Here she is, wearing her new mitts and sucking down vanilla extract like a pro.  Awesome.

Close up:

Now, what kind of a knitter mom would I be if I let him walk around with those?

We’re deep into Harry Potter these days, reading it aloud at bedtime.  We’re on the 4th book which is getting a bit dark and scary.  He still loves it and, truth be told, I’m probably enjoying the reread more than he is. Maybe when we get to the end with the dripping blood and all that I’ll have to censor it a bit… Anyway, I asked what house he would be in and he promptly replied: “Gryffindor! Gryffindor!” “You sure?” I asked. “Not Ravenclaw?” Mostly thinking of the perfect Ravenclaw colors I still have left over from the scarves from 2 years ago. (At least he didn’t say Hufflepuff. I’d be a bit worried. Ugh. What reasonable person would want to be in Hufflepuff? But I digress.)

I managed to find a reasonable combination of colors and whipped up some new mitts for him.

They’re not the most perfect, technique-wise but I’m pretty sure he’ll lose them in a few days so I wasn’t too keen on spending a lot of time.  Besides, they worked just fine to keep his hands toasty while eating froyo.

Of course, now someone else wants a pair–in purple, naturally.

In other knitting news, I’m finally getting some work done on this sweater (the one promised over a year ago):

and most excitingly (for me, anyway.  I’m sure you don’t care nearly as much) I finally, finally have a nice place to store all my pretty yarn! What was once a dreary little corner with a crappy plastic drawer unit overflowing with art supplies is now a clean, well lighted place to store yarn (and all the art supplies and puzzles and games).

Now if I can only somehow convince Eric that we need to get rid of the piano and convert the entire room into a craft space for me…

Really, though, it’s more of a guiding principle of granola making than a true recipe. I always make a large batch (the recipe below is technically a double recipe, half if you want less) because it’s gone in a few days. To save time, I mix up two batches of dry ingredients since I have everything out anyway. Then I put one of them into a large plastic bag (the bag the oats comes in makes a good container for this) and then, a few days later, all I have to do is mix up the wet ingredients, stir them in and bake.

Many granola recipes have you toast the oats first. I’ve never done this and hardly find it necessary, but maybe the final product suffers, who knows. No one has ever complained. I started with a recipe I found in a cookbook but found it far too oily and far too sweet. I kept cutting back on the oil and sugar until it was just right. I tend to make it less sweet than most granola you’ve had before, since most of the time we mix it with vanilla yogurt or soymilk which adds a lot of sugar.

Granola (I get all my ingredients in bulk from Costco, which also helps to save some money)

6 cups regular oats

4 cups mixed chopped nuts/seeds (anything, really–I like pumpkin seeds, walnuts and pecans. If you want to make this a lower fat recipe, use less nuts/seeds. I personally do not believe in cooking or eating low fat.)

1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup canola oil (could sub some melted butter also, very tasty)

1-2 tablespoons of flavored oil (walnut, hazelnut, etc) (optional)

1/2 cup liquid sweetener (I’ve used honey or maple syrup, though you could use agave or something else)

1 tablespoon vanilla extract

2 cups dried fruit (cranberries, cherries, etc.)

Other potential add-ins: shredded coconut (add to dry mix), chopped candied orange peel, chopped candied ginger, mini chocolate or yogurt chips.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Mix together oats, seeds, nuts, and sugar in a bowl.

Mix oils, vanilla, liquid sweetener and honey together in a liquid measuring cup and whisk together.

Pour liquids over dry and mix well.

Prepare a large baking pan with nonstick spray and line with parchment. (I mistakenly bought parchment already cut into sheets, clearly it’s preferable to use a larger sheet that goes lengthwise. This step is optional, but really cuts down on the cleanup.)

Pour granola in and bake for about 30 minutes, stirring once or twice until golden. Most other recipes will tell you to spread out on a baking sheet, and again I’ve never found that necessary.

Using the parchment, lift the granola out of the pan and transfer to cookie sheet to cool.

Mix in dried fruit when cool and enjoy with milk, soymilk, yogurt, or just by itself! Good luck getting it to last longer than a few days. If any of you make this I’d love to know what you use and how it turns out!

This year people brought over their musical instruments and just about everyone took turns playing or singing to the best (or worst, sorry Jimmy) of their abilities.

Here’s a little video of the night, though there’s a lot of people missing as I only started taking pictures after midnight; was having a bit too much fun earlier. What better way to ring in the New Year, than to be with friends and make our own music?

Oh, and Happy New Year everyone!

I prepped both kids by showing them kids ski videos on youtube.  Some of those kids are a-mazing, like this one little girl who’s been skiing since she was 16 months old and competed in slalom races at the age of 6.

We dropped both kids off at ski school–don’t they look perfectly ready for the mountain?

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Eric, Sapana and I took off to enjoy the mountain for the day.  Even though there hasn’t been a ton of snow, there were still some great runs to be had and it was probably one of my most fun days on a mountain, ever. I kept waiting for my phone to ring, telling me that the girl was cold/tired/hungry/bored and I needed to come pick her up.

It never did! She LOVES skiing! As soon as I picked her up at the end of the day, she asked me, “We come back ’keeing tomorrow?” with a big, big smile on her face. I asked if she’d take one last run to show me how she did. She got very excited, and pointing to the magic carpet told me, “Mommy, dat wug moooves!” (“Mommy, that rug moves!” for those of you that don’t speak her language.) Up she went, and here she is rocking it down the mountain:

Not to shortchange the boy, he had a great day also:

Here’s hoping you all also had a fun holiday this year, filled with family, laughter, and good food!

