Wow. When I skip a few days or a week of blogging for real life, I tend to totally ignore it and carry on like it never happened, bu I’ve been absent for two whole weeks. It’s not life, it’s Christmas! I’ve been very dedicated to staying on task with my to do this year and it’s been going well, but I’m knitting every night, not blogging. So here I am, on track for my favorite holiday ever and back on track for blogging as well.

When I sat down to write this I was afraid that I was a week behind for Courtney’s December challenge – thankfully, I am right on time for the first in the series! The one thing she mentioned to do last week was light an extra large candle everyday and to make a note on the calendar that says ‘I Peter 5:7 Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you.’ This passage has actually helped me quite a bit over the past couple of years so it’s familiar to me! As for the candle, I mentioned a few weeks ago that after the Making Your Home a Haven challenge was over, I kept on lighting my candle. I honestly feel that it has changed my attitude because I’m in the kitchen or in areas off the kitchen so much of the day and night that it catches my eye all the time, and at this point even when it’s not lit I still stop and take a moment.

The challenge for this week is to schedule a bubble bath. I’m not a bath sort of gal, but I will schedule an extra long pamper session for myself. My dear friend Lindsay, who I met in kindergarten and my still fairly new friend Jade who I met in January, always look their best and have really encouraged me to make the time to make that a priority if that’s important to me – and it really, really is. So far, so good. It is time consuming though, especially with my lifestyle (read: changing diapers, doing dishes, scrubbing corners, baking, etc) so time has to be taken every night to fix or change nail polish, take off make up, moisturize like you’d never think is necessary (‘your skin is thirsty May!’) and all that stuff. I have found that forcing myself to make time to ‘get pretty’ as I playfully call it, has helped me center myself too! I’m not really in that bathroom focusing on taking off my eyeliner or sugar scrubbing my knees and elbows – because really, what is there to think about? I’m in there letting my mind wander, thinking about the sort of things I’d never allow myself time to think about otherwise. You all know I’m a pretty thankful person as it is, but as I was changing my nail polish a few days ago, I thought about how amazing it is that I get to wake up everyday here in Canada and not in Haiti or Burma or somewhere I have never heard of that has equally scary situations going on. I think about how amazing it is that we have the cash for me to even have this ridiculous collection of nail polish or that I can somehow get away with wearing plastic jewelry at 30. I think about my babies and how none of them are technically babies at all anymore – about how healthy they all are!! Most of all though, I think about my husband and our marriage and I sigh. Not only are we still friends, but ever since we moved to the woods he’s gone above and beyond to make me fee happy here because he knows how much I miss Toronto.

Anyhoo, the second part of this challenge is to read about the birth of Jesus. You know, the whole reason December is a big deal in the first place? 😉 Matthew 1, 2 and Luke 1,2 are on my list to read and re-read this week. I am feeling much more churchy than usual, and I don’t know if it’s because of Christmas or if it’s just that He is using this time of year to make my heart feel three sizes too big for my chest, but it does. It really, really does.

*I just read this post over at Inspired to Action and stopped in my tracks because it’s exactly why I get up so early every morning for alone time. Some days I actually get all the way out of bed and read my Bible with a coffee. Some days I just read in bed, and some days I just lay there and think and steal an extra snuggle with my husband – always thankful for this life.*

In this post, I am participating in Making Your Home a Haven, and Marriage Mondays.

I skipped a Marriage Monday post last week and there was so much I wanted to say about the challenge being over and what I’ll be doing in the coming weeks! I am very happy to read recently on Courtney’s blog that she has a December challenge coming up to remind us to stay close to the true meaning of Christmas during that incredibly busy time!

Lighting my kitchen candle every morning has reminded me to start each day with kindness and saying a little prayer for peace every time I saw it burning throughout the day has kept me focused. I keep burning my candle and I will get a new one when this one is gone and will continue this practice. It’s been a quick and simple reminder to be kind to those around me and to make my home the haven I have always aimed for it to be.

