Creamie and three of her cousins.  Classic awkward cousins picture, right?  Yeah, I thought so too.  So so perfect.

So here is my March, via my instagram feed. Three months into the year and I am still successfully taking a photo everyday.  Next year I think I’ll set a goal of taking a real camera photo everyday.  But I am so glad I have my phone with me all the time and can catch small moments I’d otherwise miss.  Like yesterday.  Creamie tried chopsticks for the first time and successfully ate one french fry.  Very authentic, I know.  You can click on that mosaic to go to flickr and get more info on any of those pictures.

Scott isn’t home tonight, and so I took the opportunity to make cauliflower crust pizza.  I’m kind of on a veggie kick lately, and I’ve been avoiding carbs and sugar for two weeks.  I have been craving pizza, and I figured if you put enough oregano and fresh herbs on/in it then it’s going to taste like pizza no matter what, right? Right.  I liked it.  It still needs some tweaking to be perfect, but it was awesome to eat pizza without breaking my no carb streak. (I’ve been trying the South Beach diet again, and in the past two weeks I’ve lost 10 pounds just by being careful about what I eat, it’s awesome.)

And speaking of what I eat, I also started making my own Greek yogurt.  It’s been a staple the past two weeks, but after forking out $12 for two quarts of nonfat Chobani, which lasted only 4 days, I did some math and figured at that rate I’d be spending like $800 a year on yogurt.  So I tried making my own.  I’ll share that whole process on Monday after I take some pictures while I make it tomorrow.  It now only costs me $2.50 to make two quarts of nonfat Greek yogurt.  Win.  Be back soon.

Top row: Spring is here. (I think part of this nastiness is allergies for her.  Which is why I hate spring and am obsessively in love with winter. Winter I start missing you the first time I see a teensy hint of green anywhere.) I am deep cleaning my whole house.  She is riding her bike around the kitchen in only underwear because she changed her name to Tarzan (and Tarzan doesn’t wear clothes).  And she is really into toast as a midnight snack lately.

Second Row: When she first got sick all she wanted was to snuggle with her daddy at night.  I took out my own stitches.  I am a DIY’er like that.  My finger is getting much better, but I am still not typing with it or playing the piano.  I got a new vintage book in the mail. Dorothy Grider is my favorite illustrator.  And Creamie has been working at her new office with her new cardboard and sharpie computer.

Third Row: We got some snow.  It stayed for two days.  She was too sick to get off the couch and we missed it all.  We made butter! (more on that tomorrow). She is taking care of her sick babydolls and rocking them and getting them juice and applesauce a lot.

Last Row: Mama Flashback: Her tiny little person at 11 months old pushing the cart at Costco, all by herself.  Creamie’s nailpolish of choice.  She is currently painted a different color on each hand and foot.  Pink and brown on her toes and black and clear on her fingers. Her choice.  Still sick.  She had a coughing attack today that scared her so bad because she couldn’t breathe.  She only sleeps with some serious medication.  And still wakes up when it wears off around 4 or 4:30 am… and then up. for. the. day.  So so gross.

And the last pic.  I left my house this morning for the second time since last Sunday.  It was kind of momentous.  I’ll be back tomorrow with the story of how I came to make butter last week.  It’s a good one.

*Blerg: adjective/expletive.  It’s been getting a lot of use at my house this week.

P.S. Also, can I just tell you how much I love Big Huge Labs for letting me make all these mosaics for free? Love big huge labs.  And I don’t care who knows it. Click on the pic to see it on flickr with a link to each individual photo and more info… if you are into more info and stuff.

After we dropped off Creamie at preschool we went to breakfast.  Like a date.  In the morning.  So so awesome.  Then we did a little thrifting, picked Creamie up and went to lunch.  The afternoon was spent bowling, eating ice cream and setting up a tent (a real tent) in the living room to watch a movie and eat snacks. A bit of happy mail thrown in made the afternoon extra awesome.  And then we had waffles for dinner and finished it off with a little snuggle and TV time which eventually turned into a pillow fight.  Not *that* kind.  We really were just beating each other with pillows.  I think I won, I ended up on the floor with all the pillows.  She with the most wins, right?  It was such a great day.  I can’t wait for 4 more years to do something equally ridiculous.  (I also found this idea this morning and I think I’ll do that this week too.  I’m all about time capsules.  I think. I think I’m all about time capsules.)

And with February over and March officially here I just wanted to tell you I am still right on track with this years 365 Instagram project.  And amazingly I’m still on track for four of the 8 other new years resolutions.  Two months in and a 50% success rate is doing better than average in my opinion!

