We should have gone to Arby's

I blame swimming lessons.  Normally, my son Chazzy Chazz has swimming lessons on Mondays at 7:00.  There is no way we can all get home and have dinner and get to swimming lessons on time, so we all head to the "Fancy McDonalds" for dinner.  It is fast, the kids love it, and it is pretty close to swimming lessons.  Last week was the last week for this session of swimming lessons, so today we could do anything we wanted for dinner.  Well, it is Monday, and I wasn't in weekly meal planning mode yet, so we had to go out to eat.  The kids knew it was Monday, so they got all excited about McDonalds.  The big decision was what McDonalds should we go to.

• The McDonalds by Meijer is only about 2 miles away, but it always has a bunch of crazy people who sit around there all day.  The crazy people love to talk to the kids.
• The McDonalds by Sams club is good for drive through, but the lady inside always gets our order wrong.
• The Fancy McDonalds is fancy, but the workers always have attitude and I have to hear too much about their plans for how they are going to get home after work.

The only McDonalds that sounded good was Andrew's McDonalds.  Uncle Andrew claims that the McDonalds in Ypsilanti on Washtenaw has the best chicken nuggets, even though they look burned.  So we headed out to the place where everybody knows Uncle Andrew's name.

We got there right after the power had flickered and messed up a bunch of their machines.  That was only the start of the weirdness.

We all know our job when we get to McDonalds.  My husband takes the baby and finds a seat.  I order the food because I have the amazing ability to remember what everyone likes to eat.  The kids run back and forth between the two of us.

Traditionally my husband is very unapproachable.  He is tall, dark, handsome, and usually has a fierce look upon his face.  I am not unapproachable.  This unapproachability really comes in handy when you are walking through a market in Jamaica.  However, our children are adorable and they greatly reduce my husband's unapproachability, especially at McDonalds.  Today, while the hubby was sitting and waiting for the food, a guy came up to him and started talking.  I was giggling because my husband hates talking to strangers and there he was stuck.  It took a while to figure out the whole story of what was going on.  A young guy was claiming that he was homeless, and wanted to stay at a shelter in Ann Arbor.  He claimed the Ann Arbor shelter was filled up, he slept in a box last night,  but there was room in a shelter in Grand Rapids and he needed to get there.  Somehow, all this required that he borrow my husband's phone.  As the young guy is telling his story to my husband, an old guy comes up, gives my husband 5 bucks and tells him to spend it on the kids, but not to give it to this young guy.  A few small bits of food sprayed out of his mouth when he said it.  I think this caused the young guy to limit his request to using the phone and he didn't ask us for money.

The young guy never came to talk to me, but I heard him talking to most of the people in the restaurant.  For a minute he left with some really old guy, probably to get a ride somewhere, but he came back in shortly after that.

I am torn when it comes to people like this that need help.  On one hand, it is the right thing to do to help people.  On the other hand, you always hear about people who are begging just to get booze or drugs.  Either way, they always give you a sob story, but you don't know their motives.  They could intend to rob you or something worse.  I am glad my husband let the guy use his phone.  Even that would have made me nervous.  The guy could have stolen the phone.  While I was standing in line, I was really worried he would ask me for money and I was trying to decide how to respond.  When I finally got to our seat with the food, I heard the story about the old man and the 5 bucks.  The old guy had left by then, but the young homeless guy had not.  When I saw the money, I knew we had to give it to the homeless guy even though the old guy told us not to. 

I think we have to add Andrew's McDonalds to the "do not visit" list.  Do you think all this should tell me something about the type of people that frequent McDonalds?  What does it say about my family that we are in that group?  Is this a hint from the universe that we have to eat healthier?  What is your general philosophy when approached by panhandlers?

Crafty Autumn

I just got done with 6 weeks of maternity leave.  Whenever I go on maternity leave, I think that there is so much that I am going to get done.  Then, when I am on leave I realize that I am not going to get anything done because I will be taking care of a newborn baby.  It was wonderful taking care of my new little baby, but somehow it made me want to make stuff.  This is what I managed to make.

