compost fail

Yeah, so we gave up on composting. After a year of trying with our 5 gallon bucket system and winding up with compost that killed my plants and smelled bad, Chris decided he would dig a trench for compost in the back of our new apartment, only to find that we had hard clay, not dirt back there. So since we don't have the money for a real compost drum or anything, we're back to throwing away our food trash and calling our year-plus experiment of saving food waste a total waste of time and effort. Bummer.

Studies show that Prenatal Air Pollution Lowers Children's IQ

So I just read the first article to really make me paranoid ... a new study showed a link between exposure to smog before birth and low IQ in children. I live in Atlanta and, until about two months before I got pregnant, would walk a mile down a really smoggy street to the train station and back 4 times a week for work. Sometimes in July/August even the short walk from the train station to my office building would make me feel sick from the car exhaust. I'm just glad we happened to move to a less busy area right before we got pregnant... but it still makes me a bit paranoid about living in a big city.

Zeke and the mobile

Zeke just got old enough to care about things like his mobile, so we finally put it up in his bassinet. The first time he saw it he was mesmerized for quite a while and actually smiled and talked to it, which was the best compliment a momma could get! Here he is at 11 weeks old, checking out his sea mobile.

Genetically Modified corn and soy

Chris sent me this interesting (although long) article on the effects of genetically modified (GM) foods. It further makes me wonder if my corn allergy is related to eating GM corn before I started avoiding corn. Some of the side effects they mention (other than allergies) are flu-like symptoms... which are exactly the symptoms I get now when I eat things with corn or corn derivatives.

Design snobbery

This is a pretty hilarious comic. It reminds me of when I was in college and refused to shop at Old Navy because I hated their commercials so much. (The ones with that obnoxious woman with the round white glasses). It also reminds me of my good friend Tiffany who likes to point out, "I have that font," pretty much any time we pass a sign or a shirt with a font she recognizes. It's kind of rubbed off on me, and I've caught myself telling Chris when I have a specific font that's on a tshirt he's wearing or something.

cowboy booties

Since our lives are basically All Zeke All The Time right now (and my life is basically Nursing Zeke All The Time), pretty much any updates for a while will be on the baby blog, so I'll probably be pretty lax on the updates here. (And since it's hard to blog while nursing, at least right now, most updates will be made by Chris).

But I did want to post a photo of the baby booties I made for Zeke. I started them on Saturday, April 25th, and finished them while in labor in the middle of the night, right before I woke Chris up to help me with contractions Sunday morning. So they have a pretty special place in my heart now.

Zeke wore them on his first restaurant outing, to Ted's Montana Grill on Saturday night. We went with my parents, for Chris's 30th birthday. He was rather stylin.

(the t-shirt was hand-embroidered by Chris's sister, Emily. It's the first onesie we put on him once his umbilical cord fell off Saturday morning).

I'm a mom!

Ezekiel Lee Skeene was born at 4:26 on 4/26. He weighed 7lbs, 3 oz and he was 20.5 inches long. There are tons of photos over on the Baby Blog. If this is your first time hearing then go check out the photos. Chris has been taking pictures like MAD, and I finally got a chance to post my birth story yesterday.

I haven't been on the computer much in the past week (maybe 2 or 3 hours total, overall) with all that's going on, and probably won't be on for a while. Too much to learn about being a mommy!

baby booties

I have a couple of friends who are having babies soon (actually, I have a lot of friends who have either just had a baby or will have one soon, but two of them are in my small group, and our small group is throwing us a joint shower next weekend).

One is having a girl, and the other a boy, so I thought it would be fun to make them some cute baby booties. So I found a couple of free patterns online (for mary janes and for sneakers) and made these. I made up the leaf embellishments for the mary janes, but otherwise just followed the patterns. They were both pretty quick to whip up since they're so small, so they were a fun project.

Chris wants me to make cowboy boots for Zeke, and I actually have a friend who has this pattern book with the cowboy boots pattern, so I will probably do that at some point, too. Man... never thought I'd be the "crocheting baby booties" kind of gal. How things change.

march finance update

So since I talked last month about how Chris and I were doing with being better stewards of our money, I thought I should keep it up and give a report on March. I won't be as long-winded, though.

