one shabby chick

A lot of totes and Creme Brulee'

I had planned on not doing any sewing besides the "beloved" table runners for a while, but....

We have our first co-op class tomorrow and everyone needed a book bag to carry along their science books and notebooks.

We are in a small homeschool group and we are meeting every 2 weeks for Science, Art and Speech class. The older kids are doing a General Science (with lots of dissecting) and the younger grades are using this book - which should be really fun since we live in Hawaii (and have places like this to go for field trips).

So I whipped up 4 tote bags after school today.

Even though Baby Girl will actually be hanging out with me in the nursery (that's my job for the co-op...I lucked out), she still wanted her own bag. She's carried it with her since I made it today too...she just left with Hubby to take our eldest to soccer practice and had it packed full of stuff.

I used fusible fleece on Bela's bag and stitched some straight lines with the walking foot.

Big brother decided he didn't like the "yellow" color (even though it's mustard and has gigantic squid on it - how cool is that!!) so he turned his inside out.

Little brother is not as picky and seems to like his just fine - his lining is that cute little fish print (had to stay with the whole theme of our science this year).  I used some of my fat quarters for these...I really love how soft her fabrics are.

And, I almost forgot until I looked at the post title, a recipe...

Creme Brulee has got to be my all-time favorite dessert. So I made some this morning since we are having a romantic dinner hamburgers with the kids as our Anniversary dinner. I figured once the kiddos are asleep, we could at least enjoy a romantic dessert...

This recipe is so easy and always comes out great...I added some Bailey's Irish Cream in it just for fun.

Creme Brulee'

8 egg yolks

1/3 cup white sugar

2 cups heavy cream

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/4 cup white sugar (for caramelized top)

Preheat oven to 350. In large bowl, whisk egg yolks and sugar until sugar dissolves and mixture is thick and pale yellow. Add cream and vanilla and whisk until blended. (It says to strain it but I never do - you can if you want to).

Pour mixture into ramekins and place in water bath (I just use a sheet pan filled halfway with water) and bake until set around edges, 40-50 minutes.

Remove and let cool, then chill in refrigerator, for at least 2 hours, or up to 2 days.

When you are ready to serve, sprinkle about 2 tsp. of sugar over each custard. You can either use a small, hand-held torch or place under broiler until sugar melts.

Re-chill for a few minutes before serving.

Yummy!!

Obsessions

Current obsessions in our house:

Calvin and Hobbes (who doesn't love that kid?)

Any and all Legos...every morning I have to pry them away to eat breakfast and do school.

Embroidery....but on her own. It's a cute little Stitchette.

Making noise during school...constantly. Here are the culprits!

Here's mine:

Just can't tear myself away from the screen. There are just too many fun things to read/find/buy. Really need to stop with the third thing though!

Not digging the pillows. Must re-do. They just don't go with our red walls. I really can't wait until this fabric comes out.

Really getting bored by the curtain too. We need one here since the afternoon sun shines right in to the living room. Must wait for fabric.

Have decided (well, maybe) to join....(gulp)....Weight Watchers. I need to do something and maybe if I'm paying to go, I will stick to it.

I'm feeling so unmotivated to sew but at the same time I have a list of crafts I want to do...I told myself if I got the girls' quilts sewn, then we could get some bunk beds and re-arrange their room (I love re-arranging rooms!). And I could sew up some different curtains for their room too. I think they need to be longer. Maybe in this fabric...got my first bundle in the mail the other day.

Oh, and totally unrelated...did you see the Oscar's and this wonderful moment? I just loved that they won and they performed the song wonderfully too...it sounded amazing.

Ughh...and what is up with Mike Myers big movie poster/advertisement thing on Yahoo. It's starting to creep me out...take it down please!! I mean, I love Mike Myers but I don't want his huge face staring at me while I read the news/get my email.

