It's a lack of time management that causes these things to happen.

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I haven’t been as attentive as I would have liked and truly – though I am sure you have heard this before – it isn’t you, it’s me. I have been, well, occupied with going crazy. November through January is always a rough time for me in terms of blogging.

First, of course, there is NaNoWriMo, which, by the way I won for the second year in a row. I hated the end result, but I finished and while I think the story has a good premise, I do not think I executed it well. Honestly, now that I have two months between us, I can tell you that the story was possibly some of the worst written drivel I have ever written. Which, although harsh, is true and good, because without being able to recognize the bad in what I write, how will I ever improve?

NaNo also lead Mister W and I on some very long and deep conversations about the meaning of my life and where I want it to go. Clearly, if you recall, I have been displeased… Hell, downright miserable with my job and Mister W has been nothing but encouraging me to follow my dream of writing full time. So I have been playing with story ideas and characters…we’ll see what happens in the coming months.

NaNoWriMo gave way to the holiday season when I am in my personal happy place. I love the holiday season. I take pleasure in everything: songs, food, gifts. And this year I threw myself into making quite a number of handmade gifts, namely crochet and food items. Between baking and wrapping, trimming and drinking my spiked eggnog, I didn’t have much time at all to think of you. I lurked on a few other sites like an innocent peeping Tom, but I didn’t have much to say, so I kept everything hush-hush.

December was also a time for family and I had a houseful. Again, I was in my element because I take great pleasure in entertaining and making people feel welcome, happy and pampered.

Big Sis and Little Sis took much of my time as well, not that I am complaining. Every moment spent with the Girls is good. Board games, Munchkin, new Wii games and scooters kept us busy.

Crafting has also been a big distracter! I got a loom for Christmas so I have been spending time learning how to weave! So fun! With the little taste I got from the table top loom I am eager to move on to a larger floor loom and then…Who knows!? Maybe a spinning wheel and a few alpacas!



My Beka Loom

My crochet has also brought in a bit of money. After a few of my colleagues saw a scarf and hat I made for myself, I received a few requests for scarves, hats and baby blankets. As in people want to give me money to make something for them. Give me money to do something I love to do!! What is that saying? You know, about doing something you love? Well, let me tell you, Mister W is keen on that idea. As much as he is encouraging me to write, he is also pushing me to sell my skills. He doesn’t even blink anymore when I bring home a new skein of yarn!

So that’s what I have been up to. Now it is a new year. My inkwell is full and I have a brand new sheet of ecru parchment, shiny and crisp just waiting to absorb my thoughts and experiences, my joy and my sadness.

Diaper Cake Wrecks!

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I love Cake Wrecks. I only wish I had the baking talent to recreate some of the cakes I've seen on the site. Instead, I make some fantastic crafts and sometimes, the most well-intentioned craft gets out of control and explodes all over my dining room table.

This week, I bring you a story of a craft gone horribly wrong. You might remember me mentioning my BFF Rose and her soon-to-be-born baby. Her baby shower is coming up this week and Big Sis and Little Sis and I intended to make her a diaper cake.

Expensive craft, yes, but utterly delightful and fun to make. Here is what I envisioned we’d end up with:

Photo taken from The Stork Connection

After working about two weeks on it, looking at different configurations and ways to attach everything in, we finally finished it yesterday.

We spent night after night, rolling and rerolling organic cotton cloth diapers, organic cotton receiving blankets and splash-themed hooded towels. We tried tiers; we tried single layers, no matter what we did it looked lopsided, drunk and deformed. Finally, we settled on rolling the diapers (which are taller) inside the blankets and towels for a thick, wide base that we could “fit everything” on.

HA!

We rolled soft little baby washcloths into something that resembled a flower…or a sausage…or a wiener…

We implanted little Nuks, jittery vibrator vibrating toys, things that rattled, crinkled and jingled all throughout the cake. We attached things with giant safety pins that shed much of my blood. Baby safe, rubber coated spoons grace the top like candles and the center piece (the only thing that would fit and stay put) was a super safety rubber ducky that wasn’t even on the registry but Big Sis fell in love with it and needed it for “her” Rose.

