Sock Monkey

Oh Sock Monkeys. How I love thee. I found the tiny military sock monkey (my Godson’s dad is in the Air force) in Solvang, and decided to try and make a large one to go with it. I had gotten this sock monkey kit at a garage sale… but these kids are available online, or you can just buy the socks and look up directions online. They are everywhere including here or here.

I am a visual person… I I mainly went off of the pictures shown below and winged it. You cut along the dotted lines and sew along the solid lines double stitching where you see the dots.

Sometimes when I sew… it turnes out like this… all knotted (look close at all fo that white thread in the big mess below). I think it is funny when people are amazed that I sew. Oh if they only knew… well now I guess they do

Well I sewed the arms and legs… and they should look like they do below (arms left, legs right)

Then I stuffed the legs, body, and arms.In order to stuff the arms, I kept them inside out, then slowly turned them right side out as I stuffed it. That way it got stuffed evenly and easily.

When you sew the ears, you end up closing them. Take a pair of siccors and cut along the fold. Turn inside out and stuff.

You sew the arms, mouth, and ears on using a whip stitch. (sorry, no picture)

Then you add eyes, and perhaps some personality accessories

I am now super excited to make some sock monkeys with some fun and crazy socks.

Easiest Baby Blanket

So… like six months ago my mom asked me to make a baby blanket out of this material so it would match this pillow that she bought for my nephew.  This was long before Noah was born…. now months later, I finally got around to it.

I bought one yard of the fabric fleece.  First, I used a bowl as a template to round the corners off.

Then I simply sewed the front and back pieces together.

In lieu of an actual baby to demonstrate, I used the sock monkey that I made as a Christmas present for my Godson.   A tutorial on the sock monkey will be coming :)

Crochet Coffee Sleeve

I have been really into crocheting lately.  My most recent project was making coffee sleeves, or as I call them… coffee cozys.  A good friend of mine had a birthday and I wanted to make her something fun.  She drinks a lot of Starbucks, so I decided to make her a few of these.  She can drink her Starbucks in style, and hey… its that much greener not taking the cardboard ones and throwing them away.  I chained 37, and then did a half double crochet until I thought it was long enough.  I tied it off and then crocheted the loose ends in.  She loved them :)

dizzy tired

*I was finally able to fix the picture problem.

If you are wondering why I haven't blogged in a while... this is why:

Yesterday was open house. It was the longest day ever I left the house at 7am, and didn’t get back until after 11pm. (I live too far away to make it worth while to go home in between school and open house, and then after a bunch of teachers got pie) Today was spent recovering. I seriously slept most of the day, and still feel tired enough to sleep tonight. Below I posted some pictures of what I have been up to. Above you can see some of the whole class shots. There was a lot going on. On their desks they had folders with tons of work in them. Their journals were propped up on their desks, and on their chairs were their Charlotte's Web shirts that they designed. You can also see the solar system hanging across my ceiling.

I set up a voting booth where they could vote on their next read aloud book, we had up a class quilt, and their foot projects since our theme this year is following in Jesus' steps, and each student drew pictures of their parents and at open house, the parents had to guess who they were.

On our writing board, I out their latest essays up (some of which were finished that day) and I put up math posters that the students made on the whiteboard where I do group tutoring.

The science board was packed. I had a few of their moon phases up, a few of their constellations up (they dropped stars onto a paper, glued them, and then had to see what picture they saw in the stars), and all of their planet projects up. It was an accumulation of the unit that we just finished. You can kind of see above their ecosystems projects, and below the board their Live Out Loud projects (they had to do community service four times).

After studying psalms, I also had the kids write their own psalms.

There was actually a tone more stuff. The night went really well. Families stayed in my room a really long time looking at everything. They were all impressed with the room, loved my dress, and were having a good time. Success!!

So easy even I could do it :)

So a good friend of mine suggested I visit this website http://www.ravelry.com. They have a bunch of crochet and knitting patterns for free. I tend to be a craft by the seat of my pants kind of girl, but I thought... hey... I am up for a challenge... so I decided to try one. I have never followed a pattern before, so I picked one that I thought would be really easy. And..... it worked!

It was super quick too. I did it while watching an episode of NCIS. Now I have a fun new headband. If you want to make one too... here is the link

bye bye weird curtains

First let me explain what you are seeing in this picture… because our house is definitely not a cookie cutter house. Your are actually looking at a wall of mirrors, and seeing the room in a reflection. In the mirror, you can see the half wall and door that leads to our den (it was an add on) As you can see…. there were these weird curtains in the middle of our house framing the wall from one room to another. Normally you see curtains along a doorway to the outside.. but not in our house. Besides the fact that I think it is weird to have curtains in the middle of our house… they are not exactly our style. Lan tried to convince me to keep them because they reminded him of a move theater. Ummm, sorry hun… not exactly the look I was going for in my dining/living room.

So one day when I couldn’t stand them any more, I started to take them down… which lead to Lan shaking his head and taking over. Hehehe… my plan worked perfectly. Taking down the curtains revealed some long cracks in the wall. Not too surprising in a 60 year old home that has been through some big earthquakes, so we said a prayer that the cracks were only cosmetic and patched them up with some patch and paint compound.

Ahhhhhhh… so much better. It made the space feel so much more open and clean. As you can see we also updated the broken chandelier with a more modern one. I am now itching to paint :)

Every little thing that we do makes me gitty and really helps make it feel like our home.

When the in-laws come to visit

This weekend Lan was replacing our door frame and asked his dad to come and help him. As always when we see them, they came baring food! Yum :) The fried rice was eaten that day for lunch and the home made egg rolls are in the freezer for a dinner this week :) They also brought with them some fruit. In the background is a branch off of their kumquat tree. Yes... the whole branch. That big spiky thing in my poorly lit slightly blurry photo isn't a hedge hog, but it is a fruit called Durian.

The outside skin is very spiky. Personally I would use gloves, but my manly husband said he didn't need them. You cut off a large section of the husk and pull it back. you can see how thick the skin is. The fruit is inside and you just scoop it out.

As you can imagine, there is a lot of fruit in there. There are large seeds coated by the fruit. Simply peal the fruit off of the seed when you are ready to eat it. We mixed some in with some vanilla ice cream, and then froze the rest in a plastic bag to be used later. (freeze it with the seeds)

Its an interesting flavor that not many people like. It has almost a savory taste. Hey if you are up for an adventure, pick one up at your local Asian store. They sell them frozen, so letting it defrost will make cutting into the thick skin much easier.