Basically, we didn't manage to stay under budget, but we came really close. Chris had to get some cavities filled, so that was an unexpected expense, but the upside is that he walked in the door from his dentist appointment with both his bill in hand, and the mail - and in the mail was a check for freelance work I'd done the month before, for very close to the amount that the dentist bill came to. It was kind of depressing for me that I had done that extra work just to see the money flow right back out, but at least we had it! God is good. We went about $12 over our food budget, which isn't too bad considering we had people over to eat 5 or 6 times, including Pi Day, featuring fancy things like gluten-free pi(e)s and homemade frozen yogurt. And Chris had to go out of town for a weekend for a wedding, and we still only spent about $20 all month on eating out.

So there you have it.

glass mug cozy

Okay, this is actually a really long explanation for a pretty simple item. So our church offers free coffee and snacks in the mornings, right? Only a while back I decided to start bringing my own mug because I felt really wasteful using a paper cup each week, when I KNEW I was going to get coffee when I got there. Then when I was trying to get more calcium, I started bringing milk in my mug so that I was all prepared with my milk to add coffee to it. The cup holder in our car is really small though, so the only thing that fits in there are those glass POM tea jars, and they have a lid to go with them. The problem is that these POM glasses don't have a handle, so it was hard to hold once I put hot coffee in it. So one day Chris suggested a crochet a cozy for it so I didn't burn my hands, so one morning I finally grabbed some yarn on the way to church and made a cozy for it on the way there (our drive to church is 40 minutes long, so I was finishing it up just about the time we got there). I didn't get the handle on it for the first day, but after testing it out decided what I needed for a handle, and made that later in the week. I've been using it ever since, and I love it because it's super handy for my purposes.

I also kept getting lots of compliments on it, so I thought it might be fun to make a few more and try to sell them on Etsy, but for the purposes of keeping shipping manageable, tell people to buy their own POM tea to put it on. Imagine my dismay when I looked up the POM website, only to find that they've switched to a different sized, plastic bottle!

Alas, I got Chris to take a good photo of it anyways, so I figured I'd share.

I'm thinking of making cozies for Ball Mason jars, though, since I use those a ton to bring coffee to work and stuff... so might still try the etsy thing, but with Ball jars instead. Who knows. It's not like I don't have a thousand other things that take precedence on my to-do list or anything.

First Etsy Sale!

I just made my first Etsy sale! Some fabulous etsy customer bought my Sea Creature Mobile pattern. I was starting to think the whole crochet pattern writing experiment was a big waste of time (and it still may be, who knows, if I only sell the pattern a couple of times it certainly won't have been a profitable endeavor... that thing took forever between designing, writing, creating the layout, and testing it!) but it's pretty exciting still to have my first sale. Huzzah!

Anniversaries

This next few days are chock full of anniversaries / milestones.
Most importantly, Sunday (March 29) is Chris and my 6 year wedding anniversary! And our last child-free anniversary. How are we going to celebrate? Probably by skipping church, sleeping in, and then doing not much of anything all day, just hanging out. It will probably be our last chance for a while to not do much, so we will relish it. Last year we did the same thing - stayed home and did nothing - and it was great. A fantastic way to celebrate. :-)

(March 29, 2003 - the wedding party, left to right: Alan, Emily, Sam, Kendra, Chris, Brooke, Mike, Amy, Phil)
Sunday is also my one year anniversary of calorie-counting. (Yep, I started my diet on our 5 year anniversary. I'm weird.) I lost about 25 lbs and got to my "goal weight" in about 4 1/2 months. And right about the time I got to my goal weight and started eating enough calories to "maintain" my weight, we found out I was pregnant! Since then I've been steadily climbing back up, but this time with pregnancy weight. The thing that's funny to me is that one year later, I still weigh about 7 lbs LESS than I did a year ago, even though I'm in my 8th month of pregnancy! Calorie counting pays off big time... let me just say it's not fun or easy, but I definitely think it's been worth it to have a better idea of what's going into my body, and now, Zeke's body.
Finally, Tuesday will be my one-year anniversary of being gluten-free. Yep, a year ago I found out that I had a gluten sensitivity and started on the road to figuring out my many other food sensitivities. I think it's safe to say that even with a little Zeke stealing all my energy as of late, I feel a zillion times better than I did a year ago, when my body spent all its time attacking the food I was eating.
Celebrations abound!

