Last day of January already?!

Hello everyone! I hope you're all having a good weekend. Mine is moving along just fine. Too fast, though. Don't they always? We were planning on going out to see a movie tonight, but Old Man Winter thought otherwise. We got some snow here, and since they don't deal well with snow in this country, we decided it was better to just play it safe and stay in. Yay for Pajama Sundays!! (We do this so often we've named it! Isn't that pathetic?)

Since I found myself with some free time, I thought I'd try a new recipe I've been meaning to have a go at. It's Brownie Cupcakes by Martha Stewart (she gives a lot of inspiration with her recipes and crafts!).

Don't they look deelish??

She put chocolate frosting on hers, but I tried mine with peanut butter frosting. They turned out fantastic! The frosting does not measure up to Grammie's chocolate-peanut butter frosting, but that's ok. Nothing ever will live up to that!

And in an effort to keep my blog from being way too girly, here's some techie stuff. Have you SEEN the latest Apple gizmo? The iPad? Go check it out here. At first I was thinking "oh, it's just a giant iTouch" and "who would really need this thing?"  But I kept thinking about it (which is probably what Apple had planned all along!), and realized that *I* could use this thing! The portability of it. All the cool apps, not to mention the big standards (email, photos, music). And if I had some disposable income, I probably would be out buying one right now. What a fun toy that would be to play with!

Enjoy the rest of your weekend! I'll talk to you soon...

A blanket for Hannah

It's Friday afternoon here. The week went pretty fast for some reason. Maybe because I had to switch my work schedule around to accommodate the furnace repair people coming. It was time for the "yearly" checkup. I put yearly in quotes because though the card they sent in the mail with the appointment date SAID yearly, they actually come twice a year (winter and summer). Maybe they don't have a word equal to "bi-annual"? (That's twice a year, right? Not every other year?) But they've come and gone already today, so the rest of the afternoon is all mine! woohoo! What shall I do? So many choices...

I recently started to crochet. Well, not so recently. I think it was last April or May. Recent enough, though. It's turned into a real habit. I'm hooked! ha ha, terrible pun. I started off wanting to do a snowflake garland like Martha's, but I figured I should start with something a little easier first. My cousin Katie and her husband Rich were expecting a baby, so a baby blanket was my very first "big" project. Hannah Marie Vines was born November 5, 2009. The blanket has now been delivered, so I can finally post some pictures of it!

 I of course didn't measure it to give you a size.

a close up of the circles

I didn't know at the time if they were having a boy or a girl, so I picked semi-neutral colors. I didn't want to do greens and yellows, but found these great colors. They probably aren't traditional baby colors, but does that matter? The yarn is Phildar Aviso (60% cotton, 40% acrylic), an nice soft yarn that should be warm for Hannah's first few months in cold Germany! Hopefully she is enjoying it.

I have so many other crochet projects going right now too. Blankets, scarves, pillows. And I keep coming up with more ideas that I want to create. It's an addiction, that's for sure. As I finish things I'll show them to you. The project I'm working most on right now is a scarf that will be a gift, so unfortunately I can't show you pictures of it yet. Once it's been gifted, I'll show it off.

So maybe I'll fill my free afternoon with hooky goodness. I hope you have a wonderful day wherever you are!

First ever post!!!

Is it spring yet?

Hello all! Welcome to my first ever post to the blogging world. For a long time, I thought blogging wasn't for me. What do I have to say that the general public might want to hear/read? But lately I've read so many great blogs that I figured I might give it a shot. I'm sure that I won't be winning any awards, but hopefully I'll be able to use it to keep friends and family updated, since I am TERRible at keeping up with people. Just awful. My apologies to anyone ignored involved.

I'm sure there won't be daily posts (who has that kind of time, unless it's their job?), but hopefully it'll be often enough to keep you interested. Hopefully the content will be enough to keep you interested too! News of Dutch life, crafty things I'm working on, a rant here and there I'm sure, and probably a lot of "I miss America!"

See you all soon!