So while we were visiting Grandpa we hung out at his house a lot.  Had lazy mornings.  Didn’t stress out about not being somewhere by 9 am.  Lovely.  We went to a park Scott remembered from when he was young called The Dennis the Menace Park.  (Seriously.)  He was dissappointed to see that all the cool old toys have been replaced with standard run of the mill hard plastic and metal play equipment.  It used to have a big cool castle theme.  Now it’s just primary colored play equipment.  This sword in the stone was the only thing left from the old park.  Creamie loved it anyway.  We had our picnic, she ran around touching everything and we left before it got too cold for dinner and a little shopping.  A perfect day.

Creamie and Grandpa got along great.  She shared her books and fruitsnacks with him and he sat down and watched cartoons with her.  She talked his ears off I’m sure.  But it was so sweet to see them sitting together on the couch watching cartoons on Sunday morning.  It was one of those things I hope never to forget.  And I hope we can go visit again soon.  Not only is Grandpas house the perfect vacation, it is full of beautiful old things that make me smile just to look at.  Look at the treasure I saw peeking out from the top pantry shelf while I was looking for napkins!  Catherine Holm! And the wallpaper in his dining room is one of the most beautiful patterns ever.  And the little turquoise fawn in the china cabinet…. sigh.  Grandparents always have awesome stuff don’t they.  I should take pictures of every single thing I love about my loved one’s homes.  What a fun little album that would be to look through.

A big part of our trip was focused around eating.  As it should be.  We ate at all our favorite places while we were there, the doughnut shop around the corner being one of them.  This girl would do most anything for a rainbow sprinkle doughnut.  Do you remember this post?

I got to do one more REALLY fun thing before we left LA and headed down to San Diego.  I e-met Shannon more than a year ago.  And she is absolutely lovely.  Her blog, Little Luck Tree is full of pretty pictures and tutorials and very doable DIY projects.  She just moved across the country to Hollywood and is living her dream of acting.  I am so excited for her! She came and met me for lunch just before we packed up the car for the second half of our trip and I wished I could have spent another few hours talking.  And we didn’t even get to the shopping or the thrifting!  Also, my face is totally pink from our day at Seal Beach.  I forget how often to reapply sunscreen every time we are on vacation…

Shannon and I met at a cute little spot for lunch (delicious food and real plates!) and talked about life, blogs, geeked out about “famous” people, caught up on all those things in real life that just don’t transfer as well into internet conversations and generally just had a wonderful few hours sitting out in the sunshine.  And when it came time to go, we both admitted we are blogger geeks and had to take a picture.  And then we both pulled out our Instax camera’s and laughed at each other.  She found some poor unsuspecting diner to juggle gigantic oldschool cameras while we stood there like happy idiots.  Thanks diner guy.

I don’t use my camera (an Instax 210 wide) nearly as often as I should.  It was Shannon that actually encouraged me to take it out of the box months ago.  My dad gave it to me for my  birthday last year. (Shannon’s cute little white Instax is the Mini version.)

As for today? I am working on a new project that is totally for me.  I also found out I am going to teach my first class at my local quilt shop at the end of April.  Exciting!  I’ve been eating my mom’s plumberry jam on everything I can add it too, breakfast lunch and dinner.  Creamie asked for some orange juice this afternoon, and after I squeezed her some I decided to try out a green smoothie with some of the baby spinach in the fridge.  I’ll just say I’m a total fan.  It will be hard to not eat one every single day.  Though with two cups of spinach in there and a bunch of fresh fruit that might not be such a bad thing.  I’ll be back soon, I almost feel completely caught up on my life and ready to jump into some new things.

As soon as we laid out our big blanket on the sand Creamie started taking off clothes to get in the water.  Her little skirt was off in no time flat and it was all I could do to keep her underwear on her.  I was glad I found these little boy shorts for her a few days before we left.  I didn’t much mind her walking around in these undiepants.

I found a small bucket of beach toys for $5 before we left and it was one of my best buys.  She was in heaven.  I think she played here in the sand for 3 straight hours.  I took more than 300 pictures, but I’ll spare you the full photo journal.

This was the first of many picnics on this trip.  I can’t count the number of sandwiches I ate.  But I was really glad we took our big picnic blanket.  I used it almost everyday.  It was perfect.  (This is the quilt I made for Scott last year from his dad’s clothes, that post here.)

She was burying her dad’s feet.  And doing a wonderful job of it.  Also, I think I have about 50 pictures of her from this trip with her toungue out.  Beaching is serious concentrating business!

