I do so solemnly swear

to be less of a hot mess and get back to blogging and other housewifey type things.


pics on Sodahead

While we're discussing my lack of getting done crap, can we discuss Park Seed? Is there a reason it's taking them forever to send me my damned seeds already? How much effort does it take to drop some peas in a damned envelope, slap a stamp on it and send it my way?

Hmmmmmmmmm?

GAH!

The song remembers when

I was seven years old and standing in my great grandmother's living room, waiting for all my guests to arrive. I finally got to wear my new gray plaid dress with the wide bib collar and my socks with the lace trim. The music was turned up, the strawberry cake was cooling in the kitchen, and my brother and I were holding hands and spinning.

The next time I complain about my fat belly

Please remind me that it took me three days to blow through these.

And that instead of disgust, I am giving serious consideration to making these for Sunday Dinner.

Whomever said "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," doesn't have taste buds. Actually, it was Kate Moss who said it which makes total sense since she's more interested in the kind of stuff you shoot or snort and not the stuff you put in your mouth.

Sunday Dinner

Oh what a beautiful morning!

My children made me breakfast on Sunday. Okay, so I made them make breakfast. This makes me responsible for the girlchild leaving the house this morning looking like she caught a case of the measles. I'd almost rather she had. Then, I wouldn't have to explain that I let my kid get popped in the face by a roving band of melted butter that hopped right from the frying pan and onto her skin. Dude, totally her fault for dropping a piece of ham on to the skillet from a high point, right? Or, yanno, my fault for not paying attention while she was cooking.

Then there was the moment when we got to church I asked pete where the diaper bag was.

"Oh, you must have forgotten it at home, mommy."

Wut, who?? I, who said, pete, get my purse and the diaper bag and go get in the car?

Yeah, sure, I forgot it. ::eyeroll:: Thank God pudding didn't have a massive blow out at church because what better way is there to spend your Mother's day than getting shat on by your own kid.

Le sigh.

Let's talk about dinner, shall we?

Before you yell at my husband for making me cook on Mother's Day, please understand that I adore our Sunday dinner tradition. I plan the menu well in advance, researching recipes, wondering if I should buy a new serving platter or baking pan, what new food to offer up, etc. I planned this Sunday's dinner before I even realized what today was and once it was planned, the hounds of hell couldn't stop me from looking forward to making my very first poundcake and attempting homemade beef pot pie.

Since my greatgrandmother taught me to eat my veggies before dessert, let's start with dinner. For my Sunday Dinners, I've been working with the Cover and Bake cookbook from America's Test Kitchen. I cannot rave enough about the awesomeness contained in these marvelous pages. In addition to some kick ass recipes perfectly suited for my tastes, as a bonus, this book spends a huge amount of time explaining why they've chosen to make the recipe the way they did, how to select ingredients, and what type of equipment to use. Even if you know how to cook well and can easily tie up the perfect pork roast, I guarantee you this book will teach you things you didn't know.

Today, it taught me to make a perfect pot pie. First, the ingredients.

You'll also need your favorite biscuit dough or pie crust recipe.

So now that you've got all that gathered, let's proceed. Heat up the butter in a large pot and cook the beef, seasoning with salt and pepper until browned. Remove from pan and set aside. While resisting the urge to shove all the tasty beef down your gullet, brown the onion and carrots. Stir in the garlic then sprinkle in the flour. Keep stirring and cook flour until golden brown. Then slowly add the wine, scraping up any browned bits. Next, pour in the chicken broth, tomato paste, and thyme. Stir until smooth. Dump the beef you haven't managed to eat back into the pot and stick a lid on it. Then let that bad boy simmer on low until the beef is nice and tender.

Slap the whole shebang in cassarole dish. I used buttermilk biscuit dough for my topping. I rolled it out, stamped out about 12 biscuits and laid them on top all nice like. Then I baked it at 400 for about 20 minutes or until the biscuits were nice and brown.

Profit.

So for mother's day, mr man gave me exactly what I wanted, another opportunity to turn out an amazing dinner, not because I'm the type of sap who lovingly declares how much they just love taking care of their family but because I like being a grade A attention whore in my cute apron.

I'm famous, yo!!!

Okay so really, I won a contest but I feeeeeeeeeel famous and since it's all about me, let's go with my first reaction. Infamy, that's me.

On to the details. Are you an interwebs meanderer? I am, particularly on the weekends. I hit up one corner of the worldwideweb and then flit around like a butterfly on crack. Why on crack you say? Because butterflies are graceful and lighter than air and I'm well, not. I'm not on crack either if that's what you're wondering, even if my hair looks like Whitney's after an all night bender.

