Training britches!

Well I made my first pair and I nixed the wool part because I don't need them to be waterproof, anyway here is a pic of the first pair I made, they are plenty cute and plenty functional, they just take a while to dry because I put 8 layers in the wet zone, Also the workmanship is a little shabby, I need to practice and find a better method of attaching the waist and legbands...

Getting my life together...

Its about time that I got my life together, and by life I mean my home. I need to organize and purge and purge and purge. Okay, I probably don't have that much to purge, seeing how I am constantly editing my material possessions and carting them off to the goodwill. However, somehow, I always seem to amass enough items (each season) to make a good trunk full of stuff to haul to the goodwill. It really goes against everything I believe in.... this over consumption and disposal of goods, but I really don't know how to avoid it. How do you avoid something you don't see coming? I don't shop that much, the majority of money is spent on food items. Where is this stuff coming from? Lets see if I can make this make sense...

1. My son- I do have clothing items (bought to fit me during pregnancy and after childbirth) that no longer fit because my size has been slowly decreasing since I gave birth and these items (mainly pants) don't fit flatteringly anymore (this is coming from my husband whose opinion I value on matters concerning the appearance of my butt in aforementioned pants).

2. My husband's mother- Ok, she doesn't really hold any blame here, but I am going to go ahead and assign her some. First of all she constantly calls me to ask me what size my baby is wearing because she is out shopping and just found an unbelievable sale at Children's Place or BabyGap or some such other store.... it doesn't matter if I say we don't need anything, if the deal is good enough she will certainly buy the items and justify it by saying that SOMEDAY he will be able to wear it and if not she has 4 more grandkids, etc.... How this relates to my current clutter, ummmm... well, ummm there are at least 1 or 2 baby items here that I don't need, I am sure... let me just look around for a minute...

3. My husband- this jerk wanted to keep a vodka bottle because it was shaped like a skull last week. Obviously I unceremoniously hit the dumpster with it while he was at work. This is one small example of his attitude toward decluttering and organizing. (eta: people may think I shouldn't call my husband a jerk on a public blog, but it is a fact, he tends to be a jerk, it requires a certain amount of constant self-awareness for him not to be, and that self-awareness is often lacking. Just stating the facts, doesn't mean I love him any less...)

4. My neighbors- I blame them for not moving out of the bigger house that my family is renting to them that I would like to move into. If I had more space I could organize my stuff better...

Okay thats enough of that, I am going to be a big girl after I finish playing on the computer and my sweet baby wakes up and go get started!

Vegan Flourless Chocolate Cake

ETA: Ok, I made this recipe a couple more times, and I don't know what I was smoking the first time I tasted this cake, but YUCK!


Ok, I stumbled across this recipe whilst googling for a flourless chocolate cake recipe and must say that I was intrigued. A cake recipe based on black-eyed peas.... hmmm. Now, for some reason I have a strange and sometime-y aversion to legumes, that is if they are prepared in the traditional sense. I do occassionally relish a bowl of 5 bean chili or baked beans, but not as a daily dish. Now, seeing how I also have an even greater aversion to store-bought meat, I think that legumes should be incorporated into my daily diet for nutritional reasons. In this recipe, I have found a pleasing if not addictive way to do just that. Here is a link to the recipe http://www.noveleats.com/daringbakers/vegan-flourless-chocolate-cake/.





The cake certainly satisfied my sweet tooth and was decadently rich. I will say that next time I will bake for about 10 more minutes because the center of the cake was still kind of wet, I cooked it for 60 minutes. I also iced it with a chocolate buttercream glaze, made with chocolate morsels and vegan butter.

Training pants

Ok, I have to type quick because my baby daddy is trippin'. I keep telling him over and over again you can't "babysit" your own child, its called parenting... Anyways, I wanted to quickly go over my latest project: training pants for Manny. He is now 8 months old and pooping almost exclusively in the pot, however I miss a lot of pees, so I would like some trainer pants that pull up and down. I just got some organic bamboo velour and fleece and I already have some wool interlock, so I'm thinking about how I can combine them to create something like this http://doityourselfec.blogspot.com/2008/01/wool-in-two-training-pants.html.

Hickernut

Ok, I really didn't want that for the title of my blog but after entering a million cool titles into the "choose a title" engine and all of them coming back as already taken, I just typed "Hickernut Central" in to see if anyone had ever thought of that. Well what I didn't realize was that once I clicked enter I would be stuck with it as a title, that there was no reverse button. Maybe there is, I don't know, I'm too lazy to look and try to figure it out, and besides I will just assume it is destiny, my blog shall be called "Hickernut Central".