February Accomplishments

 I know I missed a couple days crafting-wise, so I know I won't be able to say I at least worked on something crafty each day of 2010, but whatever. Here's what happened last month in the Hansen household:


Crafting:
Bean bags x 3
Finger sweater
Crocheted camisole
Felt mustaches x 8
Fabric/cardboard BIG postcard
Lung pin cushion
Ferris wheel card
Dog treats
“Chock” monkeys x 2
Waffle cookbook
Paper
Band-aid hair clips
Beck’s needle book
Sherlock hat
Sherlock pipe needle book
Yarn – rainbow ~ #? yards
Yarn – purple/orange ~ 17 yards
Crocheted jar x 1


Home Improvements:
Electricians
            Outlets in garage 4
Outlets in bathrooms 1per
Fan box in LR
            Light box in front LR
Fan in Bathroom
Check heater Plug
Outside light
Outside plug by electric fence
Water heater plug
Track lights in front room
Fan/light in living room
Repair electric fence
Move fence energizer down

Books finished:
Still Alice by Lisa Genova
Artisan Bread In 5 Minutes A Day by Zoe Francois and Jeff Hertzberg
Organic Body Care Recipes by Stephanie Tourles
The Complete Hans Christian Andersen Fairytales
Yes, I read cookbooks and crafting books all the way through like they ar enovels before I ever do anything out of them. 
I just barely finished HCA last night at 11 pm. That was a hard read. 803 pages. Didn't understand a bunch of it because it was written 150 years ago with many stories about Denmark etc where I've never been, but I still read it. Yay for me!


And it really bugs me how you can't just copy and paste out of MS Word into Blogger. What the heck?

NESTING

Nesting is the key to... confinement, which is fine by me. I'm an introvert.

What I want...

I have a list of "Wants" on my computer. I think when I started it it was supposed to be between me and G but now it is all what I want. I have lists of "Music," "Books," "DVDs/Blurays," and "Other" on there. I don't want to feel ungrateful, I have a lot, but I am going to share some of what I want with you, and maybe I will do the links right...

 Let's start with books, shall we?

Non Fiction

-The Artistic Mother by Shona Cole at An Artful Life because why not? I'm might already be an artistic mother, but I can always learn more. I love learning more. 

-Home, Paper, Scissors by Patricia Zapata at A Little Hut OK, so I am getting this one FREE because I won a give away on her site, but I don't have it yet and I have been so excited about it since before it even came out. I don't even remember how I found her site, but I love it and I always have!

-Geometrics Crochet Math + crochet? How could life get any better?

-Bend the Rules with Fabric by Amy Karol because, again, I try what I might but I can always learn more.

-Drip. Dot. Swirl and Crumble. Crackle. Swirl Von Glitschka
Life is a Verb by Patti Digh

Fiction

-Pride and Prejudice and Zombies Adding zombies to anything will make it worth my while. Maybe this way I can read some of the "classics" and see what they are all about, eh?
-Overqualified by Joey Comeau, author of the comic A Softer World.

-I have yet to read any Anne Rice novels. I think I would like to.


Some other things I want:
-Green Star Juicer because I need a juicer and if I'm gonna get one, why not the best one?
-A spinning wheel. I want to learn to spin yarn so bad, you have no idea! I think it may be my most anticipated new craft to date! But where would I keep it? That is the big issue...
-If I can't have a spinning wheel because of space issues, I would at least like a drop spindle from Zebisis Designs. SO PRETTY!
-A food dehydrator so I can make stuff like jerky and fruit snacks and have that much less I'm spending at the grocery store. Sure, I will have to buy meat and fruit, but 1 lb of beef is much cheaper than 1 lb of jerky. AND I could make my own flavors, maybe use some Wildtree products on it, ooOOooh!!! Healthy stuff for my family, heck yeah!

So what do you guys think, am I too needy? I'm not saying I'm going to be unhappy if I don't get any or all of these things, I just thought I would share what's on my mind.

In other news, Alice got her first tooth today! Maybe early by some standards but she's already 2 months behind her brother!

Lists

I am a fan of lists so much so that last year I started keeping a bunch in folder on my desktop. I have a list of "Wants" that includes music, movies, books, etc that I want. I have a list of crafts I want to do/want to learn/need to finish. I have a list of projects we need to get done around the house. And this year I have started a list of ACCOMPLISHMENTS. This list I am keeping to help me keep track of what we have actually done because while I love taking things off of my other lists, when I do they just disappear; I have no record of them. That's not cool. So you wanna know what I did in January?

Crafting:
Sock monkeys x 4
Finger sweaters x 2
Felt cat toy
Etched glass
Cowl
Crocheted rose hair clips x 8
Crocheted hanging jars x ?
Book box w/ rub on letters
Stitch markers x 4
Bottle cap pin cushion
Paper
Paper bowls
Alice in wonderland ATCs x 3
Bird House
Caterpillar bag
Feather vial necklace
Apple trivet
Fabric postcards x 6
Felt mustache pencil toppers x 24

Home Improvements:
Fans in kids’ rooms
Quote on electric

Also in the word document I have a section for Books but since I didn't technically finish any last month, there are none on the list.

My goal this year is to do at least one crafty thing a day. I'm not saying FINISH one thing/day, but at least work on something. I have been doing swaps on craftster.org and those are helping me muchly greatly in the daily creation department. It is motivating and thoroughly enjoyable. It also adds to my anxiety. Ah well, that's a topic for another day.

