$3.50

It's a bad picture but you get the idea...

$3.50
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

Real music "toys" for the little dude. I went to the famous VNA rummage sale a few weeks and scored big time on a few things and i do believe this is one of the best treasures i found and at $3.50 i thought a steal. Especially the flute! He loves going around with it and the guitar gets fair attention too. Strums it whenever his eye catches it.

thimbles!

thimbles
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

I hate typical thimbles. They make it awkward and hard for me to sew. I saw some embroidered Japanese thimbles made out of fabric and came up with these - felt and fabric thimbles in 3 sizes. Love them! So much more comfy. I used feedsack and other vintage scraps to make them decorative. I love em!

Busy weekend!

We did a lot this weekend. Costume contest, hayride, farm visiting, apple farm visiting and more. Here's a few pictures...

Typical weekend lately...

Apple picking...last time until next year so one more apple pie it is!




a visit to the farm for eggs and veggies...

pumpkins
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

baa baa black sheep
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

ended up going on a hayride and went through the corn maze since it was the last day for both...

tractor ride
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

Trying to capture fall before it flees...

Contest

Go check out Robin’s blog for a contest. I found out about it on Surviving’s blog.

Our house really IS haunted!

Our house isn't haunted and it's not because of Halloween decorations. Strange things happen here. Lightening bolts hit us, things do weird things (clocks, etc), knocks on the door but no one is there and now.............now pumpkins that were previously not carved are carved. How strange is that.

We had a busy week. Fall festival at preschool which meant volunteering for me, a costume contest and a rainy day. Well today between rushing around we ran home for something and I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw one of our pumpkins carved before rushing inside. We were planning on carving them tonight after the rush of the weekend. No need because it's done. How freaky is that???

Sunflower fun

1. I took this shot at the train station on LD's 2nd birthday. I love how it turned it out.

2. A crocheted scrubbie my mom asked me to make her.



3. A sunflower paper craft made from cutouts of LD's hands and black dahl that fell at the bottom of the cabinet and was too dirty to sort out.

Fun.

tree love

Red2
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

Again....i lovvvve it here. Look at this. I am forced to sit and stare at it in the parking lot of the library. I can't hear the chatter in the backseat nor rush my books into the library and zoom off to the kazillion other things I have to do. When I see this I can only sit in awe.

introducing le petite prince!

le petite prince!
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

So here it is in it's imperfect glory - i'll post a picture of the complete outfit later. This robe was my challenge - the rest is easy. I love the way it turned out, mostly because i have no experience with clothing except shapeless pajama bottoms that are easy to make. It's based on the French book Le Petite Prince.

I did this with no pattern and no knowledge. The sleeves are way too long because short and simple i screwed up and forgot my plan. It'll be an easy fix though because the sleeves are the only place i didn't put lining so instead of undoing everything on the sleeves again i'll just add lining to the top and bottom. The sleeves were hard to figure out. I didn't realize you had to stitch the cuffs on last. That the shoulders come first. I stitche the arms and thought i could just attach them and the cuffs but quickly realized that's not the way it works. I'm really glad i did this. I was so intimidated at first but since i found the perfect fabric on the remnant table (when does that happen???) for 99 cents a yard i figured i could screw up and just lose time (worth much more than the cloth though right?). Funny i went into the shop looking for shiny satiny fabric (on ebay too) but was only finding expensive stuff which probably would have been harder to sew although this slippery slinky material was not easy to work with at first either. Anyway, long story short, i feel confident enough to retry clothing. Whenever i attempt a pattern it gets screwed up. The pajama pants i made for me could fit three of me in them. I just don't get along with patterns. I do better looking at something and deconstructing then reconstructing. Lately i look at clothing like that...i see how it was made. Pretty cool and weird too. But now i'm going to try a pattern and throw my common sense in there and see what comes out. Probably won't be able to do it until after the holidays though because i have presents to make.

two posts in one day!

I don't usually post twice in a week!

I'm just so happy that i finally finally finished LD's le petite prince costume. I'm entering him in a costume for completely selfish reasons. Fabric is involved. Pictures to come soon! Just had to share my elation at finishing it. I really didn't think i was going to be able to pull it off. I had no pattern, no clue where to start but i did and i finished it. I'm thinking if i had any idea of what i was doing, i just might be really good at this!

I remember...

LD's 2nd birthday cake made by moi
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

...when I couldn't wait for this darling little boy of mine to speak. And now...now...i can't wait for a moment of silence. I don't mean it but then i do. The rambling monologue that lasts from sun up (well about a half hour before) to sundown (about two hours after) with a minor break (one small nap) in between is exhausting. I would be lying if i didn't occassionally fantasize about sticking a sock in it.

Two is tough. Two is tiring. Two is also fun and amazing and new words always throw me for a loop wondering how he can learn so much in a day. It's also amazing how many times he is sent to the naughty rug and how much he likes being there. Hitting and throwing are on his to do list most days now. It's frustrating getting a car or truck smack dab in the face upon wakeup. People wonder why i need so much coffee...you try waking up that way every day.

