I went for a walk today, and decided that I don’t like the dog owners in our area very much. Well, maybe I only dislike SOME of them. Here’s why…

1. People who have so much dog crap in your back yard that I can smell it from the walking path, that’s disgusting. At 10 in the morning. When it’s not even hot out yet.
2. People who don’t pick up after their dog. When it poops next to the side walk, and I have to walk past it. GROSS. I really can’t stand it when people don’t scoop the poop. It’s just wrong.
3. People who allow their dogs off leash when the dog isn’t trained well enough to follow simple commands (stop, come, etc.). I would prefer to NOT have a strange dog charge and me and Kitten in her stroller, it makes me nervous. Also: when the dog looks like it’s going to run into a busy street. If your dog doesn’t come when you call it, it should be leashed (not to mention that all the common areas in our neighbourhood are on-leash only areas).

That’s all. I guess I’m feeling cranky, and today it’s because of bad dog owners. (to be fair, we have a GREAT dog who lives behind us. She’s super well behaved, doesn’t bark (except at the odd rabbit or cat who wanders through) and is so friendly. Also? No poop laying around in their backyard, and I never see their dog off leash. So it’s not all dog owners, just the crummy ones I’m annoyed with)

July 2nd, 2009 by Kait | No Comments »

FYI: Costco.ca now has the Bumkins cloth diaper kits! You choices are:

6 piece All-In-One set, averaging out to about $23 per diaper:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Contours set (2 covers, 6 contoured diapers), averaging out to about $18 per diaper:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

4 Covers + Wet Bag set, avering out to about $15 a piece:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, if you’re interested in giving cloth diapers a try, but don’t want to get bogged down with a lot of choice, or have to worry about ordering from a company you don’t trust, then you can try these from costco!  All three sets have your choice of girl prints, boy prints, and Dr. Suess (gender neutral).

June 27th, 2009 by Kait | No Comments »

I’m lazy and tired and have WAY too many things to do, so here’s a short list of things that you might want to know.

• Kitten has renamed Nybbles.  She’s now called “Moses”.  Don’t ask me why, but it is what it is.  Also, Kitten has learned how to make that “pssss psss pssss” noise and rub her fingers together when she wants the cats to come to her!  It’s hilarious.  “Moses” usually ignores her, but Tych has been known to come on the occassion (depending on how much love he’s received lately). 
• I’ve still bee knitting like I have lost my brain.  Here are some of my most current items:

I did a set of three pairs of shorties for a wonderful lady on Cloth Diaper Nation. Here they are (please excuse the terrible photography in the first picture)

I also had time to crank out a skirtie for Kitten. I really love it, even though it took nearly 12 oz of wool (that’s a lot) and a zillion hours to do!

