job hunt is over already

I don't have a ton of information on it yet, but Tim went out for an interview this afternoon and decided to work for an energy company, doing door to door sales. We are very excited that God has provided this opportunity so soon for us. Thanks to everyone who was keeping us in your prayers.

I'm trying to do the crafting thing again. I found a tutorial online on how to make newborn gowns out of adult-sized T-shirts, and have a stack of T-shirts. I've made a couple of gowns so far and they are turning out SO cute. I'll post a few pictures once I get some more done. I've also been doing some more crocheting. I have a bunch of wool yarn with which to make diaper covers, and am in the middle of making a "patchwork" one for Lydia. Some of her plastic covers are a little too small for her bulky nighttime diaper, so this patchwork one will be for her at night. It's coming along quite nicely. :)

more busy, and some somewhat good news

First, the somewhat good news. As a bit of background: earlier this month, hubby received his paperwork to sign up for health insurance. But the company had had a delay in getting the paperwork to the newly-eligible employees, and he only had 36 hours to turn it in before the deadline. We decided not to go w/ the company insurance, and instead look into getting some private insurance. Well, we didn't start the "looking-into" process until after the deadline, and were sad to find out that maternity coverage would be either nonexistent or would be as much as we were paying for COBRA anyway. I had hubby bring home a benefits book b/c we couldn't tell from the enrollment paperwork if maternity was covered under their plan or not. Well, it is, but the next open enrollment isn't until January (effective that same month also). But, at least we knew so we could try to plan.

Then today, hubby calls me and it turns out that he CAN still go ahead and sign up for insurance after all! I still had the other copy of the form at home so we went over it together and signed up. :) Now we just have to wait on our cards, and hopefully Lydia's doctor is covered. I couldn't find the name of the insurance company or a way to check the provider directory in any of the paperwork. It'll all work out though, I'm sure.

My to-do list from a few weeks ago has changed. I've finished some things, and decided not to do others, and added a few different things. I still have my store open over on Hyena Cart, and have also joined a congo, which is a group of stores all under one "roof." Everyone in it is going to have new, in-stock items at once (the first and third Wednesdays). So part of my recent accomplishments have to do with that new congo that I'm a part of now.

Recent accomplishments:
- finished crocheting the play food for the congo's grand opening day
- finished crocheting the FFS (free for shipping) items for the congo's pre-opening sale
- took pictures of the above items and got the listings ready to list

New to-do list for March:
- do some transcription if work is available (2/28 only)
- work on Lydia's skirty as time allows (I've figured out a way to make a pleated crocheted skirt and am going to make a wool diaper cover using that method)
- finish pants for one of the April outfits for sale
- use the pinking shears on the completed outfits
- finish all four pillowcase dresses
- try out the new rolled hem foot on a curved edge (I'm waiting on this in the mail)
- make melon redondo dress
- crochet play food for the 3/19 in-stock date
- re-do state and federal taxes (I've received both refunds, but got one more form in the mail after I sent it off, so I have to send in a revised return for both of these entities)
- crochet the food for the first April in-stock date
- make Lydia's 15 month well-baby appointment

busy busy busy

Wow, I am busy. I have a big list of craft items with deadlines coming up before I really want them to, and that's of course apart from my regular household obligations.

Since I'm still in the first year of my store, a lot of what I'm doing is marketing-related. I need to get my name out there and get some word of mouth referrals started. But meanwhile I also have a few non-store crafts, the first of which is a set of Valentine's washcloths. At church, there is a whole pew of widows, and some of us are getting together to make them some Valentine's gift bags. I'm making a dozen washcloths. They are my first attempt at tunisian crochet, and I'm making a heart design right into the stitch pattern. I am finished with the tunisian part on all 12 of them, and now will just have to border them. I should be able to finish these by tomorrow night and give them back to the girl who's assembling the baskets.

Then next on the list is a green scrubby w/ a rainbow border for my mom. I made her a Scrubcloth over the holidays, and she wanted a scrubby by itself as well. I made her a purple one already but during a recent phone conversation, she said that she wanted two. So this green one will be her second one. I haven't mailed the first one yet b/c I'm also still waiting on something to send to my dad. There's no real "due" date on this one, but it'll just take half an hour so I'm going to squeeze it in as time allows.

