no vacancy

Adam's 14-year-old nephew, Daniel, has moved in with us. His parents are going through a difficult divorce and we've all decided that this is the best place for him to be right now. So with the three of us plus Adam's mom, Daniel, a dog and two rats, this place is getting pretty full.

I'm glad we can help both Michele and Daniel out, but I have to say I really miss when it was just the three of us. We all have a lot less privacy and personal space than we were used to, and it's been stressful to say the least. I had to sort of step back and take a break from everything (including blogging, obviously) for a while to take some time to adjust. I wish I could say I wasn't having such a hard time with this, but that's the truth.

Things are getting easier as time goes on, though. I try to just keep myself busy and stay out of the way. I just hope that one day I'll be able to feel comfortable in my own home again.

a nice village, a not-so-nice dog

Okay, I disappeared again, but this time I have a better excuse.
We're moving!

Yes, we're saying goodbye to Ugly Suburban Townhouse and moving to a lovely detached house in a quaint little town we now refer to as the Nice Village. Why? It was what Autumn called it the first time we went to look at the house. "Wow you guys,"--do other kids call their parents "you guys"?--"this is a really nice village!"

We thought so too, and decided to rent the house as soon as we finished the walk-through. It's a clean, sunny two-story with a finished basement, a fireplace and a gigantic yard in a sweet, quiet neighborhood. Yesterday we picked up the keys. Our lease here isn't up until the end of the year so for a while we'll have two places, but that just gives us plenty of time to pack, move, organize and clean. Stress free moving. I dig that.

And as if a new house wasn't enough of a change, Adam's mom will be coming with us! For various reasons we decided that it would be best if she moved in with us, at least for a few years, to make life a little easier for everybody. It's going to be a big adjustment (and probably not an easy one) but I'm hoping we can make it work. Don't get me wrong--Michele is great and I love her. We're just very different people. It will take some adapting on everyone's part. But I really don't mind his mother moving in with us as much as I mind this...
Seamus, a.k.a. Satan's Lap Dog, a.k.a. the bane of my existence. I love animals, I really do, so when I say I hate a dog you know it's bad. This dog is pure EVIL. If he hasn't chewed up everything I own by this time next year it will be a miracle. He eats EVERYTHING, and I mean everything. Nothing is safe from his deceptively mighty jaws.

One thing he loves to nibble on is feet. Everyone thinks it's cute. He'll playfully lick everyone else's feet, but if I am in the room he comes straight to me and CHOMPS DOWN on my toes like they're kibble. He especially loves to do this when I'm sitting at the table and trying to enjoy my dinner. Michele seems to think it's because he likes me, but I think it's because he has a personal vendetta against me and he's hoping if he gnaws hard enough I'll slowly bleed to death. Can dogs sense when you don't like them? That must be it. I don't fawn over his sickening cuteness like the rest of the family, and therefore I must bow down or be eliminated.

Dealing with him when we visited Adam's mom was bad enough, but now we'll be sharing a home. Hopefully I'll at least find relief by hiding in my no-demon-possessed-dogs-allowed craft room. I may have to wear my boots at all times to keep my toes from being turned into hamburger meat. Wish me luck.

does this fluffy bunny-eared capelet make me look like a dork?

My baby sister Emanhi requested a white fleece bunny-eared capelet for her 14th birthday. I didn't want to make it in white because I thought it would look too much like an Easter bunny costume, but it's what she wanted. It is probably the dorkiest thing I've ever made, but it's cute and I think she'll like it. I'm not sure it's totally done yet. I think I want to add some sort of closure, maybe ribbon ties or an oversized button.

Despite the silliness, I kind of want one. Definitely not in white, though. Maybe black. And maybe not a capelet. A bunny eared scoodie would be cute for the incoming cool weather, don't you think?

20

Yesterday was my 20th birthday! We celebrated at home with good friends and good food. There were party favors...
a sparkly purple cake covered in plastic zombies...
decoupaged paper hats...
and lots of general silliness.
It was so much fun to just hang out with our friends laughing and eating an ungodly amount of cake. I don't think I'll ever be too old for birthday parties, especially the kind involving balloons, crepe paper streamers and fake mustaches.

Feeling inspired by a few other Flickr members, I've decided to take on a little project over the next year of my life and take a self portrait every day until my 21st birthday. I thought it would be a fun challenge for me, because I've realized that I have very few pictures of myself. I'm almost always the one behind the camera. I think it will be interesting to put myself in front of it for a change.

Happy Father's Day!

I couldn't have asked for a better dad for my little girl. Adam, you're the best dad in the world and you rock most hardcore. We love you.

Valentiney Goodness

Adam and I had plans to go to dinner last night, but my love has come down with yet another bad cold, not a week after recovering from the first one. He's what we call an overachiever. Nevertheless, we had a very nice family Valentine's Day.
There were pretty pink pillowcase dressesHandmade candy heart barrettes
A new hair color for Mommy
Sugar cookiesSparkling ciderAnd lots of hugs and kisses all around.
One odd thing Adam and I have in common is our love for zombies. Zombie movies, games, art, books, you name it. If it's undead, we think it's cool. My gift to him this year was this doll, a zombified version of myself, tearing out her heart out and offering it to him.Gory? Yes. Weird? Probably. Romantic? Absolutely, if you're us. He loved her and she sits in his office now, alongside Autumn's gift, a decorated frame holding her school picture.Hope you all had a lovely holiday, full of chocolate and flowers and those little heart-shaped paper doily things!