• My site was hacked.  It was kind of funny, but I’m just grateful that they didn’t do anything malicious… like corrupting my files and such.  So I’m doing a backup again today, and trying to figure out how to change my ftp password.  It’s lame right now, so I want to make sure it’s more secure in the future.  It’s possible that they guy just hacked everyone on the server… but I’d like to be a little responsible for my own security, you know?  Anyway, I have high hopes of moving my blog hosting to our server, but Rob isn’t sure if  it will slow my blog down and such.  But if it loads in half a second or one second… does it really matter?  I assume that *most* people use a feed-reader, anyway, so they’re not really loading my site as it is. 
• Our air conditioner is on the fritz.  Some days it works, and others NOT AT ALL.  Apparently I am now a big spoiled baby because the heat makes me CRANKY.  Which sucks.  We have a repair guy coming tomorrow, and it’s been working *ok* (but not as efficiently as I think it could be), but when you buy something new, you don’t expect it to break barely a year after you’ve bought it, you know?
• Also broken:  My washing machine.  Although not unusable, it makes a really loud squeaking noise… some times.  I originally thought that I had destroyed it by using too much soap, but the squeaking comes and goes, and happens when the drum is pushed on (we have a front-loader).  So… I’m using it until the it squeaks all the time and then we’ll have the repair guy out to look at it.  I don’t want to use it into the ground (and then buy a snookem new one)… or do I?  I have my eye on the LG fancypants one.  But in white, because we’re not replacing our perfectly good dryer.
• We’re on week 4 of our homeschooling, and thing seem to be going ok.  How do I judge it?  I mean, Kitten doesn’t learn and use her vocabulary word every week (seriously, how do you work “vines” into every day conversation, other than “Hey kid, go get me a glass of Wild Vines Wine out of the fridge?”), nor does she always remember the sign language sign for the week (but “cat” was a hit, and she totally knows that one!!!), but she DOES remember shapes, colours, letters and numbers.  So I guess that’s better than nothing.  This week the topic is eyes and the vocab word is “iris”, so I try to talk about “mommy’s iris’ are blue, auntie’s iris’ are brown” after explaining what an iris is (the coloured part of your eye).  We try to review our learning poster every day to help with retention, but I don’t know if what I’m doing is “right”, you know?  Regardless, it helps me to interact with her a little more and helps me to plan pointed activities, rather that just letting her play independantly all day long. 
• We had AWFUL ammonia stink in our diapers.  Probably a mixture of detergent and mineral build-up.  I finally found some RLR locally (Sobeys!  WOOT!), so I have officially stripped all of Kitten’s diapers and they are so soft and sweet smelling now.  Hopefully I won’t have to worry about that again any time soon.  However, I’ve decided to strip our microfiber because it’s all so dingy and gets smelly fast, so there must be yuck in there still.  First I have to catch up on some regular laundry.  I am so tired of doing laundry.  ::sigh::
• I haven’t talked about Jamie Oliver in a long time (I know, what’s wrong with me?), but I recently bought his new book “Jamie’s Food Revolution”.  It’s a recipe book where the whole idea is to learn a handful of simple but tasty recipes and to teach them to your friends.  Then your friends teach them to their friends, and so on.  That way, everyone’s learning how to cook a few great meals and eating less take-out, which is ALWAYS a good thing.  Now, some people don’t need cooking lessons (I’m looking at you, Hanna), but for the rest of us who get stuck in the same rut all the time (spagetti, pancakes, KD, that was typical around here!) it’s great to be able to plan out a week of exciting different foods.  I especially love his curries section (mmm!  Curry!) and stir frys.  If you have a chance to even just peek at the book, it’s SO PRETTY!  I think I pet it for like, four days, before I started to cook out of it. 
• I’ve started using the Oil Cleansing Method for facial care.   I still get terrible acne and there doesn’t seem to be anything that is helping it.  Plus, I am STILL struggling to find a good moistuizer.  So, the premise of this method is that you mix castor oil (plant based, aparently magical) with cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil and rub it into your skin.  Then you use a very hot, wet cloth and hold it over your face, then gently swoop the oil off, rinsing the cloth a lot.  I used it last night at the sink and this morning in the shower.  The sink method works better, because you’re not sweating in the shower (or is that only me?).  I liked how smooth my face felt after, and especially how that always dry and flaky patch between my eyebrows was just normal skin (although I could still see my angry elevens).  I don’t really need to use a moisturizer after doing this, and I liked that part best of all! :)  I’ll let you know how it all continues, especially during the hormonal acne I get during my period! 

Anywhoodle.  I think I’m going to go knit - I have one more skirtie custom to do and then I have a break to knit my own things.  I have oh-so-many things to knit.  Like a tank top for myself, a halter dress for Kitten, my winter cowl, a church shawl for myself… Lots of things.

June 16th, 2009 by Kait | 2 Comments »

A few things that I wanted to share…

Another pair of shorts!  Not for Kitten, for another baby.

Here’s a picture of Kitten in her “reading glasses”. She really is obsessed with sunglasses, and we kind of let her have them when she wants. She actually put these ones on herself, which is fairly impressive seeing as how she didn’t lose an eye or anything.

