Some Big News

Hey, I’m just popping in to say hi. I’m sorry I’ve been MIA lately, but my computer that I use for blogging died, so I’ve been kind of crippled, computer-wise, for the last few weeks. But I’ve got some big news that I’m finally able to share with you. Seriously, I’ve been waiting for this decision for the last 3 months, and I’m relieved to say that all that waiting wasn’t in vain. So without further ado, I give you:

Our new home.

Well, at least our new home’s location (we have yet to procure a home home, but hopefully that part will be taken care of before too long).

Yep, here’s a little close up. In case you’re not familiar with every little dot in the Pacific Ocean.  Our little dot is called San Cristóbal, in the Galapagos Islands.

Exciting? Crazy? Cool, huh? We’re definitely moving into the unknown, here. I’ll have more to share later. Today I’m flying back to the states to pack up the rest of our old home and get everything ready for our transcontinental move (again, crazy).

Have a wonderful Monday!

A Few Little Things

Christmas and New Years flew by in a blur, and now I’m battling a nasty stomach bug, so I’m not feeling up to much. I just thought I would share a few little things with you. First, Christmas. It was small, on my part, very small. I whipped up a couple of little felt lovelies for my daughters. With life and our future living situation still up in the air, and living out of suitcases for the last month, I didn’t want to add too much to the toy load, but I did want to give them a little something to make this Christmas special. First, my older daughter is OBSESSED with horses.

So a little felt horse finger puppet was an easy choice.

My younger daughter’s tastes are a little more simple, so I went with a nice little felt ball. It’s fun to chew on and to throw.

With the year before me a complete unknown, I decided to ground myself with a few goals (resolutions) that I want to make happen. I even wrote them down, in a nice little word-collage, but of course, I forgot to photograph it, and now it’s dark, so I decided to let the post go without a picture. My goals are mostly small, but after all, it’s the “small” things that make life wonderful.

Anyways, I hope you all have a wonderful week. Hopefully I’ll be feeling up to posting something for real next week!

Ecuador Days 13 and 14

Day 13 and 14:

With the chicken coup finished, other things had to be gotten in order. First, my husband and brother-in-law had to clear an area for the coup and casita, which was no small feat. My in-law’s back yard just a little like a jungle, and ground space is at a premium. After a little clearing and leveling, they made a nice spot, and they even got the chicken “nursery” because (did I mention this?) they were going to get more chickens, of the small, freshly hatched variety, namely chicks!

No, I’m not kidding you. They’re really that cute! My little girls flipped out over these little fluff balls (and I’m even crazier about them, if you can believe it). It takes all the willpower I have not to just carry one of these guys around in my pocket all the time.

(For this picture, I said: “Hold up a chick and smile.” This is what I got.)

My little girl has a rocky relationship with these chicks. She loves them so so much, and they just don’t reciprocate.

She doesn’t handle rejection well.

Well, that’s the end of our first two weeks in Ecuador. I think I’ll probably switch to weekly updates, because life is moving too fast here to keep up with it all.

Have a wonderful day!

Ecuador Days 10 through 12

Days 10:

These next few days were spent listening to a lot of whack, whack, whack, WHACK. Yes, that’s the best description I’ve got for the sound of lots and lots of hammering, with some sawing and chiseling thrown in there too. That’s the sound of a power-tool-less construction project going on. I am so impressed with my husband, not only because he made a chicken coup, and chicken casita (little house), but also because he was able to make it work in very primitive working conditions.

Seriously impressed. The finished product is very a nice little home to seven (soon to be 14) little chickens. The house is complete with roosting poles, a little ramp, and some shelves for the chickens to nest on.

Of course, Papi’s little helper was very busy the whole time. She had a little miniature hammer and some pliers with which she was busily “working.”

Our conversations went like this for most of the days: Me:”Come do [this or that]. My two-year-old: No mami, I can’t, I’m working!“

Day 11:

We took a break from the hard work to go to visit my husband’s grandmother: Mami Olga as everyone calls her. Both the girls were pretty shy at first, but eventually the warmed up to her.

Of course, Mami Olga’s cat was the favorite of the visit, until the very-pregnant feline lost her patience with them.

My poor girls; they always love animals way more than the animals love them. So sad.

Mami Olga lives about 2 blocks from the beach so we walked down to see the ocean.

