Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Hi, it's me, baby Emma.  

I just wanted to wish my daddy a happy birthday!  Thanks for being such a good daddy and for being so nice to mommy and grandma.  I'm just a little tiny, but I think you look great for being so old!

Pizza Party at Home

A couple of weekends ago, I made pizza.  From scratch.  Not too hard, actually.  Pizza dough is remarkably easy to make and pretty resilient.  You really can't mess it up too badly.  One thing to keep in mind, though, is that pizza dough will take time. You need to let the dough proof, which can take a couple of hours.  I just went and played with this little character while waiting.

I used the pizza dough recipe from Smitten Kitchen.  Very basic - flour, water, yeast, olive oil and salt!  I doubled the recipe and substituted about half of the white flour with whole wheat flour, so my crust was a bit more rustic, earthy and healthy.  I rolled out the dough into two pizzas.  I spread on my homemade tomato sauce (so very simple to make), and then I loaded the pizzas with chopped veggies - onions, mushrooms, broccolini and olives.   

I topped with some shredded mozzarella cheese (R, all of this was vegan until this point, sorry!).   

Then, I put the pizzas in the oven on a baking sheet sprinkled with a little cormmeal and let it bake for about 15 minutes.  

The pizzas came out bubbly and melty and cheesy, and yummy!

Happy 11 month birthday!

Happy 11 month birthday Emma!  You're almost a year old and I got home too late today to wish you a happy birthday.  Mommy had to work late, but had time to take a picture of you while you were sleeping. 

Home Craftiness

After years of watching HGTV and these do-it-yourself-on-a-dime-or-you-are-a-total-inept-loser types of programs, we decided to reupholster our dining room chairs ourselves. Why do we need to do this?  Because of these two culprits:

Claws, fur, and some hairballs later, our original cream colored seats were left looking sad and tired.  I will forego my embarassment and post here a picture of one of the seats (note that I am posting one of the better looking ones in an attempt to retain some semblance of dignity): 

We went to Jo-Ann Fabrics and Crafts and picked out some fabric on super sale.  When we bought the fabric, I  voiced some concern that it had stripes and that it might be hard to align them correctly on the seats.  Someone who shall remain nameless poo-pooed my concern, but I was only to be vindicated later. 

We cut the fabric:

Held it in place (again, as mentioned above, with some fussing and pulling to get the stupid stripes aligned):

 Stapled it in place with a big-ass staple gun:

And voila!

But, wait!  Stripes, breathe your last breath of fresh air because you are about to be...

Hermetically sealed.  With vinyl.

My concession to my husband's valid concern that our two furry culprits would only strike again with a vengence.  Freakin' kitties.  I live in a place with plastic. covered. furniture.

75

...is the number of bug bites I got over this weekend, give or take a few.  My body is burning with itchiness! 
Other than that, we had a relaxing family weekend in the Central Valley.  We went to a surprise birthday party for my sister-in-law, had family dinners, Emma swam in the pool, and we brought back some apricots and peaches from my father-in-law's fruit trees.  Will have to post some pictures later - we think that Emma is a water baby!  She loved being in the pool!