We watch zany movies

So we watch a lot of zany movies at my house, some recently with a State Department theme. The above is certainly campy and dated but that makes it even more entertaining. Don't you love how he is holding the gun - love the acting in 1949 B movies.

Operation get my health in order in underway

Barring snow, I will be driving very far 4 times in the next two weeks to get medical care. After having child #3 in China I have a bum hip...don't even ask. And I have to get it fixed or at least looked at. Said child is about to turn 6 so it is getting a little embarrassing.

For some reason though I have decided that I need to fix everything else first. So Monday I go to the chair of torture...I mean dentist. I already went once where I was told I need 4 fillings fixed and all 4 wisdom teeth out. Come Monday I am on step a. Tuesday will be a trip to the dermatology NP. Fun times. But at least it's in a different town where you have to watch out for Amish. I mean, watch out for Amish in their buggies so you don't run over them. The Amish themselves seem ok, though a lot of them clearly have birth defects...but I digress.

Then we have a trip to the oral surgeon for a consult. Have to make sure they have the full on drugs before I agree to anything.

Then final stop in this epic drama is a trip to the midwife. No, no babies here. I need my thyroid checked and she does it. What is crazy about this midwife is that I live in a foreign country and she lives in a very economically depressed US city. Very. I walk in and hear her accent, I ask "Where are you from?" - alwasy good to break the ice on your first visit, right? She says Chapel Hill. I say "But I am from Chapel Hill" then it takes the two of us 5 seconds to realize we know some of the same people. Such a small world so very far from Chapel Hill.

Mighty Life List

So I wrote up a short life list a while back. I got the idea from here. Her's is probably more interesting, and longer and she had a paid sponsorship to get several of her things done. I would be more than happy to get them done faster if someone paid me!

Anyway, how am I doing with it?

My 5 year old can knit. Garter stitch, but she is pretty good and she will be a knitter.

I have bookmarked a recipe for pain au chocolat. So that is something.

I am going snowshoeing for the first time this Friday. Thanks to my fellow Austrian.

Graphic design. I taught myself how to make a blog button, the one for the swap. I think I could even make a banner. That might be enough for now.

I think we know for certain what the #2 kid is allergic to for right now. So far this winter his skin is not like red sandpaper, so that is something.

I think whole wheat bread love it coming off the list. I have tried. Really I have. But the only whole wheat bread I will eat is so packed full of sugar and other stuff it hardly makes it worth it. I blame my fs upbringing for my ability to only eat white bread. And my milk issues. Try being forced to drink powdered milk in Africa as a child and see how you turn out.

Thanks to my high school friend, Elliott, I have some nice new piano books. I am playing everyday.

Train a guide dog - check. The guide dog is doing really well. She will probably leave us before the summer. She is a super dog and will make some local and their family very very happy and hopefully make their life easier. We will miss her, but if we get Africa next - we ARE getting a dog. A labrador. The husband is unaware as of yet.

I am working on the quilts and have made a few more pairs of socks.

So it is all coming along.

What did you do today?

Here we have my morning. Working on the sock, there is always a sock going, always. Working on a garter stitch helmet from a vintage pattern I bought from etsy...the jury is still out if it will actually be wearable. The never ending quilt. And my new book 'The Best Things in Life' which was recommended by my man, Fareed. Fareed Zakaria is not actually my man, I am married to someone with a less exotic name, he is just smart and I have taken to reading books he recommends.
My afternoon will be spent ice skating with small children.

the swap is on

On Saturday everyone got matched up with their partners. As you can see from the picture it was very scientifically done. I pulled slips of paper out of a bag and matched them as I went. If you are reading this and did not get an email from me, or your swap pal has not gotten in touch or responded to you getting in touch, let me know. I had a few people drop out for various reasons, and with only my by the book husband to give me advice, I left off a couple of people who mentioned in passing they might be interested, but did not sign up via the instructions. If you are one of those people, I am sorry. I wasn't sure how serious you were and certainly did not want to match up anyone who later said "I wasn't serious about that!" Maybe I will run one again in the fall, after PCSing is over, and R & R's and the kids all go back to school. If summer at home with 3 kids doesn't do me in...

fs swap update

It looks like an even 50 people have signed up. Yah! So later this evening I am going to send all 50 people an email just checking in and to double check that everyone's email addresses work. If you do not get an email from me tonight EST please contact me as something has gone wrong.

