Baby Nerd Shirt

I love Tiff from Making The World Cuter. I’ve featured her adorable felt Mario Play Mat before, and now she (and her mother) have tickled my nerdy fancy again. When I found out I was having a girl, people all around were excited about cute little girl clothes. Ruffles and bows are undoubtedly fun, but I’ll be just as thrilled if I ever get to dress a little boy in geeky gear like this Suspender Onesie!

You’ll have to hop over to see her adorable son in another version. He’s worth seeing whether you want to make the shirt or not!

A Little Organizing and Some Thoughts

My kitchen is a struggle for me. In some ways, it is fantastic. It’s large with beautiful cabinets and new laminate flooring. The appliances are new, too. On the other hand, it has no pantry, limited counter space, and no coherent organizing. There are pots and pans in four different cabinets! One of these days I need to unpack all of the cabinets and re-organize completely. For now I’m working on the small things.

This used to be my silverware drawer. In our last apartment we had very small drawers so I had to get a very small silverware tray and combine all the fork and spoon sizes. We now have wonderful, wide drawers. With so much empty space around the very small tray, things just got tossed into the drawer.

When I spotted these modular trays on clearance at Target, I knew I had to have them. I finally have a place for everything! Even the “junk” utensils that hubby packs in his lunch are tamed. Apparently, hubby was just as bothered by the messy drawer as I was. When I showed him my work, he exclaimed, “The spoons are divided by size!” It’s the little things that make me proud.

There is no “before” picture of my dish drying rack, because its exit was very… impulsive. As in, I got really angry and threw it away. It was one of those in-sink baskets, and it was completely non-functional for us. It was white so it showed every speck of dirt. Clean dishes were always getting splashed by water or bits of food forcing me to clean them again. I had to move it any time I needed to clean the sink. Worst of all, one or the other of us was always setting dirty dishes in it- yes, I was as guilty of this as my husband, because I just gave up. Even though I had to sacrifice counter space, I am so much happier with my new drying rack. My dishes and my sink are clean!

Now, as for my lack of posts lately…

I’ve mentioned before, briefly, that I have fibromyalgia. I have good days and bad days, and sometimes they turn into bad weeks. I am handling life a lot better than I used to, but some days I feel as if it doesn’t show. This is mostly because I have more on my plate with a toddler to take care of. Naturally, I don’t finish a lot of craft projects during bad times. It takes all my energy just to maintain the basics.

I would love to feature other crafters during these spells, but I want to keep these features relevant to my tastes and interests- in short, mostly nerdy. I’m still learning how to dig through the internet to find these kind of projects, and trying to decide whether I would prefer to feature only blogs or if I am willing to link to places like Etsy, Ravelry and Craftster. I also want to make sure that I don’t just echo Geek Crafts! For now, I will keep refining my searching skills. So excuse the growing pains. I’m doing my best.

Playing Catch-Up

Late February and early March are very busy when you are part of a Speech & Debate family. Hubby dearest started his student teaching under my father just in time to get thrown into the district tournament that we host. It means we went from having him done with class and home by the early afternoons, to working late into the evening with hardly a break for dinner. But let’s be honest here, he and I would have been volunteering to help even if he was not student teaching. Last year we brought along the three-month-old offspring and helped. Now that she has the ability to run around under her own power, it was both easier and harder, but we survived.

Immediately after we finished that hullaballoo, the little one got sick again, and was still sick when hubby had to leave for two days on yet another tournament trip. Now he’s home and she’s finally getting well, but I’m under the weather. I might have caught the bug that has been going around, but it could just as easily be sheer exhaustion from the stress of the last couple of weeks. I’m not good under pressure.

So, with all that going on I feel lucky that my house only looks like a tornado hit it and not a hurricane. I have been fighting the tide in an attempt to have a better organized kitchen, and I did succeed in revamping my silverware drawer and sink area, which I plan to write about soon.

In crafting news, I have to admit that I have failed in my stash bust resolution. Yarn is my weakness, and I completely caved when I found Palette Yarn.

It’s a fingering-weight yarn that comes in pretty much every color you can imagine. I love small, quick projects like doll clothes and kids’ hats so I am always looking for fine yarns, but Walmart is pretty much limited to baby yarns in pastel shades. Boring! I’m in love with the beautiful bold colors of Palette. I’m not admitting how much I have already bought, but I will admit that I now want every color.

In celebration of my yarn addiction, I decided to take up knitting again. I used to knit in high school, and I was delighted to discover that I still remembered how. I’ve made it my goal to learn how to knit in the round. I’m envisioning rainbow-hued wrist warmers made from my awesome Palette yarn. I love a new challenge!

Hopefully I’ll recover from this yucky bug quickly, because I am so ready to get back into routine with everyone healthy and happy. In the meantime, at least I have yarn.