Barefoot Boy

Our eldest had got to read the best poem for English today. We use this book and I love it. Anyway the poem was "The Barefoot Boy":

Blessings on thee, little man,
Barefoot boy, with cheek of tan!
With thy turned-up pantaloons,
And thy merry whistled tunes;
With thy red lip, redder still
Kissed by strawberries on the hill:
With the sunshine on thy face,
Through thy torn brim's jaunty grace;
From my heart I give thee joy -
I was once a barefoot boy!
Let the million-dollared ride!
Barefoot, trudging at his side,
Thou hast more than he can buy
In the reach of ear and eye -
Outward sunshine, inward joy:
Blessings on thee, barefoot boy!
Oh, for boyhood's painless play,
Sleep that wakes in laughing day,
Health that mocks the doctor's rules,
Knowledge never learned in schools,
Of the wild bee's morning chase,
Of the wildflower's time and place,
Flight of fowl and habitude
Of the tenants of the wood:
How the tortoise bears his shell,
How the woodchuck digs his cell,
And the ground mole sinks his well:
How the robin feeds her young,
How the oriole's nest is hung;
Where the whitest lilies blow,
Where the freshest berries grow,
Where the ground nut trails its vine,
Where the wood grape's clusters shine:
Of the black wasp's cunning way,
Mason of his walls of clay,
And the architectural plans
Of the gray hornet artisans!
For, eschewing books and tasks,
Nature answers all he asks:
Hand in hand with her he walks,
Face to face with her he talks,
Part and parcel of her joy
Blessings on the barefoot boy!

John Greenleaf Whittier

It just evokes up such lovely imagery, doesn't it?

Another Post

Wow, two posts in one day! I'm ususally so bad about posting too. But we have somehow gotten into a big Christmas break (from school) and so we tried to do something crafty/schooly (I know this isn't really a word) today.

We made these....

which I saw on this blog, which is wonderful and full of ideas!

My daughter was amazed that she hadn't thought of it on her own (her being so crafty and all)....

As you can see they were concentrating very hard on making them look nice...

We glittered outside (and we, as I have complained many times on this blog, have no Target and therefore, no Martha, so we had to make do with Walmart glitter - how caveman-ish, I know) since I didn't want to clean up glitter for weeks.

They are really cute and I'm thinking we'll string them up somewhere in the house...maybe the kitchen.

Well, I better get going...I want to shave my legs and maybe paint my toe nails for tonight. It's fun and everyone always gets dressed up....and there are already tables set up for the craft fair so all you have to do is make your table look cute.....

Why yes, I am crazy...

I realize that it is only the first week of November and I should be thinking about Thanksgiving and then Christmas but I like my Christmas season to last as long as possible...especially when the only thing Christmasy about Hawaii is when it rains. Our leaves do not change colors and no snow falls here (at least not on this island). We do have gorgeous red sunsets and clear blue water (with enormous crashing waves in the winter) as our trade-off. And the warmest we have to dress is in jeans and a sweatshirt (and this is rare). So...I have to make my own Christmas magic and this means decorating my home so it feels like Christmas. Which I have already done. Which makes me slightly crazy. At least this is what my mother and husband tell me.
The reason behind this Christmas in November is because I decided to rearrange my sewing area. So I can see the tv while sewing. Since this is really important and I am planning on making lots of gifts this year (and apparently watching lots of tv while doing it). So...there is a small closet in our bedroom that is actually a staircase that leads upstairs. But it is boarded up at the top and we don't use it. So I store all my Christmas boxes there (I had ten boxes, not to mention about 5 bags and various other small boxes). It's nice to have the extra storage area but if I use it I need to keep the door area free and that takes up too much room so I moved everything out and arranged my sewing area as such so there is no access to the door (unless you move a bunch of stuff around which I don't want to do in 2 months time).

I realize this story is boring and long - sorry!

Since all the Christmas stuff is out now and the new storage area requires going up and down a ladder with boxes (something else I did not want to do twice in just a few weeks), I decorated the house...whew! OK the story is over now!

