Twilight

I'm about 25 years too old to be admitting this, but my friend has invited me to a Twilight party tonight. I'm happy for a chance to see some friends and have an early evening. For those of you too intellectual to know about the Twilight books, they are vampire romance stories. Okay just typing that made me cringe, but I found them enjoyable to read. This year was an extremely difficult year for me and reading some trashy fluff was perfect for my distracted state of mind.

I offered to make dessert for tonight and chose this cupcake recipe. The whole thing looked insanely sweet, so I substituted a mixture of strawberry and red currant jam for the cherry filling the recipe called for. I thinned it out with some Quantreau to make the blood drips on the top. I wish I had done that for the filling because it seemed to cut down some of the sweetness. I haven't tried one, but I think they turned out sufficiently cheesy!

Hat from Lisa

This beautiful hat was a present from Lindsay's aunt and my sister Lisa. It has become Lindsay's favorite hat and fits her beautifully. I'll have to pin Lindsay down to take an overhead photo of the hat because it comes together in thirds to meet at the top.

Curious Lindsay

Have you ever subscribed to a magazine, decided you didn't like it enough to renew, but then kept receiving copies for-freaking-ever?? They are trying to keep their subscriber list looking healthy to pull in advertisers. This is why I still receive Parents magazine every month. Not because I love the open this can and add this frozen package type of recipes they have.

Anyhow, now that I've explained why I even have Parents magazine in the house I can get to the point. Lindsay saw some cartoon characters on the back cover and decided to flip through the magazine. I was on a work call, so I wasn't paying close attention. Suddenly she gets excited and says, "That's me with Curious George!!". And sure enough, Getty sold one of my photos of Lindsay to make this ad.........



It's from a trip to Montauk the summer before last when she was 2 and a half. It's always been a photo that I think sums up childhood exploration and curiosity well. Oh, and I sewed those little green shorts.

Edmund Ivan Lazar - June 11, 1924-February 12, 2009

How can I possibly describe my father? He was born into a prominent Hungarian family, but lost his wealth during the war, fled his country to start a new life, raised children as a single father and never once complained about how hard his life was. He enjoyed his life tremendously and had no regrets whatsoever. He loved his family, his friends and baked all kinds of goodies for all of us to enjoy. He was a gentleman and he loved women. Three wives and two daughters! He loved to be surrounded by all of our little girlfriends, and listened to all of our silly conversations with delight. He taught us about the world, about conservation and renewable energy. He taught us about liberal politics, about nurturing any animal that crossed our path, about laughter and about Mozart. He taught us to think for ourselves instead of following the flock. In his last few months, he taught us about bravery. I will need that now because I miss him so very much. I love you dad!

New Ideas

This blog has taken some turns since I first started out. It began as a way to keep track of my knitting projects. Then Ravelry came into existence, which is a fabulous site and pretty much did away with the need to track my projects on this blog. So that left blogging about my family and some ranting about the environment.

Well I started a new blog, which is called TheNewGreenBlog. It gives ideas about living a simpler, greener life in the city. Please stop by and let me know what you think. It's in the early stages, so I'm still tweaking the design part.

Ice Skating

We decided to spend the day after Christmas at the local ice skating rink. This was the first time Lindsay used single-blade skates. She got used to balancing on them while we walked to the rink. It's amazing how much better her coordination has gotten since last year. While she didn't really want to let go of our hands completely, she did a few times. And she did well. So laps were skated, hot cocoa was drunk and a good time was had by all.

My Little Ballerina

On thursday, Lindsay had her first ballet recital. The whole thing was so sweet, it made your teeth hurt. Little girls in pink, bunchy tights with tutus tucked into the waistband, squirmy girls at quiet moments, super-earnest girls trying to do the Tea Dance from the Nutcracker, Lindsay running over to give me a hug in the middle of the performance, etc. I mean, aren't we just programmed as parents to eat this stuff up??? I sure am.

What made me the most proud of my little girl was, when receiving a bouquet of flowers from us, Lindsay asking if she could divide the bouquet up between all of the girls in her class. I was about to explode with pride.