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It’s been awhile since we met up with friends for dim sum. We finally went on the 19th and went to our usual place, Golden Unicorn. In attendance, besides me, Yves and Sienna, were Pete, Joy, Aaron, JW and his new girl Kate. Everything was yummy and of course, there is always something that comes after we are stuffed and pay the check. This time it was peking duck! Darn it! (Side note, Aaron’s wife Drena is expecting their first baby, a boy in January! Woohoo!!) There was a newbie to dim sum, JW’s girlfriend Kate and she was willing to try everything and anything. Of course, we got chicken feet and she said she liked it (although she only ate one! LOL)
Sienna was pretty good the whole time. Yves went into work afterwards and I took the train home with Joy. We decided to drive to the Avenue U N line stop since they were doing all kinds of construction on the Q line and thought it would be easier to just avoid that whole line. After Joy got off at her stop, I was trying to concentrate on getting off the right stop since my mind can wander and I wasn’t familiar with that particular line. Well, we were at one station with the doors open when all of a sudden the conductor was sort of yelling over the loudspeaker. Something about an emergency and if there was one, please say so. I thought oh great, what is going on? It turns out that my mischievous Sienna was pushing the button that allows you to talk to the conductor in case of an emergency. Oops! That’s what I get for not paying attention! HA!

Waiting for the train

Where’s my plate?

One of Sienna’s faves, sticky rice in a bamboo leaf

Chicken feet!

who needs chopsticks?

Checking out Aaron’s G10

Kate, JW, Yves and Sienna!

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I just came across this from one of my crafty blogs. I just had to share! It’s a cooking show called Cooking with Dog. Francis, the poodle is the host/sidekick. It just cracks me up watching him just sitting there! I guess because I know Skippy would not be able to just sit there so close to food!

Check it out on Youtube

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On the 12th we had another Toddler Take Over BBQ, this one to celebrate Sylvie’s 1st birthday. The weather didn’t turn out so well with overcast and some drizzling but that didn’t stop the party goers! It wasn’t pouring, at least, so we just stayed in the garage and under the umbrella when it was drizzling. The kids did not seem to mind. I did not take as many photos as I would have liked. Sometimes you just forget when you are hosting. Everyone had a great time! We had lots of food leftover (although none of the Turkish sausage Jane and Akon brought over to grill-it was DELICIOUS!), yummy cupcakes that Starr baked (vanilla cake with butterscotch glaze and frosting), my version of thin mint cookies, Turkish baklavah (which is better than the Greek version!) and pinata fun! The pinata was from Nico’s birthday party that never got used because it rained that day too!

Sylvie likes Sienna’s cup!

They are happy eating chips!

People always end up standing!

Yves and Brian manning the grill

Alesandro and Phoenix at the sandbox

Starr, Geneva and Sui

Playing with a little puddle

We sang Happy Birthday and the kids just want their cupcakes!

Sylvie did a pretty good job!

Here is a funny coincidence! I had given Starr a bunch of Sienna’s old clothes for Sylvie. Sienna wore the same dress for her 1st birthday party as Sylvie! It wasn’t planned at all. Here is a comparison photo:

There were also a couple of kids that I did not get good photos of so just to document their presence, there was also 3 year old Gaby (Alesandro’s sister) and 3 year old Izgi ( daughter to Jane and Akon, who brought that delicious sausage). And Kerri came later with Rory and new baby Tyge. I don’t have any photos from the pinata. All the kids got a chance to hit at it (unsuccesfully) and even some adults. We ended up basically ripping it open.

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Yesterday was Yves’ birthday. Poor guy is busy at work and Sienna was being so naughty yesterday! She opened all the drawers to our dresser in the bedroom and thus it fell over. What a mess! And the little glass that was in my jewelry box got all broken. At least take out Japanese was good (we tried a new place). It’s a good thing we celebrated his birthday on Sunday. After grilling some lunch outside, we had cake inside. My parents always buy the birthday cake and Yves wanted carrot cake again! They tried a different bakery than last time, Leskes. The cake was moist but the addition of pineapples in it did not appeal to Yves (I didn’t mind that much.) We are now going to make it a mission to find some good carrot cake! (We know of a great carrot cupcake! Robicelli’s!)

Sienna sings Happy Birthday!

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I don’t know if I mentioned it before but Sienna is totally obsessed with Clifford ever since I took her to the movie in August. She always wants to read the books and she always wants to watch the cartoon. I thought I would surprise her and make her a Clifford pillow from embroidery. I opted to do it on red felt and now I wish I did it on the better wool felt than on the cheaper acrylic felt. Oh well. I still need practice on my stitching. It was a lot of fun to make for her. I actually finished the stitching last week or so but only got around to sewing up the pillow last night. She loves it!

It was hard to take a photo of it after I gave it to her because she couldn’t keep her hands off so I took some of her showing it off!

And then she couldn’t stop posing with it and kept saying Mommy, take my picture!

So I told her to hug her pillow!

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So I know I haven’t written about the recent netflix movies we’ve watched (or that I have watched) so I thought I would throw some in now. I’m not going to write the summary of the movie, just what I thought of it.

We just returned Adventureland. It was a cute and sweet movie, not what I was expecting. I was expecting a bit more goofy type of comedy along the lines of Superbad (who happens to be the same director) or Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It wasn’t bad just a little more slow moving than I was expecting.

I also finally watched La Vie En Rose . This movie hung around for a few weeks because Yves wasn’t interested in watching it and at almost 2.5 hours long, I was a little lazy to watch it. I finally did during last Friday’s rainy day. I’m so glad I did as I was very tempted to just send it back. It was riveting!! I didn’t know much about Edith Piaf besides the fact that she is French and an amazing singer and this movie taught me a lot. It was very interesting and very well done as it goes back and forth between various stages in her life. I can’t say the same for I’m Not There, the story about Bob Dylan. I think I made it 30 minutes into the movie before I gave up. Too confusing!

