Today was one of those days I’d consider a win — this whole weekend was, actually. I didn’t yell too much at the toddler, the baby didn’t quite get enough naps or sleep enough last night (cold, teething), but overall, it felt successful.
In contrast to my last update, I’ve done some adulting lately that makes me feel like I’m at least not a complete loss as I stare down what I considered to be middle-age (jfc), but my dad argued isn’t in fact the case. Of course, I’m sure part of that is that he doesn’t want to be thinking of what it would mean for him if his eldest daughter was middle-aged, but at the same time I’ve no doubt I’m being overly dramatic by classifying 35 as middle-aged.
My personal successes are so small as to be laughable, but they counted for me, damnit. Seriously little things like taking care of some banking paperwork to take advantage of some offers, sending off emails for things I can’t even remember anymore… I should’ve written about it closer to when it actually happened, clearly.
It’s sad when I consider a good day to be one where I go out to my favourite stores and don’t buy anything, but sometimes that’s a victory for me.
I was thinking today about how I know that I have too much stuff overall. Too many clothes, too many hobbies, too much things in general. I like the look of a minimalist house, but I also like that our house looks like people live there. Granted, I could do sometimes with a bit less of the cats’ presences, especially when they’ve been on a barfing spree, but that’s one small price to pay for their presence in our lives.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to keep this blog separate from the baby blog and focus on talking about the kids there, but at the moment that makes it feel like I don’t have anything to say that isn’t about them, and damnit, I refuse to be one of those people. Hence the too many hobbies, really.
In my time off I’ve taken up jewelry-making with the intention to sell what I make, so keep your eyes peeled for updates on that. There’s a lot of back-end work to be done before we’re really ready to launch, but I’ve kept busy making bracelets, earrings, and necklaces in the meantime. I’ve also been continuing to work on my knitting and a beaded cross-stitch project, so with any luck I’ll get organized enough to get some photos of those up when they’re done.
I do have one item I’m rather proud of that I can highlight here in the meantime, and that’s a Muppets alphabet cross-stitch I did for the baby’s room. It’s been framed and looks gorgeous, but hasn’t yet been mounted. I need to move some decorations around before there will be enough wall space in there for it, as I’m obviously not going to mount it over the crib or change table. I also need to move the toddler’s name out of the room and put his name in, but that also requires finalizing some paint on the letters, since I’d screwed up by not sanding them when I painted them the first time and had to start over. And then not all the paint came off nicely, so some of the letters look like they have spots on them and I’ll just end up pretending that’s a feature and not a bug.
So here’s the cross stitch. It took me a few months of fairly steady work to complete, and I thought I’d have it done in time for his birth (if not actually framed), but the little bugger came early when I only had like, one figure and two letters left to go or something. Nonetheless, I finished it after about a month or two of his birth, so go me and stuff. Credit for the pattern goes to Pixel Power Design, from whom I’ve downloaded a bunch of patterns I hope to take on over the next while.
Muppet alphabet, design by Pixel Power Design
I did the cross-stitch on 14-count white Aida cloth, since the walls in the baby’s room are peach and I wasn’t sure I loved the blue background they had in their example. I didn’t really give black any consideration; I have no issue stitching on dark cloth, but obviously the details in the characters with dark hair would’ve been completely lost. I prefer DMC floss above Coats, so that’s what the majority of my stash consists of; I still had to go and buy a surprising number of colours (surprising given how much floss I already owned), but I didn’t mind terribly. The stitches are all done with two strands of floss minus the infinitesimal amount of back-stitching (always my Achilles heel), which was done using one strand if memory serves. The grey used in the letters was the one colour that required multiple skeins.
It was definitely a fun project to do, and I was very pleased with how it turned out. And out of all the projects I’ve done, it’s the first one I’ve ever gone through with having framed. I ended up going to Michael’s because I didn’t really know any better, and I figured they were used to working with craft projects. It cost me an arm, a leg, and the marriage rights of my first-born child, but I’m happy with how it looks. My mom recommended a different framer, so I’ll probably check him out with my next project… like maybe my girlfriend’s wedding present that’s been 99.9% finished for many many years. I’m really trying to focus on one in, one out, but that one’s just been out for ages. 
I Chase Boys 