After that, I am going to make some Easter-themed play food. The site that my store is hosted at has a TON of stores, and several vendors are getting together to make a couple of gender-neutral, one-size-fits-all Easter baskets to auction off. I'm very excited about this project. The due date is March 1, when I will need to send the items off to the person who will assemble the basket.

Also for Easter, for my own store, I want to stock several little beaded headbands. I may just skip that whole project, though, depending on if time allows. But the due date on that one, if I do it, is also March 1.

Last month, I made 60 miniature Scrubcloths to be sent out in a box of samples. Several vendors get together and send their samples to a central person who assembles them into boxes filled w/ random samples, and these sample boxes get purchased. The boxes that I'll be a part of will go on sale the middle of this month. I'm going to try to participate in this box again in April, so a due date to get 60 more samples done is March 15 or so, so I have enough time to mail them off. This is another one for as-time-allows.

I've also been planning on March to be when I introduce tie-dyed diapers into my store, so I need to snatch two days in a row to do the dyeing (one for dyeing and one for washing the excess dye away). I have March 15 as a due date on this one also.

Then in April, I am going to be part of a "conglomerate" ("congo" for short) that has a rotating membership. Each week of April I'll be stocking one or two girly clothing items. The due date on making these items is April 1.

Finally, at the end of April, I may be able to participate in a bazaar at the Regional Sweet Adeline's competition. I've been to this bazaar before, but as a shopper. I'm still working out whether I want to participate and exactly HOW I want to participate (like just taking samples to the bazaar and having people order them, or making up an inventory, or a partial inventory and letting people buy those and then ordering other items, etc.)

Phew, what a LIST! It would seem that I have enough time to do all this, but I'm also still in a "peak" transcription month, so that eats up a lot of time that I could be crocheting or crafting. But, since it's all written down with each of their individual deadlines, I should be able to get it all done. :)

a picture of the play food

Yay, my first batch of play food is "cooked" and ready for sale! Definitely go check out my store for more pictures of the individual items, but I wanted to share the picture of all the items I've made so far:



Doesn't it look delicious? I'm very pleased with the way it's all looking so far, and VERY excited about the plans I have for the next few foods that will be coming out. :) (I still have yet to develop those patterns, though... I'll be working on that this week.)

The other two of Lydia's top teeth are breaking the gums, so by the time the weekend is here, all 4 of them should be well on their way to arriving. And she's learned how to wave pretty much on request now. I'll say "hi" and she'll wave at me and jabber. And then sometimes she'll wave just b/c she feels like it. lol. Like today in the store, she was on my back and her arms were pretty contained. At one point, though, she wiggled around and worked one of her arms free and was happily waving "hi" with it for a bit, then she wiggled it back down to where it was supposed to go. All I could do was smile. :)

squishy lovey blanket

Woohoo, my store is now open! It is here, and I spent my traveling time over Thanksgiving weekend crocheting like a fiend to get my stocking levels higher than just 1 per item. I'm really excited to finally be opening my store. Eventually I'll be adding tie-dyed prefold cloth diapers (aiming for March) and crocheted play food (aiming for January). The play food seems to be in demand right now, and it's been so fun thinking up "new" foods that I haven't seen for sale yet, and working out how I'll pattern them.

As for the squishy lovey blanket, Lydia has a little tiny blanket that's red satin on one side, and a slightly furry cow print on the other (with her name and birth stats embroidered on it) that my mom got for her shortly after she was born. I took her crib bumper out a few months ago, but she had been using the falling-down bumper as a pillow, so I needed to put something else in there for her to cuddle with. The transition to the cow lovey was easy. Now when I lay her down, she grabs a hold of it and hugs it as she falls asleep, whether it's just for a nap or for the night. But anyway, enough history. Usually the lovey will be in roughly the same spot that it was when I laid her down. Occasionally it'll be way on the other side of the crib. But this morning it was in a brand new spot. The entire lovey was completely squished down in between the side of the mattress and the crib slats. I'm still wondering how she managed to do that.