So a few weeks ago, while wandering around, I stumbled upon a pair of talented bloggers heading up a vintage lingerie sewalong, Anna Depew at A Few Threads Loose and Sarah Norwood at Ohhh Lulu. Now, given my fascination with vintage clothing and my love of cute underpinnings, it's only natural that I fell headlong in love and have been a loyal followers of both ever since. I've even decided, thanks to their beautiful work, clear instructions, and faboo pictures that I should make an attempt at sewing some lingerie of my own. There's even some peacock brocade in my sewing stash I've mentally set aside for a set.

So imagine my excitement when I saw that Sarah was doing an ad spot promotion for the first five people to comment. Well you know I hustled my ass right over and to my surprise, VOILA! I AM FAMOUS.

I guess I better sew me some new panties for my happy dance.

So please, head over to Ohhh Lulu and check out her blog, not just to celebrate my general awesomeness but also to take a gander at the uberskilled Sarah and her beautiful pieces. Also, she has an etsy shop. So if you don't sew or you aren't yet ready to tackle unmentionables, you can buy some. After all, who doesn't like to feel pretty in their pants?

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go rescue my baby from his bed. He would like you all to know that I'm mean, horrid, abusive, and not at all famous. Thanks for the reality check, kid.

Call CPS!!

My poor, abused, unloved baby!!

Nubbie = happiness

So I thought I'd be a nice mom and take the kids downtown to see the Tall Ships on the Savannah River. Sadly, my happy behind got there too late to do anything fun and the city had this brilliant set up that made getting decent pictures nearly impossible without dropping scratch on boarding tickets. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, I was trying to do something cool with my children and ended up wrecking the helpless one in the process.

In my defense, I was attempting to use my stellar mom skills to keep Pudding's beloved nubbie from going rogue as we crossed a busy intersection. In my crusading zeal, I swiped my unsuspecting buddhabelly right below his little eye and left a nice, shiny bleeder as evidence of my fail.

Of course, he wailed like I tried to chuck him into the river, earning me a cascade of side eyes as I attempted to comfort him, once safely across the street of course. But it's only fair as I did try to blind him.

But in an effort to prove I'm not a complete screw up, I will take the time to tell you that I am so good at this mothering thing, that I know what my kids need even before they do. For instance, Peteybird came home sick from school today. Lucky for him, mama had a nice pot of soup simmering on the stove. It's totally because I'm awesome, right?

::sigh::

I know. I still tried to gouge out my kid's eye. It's going to take more than a soup coincidence to make up for that.

Guess I better think about buying the kid a pony, huh?

He looks relatively unscathed though, yes?

To make myself feel better, we sauntered over to Leopold's and snagged us some ice cream. After all, sweet dairy goodness cures everything.

It's raining, it's pouring

I'm blaming the rain for my lack of productivity today. I sewed exactly jack and shizit today, didn't cut out a damned thing. I weeded nothing and watered about two hours before the skies opened up and released a torrent that I thought would knock over my sage.

I did manage a homemade veggie sausage soup though.

I made the stock from yesterday's lamb trimmings and spent the day salivating as the scent permeated my kitchen. This is also the trouble with using your crockpot while you're at home. Suddenly you feel like a supermodel in the middle of a bakery, your stomach lecturing you while you try in vain to convince yourself that you are not starving. I may have stuffed my face all day accordingly. Half of that might have been leftover Sunday dinner dessert. Cookie brownies are the devil.

I worked in some MMM, too.

This is the Sorbetto blouse by Colette Patterns. Yay for a free working pattern.

There is no try

Ahh, Sunday dinner.

A time honored tradition in which all parties gather in the kitchen, listen to some Sinatra, and labor over a nice, home cooked meal and a faboo dessert while dodging incoming fire from a roving band of mandalorians who have been engaged by the Sith to hijack dinner prep and poison the unsuspecting republic's dining facilities.

Wut? This doesn't happen in your household?

Thankfully, Asoka Tano, Mace Windu, and the strategic use of the force enabled us to turn out a lovely shepherd's pie featuring golden lamb chops delivered to Savannah by caravan across the dessert.

No, really, you need to understand the lengths I undertook to snag 3lbs of lamb chops. Do people not eat lamb anymore? I'm not sure why I'm shocked actually. I've had lamb exactly four times in my life and half of those were over the last two days. I will say I was surprised to find I could purchase fresh goat in my local Kroger but not lamb of any kind.

Goat, people. Goat.

Maybe I should find a recipe for a future Sunday dinner, hmm?

It was a good week

Ain't no shame in my dork game.

If I could come up with a handful of words to describe myself, I'd place the word procrastinator nice and high on that list. I make these grand plans and barely manage to summon up the energy to follow through with 10% of them. Now I'm not quite ready to declare I've completely changed my ways but I've managed enough projects this week that I may very well be on my way.