If I were sending out Christmas cards, this would be the photo. Well, maybe not.

We stopped by the “Shopping” (the mall) to get some things, and I couldn’t resist taking this photo.

It is awesome for so so many reasons.

Day 12:

This day started off great with yummy food. A papaya smoothie (with fresh papaya curtesy of the tree in the back yard) and encebollado, which is a really delicious soup featuring fresh tuna and yuca root.

By the afternoon, though, I was beginning to lose my mind a little with all the hammering from the chicken coup construction, so I went on a quick shopping trip with my sister-in-law and my older girl, who is completely enraptured with the whole bus system (fortunately she has been able to block all the memories of her throwing up on them the last time we were here!). I’m still not up to shopping by myself; I’m worried I’m going to get totally ripped off on prices (bad), lost (worse), or robbed (worst), but who knows, I might get the courage to venture out on my own one of these days. It happened to be a Wednesday, and that means all the produce is 25% off, which means I really went to town in the veggie aisle. I was most excited about my 10 artichokes (!) (which, by the way, happen to be the best artichokes I’ve ever tasted, hands down) and 7 great big avocados, but I also got mangoes, apples, plantains, onions, tomatoes, potatoes, oranges, and peppers. And I only spent about $20. The bus ride home was less fun for my little girl than the way there, but we made it home with all our bags and no car sickness, so it was a definite win, overall.

Here’s the finished coup, in case you were wondering:

Ecuador Days 7 through 9

Day 7:

With my husband still sick, I didn’t get much done today. We went for an afternoon walk to get pan (bread) from the local panaderia. That was pretty much it.

(These pictures were taken about 10 seconds apart.)

Day 8:

We celebrated Joel’s birthday. My dear lovely husband got another year older and wiser. Since he doesn’t like birthday cake, but loves chocolate, I decided to make some dark chocolate brownies with a dulce de leche swirl. Before you get to excited about how yummy that sounds, I have to say they were a total flop. It was no fault of the recipe. Total user error, as my husband would say (except he wouldn’t say it for this instance, when he tries to be super supportive so I don’t give up on baking all together). I burnt the dulce de leche, so I had to use a sieve to get the charred pieces out before I swirled it into the brownies. But the real lesson of the night was the oven temperature does matter. A lot.

You see, the numbers on my in-laws gas stove have all been rubbed off, so I had no way of knowing what temperature the oven was set to. I couldn’t even tell how far from the “off” position the knob had been turn, because they’re kind of swirly knobs, so I just had to guess and go with it. I think I must have been cooking those things at about 400° because they were completely black on the bottoms. Apparently 50 degrees makes a big difference.

Think charcoalate brownies. So so disappointing.

I mean, they got all eaten, as much as could be chiseled out of the pan, that is. (Check out the fork after said chiseling.)

Day 9:

We went to church. We walk to church with our awesome big stroller.

Are you starting to see a pattern with the girls in the stroller?

We also ate some crabs.

My first time eating crab. You know anytime there are news papers spread out underneath your food, and you’re eating over a cutting board and the use of mallet or hammer is recommended, you’re in for a unique culinary experience.

I decided that you can divide the world into two kinds of people: those who know how to eat a crab, and those who don’t know how to eat a crab. You’ll see what I mean if you ever try it.

I was pretty good at getting the claws opened, but the head was harder. I was a little hesitant about sucking all the stuff out of there after my sister-in-law told me to watch out for crabs that had poop inside them still. Made it a little less appealing.

For the most part, it was really yummy and really creepy at the same time. It’s always a little weird when you can look your meal in the face as you’re eating it. At one point I was thinking, here I am tearing the legs off a creature and using its own claws to scrap the flesh out of its newly severed appendage. Wow, sorry if you’re vegetarian or if you’re now a vegetarian; I realize that was a pretty intense description. Anyways, good luck trying crab!

 

I hope I’m not boring you all with this little log. I promise something crafty is coming; I can feel it. But I think it might have to wait until the chicken coop is complete and my husband can watch the girls for a little while. Until then, have a wonderful day!

