Well Wishes for a Happy New Year

I came home the other day to this:
It contained all of this:
Note: There were two pieces of chocolate, but...
Need I say more?
There was note, and this is what it said:
How sweet is Jennifer, over at The Felt Mouse? I feel very honored to receive such warm wishes from you! All the best this year right back at cha'!
This was lovely to look at! And so much fun to put together. And how incredibly considerate you are to send the batteries needed with it! Did you know that my supply of AA batteries was almost completely depleted from the holiday season?

Public Market Thursday

My friend and neighbor Sue and I have decided to make a little time to head to the public market each Thursday morning. It's getting harder and harder for us to find time to see each other, and both of us are very careful about the freshness of the foods we purchase. So this idea fills both of those niches. How very sad it is to have to double schedule things to be able to make time! But it works for us.

So today with the temps in the low twenties, we grabbed some gloves and our canvas shopping bags and set out to find some homegrown goodness...

Our first stop is always this enclosed market that sells fresh and dried herbs, and all sort of extracts. Today I needed vanilla, and I love the fact that is is made right here in Rochester.
Then it's on to the pastry man, he has these HUGE cinnamon roles for $ .50 each,
is there anything that is $ .50 each anymore??? But aside from the price, they are INSANELY good!!! Today he also had this bag of three small focaccia breads for $1.00.
I see sauce in our future!

We also found some local honey,
Some veggies, Little P has been asking to try parsnips.
This looked so funky I had to ask what it is,
It's celery root. I have to say that I am not so sure I could eat this. It doesn't look very appetizing!

This looked funky too:
But I didn't ask about it! That's an interesting phrase on the outside of a place that makes fried dough. For those die hard Soprano fans, this is for you.

I didn't buy any of these today but how beautiful is this to look at?
We did stop at the cheese dude and I bought some pepperoni sticks, for Mr. Fantastic to snack on, and some parm cheese, about a pound and a half for... $3.00. Gotta love that!
Last but not least, we stopped at this hole in the wall place called, Juan and Maria's Empanada Stop. They have breakfast sandwich and a drink for $1.95.
We stop every time we go and I think that I look forward to that way more that I should!

A toasty, I love You

For Christmas Mr. Fantastics parents got me a ton of fun kitchen stuff, and I love it all!
They bought be quite a few silicone things to try. I am still amazed that it doesn't melt in the oven! They found this:

A Cathedral Bunt Pan... Mr. Fantastics favorite cake in the whole world, a Cinnamon Cake, is made in a bunt pan, he is ecstatic, mostly because he gets to eat more cake!

They also got me these:
Dinosaur cookie cutters, they are just too stinkin cute! And Boots loves dinosaurs so much he can't wait to have dino cookies!

They also found this:
First you stamp the bread:

Then when you toast it, "I heart You", shows up! They kids loved it.Thanks Geea and Trampa!
I am not totally sure where they got it, but you can buy it here. And that store, Perpetual Kid has some of the coolest stuff I have ever seen, where else are you going to find these, come on, you know you want them!

Big Love for Elf Shoes

I love, love, love the ornaments I made for Christmas this year. In the months leading up to the big event I tried out at least a dozen options for ornaments. I had some specifics this year that I was hoping to fulfill. I really wanted to sew something, more specifically hand sew something. I wasn't sure what until I saw these:
(picture taken from Allsorts post)
Immediately smitten, I went out to buy the most gorgeous wool felt that I could afford. And at $18.00 a yard, it wasn't a ton! Thank you so much to Allsorts for this amazing pattern! It was entirely too much fun to make.

I made a small army of elf shoes, its sort of tradition to give ornaments out to our siblings and over the years I have tried to always make them myself. I also make an ornament for Boots and Little P each year so that when the time comes for them to grow up and move out on their own they will already have ornaments for their first tree.

My one regret in the whole process is that I didn't take a single picture until tonight, and that is only of the last two sets that are awaiting a visit to my best friend and my gorgeous new niece. As many times as I walked past the 20 or so sets and they made me grin I never took a picture, I can't believe it! Anyhow these are it:The red pair does not have their buttons or their ribbons yet, but you get the idea!

