Posts Tagged ‘Liz’

Jen and I have decided to do craft-alongs together. I picked our first project: baby amigurumi owls from Liz’s Seriously Cute Crochet book. I love the little owls and there’s a pattern for a mother and a baby owl. The baby looked like a faster project, so we chose that. Mine took about 3 hours, including Rhino interruptions. It was pretty easy, but didn’t turn out perfectly. I like it anyway, though! Rhino really enjoys playing with it and I’m just waiting for him to rip off a wing with his teeth. I’m looking forward to making more in the future.

I have wanted to try wool diaper covers on Rhino for quite a while. I’ve only heard such amazing things about how they are so breathable (more so than the Polyurethane Laminate covers we’ve been using for him), antibacterial, need infrequent washes, rarely smell, etc.! Liz gave us a second-hand wool cover that Rhino uses every night and it has been awesome! One of the reasons I wanted to learn to knit was so I can make soakers (like underpants that go over the cloth diaper), shorties (still a diaper cover, but shorts) and longies (also a diaper cover, but are full pants.) Well, I finally finished my first knit soaker. I made some mistakes, but it’s finished and it’s cute (though it will be cuter on a baby bum!)

But … big problem. It is WAY too small for Rhino! I definitely need to work on getting my gauge right. Andrea is interested in trying wool with Amelia, so I’ll be sending this her way (I’m hoping it will fit her!) If not, then we’ll hold on to it for future baby #2 to grow into. I’m going to try some other patterns, but I will definitely be making more of these in the future!

I’ve seen so many beautiful projects on Ravelry and Flickr that I’ve definitely been inspired! Here are a handful of my favorite wool soaker photos which motivate me to knit something really cute for my baby’s bottom.

1. Soaker, 2. Gradient Leaves Fluff Factory Custom, 3. Custom Celestial Intarsia Llamajama Soaker., 4. see? Ducky., 5. kirjoneulemerinot2, 6. Fluff-A-Rump Schmidty Shorts Upcycled Wool Diaper Cover, 7. piratelongies, 8. Camping3, 9. s002l, 10. Garden Shorties, 11. lisa1, 12. ButtKnits_bikerbabe_200, 13. Coyote Desertscape, 14. the_deep, 15. montana_night_2, 16. Falling leaves shorts, 17. spaceinv2, 18. IMG_5526, 19. Toadstool Longies Back 2, 20. August 008, 21. Black Monster Longies in Action!, 22. Sheep! 3, 23. Sock Monkey Family Portrait, 24. Dinosaurs3, 25. Dragonfly Longies 2

I lied about not posting a photo of my picnic bento. Liz, her kiddies, Rhino and I took a long walk yesterday and we all (well, not Rhino) had bento lunches at a park before we headed out. Here is what I made myself:

Her kids had their own cute little lunches with molded (not moldy) eggs, pretty rice cubes, and healthy fruits and veggies. They were too cute!

Here is also a photo of Matt’s lunch for today. It’s my first attempt at a little “octodog“, which is silly but fun.

Today Matt is having a chicken bento I made for lunch. Liz mentioned a tomato basil pasta that she makes, which inspired me to make my own tomato basil pasta concoction. The bottom of Matt’s bento is chicken and garlic in penne with fresh basil and tomatoes. His onigiri today is rice mixed with furikake, stuffed with teriyaki chicken, with a nori star and wrap. He also gets teriyaki chicken on the side and some almonds, grapes, cherry tomatoes, and Cheddar Bunnies to munch on.

Liz called me yesterday to take a bento supply shopping trip at the Â¥100 stores in town. That’s where I get the cute boxes, molds, punches, etc to help make pretty lunches. I’ve been flavoring the rice with pureed vegetables, but wanted to pick up some furikake, so I bought two variety packs to try all sorts of flavors! I also found the egg molds that I’ve been looking for, some cute tiny cutters of shapes and leaves, and a bird-shaped rice mold (to match my elephant mold.) Here’s my latest haul:

So far all the bentos I’ve made have been for Matt’s lunch at work, but I’m going to start making some for myself to take on picnic walks, so I found a pretty, insulated lunchbag (Matt has a blue plaid one that’s similar.) I’ll probably make one for a picnic/walk today but I doubt it will be pretty (just throw in some of the pasta and some fruit) so I doubt I’ll be posting another photo. :-p

So now Matt is back on days and I’m packing him lunches. In Japan, boxed lunches are called bentos. Sometimes their just food and nothing too special, but often they’re really pretty. It’s common to make them super-cute, too (and sometimes, beautiful). Liz and I went to the 100 store today and I found tons of adorable bento boxes, punches and molds. I thought I’d spice Matt’s lunches up a bit and start making him pretty bentos. So here is my first attempt at a bento for Matt.