How can I resist that kind of logic?

Well, after all was said and done, this is what we ended up with:

And this is the pile of all the stuff that didn’t fit on the cake!

Big Sis looked at the cake and the pile afterwards,

“Well, I guess we over did it again,” I said.

“WE??” Big Sis asked her eyes practically popping out of her pretty round face.

“Yes, WE!” I replied, “You were at the store too. Half of this stuff you put in the cart.”

“Na-uh.”

“A ya-huh!”

“Our Rose will like it anyway.” She said completely not playing into the argument.

“Yes.” I said, “Yes, she will. ‘Cause we made it.”

“What about the other stuff?” Little Sis asked.

“We’ll just wrap it up.”

“Cool.” Little Sis said, “I think you'll need a bigger box, though.”

“Yeah.”

Can't argue with that one.

The Art of Babies and Diaper Cake Construction

Dear Secret Blogiary,

I decided that the Sunday Supper posts are going to have to be put on hiatus for the time being. It isn’t that I didn’t like doing them, but it has been overwhelmingly busy on the weekends lately and with Nano just around the corner and Thanksgiving and Christmas racing in behind, I am feeling stretched and stressed already.

Instead, today I worked on making a diaper cake for my BFF Rose who is due in December. If you don’t know, a diaper cake is a “cake” made with baby supplies: cloth diapers, receiving blankets, hooded towels, socks, washcloths, toys and other essential baby material. You can see some really gorgeous examples at Rattlecake and if I had really wanted to save my sanity and some money, I would have ordered from them instead of attempting one on my own. But...well, I never once claimed to be rational.

Diaper cakes are expensive to make especially when the person for whom you are making it is an eco-friendly vegetarian and registered for only 100% organic cotton everything. I would go that route too if I could afford it. I also found out she is going with the au naturel diaper option so a diaper cake is a perfect gift!

The girls and I had too much fun at Target picking out the baby gear needed to go into the cake. It is hard to imagine now that my girls were ever as tiny as the baby clothes we saw! I ended up spending way more money then I had wanted, but I was able to completely justify it by clearly and slowly explaining to Mister W (again) that Rose is an Only Child and I am her BFF, which means, of course, that I will be Little Baby’s Only Aunt and therefore I am allowed to spoil the snot out of Little Baby.

Nyah.

After unloading all the bags onto the dinning room table, Little Sis reverantly touched every item with a single finger as if they were sacred talismans. She oohed over the tiny booties and gave the rattles a timid shake. She looked at me and asked when I was going to give her a little brother or sister. Mister W gave me “the look” - the one that said "HA! Have fun explaining that one to her and oh by the way, she'll also want to know where babies come from, because you know that'll be the next question" - and walked away from the table.

Oh. Boy.

That is a story for another day, but I explained that Mommy was happy with just two shiny pretty girls even if they were from Outer Space! That prompted giggles and the subject was easily diverted.

We went back to the cake and looked over the instructions and started unwrapping everything and rolling diapers up. We rolled up the first dozen and wrapped a thick ribbon around it for the “top layer.” Then we started rolling receiving blankets and towels together and as we reached for the last towel, we realized we had forgotten an essential piece: The Diaper Pins!

We secured the “bottom layer” with a ribbon temporarily and then tried to figure out how to get all the goodies inside. Little Sis played with the baby face clothes trying to roll them up to look like flowers like in the picture from the directions. Big Sis debated the merits of stuffing the toys and rattles into the top rolls or unrolling the whole thing and rolling the toys up inside.

As I stared at the cake, all I could think about was how I would ever get this thing shipped without it falling apart. We played with it for a few more minutes until Little Sis, frustrated that she couldn’t make wash cloth flowers wandered off to play on the computer and Big Sis started hinting that it was close to suppertime.

So the cake is on hold for right now. Once we get diaper pins I am sure the whole thing will come together effortlessly.

Right.

Well, at least the blanket I made is done.