I’m looking forward to the December challenge because it’s coming at a time when I have decided to make myself sleep 7 or 8 hours a night. I usually get about 5 hours, sometimes 4 and last week I was going on about 3 hours a night – every night. Why do I do this to myself? I have a long history of wanting to do so much that I fill my plate till it’s overflowing and there is no time for sleep. Many of my friends could argue that I manage my time well, but just like the cute girl in a size 5 dress, I think I can do so much better. 😉

Yesterday, I plunked down and made a schedule of all the things that need to get done for my sister’s birthday weekend here in the woods, and whatever I couldn’t fit in the schedule (that obviously included my regular life stuff), I dropped. I still want to try those things (like making croissants from scratch) but I can do that for next month’s girl’s weekend. Usually, I’d just cram those other things into the wee hours of the morning, but I am refusing to let myself get stressed out by things that should be fun. So now I know what I’m going to do for her birthday weekend, I know when I’m going to do it all and I know that there is time to get it done without losing my head. And last night? I got 7 hours of sleep AND I got the garbage out on time this morning!

Plus, we just moved from the biggest, busiest city in the country to a cute house in cottage country so shouldn’t my life be more laid back? Which also goes back to the Making Your Home a Haven challenge, a laid back house is always a more inviting house. I have always been a pretty laid back parent – with very clear lines drawn in the sand, but I need to learn to be a lot more laid back with myself. I have found that the flurry of Christmas knitting has actually helped me a lot in this, and actually the last time I felt nice and laid back was when I was at the end of my pregnancy with Wee One #3, and my husband was terrified that I was going to go into labor early like I had with our first two kids, so I was stuck in the house. So I knitted for three months – and it was wonderful!

It slows me down because knitting isn’t something you can rush! You can get faster over time (we call my sister a ‘turbo knitter’) but it is a process that just takes as long as it takes and there isn’t much you can do about it. So now, I get my chores done early, usually before the kids have even gotten on the school bus in the morning, get in a blog post, get in a workout and then off to the living room I go with the littlest one to watch Christmas shows and knit!

Tomorrow I’m posting about Snickerdoodle cupcakes and cookies!

This is part nine of my Window Shopping Wednesday series, this time focused on a single store, Little One Books. I’m featuring this store because their selection is unlike any other in that all their books are handpicked by the couple that created it! They have over 700 books, music and videos and they have all been chosen based on content and readability. Each book even has a ‘why we chose this book’ write up explaining in great detail what made this book stand out.

Before I go any further, I want to mention that the book I was sent was packaged well and in perfect condition! I am mentioning it because all too often I’ll order something with a set of expectations because it’s from a well known company and when it arrives it’s falling apart. Very well done on that front, Little One Books!

The book I requested when I was given the option? Where the Wild Things Are, of course! I have loved this book since I was first read it as a child by my parents, who had read it to their Godchildren before I was even born! Timeless and fun!

They have also put together bundles of themed books, music and videos! From Quiet Time to Let’s Sing and Dance, they’ve got a nice selection and they are well matched up!

Want a $25 gift certificate to Little One Books? Here are all the ways you can enter this giveaway – just be sure to comment here and let me know what you did to enter!

1. Head over to Little One Books and sign up for their newsletter. (1 entry)

2. While you’re there, have a look around and let me know in the comments which book you’d pick if you win. (1 entry)

3. Head over to Little One Books on Facebook and become a fan. (1 entry)

4. Follow Little One Books on Twitter. (1 entry)

5. Tweet that you’ve entered this giveaway! Mention me (@soverydomestic) and Little One Books (@littleonebooks). (1 entry)

Remember, you don’t have to do all five things to enter, each one counts as it’s own entry!

This giveaway will run for two weeks, closes November 17, when a winner will be chosen by random.org. I will email the winner immediately and they’ll have 48 hours to claim the prize – if the winner does not claim their prize within 48 house, we’ll use random.org to choose another winner. Good luck!

In this post, I’m participating in Tempt My Tummy Tuesday, Tuesday Night Supper Club, Hearth ‘n Soul, Tuesdays at the Table and Delicious Dishes at It’s a Blog Party

We were really feeling the Halloweeny vibe this year, but wee one #2 marches to the beat of her own drummer. So in the midst of the black and orange explosion of last week, she chose to go off the rails and bake something not even remotely seasonal. That’s ok, she’s 4 – as long as she’s actually creating edible food in the kitchen who cares if it’s on theme or not right? Right!

The Halloweeny food does not need recipes, as I am sure you make these on your own already and if you don’t there are about eleventy billion recipes online. I did my best to make Halloween week as silly and as fun as possible for the kids – of course it got me in the spirit too. Every day, we had at least one themed treat or meal, and towards the end of the week the whole day was themed! Not that I have ever been known to get carried away. Ahem.

