Pretty Things: Dresses and Blossoms of Orange

I've been hearing a lot of good things about eShakti around the internet recently, so I was very pleased to get a chance to try out one of their dresses.

They have a huge inventory - mostly dresses and skirts.  One of the best features is that their clothes are completely customizable, if you're looking for something a little different.  You can change the neckline, hemline, sleeve length, etc. to suit your style.  AND the dresses have pockets!

The quality is good, and the prices are reasonable, though more than what I'd usually spend for clothes.  Ok, let's be honest, pretty much the only clothes I buy these days come from thrift stores.  But if in the future I have a special event to go to or some birthday gift-money burning a hole in my pocket, I would absolutely consider another eShakti dress.

Here's the dress I picked.  It's custom-fit since I did specify all my exact measurements, but I did not choose to change the shape at all from the original style.  I love the dress, though if I did it again, I'd probably have the sleeves cut to cover the shoulders a little more.

Why no, my skin has not seen sunlight for months...why do you ask?

I picked out a lovely orange summery dress.  I knew it would be smarter to look for a style that I could actually nurse a baby in...but the few dresses that seemed conducive to nursing were just not "calling my name."  People have told me that orange is a good color on me, but it's difficult to find nice-looking orange clothing (at least in the thrift stores).  I saw this pretty orange dress, and just had to get it.

I really don't have much of a waist, but this dress makes it look like I do - ha!

pockets!

The shape is simple, but the dress is very well-made of sturdy soft cotton.  I love the big tucks along the bottom of the skirt.

I have a few weddings to attend in the late summer/early fall, and this should be perfect!

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*****

There is an ugly bush/tree thing in our backyard that's been on my mental "hit list" for the garden since we first moved in.  We decided that this summer, we're not doing anything with the outside of the house or the yard, since we already have so many projects to deal with inside.  We're going to give everything this one summer to grow and bloom and defend its right to stay.  But this particular plant was so unattractive that I had already decided it would have to come out next spring. 

And then it bloomed.  It turns out it's a mock orange, which makes very attractive little mock orange blossoms.

But you can still see the ugly shape underneath!

Last week, I went out each morning to cut off some flowers to put in containers around the house.  I gave several bunches of the blossoms away to friends as gifts.  I love having fresh flowers around.

So now I'm torn.  Does one week of beautiful flowers make up for fifty-one weeks of having a scrubby bush-tree thing taking up space in our yard?

One more thing to consider:  Our elderly next-door neighbor has lived in their house since she was a girl.  She told us that her father had planted a whole row of mock oranges along the property line, and this one is the only one left (though it seems it was actually on our side of the line, based on where the fence got put in).  She surely has a sentimental attachment to it, which I do respect....But she's not the one who has to deal with it!

Monday Musings, May 6th

Right now...
Sly is in his room for a "nap" (i.e. talking to himself, banging, and playing with toys), Stella is asleep on the Boppy in my lap, and I need to get back to cooking and cleaning, as we are having dinner guests!

This weekend...
My mother-in-law was visiting. We treated her to a home-cooked steak dinner on Saturday, to thank her for doing our taxes for us again this year (she does it for a living, and is always happy to take care of them for us as well).

Stella got her first tooth, finally.  Sly has been copying me, and calling her "Stella one-tooth."  He keeps asking to "feel her little toothy."

I baked some banana cookies on Friday which were fantastic.  We didn't have orange zest, but I doubled the vanilla to make up for it.  

I started caring for my hair according to Curly Girl.  I had heard of this book from a few different people who all claimed it changed their lives.  It explains how to care properly for curly hair in a way that keeps it healthy and looking beautiful.  I always figured it wasn't for me, but when I picked it up last week at the library, I saw there was a section for wavy hair as well.  That's what I have, though I've always used a blow-dryer and a brush to smooth out the waves.  I decided to just go for it, and let my hair do its natural thing for a little while.  Here are the results from day one:

The book says that sometimes, more curls will form after a few weeks. I'm gonna try to stick it out and see what happens.