His vocab used to be about a hundred words now it's increasing at an amazing speed, but the way he says some are so dang cute! Some of my favorite words in the monologue...

a more. Means i want, i want more, i want some, etc etc.

nuk - milk. Used to be ilk, then ick, now nuk. And used quite demandingly too.

turt-tle - not turdle how most say it but a very sounded out turtle. This is now one of my favorite words of the english language. Love it on my little one's lips.

a-mane-o. Tomato. This is my husband's favorite word of his i think. LD loves tomatos. Took a long while for to figure what the heck he was saying which always makes him mad. Two is full of frustrations for child and parent alike.

cow jump over the mooooon - he's obsessed with the moon and the cow and looks for each of them every single night and sometimes mid-afternoon. He was quite sad in October when the moon was so low every night that we couldn't see it from anywhere.

kiss-eeez. a-more kiss-eez. So cute!

daddy's. mommy's. two daddy's. I don't know why but he calls me daddy most of the time. I think it started when i weened him and told him "no more mommy" because he used to call milk mommy. It used to be a little embarassing when he called me daddy in public and when he recently started to say "two daddy's!" while pointing at us both. I've tried breaking it. Now i just embrace it. When he does say ammi (urdu for mommy) he says "ammis" - one is never enough for him. When he's got a fist full of blueberries or grapes he's already asking for "amores. amore buberries"

i'm missing some other favorites...

These are the days i never want to forget but i seem to forget before i remember to remember.

There are two occassions when he's calm and quiet-ish. When we pray (he stands there mumbling and then says thaaaank you. thaaaank you. over and over. Too cute. I didn't teach him that either.

Up above is the cake i made him for his second birthday. I love the way it turned out. It was much easier than i could have anticipated. I planned it for months though. We took him on his first real train ride that daytoo. Most of his monologues are about trains and "a-more trains" so "trains and a more trains" he got.

Food blog

btw, i've started my month long menu planning and budgeting on my food blog.

Eid

Hope everyone had a wonderful Eid. I did. I'm happy to say for once that it felt like Eid instead of me feeling like an outsider or not going to the mosque because my babe was too small and feeling left out. This year was perfect.

We attended prayers in the middle of a field under a tent and I must say, I felt such peace. My son was running around behind me outside so that interrupted me a few times but still, I felt good standing there with so many other Muslims. You never see them here. I'm so glad we found this mosque so close to us. A mixed crowd and the women talked to me and the ones that didn't offered salams and smiles. So different from my last Eids where everyone seemed to know everyone else and I was outside of it all.

After that we made our calls and then drove to a small town in Connecticut, a post will be on this later. I'll just say we were in search of Stars Hollow because since seeing my first episode of Gilmore Girls, I've always wanted to go to the real Stars Hollow and see it. We did and I'll post about it later. I so want to move there!

The next day was the kids Eid party at a friends house. It was awesome! Loved seeing Eid being celebrated in such a big fun way and although my guy missed his nap and didn't want to pin the star near the moon (game) with the other kids and preferred to hold the limbo stick instead of going under it, he had fun. It was an excellent day. We are all already planning the next Eid in 8 or so weeks. It's so important to have this for the kids and I'm so glad I've met likeminded folks.

Knitting envy and an early Eid Mubarak.

It drives me crazy that i have issues with knitting. I can do almost any other creative thing - at least to the point where i feel satisfied with the results. I can even knit a few dishcloths, as long as i don't make a mistake. I'm afraid to start a big project because i can never figure out how to pick up stitches or any other mistake fixing thing so i just don't knit. But if there's anything that makes me want to try again it's this. Dear God isn't that the coolest. I totally see Little Dude in one and myself too. It's killing me that i can't whip it up myself. Arghhhhhhh. Anyone who knits love my little dude enough to make one for him? ;-)

I probably won't be online tomorrow so I want to wish everyone Eid Mubarak now. Insh'Allah it has been a blessed and renewing month for all.

Some days just aren't meant for blogging.

I was going to post about going to the farm this weekend and the plenty we came home with and then i didn't want to because me and the little dude have been in a big brawl today. He finally crashed. Thank God. I hope he wakes up in a better mood. If not it's ice cream and cartoons for the rest of the day because i just can't deal anymore today. Anyway, so then i wrote a nice post about my first quilt and how much i love fall etc etc and then i decided to go to my flickr picture and post from there the picture of my quilt in progress, so i cut what i wrote to paste over there. In the meantime I got distracted and copied something else. It was gone. Things just aren't going right today. Sigh. I haven't sewn in so long. I'm going to go decompress and sew something simple just to clear my head. Hopefully it won't be a disaster too. Happy Monday.

NYC - Chinatown

P9150035
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

I love the accidental nature of this picture. We were just pulling into Chinatown and my mom wanted a picture so i snapped one at the beginning of the street quickly to capture the compactness of it. What I also caught was a photo shoot off to the left. Look at the bottom left and the woman there posing. There was a group of photographers snapping away at her. It took me a minute to figure out why she was looking at me for taking a picture. Accidents are cool sometimes. It really completes the picture i think.

Got mail (over two weeks ago...)

P9230240
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

Do you know that silly girl Robyn? She's one of the sweetest most giving people I know. I ordered this cute little pouch from her store because i adore the print and she's got a great talent for sewing.

Look at all the little extra goodies i got too! I'm so spoiled. Most of this has already been put to use. She's got my taste down. Thanks Robyn!

Check out her store and support another muslimah!

This is why i love New Jersey

Jersey fall
Originally uploaded by wayfarer

When I told people I was moving to New Jersey they would say "I'm sorry." And they meant, "I'm sorry you have to live in the armpit of the US." I was scared of what living here would be like.

There hasn't been a minute yet that I miss Georgia over here. Except for the people we left behind. Them i miss.

Look at this. Just gorgeous. Don't miss that moon. This is minutes from our house.