Ecuador Day 6

Day 6:

I never appreciate having unlimited access to a car more than when I’m in Ecuador. My husband’s family does not have one, which makes getting around tricky business. I remember my very first bus ride in Ecuador three and a half years ago. We chose to ride at the magical hour when all the children are released from school and have to get home (there are no school buses in Ecuador, at least that I know of.) The bus we alighted on was packed sardine-style with at least 100 uniformed children ages 5 to 18. I was just nearing the end of my first trimester, and I wasn’t completely over my all-day sickness, so standing up in a cramped, weltering-hot bus for 20 minutes was not the most fun, but I survived. We’ve been on many bus rides since then, but it’s a whole different thing taking the kids along. The day we arrived in Ecuador, we went shopping by ourselves, but today for some reason, we had the gumption to tote along our two little toddlers.

Our older girl, almost three, loved it. Every other second she was exclaiming, “Mami, look there’s a dog. There’s another dog. There’s another dog. Mami, uno, dos, tres dogs!” Our younger girl was fairly tolerant for most of the ride, but I think we caught some air one too many times, because her complacency didn’t last.

Because nothing says “welcome to mass public transit” quite like a lap full of warm vomit, my younger daughter did me the honor of getting sick all over me about 5 minutes before we arrived at our destination (arguably not as bad as the last time we were in Ecuador and my older daughter threw up all over me at the beginning of a two-hour bus ride to the temple—oh memories!). I spent the first minutes of our shopping trip trying to decide if people were staring at me because I was the only white girl in the mall, or because I was covered in throw-up. Either way, I just tried to smile through it.

Compared to the bus ride, shopping was a breeze. I filled my basket with all kinds of fresh fruit and vegetables (I bought half a dozen artichokes!) and then we took a taxi home. Taxis, while costing 5–10 times the bus fare, are a convenient way to get home, but I do feel like I take my life hands whenever we climb into one of those yellow cabs. At least no car sickness on the way home.

Yes, we truly are blessed.

And just to include a photo, here’s a picture of one of the little things they have here that get me through the tough times. Like wafer cookies in the states, but much, much better.

Ecuador Days 4 and 5

Day 4:

Not much done today, my poor husband is sick sick sick with a temperature of 103 (no, it’s not the water, thank goodness), so my translator/helper/cook/thing-finder is off duty, which means there’s not much I can do.

The girls are amusing themselves with the chickens, which they love much more than anyone should love something that dirty.

(Problem: The chickens won’t come to me.)

(Solution: I’ll tear off this leaf to feed them. Wait, where’d they go?)

Our missing suitcase is still MIA, but that seems to be the way things go in Ecuador; everything takes much longer than you think it should, and nothing ever goes exactly how you planned it.***

Before getting really sick, my husband was undertaking to plant trees, till the soil to prepare some ground for a garden, and build a chicken coup. My most ambitious plans included going shopping and organizing my suitcases. But all that will have to wait for right now.

Day 5:

It gets dark around 6:30 every day, year round. That’s the oddity of living on the equator; there is not much change. We’re visiting for the first time in the “summer” months (the last two times we’ve come here, we’ve come during their “winter”) but nothing is noticeably different except it is probably hotter, but coming from Utah winter to here just feels plain hot. Period. The days feel the same as I remember them from the last two times I was here. Morning and night come much sooner than I think they should; and I can never get myself into bed or out of it as soon as I think I should.

At night I lay in bed nursing my 13-month baby who will eat anything except cows milk, and who loves to lay in bed nursing more than pretty much anything else. It makes for a lot of time to sit and listen. The night sounds are different here. I notice them much more than in the states. Cinder blocks and plaster do little to keep the outside world from penetrating the interior of our quarters, and the noises, even more than the insects and heat, seem the most obtrusive. A fan is an absolute must-have for sleeping to cope with the noise as much as the temperature, but even the loudest fans the department store has to offer can’t completely mask the ruckuous going on all around.

I can’t even think what forms the night sounds of my home in Oregon. I guess we hear dogs barking occasionally, but even that is most often a single dog singing an unsolicited solo. Here it is packs of dogs. Think of the scene in 101 Dalmations (animated, of course) where the dogs are sending their distress message across the city with barking; at the close of that scene the whole city is going crazy with barking, yeah, that’s exactly what it’s like.

