Burlap wreath

My sister asked me to make a wreath for her door. Her door is not blue. But I keep telling her it should be.

This was really easy and quick. Unlike that ruffled wreath that required 4,305,975 (or thereabouts) felt circles and shriveled my hands into cramped tyrannosaur claws. It was worth it though.

I cut the burlap into strips. Then I held the center fiber tight and pulled the fabric down along it, making a loose ruffle (but without the hassle of a basting stitch!) I took these ruffled strips and wound them around the wreath, pinning them as I went. If the wreath base and the fabric had contrasted more, I think I would have wound the wreath in non-ruffled burlap first. But I didn't.

True story: my sister and I came out of totally different aisles of the store with the exact same feather thing in our hands. Hers was black. She said "I love this but I would like it more in red."

Mine was red.

World... meet Fang

Violet's teacher is having a Valentine box decorating contest and told them to go nuts.

I guess he's not totally nuts. He could have had moving parts or said things like "feed me candy!" But he did involve sewing.

And that's something.

Sicky sicky sick

Smitty McSickly is ill. He has some sort of RSV-like virus with a really long and ominous-sounding name that I can't remember. Basically he has a nasty cold and is too little to blow his nose so he is all stuffy and boogery and congested-in-his-chest-ery. Food tastes icky to him, sleeping in his lonely crib is not nice and people keep suctioning his nose and testing his blood O2 and touching and poking and pestering him when he just wants mom-snuggles, thank you. I keep telling him we're trying to keep him out of the hospital. He says to leave the dinosaur socks ON and stop pinching his pudgy feet.

Also today he crawled into the laundry room, industriously dug around in a basket until he found a particular sock, clutched it to his chest and said "oooooohDOboh!" He hugged it a minute more before crawling off, special sock in hand.

I have no idea.

Today's checkup involved too much of the poking and listening and pestering. Now he has two angry-looking infected ears and the doctor suggested 3 days of antibiotic injections and I just couldn't do it. We'll try the liquid.

You've definitely had too much of the doctor's office when sleeping in your sibling's trash-pile room is the best alternative.

February decisions

Remember how February makes me go crazy? Like that one February when I up and decided that we needed to move to a different house as in right now this minute? And the time that a fist through the wall started a years-long remodel of our entire upstairs (totally worth it!) And that other February when we sold our beloved Pathfinder because there was not enough room for the carseat of the third baby that I could not possibly continue life without.

February. It's a problem.

I gave last February a pass because sweet baby Smitty had rearranged our lives pretty well on his own. My major decisions last year were scaled-down decisions.

Will baby look more snuggly in his Valentine pajama suit or his hooded sweater suit?
Should we both have a little nap in our bed, or in this delicious patch of sunshine?
Do you suppose another diet Dr. Pepper before lunch will keep him awake?

February again! Change is in the air. Joe's recently replaced the red jeep with a black one. Supposedly he'll sell the red one later. The driveway is getting crowded. Also Big Blue had some ignition problems, because he was feeling left out. Blue decided that using a key in the ignition is Lame and Common and something that Other Cars Do, and that keys were no longer for him. So instead of a boring metal ignition key, Joe fashioned one from a bit of Trex decking that he found on the ground and this little notched bit of wood is how we have to start the truck.

......yep.

But hey! Swapping one jeep and repairing one truck is boring. It's been done. It's February! Joe also decided that if the Tahoe needed to be registered and I really couldn't stop complaining about it, then it was probably time to sell it too. Normally I think I'm not a complainer. I would like to think so. And maybe if we hadn't purchased the Tahoe from criminals, maybe I would have felt like I could trust and love the car. The little things would not have bothered me. But every minute of its life, I felt like I was waiting for something to go wrong. It made me worry. The heat only worked at 3 and 4. The keyless entry worked some of the time. The tachometer worked most of the time. The speedometer came and went. The CD player only played at certain temperatures. It squeaked. It rattled. And I worried.

It sold. I watched it lumber off it its new life in Idaho without any regrets. Actually we left it in the bank parking lot where the buyer was supposed to go back for it, except he called the next day to ask where was that bank again? Because he couldn't remember. I hope he found it.

And because Joe's brother is borrowing one of our cars and another is parked at his mom's house for no particular reason, our driveway was suddenly, strangely empty.

The neighbors commented on the new look.

So today, hooray! we officially joined the Nissan team again, with Nissan #5 and Pathfinder #2. And little Violet exacted a promise from all parties to not switch any of the cars for a year at least.