Make Your Own Baby Leg Warmers

There’s a new baby in my life—my 2-month-old niece, Domenica. I wanted to make her some BabyLegs, which are legs warmers for babies. They cost $12 online, but are super easy to make with knee-high socks you can purchase for one-third the price at Wal-Mart or Target.
This past weekend, I refreshed my memory on how to make BabyLegs by looking over the post I wrote on it a year ago. I realized I added an unnecessary step to make the cuff, so I eliminated those steps in the post. The new, improved post titled, “Cheap Socks Make Great Gifts,” can be found in the right-hand sidebar titled “Tutorials.”
I wanted to take a photo of Domenica in her new BabyLegs this past weekend, but she slept the whole time I saw her. And we all know to never wake up a sleeping baby, even for a blog photo.

Music For Black Friday

Holidays are on their way, these decorations have so much to say.

"In The Mall," Weezer

I personally don't brave the mobs to hunt down bargains on Black Friday, if you do, may I suggest downloading Weezer's song, "In The Mall," into your ipod. This song takes me back to shopping days of yore, when my biggest concern was sneaking a box of Mike & Ike's Hot Tamales candy into the movie theater for the premiere of The Princess Bride.

Have a wonderful Thanskgiving holiday, everyone.

American Girl, I Don't Think So

Ordering my sons something for Christmas from this catalog would, in their minds, be the equivalent of putting lumps of coal in their stockings.

I Dream Of Sushi

The first time I ate sushi was 15 years ago when my husband took me to the now-defunct Hotel Nikko Christmas party in Chicago. My husband worked there as a waiter before he started law school. This was one of the best company Christmas parties I’ve attended. The hotel turned over its immense ball room to its employees—giving us lots of room to do the electric slide. Tables groaned with appetizers, including what looked like a mountain of sushi. I nervously popped a Sake roll in my mouth … and fell in love.
After all these years, it never occurred to me to make sushi myself. The sheets of seaweed, or nori, look so brittle, I thought they would crumble when I attempted rolling rice and fish into them. But my cravings finally got the best of me, so I gave sushi-making a go last weekend. I cooked and seasoned the sushi rice and spread it out evenly on the nori. The delicate smell of the seaweed dampened by the rice made my mouth water. I added some crab meat, cucumber and avocado to the middle of the sheet, held my breath, and began to roll it into a cylinder with the help of the bamboo mat. It turns out nori is sturdier than it looks because when I removed the mat, I was pleased to see it had stuck together to make a plump California roll.
And now, Jenny, the winner of my sushi set giveaway, can have her own sushi-making adventures! Please email me your address so I can send the set to you.

Snow Day Activities

Here’s a fun web site for young and old alike to visit on a bad weather day. Jigzone.com has hundreds of free jigsaw puzzles you complete online. Each puzzle can be customized to have just six pieces or up to 247 pieces. My sons couldn’t get enough of this web site last Sunday when it was too cold and snowy for them to be outside for very long. And the best part was I didn’t have to nag them to pick up the puzzle pieces after they finished.

Receiving--And Giving--My Favorite Things

Last Saturday I received an unexpected treat. A scarf, hand knit in mohair by the lovely Hokgardner, arrived in the mail. I won the scarf in a giveaway she did a month ago. It snowed eight inches in Denver this weekend, so I got to try it out right away. The scarf is my new favorite thing—it felt like a layer of down as I trudged through snow to get Ethan to school this morning.
Now I’ve got a giveaway for you, consisting of another of my favorite things—sushi. I constantly crave sushi, probably because my kids would never step foot in a sushi restaurant. Plus, I’m hesitant to buy sushi at grocery store since these packages do not list whether the Sake is made from wild Alaskan salmon (good) or farmed salmon (bad).
I’m starting to think maybe I should satisfy my sushi cravings by making it myself—that way I can feel good that the fish I’m eating, such as wild Alaskan salmon or Albacore tuna found off U.S. Canadian shores, isn’t overfished or high in mercury or PCBs.

If you, too, are so inclined, enter my giveaway for a sushi deluxe set, courtesy of CSN Stores. From counter stools to luggage, this online retailer of home and office goods has more than 200 different online stores to meet your shopping needs.
The sushi set consists of:

• one bamboo sushi rolling mat;
• one bamboo sushi rice paddle;
• one three-step sushi maker;
• two dipping sauce dishes;
• and two chopstick rests.

To enter, leave a comment on this post stating your favorite sushi restaurant—mine is Kotobuki in Chicago—by Saturday, November 21, midnight mountain standard time. The contest is open to U.S. residents only. I will announce the winner on my blog Monday, November 23. Good luck!

The Name Says It All

Maybe it was the fact that my husband and I are hosting Thanksgiving dinner and need more seating—or maybe we just needed some retail therapy—but a couple of weeks ago we bought a new couch for our family room. We got a big, comfy leather sectional that has a recliner on each end—my husband’s primary requirement.
This couch replaces a 20-year-old one my husband bought in college. It’s a couch so worn out I’m too embarrassed to show you a photo of it.
I didn’t realize my husband and I were the only family members excited about the new couch until after the movers delivered it. “Come try out the new couch!” I said to James.
“No,” he said. Instead he went into the garage, where we were keeping the old couch until the person whom responded to our Freecycle ad for it could pick it up. “Aren’t we going to keep Couchy?” he asked, resting his head against the back of the old couch.
Couchy? Who is Couchy? Oh, you mean that decrepid thing? “No, someone else is going to take it,” I said. “Now come in the house and try out our new couch!”
“I don’t want to sit on Mr. Couch,” James replied, sulking.
Until that point, I didn’t realize that James was losing a friend. Couchy didn’t mind if he and Ethan jumped up and down on its cushions. It also didn’t care if they got Goldfish crumbs all over it, or spilled juice on it. They could take Couchy’s cushions off and build forts with them any time.
Mr. Couch, on the other hand, won’t put up with any of that nonsense.