I did scale down a bit and have boxes to take to the Goodwill (of mostly crap that I don't know why I bought - probably beacuse it was cheap). I'm sticking to handmade Christmas things as much as possible.
I buy things from a local artist every year. She does wonderful work and I have quite a few of her things. She sells them at local craft fairs. These are a few of her items below:

I have done some tole-painting in the past and have a few things I made as well. I'm not sure if I'll make some things this year. I have only signed up for one craft fair and it is at a women's dinner our church has every year. It's small but I usually sell some things. I may sign-up for another one that is close to home. I need to start making things instead of just making lists of what I plan on making.

In school news, we are reading about bats in science and found a couple of fun links (via our science book). This is a cool puzzle link that they loved and it has different puzzles and levels of difficulties. Also this article is pretty interesting.

In blogland, I'm loving the Sew, Mama, Sew blog this month...have you seen it? Lots of great ideas, tips and tutorials!! Great for a handmade Christmas!

And I can't wait for these patterns to come out next year - the whole concept is so adorable!!

I want to scale back this year for Christmas since the kids always get a bunch of plastic crap that finds it's way into the garbage or Goodwill bag too soon. I want to get one or two quality items for each one and that's it. Which is hard since I am definitely a consumer. I've warned them they are only getting a couple of presents since let's face it, they don't NEED anything. We have a home, food, beds and they all have toys. They are living the good life compared to most of the rest of the world. I realize that they are children and it is so fun to get presents (I,for one, love presents, both giving and receiving) but junk is junk and I'm over it. Someone had posted a great list of links to various handmade/unique toys on their blog but I can't remember where I spotted it. I'll search and post it if I find it. Enough on my rant....

Baby Girl is totally into our little nativity scene. I saw this about 3 years ago and thought it was perfect. The kids can't break it and the little people are so cute. She loves carrying around Baby Jesus.

** I found the blog..it was on Angry Chicken's blog back in August - great piece on toys and lots of great links!

All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth

Well, after WEEKS of the tooth barely hanging on, it's finally out. She told me she hopes she can still eat food :-)

Poor little baby..here she was walking around singing her version of the ABC song (since her big brother is learning it and I'm thinking they might both learn to read at the same time - not really, but kinda). She tried to climb onto a little plastic picnic table we have in the living room and missed the bench and fell straight into the side - there was some big crying!

In other news, I feel like I was in an accident or something yesterday. It was a brutal game (not because of the other team - I did it to myself pretty much). I didn't drink any water and got a bad migraine (blurry vision, vomiting, mean headache) as soon as I got home and also thought I had maybe broken/fractured something on my arm. I had a big lump and it hurt to move my wrist. I guess it's just a bad muscle bruise or something (I got hit on the arm). And then this morning I feel like I have whiplash (which I totally did to myself) - my neck feels really bruised. I fell backwards trying to keep the ball in play and hit my head hard on the ground. So yesterday was a bit of a bummer...but at least my arm feels better today so I'm ruling out fracture.

Sorry to be complaining - My hubby's already telling me maybe I should give it up.

Here's a photo from the birthday party. As soon as I pulled out my camera and took a couple shots, the battery died - ughh!

Cacia and Chris

Well, here's the link to the photographer's blog....I can't wait until I can see all the pictures as he took a bunch of my kids too and we never have good pictures of our kids. I'm thinking for Christmas I want to hire our friend Marina (who is an AMAZING photographer) to take pictures of our family to give as presents.

So we started back into school today...but sadly did not do everything since I had to rush over to the trophy shop to order trophies for little guy's team today or they would not be ready by next Sat. which is the last game. And we all know how important a trophy is to a 5 year old.
We did make spice muffins this morning - I even managed to make them FOR breakfast. They were all very excited by this. I picked up some fingerling potatoes at Costco today - I've seen them in all the fancy cooking shows like Top Chef and all over here and have always wanted to use them.