After she fell in the water a few times she got cold and we put her swimming suit on her.  And then she got cold again and we traded a swimming suit for jeans and a fleece jacket.  Going to the beach requires a LOT of stuff.  Especially for us.  At the end of the pier on Seal Beach is a really great restaurant called Ruby’s Diner.  It’s another California favorite.

I love this girl.  Also, I finally found a pair of sunglasses that was under $20 that doesn’t hurt my head when I wear them for more than 10 minutes.  These aren’t them.  I am not letting my new one’s out of my sight ever.  They were too hard to come by!

Most of our time in California it was pretty cold.  Her little fleece jacket got a LOT of use this trip.  So I was glad we went to the beach when we did, it was such perfect weather.  For February.  She has been asking me all morning if she can go to the beach after lunch today.  She sure loved it.

Also, I should point out that I don’t get in the water.  I do the beach in pants and a jacket and stay on the dry sand.  I did walk down to the water to talk to those two while they were playing, but I try to keep my toes out of the surf.  I am a total beach woosie.  But these two?  They’d get in the water if it was 45 degrees.  And they have.  Crazies.

I will probably share more photos than this, but in case that doesn’t happen, this is what we did.  We did some beaching, some visiting, some playing, a lot of eating, thrifting, Legoland, more beaching, and more eating.  And a lot of driving.  A LOT of driving.  (You can click on the pic to see it on flickr and get more details on any of the pictures.)  I am so glad we went.  And so glad to be home sleeping in my own bed and cooking in my own kitchen.  Oh, and so glad that the back of our car is not holding a whole month’s worth of our life.  I’m almost finished with all the laundry, actually Scott has done most of it.  We went to the grocery store today and I am excited to cook dinner at home tonight.  Be back soon.

Creamie wore her new V-day leggings (from Kohls) I wore new jeans that I wouldn’t have fit into last month (Yes!) and we went to a new restaurant.

Awesome food, awesome entertainment, and great ambience.  You just can’t beat Mexican places that go all out with the lights and the bright flags hanging from the ceiling and a mariachi band that sings love songs at each table.  Valentines Day Win.  Hope your Valentines Day was lovely, or at least included fantastic Mexican food.  I have lots of things to talk about, but a sick little girl is kind of taking up a lot of my time.  It’s day 3 of this, and I sure hope it’s the last of it!

I didn’t know I was going outside to keep her from falling into the engine.  But I love this picture!

There she was, face in the engine right next to her dad and fingers getting greasier and blacker by the minute.  And she was as happy as could be.  The headlight box took a while to get out (one of the clips was broken and it took a while to wiggle it out) and she was completely entertained “helping” for almost an hour.  And it wasn’t even the kind of helping that isn’t really helping, but is mostly just getting in the way.  She stayed out of Scotts way for the most part.  She just wanted to be right by him.  It was so sweet.

Daddys toolbox was her favorite.  I think she pulled out every single tool and used it to fix something in the car.  Moneky wrench, screwdriver, jammer, chisel…. they all went under the hood for a few minutes before she’d put them in a little stack on the sidewalk next to his box.  When his box was empty she declared the car fixed and was done playing.

She was so completely hilarious banging away under the hood with whichever tool she had in her hand at the moment.  And I was also really glad she didn’t drop anything in there.

We did find a big old screwdriver in there, it was almost 18 inches long.  Who knows  how long it’s been inside the engine.  It wasn’t one of our tools, so it has been in there for at least four years, maybe more.  This car has been in the shop over and over for minor repairs and I was shocked no one found it before now.

It wouldn’t be a car repair without getting under the car to check things out.  And she was more than happy to help out.  It was a great afternoon, and I am so glad I had my camera handy to snap a couple hundred pictures of the whole thing (you’re lucky I only posted six…)

Last night I made some pumpkin spice frozen yogurt.  The recipe still needs a little tweaking but oh my goodness it is delicious.  I’m off to finish off the last of the batch before I settle into a little sewing.

Then I ordered some delicious takeout for lunch, we built a tent out of vintage sheets in the living room and watched a movie in our tent while we had an indoor picnic.

And Creamie has been playing in there all afternoon.  She has every stuffed animal, doll, baby, toy, pillow and lego guy she has all piled inside.  I’m sure the books in her room will be the next guests.

And we are watching movies and having a great old time.  I think we are going to start dinner with dessert and hopefully have an early bedtime.  And then I hope to get back to my sewing machine.