Owari - The End

You guys, this year is finally over. I'm typically not one to wish for anything to just be over but this year- I'm so glad it's over. It wasn't a bad year by any means, no no no. It was a great year! So many wonderful, amazing, thrilling, life changing, and awesome things happened this year. It was in fact, probably one of my fave (if not my fave) year of all time!

Here are a few highlights for me:

First thing I did was release a super cute knitting cowl pattern~ Etna.


Aaron and I went to Osaka Japan for my birthday and and saw my fave Japanese wrestler live:


We found out we were having a baby!


I have enjoyed my growing belly:


Released another cowl pattern~ Mina:


Aaron and I celebrated our 12th anniversary and went to a Nine Inch Nails concert:


We found out we were going to have a baby boy in April:


And opened up an Etsy shop~ TheFoxShop:


Tons of things happened in between~ Rinoa turned 12, went to Bumbershoot Music Festival, worked a butt-ton, hosted lots of fun events at the store, got a bunch of knitting done... I mean it's been a great and full year! 2014 has a lot in store for us, and I'm excited to welcome and embrace it all.

Lastly, I want to say thank you to every single reader~ Thank you for stopping by and reading my blog. Thank you for taking time and leaving me comments. Your words and thoughts are super encouraging to me and I love reading them. ♥

Happy New Year everyone!!!

Baby Dean's Lullaby

Aaron and I decided we would like to raise our kids bilingual, to the best of our abilities. English is our native language, but over the last few years we have been teaching ourselves Japanese and speak it to each other whenever we can. Our last two trips to Japan have really been great for learning, practicing, and reinforce our knowledge. When we filled out the US Census we put down that English and Japanese are both spoken in our household. d^_^b

Recently, we made Baby Dean a little playlist on my iPod for him listen to and there's a few quiet Japanese songs on it. One song in particular Dean seems to respond to is this pretty one from a show called "Macross Frontier" that I've decided will be his lullaby. The song is called "Aimo" and it's short and sweet, and even though it's in Japanese, the lyrics are pretty easy for me to learn.

Here's a version with the Japanese lyrics and then the English translation~


What do you think? It's really melodic and soothing sounding, I think. Plus the lyrics are beautiful. Whenever the song comes on in the store (and there's no customers around) I will stop what I'm doing and sing it out loud so he can hear me sing it. (On a side note~ some customers totally walked in on me doing that today haha!)

Do you have a favorite lullaby? Is it a traditional one? Or from a Disney movie? Is it made up? Is there a song you want to sing to your kids when you have them? Let me know what you think so I have a good variety of songs to sing to Dean. ♥

Christmas Kitty

The past few years I have picked up little holiday outfits for Rinoa.  This year I snagged her a Christmas tree dress.

It's a bit small for her, so it's more a vest than a dress.  She's so happy about wearing it, she's scratching the couch in front of me out of spite.

Last year Rinoa got this pretty outfit.  Doesn't she just look THRILLED?! Haha!

Maaaaa~ please take this ridiculous thing off me. Noooow~ hmph!

There is actually one thing she's cool with~ this little collar and bell~ 

 

It's so wonderful and festive, until bed time when she's doing her nightly rounds and she just jingles the entire time... Not so enjoyable then. It's just a day time collar.

Tonight I got feisty and put on a little mini cowl I made on her.

Doesn't she look lovely?  It makes her mane fluff up and she looks kinda like a lion.  She looks all snuggly and warm~ ready for a white Christmas and a visit from Santa.  Let me tell you, she's ecstatic for Santa to come!  Her stocking is hung and ready for goodies!

Works In Progress

My husband made the comment the other day about how happy I've been lately. Part of it is the holiday season, baby, and us celebrating out 12 year anniversary, but the main reason he thinks this is because I have been crafting a lot lately. Doing all that knitting, opening up my Etsy shop, and making lots of holiday treats has really been a good thing for me, he says. This just gives all the happys. *^______^*

I wanted to show you just some of the stuff I have been working on this week.



This is a second draft for a hat design I'm working on. I might release this one or I might make the hat and sell it on the shop. We'll see how this turns out. My hair stylist had this super cute white garter stitch hat on and I am just pinning for one of my own so hopefully this works out.


This is a modified version of the Sharo cowl knit in chunky yarn. Once I'm finished with it I'll be posting it in the shop. It's a really pretty cream color that this camera didn't pick up super well.



A scarf I finished the other day that'll be up on the shop soon. It's hard to tell in the picture, but this is two different colors of yarn~ one is a light vanilla color and the other is a super light linen color. They're super pretty together I think.