So now I have my chance. I roasted them with a little olive oil and salt and pepper and am actually planning on eating them with cheese fondue for dinner. They had packs of fondue at Costco too and all you have to do is heat it up. Not sure how it will taste or if potatoes even go with fondue but it's worth a try....not exactly low carb but I've decided I'm not sure if I really care anymore. I love food...usually all the bad stuff too and as long I'm not getting too big I'm not worried. (At least not today)

Anyway, about the wedding. It was at Kruger's farm which was beautiful. We (well, my dad) had it catered from Salvador Molly's and the food was delicious and it was just a fun time. It wasn't very big and actually quite a few people flew up from Hawaii for the wedding. We had a bridal shower for her the night before the wedding and the boys all went out for mac and cheese! At the wedding, my boys turned out to be BIG dancers!! Like hilarious, entertainment-for-everyone dancers.

My youngest was doing the robot and some sort of "I don't even know what to call it" dance - he'd start moving his leg just a little and then another leg and then bust out on the dance floor. They both were doing some big "breakdancing" too. Their clothes were filthy after the wedding. It was just the funniest thing ever.

I had to do the toast since she didn't have any bridesmaids or attendants. I was a little nervous but think I managed to do a good one...a little humor along with some sentimental parts.
I managed to boss my brother around some too as you can tell by this picture....

I don't know if I've ever mentioned my sister-in-law here but she is an excellent songwriter/singer. Some free advertising for you, Hope!!

Ok well, I have to sign-off and get ready for soccer practice. I have somehow become my daughter's coach without even volunteering for it...

Ok just one more pic of the wedding......

Been so long

Wow, I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted. I do have lots to share from our wonderful trip to Portland. We had so much fun! The kids were very good on the airplane (thank goodness, I was dreading that!) and we had a whole house to ourselves so that helped. It was freezing there (to us anyway - who put on sweatshirts when it is in the 70's). AND WE SAW SNOW - Whoo-hoo!!
Everyone said there wouldn't be any and so we prepared ourselves for being disappointed. Bela kept asking as we were diving to Mt Hood if there would be snow and I told her probably not. We stopped at Government Camp at the bathrooms and asked a man if he tought there was snow and he told us no, there's no snow. We thought about just driving back to Portland and looked at a map and saw there was another lodge, Timberline Lodge, higher up and so we decided - why not..let's head up there. Our first glimpse came as a jeep came driving down the road - covered in snow! We knew we had hit the jackpot.
The higher up we drove, the more snow was on the ground. By the time we got to the parking lot, everything was covered in snow! We got out of the car and ran around, making snowballs and just tromping around in the snow (which was a few inches deep). I was taking pictures of the kids..and then IT STARTED SNOWING!

I have lived in Hawaii all my life and so have never seen snow so I am very excited about this (if you can't tell). The kids had never been in snow either and my husband had only seen snow once so it was a huge thrill for us all. I put the camera back in the car as I wasn't sure if the snow would hurt it - I wish I had taken more pictures (ughh!). We didn't want to stay too long since it was snowing hard and we weren't sure how hard it would be to get the minivan we had rented out of it. I wish we had stayed longer but we had lots of fun and the kids are still talking about it.
We crammed as much as we could into that week in Portland..which is probably why we are still recovering. We went to so many cool restaurants (they are everywhere in Portland). We had a GPS which was nice to just type in the name or address of the place and head off. We went to Crema (wonderful coffee and baked goods), Helser's (yummy breakfasts) and of course Trader Joe's (I love this store- oh, to have one here. Although this store is coming, eventually). Oh and we are getting a Target eventually too. I think it's coming next year sometime.
I did some shopping...of course! I had to hit Anthropologie. Got this and this (which I wore to the wedding) and this plus some other goodies. I had fun!
I also visited here (fun store), here, and of course Powell's. I picked up this book and have read it all week. It's great and has made me get in the cooking mood. So yesterday I made this for breakfast..man, it's a lot of work. And my hollandaise sauce turned out a little tangy (too much lemon juice!). I also got in the cooking/baking mood from the cute bakery where my sister works. It is called Di Prima Dolci and is so yummy and cozy. The entire place closed the day of the wedding and they all came and had made all the desserts for the reception, including the cake. The lemon bars are unbelievable. Ok so I'm going to save the wedding for another post but here's a pic of all of us at the wedding.....

