shelves, beach, hat

My husband is off from work for the week between Christmas an New Year’s Day, so I took advantage of that to get some projects done around the house. This week’s project was the assembly of an Elfa shelving unit for the living room. It was a bit like putting together IKEA furniture with more vague instructions. There was a lot of “according to your design” in the instructions, which isn’t super helpful when the design was a schematic without measurements. I am quite pleased with how it came out, though, even if it is taller than I anticipated.

woo, shelves!

We also had a beach day, which is always something I enjoy. Someone took the time and care to craft a peace sign on the dune behind my favorite dog beach.

peace man, cool yeah

It was a beautiful day! I read somewhere recently that looking at the horizon shifts your mindset to the big picture and gives you perspective on your place in the world. I am not sure I would have been able to put it into words so clearly but a trip to the beach gives me a mental reset. One of my life goals is to live walking distance from the beach but until I can, being able to drive there in about an hour to soak in this beauty is the next best thing.

waves and rocks

In knitting news (since this is ostensibly my knitting blog) I finished a hat just too late to donate to my Hats for Paradise project. I have another one on the needles as well. I might drop them off at Bay Area Cancer Connections. I have donated chemo caps to them before and this one might fit that bill.

finished a little too late

I have been thinking a lot about the goal of posting on my blog rather than Facebook and I’m still feeling a bit uncertain about my plans. I know that I don’t want to be on Facebook as much but I would still like to share what I am doing with friends and family. Without sharing the links to these posts on Facebook, though, I am not sure that anyone sees it. Am I blogging into the void? Perhaps. Will it be a good exercise for me anyway? Also, perhaps.

I hope you will join me for the experiment to see how it goes!

 

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clean counters

This Sunday night is the beginning of Hanukkah and I am hosting a family dinner so I have been trying to motivate myself all week to clean my counter off in my dining area. It is the hottest clutter hotspot in my house, honestly. So much clutter. Yesterday, a friend of mine came over and bullied motivated me into working on it. She even tested every pen in my three (THREE) pen cups that were there.

Of course, I didn’t take a before picture but here is the after.

Yes, I have done the dishes over by the sink and cleaned that up since this photo was taken. I always feel so much better when this space is clear and yet I always let it get insanely cluttered again before I clean it off. Maybe some day I will learn. Maybe.

This post wraps up another NaBloPoMo! I missed many days (oops) but enjoyed sharing bits of my knitting and life and knitting life with you. See you sooner than next November, I hope!

bedrooms, toes, and ice cream

We have been working on rearranging the whole house since June or so and today was the beginning of the final step: switching my younger son back into the small bedroom and my husband and I back into the larger one.

His loft bed went away first, it is the end of an era.

bye bye loft bed

This photo is a bit dark, but his bed is now in the small room! (It just needs a new frame.)

at last!

Unfortunately, in all the hubbub of cleaning up today, my younger son stubbed his toe on one of the many air filters we currently have going, which resulted a trip to urgent care and probably podiatry tomorrow.

sad pinky toe

In between all of that excitement, I made ginger ice cream for Thanksgiving. It doesn’t look like much, but it smells amazing and I hope it tastes as good as it smelled!

ginger ice cream to be

legwarmers, butterfly, return of the chaos

Mom's legwarmers were delivered on Christmas. I was a little nervous about how well they'll stay up. We'll see how it goes!

mom’s legwarmers

I finally got a photograph of the snail outside his home. He's dirty now because he was taken to the park one day.

niels’ snail

I then made a butterfly in a strawberry for Stefan. Again, too stinkin' cute for words.

peeking butterfly

Finally, my house has descended into chaos again. We got a new TV and all the components had to be pulled out so the new stuff could be put together but nothing works immediately, of course, so everything is spread around the house. Also, the boys went and slept at my parents' house and brought back bags and bags of stuff with them. I don't get how the smallest people require the most stuff. Actually, I do get it but it gets frustrating.

I'm hoping that a) all the new electronics will play nicely with each other tomorrow (once we get the right cable) and we can start sorting out what needs to go and where it can go.

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snail in a pear, living room

For some reason I don't want to work on big projects. I go through this at times. I usually end up knitting dish cloths but this time it's amigurumi that have caught my obsession attention. I was going to make another snowman but instead I decided to make a snail in a pear from a pattern called Little Toys and Their Homes. Niels had asked for it and I started and gave up on a seahorse and robot (the yarn wasn't right in both cases) for him after make a turtle and a seahorse for Stefan. So, here's the snail in his home, the S.S. Leaf (according to Niels).

peek-a-boo!

Isn't he too stinking cute for words?

I just realized that I need a picture of the snail out of the pear. I'll get that tomorrow as Niels is currently sleeping with the snail.

I've also been thinking a lot about my living room. (I know, exciting!) We had a Hannukah party this weekend and it got me moving to get the living room, dining room and kitchen into much better shape. Big parties will do that. I'm still not entirely satisified with the state of the living room, though. I would like to replace the giant white Ikea monstrosity that surrounds our TV.

playroom corner

You can only see part of it here. There is another of the four-cube pieces to the right of the TV as well. It is useful in that it has a lot of drawers and closets, however as you can see from the state of the pieces on the far left, the drawers and doors have broken off a few of them. I wanted to get the TV stand that goes with our new bookcase in the corner but I don't think it is big enough for the size TV we want to get. Our couch is a fair distance from the TV and the flat TVs are wider so we'd need something bigger. Erik and I are still discussing. Anyway, here's a couple more photos.

I occasionally consider putting the kid's play/train table in their room but I think it would take up too much of the room, so I'm not sure what to do. I have to say this: the room is much nicer when everything is put away. The new bookcase really helps with that.

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