Nine

As I mentioned, our sweet baby turned NINE last weekend and we threw him a party and showered him with gifts because he is just the fucking best.

It was a mini-golf party held at Sherman Oaks Castle Park, which I can't recommend highly enough. They were so awesome and totally affordable and the kids had a blast.

I didn't get any pictures of the kids playing golf because each hole took me about 30 strokes and they finished the course before I was even halfway through. But please to enjoy this picture of my son and his friends giving you some Capital F Fashion.

Josh taught Tori how to hold her club. It was pretty cute.

After the party, we all went to the parking lot where Dash's Baba and Grandma & Grandpa surprised him with a new bike!

He was pretty happy.

Then Josh & I gave him our gift. It was an Angels hat, a bottle of sunscreen and a bag of sunflower seeds. This is his WTF face.

The hat had a mysterious tag on it...

He's going to Spring Training! Josh booked a hotel & got tickets for a bunch of games at the Angels Spring Training stadium in Tempe, AZ. My gift is that I don't have to go with them! Everybody wins!

Happy birthday, little man. You make every minute of every day brighter.

Golf Punkz

Dash's turned 9 and we threw him a mini-golf party to celebrate the fact that he hasn't driven us to murder him quite yet. These are the favors I put together for said party.

I made a logo. Because me.

Dash has been wearing mismatched socks since he was old enough to have an opinion. It's kind of his thing. So I thought it would be cute to put together sets of mismatched argyle for the goody bags.

I made the sock wrappers from plain typing paper that I printed the logos onto.

This is Lou. He's smizing.

I took a lot of pictures of the socks.

I found green & white gumballs at Target so I put them in little baggies and called them "golf ballz" because misspelling things with Zs and Xs is "cool."

I saw some cute golf-themed cookies on Etsy, but they cost $2 per cookie and I am not only cheap but also resourceful so I bit their rhyme and made my own version.

Dipped some Double Stuf Oreos in melted chocolate...

Bought a mold and made some white chocolate golf balls.

Stuck 'em together and put them in little grass liners (get it? the ball's in the rough? get it? get it?)

And boom!

"Cookeez."

And finally, I ordered some cotton visors from Oriental Trading Company & tarted them up with an iron on of the logo.

The end.

Christmas

It has just dawned on me that I never managed to post any pictures from our Christmas and New Year celebrations. So, timely or not, here they come. Because I am nothing if not a completist.

Josh & Tio's festive sweater game is on point.

Mailing his letter to Santa (Which, what? We had the Santa talk! I think he must have blocked it out or something?)

Despite much, much evidence to the contrary, we are Jews!

Our beloved Verlaques invited us over for the traditional Jewish Christmas Eve dinner--Chinese food!


Cookies for Santa...


And oats for the reindeer. (Again, what?)


Christmas morning brought with it an embarrassing number of gifts.


I sewed him a baseball field pillow. (Josh had to literally sketch it out for me and tell me what color each component should be). (Despite the fact that every baseball season since he was 4 years old I have spent 3 hours a week staring at a baseball field).




They both love The Sandlot and are constantly quoting it to each other, so when I saw these shirts I had to get them each one. I haven't gotten them to wear them at the same time yet, but hope springs eternal.


I got the warmest, fuzziest slippers known to man.

We had Christmas dinner at our beloved Babkes and it all culminated in a naked dance party. Like it do. I can't tell if Josh is horrified or merely perplexed here.

A couple of days after Christmas I took Dash and his boy Cade ice skating. Cade wasn't very sure on his feet in the beginning, so Dash held his hand until he got more comfortable. I died immediately  after I took this picture.

On New Years Eve we invited our Babki over for lentil soup and some low-key merrymaking. Dash and Ben are a couple of weirdos. It's good that they found each other.


At the strike of midnight (well, East Coast midnight), the kids ran outside and shot off confetti poppers. Today is January 21 and we're still finding bits of glitter in and around the house.

2014 Recap

At the start of each year I like to assess last year's goals and set new ones. Because I am incredibly original.

Here's last year's list with results. I'm pretty happy with it, honestly.

1. Re-start Fox vs. Squirrel. I've been working on getting some dollhouse pillows made up for the shop, and I've been testing new doll patterns. I'm going to try to keep my focus on just one or two items that I really love and enjoy making and see if I can't make a go of it in 2014. Not yet. There just aren't enough hours in the day. Maybe this year?

2. Learn to knit. I've been spending a bit of time every evening in the last few days practicing different techniques and poring over YouTube tutorials. I've got some fairly lofty knitting goals for this year (socks for everyone!) Well, no socks yet (but I did buy a Craftsy course and plan to knit some soon), but I did learn to knit. I made some pretty awesome hats and shawls and scarves and even learned to cable. I didn't take pictures of most of what I made, but here are a couple of hats:

3. Enter my jam in the Ventura County Fair. It's just getting ridiculous. I'll make a Goddamn vision board if I have to. This is the year. Womp womp.

4. Read fourteen books. I actually managed to read twelve last year & it was such an honest pleasure to take the time and really be thoughtful about what books to add to my list. I'm already into my first book of 2014 and I'm loving it so much. Boom:

1. The Snow Child
2. Where'd You Go, Bernadette
3. The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie (Flavia de Luce #1)
4. Dept. of Speculation
5. Eleanor & Park
6. A Tale for the Time Being
7. David & Goliath
8. The Apothecary
9. Tenth of December
10. The Ocean at the End of the Lane
11. Perfect
12. Sharp Objects
13. We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
14. A Week in Winter
15. The Rise & Fall of Great Powers
16. Landline
17. The Husband's Secret
18. The Devil in White City


Attempted but abandoned:
1. The Goldfinch
2. The Weird Sisters (eta: finished 1/13/15)
   


5. Work diligently to continue reducing our debt. I don't know how diligent we were, but our debt load is slowly but surely going down.

6. Host a mystery party. This is just silly and stupid but I've always wanted to do one. Maybe for our anniversary... Nopesky. Not giving up on this one for 2015, though.

7. Run at least one more 10k. See if you can't find a running bra that doesn't leave bloody scratches on your sides, too, while you're at it. Yes & yes!

Wonderland

I am well aware that it is January 8, 2015, but I refuse to wrap up 2014 without sharing our pictures from my favorite display of mass holiday insanity:

Giving Santa a little nuzzle.

Next year maybe we visit a bit earlier in the season and not on a Saturday. This made Disneyland seem like a ghost town.

Yes, yes that is a crane lowering a bag of toys into Santa's sleigh.

Full size merry-go-round. In someone's driveway. Sure.

Gingerbread cottage that is bigger than my first apartment.

One of three (3!) live performances happening in garages in the 'hood.

Santa with the Stanley Cup. Because of course.

     

Now, Dasher! Now, Dancer! Now Prancer and Vixen!

Poor Josh, poor 2014 Lakers.