She Knits Shizknits

this is how I feel in the morning, pre-coffee

FIVE!

Guess who turned FIVE!!!! today?

That's right: Monkey Boy no longer has to say "I am 4-and-three-quarters" when someone asks him how old he is...now he is FIVE!!!!!!! (today, FIVE!!!!!! is said with much emphasis in our household)

Since his birthday falls over Christmas break, we will be having a party with all his friends once school starts again in January. In the meantime, he really wanted to go to the playland at Burger King today. That was his only special request, so of course we had to oblige!

My OOTD for this special excursion:

• brown colorblock dress: Charlotte Russe
• thermal tank under dress: F21 (remixed)
• brown sweater tights: Kohls (remixed)
• boots: Lassen (remixed)

This photo was taken after we got home from the playland (which resembles a huge kid-sized Habitrail)...I needed a cup of hot tea after the NOISE! and LIGHTS!.  Plus the fact that I ate one of those BK Chicken Sandwiches.  Someone out there must love those stomach bombs as much as I do....!  I even order mine sans mayo since it makes me feel less guilty about eating all the fries that come with the combo meal!

(as a total aside, I actually ordered and ate a McRib sandwich last week. ZOMG! I haven't had one of those since high school and it tasted exactly the same as I remembered! Which, come to think of it,  probably isn't a good thing....)

I might have to take an extra yoga class tomorrow to cleanse all the grease out of my system, but the small men were perfectly happy to scarf down their burgers (no MUSTARD, please) and apple fries so they could run off to play.   At Monkey Boy's request, we are also going out to dinner tonight. He wanted to eat at Old Spaghetti Factory, so that's where we are headed. 

Oh, and wanted to mention that I'm trying a new 'twist' with my hair. It's getting longer and harder to deal with. I have a lot of hair, but it's super fine so it tends to get 'flyaway' at the slightest provocation. Plus I HATE spending time styling my hair...if it takes me any more then 5 minutes to deal with it, I get frustrated. I complained about dealing with shoulder length hair in a Flickr post and Adventures in Mass Transit gave me some tips.

(which, BTW, you HAVE to check out AiMT's hair...!)

So I tried this as an alternative to a regular ponytail:

I didn't notice that a big strand was popping out till I took the pic, but I"m too lazy to go re-set up the tripod and camera!  Anyways....the was a simple and comfy way to wear my hair while keeping it out of my face and taming the BIG.FLYAWAY.FRIZZHEAD look that I was sporting prior to putting it up.

Any other suggestions for taming shoulder-length hair?

sheep this!

Christmas wrap-up

Well, Christmas has come and gone, and we have the piles of wrapping paper/boxes to prove it. Our house is full of new Lego sets, beeping Spy Watches, and K'Nex (which are turning out to be a big hit with Little Man). Here's how our Christmas went this year....

Christmas Eve day is always busy in our family. We celebrate CE with my mom, and open gifts CE night- a tradition that started when my parents got divorced many years ago and we had to split Christmas between them. So we'd do CE with my mom, and Christmas day with my dad. When we got married, it was still CE with mom, but we did two Christmas day celebrations: one with my dad, and one with the Dearest's family. Now that the kids have come along, we usually just celebrate CE with my mom, and Christmas day is spent at our house so the kids don't have to be torn away from their new toys to go someplace. The Dearest's family will usually have a post-Christmas get-together the weekend after, which works out perfectly. 

So we spent Christmas Eve at my mom's house, where we had a lovely dinner with Mom, StepDad and his family. Then it was time to open the gifts (like we could've forgotten- the small men asked every ten minutes "when is it time to open presents?"). The kids got a new Lego set of course, but they G'ma P also gave them a really cool crystal growing kit.  Those and their other gifts kept them busy while we watched the Polar Express. My mom was quite taken by the movie- can you believe she'd never seen it before?!? Wot?  I can pass her credit for one of my 1000+ viewings!

Mom also gifted me and the Dearest with a new waffle maker. I was super excited when I opened the box-we've been wanting a waffler for the longest time but never gotten around to getting one. The Dearest is a huge waffle fan, but frozen waffles are a pale imitation of the real thing so we don't eat many waffles around here. I think that's about to change because we used our waffler already and it's GREAT!  The waffles came out perfectly crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside....YUUUUUUUUMMMM.... I'm making myself hungry now and might have to go make some waffles for breakfast lol!

We got home late on Christmas Eve so the boys crashed pretty quickly.  Which was good because I hadn't wrapped a.single.gift.

oops (bad momma!)

Luckily the Dearest helped me out and we got done with the wrapping and arranging around midnight.  In our house, all the Santa gifts are wrapped in the same paper so you know which gifts are from Santa and which are from mommy/daddy/granny, etc..  Then it was off to bed for us tired elves...

I was expecting an early morning wake up call from the munchkins but they must have been exhausted because they didn't stampede into our room till nearly 8am!! The next few hours were a blur of opening gifts and excitement. I love this video of Little Man explaining his handmade gift for the Dearest:

LM knew the Dearest needed a new cover for his phone, but we didn't want to gift him with one because no one knew exactly which cover the Dearest wanted. So LM made Dadda a cleaning cloth for his phone...isn't that the sweetest?  Once all the gifts were opened, we put the turkey in the oven and did a lot of this:

That's LM playing with the K'Nex set Monkey Boy gave him as a Christmas present.

