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Ta-da!  Last week at Ikea I was very close to buying a play tent.  Very close, dangerously close.  I didn’t buy it though and remembered this tutorial and thought I’d give it a try.  This is a highly modified version of that one because I had neither sufficient grommets nor plastic rings on hand.  Instead of the rings I sewed casings for the poles and didn’t add flaps so the tent is three sided.  I wanted it to look something like this 300 dollar job but mine’s not quite as slick.  300 bucks can you believe that??  Anyway, it’s surprisingly sturdy and the kiddies seem to like it.  

I wish I could get the pictures into the order of her discovery but Wordpress hates me so you’ll have to use your imagination and if you want to see them full size, you have to click on the pictures twice.  I know, I know sorry.  Oh, and that coat and those red boots?  Kid to Kid Consignments.  I didn’t get what I was looking for but that coat?  The price tag sure does say $5.99 I can only imagine what it cost retail at Baby Gap.  The boots are brand new, never worn and cost only $3.99!  I bought all that and still came out ahead by not spending three hundred bucks on a play tent.

We have a whole mishmash of doll related toys all of a sudden.  First I found a doll chair at the thrift store.  

Then I found a desk that probably belonged to a doll at some point too.  

And well, once we had a desk and a chair, I thought, what better time for a doll bed?  Chase likes to tuck baby in. 

Chase has just started to get into this kind of play and I’m trying to encourage it.  I’m having trouble waiting for her birthday and christmas for the big gift ideas I have on my list.  

I’m also feeling like I never have a handle on all the toys.  I feel like I need to constantly have new stuff in rotation or she’s bored with what we’ve got.  At the same time I never feel like I can get rid of anything because she might be interested in it again at some point.  Now we have all this stuff.  Some of it really needs to go.  I’m thinking I might just schedule a goodwill pick up.  That always motivates me to get stuff together.  That and we have two extra office chairs in the basement.  Oh, and here’s a random picture of Chase I took because I am in love with her big girl jeans.  

Are you watching project runway?  This past week’s show was great.  I feel like the first couple of weeks are always lousy and I can never remember the people who get voted off by the end of the season.  The show just starts off with too many but now it’s getting good.  This week’s episode had some of the best commentary by the judges AND contestants.  There were some real gems in there.  Oh, and Jerrell, Jerrell!  What?!  I need to watch the episode again just to see that outfit.  I’m sure it was well tailored, constructed and a whole lot better than anything I could do but conceptually, not so much.

I’ve been working on a couple of projects and doing a little sewing.  You never know when inspiration will strike so I always like to keep supplies on hand like… heavy weight artist’s canvas, leather weight needles and vintage sheets… stay tuned!   

You knew it was coming right?  It’s good but not great.  It’s more of a tutu apron than a tutu proper.  Here’s how it came about.  I’ve been picking up pieces of tulle from remnant bins for months and finally had enough to put a little something together.  I also splurged and bought a gathering foot.  First of all it’s the best thing ever.  No more fussing with rows of stitching and getting great gathering only to pull to hard and break the thread.  The only thing I can’t do is account for how much length will be left if I gather with x tension and y stitch length.  Does anyone know how to figure it out?   

There are obviously some kinks to work out.  I should probably stop taking pictures of projects before I cut all the thread ends and try to prettify it a little.  I just used a wide ribbon for the band and tied it in the back.  You can get a sense of how it looks in the back from one of those pictures.  The other reason Chase got a tutu today?  Last night I jumped up and tried to squish a bug.  Who knew that would precipitate hours… HOURS of EYE? EYE? That’s fly? in baby speak.  EYE?  all through bathtime… EYE?  all through bedtime, we even read a book about a fly.  First thing this morning… everything was ok.  Ben got up with her and put the tv on and I slept in.  When they came back upstairs his face was drawn and pale and all he could tell me was that he looked away for a second and that when he looked back at the tv there was a chicken, a duck and a frog on the screen and Chase had renewed her efforts at looking for an EYE?  What do I do he asked me.  What to do indeed.  

I let Ben go back to bed and went to work.  EYE?  was nothing a new tutu and a little Dragon Tales couldn’t take care of.   

