ten minutes to myself

i have more fabric than sewing ability

Don't tell my toddler I said this, but I enjoy shopping a whole lot more if I leave her at home. 

Today, I found myself, without the toddler,  at the Tanh Dinh market (if I remember correctly) with a friend, on a mission to find fabric for a pair of holiday dresses for the girls. If I'd taken Sadie, she would have loved it. Imagine tidy stacked piles of cotton and synthetics, all folded, on both side of an aisle that was only wide enough for 1.5 people to comfortably pass each other. She could have made a big mess in record time with all of that merchandise within a single arm-span! I was really wishing that I'd brought my camera to take a photo, only to remember when I was back at home that I have a camera on my mobile phone. I never remember that when I need to! 

This was actually a pleasant market-shopping experience (those who know me are aware that I much prefer the air-conditioned mall shopping experience instead of the watch-out-for-thieves-and-get-ripped-off-by-vendors-experience). It's not touristy like the Ben Tranh market;  I went there once with Chris and  wasn't able to walk three feet without hearing yet another stall keeper shouting, "Madame, you need new shirt?" like the one that I had on was far too old or something!

We both bought more fabric than we'd planned to - she stocked up on floral Japanese cotton for blouses, and I even found a little something for myself - the geometric print in the photo in this post. I wasn't looking to buy anything for myself, but I really liked this design, so I am hoping that I can get a dress out of three metres.  Maybe this one, actually. For all of the fabric that was at the market, I didn't find anything "perfect" for the holiday dresses. Most of the fabric was lightweight and floral - perfect for this climate and the tastes of a lot of the Vietnamese women that I see out and about, but nothing that was suitable for a Christmas dress to be worn back in North America! I ended up choosing the brown knit with dots for the dresses. It's not a festive print, but I think that the design is stylish. The monkeys in toques and earmuffs was just another cute piece of cotton knit that I stumbled upon; I'm thinking pajamas for my own little monkeys. 

faux-deedoh: what happens when i try to be creative

Be assured that I have no ambitions to enter the realm of design blogging, but I thought that a wee little makeover that I did in one of my daughters' rooms this past weekend was really cute. See, both Madeline and Sadie's rooms have a wall that is completely full of built-ins - a wardrobe, a few cupboards and drawers, and this large space:

To me, it looks like that space was designed to contain a large screen television, but somehow it just seems improbable to me that a typical Vietnamese home would have large screen tvs in all of the bedrooms. Maybe I'm missing something? Anyway, these big brown spaces that really only held a clutter of toys kind of bothered me, being wasted, brown, and boring. But this weekend, I transformed Sadie's  big boring brown space thusly:

The photo may be too small to really see, but I stuck regular boring wooden clothes pegs (going for either a shabby-chic or minimalist look, depending on one's decorating sensibility) to the back of the big brown space using one of my favourite decorating aids, 3M Command Strips. And then I hung a small colourful quilt in the space, and now there is something pretty to look at there. Much better.

I could actually write a whole post on my love of the 3M Command products; I've relied on them profusely in my life overseas with it's concrete walls that I can't hammer a nail into. Why, this past weekend, I also used the velcro version of the Command Strips to put up a pair of pictures on the big brown doors to Sadie's wardrobe. Love them. 

 

 

whirligig. sounds about right.

We've been having an exasperating number of problems with our internet connection this week, which I am going to blame for falling off the wagon for the SITS challenge, but don't worry, I have other material.

This is my latest knitting project, modeled by the favourite toddler-sized model. I finished it up a few months ago but it took me an unexcuseably long time to actually photograph it. The pattern is called Whirligig Shrug, and I think that "whirligig" is an appropriate word to describe Sadie at the moment (I'd also nominated cranky teething monster, but those don't sound like they'd appeal to knitters much). 