The Dearest and MB build the new Secret Agent set the kids got for Christmas.


a prefectly cooked Pommes Anna to go with our brined turkey...

I had to stop the Dearest from 'taste testing' or the rest of us wouldn't have gotten any!

I already posted the video of us trying out the kids' RipRider trike...now THAT was hilarious! We spent the rest of the day just hanging out and enjoying each others' company. We ate lots of delicious turkey, had extra helpings of pumpkin pie, and spent time playing outside with the neighbors....a perfect Christmas day!

OOTD- Christmas Eve

Trying to keep comfortable  and somewhat warm as I ran last minute CE errands and got the small men ready to go to my Mom's for dinner..

• sweater tunic/dress: Charlotte Russe
• black knit sweater leggings: TJMaxx (remixed)
• boots: On Your Feet "Otero" from Overstock.com (remixed)

These leggings are SO. COMFORTABLE.  They are slightly thicker knit than tights (the package said 'sweater knit'), and have a thick band at the waist instead of a thing elastic. This means I can actually wear them without looking like Sal's dreaded segmented worm. Even under this rather form-fitting sweater dress, they look good.

After wearing the dress/tunic for a few hours, I realized that I probably need to order a full-slip for future wearings. Since the dress is sweater-ish, it would rub against the knit leggings on my bum and start riding up a bit. After a while, my entire bum would be showing and the dress would rucked up around my waist in the back. Not an attractive look!  I kept having to check to make sure the dress wasn't working its way upward over my bum.

I also had a similar 'walking dress' problem with this red shirtdress when I wore tights:

• red shirtdress: H&M
• black long sleeved tee: Old Navy (remixed)
• striped tights: Kohls? (remixed)
• boots: Aerosoles (remixed)

I would be walking and the dress would slowly crawl upwards so it was all bunched up between my thighs. Nice!

Anyways, I think wearing a slip underneath would solve the 'creeping dress' problem. Plus I have a couple of sheer dresses that would benefit from being worn with a full slip- they would lay better and be less see-through.

I ended up ordering these short (18") full slips from Kohls, since they were having a pretty good sale and free shipping**. I got one in black and one in nude to try out. I know 18" is short, but I figured most of my dresses are on the shorter side so hopefully it works out. I'll just return them to the store if not.

So am I crazy to try wearing a full-slip? I remember my mom wearing slips when I was growing up, but it seems that no one wears them now!

**if you're looking to buy, use these coupon codes to get a better deal: "extra20" gets you 20% off- better than the 15% they are advertising on the Kohls homepage, and good thru Jan. 19.   Also, "nocharge" will give you free shipping with no minimum order (not sure how long it's good for).

Yummmm

Yummmm, originally uploaded by shizzknits.

taking a break from leftover turkey...

who is this gift for again??

OOTD- purple errand day

Christmas is two days away!!! Ack! Today dawned cold and clear- the wind has died down but it was still in the 40s last night....cold for coastal So.Cal. I had a few errands to run today, so I needed an outfit that would keep me warm while I herded the small men through (multiple) grocery store trips, a drive-by drop off at Goodwill (bye bye old clothes), and a quick stop at a store. Hence my OOTD:

• black long sleeved tee- Old Navy (remixed)
• purple double breasted sweater- Classiques Entier from Nordtrom Rack
• jeans- GAP 1969 Real Straight (remixed)
• boots- Lassen (remixed)

I just got this purple sweater a couple of weeks ago and love it. Funnily enough, I was at Nordy's Rack with a couple of friends, saw the sweater and passed it by...it looked plain and chunky on the hanger.  One of my friends picked it up and said, "This is so you!" I only tried it on because she was adamant that I do so....and I decided to purchase it right then and there. It was originally over $150...shocking to me since it's made of 70% acrylic (can you see the knitter in me twitching already???  $150 for ACRYLIC???). The tag had four or five markdowns till it was $40...but we were shopping at a 'private sale' thanks to one of the aforementioned friends, so there was another 30% off that.  I think the final price was $28 which was extremely reasonable for such a heavy, well-made sweater (even if it IS mostly acrylic LOL).

Tomorrow is Christmas Eve, which means we will be heading to my Mom's house to spend the evening. The boys are soooo excited to be able to open some presents at G'Ma P's house!  I still need to wrap up some presents, thaw the turkey for our Christmas Dinner, and do a couple of last minute holiday errands...so I probably won't post again till after Christmas....so Merry Christmas to all my bloggy friends!

only a few days left till the Big Day

Woke up this morning to a very windy, clear day...we have so much to do today- I'm glad it's not pouring rain still! Now, to finish my coffee + dark chocolate (isn't that a healthy breakfast? LOL), shower and get started on the to-do list.

Here's a little bit of holiday cheer to start your day, courtesy of our neighborhood carolers...

And here's a photo where you can actually see them! LOL

end-of-day surprise

sunset last night, originally uploaded by shizzknits.

we had a grey, dreary day today...but when we stepped outside at 5pm, we got the surprise of this beautiful pink sky. Little Man had to take a photo so I gave him point and shoot camera. I think he did a great job!