Look for your swap pal match up email tomorrow - probably in the afternoon - I need to go sledding first thing in the morning with two small members of my household - we are getting about 6 inches of new snow tonight!

sweater baby pants

As promised, here are some sweater baby pants I made. Easy peasy, directions here. Or a hundred other places on the web. They are often called soakers, though this pair is made of a cotton sweater and would not do well with a cloth diaper alone under it - no soaking of anything I think. So if you have any beat up, faded sweaters you can make a pair of pants AND a skirt. This one is going to be shipped off to a little friend back in North Carolina. These are pretty big - he is 18 months or so...I think they came from an XL sweater at the thrift store. I did not add another waist band as per the instructions because they are already pretty roomy.

Back to the knitting by the fire while the snow keeps coming down. I dread ballet this afternoon, do we brave it or do I call to ask if its on and have the person on the other end of the phone laugh hysterically?

FS Swap deadline is tomorrow

Thanks to Becky at Small Bits who listed the FS swap first in this weeks round up! Tomorrow night EST is the deadline for signing up to participate in the swap. I think at last count there were 49 people signed up so far. If you want to still sign up, just click on the FS Swap button thing to the right. I will send out an email to everyone late tomorrow just to double check emails and then you'll get your pal a day or two later. The more the merrier and frankly doesn't everyone need some fun mail in February?!

Funnily enough super nice Becky also mentioned my crafty blog right in the same sentence with this blog - who's author I actually know in real life, or in my real life such that it was back in Beijing. The FS is a small world.

A skirt for my niece

I read a lot of crafty blogs. Sometimes they have wonderful directions for things that make me want to drop everything and try. This is one. I would put a link but I don't remember the first place I read about this and if you google it there are probably 100's of places.

This is a recycled small girls skirt. It is made out of an old Gap sweater of mine...very old, as in it went to storage for the past 5 years or so. These things are so easy and quite addictive to make. My daughter has several made out of old cotton turtlenecks from the Ancient Maritime store.

Here are my simple sewing by the seat of your pants directions. Wash sweater and dry it in the dryer, even it is wool. You want it to felt a little.

Then cut along skirt out - to do this you just cut right where the body and the sleeves join. The cut part is actually going to be the unhemmed bottom. The sides just stay sewn up as they were sewn by some poor woman in a sweatshop somewhere. To 'hem' the bottom, you use the zig zag stitch on the machine and pull on the sweater as you do it. The pulling will help make a little ruffle at the bottom if it is a wool sweater - cotton not so much.

Then to make the waist band - the proper bottom of the sweater is your waist band, you just flip it over, either inside or outside and zig zag around, not pulling this time if it's a wool sweater. Leave a little opening and then thread your elastic through on a safety pin. Then stitch elastic together - this can be a little fiddly and stitch the little opening closed on the waist band. This will fit probably a 2-3-4 year old.

If your into this, you can also save the top half and sleeves and make other things - baby pants for example. Maybe I will show some of those tomorrow...it's supposed to snow 5 cm or 20 cm.

How I shop for kids clothes

My two youngest kids usually look pretty cute. The oldest - who knows? he is away at boarding school plus he looses EVERYTHING. So no point in buying him anything good!

I have some tips for online kids clothing shoppers. Sign up for email notices from your favorite companies. You will become aware of sales and often they might send free shipping to boot. I sometimes buy from Hanna Andersson, Olive Juice or Polern O Pyret USA or Lands End/LL Bean too, but only on sale. I think maybe once I have bought a pair of tights not on sale. I also hit ebay from time to time. And I am not afraid to buy for the next season. Kids do grow usually...ebay is the place to go for those Stride Rite mary janes to wear to the Amb party of the season. Or a holiday dress. Or Hanna Andersson snow pants which are last years model but someone in my house loves flowers so perfect. Lands End especially seems to sell clothes very cheaply at the end of the season.

When I am in the States I look for stuff everywhere. Target, the Gap sale rack, the usual mall stores, even Wal-mart. And consignment stores in the South are excellent for used smocked dresses. I can keep putting my daughter in them till she is 15, right?