I know that I’ve never hear a rooster crow in Oregon, but they are a common addition to the night sounds here. Every country movie I’ve ever seen tells me that roosters crow at dawn, but I’ve learned that really, the crowing will start any time after 1 or 2 in the morning. Maybe the roosters don’t realize what time zone they are in; I still haven’t adjusted.

***We just got our bag today, only 10 days late! Oh well, we were just grateful it finally got here, and in one piece, too! Yay for small miracles! (I know I just used three exclamation points in the last three sentences, but seriously, this bag thing merits it.)

Ecuador, Days 1 through 3

Sorry that I have been absent from my little blog space for so long. I had not intended it to be so, but I have been sitting on my hands, holding my breath for the last waiting for some important news regarding the future of our family, and because of that, I could not get myself to blog. So here I am, a month later, still awaiting some important news (the wait is almost killing me; I guess I am in need of a good lesson on patience), but I thought, hey, life goes on, and so I’m blogging again.

We’re in Ecuador, by the way. South of the Equator. Have you ever bought a one-way ticket somewhere out of the country? We did. We don’t know when we’ll be back! (Crazy, I know, but life is crazy sometimes.) Anyways, I have been crafting and making and planning all along this whole month I’ve been absent here. But I don’t have much to show for it, as yet.

To ease myself back into blogging, I decided to keep a little log of what we’re up to while we’re (indefinitely) here. I hope I don’t bore you too much, but it is sometimes nice to see life from a different perspective, and for me, this is pretty different. There will be crafting (I brought a whole 50-pound suitcase full of supplies; yes, my husband does have to be crazy in love with me to allow that), but some days will be about other odds and ends. Like these first three days. We’re still adjusting to our life here. It was a full 24 hours from the time we drove away from my parents home in Oregon to the time our airplane touched down in Guayaquil. It was a pretty rough journey, but we made it. Here’s what we’ve been up to so far.

Day 1:

We arrived in Ecuador a little before 5 am. Getting through immigration went fine, but when it came to picking up our bags, we found ourselves one bag short (the bag with all the presents for the family). After getting that sorted out (the bag, which somehow got left behind at our connection in New York,  is supposed to get here sometime this week), we were greeted by an excited abuela (grandma) and uncle, who helped us load our stuff onto a truck to take us 2 hours away to their home in Ancón.

One of the first (and only) things the girls wanted to do was swim, so even though we had hardly slept in the last 24 hours, we whipped out the swim suits, inflated the pool, and let the girls have  a little swim.

Day 2:

Sunday, we walked to church. This is very different than church in the states, but it was okay. We found out the church choir (meaning all the active members) would be performing that night at a city Christmas celebration, and I don’t know quite how it happened, but I was coerced into singing a duet with the choir director. Fortunately, I found that singing in a foreign language is easier than singing in English. I’ll have to post a picture of this later, because we used someone else’s camera, but even without seeing the pictures, I imagine I stood among all the nicely tanned members of the town.

Day 3:

We’re starting to get into the swing of things here. This is my third trip to Ecuador, and adjusting to life here has been a lot smoother than the first two times. There are always a few hurdles to overcome before I really settle into living here. Taking showers (no hot water), cooking, doing laundry, sleeping in the heat and humidity, going shopping, etc. I got over most of these the first day, so we’re feeling pretty good. I’ll admit, I had a couple near-disasters trying to fry some plantains this morning, including breaking open a 2-kilo bag of flour all over the floor, but other than that, things have gone pretty smoothly.

We walked to the  beach today, and I was so grateful that we brought our double jogging stroller. We do get a lot of stares, though. The beach was fun. Nobody else was there. One of our girls fell asleep on the way there, so Joel took our other girl down to the water while I stayed with my sleeping baby.

We found out that our older girl is still afraid of the ocean—I think the sound of the waves really freaks her out. Hopefully she’ll get used to it, because we plan on going to the beach a lot. They also caught a crab.

We were debating whether to keep it for a pet or eat it for dinner, but in the end we decided to set it free.

Cute little guy.

And we rounded out our afternoon with more swimming.

Have a wonderful Monday!

Giveaway Winner

Sorry to keep you all waiting (were you on the edge of your seat?)! The winner of the 3-piece Nativity prototype set is Amy. Congratulations! Send me your address and I’ll get those sent off to you.

For all those of you who didn’t get a full nativity template, they’re now available in my brand new etsy shop. Check it out here if you’re interested. Thank you all for your kind words. Reading all your comments really made my day.

