life « GOODKNITS // a knitting & crochet blog

years away finds me here today

By Lisa Gutierrez on 03/11/2011

Living in an apartment my entire life, I never really looked forward to spring and summer. I just didn’t care. We (my neighbor and some cousins) played outside in the concrete jungle of a complex and in the local washateria that had sweet arcade games (Galaga and Street Fighter were our favorites). I never had a garden or a backyard of my own, so it was no big whoop. I liked winter because I live in coastal Texas and winter only lasts about 2 weeks. I get absolutely giddy when the temperature drops below 60.

I still feel that way about winter, but I’m also finding myself amazingly excited about Spring. The grass is turning green and the sun is staying out longer. Jason comes home from work and the boys play soccer for an hour or so until dinner or dark. I’m collecting little succulents that I find beautiful and I even bought 3 edible (eventually) plants–bells, jalapenos, and strawberries! I’m not psyching myself up for them to completely succeed. I know zilch about growing vegetables, but I can try, right? Maybe my little chants of “grow, grow, pleeease grow” while I water, will persuade them to give me fruit. Who knows.

All that to say–the warmer weather is making me happy. I need this green; I need this light.

Out of all the things on my 25 before 26 list, I’m most glad I completed #1.

oh, home

By Lisa Gutierrez on 02/24/2011

I have been here. Home. I have been slacking off on my blog and I do apologize. I just needed a bit of a break from the hustle and bustle of the internet-world. It’s on 24 hours a day! I couldn’t keep up and so I took a breather. I’m glad. I have my Project 365 photos to post (my Vivacity blog has been neglected for a while!) and some WIPs I’d like to blog about. I hope that I can get my blogging mojo back. Perhaps I should look into scheduling posts. Every time I do, though, it never seems to post, so I end up manually updating later.

What has occupied YOUR time, this week?

color!

By Lisa Gutierrez on 02/13/2011

Daddy left on his semi-annual business trip to Las Vegas, this morning. He goes twice a year and I still turn into Mopey McMoperson when he leaves. I think the boys just thought he was working really late. Thank goodness my family likes to keep these guys entertained. I’d be even more frazzled if I had to do it alone. They are electric. Always on! Always go! Always this! Always that! They go to bed when I tell them, though, so I will continue to just count my blessings and ignore the rest.

They were pretty colorful, today. Nathan is wearing purple Levi’s. The color was called ‘parachute’. I loved that! I found them and the purple Vans in the kids clearance section on kohls.com. I knew they’d be PERFECT for him because he loveloveloves purple. He’s always asking to wear these pants. I wish he didn’t get so dirty, because they are always getting thrown in the wash and I know they’re going to wear out really quick. I’m going to keep my eye out for extra pairs. I should have bought more!

I hope you all are having a wonderful weekend. I will be spending Valentine’s Day with my two sweethearts and lamenting yet another February 14th with my husband in a different state.

Don’t forget to enter the woven doily giveaway!

Stripey Saturday

By Lisa Gutierrez on 10/17/2010

The lovely Debra Parker of the sunshine chronicles has been giving weekend photo challenges the past couple of weeks. This weekend’s challenge is stripes! I always see the challenges and make a mental note to do them, but then….the note disappears in my brain (it is like SO vast and full of amazing thoughts!) and I view her posts on Monday and feel bad that I can’t contribute.

SO! I did this one early. I was on the lookout for stripes from the moment I woke up.

the first ones I saw were shadows on the wall. Then, I slowly looked around and noticed the ones on my bookcase.

These Polaroid photos remind me that the next time I’m at a yarn store, I need to pick up a few balls in these colors. Polaroid-inspired aghan, anyone? Oh yes.

Moving along outside. This is a few hours later. The mission is to tucker out these kiddos. Just let them play outside. All.Day.Long. Have I mentioned I love having a backyard? Because I do.

Andrew was wearing my favorite stripes of the day.

Nathan picked up this hat at a thrift store. He likes rainbows, so it was an obvious decision. He used money he got from the tooth fairy! I’ll spare you the photos of the stitches in his mouth. He had 3 supernumerary teeth removed on Thursday. They had to remove his central incisors to access them. They were behind and above (impacted!). That’s 5 teeth in total, guys. I can hear your collective cringe!

He took it to bed with him. He said in case the tooth fairy wants to see what he bought.

I asked him to show me more stripes and he pointed down…

Well duh! He got these shoes about a month ago and they are so worn already! the black little edging at the toe is rubbed off. He wears them everyday to school.

I don’t know if this really qualifies as a stripy photo, but I like the lines, so I’m including it:

There are more and more leaves turning red in our trees. Excitment abounds! Nate spent a good 5 minutes throwing a ball into the tree trying to get one to come down.

The sun sets, the shadows become more pronounced, and my stripe-hunt comes to an end. It was fun! I hope to participate in future challenges. I might have to set up a task reminder in Google. I might forget otherwise.

Breakfast with Andrew

By Lisa Gutierrez on 09/16/2010

This morning, this guy woke up before his big brother left for school. For the past two weeks or so, he’s been sleeping in until almost lunch time! So, after we sent Nathan off, I whipped up some oatmeal and took advantage of the lovely sun light shining through the window.

Big scoff at spoons! After he ate only about half of what was in the bowl, we went upstairs, brushed our teeth and now he’s sleeping! Yes. He only lasted about 2 hours before crawling into my bed and requesting songs and a back rub. Oh, I want to be 2.

P.S. I reeeally want to get rid of that wallpaper. I’m having nightmares about the breakfast room wallpaper, though, so I’m very hesitant!