So even though I just got the results of last year’s MRI a couple of weeks ago I’m now awaiting the results of the one I had for this year on Friday.  The whole thing is absurd.  The stack of films that I have to bring with me to every appointment weighs almost more than I do and yet the actual scan doesn’t get any easier.  It’s not the tight space that bothers me, I’m not afraid to be in the tube.  What I can’t stand is not being able to move.  

No matter what I wear, no matter what I do with my hair I spend the whole time supremely uncomfortable.  This time was no exception.  I get comfortable, get an earplug and she slips me into the tube and starts the scans.  As soon as the scans begin the woman starts talking to me through the intercom even though she’s JUST handed me an earplug and the machine makes a terrible noise.  She’s asking me if I’m ok and she continues to ask me for the next 20 minutes or so.  The third or fourth time she asks I say um, I have a cramp in my back because the burning pain is just becoming unbearable and I haven’t even gotten the contrast dye yet.  Her response?  Even though she’s been asking me if I’m ok for half an hour?  Um, she says.  Um!  Um.. what does that mean?  I tell her I need to move my shoulders which makes her huff and puff and carry on before she bustles in to the room.  That’s when she notices that she’s forgotten to wedge my head in place with the little bolsters.  The crazy thing is that once she did that?  The whole process was a lot more comfortable.  Stupid, stupid!  

So I get my films and hustle over the hospital where I find that the appointment before me hasn’t been seen yet and have been waiting for 45 minutes.  It was not looking good.  Luckily it didn’t take that long to get in.  Of course once I was in I was out again in 10 minutes.  Why did I have to go through all of that for the doctor to tell me to call him in a week so he could read me the MRI technician’s report?  I’m happy that the scans show no change so I’m not that angry otherwise I’d be carrying on about how it was a total scam.  Keep your fingers crossed that the report is consistent with the doc’s initial opinion.  I’m not too worried about it though.  

So what else is going on?  How was your fourth?  I’m trying not to freak out.  I love fireworks when I’m watching the display of a professional pyrotechnics technician.  The thought of every Tom, Dick and Harry launching his own show makes me glad it rained today so my house has a chance when the embers of Tom’s bottle rocket land on the roof.  Am I the only person that thinks fireworks at home are stupid and that it’s a really bad idea to sell fireworks at Target?  

We had a pretty good day.  We spent it just hanging around and having a good time.  A few pics from the day.

I stirred some of the cherries we canned into softened vanilla ice cream.  It was so yummy.

Ben calls it: the 1980’s are calling and they want their phone back.  

I took Chase to the toy store today.  I love that place.  I love toys but on top of all the cool toys they have all of these tiny little things like stickers and erasers and tiny little plastic animals.  I love those even more. Chase got this new stroller.  She loves it.  See stunt baby’s feet sticking out?  See all the fingerprints on the door?  Sigh.  

This could very well be the single most money-saving post ever for us hairy gals.  I remembered my mother having a friend that made a homemade wax concoction for waxing legs.  This is the information age right?  You bet, everything you need to know about the home hair removal process called sugaring is right there at the tip of your fingers… I mean fingertips, honestly, who writes like that?  

If you Google sugaring you’ll get lots of hits but this page has some good tips.  I had to make it twice before getting it right.  I think that the key, like this person says, is to not let it boil too hard.  I got impatient the first time and cranked the heat and it was hot, like molten hot right up until the time it turned rock hard and unusable.  I didn’t end up using a thermometer so you can do this without it.  The one I have ended up going off way before the mixture even started to color so I knew it was off.  I did use a glass of water to see if the sugar would hold together when dropped in.  If you search sugaring on youtube you’ll find yet more info about it.  It will look about like this:

It totally worked and I am happy to have 42 more bucks in my pocket every month.  I didn’t even wax my eyebrows off.  

My second sugary topic is about jam.  We went back to Shaw’s and picked blueberries and cherries.  You HAVE to make this jam.  This jam is out of this world.  I found it poking around the internet for recipes.  It really delivers.  I increased the lemon juice by a tablespoon and decreased the vinegar accordingly.  Obviously I didn’t use frozen berries and it didn’t make a difference.  Now for all the cherries.  The trees were just dripping with fruit.  They were so easy to pick that even Chase filled a bucket.  You just put your hands up into the leaves and you would come back with a handful of ripe red cherries.  It was my first time picking cherries but by far the easiest of the fruits we’ve tried recently and by far the most fun.. you know, cause you can get dad up on a ladder.    That’s always good for a few laughs.  