(mmmm garlic), oregano, a little thyme and a teeny bit of Miss Diana sauce for chicken. I know that doesn’t sound amazing, but trust me, it is.

We were having a really laid back day and I asked wee one #2 if she felt like baking something on her own (under supervision, natch) and without even thinking about it she announced she wanted to make granola bars!

They are painfully easy. All I did was turn the oven on, measure the ingredients into bowls, put the dish into the oven and then later take it out. She did the rest.

Painfully Easy Granola Bars

First she piled her dry ingredients into the Kitchen Aid and gave it a whirl. My mother didn’t get a Kitchen Aid till I was 14, so it’s hilarious to see my not quite 5 year old daughter working the kitchen power tools!

Then she literally dumped all the wet ingredients on top and gave it another whirl. It worked. If I had made them, I likely would have mixed all the wet ingredients together first and then added that to the dry, but what do I know?! 😉

She then greased a brownie pan with Becel and a pastry brush before unhooking the bowl from the stand and dumping the entire contents into the pan. She smoothed it out and instructed me to pop it in the oven. And so I did – then 20 minutes later I took it out again.

It was hard to hold everyone back while the pan cooled enough for me to cut them into bars. Mmmm. The kids brought them to school the next day! Yes, I know there are peanuts in them and I said they took them to school. Believe it or not, their school only has 41 kids in it and no peanut allergies so they are a peanut friendly school.

In this post, I am participating in Making Your Home a Haven, and Marriage Mondays.

I am so excited to get to this week’s challenge I want to breeze through last week, but I wont. 😛

So last week was about tenderness, and the suggestion was a serious pillow fight in the living room. We had a pillow fight, but in the interest of not breaking our TV, we had the pillow fight in the girls’ room – home to many pillow fights already! I gave back rubs to everyone and they all got into it and they were all giving back rubs to each other! Wee one #3 is in the ‘mimicking everything everyone does’ stage and was really, really into it. It was both heart warming and hilarious. I said last week that I don’t know how long the tenderness will last with the kids as they grow up, especially my son! You never know what the future holds, so for now I’ll take as many snuggled as he’ll give me!

This week’s challenge is to cook things that smell good. As anyone who has ever read my blog knows – I’ve got this locked down. I have considered cooking and baking to be art since I was a kid and first decorated cakes with my Mother and sugar cookies with my Granny. I cook every meal from scratch with the exception of lunch for the kids when they want something ‘fast and boring’. Even breakfast is pancakes or french toast or oatmeal (you know, the kind you actually cook in a pot and not the instant ‘just add boiling water’ kind).

Sometimes I fall in love with a recipe that uses store bought pre-made stuff, I’ll take it a step further (most of the time) and make as much of it from scratch as I can. It sounds a little crazy but I swear it’s never as much work as you think and the house smells so so so good!

These mummie hot dogs are a great example! The recipe I first saw used refrigerated crescent roll dough and hot dogs. While I am not above making my own sausages I do use regular hot dogs, but never pre-fab dough! So I took an extra 10 minutes (literally) and made some pizza dough to wrap around our hot dogs! 10-15 minutes in the oven at 350 and they were done. Even if you do use the pre made dough, the whole house will smell a lot yummier than it would if you just cook up some hot dogs and pop them in buns.

My kids are 10, 4 and 20 months and already I know they all associate me with the kitchen and yummy smells. I even started sneaking veggies into their treats a couple of years ago and no one noticed the chick peas in the chocolate chip cookies or the black beans in the brownies (thanks Gilly!!)

These candy corn cupcakes were made with apple sauce instead of oil and no one even notices!

I made these cakeballs as Halloween treats for the kids classmates and they are made using mashed bananas instead of oil. The orange pumpkin though, he’s 100% orange candy melt, no nutrition there. 😉

Of course there is a spiritual side to this too. The whole point of this challenge series is to make our homes more welcoming and inviting and full of love for our families. This only happens in the kitchen if you’re focusing on your family and your positive intentions while you’re in the cooking and baking. Have you ever seen an overstressed woman preparing a serious supper? It smells wonderful, but the moment a little one tries to cross the threshold into the kitchen, mama freaks out and wants the kids out of her way. It’s not about that, it’s not just the smell. It’s about the feeling of togetherness and warmth we’re creating, and coming from someone who is literally in the kitchen most of the day, I can say with certainty that sometimes it is a little stressful. But just like with everything else in life, when it gets too much for me, I give it up to God and feel a lot calmer. A kitchen that smells amazing is spoiled by a grouchy cook!