Last Tuesday, we bought Kitten a doll - her first “official” doll, as all the others have been make from fabric only. She’s VERY excited about this and plays with her non-stop. For the first few days we really had to fight with her to get her to do anything OTHER than play with the doll (Buffy, as she has been named)… like eat or go to bed. It’s been a subject of rue for me since we bought it. That, and I totally regret getting the little “accessories” pack. It had a lot of the same stuff in it, plus a lot of little pretend bottles that we don’t use in the house (talcum powder, baby oil, and diaper rash cream) so most of it I’ve put away. The good thing was that it came with two extra diapers (one was a disposable, which has already been torn to shreds - who things these are a good idea for kids? Maybe other kids are better with them, but dude. What a waste. The other was a cloth one, so whatever) and those bottles/sippy cups that have the liquid that disappears when you tip them. I wish I could have bought those things separate, but the bottles they had in single packs weren’t the ones that had the liquid that moved. Anyway, Buffy gets lots of love around here, and Kitten will talk about “baby Buffy” quite often.

So in order to help corral all the baby stuff that came with Buffy, I brought down this fabric basket from Kitten’s room. I stuffed all the baby paraphernalia in there so Kitten would know where it went. Rather than take my ever so helpful clue, she pulled it all out of the basket and did this:

She truly is Rob’s daughter (ha ha, just kidding honey! Kind of!)…

May 22nd, 2009 by Kait | 4 Comments »

I mentioned earlier that we picked up some fish from the Farmers Market on the weekend.  I was dreaming of fish sticks, so I decided to use my Mahi Mahi steak to indulge my craving.  I’m not sure if this was a sacriligeous thing to do with a nice cut of fish, but boy howdy were they good! 

In order to get our yummy dinner, this is what I did:

1.  Cut fish steak into strips, about half an inch wide, or a little wider if you’re worried about the fish falling apart when it cooks (a few of our pieces did).

2.  Dip the fish strips into egg, then into the breading (I used 1/4 cup whole wheat flour, 1/4 cup of coconut and 1 tbsp of seafood rub - you can use any spice mix that you think would be tasty.  The coconut added a nice exotic flavour to the fish sticks, I was really surprised at how good they were).

3.  Fry them in about 1.5″ of oil (which every kind you prefer, but I used canola because olive oil is too expensive to put into a pan that way.  If you’re really into the “Real Food” business, you’d use some sort of animal fat for this.  I’m not sure which fat would be best).  Scoop them out and store them on a rack over a plate or a cookie sheet (this lets the excess oil drip off).

4. I was going to bake up some homemade fries but decided that I already had hot oil in my pan, why not get the maximum amount of milage out of it? After cutting up your potatoes into smallish strips, throw handfulls of them in the oil (VERY CAREFULLY!). Swish around with your tongs and then scoop them out when they are golden.

5. Cut up some veggies to go with. We did carrot sticks, because if we were going to have a theme (sticks of food!) we were going to do it all the way. Wouldn’t you know? This is the only form in which Kitten will eat carrots (a great surprise to us all - carrots were an anathema to her previous to this dinner).

We did use our homemade ketchup here. It was tasty, but I will tell you that it doesn’t taste like Heinz. When I made it, tomatoes weren’t in season, so they didn’t taste as good as they could have, and red wine vinegar is a very strong flavour, so it kind of takes over. It’s still good… but a lot more tart than your typical store-bought stuff. I think next time I will make it in the peak of tomato season, and I will use Jamie Oliver’s recipe instead (which is much more complex, btw).

6. EAT DINNER! Kitten sure did. This is the first time that she’s ever ACTUALLY finished her supper. Usually she leaves a bit, but she totally cleaned her plate! It was amazing. Her plate (in the picture) is the small one.

Final thoughts:

I think before I make this again I am going to buy a pair of silicone tipped tongs. I was so worried about my metal tongs scratching my pan that it gave me a bit of a heart attach each time I had to scoop stuff out of the pans. I think it would also be really nice to have something that cuts up fries for me, but what are the chances of that happening? I wouldn’t want to store a large machine to cut them up, so chances are I’ll just continue to chop up my potatoes.

Cost (none of this was organic, FYI):
$3 - Mahi Mahi (it was on sale)
$0.50 - Flour, coconut, spice rub
$1 - Potatoes (we buy a smallish bag, so this might be less for you)
$2 - Oil
$0.80 - Carrots

Total cost: $6.30 - So tasty and WAY cheaper than buying it all prepackaged!

May 21st, 2009 by Kait | No Comments »