Swants!

Hey-hey!

So today was another day of crafting after church this morning.
I finally hit up this pile of felted wool sweaters that have been dominating my desk to make this must-needed article of clothing: swants.

That is, sweater-pants, or pants made out of sweaters.
I'd made a set each for Ella and William back in fall when the weather really started to turn cold, but never took any photos.
Until now!

So, here is the grand gallery of all the swants our family has:

A li'l baggy, this merino wool pair is the oldest and most used.

Dark blue and made out of a sweater Dash just never dug.

The most "legging"-like swants yet. And Ella impersonating a zombie, I guess

The black ones I made back in the fall.

I guess he'd reached critical photo taking mass by this point.

Even whipped a pair for myself! Tak'e is unimpressed

And for those curious, I referred to these pages for tutorials on how to go about them.
I think two pairs for the kids and one pair for me is enough to last us the rest of the cold winter since wool is magical and wicks away moisture and possibly offensive odors. Yahoo! Thermals for the win~~

Hope you guys are all staying bundled up warm and maybe even saving a buck doing so ;)
Until next time, take care and Happy Swants!

Doctor Day & Sewing Saturday

Hello hello!

Sorry I missed another day. Ha!
To make up for it, I'll recount how yesterday went here.

As the title suggests, Friday was a day of doctor stuff. Which does not happen often in our family, I must say.

Myself, I decided to pick a general care physician (for once) and about getting a referral to have my rosacea checked out.
Some of you may remember my post about rosacea roughly two years ago. Well, although I was (am?) on a regiment to manage it, it really is an up-and-down thing, and I want to see if I can get to the bottom of what exactly makes it flare up, the times that it does.

Then, we decided to take William in to see the physician after battling with what we were sure was an ear infection that simply would not quit.
Turns out he had a case of strep throat! After a quick 24-hour treatment, he is already so much more like his old self than he's been all week. Phew! Hopefully that means a more sound sleep for all of us too~!!

So, as for today, I have truly been indulging in the ways that Saturdays should be about:
relaxing by listening to my podcasts as I finally tackle all the sewing projects I've left hanging.
That's because I also finally unpacked and turned on the sewing machine I bought back in November.
I actually broke my personal tradition of celebrating "Buy Nothing Day" on Black Friday, and purchased it that very day from the local vacuum/sewing machine shop. D'oh!

Anyway, as for the sewing, it's really all been only mending. Granted, I do try to make even mended patches looks stylish ;)

I typically favor star shapes, and sharp-contrast against the original color - ha!

I mended three of Ella's pants, two of William's, two of Dash's, and two from the Clothing Swap that I will be returning to it.
Phew! That's a lot of mending!!
I love mending clothes over chucking them in favor of new items of clothing, that's for sure.
In fact, here is something nifty I just came up with this past week:

Mmm, fuzzy and warm woold!

Maybe you recognize what these handwarmers were originally made of.
That's right -- it's a pair of Dash's old holey socks!!
A little snip here, a little snip there and viola! I finally have a set of my handwarmers again. :)

Well, I do feel accomplished with all this mending, and will probably spend the rest of my evening keeping it up!

Til next time, take care and Happy Doctor Day & Sewing Saturday

2016 New Year's Resolutions

Howdy-ho~!

So I missed yesterday's blog post...
And that might have been because I didn't write it down here, which is something of a tradition for this blog :D
As seen here, here, here, here, and here.

To remedy that in the hopes that it will keep other days in 2016 from being missed, today's blog post is about Resolutions.

First, a look at what my 2015 Resolutions were, and how well I stuck to them:
(I failed to write a blog post about them, but did keep the paper version hanging on my desk upstairs!)

[x]  Maintain 130 lb. weight
[x]  Keep knitting!
[x]  Get rid of 10 items from the house a week
[x]  Stick to a budget

Okay, wow that was a very short list, and apparently very easy to stick to! :D
For the first and last one, I'd actually written down specific guidelines to accomplish those goals, and they were as follows:

1) Maintain 130 lb. weight by...
a. not having sugar, seconds, or snacking except on Saturday and Sunday
b. walking 10,000 steps a day
c. using the car no more than three days a week
d. having alcohol only three times a week
e. doing weekly weigh-ins with George and Kathy-neechan

I didn't really stick to a. nor d. but the rest I'd say were pretty spot-on.