I am thankful that today’s post is food-focused so I can post about some of the fun treats I made and didn’t have a chance to post on Thursday and Friday. I’ll sneak in two more pics for this post! Chocolate coated and candy covered mini marshmallows!

There will be a handful of Halloween treats left that I’ll save for another foodie post tomorrow. 🙂

I originally saw these little cuties on Bakerella, of course. I’m a little obsessed, can you tell? Then, just as with everything else that happens on the internet, they started popping up everywhere. I neeeeded to make these. This week has been a blur of black and orange, a frenzy of Halloween activity that I have loved every moment of! I will post some of the Halloween treats I’ve made this week tomorrow (along with my entry for the Craftster Fall Cooking Challenge). So with all the ghoulish cooking and baking going on around here, cute little brownie burgers were a nice change of pace in the kitchen. I made an extra tray and let the kids have at it with way more buttercream frosting than any three children should have access to. 😉

It’s pretty straightforward, and I’m including recipes! I made my standard vanilla cake in a mini cupcake pan for the buns, then I cut the tops off! Don’t overfill the cups too much because you don’t want too much of a muffin top! I then made classic buttercream and tinted it red for ketchup, green for lettuce, yellow for mustard and left some white for onions. Get creative with it! If you typically put hot peppers on your burgers, tint some orange too!

Standard Vanilla Cake – from Elliot Bakes a Cake

Separate the eggs into two small bowls. Mix the flour, baking powder and salt in a large bowl.

Cream the butter, add the sugar. Stir until smooth. Beat the egg yolks and add them to the butter and sugar. Add the milk and vanilla next and stir.

Then add the flour mix, a little at a time. Mix till smooth. Beat the egg whites till stiff peaks form, then fold into the batter.

If you’re using it for these mini cupcakes, assume they’ll be fast, like 15 minutes or less. If you’re making bigger cupcakes or a cake, add more time.

The brownies were my standard cocoa brownies (found here with chocolate chips added to them). I found that since they are so moist, I had to pop them in the freezer for a bit for them to be easier to cut – I still have yet to pick up a small circle cutter so I used a shot glass.

The sugar cookies here are the same I made last month for the Daring Baker challenge. So simple and so fast!!

Basic Sugar Cookies

1/2 cup + 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, at room temperature
3 cups + 3 tablespoons all purpose flour
1 cup caster sugar
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 tsp vanilla extract

Cream butter, sugar and vanilla. DO NOT OVERMIX. Beat in egg till well combined and not a second longer. 😛

Add flour and mix till a sticky dough forms. Kneed into a ball and divide into 2 or 3 balls. Roll out each ball between two sheets of parchment paper for about half an hour. Preheat to 350, then take it out, peel off the first layer or parchment paper and slice it into strips like french fries!

These babies cook fast, especially if you made thin fries! Check on them after 5 minutes but they may take up to 8 or 10 minutes.

And now, let’s sidebar into kiddie art, shall we?

Later that afternoon, wee one #2 wanted to into the new finger paints my husband picked up, and with wee one #3 sleeping, away we went!

This first one was made with blow painting, which is just plopping a bit on watery paint on the paper and blowing it around with a straw to make different shapes. We added eyes because she told me it’s a friendly monster.

Then we did some thumbprint snowmen on the left and handprint flowers on the right. The hand prints were the most fun because they were the messiest, of course!!

In this post, I am participating in Making Your Home a Haven, and Marriage Mondays.

I am love, love, loving this challenge series! It occurred to me today that I will likely be begging Courtney to start another one when this one winds down! <3

So with my candle going and with softer music playing in the house (most of the time), I kept my mindfulness of being peaceful and kind to everyone in my home. Recapping last week, I tried to attack the mental clutter. Knitting, baking and cooking have helped a lot with that, as weird as that may sound because I have to focus my attention to the stitches or the ingredients and I can’t let my mind wander. While this is a decent quick fix it does not get to the root of the issue, so that every time I am not knitting or playing in the kitchen I am horribly distracted by hundreds of tiny thoughts that add up to a whole lot of mental clutter. So all week now, when I’ve noticed that it’s creeping in – these completely irrelevant thoughts, I’ve just turned them over to God and refused to make a big deal out of it. That’s not said lightly and yes it is difficult, but this week has been easier since I’ve been shelfing all the internal chatter. So far, so good.

