Mikaela's Birthday

So Mikaela's birthday was last week. I can't believe that my little baby girl is 1 already! It seems like only yesterday that she looked like this:


Wait... I have to have a better newborn-ish picture......


Ok... that one is more sad... but she looks prettier!

So anyways.... I can't believe how much she has changed! And I cant believe how much she has learned! Wanna see some milestones?


This is her first day home. That was exactly one year ago today!


This is Mikaela at her own babyshower....


This is her holding her head up while on her belly.... for the first time....


Her first time crawling up on all fours....


Her first time sitting all by herself..... for more than a couple of seconds....


Her first snow.


Her first big girl bath....

And now for the pictures of her first birthday!


The cake.... I made her a personal cake and everyone else cupcakes. I webcam broadcasted the cake so that Owen and our families could watch. I also called everyone who wanted to sing her happy birthday and put them all on speakerphone so we could all sing together!


Birthday cake madness!

Then came the presents! There wasnt much... I had to spend most of her birthday money on food... the army shortchanged us again... so when we get paid she will be getting more presents.... but here is what she did get!


A completely soft pink haired babydoll was first.


Then one of those ring stacker toys came next! She still had cake on her eye! I just noticed that!

Then last but not least:

It is a penguin! It plays music and makes happy noises... and it rocks back and fourth... she can beat it around all she wants... and it almost always pops right back up! So cute!

So that was Mikaela's birthday!

My birthday....

So my birthday was on Sunday.... April 13th. I turned 26. Yep. I got some good stuff for my birthday.

For example I got a surprise party that was only kind of a surprise.... Not their faults.... I just think to much. Here is some of the fun from the party....


This is me opening my present from Heidi. It is a bathset... it smells like honey almond.

This is my favorite part of my birthday dinner:

Eggplant Parmesean! YUMMY! MY FAVORITE!!!!!!!

This is my birthday cake!

It started its life as Elmo.... By the time I got near it.... it was a cool looking chocolate m&m monster on a bed of chocolate ice cream!

And these are a bunch of pictures of us all singing to the PS3 American Idol Karaoke game...... I didn't want to sing... but was informed that as the birthday girl... I had no choice. So I sang too!






(for the ladies featured in my pictures.... that is what you get for making me sing!)

My husband also had a present sent to me! He ordered it online and had it shipped to me......



Thank you Honey! I love Piers Anthony!

My in-laws sent me a card.... a very pretty card... with money. Money that I am going to use to buy these: Boots!

YAY for new boots.

My Mom said she was gonna give me birthday money.... but she hasnt done it yet.... wish she would hurry up and do it.... since I already spent it! I bought yarn! Thanks MOMMY!

Also on my actually birthday Bill and Jessica stopped by..... they brought me a cake... which for some reason I didnt photograph... I do, however, have pictures of the kidlets eating it!




So that was pretty much my birthday...

(oh btw.... if you noticed that I was wearing vinyl in the picture of me singing... that is a long story... I would rather not dicuss it on here if you dont mind!)

The saga of my hair.....

Ok... So like most girls I am obsessed with my own hair. I am never happy with it. I blame my Nanna. Once upon a time I had very pretty hair.... See?:

It is naturally the darkest black brown.... but changes color in the sun quickly to a more brown color....

But my Nana wasnt happy with this.... she always said "You could have such pretty hair if it was just curly! So she took me out and got me a perm:

Thanks Nana.

So over time I grew to hate my hair. It would be so pretty if it was just..... so then I went through all the options! It would be so pretty if it was just:

short
curly
really straight
really long
blue black
Technicolor.....

So this was my hair maybe two years ago.... I had just taken it out of braids:

(by the way I had just given birth to Aeddon 6 weeks before that picture.... I am in jammies... and it was taken at a cabin in Big Bear, California.)

This is how it had pretty much stayed for a long time. Long and black-ish.... but sometimes I had bangs:


And sometimes I didn't:


But I got bored with the bangs or no bangs options....

Now as some of you may know... I am a little gothy... Not really a full blown goth... but I do love the clothes and the music....


(BTW~ that dress is pleather.. I already owned it... the only part of what I was wearing that was a costume was the wings!)

So I decided that I was gonna start coloring my hair again.... and start dressing a little more goth again... in short I was going to go back to being Jaclyn and not just being mom....

So I Started dying my hair. First I took babysteps....




Green highlights throughout my hair!

Then I dyed the top of it red!


But Owen said he hated the two tone look... even if everybody else said they loved it. Anyways... then I began the process of bleaching out my hair so I could dye all of it red......


for a while it looked like this. It was still long... but not bleached enough.... so I bleached it some more. The problem with that was that it KILLED my hair! So I had to chop it off! Somewhere in all of this I decided to dye it pink for a breast cancer walk....


But I really don't like pink for myself... so it went to the red I wanted it to be!



Unfortunately that faded really fast! So then my hair looked like Milla Jovovich in "The Fifth Element"



Well that I didnt like so much... but I really didnt want to bleach my hair again! Who knows how much of it would have survived this time!

So I waited for it to fade enough to take a new color without looking really weird.

eww.

So then I dyed it! And I think I finally found something I love! I think that this is going to be my hair color for a long time!

Ready for it?