 

Seasonal P

 

Both of my recently departed Grandmothers were wonderful artists.  One of my Grandmas specialized in seasonal wreaths.  She really did an amazing job.  She would add flowers and bows and all kinds of amazing things.  I have never been one to hang many seasonal decorations, but something about this maternity leave made me want to hang something on the door.  The idea of making a halloween wreath was too intimidating, so I decided to make a P.  My last name starts with P so it made sense to choose this letter instead of other ones to hang on the door.

 

 

Instructions:

All craft blogs give instructions, so here are mine:

Go to the craft store and buy a big cardboard letter, some seasonal duck tape, and whatever other seasonal accoutrements look fun.  I selected some orange spider lace, sparkly bats, and skeleton ribbon.  This worked out great for me because I have been looking for a reason to buy both giant cardboard letters AND fancy duck tape.  The hardest step is covering the cardboard letter with duck tape.  Duck tape is surprisingly difficult to cut, it really gummed up my scissors.  Anyway, I covered the letter.  I made a flower out of the lace by gathering the lace with a needle and thread and then wrapping it around.  I fascinated that and the bats with thumb tacks.  The thumb tacks were my husbands idea because he is a genius.  Suprisingly, I don't have a glue gun.  Well, I did inherit one from my grandma's collection, but I forget where I put it.  I hung this on the door using one of those temporary sticky hook and it has lasted beautifully.

Instructions

 

Hanging Towel

 

I love hanging towels.  I won a hanging towel at a baby shower a few years back and I have worn it out.  I won a halloween hanging towel (the one on the right in the picture), but since it was the only one I had, I used it all year long.  I love it because it is always there to dry my hands after I wash them.  If I hang a towel on the stove, someone will use it within 2 minutes and they NEVER put it back.  They always wad it up and leave it on the counter.  Then, I don't want to use it because I don't know if that is the hand drying towel or the towel that someone used to clean up vomit.  While I was on break I decided to make a new one to replace the worn out one.





 

Instructions:

I purchased some seasonal hand towels at Target for $1.  I had some seasonal yarn and ton of giant plastic crystal beads.  I folded the towel in half. I used the seasonal yarn and a yarn needle to stitch accross the fold.  I think "knit and crochet today" told me it is called a mattress stitch.  I triple crocheted back and forth along the fold until the yarn part was long enough to wrap around the oven door handle.  I skipped a few stitches near the end to make a button hole.  I sewed the giant plastic crystal bead to the crocheted part to work as a button.  This worked great.  There was one downside, this one stays on the oven nicely, but it is easier to remove than the old one.  After a week or so, I did find it wadded up on the counter.  I will wash it and try again.  At least it hung on longer than 2 minutes.

 

Nemo Costume

 

The nice thing about being on maternity leave in the fall is that I could make a halloween costume for the baby.  My 2 year old insisted that the baby should be a fish for halloween.  I looked online and all the fish costumes I found were for much bigger babies.  I decided I could make one myself.  My plan was to make a baby sack that looked like a fish and then also make a matching hat.

 

Instructions:

I wrapped some yarn around the baby to see how big her bag should be.  Then I slip stitched a line as long as that and then connected the ends.  I crocheted in the round until I got it long enough to be a bag.  I wanted it to look like Nemo, so I varied the height of the stitch as I went along.  Generally, it was 5 single crochets, 1 half double, 1 double, 5 triples, 1 double, 1 half double.  I adjusted this so that the tall orange parts would line up with the short white parts.  The black lines were just single crochets.  At the end I sewed together the bottom and added a fin that was triple crochets with two triple crochets worked into each one.  The hardest part for me was the hat.  For some reason I can't crochet hats.  Normally I would cheat and use a hat knitting loom.  This didn't work for the baby, I didn't have a good size for her head.  I thought that I read that you make hats by starting with six stitches in a circle then increase each row.  That is not how you make a hat.  That is how you make a circle.  So I made a circle that I thought was the size of her head but it ended up being much bigger than her head.  I kept crocheting in decreases to make it fit on her head.  This is why it looks like a funny golf hat.  To make it look fishy, I added another fit to the top.  If I had more time, I would have added some fins to the side as well.  She definitely looked cute in it.  I think this may have exhausted my costume making skills.

 

What season makes you feel crafty?  What are your favorite projects.