Busy, Busy, Dreadfully Busy.

Okay. Not really dreadfully. That's a lie.

Thanksgiving happened. We ended up spending it at my parents' house early, then at Kyle's aunt's house. That's always a fun time, his family getting together.

Then we got home and Christmas sort of exploded in my house.

This is the upstairs tree.

This is the tree in our bedroom. Yes, we have two trees. What can I say? I LOVE CHRISTMAS.

Also, we got this one via FreeCycle. Love that.

This is a sofa table in our living room. Also free, but via Craigslist.

The decorations came from Kyle's Papa, again, free.

This was, again, from Kyle's Papa. Kyle's uncle Paul, the one who cornered me and asked me about my Facebook name upon our first meeting, made this. I love it. His name is Dolph Lundgren.

This ornament tree sits ontop of our DVD rack. We got it from my in-laws 2 years ago for Christmas. I love it.

SPEAKING of our DVD rack. Let me tell you a little story.

We had seasons 1-5 of FRIENDS, which happens to be one of my favorite shows.

Keyword here, HAD.

We were planning on selling them and saving up the rest of the money to get the box set of all the seasons. Good plan, huh?

Well, Selena made these friends on the school bus that lived down the street from us. Their mom came by from time to time, we had polite chit chat, whatever. 

These people screamed white trash, but who am I to judge? I just tried to look past what their outward appearance and actions put off. There's good in all people.

So, one night she comes over. Kyle's at work. I'm home alone with the kids. Before leaving, she asks if we can swap movies for a couple nights. No biggie, they live down the street. She goes home and grabs seasons 1-3 of True Blood. They're mangled.

She grabs all my seasons of FRIENDS. I treated these things like gold.

About a week passes by without any visits from the kids or the parents. I grow concerned, but I figure it'll be okay.

Kyle goes to their house with their True Blood DVDs to swap back.

They've disappeared.

Their landlord is there, and he's mad. The house has been destroyed.

The glass in all the windows has been broken out.

The carpet is ripped up and/or burned.

And the icing on the cake?

These people left their pets, dead, in the basement. In Wal-Mart bags.

What kind of people do things like this?! It's disgusting that people can be like this. Even more horrifying that they have kids. These kids didn't ask for a life like this. They deserve more than that.

Needless to say, I don't have my FRIENDS DVDs anymore. And when I found out, I admittedly about cried. I know, it's so petty and small and easily replaced. It could've been so much worse. The LANDLORD has it far worse than I do. I know.

Now, I'm not so mad. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm upset and hurt and disgusted at these people, but I'm to the point now where I almost feel sorry for them. What kind of life is that, so empty that they act this way? What kind of future is happening for the kids? My heart hurts for them.

I keep telling myself that they need the money they would get selling the DVDs more than I need them for watching. They need good food on their table, or Christmas presents for their kids. I don't know or believe that they would be spending the money on that, but if I think that the money will go towards good things, I'm not so mad anymore. I can handle it. It's not a huge loss.

After that huge blow to my emotional side, I got busy.

I made Riah and Dot Monster some owl hats, which I posted a picture of once before. Here they are again.

After I made them, Riah decided she wanted a pink one instead.

You know kids.

So I made her a pink one. The purple one went to her cousin, along with a matching small purple one for her baby cousin. Then I made a small pink one for their half-sister.

Then, after being told by MANY people MANY times, I posted a photo on a Facebook "garage sale" group with prices, to see what kind of response I'd get.

Well..I'm up to my ears in crochet projects right now.

I was overwhelmed. I'm still overwhelmed, actually. As it stands, I have about 9 owl hats that need to be made, along with a few other hats. I'm getting them done, but with a quantity like that it takes a bit longer.

Plus Gabe's an animal.

So, I may not be blogging so much lately, but I do have a banana bread recipe I want to post because, well, I love me some banana bread.

In parting, here's another photo.

This was a specific order for someone for a pink and grey sock monkey hat. Um. I want one. In my size.

Welcome back, Jesse!

My friend Jesse, went on a 3 week vacation to England to visit her mom. And she was missed.

She came back to the states yesterday, and the day before that her boyfriend got ahold of me.

"Let's make a welcome home cake for Jesse. Well, actually, what I mean is, let me buy a bunch of shit so you can make Jesse a cake and we can come see you when it's finished and we can surprise her. Yeah, let's do this somehow sometime."

After talking to Jesse about how I felt like baking and didn't know what, she told me that I should bake a white cake with different colored layers. So that was settled.

Andy and I brainstormed on how to decorate it.

It started with this drawing.

Initially, I was going to lay wax paper over it, trace on the wax paper with frosting, and then pop it on the cake. But that didn't happen, because I couldn't find what I needed. So I piped it all, freehanded, onto the cake.

Yeah, it's a bit rough, but for my first time piping anything onto a cake, I'm okay with it.

It's 4 layers of white cake colored pink, green, blue, and purple.

And vanilla frosting.

Around the side, it says "TROLOLOLOLOL".

And then the boring cake box turned into...

That's a direct Andy quote, right there.

The decorating skills I lack are overshadowed by the fact that the cake is delicious.

I know the cake is delicious because of the cake recipe that I used (which is already posted on this blog).

Hope you enjoy it Jessiekins! 

The Girls' Room.

Do you remember that segment on The Amanda Show? It was one of my favorites.

If you don't, then please sit still while I try to steal your youth.

Anywho.

I've done a fair bit of random decorating in Selena's room. There's flowers and butterflies on the walls, there's a completely redone dresser, but we still have some things to do. It's really coming together.

We haven't done anything in Riah's and Dot's room, as horrible as that is.
Honestly, the paint on the walls sufficed for a good while. It's not just a flat one color wall.

The photos are a bit crummy, I know, but you get the general idea. The doors need some work, and that vent on the wall needs to be painted, but all in all it's pretty good alone. Lately, though, I've been trying to come up with ideas to spruce it up. My main goal is to make the rooms easy for the kids to grow with and into, so we aren't doing renovations all the time.

I started with something easy. A bookcase.

I had some problems with putting the backing on, because I'm a perfectionist, so Kyle and Gabey stepped up to the job.

And there's only one spot where they didn't hit the nail right. :)

So, it's slow progress, but it's a start, right? Soon the house will be more homey, right?

Maybe I'm not cut out for this, but I'm hoping my crafting will get be through.