Don’t worry, germophobes! We made her wash her hands after that. And then the rolling:

and the stuffing

aaaand 10 dozen (yes, that’s right) pierogies, ready for boiling and sauteeing and gobbling up!

Of course, it was all a little too much for one of our helpers, and while the rest of us stuffed she snuck away and we found her here:

We’ll wake her up when the eating begins.

Honestly, though, there are many times I’ve been grateful for this. On my last visit there a few months ago, I pillaged searched the house for things to bring with me.  I found a few gems:

Sorry for the blurry picture–still, does anyone else remember this album? (And these are all actually albums).  I used to play these on a little plastic record player that snapped into its own suitcase, as I’m sure did many of you growing up. Here’s a few more:

I posted the last one on Facebook and I was surprised how many of you had had this album! The boy and girl LOVE this one in particular and we listen to “I Left Me Cookie At the Disco” over and over again. Here it is for you all to enjoy once more, or you’re welcome to come over for one of our spontaneous dance parties:

Me Lost Me Cookie At the Disco (click link to play song)

I also found a few old games: Battleship, Connect 4, Mastermind, and Sorry!

As a side note, Sorry is considerably easier to win if you don’t really pay attention to the actual numbers drawn and just move the pieces randomly around the board, which is how the girl (blue) beat me handily in the game above.

Other things found at my parents’ house: Some of my old favorite shirts that now fit the boy, my 80s-tastic prom dress (purple Jessica McClintock, naturally), my sister’s much more tasteful prom dress, matched Singapore Airlines hostess uniforms that last fit me when I was 12 and my sister 6, a perfectly good unused salad spinner, and a pet that we’d forgotten we’d owned.  (Okay, that last one might be an exaggeration.)

It makes me rethink how quick we are to sell or give away some of the kids’ things, especially when so many of the versions of these same toys are now “upgraded” and not for the better. It’ll be hard to even keep some of these things that are mostly virtual, like music already is and books are rapidly becoming. It feels weird to think that someday I might hand my grandchildren some version of a USB drive as old memories instead of something physical. I think I’ll definitely keep some of the sturdier classics, such as the wooden dollhouse, all the Legos, some of the favorite clothes, and books to name a few, as long as I don’t become one of those people who’s navigating through stacks.  What do you think you’ll want to keep for your kids?

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In the afternoon, we sat down and had him write out his thank you notes from his party from a few months ago.  (I know, I know, it’s a bit late. We love all the gifts we receive but I am terrible about getting the notes out in a reasonable amount of time.) Amazingly, he remembered exactly what everyone had given him, which I am thankful for since the scrap of paper on which I had had that information written down was lost long ago. I know there’s mixed opinions, but I like using the prefilled thank you cards for this age.  It’s still a lot of effort for him to write out everyone’s name and their present, but would be too much for him to write out a full note for everyone. Besides, the spelling can be fun to watch.

After the note writing, he’d been sent to his room for the 10th time that day (I think for screaming into my ear that time). Shortly afterwards, he emerged, and thrust a note into my hands, grumbling, “You know where to mail this one.”

And my heart melted just a little bit, and we gave each other a big hug, and the rest of the day got a little better.

(“Litsavr,” by the way, refers to the lightsaber that I got him for his birthday. See what I mean about the spelling?)

Then I got a non-iphone smartphone, and it sucked. It froze constantly.  This meant that I was one of those people who was always staring at my phone but just watching it do NOTHING.  I was able to get out of my contract (without a penalty, ask me how if you need advice) and switch to the new iPhone, which I love.

As much as I love technology, I obviously love the handmade as well, so when I saw a diy cross-stitch phone case I knew I needed to have it. The next question was what to put on it? Well, I like birds, dammit. I don’t care if they’re cliche in the design world by now. And I have a son who’s name will forever be attached to a finch, so birds it was. (If a single one of you links to the Portlandia sketch, you will be immediately defriended.)

For the girl, I picked a little bluebird, which is a very, very loose association based on her nickname.  If we were going for a bird related to her personality, it would be…I don’t know. Perhaps a mockingbird? Loud, full of personality, bright, devoted to their own families yet unconcerned with other people? Hmmm… that would be keeping within a theme, bookwise.

I finished the birds first but it looked so plain and white and, well, there was no orange, but I was able to fix that with this cool variegated embroidery floss that I found at Fancy Tiger, and voilà!

I’m not entirely sure that it’s exactly what I was hoping for, but it’ll do for now and I’ll see about changing it in the future. The girl has already insisted that the beak of her bird be changed to purple, naturally.

A quick roundup of another high tech/low tech mix–my Kindle.  Again, I like the idea of the faux wood instead of the plastic that it actually is, and it also makes it easier to read in my opinion. I also don’t like the hard cases–I find them heavy, so to protect it I knitted a little sock out of scrap yarn, which does a serviceable job of keeping it unscratched. I tried a few fancy knitting motifs before I realized that I was spending far too much time and just went for some simple stripes.

The wood also serves as a form of camouflage, and can make the Kindle a bit tough to find sometimes.

As far as  next projects, it’s time for me to get started on a sweater that I promised to a friend about, oh, a year ago.  Will have updates on that soon!