We needed new tires on the car.  It cost over $500, and that was for the cheapest ones.  Ugh.  And we might not even have the car too much longer.  Should I happen to get pregnant again, we'll need to trade it in for something bigger.  But Tom and I had a rare rare opportunity to spend a few hours alone while we waited for the tires to be put on.  My MIL stayed home with the kids, and we got a chance to walk around and shop for Mother's Day gifts.  Did you know that that's next Sunday?!  Because I sure didn't.

We also got our morning glory seedlings all planted in planters set along the base of our porch again.  We used twice the amount as last year, and mixed the blue and red ones.  We could potentially have some very pretty results come August.

Some plans for the week: 
Having some friends for dinner tonight, joining a friend and her little man for lunch on Wednesday.  Possibly taking the kids to library story time.  They do such a nice job at those, telling stories and singing songs with the kids.  It's like preschool, or at least what I remember of it.  But Sly is always the only kid just sitting there, refusing to do anything. He claims he enjoys it, though.

I also hope to finally finish painting our kitchen table.  That's been in the works for over a week now, and I hate not having a table in there!


If I find some time for myself, I would like to...
Turn some tanktops into nursing tanks! 

source

Basically, it would just be a way to add stomach coverage so I feel comfortable nursing without a cover in public (this is my goal!  I want to be an apostle for making nursing seem "normal" again, but I still don't like my flabby tummy showing to the world...).  The only difference between these and just wearing a normal tank under a shirt seems just to be that you cut down on the number of straps on your shoulders. 

While I'm at it, I'm also going to cut out the elastic bands from those stupid "built-in bras" that so many tanktops have.  They are designed, I think, for people who are much smaller in that area than I am (especially while nursing), so they just dig in very uncomfortably on me in all the wrong places.

Prayer intentions for the week:
Some friends who are experiencing infertility. 

Something that makes me smile: 
Watching my kids play together.  No one can get Stella to crack up as well as Sly can.  He just has to make a funny sound, or pop out from behind some object, and she bursts into laughter.  So sweet.

Monday Musings is hosted at Patch O'Dirt Farm

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 17)

 -1-

 Watch this tear-jerking video of the wife of a police officer who was recently killed.  I'm so impressed by her courage, love, and faith.  I doubt I could handle myself with such grace if my husband had just died.

-2-

 I made my first-ever actual crockpot meal this week!  I guess I'm just old-fashioned and like to make things the hard way?  Well...not anymore!

We've had a big cut of beef sitting in the freezer for ages, bought right after we got our chest freezer (most useful appliance EVER, btw).  I've been avoiding it, because I just wasn't sure how to cook it.  Tom kept reminding me about the crockpot,and I finally just broke down and decided to use it. I don't know why it took me so long, because it's insanely easy and fool-proof.

 [The recipe I used was for "swiss steak", but it tasted basically like pot roast (is this what happens with all beef meals made in a crock pot? I worry that it might be).  I think I'll stick with making my swiss steak in a skillet.]

-3-

 So anyways, I decided that this Fall, I will try to do a crockpot meal or a soup (which I could make earlier in the day and reheat very quickly in the evening) every Wednesday, since that's our "late dinner" night.  It will be a great opportunity to try out new recipes.  And I'm excited to come home to a warm and delicious-smelling meal that's already cooked.  Also, that would probably mean I wouldn't have to cook anything on Thursday either, since such meals usually yield a lot of leftovers.  Score!

Also, I want to try out at least one other new recipe (for anything - it doesn't have to be an entree) every week.  [Okay, post-script and a day later here: I realize that this goal is totally unrealistic of me.  I can't even manage to do meal planning for more than a one-week stretch every three months or so!  Trying new recipes definitely needs to be planned ahead, since there's usually one or two ingredients you don't regularly keep in stock.  And I'm already going to be making a new crockpot/soup thing once a week?  Yeah, not happening.  Oh well, it was a nice thought.]

BUT I have a billion post-it note markers in all my cookbooks for things I will make "someday", and my recipe binder is getting too crammed with untried recipes ripped from magazines or printed off the computer!  Need to do something about this!

So many untried recipes!

My overflowing binder.  Notice some of the tabs: "cookies", brownies and bars", "pie', "cake", "cheesecake", "other desserts"....it's clear what types of foods get priority!