Another tip - which came about mostly because I hate little girl t-shirts with silly things on them - if you stock up on plain white, pink t-shirts, they go a lot farther. They match almost everything and since I am somewhat crafty - those stains can be covered up with some freezer paper stenciling or ribbon or who knows what.

I am also big on stripes, but that might be just me...I think if we ever moved to Scandanavia our bank account would be in BIG trouble. Our little kids only wear stripey HA pajamas which I buy on sale every year. I have now quit buy the 5 year old any because she is starting to be able to wear her brothers hand me downs and the more those things are washed the softer and better they feel. Seriously! My daughter just grew into one pair that her brother has worn almost non stop for the past 2ish years - if she wears them 2 more years then the $28 sale price was well worth it as far as I am concerned.

So there is my official position on children's clothes. I have never actually met in person anyone who shares my views, so if you do - please send me a comment so I don't feel quite as crazy! Or if you have similar clothing suggestions - I would LOVE to hear them.

The swap is coming along

We are up to 37 takers so far! So far we have people from - DC, Uraguay, Bermuda, Sierra Leone, Oman, Moscow, Turkey, Greece, Poland, Puerto Rico, Kenya, NYC, Macedonia, Jerusalem, Norway, Belgium, Canada, Austria, Ecuador, Manila, Malawi, Dhaka, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Mexico.

Pretty good mix.

Email me if you would like a button or have questions or ideas on how to spread the word by this Saturday.

Back to the uneventfulness.

I bore myself

What on earth is there is blog about today - absolutely nothing.

It snowed the last two days.

After a record 4 full days back at school the 7 year old likely has streph throat. I think it might be about time to talk to our health care provider - who I have to drive to another whole country to see - about how many times he has had streph and what the magic number is for tonsil removal. After the ear tube/adenoid removal fiasco for the 5 year old I can hardly contain my excitement about that idea. really.

My big goal this winter, besides not going crazy from total boredom and cabin fever - is to make stuff like crazy and lighten our load. We still have another 18 long months or so at post but my fs biological clock is ticking like crazy - "tick, tick, must get rid of 500 lbs! tick, tick." It is even worse this time because a. I want to take the piano with us for the first time ever and b. we have a lot more of our Hagerstown crap here so it just seems way worse than ever before and finally c. we live in the worlds smallest house. Thank you LQA.

In an effort to embrace winter I think I will now go outside and clean the car off so it might not be quite so bad tomorrow morning...I love winter.

paper dolls

I am, I think, the lone person who still likes simple things for my kids. Santa brought these paper dolls for my 5 year old this year and they are a hit. They are from Lily and Thistle and they are lovely. They also come with a cd of all the dolls so if your paper doll has an accident, you can reprint another. I think she also sells them in pdf versions, so this would be super for a fs person with not so reliable mail but who has a good supply of printer ink. I am eyeing the birthday party set - it would be unique around here at least!

I should confess I sort of needed to buy paper dolls because when we unpacked all our junk from Hagerstown, I unearthed my Prince Charles and Lady Di paper dolls, which I will not let the 5 year old touch!

Off to work on the never ending quilt - at least it's snowing and the fire is going, so I don't feel like I am supposed to be doing anything else.

The year of major making has started

The first new pair of socks for the new year. For the oldest at boarding school. They are made from some cheapy washable Paton's wool...not that I think for a minute they will be washed before March break!

This is the yarn for pair #2 I think. The husband let my 5 year old pick out yarn online for my Xmas gift. I am not really a purple person, but I guess I should just be happy the yarn is not hot pink with glitter...

And the swap is up to 27 takers, hopefully the numbers will continue to climb.

winter here is sometimes cool

This is a horse drawn wagon, complete with sleigh bells. It is down the street from our little LQA house and we took a ride the week before Christmas. There was caroling AND snow coming down. It was somewhat magical.

The fs swap is coming along nicely. We have 24 people signed up so far and I hope for many more takers this week as people are back at post and kids return to school. So far we have a pretty varied list of locales - NYC, DC, San Jose, Kenya, Poland, Greece, Turkey, Russia, Canada, Austria, Ecuador, Philipines, Malawi, Belgium, Bangladesh, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Italy and Mexico. If you need directions on how to sign up - I think if you click on the button to the right it will take you to the appropriate post. Feel free to spread the word and email me, or leave a comment, if you would like a copy of that button.