pixiegenné

well, she asked for it

my sister crissy (who has a blog i didn't know about but whatever*) tagged me for a meme today. it's the reveal 7 things about yourself meme which i have been tagged for several times before. but since she's my sister and since it's almost her birthday and since you already know way more about me than you ever wanted to, here are 7 random things about my sister, crissy...

• one of the meanest things my siblings and i did when we were little was hang crissy's favorite doll, helena, from the basement ceiling (i mention the doll's name only because we now refer to that incident as "the time we hung helena")
• plus we told her that eskimo pies were made from chopped up eskimos and we thought that was hysterical
• crissy went through a bit of a goth period in high school, during which time our toddler nephew pronounced her name "creepy", which has stuck.
• after crissy graduated college, she and a couple friends followed the dead around for awhile. they came to stay w/john and i for a bit and they were filthy. i gave them sos pads to get their feet clean.
• crissy is really good at cross-stitch. or needlepoint. i always get those two mixed up (and have never tried either...)
• she loves elephants
• and she's not someone you want to cross. we like to say "is she a good bitch, or a bad bitch?". crissy's a good bitch. it probably has something to do w/all that teasing she endured. she has us to thank for her tough skin.

you're welcome, crissy! and happy birthday a few days early!
xoxo

*if you think i'm snarky and sarcastic, read crissy's blog. you'll see where i get it...

another kid party under my belt

charlie's party was today. i have stephanie to thank for the terrarium idea. it was easy-peasy. the bowls came from jo-annes (though if i hadn't procrastinated i'm sure i could have thrifted some more interesting ones). then we put in gravel, soil, plants, moss, and little plastic toys i picked up at target (i thought we'd have enough of them kicking around the house but, shockingly, no).

here's the cake. super lopsided but super yum. we had a guest with dairy allergies so her mom gave me a great vegan recipe. jen asked for a copy so i'm listing it here in case someone else out there wants to try it. (if you're all about the icing, like me, you might want to make double)

cake
3 cups flour
2 cups sugar
2 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
(for vanilla cake)
2 cups o.j. or vanilla soy milk
2/3 cup vegetable/canola/soybean oil
2 tsp vanilla
2 tbs vinegar
(for orange cake)
use the orange juice instead of soy milk
2 tbs orange zest
(for chocolate cake)
add 1/4-1/2 cup more sugar and tbs cocoa
(or add 3/4 cup girahdelli sweet ground cocoa)

add wet ingredients to dry and mix. pour into 2 8" greased (w/crisco or earth balance, and floured) baking pans, or cupcake tins.

bake 30-40 minutes, until fork comes out clean.

icing
1/2 cup earth balance soy margarine, softened
1/4 cup soymilk
3 cups pwd sugar
1 1/2 tsp vanilla
(for chocolate add 1/2 cup cocoa pwd)

beat w/electric mixer until smooth.

yum.
enjoy the rest of your weekend!

seven

charlie is seven today!
his party is this saturday. he wanted to have it at our house which means fewer kids than normal because i have my sanity to consider. hopefully i'll think up some fun, mellow stuff.
i'm a little brain dead today. more soon!

my nephew is a superhero

i want to give a little shout-out to my nephew, graham, who turns 5 today. graham was born with a grim birth defect called a congenital diaphragmatic hernia (cdh). cdh is more common than spina bifida or cystic fibrosis but gets less press because it is so often fatal at birth. graham, however, is very much alive, and today, graham's birthday, marks the first cdh awareness day. pretty cool, dude.

and i have to share some pictures of a really cool book a friend gave me today. i almost peed my pants when i saw it, because a)the illustrations are amazing and b)my mom had this piano book when i was little. i've had "john jacob jingleheimer schmidt" in my head all day because of it...

more pics on flickr. happy monday!

jane needs her own craftblog

i don't know if this is another project from this book or not, but jane decided all by herself to make this wallet for charlie's birthday, which is next tuesday. she made it from an old comic book and tape. i want to have it bronzed or something i love it so much.

they go through phases of wanting to kill each other and getting along swimmingly. right now they are getting along swimmingly. as i type this, they are taking turns standing on each other's bellies and making gagging noises. isn't that cute? i'll take it.

we've got chinese food with friends tonight and a kegger tomorrow night. sounds like a righteous weekend to me. hope you've got some fun stuff planned, too.
xoxo

happy joyfulness

jane asked me to bid on these little kidrobot guys at the school auction on saturday (a boxed set of 25 were donated). so i won them (and by "won", i mean payed lots of money for). but my kids were sooooo psyched. it was like christmas morning here on sunday. for me, too, because the auction is over! and it was really successful! and i can now move on to other things in my life!

the decorations for the auction came out great. i took lots of pictures but then saw that jen had taken better ones, so you can check them out here if you like.

now i'm off to clean, launder, and organize my life. happy monday!

february break :: day one

today looked like this...

and we had hopes to ski but we all have colds.

so instead we went bowling and made cupcakes (and brought some to the neighbors) and played mad libs and made paper flowers and made the kids' favorite mac-n-cheese for dinner. and retired the pretty but maudlin music i've had on constant rotation for the past month and popped in some peppy nostalgia.

do i sound desperately upbeat?

funny

this guy is funny.

today charlie said, "hey mom, remember when i could talk to crows? i can't anymore. i used to do it all the time, but then if forgot and now i lost it. i just can't do it anymore."

bummer.

charlie is funny

(this morning in bed)

me: i love you
charlie: i love you
me: i love you more
charlie: i love my door

kid blather

cherries are jane's new favorite. she thinks maybe she could draw little faces on the pits and sell them (pit pals!). she's always angling to get me to sell her creations in my etsy shop. really it's just hard to pick an appropriate price point on those.

charlie showed me this video his friend sent him. i said "isn't that a little violent?" and he asked why so i pointed out the whole pipe bomb thing and he said "it's not violent if it's funny when they all die" and i really didn't know where to go from there. maybe i should show him some clips from pulp fiction to show that the two are not mutually exclusive...

and here's a sock monkey i made today for the school auction.


happy thursday!