Reading with Daddy

Better Late than Never

Happy belated Mother's Day!! We had a wonderful weekend. On Mother's Day we had a nice relaxing morning playing in PJs and then got dressed up to go out for a nice brunch. I almost made us late for our reservation, because I couldn't stop taking photos of Miss in her adorable dress. I love that she can wear dresses comfortably now that she is walking, and she was really hamming it up with dancing, flexing her muscles, and playing while I snapped lots of photos.

Over the weekend I took my camera in to the store where I bought it because I have been having some problems with it. Turns out it just needed to be cleaned a bit and it is working good as new. While I was in the camera store I purchased a new macro lens for my camera, which is something both my hubby and I have been wanting. This lens allows me to take super close-up shots (or not so close up) with a large aperture (very low f-stop setting). I had some fun experimenting with the lens today.

Finally, my last post gave me the kick in the rear I needed to just get the growth chart project done. I got out my practice canvas and experimented a little and then jumped in and painted the growth chart in two evenings. I used stencils to put Miss's name at the top, but otherwise I did the rest freehand. It's obviously very amateurish, but I am quite proud of it (the right side isn't cut crookedly, it is kind of curled up a bit, not sure how to get it back to flat). It will match pretty well in her room and she will always know that her mom made it for her. Now on to the next projects: ruffly summer pants for Miss, crib sheets, a dust ruffle, a Boppy slipcover, and other nursery decor for Baby Girl, and eventually, another growth chart for her room too!

Update and Cuteness

Okay, so I promised a while ago to give an update on the projects I blogged about several weeks ago. For starters, the growth chart. I got canvas and dowels and ribbon, gessoed it the canvas and cut it to size, painted the dowels, sewed pockets for dowels in each end, and attached the ribbon. Pretty good progress, except that it has been in this stated for weeks now:

I am completely stalled out on the final and all-important step of actually painting the design and the measurements on the canvas! I'm terribly artistically impaired, at least when it comes to this sort of painting. So I am very afraid that I will completely mess it up! My painter friends have assured me (and logically I know this to be true) that if I do mess up I can just paint over it. No biggie. Yet I continue to put off the last step in completing this project. I have gessoed an area on a leftover piece of canvas to practice on, so hopefully I can get past my fear and just get it done soon.

On to my bedroom project. I had mentioned that I bought a pattern and was going to find some fabric to make my own duvet cover for our master bedroom. Here is the fabric that I fell in love with.
And here is the finished project
Lucky for me, I didn't actually sew a stitch in this project! See, I found the fabric I loved, but then could not justify the cost of purchasing the amount of fabric that my pattern said would be required. It would have cost over $400 just for the fabric, and I still would have had to sew the darn thing! So, I made the decision that I just had to look harder for an already made duvet that I could live with. I had almost decided on one that I found on clearance from Pottery Barn when, in a last search online, I stumbled upon the duvet in the above photo! I was thrilled to find it for less than half of the cost of buying the fabric to do it myself. And none of the work, of course! How serendipitous! Mark another project "Done."

Finally, I just couldn't resist adding some of today's cuteness to the end of this post. We had a cold rainy stay-inside kind of day today. Miss woke from her morning nap with the funniest bed-head and bewildered look. And I can never resist the opportunity to take pics of her in a cute diaper and baby leg warmers.

Cinco de Mayo Fiesta!!

Several weeks ago I did a post about the St Patrick's Day celebration Miss and I had with my friend and her daughter. We all dressed in green and got together at an Irish restaurant for lunch. I brought along some fun St. Patty's bling for the girls (big and small), and it was a great time. Recently we were talking about getting together for lunch again and my friend suggested carrying on the "tradition" and having a Cinco de Mayo Fiesta, complete with Mexican food and playdate at her house. When I asked what I could bring to contribute to the festivities, she jokingly said it would be great if I had a line on some baby sombreros. Well, I've never actually seen a toddler-sized sombrero anywhere for purchase, but why would I let that stop me?? Can I come up with baby sombreros? You bet your buttons I can. Check 'em out (Miss's adorable fiesta pants aren't too bad either if I do say so myself!!):

Here's how they started. The one on the right hung on the wall in my bedroom when I was a little girl, and I happened to see it at my parents' house when I was there last week and decided it would work nicely as a sombrero. The one on the left was part of my antiquing score in Hazel. $1.50!! All I had to do was rip the flowers/lace/ribbon off, pick off 20-year-old hot glue that still wanted to cling to those things for dear life, and then add my own ball fringe and colorful rick rack. I had originally thought I would put lots and lots of gaudy ribbon and rick rack in different colors on the hats. But honestly after I added to ball fringe, they almost didn't need anything else. They practically screamed "Sombrero!!!!" I did want to add a little color though, so the band of rick rack went on and I decided to quit while I was ahead.

The hats were a hit! Mi hija es muy bonita!!!
The food and company of my friend and her daughter were fabulous as well and made for an all around enjoyable afternoon. My friend said she went a little nuts in the local supermercado, and she had the spread to prove it. I ate cactus for the first time, and it was delicious as was everything else. And my pregnant craving for all things burrito was happily satisfied today. So Happy Cinco de Mayo to you all!!

