Dishcloth swap sent

I sent this out yesterday. I hope my partner gets this before she reads it, or it'll be a spoiler. I'm afraid I'll forget to post otherwise. I was fairly impressed with them, and I had so much fun making them!

The egg I winged. I had seen a flower version with a scrubbie in the middle and thought it would look cute as an egg. The pink one is another pink argyle one. The blue one I'm not even sure what I did. It was a wonky half double crochet thing I sort of came up with as I went.

Who took my pretty house?

Have you ever been away alot, then home, then away some more? Then you're finally home for awhile, and you look around, and ask "Where is my house?" That's the state I'm currently in. My house seems to have imploded! I look around and there are dirty clothes, on the floor in front of the washer and drier. Papers and garbage strewn around the edges of the floors (especially in the mud room where the boys keep their backpacks.) Clean laundry sitting in baskets on the floor, cobwebs in the corners, and more. I had a bit of a panic attack the other day when I realized all of this. I was embarrassed to call this my home. I also have deadlines for swaps, costumes, birthday presents, and other things coming up too. So I figure I need to buckle down and schedule my time better, and whip this house into shape.

My Goal: (get it all done..... ok, not specific enough);
Have A Presentably Clean House By Halloween (oh, yes, it has gotten that bad!)

So I plan to start listing things (I'm a hopeless list maker by nature)
Monday- Clean front porch

• Scrub the siding
• Clean windows
• Sweep cobwebs
• Sweep Porch
• Clean and prep door

I began this, but I have one HUGE problem, I can't get the siding clean! I've tried dishsoap, then I tried Softscrub, I've tried bleach water, nothing is working. We live near a fairly busy corner and we have (slightly off) white vinyl siding. The exhaust and dust stains the siding and it's been like that since we moved in. I can't get the porch white. So if any of you have any sure ways of getting this done I'd love to hear the ideas. Otherwise I'll just have to be happy with dirty porch walls, and move on until something else is figured out.

Tuesday- Paint

• Paint front door red
• Paint front room light fixture red and white
• Paint metal breadbox red and white (again if I have time.)*Didn't have the right paint.

Wednesday- Craft/Costume Day

• Wash & Dry Lore's fabric
• Finish Mario Hat
• Make Lore's Pants
• Finish up Dishcloth Swap
• Make Mario's Gloves

So that's my plan for the next 3 days. I hope I can get it all done. I have a longer schedule, but some things may have to be adjusted if other things don't get done.

Dishcloths!!

Well, I have been trying to get some Holiday gifts started, or worked on, so I don't go crazy at the end of November. I joined a dishcloth swap to help get me motivated on making dishcloths for my family. My husband wanted to make homemade Vanilla, and he thought that would make a great gift. Since he was actually involved in gift decisions I figured I should go with it! So we have Vanilla steeping, and we are planning on pairing that with a dishcloth and a teatowel and/or pot holder for each major family. I think tomorrow I will try to post my list of gifts (it helped last year keep me on track) So anyway, here are the three dishcloths I've made so far in the last 2 days at soccer.

The two above are a modified version of an afghan square I got the pattern from here. I made it smaller and used a smaller hook. I had to take out a few rounds and such too.

And here is my tried and true favorite dishcloth pattern. The pattern comes from Cocoa Cream's Craft Closet I made it a bit smaller. Mine is about 8"X8" and I think the first chain was 27.

Bad Day With A Cherry On Top

Yesterday, after school, Lore came running into the house, just bawling! He said he got stung by a bee in his nose, and it was still in there.

He was right. He had been riding his bike and a bee flew up his nose and stung him, and got stuck in there. We got the bee out, put some ice on it, luckily he doesn't react severely to bees. Then he shows me he broke his bike helmet (luckily not his head.) Then about 15 minutes later he tripped and banged his head on a glass case. All of this happened to my normally extremely coordinated child within 20 minutes. He was pretty defeated, he was supposed to go to his soccer game in about 30 more minutes, but he wasn't too sure of it, and honestly neither was I. But, I felt it was my motherly duty to try to pep him up. I looked at him and asked if his nose hurt, he said not really. I then said, that it's a good thing he got all of the bumps and stuff out of the way, now he would have the BEST GAME EVER! He seemed to like that idea and got excited again about soccer.

Now, we have had a rough soccer season, Liam's team has won 1 or 2 games, Liam scored a goal, we were pretty pleased even though they lost most of their games. Lore's team on the other hand only has 2 kids on it who have ever played soccer before, compared to the other teams who have 50% or more of their kids returning kids. Not only have they lost every game, they had never score.... not once. Now I know it's not about the winning, but no one likes to get their butts kicked EVERY game.

Yesterday, after having a quite troubling afternoon, my baby.... SCORED THE ONLY GOAL HIS TEAM HAS HAD ALL YEAR! He was thrilled, so was his team, and so were we. It was the first goal of the game... they did come back and beat us 5-1, but that one point sure meant a lot to us!

Here he is trying to play it so cool, but notice the blue and white band on his hand. That means he scored and can't until someone else does.

It was a very happy house last night!

Stuff I've Been Working On

Ok, here's 2 of the things I've done recently. First is the tea towel for the tea towel tour. She requested our state or something that represents it and the year it was established. So here's what I did.

And here is the doll quilt I made for the Doll Quilt Swap I was in. She's received it, so I can show it now.

Terrible little blogger lately

Sorry, I don't know why, just plenty to do around the real world that I've needed to be online far less.

I had a request for my pink cookie recipe and thought maybe others would care to have it also. It is super easy since it comes from a cake mix. Which also means you can adapt it simply by grabbing a different flavor cake mix.

1 box cake mix (above is strawberry, my favorite is chocolate, but try anything!)

1/3 cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

Mix, drop by a small scoop onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Bake 375 F for 7-9 minutes or until puffed and almost no indentation remains when touched. Cool one minute on pan, remove from pan and cool completely on wire rack. Makes about 22-24 cookies

These make wonderful sandwich cookies. Above is filled with a delicious vanilla frosting I found here at the cupcake project I didn't have vanilla bean paste, so I just used my homemade vanilla extract instead, and I just winged it, I didn't measure. The cookies also taste great with icecream in the center!

Disclaimer: I know these cookies are not healthy or even the tastiest, but sometimes you need a quick and fairly yummy cookie. This is that recipe!

I have a few other things I hope to post soon, but I'm waiting for them to be received before I show pictures.

My current projects include another tea towel tour swap on craftster and Halloween costumes.

Lore is going to be the 10th Doctor from Doctor Who

Liam is going to be Mario

Levi is going to be Lego Indiana Jones

Yes, they all came up with their own ideas! I just have to make them happen.

Tim and I had a ton of ideas, but we haven't been able to lock one down, so it will more than likely be simple.

It's Quiet

I can't believe summer has flown by so quickly. It is the first day of school today. It is crazy quiet here. It's a bit after 3 and I keep catching myself looking out the window thinking they will be here soon, but I shouldn't expect them for another 30 minutes....
Boy, when they are with me time flies, when they are gone it seems to crawl!