Etsy Store and free baby jellyfish crochet pattern

I've finally gotten around to finishing the pattern for the baby mobile, creating an Etsy shop, AND posting the pattern for sale on the Etsy shop. Hooray! Now to see if anyone actually wants to buy it. :-)

Update: Now you can also buy it through Ravelry for $4.95.

I've decided to post the instructions for the baby jellyfish from the pattern here for free, to give you all a tiny taste of what you could be making. So here it is!

Baby Jellyfish Pattern

Materials:

• fingering weight yarn in whichever colors you want your creatures to be (sample uses Claudia Hand Painted Yarns)
• 3.0mm D crochet hook
• Needle for sewing pieces together
• Stuffing

Abbreviations:

Abbreviations:
• ch = chain
• sc = single crochet
• fo = finish off
• inc = increase (two sc in one stitch)
• dec = decrease (one sc across two stitches)
• sl st = slip stitch
• st = stitch
• x2 = repeat two times (etc for multiple numbers)

Body:
Worked in a spiral. Do not join, do not turn.
Start a circle via magic ring or whatever is your preference.
1. sc 6 around (6)
2. inc 6 (12)
3. [sc, inc] x 6 (18)
4. [sc x 5, inc] x 3 (21)
5-7. sc 21 around for 3 rows (21)
8. [sc, dec] x 7 (14)
FO, cut string and weave in end.

Tentacles:
Make 2 dark and 3 light tentacles. Attach each one to the inside top of the body. Loose chains should help the tentacles to curl.
1. Loosely ch 28
FO, cut yarn short, but not so short that the knot will come undone. Alternately, you may try to weave the end back up the chain and hide it in the leg. Use the other tail to attach inside the body.

Note: some yarn doesn’t curl as well when loosely chained for the tentacles. If your tentacles don’t curl, try these alternate tentacles:

1. ch 30
2. inc in each ch
FO, cut yarn short, but not so short that the knot will come undone. Alternately, you may try to weave the end back up the chain and hide it in the leg. Use the other tail to attach inside the body.

Get the rest of the sea creature mobile pattern from my Etsy store at
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=22891478

Happy Pi Day!

Pi Day is the perfect excuse to eat pi(e) with friends. We had a good time, and now I am stuffed full of allergen-free apple pi(e). Well, allergen free if you aren't allergic to apples or butter or rice flour or sugar. Yum!

Chris made the shirt last night for me. He made an iron-on stencil with freezer paper, and sprayed bleach water on it to make the design. A quick DIY tshirt project.

yay for

So we had a good time visiting with my grandma and my great aunt this afternoon / evening, and even though it's been a very busy day, now that they've gone to bed, I'm still too awake to sleep... which is a bummer because I do have to go into work tomorrow. I guess I'll manage.

So I struck out with the rosemary and basil plants. I want to get organic ones, but none of the places that usually carry them (Whole Foods, and Sevannanda) have them right now. I don't know if it's too early, or what. Home Depot had basil, but it's not organic, and since I'm using organic potting soil and organic plant food that I already have, I don't see the point in compromising and buying a non-organic plant. But I REALLY want some basil! I wonder if it's too early, or if I just need to expand my search. I should probably call Urban Gardener tomorrow and see if they've got their herbs in stock. I can't even try to grow things from seeds, they always fail (the one exception being my avacado plant, and I tried three of those and the only one that lived is the one that was ALREADY sprouting inside the avacado when I cut it open). So each year I just buy the actual plants... I really don't have a green thumb, I just try real hard not to kill my plants, and that's about the best I can do. Alas!

Spring!

This morning we got the phone call that we have a baby niece! Hannah Emily Skeene was born in Thailand at 4:29pm Thai time (that's 4:29am our time), and we got the call around 8:30 in the morning. Sam and Nicole were quite pleased that their baby girl was born on a prime number day - 03/07/09. So much excitement about numbers lately, it makes me smile.