-4-

I mentioned at the beginning of summer that I hoped to encourage morning glories to vine all up and around the porch.  Well, we were *sorta* successful.  The vines didn't spread laterally as much as I wanted.  But we finally have a few flowers now.
 

Our dinky and beat-up little "porch" with some dinky vines on it

But there's some beauty on it now!

Looking out at night, with our lanterns turned on

-5-

We've officially jumped on the Thomas Wooden Railway bandwagon - ahhhh

Sly's birthday gift from Nana

But I have to say, they're really well-made toys, and even fun for me to play with.

-6-

 Photographic evidence of my success at getting Stella to take a pacifier!!....for about 2 minutes.

This little girl has an insatiable need to suck.  Which usually means that Mommy has to offer herself as a human pacifier many times during the day (and night).  She will not accept substitutes!  Gahhhh

-7-

'Tis the season for REESE'S PUMPKINS!!  mmm....Tom knows he can pretty much make my day by bringing me home one of these as a gift.  I think it's pretty much as romantic as receiving flowers :-D

yummmm

The pumpkins, in addition to the other seasonal Reese's varieties (trees, hearts, and eggs depending on the holiday) are so much better than regular Reese's cups, don't you think?  Not only do you get a higher ratio of peanut butter to chocolate, but the chocolate is thinner and softer (no pinched hard edges where it molded into the cupcake paper).

Quick Takes is hosted at Conversion Diary

7 Quick Takes Friday (Vol. 14)

1. Thank you to everyone who weighed in about the hospital vs. birth center question.  After reading the advice which overwhelmingly supported the hospital, that's still where I'm leaning.  I met with one of the midwives on Wednesday, and asked her to lay out for me just what the birth center might offer that I could not get at the hospital.

It seems to me that the experience of labor and delivery wouldn't be too different at either place.  It's mostly the post-natal care and attention that differs.  The hospital keeps you for a couple days and you and the baby get regular visits from the nurses and a lactation consultant (which is good).  At the birth center, they mostly just leave you alone afterwards, and you go home in 4-12 hours.

However, at the birth center, you are encouraged to just hold baby on your chest for a long time right after birth, and start breast-feeding right away (which is good).  At the hospital, they give you about a minute with baby before taking him/her away (still in the same room) to check weight, Apgar stuff, etc.  They do bring baby back to the mother afterwards, but if I recall, they want the baby to be brought to the nursery for a more throrough pediatrician examination fairly soon after birth. 

But you know what?  I think I'm just one of those women who do like the pampering and attention (which many people might think is "over"attention) they give you in the hospital.  I'd prefer to have more immediate bonding time with baby, but it doesn't really take too long to check those things, and I mean...there's still the placenta and the potential stitching up that I need to be dealing with in that time anyways.


2. My best friend got married last weekend.  It was a beautiful wedding, and a memorable one.  We've been to so many weddings these past few years, and a lot of them have started to blend together in my mind.  This one will always stand out, though.  I'm not sure if it's just because I was the matron of honor, or because she's my best friend, or whether there was something especially unique about it.  It was the only time I've ever cried at a wedding.  I was very very happy for her.

Isn't she beautiful?

And here's us at the wedding. Tom is looking too serious.  The bridesmaid dress, which I complained about here ended up fitting a lot better after the (outrageously expensive!!) alterations.  But I still contend that it made me look more "large" than "pregnant"

3. Since I showed it to her already, I can finally reveal the wedding gift I've been working on for her for the past 18 months (yikes!).  It's a wedding cross-stitch.  And I will grumpily report that it's STILL not finished.  I need to fill in that entire center section with all the "wedding info" (names, date, place, etc.).

It's about 17"x15".  And yes, I know it has huge folds in it right now...

This is only the second cross-stitch project I've ever done.  If anyone is considering beginning this as a hobby, let me warn you that it takes FOREVER.  I have probably poured hundreds of hours into that thing already.  I fully understand why cross-stitch was historically a pasttime assigned to young ladies to teach them patience and dilligence.

close-up of a section

*If anyone's interested, the flowered border pattern comes from the book Cross Stitch Antique Style Samplers. 