Brown paper packages tied up with strings

Due to the gift of the Christmas flu I'm blogging about our holiday a little later than I would have liked to. Santa took some time out of his very busy schedule to stop by Adam's sister Terri's annual Christmas Eve party. Autumn is the one in the red hat without the beard. Luckily last year's Christmas dress still fit her. The shoes didn't, though, so she wore pink high tops to the party.Unfortunately I didn't have the time to make fabric gift wrap for all of my gifts this year, so I went with the next best thing and used recycled brown kraft paper, baker's twine and these adorable handmade tags. These pretty packages contained the aprons and play food for Adam's nieces (packed in mini cake boxes, how Martha of me) and the scarves and a video game (not handmade, I know. Bad Xan) for the nephews.The kids seemed really happy with their gifts, especially the girls. All three of them immediately wanted to put their aprons on and start baking. I was very pleased, and their parents were impressed.

On Christmas I wore my new favorite hat, a handmade gift from Faye. It matched my spankin' new stripes perfectly.Faye also made me this freaking awesome Jack Skellington hat and matching scarf, for my love of all things Tim Burton. I can't help but smile every time I wear them. Crafty friends are the best.In exchange I made her a crochet hook clutch so she can crochet on the go. Well, she already crochets on the go, but now she can do it in style. It holds 8 hooks, including this one I bought her from Etsy. When I made it I didn't have the actual crochet hook on hand so I had to guess at the sizing for the pockets. Luckily it fit perfectly when it arrived in the mail, and Faye seemed very happy with it.Now, on to Christmas morning. Autumn woke us up at a fairly reasonable hour (though Adam was still exhausted because we had stayed up very late the night before) and we all (including my grandmother, who came down from PA to celebrate with us) gathered 'round the tree to watch Autumn open gift upon gift upon gift. There were only a handful of gifts from us. The other ten million or so were from my mom and grandmother and the queen of overgifting, Adam's mom. You know how kids just tear through everything in all the excitement that comes with opening gifts? Yeah, Autumn's not a normal child. She opens everything very carefully and very, very slowly. It took her nearly two hours to finish. But it was plenty of fun to watch and she loved every single thing she got. Her stocking was stuffed with a tube of bubbles, a new pirate t-shirt and a beautiful hand bound book. From Adam and me there were also the puppets and treasure hunt bag, Underdog and Barbie as the Island Princess on DVD, and that final gift I almost wasn't able to make, a sink for her playroom kitchen. It was one of the few things that she requested, and I'm so glad I was able to pull it off. She was thrilled.The grandmothers showered her with lots of wonderful books, new winter clothes, and toys that will surely nurture her creativity and desire to learn. My personal favorite (and hers too, I think) was the Super Fort from Adam's mother, which is currently being used as a pirate ship in the kitchen. I think I'll have almost as much fun playing with it as she will. In fact, I'm off on a high seas adventure right now. I hope your Christmas was filled with warmth and laughter and family.

Trick or Treat! (prepare for picture overload)

Well as you can see, the costume was finished on time. She wore it to her school's Halloween party and brought home a bag full of candy before we even started trick-or-treating. Sadly since October has been an unusually stressful and busy month for me I didn't have the time or energy to make a costume for myself this year. But I still managed to be festive in my Halloween t-shirt, poofy handmade skirt and stripey tights. Oh how I love my stripey tights.
After school we took our pumpkins into the basement for carving. I don't know how, but Autumn managed to pick the thickest, hardest-skinned pumpkin in the entire pumpkin patch. This thing was a real brute. My arm was aching after spending 10 MINUTES cutting the top off, and after I cleaned it out I passed the carving duty onto Adam because I didn't think my hand could take it anymore. Autumn drew not one, not two or even three, but four faces on her pumpkin for him to carve out, and he did a great job on it.I, however, decided to paint my pumpkin after seeing how tough Autumn's was. Carving isn't really where my talent lies anyhow. Autumn painted a little one for Rosie, her favorite teddy bear, who also dressed up for the occasion.
That evening we went out with Adam's sister and her four children as well as his mom, who wore a fantastic witch costume. When I walked downstairs and saw her standing in the hallway I didn't recognize her at first and she scared the crap out of me!We went to maybe 15 houses or so. It was Autumn's first time trick-or-treating in a residential neighborhood. She had a blast with all the other kids, running from house to house in their colorful costumes. Luckily the weather was nice enough that we didn't freeze to death, so a good time was had by all.After a pizza dinner at a neighbor's house we headed home and Autumn set out most of her candy for the Halloween Fairy, who came in the night and left her a little purse with a kitty-shaped pocket in the candy's place.Despite not being able to do everything I had originally planned on, Halloween was great fun for us this year.