Stragglers

Surely it’s not too late to document a few more of the handmade Christmas gifts…

For my parents, a pillow with their last name on it-

Handmade items are tricky in terms of cost.  I was looking at a pattern for a bag the other day, and with its 3 yards of fabric and three kinds of interfacing, plus notions, it could easily become way too expensive to produce.  But the total cost of this pillow was…zero dollars!  The fabric was selected from the fabric I already had, the white fabric was a retired white pillowcase, and the pillow was stuffed with leftover scraps of quilting batting.  It’s a little lumpy perhaps, but I’m thinking that will just encourage people to lounge on it in an effort to smooth things out.  Thankfully I have the kind of parents who don’t mind if you yell, “Guess how much that cost to make?  Nothing!” as soon as they open a Christmas present. 

For Diane, my sister’s mother-in-law and the name I drew in the handmade exchange for my side of the family, dish towels-

For the grandmothers, ornaments made from the boys’ hands.

My not-normally-pushy mother really put the pressure on me about these, pointing to the similar ornaments I made last year and saying, “I hope you’re making these again this year” and “I know you’re busy, but make sure you get the hand ornaments done.”  I’ve also been informed that I need to make these for her every year.  Without having to ask her, I’m going to assume that my mother-in-law is in the same camp as my mom on this one and I’m going to be making these for years to come.  The paws of 17 and 15 year old Rush and Tate are going to take up a chunk of real estate on the Christmas tree.

Typically my sister and I will talk a lot about “doing crafts” when we’re together, which translates to sitting on the couch for hours talking about the same things over and over, or one of us knitting or quilting and the other in charge of making coffee.  We finally cracked the code on actually doing a craft together when we made the ornaments:  the trick is for one person to have a plan and all the supplies.  In this instance, I was already planning on making them (see comments above regarding pressure from my mom) so I dumped a pile of fabric scraps, felt, and Pellon Wonder Under on the kitchen table during nap time and we started working.

For the record, people trying to boss me around is generally a sure way to make me not do something.  I guess I just have a soft spot for my mother, my kids’ small hands, and felt.

Trent made a gazillion kitchen utensils, wooden spoons and spatulas, in his gradually expanding garage woodshop, but he took all the pictures with an ipad, so we’ll probably never see those.  The process of getting up, finding the ipad in his work bag, and somehow sending them to this computer sounds way too time consuming when I’m in a hurry to get back to my book before naptime is over.  He also secretly made a set of wooden tongs for me, actively displayed over a pot of soup.

My wooden spoon and tongs are my very favorite kitchen items, very Ingalls-chic.

Chomp

For Christmas, my mom made fish for my brother out of fence posts.  When I was them, I immediately started to ask her if she would make some for us, but halfway through the request I realized that we could make them ourselves.  She helped Trent draw the shape of a shark on a fencepost and he cut them all out in the garage.  Then Rush and I painted them, and honestly, Rush painted at least half.

Now they’re swimming up our fence.

Another Happy 2nd Birthday

Keeping My Brain Sharp

There is a long stretch of events leading up to the week of January 13-19.  Halloween kicks off the holiday season, then a week later is my brother’s birthday, then a week later is my birthday.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Epiphany (I thought I had a photo of the King Cake that Trent baked…), then Tate’s Birthday, then the marathon, then there’s the third week of January. 

It was cold.  The boys were tired from the Halloween until now extravaganza and didn’t want to go anywhere.  The only thing we had to do was get the oil changed in the car, and we didn’t even do that.

But when there’s nowhere to go, there’s always the library.  I love the library so much, I want to take it out behind the middle school and get it pregnant. We checked out a big stack of travel books, which I’ve been sneaking up to my room for 5 minute intervals to read.  They range from Daydreams (South Korea, Great Britain) to Plausible Until I Checked Plane Ticket Prices (Pacific Northwest) to Plausible (100 Affordable Vacations- I want to take a pie tour of the Midwest for sure) to Most Likely (Walt Disney World 2012). 

The travel books sustained my brain for a few days, but by yesterday afternoon I felt it was starting to atrophy.  It took me close to two hours to sluggishly fold a few (or seven) loads of laundry.  I needed some sort of challenge.

So today while the boys were napping, and then for a little while after they woke up, I found a pattern in One Yard Wonders and, with an almost-yard remnant of fabric that I purchased a few weeks ago, I made myself a new purse.