4.  I recently used some gift money I had saved up to purchase myself this cute pair of Crocs flats (Tom wouldn't let me use our common money on a product he so abhors).

The upper parts are actually more clear than they appear in this picture [stolen from the Crocs website]

Tom HATES them and complains about having to be out in public with me when I'm wearing them.  They remind me of the jelly slippers I wore as a kid.  They're very comfortable.  I was looking for a flat I could wear in the summer (i.e. without pantyhose) which wouldn't make my feet sweat like crazy (sorry if this is an over-share).  These do the job quite well.  Not exactly church-appropriate, but great for everyday wear.


5. The mini-mart in our neighborhood (pretty much the only surviving business along the total wasteland of what was once the main street) sells Slush Puppies!  This was a very exciting discovery, being that it's really hot, I'm really pregnant, and it's good motivation to make me actually go for a walk sometimes.

Slush Puppies are actually one of the most poorly-designed in the "iced drinks" category.  Their competitors, Slurpees and Icees, use much more finely-shaved ice, so you get a decent ratio of flavored syrup to ice in each sip.  When you drink a Slush Puppy, no matter how careful you are, you invariably end up with more than half a cup of flavor-drained ice.

But this is what I grew up drinking every summer at our cottage, so it has a major nostalgia factor for me, which beats everything else.  I can't wait to introduce Sly to them!


6. There's a spray park really close to our house.  I hadn't even heard of these until I became a mom.  It's basically a park with a bunch of enormous sprinklers and water-spraying structures that kids can run through on a hot day. 

Picture taken from the community website.  I've never actually seen it this packed, though

I thought it was a such great asset to have in a neighborhood, until I realized...they only put these in when they want to get rid of a pre-existing swimming pool!  Spray parks are just cheaper to maintain.  I get that, I do.  But I still think a pool is better for a neighborhood.  They talk up spray parks as being "more accessible" than a pool for those who are handicapped.  Maybe so.  But while there are no official age-limits on spray park use, I guarantee you will never see anyone over the age of twelve running through there.  It's sort of understood that it's just meant for kids.  And so it cuts off MOST of the people in the community from a good way to stay cool in the summer.

Still...as long as the pool is gone anyways, I guess it's nice to have this so near to us.


7. Our gardening attempts this year - as always - have been mostly a failure.  We sacrificed having a yard when we moved to our new place last autumn.  We don't even have the tiniest patch of grass or dirt.  But we were determined to try some container gardening along the sidewalk nonetheless.

I started a bunch of seeds (flowers, herbs, and some tomatoes) in various pots and seed-starting cells.  As soon as anything sprouts, though, something has been eating them.  I could have avoided this if I started everything indoors, but that would have interfered with our "keep all the curtains drawn during the day to keep out the heat" method of cooling our un-air-conditioned house (see #3).  With the exception of a few flowers we bought and re-potted in hanging planters (and thus kept away from hungry mouths), the only thing that has survived are my morning glories.  I guess they taste bad or something.

Just about ready to be transferred

My hope is that I can get them to vine up the trellis-y stuff all along the bottom of the porch, and just kinda totally engulf the whole thing.  Morning glories are spectacular when they've taken over a fence, and they're all opened up at once.

eww - and maybe the vines will disguise that gross mold at the bottom that I never noticed until I took this picture

Quick Takes is hosted at Conversion Diary

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

It's been awhile since I've written. Holy week and Easter are such busy times, and the past few days have provided me with many little chores and tasks needing to be taken care of. Also, I felt like I had an overwhelming amount of things that I could write an entry about, so I took the noncommittal route, and chose to write nothing!

In an attempt to keep things short and sweet, I'll just post a few pictures from the past week, and speak about them as the inspiration strikes...

I hung up some of the lovely roses Tom gave me. This picture was taken over the weekend, so by now, they're mostly dried. We keep small vases of dried roses on our home altar, and I also have a large vase of them decorating our mantle. I'm not sure yet what the fate of these ones will be...we'll have to see how they turn out, color-wise. But I admit, I kind of like the rustic charm they add to the kitchen just when they're hanging there from the ceiling. I mentioned to Tom that it might be nice someday to decorate with bunches of dried flowers in this way, and he surprisingly agreed completely.