So less than a week after our big Atlanta snow, we had an 80-degree day today. Chris and I invited a few friends to have a picnic with us at Piedemont Park to enjoy our first big spring day. It was great to be out and soaking up the sun. This spring weather has me so happy and looking forward to all the new life it brings... not just gardening, but in the form of a niece and a son, too, of course!

So I had quite the productive day, I made a batch of sprouted hummus this morning before the picnic (I'm a hummus-making fiend lately), and this evening I made some lavender ice cream - yum! We also went through all the baby clothes our friend Amy just sent us, and got them all washed and organized and whatnot. Busy busy! I usually hate doing laundry and folding clothes, but I can't get enough of folding little boy onesies!

Tomorrow after church I'm going to get some new basil and rosemary plants (they always die over the winter). I'm so happy to have weather that will be kind to my plants, which have all slowly died over the winter. I hope to have the time to get them planted before my grandma gets into town in the evening. She's driving back up to Indiana and so she and my great aunt are staying the night with us. I'm excited to get to spend some time with them. Quite the packed weekend!

Get Ready for Pi Day! Tomorrow is 3.14

This great photo is from zenwerx, which will also inform you of the value of pi to 4 million digits. Now that's dedication.

While I won't be making a pie quite this fancy, I am making a couple allergen-free pies tomorrow in celebration of Pi Day, and a few people are coming over to help us eat them. I'm going to make a pumpkin pie just because it's my favorite, and an apple pie. I was going to make a blueberry pie but blueberries are just too expensive... I could spend about $18 on enough blueberries, or $3 on enough apples... not really a tough choice this time around!

So what are YOU doing for Pi Day?

Square Root Day - and I missed it!

I've been eagerly looking forward to Pi Day, which falls on a Saturday this year so I think I'll bake a gluten-free pie (blueberry? apple? pumpkin? I haven't decided yet) and wear a shirt with a pi symbol on it, if Chris makes it in time. But much to my dismay, I missed Square Root Day, which was yesterday, and I didn't even know it. Miss Emily alerted me to the missed holiday this morning. Maybe I could have cut a sweet potato into squares and sauted them for dinner. (And wish everyone a Happy Square Root Day, which is all you really need to do to celebrate a holiday).

So now that we're planning ahead, is anyone else gonna do something fun for Pi Day? Maybe crochet a pi scarf? More importantly, who wants to come over to my house for some pie? (Don't make me eat it all myself!)

lifestyle changes

Over the past few months, Chris and I have felt the Lord calling us to be better stewards of our money, our earth, and our health. To that end, we've been slowly trying to incorporate little changes into our daily lives to live healthier, greener, produce less waste, and save money. Most of these things come from tips we see on the internet where we think, "we could do that," and then we give it a shot. Some examples are making our own vegetable broth from veggie scraps, composting, and replacing our normal cleaning products with natural products like vinegar, peroxide, baking soda, and castile soap. And probably a few things that are so integrated into our daily lives at this point, that we've forgotten it's something "new" that we adopted. This is, of course, aside from all the cooking food from scratch that we've started doing since I learned about all my food allergies. I didn't really realize how many "strange" things we were doing until my mom came to visit in December and I found myself explaining all sorts of things to her (like what we were doing putting the butt ends of our onions in the freezer).

Well, this year we've had to put a whole new spin on things and kick it up a notch, because just like the rest of America, our income has been cut significantly from what we were making last year. And on top of that, we're adding a member to the family! At first I was really frustrated... we had worked so hard last year to become better stewards of our money and to be content with what we have, so it was really hard on me when our "reward" for that success was a further income cut. I started out being really stressed about our situation (well, to be honest, I still am stressed about it many days), especially when I realized that there was nothing new I could do to add to our income (there are only so many hours in a day), and that Chris was doing all he could as well. So since the only option left was cutting costs, we started brainstorming for ways we could make ends meet by spending less, instead of making more.

