Random Tuesday post

I took part in a blogging workshop at work today, and now I am feeling inspired to post.

So let’s see, what have we been up to?

Haircuts!

The boys finally got real haircuts (first time since February or so) and now I feel okay about getting one. We went to a salon owned by the mom of one of their classmates, and everyone was masked and spread out, and it felt fine.

But even more exciting is that I am getting a haircut tomorrow! Mine hasn’t been cut since last September. Of course it was supposed to be cut in March for St. Baldrick’s but that didn’t happen, and it’s been rescheduled twice but as of now it won’t happen until next year and I canNOT wait that long.

I wanted to take a picture of my hair looking as long as possible for a Facebook post so I could get feedback on how much to get cut off tomorrow, and well, that backfired. I had to blowdry it and use a hot brush and a flat iron and a curling iron just to get it looking decent enough to share, and the feedback was largely “just a trim!”

I mean, first of all, thanks for the compliments but you know I never wear my hair down, it’s too much work and it’s too hot. And it’s a nightmare to wash. And it’s so heavy it gives me tension headaches. So I will probably go shoulder length.

My hair after making it look nice:

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If I just let it airdry:

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So yeah. Not great. Also I had to wear sunglasses because I forgot I put mascara on yesterday for a school meet and greet and taking it off is more trouble than it’s worth. But also I’m v glam.

In other news, remember how I mentioned that I was making a sourdough starter? Well, it worked! I’m kind of intimidated by it but I used this recipe sorta* to make a loaf of bread yesterday and by golly it worked**!

*This recipe had like forty gajillion steps and I was required to do something like every half hour for an ENTIRE day and I’m sorry, no bread is worth that, so I just like, let my mixer knead it for a while and called that a win. Also I took it out about 20 minutes sooner than the recipe said because it was about to scorch.

**I mean, it was tasty, but it was a very wet dough, maybe because I skipped the half-hourly folding or whattheheckever but it resulted in having to use a lot of flour at the shaping phase so there was a line of flour in the middle.

School starts on Thursday (at home) and I have three desks all set up for the boys. I just got a box of uniforms in the mail that I ordered when there was a sale over the summer in a fit of optimism, so I will definitely make them wear them for a picture. We joked about walking over to the bus stop at 7am but that would just make us all cry.

I took next week off work. Not for any reason except if I don’t do it now, it might be a while before I can. So I’m going to tackle a big sewing project. My motivation to sew has been pretty low lately, but maybe this will help! I’m making a Cashmerette Chilton trench in this plum herringbone flannel with a dark teal satin lining. It’ll definitely keep me busy!

Do I want to make the short or long version? Who knows?

And to close the post, Linus’s snowball before it turned into brown minty-fruity sludge.

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Mid-month check in

I mean. It’s mid-July. Whatever. Time has no meaning. Certainly the date doesn’t. But here’s what we’ve been up to, anyway.

We finally saw Grandee and Larry again this weekend. Steak was eaten. Yum.

I made Oliver a Manchester City mask.

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No idea what’s going on with school.

Since we can’t go on vacation, we are re-doing the boys room starting tomorrow. Here are a few very very very messy before pics. There will be a full post after.

Here’s a bit of the dresser we bought. This is the first piece of non-IKEA furniture I think I’ve ever purchased myself. (Or non-Walmart or Target, or that I don’t have to put together myself!)

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Ziggy is still cute.

I got a plant for my desk.

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I haven’t been sewing much lately, but I’m about to start sewing masks again for school. Blah. (I mean, who knows what school will look like, but I’m helping prepare just in case.)

Anyway, stay tuned for the boys’ room before and after!

What’s up?

Same old, same old.

Lots and lots of work.

Sewing:

Made myself another Artists Box Top out of the Liberty lawn I bought in May. Cotton lawn is by far my favorite fabric in the world. So light but crisp and easy to sew and doesn’t wrinkle horribly. Perfect for summer. Also I’m rather proud of this one because I made my own facings instead of trying to use bias tape, which I’ve never been able to find a good tutorial for using it on a v-neck.

