All Wedding All the Time!

My baby brother is marrying a WONDERFUL woman next weekend.  Wonderful in every way...except in her ability to make decisions.  I am contributing to the wedding through a variety of handmade amazingness of which I have taken truly abysmal photographs.  And now I will share them with you!!

First with the decision making.  My son, and the bride's two nephews are going to be in the wedding (so are the neices, but they have their dresses already.)  The bride wanted all the boys in dark grey vests, but was completely unable to find a vest she liked.  Seriously, she and I and her sister have been going round and round on this for FOUR MONTHS.  I finally volunteered to make them myself.  Trust me, it's easier this way.  I drafted the patterns, so each vest is custom fit for the boy who will wear it.  I took some liberty with the lining, partially because it's fabulous, and partially because all the boys - to include the groom - will be wearing spring green Chuck Taylor lowtops.  Too precious.

Next there is the crocheted shawl for the bride.  It's 50/50 merino silk laceweight in a magnificent navy blue.  I have no idea why my camera is in such a bad mood, and I'm sorry you can't really see the intricacies of this shawl.  I've got about 50 or so hours invested in its creation.  The lovely bride knows I've made her wedding shawl (I asked permission) and she picked out the yarn, but she has NO idea what it looks like.  I hope she loves it.  But, WOW that's a terrible picture.  It's roughly 5 feet long and 16" deep.  

Lastly, because you can't leave him out, are socks for the groom.  He has no clue I've made him anything.  His suit it charcoal grey and his shoes will be the spring green Chucks.  If he wears the socks, great.  If not, he'll appreciate the sentiment.  And, um, I knit socks.  It's sort of my thing.  

Here's to a happy wedding, a happy bride and groom, and a very very long and blissful marriage!

-Rubiy

Zucchini Bread

Alright, so our nice neighbor's dropped off some veggies to us the other week.   They gave us a summer squash and the most GIGANTIC zucchini that I've ever seen in my entire life.   We made a huge dish of veggie pasta (sorry, no pics of that), and I still had three quarters of the Zucchini left.

I found a recipe on Pinterest for chocolate chocolate zucchini bread, and so I thought I'd try it.

It was good, but I should have added more chocolate chips, and probably substituted apple sauce for the oil, because I think it was just a tad dry.    (Even G thinks so, and she usually eats anything with chocolate in it.)

Recipe below:

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Zucchini Cakes
Adapted from Food Network
2 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cups sugar
3 eggs
1 cup canola oil
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 packed cups grated zucchini (don’t peel it)
1 cup chocolate chips
Preheat oven at 350 F. Spray two 9×5 inch pans with nonstick spray.
In a large bowl, stir together flour, cocoa, baking soda, baking powder and salt.
In a medium bowl, beat the sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. Add the oil and vanilla. Add to the dry ingredients along with the zucchini and chocolate chips. Stir just until combined, and divide between the loaf pans.
Bake for 50-60 minutes, or until the tops are cracked and springy to the touch. Makes 2 cakes.

Dilly beans, pickles and asparagus

Spent the day making dill pickles, asparagus, and beans.  Tried several different varieties as well as spice levels.  Last year my pickles were pretty soft so I did some research and am trying to immerse them in ice water for 3-4 hours prior to canning.  We opened a jar last night and the ice bath seemed to work, woo hoo.  Didn't really want to use alum as I read too many things about toxicity.  My family is happy and full!

Greeting cards

Linda and I spent the day making some greeting cards.  I had a thing for flowers today, except for the deer.  The deer I did twice once for my dad and one for Ken's dad.  The others will go to ?  Maybe even one of you...  LOL!  Still need to get to my holiday cards and my one sheet wonder for other occassions.

Return to knitting

So I used to knit quite a bit, but haven't for quite some time (basically since Sophie was born). My mom gave me a book of patterns for knitting doll clothes after she bought Sophie her American Girl doll, so about a year ago Sophie picked out a pattern. And, voila, a year later her doll has a bathrobe and slippers. Hopefully it won't take me another year before I finish another knitting project.

Please pass me a stiff drink - Rubiy

So, every trite cliche about having children is true.  As a matter of fact they are SO true as to be humbling.  I really was just in labor with my firstborn.  I was just cradling her as a newborn.  I just watched her take her first steps.

Well, apparently the passage of time has a wicked sense of humor and, on Thursday my baby starts FIRST GRADE!  And, as if that weren't enough, she has TWO loose teeth.  One of which will probably fall out in the next couple of days and the other one won't be far behind.  The adult teeth have already pushed up through the gums behind them.

I'm not sure I can handle this.  So, obviously, I channeled my angst into shopping (I bought tooth tins in which to keep her baby teeth - it's not weird Sara and Erin, everyone does this,) and I made her a pillow to hold her teeth for the tooth fairy.

We're moving on Friday (the day after she starts FIRST GRADE!!) and she's very worried that the Tooth Fairy - with whom we've made a deal, she will leave cash AND the tooth, because my daughter was appalled that the Tooth Fairy would just take it - won't be able to find our new house.  We asked her if she thought Santa would be able to find our new house, which of course doubled her stress level. Sigh....

So, I told her that I'd tell the mailman to let BOTH the Tooth Fairy AND Santa know that we'd moved, and ask him to show them where out new house is.  Which, of course, was the most logical solution to the problem.

I'm not sure how much more time I can spend averting not only my own, but a six year old's existential crises.  Now for that drink...

p.s. Yep, still a terrible photographer.  It's a wool felt pillow with a pocket for a mouth, metal buttons for eyes, and missing a tooth of it's own.  Oh, and it's hot fuschia with an electric purple back.  It's kinda awesome.  

Could use advice

I have 13 of these tulips that I hand appliqued.  They are from a pattern to make a quilt, the problem is I don't have enough of the background fabric.  So, do I try to match the background the fabric or get something different for the other blocks?  What do you think?