I did proper canning this time but I did make one serving for immediate consumption.  I was sitting around last night complaining that my back was sore, that I felt bruised and then later realized that my underwear was too tight.  So tight that it made my back hurt?  You think it’s because I ate almost a whole loaf of bread slathered in jam?  It was worth it!

I’m just getting back from a long night of lecture but I’m not mad because we had such a nice day with friends Anny and baby Abby.  She’ll probably be mad that I’m posting such a close up shot but I can’t help it, you can tell how nice she is just by looking at her.  My gorgeous friend Anny:

They drove all the way here this morning just to play and it was so much fun.  We started the morning in Fells Point with a pastries and coffee at Bonaparte.  They had three little bowls with quick breakfast offerings on the counter.  Butter croissants, chocolatines, and another filled with apples.  I sampled one of each but the chocolate croissant was by far the best, how could it not be?  By the time we were done every patron in the place had tripped over Chase twice and she had put tiny hand prints all over the impeccably clean glass display case in spite of my best efforts to prevent that from happening.  

From there we hopped on the water taxi to go across to Ft. McHenry (where else, I know).  The water taxi was sooo much fun but at 9 bucks a head you don’t get a whole lot of bang for your buck if you’re not using it as a true tourist.  Nonetheless the kiddies seemed to really enjoy it.  The ride was just long enough to see some sights along the way but ended just before Chase got too antsy.  She was antsy but not too antsy.  They originally said that all kids under 10 were 4 bucks but they didn’t charge us for the babies once we were on board though I don’t know if that’s because they were strapped to our backs or because the boat wasn’t that full or just because the guy was nice.  Chase really enjoyed the boat ride though so I will more likely than not shell out to do it again.. and again.  I couldn’t get a great shot of Chase on the boat.  I couldn’t get far enough away to get more than her face in the shot.  She would have either a) best case scenario fallen off of the bench or b) worst case scenario tried to climb out onto the back of the boat.  I took the shot I could get.  A picture of a water taxi and one of Chase enjoying the ride.  

At Fort McHenry we just sat in the grass in a shady spot and had a snack before catching a boat back to Fells.  Abby is so close to walking on her own, she wanted to run with Chase a lot and they were all squeals and pointing over it.  I suspect she’ll be running within a matter of days.  It was a great way to spend the morning and I hope they come back to do it again!  I highly recommend these activities to anyone who needs to get out and about.  A boat ride, imagine.  No fuss no muss, you just show up and pay they run all the time so you don’t have to plan much of anything.  You might wait 15 or 20 minutes but in the meantime you could get a fresh squeezed lemonade across the street.  Enjoying some snack:

We also saw the visiting Japanese Coast Guard Ship.  It was pretty impressive.

I kinda fell off the face of the earth for a minute there.  Earlier this week Kayris gave me this award!  

Cool, huh?  It makes me feel cool and lame at the same time because even though I loved getting it I have no one to pass it on to.  Not really anyway.  I think most of the people’s blogs that I read either already have a huge enough following that they know just how many people’s days their making or have already been awarded it not to mention that I am completely inept when it comes to how these things go.  So… Thank you, thank you!  And I’m glad somebody’s reading :o)  Gack, now I have to figure out how to get it into my sidebar.  

In other news it’s finally here along with all the good and bad that come with it.  

The good:

The farmer’s market is in full swing.  I can’t wait for tomatoes so I can eat insalata caprese everyday.  

It’s full on yard sale season.  I left the house with 5 bucks and came back with 3.  Also in tow, two giant dump trucks for backyard play, a cool vintage pattern to make for myself in the fall, three vintage books for Chase and a pile of fabric.  Not bad huh?  

I love watching the tiny veg grow a little everyday.  I finally got some perennials in the front so we’re not the weed garden people anymore.  It’s pretty bad when the guy playing without a full deck offers to bring you over some hostas from his own garden and then feels so bad for you that he plants them for you too.  