I use to have to rely on my cell phone to be my pedometer, but that was crappy because I don't always carry it on my person. But now I have a FitBit that Dash got me (thanks, love!) so I feel it more accurately records my steps. And apparently 10,000 steps is not all that difficult to reach. It just takes one good long walk at some point in the day, whether to the downtown or on my nightly Chat-Walks (as I call them) with Kathy-neechan. :)

Then, being in Spain without a car made c. easy enough but made d. an absolutely moot point. Ha!
That will change this year, as you will see below.

Moving on...

2) I stuck to a (monthly) budget in terms of...
a. $40 eating out a month
b. $300 food bill
c. $40 entertainment
d. +$300 extra income (tutoring, modeling, eBay etc)

Okay, so a. was not so easy to stick to since we are freaks for El Sol De Mexico here in Corvallis ;)
But I like to think that c. balanced it back out since monthly "entertainment" was probably closer to $0 a month. Ha!

Granted none of this was adhered to for the entire summer while we were in Spain.
And really the only reason I created this Resolution in the first place was because of our trip to Spain. It justified the expense that the trip would mean for us. And I must say it felt good to really tighten our belts for those first five months, and then feel completely at ease financially for the next three...especially in a country that is so very affordable in general anyway! Spain for the win!!

Okay, so that was 2015.
Now for 2016's New Year's Resolutions.
Here goes!!!!

[ ] learn how to drive stick shift
[ ] do something big about the student move-out in June to reduce waste
[ ] insulate the house
[ ] paint the exterior of the house
[ ] get rid of an item from my house every day (or equivalent, 365 by the end of the year)
[ ] get the children their Spanish citizenship
[ ] beautify/make productive the front yard
[ ] get unfinished projects done to completion
[ ] get William to stay asleep in his own bed at night.


Phew!
That's quite a bit more than last year, but I think they will be quite doable.
Now a little word on each one:

1) learning to drive stick shift
Dash will teach me using the truck he bought this past fall (for $800, daz right!)
And I know how to drive a motorcycle, so the concept of gears is not completely lost on me.
It should be a good one to know, since I've also always considered it a post-apocalyptic life skill ;)

2) doing something about the student-move out in June
In the past, I've taken advantage of the students' grand exodus through dumpster diving and though it was fun and brought many things into our home we needed and used, it is (unfortunately) technically illegal, so I want to find a way to divert this stuff before it even gets carelessly tossed. In a big outreach kind of way.
I'm not going to share any details yet, but I do have a plan in the works that I will be starting on as the spring draws nearer. Stay tuned ;)

3) insulating the house
It's about time we insulated the house to save on heating and make our home overall more comfortable. Looking to do this some time in summer when the service is (presumably) a little cheaper due to it being the "off-season".

4) painting the exterior of the house
Long overdue and something we are still trying to decide between doing ourselves and hiring professionals... Hmmm...

5) getting rid of items daily
This sort of already happens, so it's here more as a reminder and hard number to aspire to ;)

6) get the children their Spanish citizenship
Also long overdue! And relating to our 2017 plans...far in the future and yet necessary to start planning for already. No spoilers!!

7) the front yard
I really want to make a productive garden, build a new trellis for the grapes, get some blueberry and raspberry bushes, etc etc.

8) complete unfinished projects
This is mostly because of this giant pile of clothes that need mending and fabrics that need to be sewed into something sitting on my desk upstairs as I write this. I just want to DO IT, as Shia LeBeouf so eloquently puts it. ;)

9) William staying in his own bed
This past year, as I've mentioned, both kids have finally taken to the idea of sleeping in their own beds, but whereas Ella is at least showing signs of starting to stay in her bed, William will inevitably join us sometime in the wee hours which would be adorable except that it's not. So my hope is to get him to go to his bed and stay in his bed. Wish me luck~!


All right, well PHEW! That turned out to be a long, wordy and photo-less blog post.
Pardon all the chatter, but I look forward to revisiting this post next January to see how everything went.
I am feeling good about 2016. Really good! Really on top of things, and with lots of projects to tackle, but also an inexplicable amount of relaxing time in the evenings. Amazing!!

Well, I hope you are feeling as good about 2016. Do you have any Resolutions? Let me know~!
Til next time, take care and Happy 2016 New Year's Resolutions!!

Living Room Turned Disco Club

Hi hi!

Okay, so the title may be a bit of a stretch, but I did want to show off a recent facelift we gave our living room.
Behold!

Man, my cell phone's camera is crappy, but you get the idea ;)
Ugh, and ignore the basket of laundry and Dash darting onto the scene, ha!