Blouse from Old Navy
Skirt: Simplicity 4041 in a Joann's silky print
Shoes from Target

 

For starters, I'm five for six on Me Made May. This might not seem all that impressive but the fact is I made most of what I wore this week. Okay, that sounds obvious given the title of the challenge but really, most of what I wore this week was made by me this week or at least finished this week. I completed three skirts, two tops, and a quickie knit dress for the pinkery. Two of my projects are part of my Spring Summer Challenge.

I thought if I closed my eyes and wished really, really hard,
Mr Man would get a good picture of me. But nope.
There I am in all my postpartum glory.
Le Sigh.

This is a major, major score for me and I'm feeling quite proud if I do say so myself. However, sewing wasn't the only thing I accomplished this week. On Tuesday, I spent some time weeding, feeding, thinning, pruning and other gardening type stuff I can only hope I did right. For my efforts, I was rewarded with a nice thick patch of slug free basil, emerging pea pods, frilly carrot leaves, delicate spinach sprouts, large zucchini flowers, and actual, edible strawberries.

Sweet pea, apple of my eye

I might be a gardener after all.

Look at all that cute.
Smelly but cute, the lot of them.

I also managed to take the kids downtown to see the clipper ships, make brownies for the youth fundraiser at my church, set the girlchild's hair on rollers not once, not twice, but three times for her dance pictures, nearly shank someone at said dance school, go grocery shopping, and lay out a lovely Sunday dinner of shepherd's pie, fresh baked bread, and a cookie brownie sundae for dessert.

Your purple lightsaber is no match
for my potato, Mr. Windu!

I'll be sure to post more later if you're nosy but right now, my feet are tired, and this lazy heifer needs a nap.

Babies are convenient things

You can, like, hold them and stuff and distract people from your fat belly.

A belt would probably work better to nip in the waist and give me a better silhouette but the kid was free and I feel like he owes me considering how much time I spend wiping his butt.

The skirt is something I threw together without a pattern, just two panels of some stuff Joann's calls Tutti Fruiti that feels like paper but the color was so vibrant I couldn't resist. Look for it again in a few days when I make pinky a dress out of it and maybe even another skirt for myself. I have three yards left I think.

Day three of MMM was a wash. I just loafed around the house all day in a target tee and watched some New Girl.

I'm going slightly mad

It finally happened, woah oh

Remember my meandering Sunday wallyworld thread?

Welp, I realized Tuesday when headed out the door with plans to raid goodwill that I hadn't seen my debit card or my I.D since my last run in with my Sam Walton stalker. I scrounged my car, my purse, the diaper bag, the trunkish thing that's not a trunk but totally is the back of the car where you put trunk stuff, the diaper bag again, the backseat, the front seat, the pocket of every pair of jeans I own, the bathroom floor, even my kid's jeans since I remember sticking my keys in there as I had no pockets on Sunday and wasn't carrying a purse.

No dice. Up against the clock and a lunch date with a cool lady and her awesome kid, I snatched Mr Man's debit card and dashed out of the door. After being treated to the antics of very smart four year old with a perfect Mario imitation, I came back home and repeated my search to no avail.

So yesterday morning, I rouse my lazy ass from bed and consider which will be more painful, playing round robin with the stupid voice automation feature on the phone or dealing with the heavy sighs, starched shirts, and eerie quiet of the bank. Choosing the latter, I got the pudding dressed and hot footed it out to the car ready to take on the day. I went to straighten the straps on his carseat and what do my fingers graze??

That's right, my debit card. Don't ask me. I just live here.

A bank trip avoided. Now I am free to run into Joann's real quick for a couple invisible zippers and see what else randomly attacks my cart. Seersucker maybe? mmmhmmm! And two bolts of a really pretty peachy rose cotton with green birds on it? Oh yes please especially as I not only had a 40% off Joann's coupon but thanks to a wise comment on Gertie's blog post from the other day, I was also in possession of a beautiful, gorgeous, shiny 20% off your total purchase coupon.

Tada!!!

Oh yeah, baby!

My high lasted exactly six hours when standing in walmart (see, sucked in again!) I realized I actually had lost my debit card. I carried it in when I ran in to get yogurt, somehow set it down when I was distracted by a bolt of brown, pink, and cream striped knit and somehow, by the time I headed towards the grocery side of the place, I'd lost it.

Grrr

Guess I'm going to have to deal with the bank tellers after all. At least I won't spend 30 minutes yelling NO, LOST CARD, YES, BACK, SCREW YOU AUTOMATED SYSTEM!!

See, I can look on the bright side.

I think I deserve ice cream today, don't you?

Cold Stone, here I come!

Ice cream fixes everything,
except a raving case of fatass of course.