PURPLE!!!!!! I LOVE PURPLE! Purple has been my favorite color for as long as I can remember! Why didnt I think of purple sooner? Who cares! It looks great! It does need one more coat to be a more even purple... but it is amazing! So that is the saga of my hair!

See I told you I was obsessed with my own hair!

I (HEART) Mail!!!!

I love when I go to the mailbox and find something completely unexpected! Today there were the usual bills... and then there was a box!!!!!!! I was very suprised when I saw that it was from knittinintexas I was very suprised!

See here is the thing.... I am a member of a group on Ravelry called Caffeine Addicts. The group was doing a swap... when the woman running the swap, Knitting Betty, mysteriously disappeared. She hasnt been on Ravelry... She hasn't posted on her blog. (I am worried about Knitting Betty! Even though I have never met her....) So we waited almost a full two weeks.... (and somewhere in that time I voluteered to be a moderator for the group).... and called the swap a bust. But there was a problem with that! Alot of people, myself included, were very disappointed! So knittinintexas and I took over the swap! YAY!

Well I was so EXCITED that I accidentally kind of did everything hard... like organizing the questionaires into qualifing catagories (you know things like "these people have pets", "these people are deathly allergic to pets", "These people live in Europe" and "these people live in the US, Are allergic to everything, and dont want to ship internationally" things like that)... and then assigning the partners... and sending out the emails of who had whom....

She did help alot though! She was way faster on the draw for doing stuff like answering the questions of swap participants.... and making group anouncements! Which is good cause under stress I tend to get bitchy!

So back to my mailbox.... She sent me a Thank you gift! This was the contents!




YAY! Presents! I Heart Presents! (Which is good since my birthday is on Sunday!!!!!)

So of course now I have to come up with a nice thank you gift for her too! Why did I not think of that to begin with???????

I think I might be a WIP Whore!

For those of you who have no idea what a WIP is... It is a Work in Progress.... There now that you know what the heck I am talking about..... Let me explain why I say that.....

First let me start at the beginning.... When we went home this year for Christmas (home of course being Southern California... the OC LA border area to be exact...) We got the last of our stuff out of storage. In that stuff was my craft box... which was filled with yarn... Acrylic yarn.

Now let me tell you a little something... when I started to crochet I used exclusively acrylic yarn.... Two things contributed to this... 1. I didnt even really know that there was a world outside of the Walmart and Micheals yarn aisles... and 2. Once I did know about other options... I didn't realize that there were wonderful websites like KnitPicks to make non man made fibers affordable.... Remember people... In California we were making 1300 a month in a good month... and less in a bad month... Our 1 bedroom apartment was $920 a month... and we still had to pay for electricity. So I was POOR! Red Heart is cheap! Heck even now we are supporting a family of 5 on an enlisted rank paycheck... All I have to say is THANK GOD the army gives us a housing allowance... and THANK GOD we live on post.

Anyways... back to the yarn and why I think I am a WIP Whore!

So we get the last of our stuff here and we go through it and put out what we have room for and put the rest into storage... I decided to go through my 25 gallon bucket of yarn.... AND IT STINKS OF CAT PEE!!!!!!! Acrylic yarn smells bad enough without having been peed on by a cat! SO I start going through it all to see what is salvageable... and there are 6 that is right I said 6 afghans in there that are all in various states of done-ness! And a purse I crocheted that just needs a button loop and a button.... Turns out the only thing in there worth keeping was the skein of yarn I had left over from making Alexanders baby blanket... (sentimentality to acrylic yarn... how sad!) So I thought to myself "Self. From now on... One WIP at a time... Finish what you start before you start something else.... the last thing you need is a bucket full of projects in various stages of completion when you die!" (let me just interject right here to tell you that I am not dying. I just always think of things in the context of "would this be something I wanted people to talk about if I died tomorrow" Morbid I know. Get over it. Let us move on.)

So I thought I was doing ok. I finished the washcloths for my sister before I started the wristlets. I finished the wristlets before I started this... The Between Seasons Cap.


I had to stop the cap cause I didnt know about the Magic Loop technique... and I dont have DPN's (double point needles).... Steph fixed that for me (yes the same Steph I am frequently bringing up... she rocks ok?) So I should be finishing that right? WRONG!!!!! I started a new project instead and justified it with "I need a little break from the cap!" SO I have two WIPs.... The cap and this:


A soaker for Mikaela. Her skin doesnt seem to like PUL (I think it stands for Polyurithane lining) covers... so I need to get her out of it and into wool soakers....


BTW... Do you like my little yarn protector? I made it out of a container for assorted flavor lychee jello shot thingies! Then I used these things to make and smooth out the hole in the lid so it wouldnt catch the yarn!


(on yet another sidetrack note... I really need to make a cool little light box thingy like the one that ADAM KNITS made!)

Back to WIPs... I was doing ok with just the two... but last night I almost cast on these too! Just to see if I could do them! AAAGGGHHHH! It is a sickness I tell you! The only thing that stopped me was the realization that I am out of circular cables! It is only a matter of time before I have a new 25 gallon bucket full of WIPs again! I just know that someday my headstone will read "Jaclyn- WIP and Yarn WHORE!!!!(and loving mother and wife....)

But maybe I am being overly dramatic.