I need an intervention.....

I just can't get enough of these:

Mmmmmm another reason I love summer!

FO: Christine's Stay-On Baby Booties

Finally, a FO to show you. These were made for my friend Michelle who recently had her third baby girl - Shelvy Elizabeth. She's a gorgeous baby too, tons of platinum blond hair. She's also lucky baby girl because she has two very special older sisters - Charley and Soleil.


Here are the specs:

Pattern: Christine's Stay On Baby Booties
Yarn: Lorna's Laces Shepherd Sock in Mixed Berry
Needles: 2.75mm dpn's

These are the most adorable booties I have ever seen. They are sooooo tiny - newborn size. They took a little longer than I thought they would, but still were done in only a few days. I started them out on 2.5mm, but decided to rip back and start over on larger needles in an attempt to make them a bit bigger. I was going to do i-cord ties, but they were taking sooooo long and I needed to finish them so I could mail them off, so I decided to do a crochet chain instead. I love them. These are definately going to be my go-to booties from now on. And apparently they really do stay on! This is a great project for using up leftover sock yarn. This yarn is leftover from my very first (and only so far!) pair of socks.

I have a few friends from work who will be popping in August, so I'm gonna whip off a few more pairs of these...I may try a dk weight yarn next and see how big they get following the same pattern. Since neither of my friends knows the sex of their babies I'll need to use something neutral...I have some red Brown Sheep Cotton Fleece left over from Red Gable. Can boys wear red booties?

ETA: My mom had mentioned that these looked so small in my hands, I just wanted to mention that those are actually my 7 year olds hands!
Also edited to fix the link!

Our House

So most of the major reno's are done, we are waiting for an engineer report to come back, though, before we list the townhouse for sale. I didn't take any actual pics from before we started, just this one which was just after we ripped up the carpet and tore off the baseboards.

Before:

After:

Here is a close up of the floors that Aidan installed. It is a 12mm laminate floor called "American Black Walnut." I love them, they feel solid under my feet and are durable...two kids, a hockey stick, and a ball = no scratches!!! The color is pretty close, but it is a little darker in real life.

Living Room:

Hallway: you can notice the new baseboards that Aidan created from scratch. He also did new door casings with the same character style mouldings on the top that he did in Maeghan's room.

Dining Room: (ugly old table!)

We painted then entire basement, main floor, both stairwells and the upper level hallway. Owen's room was painted a light yellow, he also recieved new mouldings and a new tiled window seat just like we did in Maeghan's room. We also changed all the hardware (door knobs and closet knobs from the original brass to a new brushed nickel. Everything is very neutral and clean. There are just a few odds and ends left, hopefully they don't linger for too long, it'll be nice to not have to worry about any of it anymore!

Honestly? I may not want to leave...we should have done all of this when we first moved in 4 years ago!!!

Summer Has Begun!

Today is the second day of my "summer vacation". I've moved into the part-time line that I will be working all summer. I'll be home with the kids M-F, and then in to work on Sat/Sun. I'm in heavan. Well, so far anyways! We'll see what happens when the kids are completely sick of each other, and me, and it is 35 degrees outside. Hopefully we'll all still be friends at the end of August!

The house reno's are almost complete. I'll try to post some pictures soon. My knitting completely stalled while we were renovating, but I finally was able to pick it up again last night. This is the back of the Central Park Hoodie, I've already completed the left front. I'm sure I'll be working on this off and on throughout the summer while doing other projects in between, I'm hoping to have it done by September.


Here Maeghan demonstrates what the beginning of summer really means.....time to get DIRTY!!! She didn't even know she looked like this when she came inside the other night. She was having such a good time making dirt pies with her friends.

Yesterday we brought out the swimming pool, I think that it is hilarious that the kids insisted on wearing their goggles for it.

I love summer!