Take that fancy, well lit blog photos:  9:45 PM, one lamp, zero natural light.

The lining is made from a piece of fabric left over from a shower curtain that I turned into a curtain for our bathroom.  And it actually has a magnetic snap, which, surprisingly, I had on hand.  It’s already wrinkled because I started using it as soon as it was finished.

I feel my brain cloud dissipating.

Conquering

First of all, thank God, it did not rain all day on Sunday.  It was cold, it rained at times, but it cleared up enough that the Houston Marathon could continue and people could put all their training into action.  We went out with my parents to cheer on Trent in his third successful marathon.

It’s always fun to be in the cheering section of the marathon.  It’s inspiring to watch so many people with so many body types running.  Some large percentage of the crowd is thinking or saying aloud, “I could never do that.”  But most of us could, IF we were willing to spend months getting up at 4:30 on Saturday morning to run for three or four hours at a time and to get up during the week for “short” three to six mile runs.  That, to me, is what separates a marathoner from a everyone else.  God didn’t just make some people runners and some people sleepers, we choose a lot of that on our own.  The drive to get out of bed and put on your running shoes, even as you see that your other option is staying asleep under a down comforter, is what separates out the people with medals.

Next, A Life Lesson In Pictures
or How To Rouse Yourself to Action
or What Pushing Through Looks Like
or Mental Strength Defeats Physical Pain
or Being A Badass

Me:  It’s just another long run!  Only five miles to go!  (I knew it was less than that, but I wasn’t going to say only 3 miles to go when it was really 3.2.  Someone standing around in a warm pea coat with a cup of coffee, underestimating mileage will really piss off someone who has been running in the cold and rain for the past 4 hours.)

Trent:  Less than that…

And

here

he

goes.

A few miles later, here he is, almost to the finish line.

Then it’s over.   You finish your 3rd marathon, and get a sweet medal and the lifelong bragging rights that mean even if you aren’t still running when you are 90, you were a marathoner in your youth.  You get the stiffness and soreness that reminds you that you didn’t waste having a body, you did something awesome with it.

I was so proud of Trent after this marathon.  I’ve been proud of him after every marathon, but especially after this one.  A marathoner’s spouse enjoys a unique perspective, because you don’t just see marathon day with its sufferings and glory, you see how someone you love sacrifices and pushes themselves to get here.  You are the one who stays in bed under the down comforter when they’re getting up to run, waking up just enough to say, “Be careful,” before closing your eyes again.

A marathon showcases some of Trent’s best qualities:  action, ability to wake up early to do miserable things, ability to wake up early to do amazing things, mental determination (we need to remember that this quality is a positive when our kids are showcasing it in battle form), physical strength, and stick-to-it-ness.  If only a marathon also required being good at math, it would be his perfect showcase.

The Tateamus Turns Two

Tate celebrated his second birthday last week with an explosion of new words:  Hi!  Shoe!  Car!  Teeth!  Cat!  He says them all with exclamation points.  Tate lives like an exclamation point.

We had a pajama party breakfast on Saturday morning to celebrate.  Pretty much since Tate’s first birthday, I’ve been thinking about a birthday breakfast so that we could have birthday cake consisting a giant pile of donut holes.  Both boys LOVE breakfast.  Every morning they eat a lumberjack sized breakfast, then a normal sized lunch, then a few bites of dinner.  (That’s probably how we should all be eating, fueling our body for the day, then tapering off as we go along.)

It was a great morning:  The boys woke up, we brushed their teeth, we started the coffee, and friends started showing up in their pjs.  Then we all spent all morning eating and drinking coffee and talking.

And of course, singing Happy Birthday to Tate!

We are big fans of the backyard party, but for an early January birthday, I’m just going to assume we’re going to be inside.  You never know what will happen when you let loose the 4 and under crowd in your home, but those kids were all wonderful!  The entertainment was provided by blowing up a dozen balloons.  (I think it also helped that all our most annoyingly loud or destruction causing toys were hidden in the garage.)

We spent the rest of the day in our pajamas as the coffee and donut high slowly wore off.  Happy Birthday Tate – and many more.

The Love Child of Ronald McDonald and The Hamburgler

Sometime last year, my aunt told us about a book she was reading, Born to Run, about people in Mexico (I think) who run incredibly long distances, barefoot.  Then in December two of our friends read it and passed the book to Trent, who read it over Christmas.  Trent talked about the book so constantly while he read it that I feel like I heard enough to not read it.  It’s similar to just watching the movie instead of reading the book, so I get the feeling I’m missing out on the best of Born to Run. 