So we've been reading lots of money-saving blogs for tips and ideas, and generally asking ourselves what we can cut out or do differently. You may have noticed that Chris is especially obsessed with getting stuff for free, like food at restaurants, products at CVS, and of course our washer and dryer (although the jury is still out on whether or not those are working well enough to keep them. hmmmph). We've gotten better at cutting down eating at restaurants (we had cut down to about once a week, on Sundays, but have even tried to cut some of that out as well), and I've gotten much better at making my own ghetto lattes at home to bring to work, and "just saying no" to buying coffee work. We decided to cut down our meat consumption, and to use more dried and sprouted beans instead of canned beans, as yet another way to save a few dollars here and there. Finally, we've gotten better at questioning our normal grocery store purchases... certain convenience foods have to be put back if they're not on sale or necessary for a specific reason (like if we're traveling out of town and I have to have snack bars to take with me), and some foods were substituted for cheaper brands or different products (cream if rice for my breakfast is cheaper than cream of buckwheat, and just as tasty).

To be honest, I wasn't sure if all of this was going to work or not. I kind of felt like these things were all just drops in the bucket and we wouldn't really notice a difference at the end of the month. And I was so stressed about money that I didn't log our receipts from the month until yesterday (usually I try to keep up with it on a weekly basis so we know where we stand as we get closer to the end of the month). Imagine my surprise when I saw that, aside from buying a used car this month (an unavoidable necessity), we actually broke even for the month!

Some examples... although we ate at home a little more than we had been, we spent close to $200 less in groceries than our average month (and just so you know, that somehow meant it was actually EASIER for me to get all my necessary vitamins and minerals in my pregnancy diet, including calcium, protein, iron, and folic acid). We're still buying organic for the essentials (apples, dairy, eggs, etc), and we fed other people a few times. We also spent about $20 less on eating out, even though we paid for a friend's meal once in our month. I realized that in the whole month, I only bought two lattes, one because I was meeting a friend, and one because it was my boss's birthday. And our "just say no to non-essentials" policy meant we spent about $100 less on "miscellaneous" stuff than we usually do. To be honest, I don't feel like we deprived ourselves of anything or suffered through the month. It's a pretty good feeling. I'm hoping we can keep it up and hopefully make this yet another new lifestyle change that we don't even realize we're doing.

There is one aspect to all of this that shines out above all the others, and that's with all the new baby essentials. I've made my lists of what we need to have to be prepared for a new baby, and which items are conveniences instead of necessities, and have been expecting to spend quite a bit of our savings on baby stuff each month as we try to get all the essentials. What I wasn't quite expecting was just how generous people are, and how much the Lord would provide for us in this area. We've had a few people give us or lend us baby stuff that they no longer need, including clothes, diapers, a baby swing, a bouncer, a car seat, etc. Another friend has promised to help me with my sewing, and teach my how to make my own baby sling with fabric I already have (I cannot tell you how excited I am about this!) Add to that the generosity of friends and family with baby shower items, and we are getting fairly close to having everything we need for his first three months (and in some cases for the first year), without spending much at all. We have truly been blessed, and we know it!

So this has been quite the long rambly post that probably almost no one actually got all the way through, but there you have it. The moral of the story is that it's worth it to incorporate small changes into your life, and that they can indeed become great assets when they become second nature. The other moral of the story is that the Lord provides for our needs in ways we often don't even see at the time.

Baked Sweet Potato & Black Beans

Chris came up with this tasty dinner idea for me a few weeks ago... at first I was skeptical, but it's actually very tasty. Kind of like a baked potato w/ chili topping, but I am allergic to both baked potatoes and tomato sauce, so this version is a baked sweet potato with black bean soup topping.

And Chris makes some fantastic black beans... for this batch he sauteed onions, garlic, and mushrooms in olive oil with some creole spice before adding the black beans. I topped it off with some cheddar cheese and some plain yogurt (instead of sour cream) and had quite the tasty meal. The slight sweetness of the sweet potato is actually a great compliment to the spicy black beans.

Just thought I'd share in case anyone is getting tired of their normal dinner options and was in search of a new idea. The best part is it's healthy AND cheap!