spaghetti

we had spaghetti tonight. so kaleb had cheese and bread and fruit, and then i tried to feed him some spaghetti with a kaleb fork. and he would have none of it. but he threw a tantrum until i gave in and put the bowl on his tray. and he ate every last bite. and a second helping. and he LOVED it!

it must be so cool to eat like a big person :) his fork remained in 1 hand most of the meal, and he would grab a fistful of pasta and gobble it down. good thing he was wearing red!

ellie requested pasta for her meal this week, and she really must have meant it - here she is with a clean plate:

and that's after 2 helpings of spaghetti for her as well! i know what to cook more of around here!

lake weekend

so we spent the weekend at the lake with coach and nonna and alana and cody and brynn and chandler. how much fun could it get??? 3 little girls playing with all kinds of girlie toys, and 1 little boy to chase them around the house...so fun! check it out!

(and if you click on the first foto, it'll make them all big enough that they should be read-able)

hello again

i feel like i updated every day for the first week of the month and then dropped this blog like a bad habit. sorry.

this past weekend, though, this household has suffered a sinus infection, 3 days of 103-degree fever, 2 stomach bugs, a trip to the ER (for rehydration), 2.5 missed days of work and 2 missed days of school. but i think we're over it all and ready to move on to the lake this weekend!

we are super-pumped to get to spend the weekend just an hour away at a house on the lake with coach and nonna as well as brynn and chandler and uncle cody and aunt alana...ellie's been waiting all summer for this weekend! and as we watch 5 inches of rain fall on the ground thursday night, she looked at me and said, "this will be so good for the lake this weekend" - such a smart girl!

but first for some relaxing time for mama this afternoon - after nursing everyone back to good health, i was blessed with a few extra minutes in my afternoon today to come home after work and enjoy my craft room to it's fullest.

i've got ellie's birthday invites printing as i chain piece a quilt top together from some "man fabrics"...

that is, i participated in my first ever fabric swap in june. it was through a girl i'm connected with online through the austin modern quilt guild. mind you, i've attended one meeting in person, but feel like i'm totally a part as i stalk them on facebook and have hunted down a many of their blogs documenting quilting works and life. and one of the other not-so-involved members decided to organize a fabric swap of man-themed fabrics. i got my envelope of 36 different 10" squares mid-june and got around to picking out a pattern and cutting last week. and today i stitched!

another project in the works looks something like this...

not many more details, though. stay tuned for more!

and lastly, this one little box of 100 5X7 matte paper cards was bought when my little man was born to print his announcements on. and i thought, "man, what ever will i do with 100 cards. i only need like 30." well...i've not only printed his announcements on them, but also his birthday invites and thank you cards (which, btw, never got mailed...thanks one and all for the gifts!), and now have completed ellie's invites. and the box is empty.

it's been such a fun, creative hour in my craft room...i should carve out more time - even if it's in 15-minute tidbits - to spend in this place...it's so fun in here!

blessed to have a space of my own, i'm now off to pick up the kids and pick up with life as usual!

recipes

my friend, abby, records her recipes in a plain ol' blank journal. she does it to keep them all in one place, and she has a strict policy that only those things that have been tested and approved by the family get recorded. this way, every time she cooks/bakes from it, it's a winner.

i've got my grandmother's recipe box in my kitchen - an old wooden one with all kinds of recipes, mostly typed on her typewriter. a few in mom's handwriting, an occasional one in maw maw's. mostly what's in maw maw's writing, though, are the personal edits she's made to previously-typed recipes. on her fudge recipe, she notes she adds at least 6 more ounces than the original 12 called for.

her white cake has mathematical equations worked out for the quantities of ingredients based on whether you want 2, 3, or 4 layers. this is cool to me.

i've been thinking about both ladies' methods these past 2 weeks and broke out a new journal tonight just for food. i searched the internet for digital ways to organize recipes; i thought about reorganizing my recipe box and trying to do better at keeping it well-arranged. but i like the journal idea. and i like the thought of it being in my own handwriting (versus a digital version that seems less personal).