We also did not make it through Chop Shop, the shaky camera was too much for Yves to handle and barely made it through There Will Be Blood. I did like Dear Frankie and Sex in the City (finally watched it!), both movies which Yves did not watch with me. Yves also did not watch 1408 with me as he doesn’t care for those types of movies. I only thought it was ok and only made me a tad jumpy.

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I just want to document this event before I forget. Today was Sienna’s 2.5 year wellness check up at the doctor’s this morning (8:15!). My dad usually comes with me mainly for support as I tend to hate going to the doctor’s with Sienna by myself. She is usually fine in the waiting room but once we head into the exam room, she usually starts getting scared and begins to cry a bit. Never mind once the doctor comes in! She used to not be as dramatic at the other doctor’s office and I always thought it was because the rooms were decorated for kids. These rooms are not. They are like stark hospital rooms, very medical and no kid’s decorations at all. So it surprised me immensely that Sienna DID NOT CRY AT ALL!! Even when the doctor gave her 2 shots. She even said she loved the doctor. Wow! And that was before he offered her lollipops! She did cry when they took blood from her in the other room but they did it really fast so it was over in a snap of a finger!

My baby is growing up! Sniff.

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I recently wrote about the megaton of felt I won and Sienna’s recent tea party obsession, which has incidentally died down. I’m sure she’ll be back to it but it’s fine for now since I’ve moved on from making faking felt food for her. I’ve joined a couple of felt related swaps on swap-bot and have become obsessed with looking for free patterns and tutorials for making things with them on the internet. Here is what I found but before I post them, here were the last couple of things I made for Sienna!

a frying pan from one of the patterns I bought from Gulf Coast Cottage on Etsy (I didn’t get around to the spatula yet!) and it actually fits this crochet fried egg I got from a tawashi swap (which I couldn’t find at the moment I was taking this photo.) The actual pan part is a bit heavy for the handle but oh well.

And the bagel I’ve spoken about

And here are the swaps (if you happen to be my partner, don’t peak! I just mailed these out today!)

This is for the fall felt fun swap. My partner likes birds and the color blue so I thought this was perfect. From Zakka life. I also included one of the fall ornaments posted below.

Buttons Brooch swap for my partner whose favorite color is purple. It came out a little lopsided but I still thought it was cute. The pattern is here. I totally forgot to use pinking shears to cut out the base heart but I love how the blanket stitch looks. I also included this brooch as an extra!

The pattern for this is here and she makes it as a hair clip.

Some misc. fall ornaments from a pattern set I bought from Prairie Point Junction. I probably could have done them on my own but at least I have a bunch of templates on hand. I bought Fall, Winter and Spring themes.

And my most prized piece only because I took the stuffie pattern (from flickr) and resized  it to my needs and it came out so cute!! For the Felt Brooch swap, my partner is a fan of Hello Kitty.

So freakin’ cute I might have to make one for myself. I almost didn’t want to mail it off so fast (I just made it last night!)so I could admire it some more. HA! It does look cute with my new HK wristlet I made the other day!

A big shout out to futuregirl, whose tutorials really helped me a lot and pointed me towards my now favorite knot! And you know what? I won a 2nd giveaway shortly after receiving my felt (I should have gone out to play the lottery!), a book called Fun Felt Crafts! I got the book earlier this week. It’s a cute book and I’m still looking through it. I was actually surprised that it was published this year as the book as a very vintage feel to it.

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Yesterday was our first class at the Little Gym for the Fall/Winter semester. Sienna always enjoys running around and swinging and jumping. And she did just that during this class. Unfortunately the class did not tire her out as I had hoped and I feel like naptime is going to start to fade away soon. She had a less than 2 hour nap! Perhaps it is just a fluke! Anyway, I can’t believe that I did not get a chance to post about the show week from the Little Gym Spring semester back in June. Thought I would post about it now. Show week is the last class of the semester and all parents and grandparents and any other family members are invited to come and the kids show off what they learned the previous 19 weeks. Both my parents came. Let this also serve as a reminder to myself to not let my mother come to the Winter semester show week. She was a royal pain in the butt. She kept hovering over Sienna and did not want her to do the majority of the activites (the rolling for example) meanwhile she had been doing it the whole semester. Grrr. Downright annoying! Anyway, here are some photos and a video of the event!

Under the parachute

Swinging

Jumping with Grandpa

Grandma always close by

Attempting a group photo!

Little Gym Show Week from Lisa on Vimeo.

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I had lunch with Pete last week and we went to our semi-regular favorite place, Shopsin‘s. I’m really disappointed that I forgot my camera as we had some yummy stuff! I’m still writing about it tho so I won’t forget! My quest to try something different each time is still in effect.

This time, I got Luke’s lunch I. That’s bbq pork, chili cheese fries on ciabatta and I got mild so Pete could try some. It was DELICIOUS! Of course I absolutely love bbq pork and they didn’t put a lot of chili cheese fries on top so it wasn’t overwhelming. Pete got a big bird sandwich, which I can’t find on the menu but it is basically a fried chicken sandwich. And I took the liberty to order us dessert, ebelskivers with banana. I only first heard about it from a new Food Network show “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” (a very dangerous show to watch!) as one of the chef’s named this as his favorite fried food at Shopsin’s. So of course, I had to get it! Do I have to tell you? Ok, it was YUMMY!!

And of course, we rounded out our visit at Economy Candy! 😉

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