My niece picked out these two fabrics when she was here from California in December, I am making a tote bag for her.
I LOVE the bobby pins! Too cute. Now what to make for me???

Lucky

If you live in New York, more specifically in Western New York, the weather the past few days has been really, really enjoyable. There is nothing like a nice 65 degree break from the snow to make you throw open the windows and want to start spring cleaning!

And I did, until Boots got home from school and wanted to take a walk and enjoy the weather. The dust at my house far from my mind we walked and talked all about school and their new science experiment. He is loving predicting the outcome of things, the excitement of waiting to find how it is going to turn out is almost more than he can take! Today they tried to clean pennies with a variety of things, he was beside himself that lemon juice does anything other than make things taste different. He truly loves school and I am not so sure I have ever seen a more eager to learn 4 year old.

Listening to him get so excited over telling me what he learned I was brought back to one thought. This is why I am home. I loved every single word, driving the point into my brain, this is why Mr. Fantastic and I work so hard to make it all meet up. These are the moments that quiet the uneasy side of me. I couldn't be more in love with the fact that he has so much to share that he can barely get the thoughts out, and that he is excited to share them with me. Me...I feel so blessed to be that person. I love, love, love my life. I am so lucky to have this boy to call my own.

Space Boys and Zombies... What more do you need?

I made this lovely Space boy for my nephew for Christmas. It is a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls, it comes in a booklet along with the pattern and instructions on how to make a robot for him as well. As you can see, I only got the Space Boy finished, oh well, there is always his birthday. Maybe by then Space Boy could use a companion.

On the flip side of cute and boyish, I recently made this Zombie girl, also from a pattern from Wee Wonderfuls.
It is actually the undead form of Olive from her make a long story pattern. I realize I completely destroyed her sweet and wholesome idea with slightly decaying flesh and exposed wounds, but a girls gotta make things her own somehow.
It was made for an incredible artist friend of Mr. Fantastics who has done a tremendous amount of amazing work for him for Jesus Hates Zombies. I wanted to do something special for her and I felt that anything less than homemade and original simply would not do! So I made her a red hoodie in honor of Lauren and sent her on her way.

Cookies and Mexican Cocoa

We had grand plans to go to the Public Market yesterday. It is something that everyone that lives here should do at least a few times a year. We try to go as much as we can and yesterday seemed like the day, the sun was shining, the kids couldn't wait for hot donuts and hot chocolate (one of the glorious things about the outdoor market here is the FOOD!) And until I looked at the thermostat holding steady at 7 degrees I was fine with going.

But since it's not good for anyone to walk around in single digit temps, we decided to stay home and heat up our kitchen to stay warm.

The kids made, Mexican Hot Chocolate, with a pinch of chili powder and cinnamon.

Boots loved it! So did Little P, but she politely refused a picture!
Then we decided that we would make Jam Thumbprints, we used Barefoot Contessa's recipe. Yummmmmm!

The coconut was a nice toasty change from normal thumb prints. Thanks Ina!

100 % Awesome

While browsing through Target yesterday I came across these:

They are called Mighty Muggs.

Boots decided that Dad could not live one more day with out the Boba Fett

So we scooped him up and brought him home, little did we know that when Mr. Fantastic opened him up we would find that he is actually made from:
I wish every toy was!

New Year, New Ideas

It has been a very hectic couple of months. There hasn't been much time for anything extra, including blogging. But I am going to try to make an attempt to post every day this month, minus yesterday. New Years classifies as a freebie don't ch'a know?

Christmas was great, the kids loved loved loved seeing their Grandparents and Aunt K and her whole family. It was a blast having all of the kids running around the house. Our little nephew got a leaf blower for Christmas, have you ever seen any thing so freakin' cute???

When he wasn't using the little vacuum he was using this, I had a very clean house by the time they left!

We spent the day yesterday at home with the kids, it was Mr. Fantastics last day of vacation, so we decided to try to make it as relaxing as possible. Part of it was spent trying to put together these puzzles that Aunt K gave Boots for Christmas. Now these are the coolest damn things, and he LOVES them. But you need a engineering degree to put together the tortoise! They all went together eventually and he loved every second of it.

More tomorrow!