As for the clutter in the house, we’ve been over this. I am very thankful to say there isn’t any, but of course that’s because I clean every day and not everyone has time for that. I wasn’t always this neat and I can honestly say that the overall feeling in a home when everything is put in it’s place is so much calmer and laid back than when there are piles everywhere and everyone is running late and where is that permission slip?!.

This week now we turn our attention to physical tenderness in our quests to make our homes havens for our families. This is an important but sometimes neglected part of being a close family to a lot of people. We’re big on snuggled in our family, but I can sense that it gets harder to keep that up the older they get. My oldest is 10, and he’s always got a hug for me when he gets off the bus after school or when he’s on his way to bed – but will it be like that when he’s 15? I have my doubts lol. For now though, we generally watch movies together on Friday nights and sunggle up under a huge blanket on the big couch in the living room. We also do a whole lot of blanket forts, and that usually results in some close together time too.

I will be mindful of it though, and encourage a serious pillowfest in the living room. I give back rubs to my littlest and to my husband. This week I will be sure to also give some to wee ones #1 and #2, and ask them how they feel about this challenge. I always move the pillar candle form the kitchen counter to the table for supper and they have all seemed to enjoy that. When I was a kid we ate a formal supper in the dining room every night, with candles, linen placemats and napkins – the whole nine. My mother is a very classy lady, one day I’ll get there!

Canadian Thanksgiving has already come and gone, but I know that American friends still have about a month to pull together some cute treats! As you are painfully aware by now, I adore cute food. I mean, I like snazzy grown up food as well, but I have a really soft spot for small, cute food (just wait till you see what I made for my birthday party last week)! I had seen these in various forms all over the place. But these ones are my hands down fave and I more or less used these as my guide.

First off, use the Double Stuff Oreos Cookies and Cups pulled apart regular Oreos and mashed them together to create ‘Redneck Double Stuff’ (best name ever), so it’s possible to make them without, but to make enough for a classroom or large group, I’d imagine you’d need twice as many.

The first few steps are very, very simple. Poke 5 pieces of candy corn in a semi-circle around the top of the Oreo for feathers, then break pretzel sticks in half (technically, you need them to be a little less than half, but you can pawn the middles off on your kids – ha), and poke them in the bottom, like little turkey legs.

There are about a zillion ways to make the head. I have seen chocolate covered mini marshmallows, mini peanut butter cups, Malteasers, Skor balls (and of those chocolate bar in ball form would work). Me? I used brown royal icing, because I had a bunch left over and hate to waste. Depending on what you used as a head, the eyes and nose can be so many different things as well! I used more royal icing, white for the eyes of course and orange for the beak. I painstakingly put on green and blue sprinkles with tweezers to make the pupils. They added serious personality!

It has been said before, but I’ll say it again – cute food is so much cuter on a stick!

Naturally I had to wrap them for transport to school, and I’m not a part of the whole ‘getting to school’ process now that we live in the woods. So I used candy bags and orange ribbon for the kids to cart them off in shoe boxes on the school bus!

As cute as these Oreo turkeys were, they were not exactly the sort of thing to send for the teachers, but I still wanted their treats to be cute because while everyone knows that I’m doing most of the work, wee one #1 is an excellent measure-er and wee one #2 is a great dumper-inner. So the treats are coming from the kids too! I decided on these pumpkins because they’re festive for Thanksgiving, fall, and October all at once and they’re cute but not so cute they’re clearly meant for children.

I packed the cookies in parchment paper, tied them with orange curling ribbon and tucked them in the kids shoe boxes with their turkeys.

They were very excited to be bringing their treats to school. It’s the first holiday of the school year at a new school so I was a little nervous but everyone loved them!

The kids were feeling the Halloween spirit when they got home from school, and set to work on making little Halloween cards to send to their friends back in Toronto. I jumped on the wagon and made a bunch for my friends too and let the kids decorate them! That’s a whole other post!

In this post, I am participating in Making Your Home a Haven, and Marriage Mondays.

So far in this challenge, we’ve started a routine of lighting a large candle every day in the hub of our home to help us to be mindful of creating a peaceful environment and to say a little prayer for peace when we see it. We’ve started listening to softer music in our homes to set the mood to our homes as welcoming and inviting. I have honestly noticed a difference – and our house is usually really laid back and approachable as it is.