Three strings of rainbow twinkle lights strung all the way around the living room~~~!!

The joyous effect is not captured in this photo, but trust me it is fun times here at Chateau Dashiell

How did I come by them, you ask? Why they were courtesy of...the curb!
That's right, thanks to the magic that is the unspoken yet reliably present Free Stuff on the Curb system, I scored three fully functioning beautiful cords of twinkle lights. :)

I know I am going to sound like a broken record saying this, but I just love Gift Economies like this!!
Being able to salvage someone's unwanted items to bring light (literally!) into my home, to save it from the landfill and save my money for other things (like education, travel, and good food! :D )

It's not much but it's an example of little things that bring joy to my life~

And with that, I must peel off to complete a deadline.
So until next time, take care and Happy Living Room Turned Disco Club!

Slow Icy Day

Greetings, one and all!

This blog is coming to you at the end of a very slow, icy day.
It was so cold and icy today, in fact, that they cancelled school!
I'm glad that even as an adult, I get just as giddy and excited about school being cancelled as when I was a child :D Makes me very grateful to have a job that isn't affected by terrible road conditions or having to keep the kids home unexpectedly. We just go with the flow~!

This is the second time they've had to close school this year, with the last one being the very last day of school last term...making our break longer by two whole days. Wow!

It was spent with shuffling the kiddos off to a friend's house for a playdate, running some errands to the P.O., wrapping up a script to send off, and now winding down before I have some lady friends over for knitting~

Poor little William is actually not feeling so hot, as he has something of an ear infection, so he's been in bed since 4:30. Hot compresses and tea tree oil have been helping so far, but if he's not all better by tomorrow we'll ramp up the treatment to include colloidal silver and ACV.

Hurray for the kitchen cupboard (aka medicine cabinet! ;) )

Anyway, just wanted to bop in, so that I remember what a random day in January in Corvallis can be like.

Hope you all are well, safe from dangerous driving conditions, and enjoying this Slow Icy Day!

Playroom-Turned-Bedroom!

Hi again!

It's been a while since I've written about the kids' playroom. So it's time for an update!

Firstly, we have moved the playroom down to the first floor...I don't exactly remember when.
So it looked pretty much like this:

Thanks to the lovely Kim K. for her awesome wide-lens photographing abilities!

Trying to get the kids to sleep in their own beds/room was always a struggle, but suddenly out of nowhere, just after Ella had turned six, she announced that she would prefer to sleep in her own bed -- hurray! So we moved the Ikea bed (which we foolishly bought shortly after William's birth) down there for William to sleep on while Ella preferred the fold-out futon. Go figure~!

This went well all through the fall season and the kids were happy and comfortable.
And then Dash had an amazing stroke of good luck on the Craigslist Free section: someone was giving away a loft bed frame!!

I now introduce to you the new-and-improved playroom/bedroom:

A little sneak-peek of what it looks like from the door.

The loft bed!!

The Ikea bed fits perfectly below the loft, and then the twin-sized mattress was scored through the Gift Economy FB Group the very same day -- BUYA!!

Dash then strung some twinkle lights around them (white for Ella, rainbow for William) and voila! A snazzy sleep set-up that the children absolutely adore.
They will go down without a fuss around 6:30pm (praise be to god!) but inevitably awaken sometime in the wee morning hours to steal into our beds. WHY?? Cannot get them to stop that, but will keep trying nonetheless.

Beyond the new sleep arrangement, I thought I'd give you a tour of the Playroom in light of its new face-lift -- especially with being back from the holidays and having to rejigger things thanks to the influx of toys and gifts. Oy ve~ Here goes!

The south-facing wall.

These photos were taken at night, hence why all the curtains are drawn, but yesterday was sunny and you should've seen the light pouring in over Ella's desk. So wonderful!
That little shelf from upstairs has been moved down, too, and just above it is a bulletin board I beautified back in September with some star-patterned fabric. :)
Ella fills it with her drawings, favorite photos, and other bits of inspiration.

The art easel is actually a pretty popular hit still so it sits in the corner above the basket full of stuffed animals. Still trying to reign in those "stuffies" (as the kids call them) and relocating some of them to the kids' beds has helped that, though the sheer number is still sometimes a little baffling to me.

Moving on~

The east side + northeast corner

It's not the best shot of it, but William has his own little desk now too!
Dash built it about a month or so back and William does love it so very much. I will have to showcase some of his artwork here soon!!

