The Triumphant Return

My, it's been a long and crazy couple of months. 

Here's a bit of what you missed:

(OK, maybe more than a bit.)

 Our joint Christmas presents

 Christmas presents to one another

 A Christmas dinner of truffle-stuffed chicken (a.k.a. poulet demi-deuil or chicken in half-mourning)

And a statue cat watching over the feast

 A long trip home to visit the [kitty] grandparents

 A fun-filled visit with family

 And friends

 And Roman!

 The hanging of a vintage Peruvian tapestry (Thanks, D&K!)

 My recent obsession with knitting socks

 Finally finishing some Pinterest Christmas ornaments

 "The best hot chocolate in the world"...not really, but it was decent

(With my dear foodie-friend Lucy)

 A pâte à choux stealing (1-year-old!!!) kitten

 Some amazing Japanese beer, sake

And sushi

 St Louis' first (and maybe last) snow of the season

 Being social at Plush

The beginning of an epic knitted quilt

(which will be documented as it progresses over the next 20 or so years)

And more socializing for Kevin's Birthday at Diablitos

Along with the crazyness of the past few months there has been a trend of eating to much bad food. I know it comes with the territory of traveling home and celebrating the holidays but we need to get our eating habits back on track. 

To kick-start the change, we've made a plan to spend at least the next month eating a pescetarian (mostly vegetarian) diet. We already have some favorite veggie-centric meals in our repertoire but I'm planning to seek out lots of new recipes. I'll be sharing our favorites, new and old on here in case anyone else is feeling the post-holiday sluggishness as well. 

And along with this already exciting plan for the near future of the blog, we'll also be detailing our first splash into the real estate market here in Saint Louis. Eek!

A Very Pinterest Christmas

 My Mom and Grandma made a surprise visit out to see us a few weeks ago and wouldn't you know it, we put them right to work.

 Without my dad's master tie-down skills or a roof rack, we decided we felt more comfortable in my car. Yes, transported a 7' Christmas tree in my little Saab. It's really amazing how much interior room there is in such a little car. All I can say is the Swedes are great engineers!

Oh, and my Grandma is somewhere behind the tree.

After picking up the tree, and since we were already in the right part of town, we stopped of at JoAnn fabrics for lots of crafting supplies and then at Lucky Sushi House (which was Amazing! Far better than I expected from a tiny, strip-mall sushi joint) for some yummy Japanese offerings.

After the requisite grunting and groaning, and cutting of lower limbs, the tree was finally up and the resident perfectionists (Mom and Michael) took to covering the tree in our new LED, warm white tree lights.

Our first project was this beautiful tree-skirt. (Please excuse the cat hair.) We used this online tutorial and made it out of a pretty gray linen on top, silver edging (which was much more difficult to work with than I had anticipated, thank goodness for mom's amazing sewing skills) and a bottom weight red cotton for the bottom, which has the added benefit of making the whole thing reversible. (I excel at run-on sentences)

Here's a view of the back. And more cat hair.

Pepin has unfortunately decided that the tree-skirt is his new play thing. He jumps and slides all over on it. Some mornings we were finding it half-way across the living room. Thankfully that has mostly stopped now that we have some presents under the tree to weigh it down. And in the coming year I'm planning to make some ties for the back opening.

And now we come to the Pinterest section of the Christmas tree. (For those of you unfamiliar with Pinterest, I would go ahead and define is as a virtual cork board. You know all of those times when you are just perusing the internet and think to yourself "Wow, I need to remember that!), well with Pinterest, you are now very easily able to click a little button that you've installed on your web-browser, be in Explorer, Safari, Firefox, etc. that says "Pin It", put it into one your personalized catergories, and bam! It's there on your Pinterest board whenever you think to look back and remember all those things you mean to make or do.)

(Also, the site is still invite only, so if you would like an invite, leave a comment with your e-mail address and I will be happy to send one along.)

These citrus slices seemed the easiest and really turned out beautiful. I love how the light shines through if you get them positioned just right in front of a bulb.

And although this tree-topper had no tutorial attached to it, with a little hot glue, yarn and styrofoam, we were able to figure this one out (Well, Mom was able to figure it out).

There are quite a few more half-finished projects sitting on the dining room table but they will have to wait until family Christmas presents are finished. I am excited for the ornaments to come but on the whole, I am very happy with our half-finished product:

Irrational [Constant] Knitting

Michael pointed out to me last night that it has been close to a month since my last post.

Forgive me.

Life has been, in a word: hectic.

My job at the bakery has sadly been dwindling down. My boss, who is quite pregnant with her second child, opted to focus on her family and close down the bakery. I am sad to lose the job. I really enjoyed working at this bakery in particular and loved stretching my baking muscles, so to speak. But honestly, the close comes at a good time for us and next year will be BUSY (with the possible purchase of a house?). So really, I'm not all that sad. And that's not to mention the fact that I can personally understand how draining on a family a restaurant business can be.

So

This dwindling of working time (I have been going in occasionally to bake off extra product or clean) has left me lots of time to sit, watch the Gilmore Girls series from the beginning, and KNIT! I Love it!

This is the current project: the irrational constant mittens.

The mitten pictured (the left mitten) is the π mitten (the symbol will be on the thumb, when it's finished) and the right mitten (to come) will feature the e constant (don't ask me what that constant is used for...).

I guess this is what happens to your knitting when you marry a math nerd. The colorwork has been a fun challenge at least!

I'll be sure to update the post when the mittens are complete.