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I’ve been making stuff here and there and have not been good about posting them so here they are! Back in June I was obsessed with finding a nice headband pattern to crochet so I can wear it as a sweatband when I exercise. I printed out a whole bunch but did not get very far with a lot of them for one reason or another. I finally made this

I did have trouble with it because the pattern did not make sense to me. The creator of the pattern was kind enough to answer my questions on it but then never replied back when I had a follow up. I was told by a super knitter/crocheter from the craft meetup that I did it correctly and that the pattern was a little confusing! Whew! Not just me! I am also working on a blanket (starghan) for Sienna that is well on it’s way but I have not taken pics of it yet.

Yesterday I finished up the Year of the Pig t-shirt pillow. Most of Sienna’s old clothes were given away but there were a couple of things I didn’t want to part with, namely this year of the pig shirt. It’s a little lopsided but hey, I’m still a sewing novice. I realized after the fact that it would have been cuter and easier to keep it as a t-shirt and just sew up the openings. Oh well!

And last but not least, my Gocco projects. I finally relented and got a PG-11 that came the week after my birthday. I did not play with it until this past Sunday. It was quite humid on Sunday so I believe that made my original stick to the master. I was totally bummed about it. Questions posted to the yahoo and flickr group were made. It was suggested that I rub a little warm water to get the bits off. It worked!

I’m not totally happy with how it came out but since it’s the first print on my own machine, at least I got over the first print hurdle. Later in the week I made another one.

I ironed out some of the carbon in the printout before flashing the master and this time it didn’t stick! I tried 3 different types of paper with the lower right one embossed. It’s a little better technically but still not super thrilled. I’ll get there!

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I wanted to make sure I wrote about the lunch me and Tammy had with our babies to celebrate our birthdays in July. We met up in Queens (!) at Just Like Mother’s, a Polish place in Flushing on Queens Boulevard. I was certainly glad Tammy had her appetite back because we went all out!

We got a sort of sampler plate with pierogies, stuffed cabbage, bratwurst, boiled potato, sauerkraut/cabbage salad type thing. Then we also got an order of potato pancakes and the meat blintze that I read about here. For dessert we got the small order of apple fritters (although I would like to try the blueberry blintzes next time-that’s right, I said it, I would go back.) The stuffed cabbage and meat blintze were the true standouts. I prefer the pierogies and apple fritters from Raymund’s in Williamsburg but everything was quite tasty considering it is Queens. 🙂 (In case you didn’t know, we have a running joke that everything in Queens is inferior to anything in Brooklyn and recently stated that I don’t mind visiting Queens but I wouldn’t want to live there and that’s no joke. HA!)

Sienna was perfectly happy eating plain bread with her fork and Zack was asleep the whole time! Tammy gave me the Real Simple Meals Made Simple cookbook for my birthday and I already made the super sized meatballs in it! I gave Tammy lavendar and geranium organic soap and hemp lotion as I was thinking about her rash and hives from the pregnancy. Of course I gave it to her 2 weeks later at the BBQ!

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What time is it? It’s BBQ time!

Last Saturday we had another BBQ and what a lovely day for it! (Sunday turned out to be rain and thunderstorms!) It was also Zack’s first social outing and his first time to Brooklyn (I don’t think he wanted to leave!) Baby brain be damned, Tammy and Mark brought over 7 layer Mexican dip (YUM!) and Pete made deviled eggs brought over in the nifty carrier (need I say YUM?) and Nate got delicious lemonade in cool bottles! (Poor Mari had to work!) Joy managed to come by at a decent time and brought delicious donuts from our place and Italian cheesecake from her hood. Since Richard couldn’t make it with his dog Casey, Skippy was on good behavior, as good as he usually is anyway! Joy laughed at me for going all the way to Dyker Heights to pick up stuff for the BBQ. I don’t care, I’ll be going back, especially for their Orange Italian soda! All in all it was a nice relaxing day, filling our tummies and chillin’ with our friends!

(taken by Tammy)

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Sienna is ready for grilling!

Saturday we had a BBQ and we were ready to invite more people and have different foods to grill. I was actually concerned about inviting too many people and that actually worked against me because it was a low turnout due to everyone’s busy summer plans. But Richard came!! He brought along his boyfriend Billy and dog Casey, which Skippy took an instant liking to….all afternoon! Yup, looks like Skippy fell in love (or lust) and would not stop humping poor Casey, which confirms my belief that Skippy swings both ways. It got to the point where we had to separate Skippy several times!

Anyway, they also brought a wonderful fruit salad and sangria! Brenda came and brought ice cream sandwiches. I saved myself some trouble and bought pre-made beef burgers and chicken burgers. I was at this supermarket in a predominately Italian ‘hood and they had all sorts of pre-made burgers with stuff in them and kabobs and such. I could have easily gone crazy! I also bought hot dogs and made pasta salad. Joy, in true Joy fashion, showed up a couple of hours late with her lime marinated chicken, after we all ate! I even called her to make sure she didn’t get run over by a bus. Guess that is the mom in me now! (Me and Joy ended up cooking the chicken later on for a late night snack. Late for me cuz it was 9pm!) Even if the low turnout we had such a nice time and the weather was fabulous! Wonderful breezes and not humid.

Sienna such a party animal!

