July 9th

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Eatin’ browies.
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Someone planted some of these in my garden last year but in a spot that gets literally zero sunlight so they are small and tragic. Also, bumblebee photbomb!
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All day, every day, climbing on the table & asking to be lifted down.
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Watching butterflies. She just noticed that they exist the other day and she is fascinated by them. There were three on these flowers, she tried to touch one and it flew away, startling her.
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She’s wearing the little shoes I made with the 2-piece pattern I modified from the 3-piece pattern I used for the black shoes. These stay on well when she’s walking, but fall off too easily if she tries to climb anything (which is constantly) or is picked up. I think the problem is a combination of too-loose elastic and a too-low back, but they should be fine if I add a little strap to them.
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Creating the illusion of having a shirt tied around her waist by stuffing her whole body through the neckhole and just wearing it around her waist.

Random things…

I ordered some stuff from Zara online and had to return a few things I didn’t like. I love that you can return things bought online to the store, and get refunded to your paypal. Some stores that take paypal online refund you in the form of store credit, which is annoying, but at Zara it goes straight back into your patpal. I actually got an email that I’d been refunded before I even left the store. I did have to send one item back through the mail as they’d sent the wrong size (it didn’t match with the code on the receipt so they couldn’t take it back in the store), so I had to call their customer service line which was super fast and painless & hopefully the proper size pants are on their way to me now!

Gwen is super into those dried yogurt drops. I hardly ever buy them because they are SO EXPENSIVE, like even the store brand ones on sale are still $4 for what feels like a bag of air. I know people make their own by freezing little dollops of yogurt but wouldn’t those turn into a melty mess if not eaten quickly enough? Yuck. Most of the other recipes (or instructions, really, I mean the only ingredient is yogurt) I can find online call for a food dehydrator, but I did find one for making them in the oven that I might try.

On the weekend Taylor and I tried the wackest snack. He always buys new products, like put NEW!!! on the label and he’s all over it. Anyway he got us this Smartfood popcorn which was a mix of caramel… and cheddar cheese? WHAT EVEN. Like if you are going for a sweet-and-salty vibe just throw some sea salt on your caramel corn, don’t mix super-orange-Kraft-dinner-cheese-powder-looking cheese popcorn with it! Definitely not a good combination. I ate all the caramel corn out of the bowl but since half the bag was cheese it wasn’t enough and now I have endless caramel corn cravings, wahh.

Kelly started a youtube channel recently and I loved this video where she talks about her chronic invisible illness. While she has a much more terrible autoimmune disease than I do I still related to a lot of what she said.

(It’s long but worth it!)

I’ve been doing a little work in Gwen’s room over the past couple of weeks. We don’t really spend much time in there so it was kind of disorganized and messy, but also weirdly bare as I’d moved some things from it out to the living room. Also, when her lil friend is here he naps in her room, and I have a portable, foldable crib for him that was always set up because I had nowhere to store it, and it made her already-small room seem even more cramped.
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In order to make the portable crib more storable, I cut the legs off so it sits right on the floor. This made it short enough that, when folded, it could be hidden behind Gwen’s crib. So that it wouldn’t be visible behind the crib I stapled lengths of ribbon to the large canvas I had between her crib and the wall and tied it onto the outside of the crib (previously it was resting on top the baseboard). Now I have somewhere to put the portable crib away where it’s still easily accessible and in the room where I use it.
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I also “made” some “blackout curtains” for her room. Seeing as how we live in a basement and her room has one window that is underneath my upstairs neighbour’s porch, you wouldn’t think I’d need them. However, in the summer evenings the sun straight up blasts into her room, right at bedtime! Last summer I taped (yes, taped) a pair of dark brown pillowcases together and taped them to the window frame, but this year I wanted to have a better setup. I also wanted to do it cheaply, so I sewed the same pillowcases together and then folded the top over (to make it the right length for the window) and sewed a channel along the top. I screwed a pair of cup hooks into the frame and ran a dowel (which I’d cut to size) through the curtain channel and rested it in the hooks. It’s not super secure (opening the proper curtains causes the dowel to slide around) so I need to figure out a way to properly secure it, but even if I don’t it has the desired effect of darkening her room at bedtime.

Normally these projects would have taken me about a million years because I always try to do things manually. The reason for that is partly because I’m afraid of many of my electric tools and partly because I’m too lazy to dig through the various closets to extract said electric tools. This time though, I actually got my shit together. I used my jigsaw to cut the legs off the crib & my electric sander to smooth the cut areas, I used my sewing machine to sew the curtains, and I used my drill to make pilot holes for the hooks. Honestly I think I’d use all these things more often, and therefore be more proficient with them, if it wasn’t such a hassle getting them out. I wish I had a larger craft area with room for a sewing table and maybe a door so I could keep lil babies out of it, and a workshop for the tools! That’d be living the dream for sure.

I’m working on a pet portrait banner right now and istg it’s going to be the death of me. I kind of hate making them because they are a lot of work, but I also love making them because I love how they turn out. The hardest to make are definitely tabby cats. So many unique markings! Such diverse colouring! This one needs to be shipped in two days and I still have to make one more face & I haven’t even started the stripes yet.
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4 Replies to “July 9th”

  1. I love that you are so practical. I have always had the IDEAS, but waited around for somebody to do the work for me. You just go ahead and DO stuff. I am super-proud of you.

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