Have a wonderful week!

Tutorial: Sewing Fabric “Block” Animals

***Just a reminder, the giveaway for the 3-piece nativity set is still going on, and there are a few full copies of the nativity template left and you can now purchase the full template in my brand new Etsy shop. Be sure to leave a comment on that post to get a chance to win and to get your free template.***

So, you’ve got your Nativity template, and you’ve been happily stitching away, and now you want to make those little guys into fabric block animals (like wood block animals cut out with a jig saw). Well, it’s a pretty simple process, so for all you seasoned sewers out there, just scroll down to admire the finished product. But if you’re like me, still feeling my way around the sewing thing, then you might want a quick tutorial to get you on track.

First things first, I got a question a little while ago about what kind of fabric I used, and my answer is a medium weight 100% natural colored linen from Joann’s. Nothing special (but if I had unlimited resources, I would have liked a nice, expensive, made specifically for embroidery linen). I also think a good cotton (Kona is my preferred choice) would work perfectly well, too.

1. Once you have your image embroidered, you are going to want to remove any marks you may have used to create the pattern, then iron your piece flat (I use a scrap of muslin when I iron my embroidery to protect it).
2. Then lightly trace an outline about 3/4th’s of an inch around your piece. I like to keep my border fairly well-rounded, because tight curves are much harder to sew (maybe that’s just me, though).
3. Cut around this traced line. You can use a good, sharp pair of scissors, or lay your fabric down on a self-healing mat and then carefully cut around it with a small rotary cutter.
   
4. Lay your cut-out piece on top of your back embroidered piece, or just on another piece of fabric if you don’t want your block to be double sided, right sides together. Make sure to line up the two designs as closely as possible ( I feel for the “ridges” made by the embroidery).
5. Trace the outline on your back piece of fabric and cut it out. If you are using a rotary cutter, you can skip the tracing step, and just follow the outline of your top piece as you cut out the back.
   
   
6. Cut a long strip of fabric, making it the width you want your finished block to be, plus a 1/4 inch seam allowance on both sides. The length will vary depending on which figure you are sewing, but you’ll probably need at least 18 inches, to be safe.
   
7. Sew the long strip all along the right-side edge of one side of your piece.
   You can pin it if you wish, but I found it easier to just manipulate the fabric around as I went.
   Leave at least a 1-inch tail at the beginning and end of the strip, and leave a slight gap between the beginning and end of your stitching so you’ll have enough room to turn it out later.
   (I didn’t leave extra room, so my fabric tore a little when I turned it out. p.s. I didn’t mean this to be a close-up of my pomegranate-stained finger. Sorry about that!)
8. Pin you other side to the edge of your strip, with the right side facing in. You’ll want to make sure you’re laying over the other side in mirror position so the sides will be straight look right (sorry if that’s a little confusing. I couldn’t figure out a better way to word it, so just look at the picture.)
9. Sew all along the edge, with a 1/4-inch seam allowance. Your stitching will be parallel to your previous stitching along the side strip.
10. Turn your piece out. If you are using hemostats or any pinging implement, try not to grab your embroidery, go for a blank piece of fabric.
11. Stuff your piece with little pieces of poly fill, wool, or cotton. I like to stuff mine pretty firmly.
12. Leave a little room in the bottom to pack in your weighting implement. This can be a few fishing weights, some beans, rice, or anything heavy, small, and nonperishable. If you want, you can sew a narrow weight “pouch” out of a scrap piece of the side strip and fill it with your weighting device, then stuff the pouch into the bottom your piece; this method helps keep all the weights at the bottom. Something to keep in mind: the bigger your piece, the more weight you’ll want right at the bottom to keep it upright. I didn’t get quite enough weight in my donkey to keep it really stable, so it’s a little wobbly, but it works.
13. Once you have your weight inside, sew up the opening with a ladder stitch (see my tangram tutorial for an example of that—I think I called it slip stitch there,  or just google it).

You may have to smoosh it around a bit to get it to sit right.

You’re done! (Only 23 to go. . . .) If you don’t have a nativity template, go get one here, or use whatever design you want for your fabric blocks. Enjoy!

ps. I’m linking this up at the weekend wrap-up party and at skip to my lou.