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Porcupine

Last Wednesday, I met up with 2 moms (Dana/James and Ashley/Caroline from the Brooklyn Moms meetup) at the Prospect Park Zoo. Sienna hasn’t been there since last summer and in the baby bjorn so it was fun to see her reaction now. She was walking all over the place and started getting upset when I tried to prevent from going certain places, like closer to the kangaroos! This probably would have been an ideal place to bring the “leash.” She enjoyed the petting zoo area in the barn and was laughing when I was feeding the alpacas. I was trying to get her to feed them too but she got a little scared. Plus her little hands can only hold one or two morsels of the food so the animals weren’t interested in her offerings! LOL

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Last Sunday my parents came over and we started cleaning out the garage. I can’t believe how much stuff we had in there! We threw away a lot of stuff but there is still more stuff to throw. Besides a dot matrix printer, an old PC and printer but a box of my old electronic games such as Speak and Spell, Simon, Fabulous Fred and Wildfire (as well as 2 of my old barbie dolls and a barbie doll photo studio!)! Sienna grabbed the Speak and Spell right away so we brought it upstairs and tried it out.

And here are some other misc. pictures from the past week.

And Tuesday I went to get my hair colored so we first had dim sum with my parents and then they took her to the park. Here is dad feeding Sienna with a chopstick!

Yummy!

Wearing Grandpa’s hat!

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Saturday morning we left for a trip to the Poconos. Yves was assisting Jim on a wedding shoot for his dentist’s family. I thought it would be a nice little getaway for me and Sienna so we tagged along. I forgot how much you need to pack for the little one! It was too bad I was doing it only for an overnight trip! We had to find a new place to stay to bring Skippy along and we found these cute little cottages called Rimrock Cottages. It was interesting. We got one of the A frame chalets. It was cute, the downstairs had a double bed, sofa, fireplace, bathroom and little kitchenette. There was a loft with 2 single beds. I was a little perturbed about a couple of things. The main one being all the cobwebs! I know it’s the country and it’s rustic but they couldn’t bring in a little duster and do a few swipes? And then we seemed to be in the only cottage with a broken front door screen held in place on the bottom with duct tape, which Skippy promptly broke through. LOL I didn’t make a big issue of it since I didn’t think it was going to be cool enough to leave the door open. I was wrong! It was cool in the evening and the morning! And the AC was not cooling the place at all! I had to go upstairs in the loft, get on my belly and reach out to change the coolness of the AC. It was much better after that. Anyway, I guess I sound like a true city girl with all this complaining but in retrospect, it was nice and was nice to getaway for a day. We got there within 2 hours and was in the pool shortly after that! We had lunch back at the room and went for a little walk around the grounds after that. After a little nap, Yves had to go meet Jim and me and Sienna went to the outlets. I’m not an outlet person at all, I can’t understand the draw. The prices are not much cheaper and the selection isn’t any different. The only thing I bought was ice cream and candy! LOL. We killed a little more time at Kohl’s and had dinner at Red Robin, I haven’t been to one in ages! I have to say I was pretty impressed with all the different selections and healthy sides on the kids menu. I got a regular cheeseburger and Sienna got pizza and apple slices (she ate all the apples up!)

We managed to get back to the room without getting too wet. It was raining off and on since being at the outlets and really poured while we were in Red Robin and poured again when we got back.

We were on the road by 9 am.

In the pool by 11:30!

Took a walk around 1:30

I love this picture that Yves took!

I’m telling Sienna not to put a yucky stick in her mouth.

The outlets

Red Robin

We had breakfast at Friendly’s the next morning. Haven’t been to a Friendly’s in ages either!

Sienna took a 3 hour nap when we got home Sunday!!

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There has been an energy sucking heat wave in the mid-90s from Saturday through Tuesday. It wasn’t so bad in the backyard on Sunday when we blew up the little kiddie pool I got for Sienna. I do believe I spent more time sitting in it than Sienna did! Hey, if she doesn’t care, who am I to complain? It’s there for her to use! 🙂 We didn’t BBQ this time and just made sandwiches to munch on.

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Monday I finally took the time to make homemade pizza dough! I bought fresh mozzarella from the bakery and that is a very important ingredient for homemade pizza. I got the recipe from the Reader’s Digest Homemade book. It wasn’t very hard at all but with a slight Wii injury from playing yesterday, my right hand wasn’t the strongest for kneading. Overall the dough tasted ok. It probably would have tasted better if I put more salt but with my blood pressure, I always put a little less salt than recipes call for. Most of the time, it doesn’t make a difference but I guess since dough only has about 5 ingredients, it can make a difference. For the sauce, I used Trader Joe’s no salt added marinara sauce (which I love! better stock up!) and toppings were whatever we had left in the frig. this included meatballs, mushrooms, goat cheese, red onion and black olives. I had trouble rolling it into a perfect circle but I guess that takes practice. I decided to make personal sized pizzas so it would be easier for the toppings. Sienna seemed to enjoy it! I had extra dough after making 3 mini pizzas so made a little calzone too!

The dough

Rolling the dough

Circularly challenged pizza and a calzone

Ready for the oven!

Looks edible!

What is this Father? (photo by Yves)

I think Sienna likes it! (photos by Yves)

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Pete came over on Sunday to help us do a test run of the first ghetto BBQ pool party sans pool. We weren’t sure how well it would be since there isn’t any grass (hence the ‘ghetto’ term) but we got a nice shade umbrella and 2 fold up chairs with canopies. It’s been awhile since we had a BBQ but I think it turned out well! We kept it simple and just grilled hamburgers and I made potato salad and blueberry crumble! The potato salad required bacon and apples so I was a little leary of that combo but it was delicious! The blueberry crumble was actually a blackberry crumble recipe from Everyday Food but I didn’t have blackberries. It was so good I made it again later that week.

Waiting for Pete!

Checking out our canopy chair.

The Master at work.

The “enough with the pictures and gimme more food” face!

Pete also brought his Wii with him.

I would say the first ghetto BBQ of the summer was a success and it was a great day!

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