We spent Holy Saturday fixing up our garden and getting stuff planted. I finally got to get those tomato seedlings out of the kitchen! (The front planter has my lavender seeds, which seem to have just been complete duds, all of them).


The quality of this picture is pretty poor (it was taken from Sly's bedroom window), but this is a view of our backyard. The two garden patches in the back now have: tomatoes, carrots, Romaine lettuce, and sugar snap peas. We also planted morning glories along the side fence this summer, so they won't completely engulf all the crops again.


Sly really enjoyed picking the dandelions in the grass (which needs to be cut badly! I should call the landlord about that...)


I snatched it out of his mouth right away (well, after getting this picture of course :-P)

Saturday evening, we dyed our eggs. I also dipped twelve blown eggs into the dyes, to be decorated with wax at a later time. Notice how I have Sly AND Lance in my lap at once. They fight for my attention all the time.

I made a "Sly" egg with the handy clear crayon that comes in the dye set, and Tom suggested I make one for each of us as well. But it seemed inappropriate to write "Christine" and "Tom" on them. I mean...in relation to Sly, we are "Mom(my)" and "Dad(dy)." So that's what I wrote. And it did feel strange. I think that's the first time I've ever referred to myself that way in print before.


Our eggs looked much nicer the night we dyed them. This picture was from Sunday morning, after the fridge had already covered them with condensation and made the dye drip.

We went to the Easter Vigil Mass at 10:00. For weeks, I had been insisting that would be a bad idea. Tom really loves the Vigil, and I knew he wanted to go, but I didn't think Sly would feel the same. I kept trying to paint pictures of the awful scenes we could expect to endure, having a cranky baby out well past his bedtime. Somehow, though, in the end, Tom convinced me it would be okay. He assured me that Sly would just sleep through the whole thing.

Hah! I should've listened to my gut! He screamed through the entire first half, and I had to sit with him out in the narthex, missing everything. Well, technically, I could still hear the priest. But it was all in Latin, and we only own one missal that has the updated Easter Vigil Mass in it. So I really couldn't follow what was happening. But Sly finally did sleep, and we were even able to go out for food afterward with friends (I got a milkshake)!

On the way home, we were discussing what Easter traditions we may like to have once Sly gets a little older. In Tom's family, the kids had to find their Easter baskets as well as all their eggs on Easter morning. At my house, we came down to find the baskets on the coffee table, and the eggs in the fridge - just where we'd left them!

That night, Tom was very insistent that I should just go to bed, and he would stay down to clean up and get Sly's Easter basket ready. I should have known...

...that he was actually hiding all my wax eggs around the house for me to find in the morning! I spotted this one first, hidden in the coupon holder thingy.

Sly wore an adorable too-big Easter suit. This only lasted about half an hour, until we decided to change him into something we didn't mind getting dirty.

As soon as I saw he was getting green dye on his mouth, I took the egg away.

We read that babies can eat egg yolks, but not the whites, since they have a lot of allergens in them. "This will be perfect," I thought, "since I only like to eat the whites!" But no such luck. He did not enjoy egg yolks one bit, and started crying each time we tried to give him a second bite!


He got some Cheerios instead. Sly always reaches into the pocket on his bib to get the food he dropped. I think it's adorable - like he's digging for treasure.


The Easter Bunny brought him a basket filled with....plastic eggs to play with! No candy for babies!

After spending the morning around the house, getting our fill of chocolate and hard-boiled eggs, we headed over to my dad's house, where he was hosting the entire extended family for dinner.

For a while, Sly was the only baby there, so he was getting passed all around. At some point near the end of the night, someone must have given him a pretzel rod. He LOVED it and was munching away on it for a happy half hour, and getting himself covered with little bits of pretzel-turned-slime. Next time he was handed back to me, I saw that someone had given him a second pretzel, which he was clutching in the other hand. So for over an hour, he went back and forth, sucking on the two pretzels. Since it was well past his bedtime, he was amazingly cranky, and cried everytime we tried to take one away or clean him up.

Overall, a nice Easter spent with family and gorgeous weather!