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I also made George another button down shirt for Father’s Day. I couldn’t find any more Doctor Who fabric, but I found this one covered in cocktails at a local sewing store. (I had to make an appointment to shop. I felt v important.)

And I made myself this Holyoke sundress from Cashmerette. The top ended up a little big, and I’m not super comfortable with my arms out like this, but I’ll get over it when the temp is 100. This one is made out of a linen/rayon blend.

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Baking:

Bagels that looked funky but tasted good.

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Dinner rolls that look and taste amazing.

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Beignets from scratch!

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The boys and I ate at a restaurant for the first time since March! We went to Tartine, which friends of our own. It was delightful and the food was delicious and nice to feel sorta normal.

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Premier League games started up again, so now it’s even harder to get the boys to focus on summer reading.

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And when they’re not watching soccer or avoiding reading, they’re playing Minecraft with their cousins, which warms my heart.

My cilantro is practically thriving.

And Ziggy is as ridiculously cute as ever. He got a new collar! And I got a lick to the face!

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Until next time….

May stuff

It looks like I’ll be writing one post with more than a dozen words in it per month. I don’t know why I can’t motivate myself to blog more. It’s not like I’m not sitting at my computer all day, every day. (Work is busy.)

So let’s see.

Mother’s Day was great. I usually leave the house and go see a movie with Terry on Mother’s Day but that obviously wasn’t an option this year. But George got me a picnic basket full of goodies from Tartine, and I relaxed and spent the day outside (the weather was outstanding) and drank a bottle of rose that Kiki had sent me. Delightful!

And then later that week, George turned 50! George doesn’t care about birthdays as much as I do, but I tried to make it special. Dinner was from Tartine (shepherd’s pie), I got my friend Angela to bake a cake, and I got him a bottle of expensive whiskey and this portrait of Ziggy. His favorite gift (and I don’t blame him) though was the cards the boys made him.

I’ve been sewing quite a bit – some masks, of course, but also clothes. It makes me happy. I need to do separate posts on these, but I’ve made shirts, mostly. This is all leading up to me deciding which pattern I’m going to use when I sew up this length of Liberty cotton lawn I bought when a fabric store had a sale. All the heart eyes!

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I’ve been enjoying my Peloton too. It is so nice to have the outlet for stress relief. Yesterday I hopped on it three different times when I was stressed out of my mind. Just a ten minute ride really helps! In five and a half weeks, I’ve done 80 rides! (I mean, yes, some of those are 5 minute warm ups or cool downs, but plenty are 45 minutes or longer!)

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If you use the Peloton app, follow me! I’m…guess what…yep, pyjammy. Easy to find.

I’ve been watching all of the Marvel movies in the order suggested here, because Kiki was doing it, and it sounded fun. I realized I’d missed a couple of the movies over the years, so it was nice to get caught up. (And now the beginning of Avengers: Infinity War makes sense!) Sometimes I have it on my phone while I sew and kind of half-watch (I mean, I don’t want to sew over my finger or anything) or sometimes I have it on while I work on a puzzle. The boys watched Spiderman: Homecoming with me the other night, but otherwise it’s just me.

Speaking of the boys watching things, they were so happy last weekend to have a soccer game to watch on TV again!

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Ziggy likes to watch sports too.

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And he’s just generally cute.

Tomorrow is the boys’ last day of sixth grade! Last night they put on their school uniforms because they missed wearing them. So hopefully they won’t mind putting them back on for a last day of school pic!

Things and stuff

Oops, it’s been almost two weeks since I posted. My bad!

So let’s see, what’s been going on since my last update post?

I got my Peloton last week, that’s pretty exciting. I have been doing about 45 minutes a day of classes or “scenic rides” but I am still waiting for my butt to acclimate. It’s getting better.

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Going for a ride through France, no biggie.

The boys have also been riding it, which is great. They haven’t been going outside enough, even though the weather has been pretty great.

Last week was spring break so they didn’t have any school work. So their brains rotted and oozed from their ears.

I’ve been baking a lot, still. The highlight was when King Arthur flour commented on my hot dog buns.