The "construction station" left of that was a score from a Clothing Swap but seems to have run its course, so I may be finding a new home for that soon. Gotta admit, it's a pretty handy organizational tool at least, since the bottom compartment holds William's budding collection of toy cars. Thanks, "Santa"!

The 9-compartment white shelving unit used to mainly hold the grown-up books in the house, but that has since been moved to the office -- gotta say, I love when Dash goes away on his little trips because it gives me time and space to implement much-needed organization systems~!

Anyway, now each unit of the nine plays a role. As such (from top to bottom):

Row 1:
1) Ella's makeup (technically mine, but I let her play with it)
2) crate of games (playing cards, board games, etc)
3) crate of art supplies
4) readily accessible art supplies

Row 2:
1) basket of felted wood toys/items (mostly from Waldorf, made by the kids, etc)
2) wooden train set in a vintage traveling case
3) the kids' new Lego sets
4) treasure chests (filled with dragon tears, pretty stones, shells, etc)

Row 3:
1) puzzles
2) wooden marble run, random jumprope, kaleidoscope
3) Ella's Polly Pocket kit and faux suitcase holding Barbie dolls + MLP
4) super random toys, what are they doing there? They don't belong there, oops

Row 4:
1- 3) books
4) musical instruments


So yeah, not as minimalist as it's been in the past, but really well taken advantage of, for the most part, by the kids.
Oh, and the top of it features an oversized Costco box thing that holds the rest of our art/crafting supplies. Alongside it are some tins of beads and Ella's collection of wooden creations from school.

To the left, you'll see that familiar wicker basket that still holds dress-up clothes, though I must say their popularity has gone down over the past year. We may be phasing it out sooner than later.

And don't you just love that poster from the Albany Carousel Museum that's above it? Thanks, Kathy-neechan!!

Well, that just about wraps up the tour of the playroom.
William's closet of clothes is in the far corner, right by the doorway, and it's still all organized using Cutie boxes. HA!

One last shot of William on his bed...playing with a cardboard tube. Nice.

That's what I get for trying to force a "candid" shot. Nyuck!

And with that, I bid you good night, sleep tight, take care and Happy Playroom-Turned-Bedroom!!

Knitting in the New Year!

Hello, hello!

Yes, 'tis I, back from the blog-dead~!
I know I've said this before, but I am really going to try to be consistent about blogging this year!
It worked out pretty well in 2013, so maybe it will again in 2016 ;)

To start off my 2016 blog adventure, I thought I'd share some of the knitting I've been up to this past month.
Nothing like the holiday season to really catch that crafting bug, amirite?

This year was definitely the year of the handwarmer as I made a total of six handwarmers for my family.
I don't have shots of them all, but here is a shot of the pair I made for Kathy-neechan as a starter:

"Don't Think About It" quoth the Rick Sanchez ;)

The reason for all the handwarmers is thanks to this incredible influx of wool yarn I received through a friend on the Gift Economy that came in the form of one monstrous knot but that I diligently untangled and sorted by color.

I honestly should've taken a Before shot, but I assure you the beast was as large as our dog, Tak'e.
Here is the after shot of the yarn all color sorted (in rainbow order...hnnngggh):

The box on the left was more of the grays, browns, and a random skein of green I had from a million years ago

Another thing I made a ton of was legwarmers, for little baby Joya, my new niece up in Alaska! :)
I sent off one pair to her in time for Christmas, but the rest I knitted up while absolutely chillaxing in AZ this past week:

Darn, that is one crappy photo. But you get the idea. Random colors, and oh! My mom's handwarmers up above! :D

If I wasn't knitting, I was listening to a podcast about a zombie apocalypse called "We're Alive" or listening to Allie Goetz's Rick & Morty concept album.
I will have to share with you all soon how absolutely obsessed with this cartoon show I am. But that will have to be at another time. ;)

I also made a bunch of cotton washcloth sets for the kiddos' teachers, because I had this awesome endless spool of white cotton yarn to work with. Fancy and functional, just how I like it :)

Next on my list to knit is a pair of handwarmers for myself~!
I had a pair I'd knitted (intended to be a gift but felt too embarrassed by their crap quality to actually give), but I lost them when we went to Los Toros in Los Angeles! :(
Oh well, I'm sure they're keeping someone warm now~!

All right, well, until next time (presumably tomorrow!), take care ya'll and Happy Knitting in the New Year!!