In this photo, Sadie is peeking out the doors that lead to the swimming pool at the Somerset Building, where I take her to Gymboree Play and Learn. I think it's awesome that there is a franchise here in HCMC, but I'm currently feeling sort of awkward about it. Thus far, we've always been the first pair to arrive for the class, on the early side but that could easily go the other direction if the traffic into downtown is bad, and this past Wednesday Sadie was having a freak-out during the session. Her instructor commented to me that she was "tired because we come so early", which I sort of dismissed, and just packed us up to leave the class early as Sadie wasn't giving in to any sort of distraction attempt. On the way out, the receptionist gave me an info folder. I opened it up in the car the first line on the enclosed memo was "Please arrive for class no more than five minutes before the start", highlighted in orange. Ugh. Are we problem patrons? (With cute handknits?)

spin and fly

I read something on the web the other day that I meant to bookmark so that I could blog about it, but I seem to have forgot to bookmark the article, and thus, I have no idea what to say here tonight! So ... maybe I'll post a photo of Madeline in her new tutu in an attempt to make the lack of insightful and witty writing less obvious. Is it working?

Julie and I made this tutu a couple of weekends ago, actually. I'd seen a similar one with a $28 price tag at one of those baby boutiques. I spent about $7 on this one, for three yards of tulle (I already had the elastic for the waistband in my sewing kit). I borrowed the super-easy technique from this post on the Baby Bargains board. I didn't even have to set up my sewing machine!

I don't want to think about how many Fridays have gone by without posting some nifty links. I have some today, though, from The Silent "I" - truly, a blog after my own heart. It's all about traveling with young children. I haven't gone back through all of the archives, but I do have to recommend the posts about navigating through airports with babies and toddlers, and then the inflight experience with babies and toddlers. The next flight I will be taking with Madeline is a doozy: Calgary to Bangkok. Something like 26 hours ... the only thing I am exciting about is trying out her Gogokidz Travelmate wheels ...

Visions of Gingerbread

Madeline's first homemade ornament
Originally uploaded by goingdomestic.

Faux gingerbread people ornaments were the craft at Little Learners this past Thursday. This little person is Madeline's first homemade Christmas ornament, and I think she did a great job (though I did help her with the glitter-glue outline on her gingerbread person's hair). Madeline showed more restraint with glitter than the rest of her classmates did. I didn't ask Madeline's teacher where she found the foam gingerbread people, but I suspect it was at Michaels ('cause it's the only place in town, pretty much).

This is Madeline's third Christmas, but it's the first one where I'm trying to explain the "Christmas" concept to her. She really likes looking at the outdoor lights when we are driving to pick up her dad from work after the sun goes down. We were going to take her to our community's children's holiday party yesterday, but she elected not to go (well, she elected not to get dressed, really), even when I explained that there were cookies and a present involved. She generally thinks that reindeer are moose, but in her world, all antlered creatures are moose (she's done a lot of growing up in Newfoundland, after all). We've bought her two Christmas-y books to read (Merry Christmas, Curious George and the delightful Bear Stays Up for Christmas), and she likes them, but I'm not sure how much she truly understands yet. But it's okay; she's still quite little, and I'm sure that next year she'll be too excited to go to sleep on Christmas Eve.

The Great Homemade Playdough Experiment

Over the past few months, I've tried out three different recipes for homemade playdough. Madeline has two cans of the authentic stuff, but it has become rather rubbery, and frankly, the residue it leaves on surfaces and hands is kind of icky. I began my search for easy-to-make soft playdough ...

The first recipe I tried out was this one for no-cook playdough. It was really easy to make, and what really caught my eye was that it didn't call for any fancy ingredients - just water, salt, and hot water. The resulting dough was maybe a little glutenous, but not particularly sticky. I didn't have anything to colour it with, so it stayed Boring Beige. It dried out pretty fast.

The second one I tried is called The Best Play Dough Recipe Ever, though I didn't have such a spectacular experience with it. I am not sure if I over-cooked it (though it says to cooked until formed and no longer sticky), but it was really really doughy and I couldn't get the lumps out. When I first went shopping for the ingredients, I accidently bought alum instead of cream of tartar, as well. Oops!