Don't you love how the flower girl's tummy is peeking (well, more than peeking) out of her outfit?

They kept me up til 1 am...

No..not my kids, these guys...

I was stressing so bad for them that they weren't going to tie it up but they pulled it through and came out with a tie...and lucky for them this game ended in a tie too. Whew! The game was on at 11:00 pm here so I had to stay up and watch a little...and then a little more..and finally all of it. I'm feeling ok today and we had a light load in school but I think I'll be hitting the sack early today...not to mention the fact that I feel like a boxer after a match from my game on Sunday...which we WON!! Yeah! I love to win and it was a fun game which makes it even better. But boy, oh boy, am I hurtin'. Guess that's what I get for thinking I can go out there and just play without a warm-up (or even actually being in shape)...I'm not 20 any more! It's all downhill after that 4th child too :-)

I'm finally getting excited about our trip to Portland....I only wish I had booked our rental car before because somehow it seemed cheaper..oh well, that's life!

Not much happening on the sewing front...especially not these..I need to just get them done. This week, this week.

Baby Girl has now decided to move from pillows to her own skin...
What can you do? I've tried hiding all the pens but we do homeschool so they are around.

And lastly, my little guy in his soccer uniform....(even though he looks fine here, before his game he claimed a neck injury, and sat out the whole game - he wanted to go in at the end but had shed all his soccer gear and they only have five minute quarters so it wasn't happening...which of course caused the tears to flow)....

Once Upon A Summer

We are reading this book for family read-aloud time. We've always started books and then somehow never finish them. I think it's because I hadn't ever read them during school time which is what we are doing with this book. I picked it since I LOVE western/prairie stories (Bela is also reading Little House on the Prairie) and it has a boy as the voice of the story so I figured it would be ok with Son #1. Today they made me laugh as we were reading and they told me they wished the book had pictures or there was a movie made of it. I told them that was what their imaginations were for!

I feel (slightly) horrible as we finished school fairly early today and the mail came and in it was this. So now they are all watching it :-) - I know, what kind of a homeschool mother am I?!! At least their names are the same as famous painters....

This morning started off with a bang as somehow my sweet little baby girl has turned into a screaming banshee....
I have this blog on my favorites and have come to appreciate her blog title more and more the past few weeks. Every morning (and multiple times during the day) I am greeted by a small creature screaming at the top of her lungs. I do not know what to do about it. I tell her no but in the mornings I can't just leave her in her crib for her to realize she can't scream like that because she just screams until someone gets her. And it's not a crying screaming...it's more of a calling/just-for-the-fun-of-it screaming. After I picked up the screaming banshee, I made some coffee and puttered around on the computer for a little bit. She has also developed quite a coloring fascination and as I glanced over today, I was horrified to see her coloring on my newly sewn pillows with a BLACK SHARPEE!! Ughh! Even though I knew it was a lost cause I sprayed an entire bottle (not really) of Shout to see if somehow it would miraculously disappear but no such luck. I guess I'll just make another one...At least I don't have a white couch...

English class was a big hit with Tita so she is going to go three nights a week. Guess I'd really better watch what I say to Hubby now :-)

Well, Tonight's our big date night. I can't wait - we really need a night alone. Tita (from Costa Rica) is going to watch them until Tita (my mom) gets home from work. I didn't know if they could (which they probably could) spend the whole evening with someone they can't really communicate with.

Hopefully Hubby and I will make the meal last. We always joke when we go to restaurants about how fast we eat and leave. I think we are used to having kids around and stuff to do so we never take the time to relax and enjoy meals. I'm going to do that tonight though...and have some champagne...or something alcoholic for sure...ughh - the screaming banshee is screaming "MOM" at the top of her lungs from her high chair...