Family Photos

As promised, here are some photos of Miss with all the family we got to visit with during our trip last week (except her great-great-uncle and aunt; I forgot the camera when we went to see them). She had a blast playing with my parents and my brother and sister-in-law and their kids.

Here she is with Grandpa. He had just had surgery on his rotator cuff, but they had fun playing anyway. She gets a kick out of his mustache and loves his deer and bear mounts on the wall in the den. She wanted to be picked up over and over to look at them, but wouldn't touch them!!

Being silly with Grandma. Grandma taught her to make a clock sound and be an elephant (Miss raises her arm like a trunk, but doesn't do the noise very often). I have no idea what they're doing here. . .
Playing with her uncle. I have a link to his blog Dunamis Training Systems on my sidebar. Check it out!
She was fascinated by her oldest cousin. This looks like a staring contest!
Miss learned to climb into her toy box during this trip, and her cousin wanted to try it too! He's showing her something very important!
Here she is meeting her newest baby girl cousin (on my side of the family anyway, she actually has one younger baby girl cousin on my husband's side). How cute is she??? My sister-in-law (behind the adorable baby) is my main source of info about using cloth diapers with a newborn, since I didn't start using them full-time with Miss until she was about 4 months old.
And here are a few photos of Miss playing in the boat with her Daddy for the first time. She loved it!

Score!

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. Sorry. We went to visit my parents for the past week. I've already posted all about the black hole of internet access within which they live, so I won't get into that again, but that's why I've been MIA. We had a wonderful time on our trip. Miss got to spend lots of time with her Grandma and Grandpa and we got to see my brother and his family. We met my new niece finally, which was tons of fun. I'll post some pics of that part of our trip soon, but this post is about the fabulous treasures I scored while antiquing with Miss and my mom. We went to Hazel, KY, which is a small town at the very southern edge of the state about an hour from where my parents live. I always have the best luck antiquing in Hazel. It's one of my favorite places. Many of my favorite antique finds have come from Hazel, and this trip was no exception. Here's what I scored:

I was looking specifically for a dresser to double as a changing table for Baby Girl's room. I had specific dimensions in mind for the dresser so it would work. Here's what I got for a great price!!

You can see the new color of the walls in Baby Girl's room too, and here's a photo of her crib and some of the fabrics I'll be using.
I have been looking for some more decor for the walls in Miss's room and found these adorable little framed needlepoint pieces. They were a steal at $13 each!
They look great in her room.
My final score is something I've been looking for for a while. Some individuals (my brother) wondered why on earth I would buy this.
My brother has no vision for such things. I've been looking for a birdcage for a while so that I could use the stand for a very specific purpose. Behold:
That is the chandelier that I bought for Miss's room in our old house, where there was no ceiling-mounted light fixture and I hung it from the hook in the ceiling. There is a ceiling fan in Miss's room in our house now, which I didn't want to take down, so I have wanted to get a birdcage stand from which to hang the chandelier so it would work more like a floor lamp. Here it is in place in her room (though with the light turned on you can't see the chandelier very well). I love it!

And here's a photo I just had to post today because I love it. More photos from our trip to come soon!

Random

I am crazy tired tonight. As a result, I'm not sure that I can put together much of a coherent post. And if I'm totally honest, I'm too lazy to get up and get my camera to upload the new photos I've taken over the past few days. So, here are a few random comments on some photos I enjoy.

Miss love to play with her Daddy. Seriously, he's like an amusement park ride to her. He eats it up too.

Miss has learned to say, "What's that?" She actually says something like, "Ta" and points and/or looks at something, but we know what she means. She does this a lot. I love her curiosity! Sometimes she does this more than once for the same object, as illustrated by the pictures below. Or else, and this is probably more likely, she's asking about one thing and I'm telling her about something else, so she keeps asking until I get it right!

This past weekend my husband rendered lard. Seriously. He took pork fat, cut it into pieces, and cooked it over very low heat for the entire day on Saturday. The picture below is the result. Lots of liquid fat and some "cracklins" to boot (those things are actually yummy). Strain off the liquid and voila! Lard. Note: also in the photo my gorgeous copper saute pan that he got me for Christmas and the knife set he got me for Christmas several years ago. The man is no dummy. He took the fact that I love to cook and ran with it, and gets himself some pretty tasty eats from time to time too!
You may be wondering what one does with lard once it is rendered. I was. Well, you can use it for many purposes when cooking, and apparently using it for baking results in fantastic treats. But my hubby rendered this lard expressly for the purpose of making pork confit. In other words, he marinated the pork on the day he made the lard. The next day (Sunday) he cooked the pork submerged in the lard in the oven on very low heat all day. It's a bummer I don't have a photo of this, as he used my other gorgeous Christmas present for this, which is a copper dutch oven to match the saute pan! Anyway, cooking the meat this way not only makes some seriously delicious pork, it is also a preservation method and with the cooked pork stored in an airtight container in the lard in the fridge, it will keep for months. Who knew?? P.S. to eat it later we will extract it from the lard and saute it. Yum. And - BONUS - the lard can be used again. Thrifty.