Some random thoughts

Yay! Happy Holidays! I'm happy they're over. Russ now has too many toys and I really need to weed through them and see which I want to save for Alice and which I want to donate to something else. I am not looking forward to this. I got diamond earrings from G... let's just say he did better last year with the sewing machine. I will keep the rest of those thoughts to myself for now. He got, among other things, a super-dooper-bad-a** tool chest! I am the best wife ever you guys!


     So I was talking to my MIL at Christmas about the whole "Trying to only buy from the USA" goal I had (and failed miserably at) this year. Turns out she wasn't saying "It's pointless; why  bother?" like G led me to believe but rather "That's a really good idea. I'll try it, but OH! Darn near impossible!" It really made me happy that something I thought made sense to my MIL and she agreed. This doesn't happen too often. I usually have to hold my tongue when she expresses her opinion of my opinion just so G himself doesn't kill me for the harsh words I would like to share with him mother. But we agreed. And we agreed that it's just about impossible to take on such actions.


     And on that topic, it IS impossible to buy anything at Target Made in the USA. Yeah, my aunt gave me a gift card to Target and while we were there last night nothing I wanted was made in the USA. I ended up buying some pants made in Cambodia and some socks (to make monkeys) that were made in CHINA but that was all I could bring myself to buy. I still have 20$ and really don't want to use it but it's 20$, you know? Maybe I'll just put it towards the next season of whatever TV show we need the next time we need more visual entertainment.


     Vienna Sausages are yucky.


    Inspired by Rhonda at Down to Earth, I have quit using my dishwasher. In fact I haven't used it in over 3 weeks, which is much longer than most of my goals. My goal started with trying to get them done every morning, and while that doesn't always happen, nor does it happen everyday, I'm still only doing them by hand. I do get them done most days and the days I don't the reason is more along the lines of there not being enough to want to use a whole sink full of water on than me just being lazy. Some my question my motives but I think it's obvious: when I start the day doing something productive I have a more productive day. Makes sense, no? And, to be completely weird, I have found it to be rather enjoyable.


     It has come to my attention that people have commented on my blog! Oh! And not people I know, either! Amazing. I don't think I really have an opinion on this. Something I do have an opinion on, however, is people who leave rude comments. I don't expect everyone to agree with me, but just because I don't have the same opinion as you doesn't mean I am unlearned or "haven't done my research." So if you're going to leave a comment, don't be a bitch about it, and if you find that difficult then at least don't be anonymous. Anonymous, rude comments suck and will get deleted.

Christmas Time!

So my plan for Christmas was to make most presents. What I didn't make I wanted at least handmade, preferably local, but handmade in general. And what I didn't get handmade I at least wanted made in the USA, definitely not Made in China.  This worked mostly. In the above picture you can see what I made for my mother in law, Lynda. G's family is so hard to buy for. Segen wants everything, Bill doesn't really want anything, and Lynda buys everything she wants. So what do you make/get the lady who can buy it all herself? Bags to help with her purchases. I thought it clever. I have also made sock monkeys, finger puppets, and etched glasses and I'm planning on making today or tomorrow some bracelets.

The last part of my resolution, the whole all USA nothing China part, was really freaking hard! I honestly believe that the ammount of items we buy that are imported is a large factor in why our economy sucks so much. Why do we send our money overseas? Why don't we help our own people and buy local more? G was talking to his mom about it and she made the point that our country is programmed this way and me trying to shop local (US local) isn't going to make a difference.  I'm not going to the change the world. Here is my disclaimer: I am not planning on changing the world. I am not trying to change the world. I'm trying to change myself and teach myself and hopefully my children in the future smarter shopping habits. It's the same reason I recycle and save things I can't recycle to use in crafts. It's the same reason I'm trying to become less materialistic. Why do we have so many things? And why are a large majority of these things Made in China?

As it stands Amber's present was made in Germany and I got some Lego's for Russ (couldn't help it) and a game made in Mexico. And, 3 days before Christmas, we have 6 presents left to go AND we need to get something for my sister for her graduation, which was last week, yes I suck I know. But we are getting there.

Cord Blood

So I've been meaning to do a post about CORD BLOOD for a while now, but I haven't wanted to put the effort into it so this will just be really short.

You know what cord blood is? It is your babies raw genetic material, plain and simple. Stem Cells are a big issue of debate, but they shouldnt be. There are so many stem cells thrown out every time someone has a baby. Most people don't know you can save/donate your cord blood stem cells because it is illegal for doctors/staff to broach the topic to you, which again is stupid! There is nothing unethical about cord blood stem cells! If anything, it is good because it saves that much from going to wherever genetic waste goes! If you don't save it or donate it then it goes into the waste bin. Personally, I think that is ridiculous. I have saved it from both of my children. Here is a good site to get more info on what can be done with Cord Blood and what they are trying to do with it: blog.cordblood.com

I got a call from CBR-Cord Blood Registry, where we saved our kids' cord blood-about our collection for Alice. Turns out you need at least 100 million stem cells to creat a viable collection. Average collections run about 250 million, which means Russell's collection was just about average at 290 million. Alice has a count of 1,502,000,000 cells. That's over a billion! That's 15 times the minimum! Isn't that great? I am so happy.