And one last picture:


Sly's really starting to love solid foods. Monday night, I sat near the sink so I could clean him up, and he grabbed a slice of leftover pizza off my plate on the counter!

An Ephiphany About Those Carrots

Okay, I intend to write later about Holy Week, and Easter, and to share some cute pictures of my adorable little baby. But it's already past midnight, and I can't afford to stay up that late!

But I needed to share a thrilling discovery I made while tutoring one of my biology students today. So remember how surprised I was last month to discover perfectly good, fresh carrots growing in my garden, even though they had been sitting in the ground all fall and winter? I figured they had preserved by being frozen in the ground instead of dying, or getting eaten by bugs like they should have.

Well, tonight, I was going over some plant chapters with my student. And we were discussing the difference between plant lifecycles - annuals, perennials, and the little-discussed biennial plants. The book noted that carrots and beets are both examples of biennial plants. The first year of life is focused on root growth, and the second year is for flowering. It all makes sense now! My carrots were supposed to stay alive all winter, because they were only through year one of their life cycle!

This is interesting news, because it means that of I were to plant a bunch of carrots at the beginning of one summer, I could continue to harvest fresh ones all through the following winter and spring. No need for canning or refrigeration. But - it should be noted - once the carrot starts its flowering phase in year two, it uses up all the lovely sugars that have been stored in the edible parts.

I just had to share this exciting realization with my student tonight. I think she maybe found it mildly interesting...or perhaps she was just humoring me...

What the Heck? Carrots in March?

Yesterday afternoon, Sly and I went out into the backyard to survey the winter damages on our little garden patch. It's pretty bad...

Our Lady is probably shaking her head at this mess

Taking care of the garden over the summer while I was pregnant provided me with a nice diversion. But as I got bigger and bigger (it was my third trimester), it became more difficult to bend over to weed, harvest, etc. Not to mention that even being on my enormously-swollen feet was unpleasant enough. So the garden sort of went to pot towards the end of the summer (see previous post: The Miracle of (Plant) Life).

And then once Sly was actually born at the end of August? Well, all desire to tend to my garden was completely supplanted (no pun intended) by my desire to tend to my new baby.

While we were out there yesterday, I noticed a little orange head peeking at me out of the soil. I dug in to investigate, and sure enough, out came a huge whole beautiful carrot! In March! Then I realized that there were at least 15 more just like it. Laughing, I began to dig in with my bare hands, and had soon produced a nice little harvest of carrots.


My only guess is that they had ripened very late in the summer, in that time after the baby was born and I had stopped checking my garden. I didn't figure there would be any more carrots, since I had planted all the seeds at the same time, and already had a booming crop a few weeks earlier. I'm assuming these carrots just spent the winter out there, frozen in the ground. But the freezing seems to have preserved them well.

They clean up nice

We tasted them last night, and they seem fine. So I guess now I need to start drinking tons of my carrot juice again (see number seven)!


And I'll end this post with a cute picture of my little Muffin, enjoying his first real taste (literally! ack! Those plants in his hands went straight to his mouth right after I snapped this!) of the outdoors :-)

The Miracle of (Plant) Life

I planted some starter tomato seeds a week or so ago. I've been faithfully watering them everyday, without any sign of sprouting. I checked on them last night before I went to bed, and there was still nothing. But this morning, around 11:30, here's what I saw.


It's amazing how quickly they appear!

Two little green seedlings

I'm looking forward to planting our little garden again this year. I've learned from a few of last summer's mistakes. Most importantly, that you should separate your flower and vegetable areas! The flowers that I planted last year (hyper-engulfing morning glories, and much-too-tall wildflowers) completely overtook some of our vegetable crops.

Our garden, last August. Believe it or not, this is a picture of the fence.
The big lump covered in morning glories is the gate, which could no longer open!

This year, I think I'll try to get morning glories to grow up and cover the fences along the side of the backyard (should not be difficult at all! And they're very beautiful once they start blooming), but leave the back of the fence vine-free, as that is where we've built our little planting boxes. The crop list so far is carrots, sugar snap peas, tomatoes, and lavender.

Part of last summer's "harvest"