We got Pictionary, which was fun until SOMEONE stormed off because he didn’t think me saying “looseleaf paper” when the answer was “paper” should count.

We haven’t been watching movies as much, since we started watching Brooklyn Nine Nine. I love it, but I also miss movie nights. We’re about halfway through, I think. Maybe next week we’ll be back to movies.

My hair is long and gray. I can’t wait to cut it off. I wonder if it’ll still happen in May.

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Very gray. Digging it!

The Grand Meetup for this year (slated to be in September) was cancelled, which is sad but understandable.

I started this post three days ago. I can’t say a lot has changed since then, except my butt is getting more used to the Peloton seat.

Oops. I started this post 8 days ago. My bad!

My butt is definitely used to the Peloton seat. I’ve done 35 rides since I got it two weeks ago! Sounds impressive until you realize that includes the 5 minute cooldown rides. Anyway, who cares?

I am even closer to chopping off my ponytail myself. I long for the day I can wash my hair in five minutes.

Sunday I drove over a glass bottle and got my first flat tire in my new (I still consider it new) car. Bummer. I had another tire with a slow leak, so I figured I’d just end up replacing all the dang tires today, but I just had to get three of them repaired! (Yes, that means two tires had nails in them and one a shard of glass.) Only cost me $45 instead of the $700 I was anticipating. That was exciting!

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Boo.
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Yum.
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My green thumb strikes again!
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Boys watching the NFL draft. Who are these people?!?!?

Ziggy being cute all over the place:

Well. I’m going to just go ahead and post this now or else I never will.

Goings on

I mean, nothing exciting. Same old, same old. Just like everyone else on earth, right?

Sigh.

Well, okay FINE I gave up again on my daily photo challenge. Not that I haven’t taken photos every day, but I keep getting so far behind, and no one needs to see boring pictures anyway. Blah. And I mean, since we’ll be at home for the next month, it’s gonna be even worse.

Anyway.

I had my day off with Miles last Monday. We had a great day. Walk to the coffee shop, breakfast at home, went to a park, lunch at a diner, and capped it off with an escape room, which we escaped from! So fun. And I got an email from LSMSA saying Miles had been awarded a scholarship to the summer camp! (Who knows if that will even happen?)

Crescent Park (you can almost see our house from there!)

Lunch and escape room

Oh and I never talked about everything Linus and I did.

We had coffee, and then shopped, and had lunch (steak!) and escaped from a room, and got froyo. Lovely day.

Poor Oliver was supposed to have his day on Friday, but their school closed on Thursday until April 13th at least. (Spring break starts on the 13th, so not sure if they’re going to roll into that, or pretend it was during the quarantine time.) But we’ll do it eventually. Hopefully during this school year.

The boys were at soccer practice when I got the email from their school about it closing the next day, and that was the last soccer practice for the forseeable future. Sad. But they’ve been playing outside plenty. Their new thing is playing basketball in their room with the “hoop” we fashioned out of a small cheap plastic soccer goal and plenty of duct tape.

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I mean, you gotta admire their inventiveness!

Tomorrow “school” starts for real – their teachers will start putting up assignments on Google Classroom for them to do.

Let’s see. I also made this cute clutch:

If you happen to have an appropriate zipper lying around, it’s a good, quick, satisfying project. And free! Here’s a link. I made it out of leftover denim, which I was glad to use up.

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pamchops.com!

Fundraising update: Well, the St. Baldrick’s event was supposed to be on March 29, but it looks like I’ll be growing my hair out for a bit longer than planned. Now it’s going to be (hopefully!) at the end of May. So I’m going to stop begging people for money for a while. But I mean, you certainly still can. My friend Hadley also set up a Color Street party to benefit my fundraiser, so you can also have fantastic nails while you’re at home. Honestly, it’s a great and easy pick-me-up anyway. I think I’ll put some on later today.

So. I guess that’s about all of the excitement for now. I have lots of sewing I can do, but I honestly don’t really feel like it. Argh!

Feeling very grateful to have a remote job right now, so I’d better get back to work!

(Oh, and I wrote this post about working remotely.)