opening day is decided upon

Yay, I've made a commitment to open my store the Monday after Thanksgiving. I'll have some of the items listed and "previewed" the Monday before, though (which means THIS Monday... eeek! lol). For any of you who aren't familiar w/ Hyena Cart, you can go in and look at items, but if it's a particularly high demand item, then the seller can set a time for the item to go "live" and then after that time it's first come first served. I don't expect right off that my items will be in high demand, but hopefully I'll get a good clientele going. :) It's just hard right now to balance hosuehold stuff, taking care of Lydia, doing my transcription (I'm SO close to getting a bonus this month), and making my wares to sell online. I should be able to get it all done though. I'm really getting excited. I'll be out of town Tuesday through Fridayish, and will try to be working on some more dishcloths or scrubbies or whatever while I'm out of town, also, since I'll be chauffered by my in-laws. Then maybe I can increase my stocking levels just before opening day. :D Oh and definitely check here late Monday for a link and/or pictures.

first birthday sneaking up

Hm I guess all the comments about hubby's job loss came where I posted this elsewhere. We found out Friday that he has to wait for his drug test and his DMV background check to come back before he can be "officially" hired. He should pass both of them w/o trouble, although the DMV check was VERY extensive, asking him questions even about his Very First Job Ever. We're supposed to hear today or tomorrow if he passed that. I'm hoping we'll hear back this afternoon sometime or early tomorrow b/c this wait is killing me.

The mom of one of the women from church knew we were OU fans and she gave us some tickets for the game this past weekend, hence our going out of town. We made a weekend of it and went up Friday and came back yesterday. My MIL watched Lydia during the game and gave her two pumped bottles and even got her to sleep for the night. It was the longest I'd ever left her, almost 6 hours. When we got back, I had to fight the urge to go wake her up and tell her good night. I was nervous that she wouldn't take the bottles since she hadn't had any before, but she took them with only a little encouragement. With the first bottle, MIL would poke her finger at the base of the nipple to get it to squirt into Lydia's mouth and get her interested that way. Then by the second bottle, Lydia was an old hat at it and was even almost holding it herself. But they had lots of fun and I'm glad they had some bonding time. Hubby and I enjoyed the game, too.

This week is still pretty busy w/ transcription. I should be able to make enough to make my 12% bonus for the month. Woohoo. I'm also still working on some longies to sell and some dishcloths. Eventually I have plans for cotton and/or wool play food. It won't be in time for this holiday season, obviously, but hopefully soon after the new year I can start on those plans. I have a few ideas for the food that I haven't really seen yet. I've only been looking on Hyena Cart so far, though, since that's where my cart will eventually be set up.

Oh and we went and got DD's one-year pictures made today, and her and our holiday pictures too. I'll have to post those when they get back. At the studio, the current customer happened to be one of the moms from our local moms group. I got close and was like "That looks like E." Then I peeked around the corner when I was filling out my sign-in card and sure enough it was her DD on the table. :P I'm so excited about how these pictures are, though. She's really getting more and more photogenic as time goes on. I was telling the photographer when her birthday is and he said that's when the pictures would be ready to pick up. :)

I can't believe we're taking her ONE-YEAR pictures already. Soon I will have a toddler instead of a baby. I haven't made any party plans yet. It'll have to be a small one. But I don't have any idea of a "theme" or anything, and I really don't necessarily even WANT a theme since she's still so young. There will be plenty of other themed birthdays that we can have so I think this year's theme will just be "birthday." :)

babbling again and sitting pretty

After a months-long hiatus of babbling, Lydia's finally picking it back up again. She has the "m" sound down now, and "accidently" said mama the other day, and a few times since then. So yay, she said mama before dada. lol. Seriously, though... I'm not convinced yet that she knows it refers to me, so I don't know if I want to "count" it as her first word yet. Plus, sometimes she'll say "mama" and other times she'll say "mum mum mum mum mum," just making noise. And still other times she'll talk with an entirely different consonant than "m."

But in other news, she can now get to a sitting position, and stay there, without having to lean on one of her arms for support:

I'm so proud of my little girl. :) And I can't remember if I mentioned earlier, we got her a high chair finally so she can experiment with food. She thought that was loads of fun:




I'll have to remember to keep the clip in her hair next time to minimize the chances of her getting food in her hair. It was so funny to watch her eat, because every so often she'd "shudder" (like how you would shudder if you ate something slightly bitter), but then grab another bite right away.

Lastly, here is a dress/pinafore set that I sewed for her to wear to church. I think she likes it:

transcribing coming back

Yay, I finally got a hold of my old transcribing job and they reactivated me. :) There probably won't be any work for me until the middle of next month, but that's OK. I really need the time to finish up sewing projects and dye several diapers and get those on the web, and possibly make a few crocheted baby headbands, although I may wait until after my next paycheck in November or so to really do those.