This week’s challenge is to clean up the clutter. I know I mentioned this already recently, but when we moved last month, we eliminated all of our clutter. No really. However, there are three areas that need to be better organized. My accessories collection (I have an unhealthy obsession with sparkly, clinking and/or plastic jewelry and headbands), my craft supplies (this is way more under control that my headbands lol) and my husband’s office.

Spiritually though we are to be looking an our internal clutter. I was going to run around my house and show off my tidy bookshelves and my organized laundry room and pantry with all the labels facing out in neat rows like the grocery store – but that’s not my struggle. I can keep my home free from clutter – I have a serious issue with internal clutter. That’s what I have to work on this week.

When I’m putting wee one #3 down for a nap, and I’m sitting there knitting away, quietly at peace with myself, the internal clutter starts. I start thinking I should have done my fitness DVD twice that day because I had time and I was just lazy, or that I should move yardwork day from Friday afternoon to Saturday afternoon so the kids can be playing out there while I’m working. Sometimes, it’s even other people’s clutter, like my husband’s cousin’s relationship issues or problems my friends are having in their jobs or marriages re-sorting to do lists in my head that are actually written down somewhere else. It’s mental clutter because it doesn’t matter if I did my fitness DVD once or twice once it’s done. If I’m thinking of switching yardwork days I should just do it and be done with it, it doesn’t require hours of mulling over. Neither, of course, do problems other people are going through! Seems like a little issue till I realize that I haven’t accomplished much in an afternoon because I’ve been fretting over my sister’s relationship issues or my best friend’s fight with her boss. It’s not that I shouldn’t ever think of these things, it’s that I should not let them rattle around in my head when I should be focusing on what I’m doing, being in the moment, to stop myself from snapping at those around me – those whom I love the best simply because I’m distracted and not giving my full attention. Does anyone else have this problem?!

So that’s what my focus will be this week, cleaning out the mental clutter and fighting to stay present.

That’s right people, I’m knitting again. And not just picking up a sad sock from last fall and doing a few rows, I am finally back to my ‘knit a pair of socks in a little over a week while baking from scratch and keeping a clean house’ self. Phew. My poor husband lost his June Clever there for a while and it must have been a little scary. Trust me, I was more nervous than he’ll ever be and maybe one day I’ll post about that. For now, however, the domestic goddess is back at it. Let’s talk about socks, shall we?

Wee one #2 started senior kindergarten this year and her teacher is bananas. Bananas in the same way that I am bananas, so I’m really looking forward to this year at school. I really wanted to make her something extra sweet for Christmas, and as any knitter will tell you I’m already behind when it comes to Christmas knitting. I have a queue on Ravelry as long as my leg (maybe longer actually), and this pattern, Socks of Kindness struck me as something she’d really like. Simple but cute.

It’s a 12 row pattern repeat, and really knits up quickly. I mentioned on Ravelry already that it’s a great pattern for getting your knitting mojo back if you lose it because it’s simple enough to knit up without thinking too much, but it’s got some substance to it so it’s not a horribly boring knit. This is also the first time I managed a short row heel! It was easier than I thought it’d be, after a few failed attempts last year it worked this time for some reason. I like the look of this heel better, though it’s less ‘fun’ to knit than the heel flap I usually knit.

I am aware that it is a little nutty to be knitting socks for my kid’s teacher (teachers actually, I’m knitting up a pair for wee one #1’s teacher too…) but I want them to know that I appreciate the one on one teaching that comes from being in this tiny town. So much one on one time also means they’ll get to know my kids in ways that none of their former teachers in Toronto ever could and that deserves something a little extra, right? Oh, so glad you agree! 😛

I just cast on for the Shifting Sands scarf last night and I had to rip it back – twice. I have no idea why, but I always seem to forget how to cable when I start a new cabling project. I always realize after I’ve knitted a couple of rows and it looks off. One day, I’ll get it on the first row! So, not much progress, but I’ve got one Christmas gift off my list and I’m starting on another.

This afternoon, I’m cooking up my Daring Cook challenge and some treats for my birthday weekend this weekend. I killed my oven on Thanksgiving (sooooo lucky that it was *after* I was done all my baking), so I’m doing stove top, no bake and bread machine baking. That’s right, in the bread machine!

My actual birthday is next weekend, but my ladies (and Andrew) are coming up tomorrow to help me celebrate and I could not possibly be more excited. I’m Greek, I show both love and excitement with food. Get ready!!