I made sticky rice to make plain (not filled with anything, no furikake) onigiri, an elephant head (with eyes and ears made with kalamata olive), and a cube with a star indent (filled with turkey pepperoni and American cheese.) I also used flower and star-shaped punches on some jicama and red and green bell peppers. There’s a cute tiny fork (though I’ll pack chopsticks, too, but I really couldn’t resist the itty bitty forks), a small condiment bottle that I filled with soy sauce, and pretty little grass and paper cups. I threw in some lifesavers and chocolate chips (the only sweet things I could find), almonds and cranberries to fill it all out. I didn’t plan out the bento at all, but from now on I’m going to have one in mind before I get started. Last Christmas my mother got me a Japanese cook book, so I’m anxious try some traditional Japanese cooking to include in Matt’s future bentos. We’ll see how that goes!

I don’t know why I’ve been so lazy about blog posts lately. Oh wait, yes I do — I’ve been knitting! I found an amazing site for crocheters and knitters: Ravelry.com. Over at Ravelry, yarnies share projects, patterns, yarn, chat, have knit-a-longs, etc. etc. etc. Looking through all the patterns and seeing everyone’s projects has been so inspiring and motivational — I have about 100 projects queued up for the future! I’m working on matching winter hats for Rhino  and Amelia since we’ll all be in Colorado together for Christmas this year. I’m also knitting a wool diaper cover for Rhino (or maybe it will be too small, in which case it will be for Amelia.) Rhino’s legs are so chunky and his current PUL covers dig into his thighs and leave ugly red marks. He’ll outgrow them and his medium sized diapers pretty soon, so rather than buy the next size up, I’m just going use prefolds and sew up some fitteds and knit wool covers. Right now I’m just doing a cover, but in the future I want to knit up some super-cute shorties and longies for him to wear around. With all the recent knitting enthusiasm, I’ve had to pick up some new yarn, of course! Liz and Drew took us to Shimoda mall last weekend and I visited the craft shop there. I got some needles in sizes I needed and some wonderful pretty new yarn. It will be a challenge staying away from there! My stash just grew quite a bit and I need to use up what I have!

We’ve had some recent get-togethers with new friends at our home. Last weekend Liz & Drew & kids, Nicole & Mike, and Catherine & Tyler came over for pizza, Wii, and MST3K. We’ve had them all over before for lasagna or shish kabobs and anime, games, and MST3K previously as well. It’s nice to spend time with other couples and I’m so glad we’re getting to know people over here. Mostly everyone we spend time with right now we know from church. Everyone has been so great to us there and I’m really enjoying getting to know other people in the church. Matt’s ushering and I’m working in the nursery now and we’ve opened up and are being more sociable than we ever were in California. There have been some fun picnics and fellowship potlucks lately that have been really good times.

Rhino is doing well. He’s making a lot of really funny faces lately and flashing us huge, toothy grins. He flails his arms all the time, both in joy and frustration. I think he’s getting ready to get mobile — he thrashes around more when he’s on his stomach or tries to climb up me if I’m sitting with him. He sits up on his own flawlessly and is now gently leaning forward and getting onto his tummy on his own from the sitting position. He’s eating yummy mushed peas, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes mostly along with some baby oat cereal. He’s practicing pinching and self-feeding with sweet potato puffs. He’s doing really well with picking them up between his forefinger and thumb (or thumb knuckle) and putting them in his mouth. I had also been giving him chilled baby carrots for a while to teethe on. He really enjoys holding the little carrot, holding it up and showing it to me, waving it around like he’s conducting an orchestra, etc. He’s getting so much better at chewing, he will pretty much demolish (and eat!) a baby carrot. Of course, I’m always sitting with him to make sure he doesn’t bite off a chunk that he could choke on, but really he just kind of grates the side of the carrot with his teeth so the pieces are really small and he can swallow them easily. He really has the best time with the carrot, too — I think they’re his favorite toy!

We haven’t really been doing too much else lately. Matt is back on a day schedule. His new term is starting up this week (he’ll be taking a math class online and hopefully tomorrow will be signing up for another class to satisfy his CCAF requirements.) Tomorrow through Sunday our church is having a world missions conference, which we’re looking forward to attending. School is going slowly for me, but it’s going. And that’s about all! We’ve been pretty dull lately. It’s been raining a lot, so we haven’t gotten out too much. I’m really itching to go on a hike soon and get some pretty pictures before it starts to get too cold. Hopefully we have a nice, dry weekend someday soon!