Trent is running the Houston Marathon this weekend and has successfully made it through the worst part of a marathon:  the 20 mile solo training runs that start at 4:45 AM on a Saturday.  Trent typically refuels during his runs with GU or Shot Bloks, concentrated energy gel food…(what am I talking about?  This whole post is hearsay.  Who do I think I am, Bill Bryson writing about hiking the Appalachian Trail?)

ANYWAY.  In Born to Run, these super runners refuel with something called pinole, a cornmeal based energy food.  Trent decided to make it.  When he looked up recipes, he found a lot of blogs with pinole recipes that ended with, “It didn’t turn out exactly like I wanted it, so I’m going to try again.” and then never a post about the trying again.  So Trent experimented and came up with a successful pinole recipe, tested by himself on a 15 mile run. 

Trent’s Pinole

1/2 cup toasted finely ground corn meal (grind cornmeal in a coffee grinder, then toast in a skillet until light brown but not burned)

1/2 tsp cinnamon

1 Tbsp honey, dissolved in 5 Tbsp hot water

1/4 cup chopped, dried apricots

3 dollops peanut butter

Mix together, form into cookie or bar shape and bake 10-15 minutes at 350F.  Enjoy liberally for all your endurance energy needs.

He’s still running Sunday’s marathon with margarita flavored Shot Bloks, because three weeks before a 26.2 mile run is no time to change your strategy.  He’s also running with shoes, although he was highly inspired by the barefoot runners in the book.  Shoes or no shoes, I’m looking forward to cheering him on. 

Too Late For A Christmas Post?

I’m pretty sure we had a great Christmas, because it’s already blurred into all my happy Christmas memories.  Family and food and gifts and a church service full of people and poinsettias and carols-

and a Christmas Eve party

and a boy who helped himself to a bag of Fritos

and Christmas morning excitement

and really just getting to be with some many people we love.

Handmades

This is just a smattering of the handmade gifts exchanged this year, based on the pictures that I put on our computer from my dad’s camera.  Overview:  The Rush family raised the bar for handmade gifts this year. 

Starting a quilt in November for a Christmas present seemed like a terrible idea all though December when I had a quilt to finish, right up until December 22 at midnight when I finished it.  Now it seems like a great idea.  I thought the lesson learned was going to be Start Projects Early, but instead it was You Can Do It!  I hope my brother will remember that I’ve never made a quilt that didn’t make my fingers bleed and I also finished it while watching It’s a Wonderful Life, so I cried onto it as well.  Quilts very literally contain the quilter.  Also, it’s machine washable.

My sister knit a coonskin cap for my Dad.  For most Davy Crockett admiring boys born in the 50’s, a coonskin cap will always be the height of fashion.

She also knit the warmest, most fabulous cowl ever for me.  So far while wearing it, I’ve miraculously eaten a fish po’ boy and spaghetti without turning it into a giant bib. 

My dad made this wreath for me, and it’s already hanging in our kitchen.  He said it required 160 corks and he and my mom had enough that he could have made two wreaths if he wanted to.  Shocking.  (Not.)

My brother made this sign for Trent’s office, but I might sneak it onto our bookshelf as soon as I finish this post.

My mom made fencepost fish for my brother to hang in his yard.  It has already inspired me to make sharks for our own yard, which are completed and will hopefully be hung up this weekend.

My brother-in-law’s mom made him a set of washers.  I know what we’ll be playing at the beach this summer.

My sister and I discussed gift giving among cousins back in November and determined that for now each gets one gift that must be either a book, pajamas, or handmade. We both ended up making costumes.  Looking through the pictures, it seems like we made ridiculously gender stereotyped gifts, but really we just made gifts that we knew the receivers would love.

Our Uncle Peter worked at the Bureau of Printing and Engraving in Washington D.C., and Casey took his old police badges and sewed them onto blue shirts, making policeman uniforms for Rush and Tate.

I made what every mother of two boys makes for her very girlie niece, a hot pink tutu.

Here’s the very best part of making a gift for someone:

The elusive moment when someone opens a gift that you made for them and you can tell that they love it.  That’s my Merry Christmas from Carolena.