Lydia's teeth finally popped through. She has two teensy white lines on her bottom gums now. I need to get a picture sometime. She's still not doing hands and knees crawling, but she does get up on her hands and knees and will even lift one of her arms, but then she puts it right back down where it was before. We got her a Superyard, to help keep her contained when I do transcribing. So far she seems to like it, although she'd rather me play with her than her be in there by herself. She likes it if I'm outside and I stick my face onto the "wall", then she'll come up and try to grab my nose or lips, or sometimes just try to mash her face up against mine.

The parenting class at church is going well. It's weird being in there w/ such a young baby, b/c a lot of the principles are applied better to children who actually need a little more guidance than a 9 month old, but I really like it just the same. The teacher told us some things on Wednesday that were scary, though, about how a child will try to manipulate his/her parents and possibly turn them against each other (like by going to Dad when Mom said no, and then Dad doesn't back Mom up and Mom and Dad then fight about it later). He also said that Moms are better at guiding girls b/c they were once girls and can think like a girl, and Dads are better at guiding boys for the same reasons. And that made sense to me. Hubby and I recently read a couple of books, "For Men Only" and "For Women Only", by Jeff and Shaunti Feldhahn, and it was really eye-opening for both of us.

restless sleeper, done dyeing

Ever since she was tiny, L has been a restless sleeper. I'll lay her down in the middle of her crib and she will wiggle and squirm and move around until she's wedged herself next to an edge. But she's never bothered by this, and continues to sleep peacefully. A few weeks ago, I encountered this when I went to peek at her in the morning:



Then this morning, her little feet were sticking out between the rails and on top of the bumper. In both cases she was still either sleeping or as happy as can be. (She usually wakes up in a good mood). I just think it's funny how much she moves.

Tuesday, hubby and I finally dyed. I dyed a length of fabric to be used as a wrap baby carrier, and we also dyed 48 prefold diapers. I'm pleased with the way most everything turned out. Here's a few samples:

I was surprised how long the overall dyeing process took, but I shouldn't have been surprised since each of the 49 pieces of cloth had to be tied and dyed individually. Hubby and I had a lot of fun, though. Maybe someday I can dye some more. :)

new tricks and giggles

Well, L finally found something funny enough to laugh at it more than once. (Although it was hard to tell that she was laughing b/c her laugh is still that "heh heh" sound that could be a cry if you weren't looking at her.) Anyway. It's been unseasonably cold here lately, but even her warm-weather sleepers have feet on them, so opportunity to clip her nails is few and far between. But the other day I was changing her and she was in a good mood, so I thought I'd clip the most offensive few toenails while her feet were exposed. I did this right there on the changing table, and my elbow happened to be up in her face. For some reason, she thought that was SO funny. She made her laughy noise and I looked at her to make sure she was laughing, and she had a HUGE grin on her face. Since then, she has at the very least smiled at an elbow in her face, and even has giggled a few more times. :)

Her other trick she has done before once or twice, but started it back up again pretty regularly yesterday. She has always been fond of sticking her tongue out, but yesterday she kept sticking it into her bottom lip. It made her look like an ape. lol. I think it's possibly another sign that she's teething, b/c it almost seemed like she was feeling her gums w/ her tongue. Her cheeks also keep turning pinker than usual. Otherwise, she still has a great disposition. Sure would be nice if teething is mild for her... but I've been so blessed w/ her laid-back-ness (is that a word?) so far that I'm sure I'm in for some long days and nights coming up. Oh well, she's more than worth it. :)

fit to be tied (and dyed)

I am SO excited! We cloth diaper L, and had been using Fuzzi Bunz, but she is about to outgrow them. I was not dissatisfied with them, but they use snaps and I can't really get as good a fit as I could with velcro. So, we got some prefolds and separate covers to use for her next size in a month or so. But, the Fuzzi Bunz are all kinds of beautirul bright colors, and the new diapers are so bland comparatively. So, hubby said that we could tie dye them. :D :D :D :D Everything I've read online said that it wouldn't affect the absorbency, etc. So I ordered a bunch of dyes and supplies today and can't wait until it comes in so I can have fun! I have 48 diapers to dye. (I also bought several silk scarves that I'll be dyeing also, for L to play with when she gets older.) I'll definitely post pictures when all is said and done... unless all I make is a mess. lol. :)