My most recent recipe is this one that I found via Kiddley. I am not sure that it's considered no-cook, because a person does have to know how to boil water, but it's takes less than ten minutes to make. I got to use the rest of my cream of tartar, too. At first pass, I was really pleased with this recipe - Madeline's new dough is very soft and smooth. It's getting stickier by the day, however, and I'm not sure I can simply fix it by working in a little more oil.

I haven't decided if I'll stop my experiments with this recipe. It's pretty good, but there is a recipe for microwaved playdough on Kiddley here in the comments that sounds kind of intriguing. Maybe that one should should wait until I have access to a microwave with a setting besides "super-hot", though ...

not-quite-cinderella story

I've written before about how pleased I am with those flexible-soled Pedoodles shoes we have for Madeline. Just imagine how excited I was a couple of months ago when a half-dozen or so new designs were unveiled on their website! I didn't hesitate to order Madeline a pair of the orange runners for her birthday.

Fast-forward six weeks, and a few days after Madeline's birthday, I try to put the orange runners on her feet for an outing. Visualize my confused expression as the shoes refuse to slip on. I ordered them in the same size as her current pair of Pedoodles! I sent an email to the company, asking if the toe box on the runners are indeed narrower than they are on the shoes that Madeline currently wears, and they did confirm that the runners were narrower and fit smaller. Bummer. I then thought of replacing them with the fabulously cute red mary jane style, when I went to look them up at the retailer I would order them from (free shipping to Canada!), I noticed that they have started to post feedback about the sizing of the new styles on the site. And the Ruby Janes were noted to fit narrower and smaller as well. Bah!

On a more positive note, the stitching on Madeline's current pair of Pedoodles just gave out last week. This pair lasted a lot longer than her first pair with the decorative stitching. Instead of sending them back, I picked up a curved sewing needle and have stitched them up with strong thread. It worked pretty well, even though it took me forever to understand how the moccasin-style stitching worked.

Meow!

Madeline turned 22 months old over the weekend and happily modeled the kitty hat that her grandmother knitted for her. The kitty-ear hat is something of a tradition in my family. Both my sister and I had one as well. I am not sure if my original kitty hat was handed-down to my sister. I remember her wearing a pale pink one, but I seem to recall a pastel multicolour kitty hat - so perhaps that one was mine ...

I've already mentioned that Madeline has really been increasing her vocabulary, but in the last month she's also become really good about bedtime. Lately, we'll be plodding through her bedtime routine, and she'll suddenly point to her crib. I'll lay her down, she'll say "night-night", tap her aquarium on, and roll over. That's it. She almost puts herself to bed, really ...

there's a shivering sheep somewhere

I fell out of the habit, after Madeline was actually born, of posting all of the lovely handmade gifts she receives.  The other day she wanted to wear this ensemble that her nana knitted for her, and I remembered to take a photograph.  A hat, sweater, and mittens. Lucky girl.

squishy

Part of my master plan for Madeline was keeping her ignorant about the existence of playdough until she was old enough not to be messy with it or try to eat it, whenever that happened to be. As the evidence shows, I've failed in that endeavor. She was introduced to the fun of playdough in the open playtime that the local YMCA has every weekday morning, and she did okay. I made her a batch at home (using this recipe), but she seemed to really like the assortment of tools that were provided at the Y to use with the dough.  I left all of my cookie cutters and things like that back in Calgary, so when we were out at Toys R Us last week I picked up a set of special playdough tools that included two cans of the authentic stuff. Did Madeline try to eat it? Yes, but only twice, and I'm not really worried about any further oral investigation. I tasted a wee bit myself, and frankly, the salty-soapy flavour just isn't appealing.

The homemade playdough at the Y is really nice - it looks and smells like cherry bubblegum. I was chatting with the lovely lady who makes it for the preschool playtime and after-school programs, and she promised to pass along the recipe to me. She revealed that her secret ingredient is Kool-Aid.