I took this book out from the library.  It has good ideas for ways to encourage children’s play outdoors.  The book has just been re-released with a few updates but the pictures scream I’m from the original publication!  A lot of the featured gardens are from the mid-atlantic region which makes is that much more useful and interesting.  I’m reading and thinking about how to interpret some of the ideas for our postage stamp yard.  We’re trying to think of ways to maximize the use of our space.  Ben built a door to cover the steps down to the basement that is not pitched so that it also serves as a little deck for the grill that freed up a lot of space and also provided a place to store our table when not in use.  I planted ferns underneath our plant beds.  I put some stones in around them and I’m hoping that they naturalize a little.  

We’re trying a new composting experiment.  We were on the verge of shelling out for a system when we found this.  

All of our hard work is finally paying off.  We’re having a lot of fun kicking around outside.  

Oh, and Pile of Craft.  I hardly slept last night, tossing and turning and trying to figure out what order to tackle the walk to the farmer’s market, block yard sale and craft fair in.  For fear of being run out of town I’ll keep my opinion to a minimum but I’ll tell you that I just don’t ‘get’ the whole hipster scene.  Craft is craft regardless of how ‘cool’ you are, where’s the craft love people?  I did buy one thing from one booth because the vendor was the nicest, most genuine person.  She had a truly warm smile and was so nice not to mention that her wares were super cute.  Only a super nice person selling super cute stuff could get me to spend 40 bucks on a child’s t-shirt, sheesh.  Don’t hold this against me when I’m calling asking you to borrow money.  Chase has a kitty t-shirt and kitty says MOW that’s m-ow not, mow.  

The cat is from a recycled T and the rest of the shirt is organic cotton.  The whole thing is ridiculously soft and beautiful… I want it.  Plus it looks like a cat I had once.  

Summer means it’s almost Chase’s half-birthday.  She’s having a little bit of a language explosion that results in more than a little verbal diarrhea.  I catch some of it that gets repeated, bug bite, Chase got socks, go outside, truck, chalk, toot toot!  and a lot of new animal sounds and actions.  A lot of it sounds the same but I’m fluent in Chase-ease.  She is also finally saying mummy and mom.  Of course it’s while she’s trailing behind me demanding to be carried.  I had to bust out the Ergo my back is killing me.  

The bad: 

Chase is being eaten alive by mosquitos and I haven’t had time to figure out how to effectively combat the buggers.  I finally went around today and put a few drops of citronella essential oil around where we sit and it seemed to work.  It’s cost effective until the bottle runs out because I already had it on hand but I’m reasonably certain that pouring essential oils around in the great outdoors isn’t the most effective way to fend off mosquitos.  

Must you play your music so loud?  Seriously, are you going to die if you turn it down a notch or two?  One day I’ll just snap. 

What will the kids DO all summer?  

It will be hot soon and the craziness that is summer in the city will hit hard.  

Have a good weekend!

A belated happy father’s day to all.  What can I say?  I know it’s Tuesday but in in my defense I thought it was Monday all day to the point where I found myself standing in the Red Canoe asking what happened to story time.  The weekend as uneventful and quiet, perfect for us homebodies.  On Saturday we visited Shaw Orchards to to pick your own strawberries.  Doing some quick research I found that there is a pick your own that’s closer but the Shaw website promised a tractor ride and they did not disappoint.  The tractor ride was THE highlight of the day for Chase.  I picked a flat of strawberries which is way too many for the three of us.  I made one batch of freezer jam and since I don’t have any other bright ideas it looks like another batch of freezer jam it is assuming that I can find enough containers.  Somewhere in here a case of canning jars is hiding and laughing at me.  Here are a couple of pics from the day.  

It took us about an hour to get there but it was a straight shot from the city and very scenic once we turned exited off of 83.  We plan on going back to cherries, blackberries and blueberries as soon as they are ready, which they promise will be soon.  

I did some checking in the garden today and everything seems to be in full swing!  There are tiny little veggies on all the plants.  I can’t wait to eat a tomato.  I’m lying, I can’t wait to eat a BLT.  I bought about 10 pounds of bacon on Sunday in preparation.