I heart this so

Via Pinterest from
http://vintagevandalizm.com/

Hmmmm, I think I have just the right thing in my floordrobe to repurpose accordingly.

Oh what, you've never heard of a floordrobe? HA!

Okay, fine. I'll tell you. It's what you call that clean pile of laundry that somehow never gets put away. Bonus points if it's on the floor of your closet or the floor in front of your dresser. Extra extra points if you don't even have a dresser but just throw crap willynilly wherever it may land.

In case you haven't figured it out, I'm all kinds of domestic when it comes to food, gardening, and sewing but cleaning is not my strong suit. That's what I had children for, which is counter productive given how much mess they make in their own right but let me have my delusions.

Day two

It's days like this I remember why I have children, yanno, beyond the slave labor aspect. Hey, groceries don't carry themselves into the house, you know.

Anyhow, I have recruited my children as little helpers in my blogging endeavors, primarily to be my personal photographers. Sure, I could get their father to do it but then I have to resist the urge to choke his tall ass out when he gives me that annoying "wut" face for taking five million pictures a day and actually being the type of person who has a blog. What can I say? The man is a seventy year old man in a thirty seven year old body. So I bypass his pursed lipped judgement and finagle the children into doing my dirty work. They do want dinner, yes?

The minute the spill into my house, dropping permission slips here, hoodies there, and leaving notebook paper and pencil nubs in their wake, I pick off a particularly eager looking one and usher them outside for picture taking time. Today, we had to make a pit stop in the land of "what did mommy buy today" to give pinky a dress I found for her at Goodwill. Then, I had to sit and wait while she changed immediately. On one hand, I'm delighted by how much she loves her $1.99 dress. On the other, I WANT MY PICTURE TAKEN, DAMMIT!

I'm glad I waited though because she trilled me. After taking my picture, she decided I should do her a solid and take her picture too and because she's a joiner, she wants it posted on the blog too.

So now that you've suffered that barely entertaining, meandering story, here's the pictures.

What's that I see in the trees?
World peace?

The top was done up in two hours out of some knit I have in my stash. I think I picked it up on the clearance table at Hancock's. But it's been a few years. The skirt is Sandra Lee Me Made, aka, barely made by me at all. But instead of being paid millions of dollars to ice a store bought cake with canned frosting on national television while drunk on peach schnapps and delusion, I took a Goodwill maxi dress, cut off the top, sewed in an elastic waistband and called it good.

Here it is in it's pre-Snarktastical glory.



Who doesn't love a little uniboob in the morning?

 And here's the oft hilarious pinky in her Goodwill dress, perfect as it is.



Whirled peas? I don't get it.


Perfect as she is. Nope, I gave her absolutely no direction on either where we ought to take this picture or how she ought to pose. Pinky just climbed her happy little butt up on that wall and stunted like her mama, facial expression and all.

She slays me.

Now if you'll excuse me, I've been ordered to make her a maxi skirt. I'd feel put upon if I wasn't fully aware that in a couple years, she'll be bending over backwards to be my complete opposite. I better enjoy having a mimicking shadow while I can.

And We're Off!!

If you recall, today is the start of Me Made May and to get the ball running, may I present my yard sale revamp?

I really need to learn to take better pictures. Guess it's time to start reading up on photography.

In any case, I started off with a standard ladies dress shirt in a size 12/14 that I picked up from my church youth group's yard sale in October. I'd planned to convert it into a maternity top but never got around to it. Turned out to be a good thing as the existing shirt would not have accomodated a babyfat belly for very long. My crappy photography skills don't show the colors very well but it's a white shirt with chocolate, tan, and maroon stripes.

The conversion was pretty easy and only took me about a day. I cut off the sleeves first then cut out the side seams. I used the Sorbetto top pattern to cut the proper armhole shape but cut the neckline just a bit lower. I added darts at the armholes and the back yoke to fix the gaping. Then I made some bias tape from the sleeves and used it to bind everything up.

 I know that I'm really not supposed to be making up a lot of stuff for MMM and just going with what I already have however, I realized belatedly that most of my handmade items are dresses that won't be convenient for nursing my kid. So I could either make a few extra things in addition to all the sewing already on the books or amend my challenge parameters.

I chose the latter because I enjoy making my life more pressure than it has to be.

Such an inconvenience, these baby things. Also, they spit up, a lot. As if sensing the drawbacks to dealing with their fussy little behinds, they often make a concerted effort to be extra cute, as if it somehow makes leaving wet spots all over your shirt less annoying.

Who am I kidding? I'll totally deal with grody patches if it means I get to dress the kid in adorable feetie jammies. See that spot of gray adorning my kid's toes? Those are rhinoceroses/rhinocerooses/rhinocerice, yanno, something.

And just to bring it home, they say "I'm in charge" on the tag.

Do you die? I die.