sheesh, maybe i should quit...

doug reminded me i had already posted that picture of isaac's gram stain. i had forgotten it. oops.

a gram stain

i think this was from a swab of isaac's throat (poor kid, i know). big glob in the middle are two epithelial cells, small dark purple specks are gram positive bacteria.

afgan i made for mallory

actually i made this baby blanket in north dakota, before i was pregnant with her-- but i loved it so much i saved it for my first child.

then i added a ruffle to feminize it a little. but she still ended up loving pink.

oops

 

bought this and then read it. made me laugh

another quickie dress

the fabric came shirred and hemmed on the bottom. digustingly easy. we'll see how much mallory will wear it since it is not pink.

Winco's Old Fashioned Oats

again, another recipe for winco bulk:

oatmeal

2 cups boiling water
1 cup rolled oats
1/8 tsp. salt

add oats to boiling salted water, cover, cook 5 minutes.

curtain decision

i really loved the fabric on the left with our wall color. but it didn't match the couch. so i chose the one on the right--the flowers surprisingly matched the flowers on our couch.

easter

for easter doug filled out my families are forever frame. it was one of those projects on my list that required several other projects to be completed before i could finish it (have you ever read patrick mcmanus on sequences? that was exactly what this was), so i was so glad that he just did it for me. because otherwise it would have taken me until i had finished scrapbooking. and i don't know if i will ever finish scrapbooking. or even ever start. sheesh.

couscous

winco is great, bulk is great, but i have a tendency to lose the recipes/directions for their bulk food items. so here is winco's recipe for their bulk couscous so i can find it at 5:30 when i am making dinner.

bring 1 1/2 cups water or broth to a boil. add 2 tablespoons butter, 1 cup whole wheat couscous, 1/2 tsp. salt, stir. reduce hear, cover and cook for 3-5 minutes or until all the water is absorbed. stir to fluff up and serve. makes 5 1/2 cup servings.

space book for my sister...

Click here to view this photo book larger

i made it for her family for christmas

update: password is snotto

and the making of the space book:

i wanted to give her a photobook, but needed something to make it special, rather than "oh i thought this picture of your family was cool." so i debated between an abc book of her family or writing a story and putting pictures of her family in them. luckily my mother in law said that a story would be much cooler. since some of the presents i made her family had sort of a space theme to them, i thought i would send her kids to space. i had pictures from what she sent out by email (the green st. patrick day wigs were a great plot help) and some from our family photographer. working with pictures from email meant that the resolution on some of them weren't great, but since i only used head shots, i think it worked out well. oh and i didn't have photoshop, so i cropped out their heads with a circle tool, but i think it worked-- it kept me from trying to make it perfect. the space pictures were copyright-free pictures from NASA. it was a lot of fun. i want to do it again. so watch out world.

i liked the quality of shutterfly, however, the color of what was on my screen was not exactly what was printed. and i really don't know how to get around that.

password...

so if you actually want to read the words to the book, here's the password: snotto

silly me, thinking that they would just let you see the book.