Random on a Tuesday (Warning: Long Winded!)

Looky! It's a random Tuesday! I'm procrastinating. I have things to do, but wanted to share pictures and stories.

Our 'maters are getting big. We've got about 5 or 6 now. I don't think we're going to get a ton though, so I guess I'll have to find my chili ingredients elsewhere.

I planted Basil a week ago and it came up within 5 days. It's supposed to take at least 8. Hot weather makes basil happy. This in turn makes me happy, since I LOVE basil and am so excited to make pesto from my own garden. I want to get a ton of different herbs and scatter them around. Cooking from my garden has seriously big appeal.

This is one of our flowers that came from a bulb that came from the 99 Cent Store (in a hole at the bottom of the sea... Sorry.) I can't remember what it is, and I'm not sure where the package is, so I will guess and say that it is one of the Freesia. I think I'm horribly wrong though.

Here is a bouquet of flowers entirely from our own plants. This picture does not do it justice. It made me so happy to walk outside and pick them all. It really brightens up the kitchen.

I desperately want tons and tons of plants in the backyard. Ben keeps saying we have to wait until we get sprinklers in (even though he's dieing for foliage as well), but I think I might just tell him I'll stand out there with a hose just to have plants.

This is the place our garden is going to go and I am severely tempted to rip out that slab by myself, one chunk at a time and plant things.

Last night was spaghetti for dinner. All the kids look like this on spaghetti night, but Duder was especially excited, and especially messy. I've never seen a kid enjoy food so much. You put him in his high chair and he does a little dance for food. It's the cutest thing. He's not picky. He eats anything and everything (sometimes things not edible), which makes me happy since I love to feed people.

I also changed him to a toddler bed yesterday. I was wondering how it would work out, since he's only a year. Every morning he stands in his bed and yells and screams and gets mad because he can't get down and play with his brothers. So my thinking was that if I just change his bed and put it on the lowest mattress height, then he could get down in the morning and play like the big boys. It worked beautifully. He only fell out once last night (to be expected, and after that Ben rigged up a little wall) and this morning I heard giggles and chattering. Perfect!

For anyone who hasn't seen them yet, these are the chairs we got to go with our table. I loved the X's on the back. We got them unstained, since they were cheaper, and Ben stained and laquered them and now they look like this:

Tada! Perfect match for the table! We love them, and they're so comfortable. We just got 4 for now, and will get 2 more later. Now we just have to get rid of the stupid, horrible, uneven kitchen floor. I'm having issues with it, can you tell?

Knitting has been lacking lately. I have been so incredibly busy and feeling kind of stressed. I have a website to finish for a client, bookkeeping work to get done for another, and the other day I cast on for this

which I need to finish. It's the Lace Edge Cardigan that I have knit twice before. This one is for the newborn baby girl of one of Ben's co-workers. His little one was born without half of her heart and has been down at a children's hospital in L.A. to fix it since her birth at the end of June.

Now, you all know that Ben and I have done the babies-in-NICU thing and we know how terrifying and painful it is and how you hate that you can't do anything but wait. I firmly believe that all babies should be knit for, but I have a special place in my heart for NICU babies and felt that I needed to make this. Not just for her, but for her parents, to let them know that we are there with them in spirit, praying and waiting. Ok, moving on. I'm starting to cry now.

So anyways, that's on my To Do list of things that need to get done soon, but the clients come first so it's going slowly. The blue thing above that is the GK 2010 mystery shawl progress. I'm on the last official chart, aside from the lace edging, but I will need to add a few more repeats of one of the other charts to make it bigger. The problem with knitting on smaller needles than called for means the size turns out a lot smaller. Unfortunately I haven't done any knitting on it recently. I've actually been working on washcloths more than anything. It's knitting I don't have to think about or pay attention to.

And last but not least, I found a new awesome blog/site:
Simple Bites

Go there. Just do it. You'll love it as much as I do.

Sorry for the longness, but I haven't posted in so long I had to catch up!