Just some of the pretzel mess goodness I made the other day. There are also a two bags of pretzel rods that were decorated also.




Aaron and I tag teamed my dinner bento tonight. He made me a peanut butter & strawberry sandwich and sweetly arranged my berries, while I sauteed some green beans in olive oil, miso paste, and red pepper flakes. There's also a tiny bite of a Starbucks Cranberry Bliss Bar in there for dessert.

Today I picked up some really pretty blue and lavender yarns today that I'm super excited to knit with. Once I finish up with these I'll be working on some more cowls. Maybe a hat too. AH! I just had a GREAT idea for another new hat design. Must hurry up with these projects!!

Well I have only eaten half of my dinner in the hour it's taken me to write this post so I'm going to go eat. Have a great night everyone! ♥

TheFoxShop Is Now Open!

Hey everyone! My Etsy shop, TheFoxShop, is now open! Please check out my selection of knitted cowls, beanies, and hair bows.


I will be adding stuff to the shop every so often. There are two cowls in needles right now so those will be probably be added sometime this week or next. Also, if there is something you are interested in but not seeing in my shop let me know, I'm very open to do special orders.

My shop will not be closing for the holidays since I have to work every day between now and... after New Years probably. Short of Christmas Day I mean. So I'll be out & about and able to get to the post office.

Well, thanks for stopping by everyone. Have a great day!
♥

Holiday Music Mix

Every year Aaron makes a huge Christmas music list for the store's iPod, and I always look forward to it. This year the list is over 200 hundred songs with all our favorites and a few new ones we've discovered this year. It is such a happy list and it makes me love being at the store that much more.

It really gets me into the holiday spirit! So much so, I wanted to share it with you. Here's a playlist of some of my favorite songs that I think you'll like. It's an eclectic selection of songs~ ranging from traditional to new music, and 8-bit remixes to Japanese. Please listen and enjoy!


What are some of your most favorite holiday songs? Do you have a yearly playlist or set of albums you listen to?

DIY Lip Color

My stubbornness knows no bounds sometimes, and yesterday it was in my favor. I had the evening off and I was determined to get some fun time in along with my responsibilities. Earlier in the day I saw this video by Michelle Phan on how to make your own lip color by using up your old make up and I just had to make some for myself.

So I cranked up the music and snagged the materials:

■ your fave clear gel lip balm
■ old lipstick, blush, and eye shadow
■ metal spoon
■ candle lighter
■ tooth picks
■ some type of container (I used emptied eye shadow containers)

Put a good amount of lip balm in the spoon. With the tooth pick scrape, scratch, add the colors to the top of the lip balm. Use the candle lighter underneath the spoon and melt the balm. *note: this will blacken your spoon pretty hardcore- it washed off my spoon though.* Stir the color into the balm, mixing well. Once it cools (it takes a few seconds) try the color on. Add more lip balm or color as desired; melt and mix again. Once you are happy with the color, carefully drizzle it into the container and let cool. DONE!

I made two different lip colors:



A bold pink blush and a light sparkly nude made a bright sparkly pink.



A coral and kinda nude pink lipsticks with sparkly nude eye shadow made this really pretty lighter coral color~



Experiment with different colors and varying proportions of color vs. clear lip balm. Oh, and a little lip stick goes a l o n g way. I threw away one attempt because the purple-ish pink lipstick I used was cah-ray-zy bold. Definitely play with it and find that perfect color. Don't be scared of the color! Play with it! This is such a great use for shades you don't use anymore or colors that have cracked and are in pieces.

This little project maybe took me 30 minutes to do start to finish, which was great since I only had a little play time last night. I will probably do this again since it was such a fun little project.

Have you ever made your own lip balm before? Did you add anything special? I'd love to hear about other blogger's experiences with making homemade make ups. Let me know your thoughts!

We Are Having A...

Little Dean Fredrick is going great and growing well, according to the tech doing the ultrasound. He weighs just over a pound and looks pretty darn healthy. Our families are just as ecstatic as we are and have already started buying Baby Dean a few necessities.

He's been kicking me around today at work, silly goose! Today I noticed I felt a bit more forward heavy than I have before. Grow baby grow! Hehe!

I hope everyone had a lovely weekend! We had Thanksgiving 2.0 with Aaron's family yesterday. Mmmm! Any big plans for this week? We have been without phone and internet at our place for a week now so we'll be marathoning The X-Files and I've been knitting for my Etsy shop. Have a good one friends!