ellie helped me (watched me) put together a peach crisp (cobbler-like) tonight after dinner, and i like to think that in years to come, she'll want to thumb through and pick out recipes from her childhood that she can replicate. and for her to read it in my handwriting makes the passing down of recipes all the more personal, i think. and i imagine for some recipes, she'll (and kaleb, too) cringe when thinking of the time i forced them to stay at the table until it was all gone. this one's for you, mom:

abby's book has a tabbed-off section for desserts - she just picked a place about 1/3 of the way from the back and placed a tab. since my husband rarely skips meals but NEVER skips dessert, i started from the back and am working my way forward with desserts - this way i won't run out of room because i sectioned off too little space for sweets. and as of now, i've got about 8 main dishes and sides recorded, and i've got just that many desserts to balance things out :) maw maw makes note of where all recipes come from - someone's kitchen, a magazine/newspaper, etc. i like this. i've done the same. and i've tried to anticipate a someday failing memory and left little notes as to where/how i knew certain people (one woman i worked with in the recovery room in fredericksburg...i won't remember that when i'm old and gray!)

so i've got a lot of writing to do at the moment in order to catch up, but once there, i'll process through a recipe at a time as i come across new ones. and when i'm feeling less inspired to hunt pinterest and other internet places for food suggestions, i can pull out the journal of trusty food and pick one at random.

kids are home!

the school where the kids are enrolled is great in that it is open year-round...no summer off like real school - except, it closes for the first week of july for everyone to get a little vacation. which presents a week without childcare for us. which led to a road trip for the kids and me. 

we took off last saturday for garland, no stops along the way, and stayed with fabo and cacky until mid-week. on wednesday, i got the kids over to cliff and sally's and settled them in before i headed back to return to a half a week of work. cliff and sally returned them yesterday. and boy, were they ready to be home! in the first 15 minutes they were here, ellie wanted to unpack everything from her backpack and duffel bag, and kaleb pulled out ALL toys from ALL bins to make sure everything was still here. i picked up twice in the few hours before eric got home from work, and he still came home to a downstairs covered in toys:

ellie pulled out her school to play - after all, her "class" had missed her all week!

and at some point, kaleb joined her class. but not for long before he discovered he could play with daddy without having to share him with ellie!

it'd been a week since eric had seen the kids, after all, so he was in a mood to play all night! we got them bathed and in bed within a reasonable proximity to their normal bedtime (i understand there were lots of late nights at coach and nonna's house!) and i'm sure we've got a bit more un-doing to do (no, you cannot eat fruit snacks for lunch...), but it's just so good to have our little family together again!

overdue

when you're long overdue for an updated blog post, i suppose you're supposed to recap everything that's happened in the meantime...not so much for me today. there's quite a bit i'd like to record, and will in due time, but for now, i want to share my crafting lately.

i was inspired several weeks ago by a quilt at red pepper quilts and thought it would be great (and pretty easy) to use up some of my overflowing scraps from other quilts. so i started cutting. and then sewing. and taking it a little at a time, i've now got this to show:

and it's cool to look through and see fabrics used in other projects. there's one from ellie's baby quilt (red and orange), one from a pillow i made for the glider in her nursery (pink print), a couple from kaleb's robot quilt (black and white prints) that's still in progress. some fabrics were bought for projects that i then decided to take another direction and never ended up using - until now. 

i was amazed that you could throw a bunch of fabrics together that were of similar colors and the patterns would work so well together. it was super-fun to piece together!

and perhaps the coolest part for me is that this is the first project with my custom label sewn on...i've marked it as a kate creation! i set out originally with the label reading, "see kate sew" but then that very night stumbled upon this great blog: see kate sew. already taken. and wanting to be original, i settled upon:

which really is rather perfect, as when i'm asked about hobbies and interests, people find it rather unusual for a 20-something (at least for a couple more years) to have such an interest in sewing and quilting. so...that's right...i sew!

i look forward to other projects marked by me - crayon rolls, skirts for ellie, a superhero cape for kaleb perhaps. and of course, quilts!