Yesterday Rhino and I had a great time out at the Tonami Clan Memorial Village Park! (We all went there on the Misawa tour when we first arrived here, but we didn’t really hang out at the park, though we did see the great samurai house recreations!) A few days ago a woman from church called to invite Rhino and I out with some other moms and kids to picnic at the park. It was such a gorgeous day yesterday and was really a treat! There are horse statues there that the kids pretended to ride. We also got to see plenty of real animals that you can feed. They have horses, reindeer, goats, chickens, and some others I know I’m forgetting. Rhino slept in the Beco while we were browsing the animals, but a crowing rooster woke him! (What a late rooster, crowing at 10:30!?) We settled down in the grass for lunch by a great playground (I can’t wait until Rhino can enjoy it!) Liz brought a sunshade that we set up for the kids to play in and I put down a blanket under a nice, shady tree for Rhino. I really like chatting with Liz and I can see our families getting together a lot in the future.

Rhino loved being outside and was in such a great mood all day! He spent most of the time on his stomach on the blanket watching everything. At one point the sunshade began to blow away, so I stood up to keep it from flying too far. When I turned back around, Rhino had scrunched up the blanket beneath him and had apparently grabbed some handfuls of grass and clover. He had his first food! I cleaned the grass out of his mouth and just hoped some dog hadn’t been by that spot too recently!

There four other moms from the church and another lady I hadn’t met and we all had a fantastic time. I talked with Shelley, the other lady that doesn’t go to our church, for quite a while. She has a son, James, who is just a couple of weeks younger than Rhino and just as big and chunky! I was getting tired of seeing all these skinny babies (well, not really tired …) and am very happy to see another baby-sumo-in-training! The moms want to do more out-on-the-town get-togethers this summer, so I’m definitely looking forward to those! All the kids are so sweet and were really pleasant and would play with Rhino. It’s really nice to chat with the moms, too. I don’t venture outside the gate while Matt’s at work, and I really should. I just get a little nervous going alone and getting too lost! So it’s nice to get out more and see the local area with friends.

Rhino has been doing so great in the nursery at church! I was really nervous about leaving him alone for so long, but I’m getting better. Our first time going, we had Rhino sitting with us and he was good, but he’s not silent. The congregation is so small and the room is really quiet, so I had to get up once he started babbling and chatting away. Apparently he’s never cried at all when he’s been there (which I am still pretty surprised about!) It was cute last week when we went to go get him, the girl who handed him over said he was wonderful and she can just tell he’s an “AP baby“. She said he was so pleasant and she could just tell and I took it as a huge compliment. Then we went on and on about cloth diapers because she was shocked when she went to his bag for a diaper change and saw a cute little bumgenius for him. It was fun because she was all excited and giddy about how great cloth diapers are and how she never runs into anyone who uses them and I was like, “I know! Yay!” This morning when we went to pick him up, I was greeted by a little girl, maybe 7 or 8, and she took me to Rhino, told me how he had been, introduced me to all the other little babies, and helped me with his things. She was just way too cute, being all helpful with the babies and everything! I guess Rhino was really chatty with all the other kids this morning, which I wish I could have seen. At Wednesday playgroups, he usually just stares at all the other babes and chimes in briefly every now and then. Anyway … the nursery there is really great and as soon as we become members of FBC, I’d really like to get involved with it. I guess they are looking for nursery workers and I’d love to hang out with all the little ones!

Speaking of church stuff, all that is going well. People there are really nice and helpful. We’ve talked to the pastor a few times and read through the church’s constitution and philosophy. We were never church members at Calvary, we just attended. I’d really like to be a member here so we can get involved in the programs and not just sit in the back quietly. We’re planning with the pastor to get together sometime this week and have a more personal sit-down. In order to become a member, I need to be baptized. I was as an infant, and later confirmed, but never baptized through immersion. It was never something I was against, I just never thought it was necessary. I’ve been reading and praying and it’s something I’d like to do. Next week we’re going to a Welcome and Farewell fellowship fried chicken lunch (everyone just has to bring desserts — yum!), which will be nice so we can get to know more people. (Really, the church is pretty small with about 100 members, so I think we’ve all ready met about half!) Then on the 14th Matt and Rhino will be attending a father-son cook-out (and getting free steak — lucky!) which will be really cute.