Hand Knit Pumpkin Hat

Finished a second pumpkin hat today.  This one should fit my 8 month old grandson, as the first one I made was too small.  The free pattern is on www.simplejill.com.  Very easy and quick to make.  I want to make a bunch of them, but I'm already moving on to another pattern.  LOL

Beautiful Knitted Newborn Dress

Now that I've given this dress to the mommy-to-be I can post about it.  I didn't want to risk ruining the surprise.  Her baby shower was yesterday and I'm proud to say that this dress was a big hit with everyone.  

This is from a paid pattern on Ravelry called Bloom.  The yarn I used is the color Real Red by Caron Simply Soft Light.  This particular pattern covers sizes newborn through size 8, just by changing yarn and needle sizes.  For this one I used fingering yarn with sizes 2 and 3 needles.

I'm hypercritical of my work and can see all the errors I made, but I'm still very happy with how it turned out.  

You can find the pattern here:  http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/bloom-9

Managing Finances

My family is doing okay financially in one aspect, but we are also doing poorly in other aspects.

Managing our personal finances falls on my shoulders in our family, and it is my biggest dread and induces so much anxiety in me that I find I put it off until I can't put it off anymore.  I want to take that fear away and make it a manageable process.  I have many things pinned on Pinterest that say they will help me so I'm going to be exploring them to see what makes it all click for me.  I'll share what works for me in later blog posts.

If you have always struggled in this area but are able to manage it better, please share with me what worked for you.  This is not something that has ever come naturally to me and I really don't care for the sentiment I've heard from others that I need to just do it.  That doesn't help me, or anyone, to hear that.  Please leave it in the comments below.  Thanks!

National Black Dog Day

I just discovered that today is National Black Dog Day!  So I decided to share a pic of our beautiful black dog.  This girl is Izzy, a Newfoundland.  She's a total sweetheart with no idea how huge she is.

Do you have any black dogs?  I'd love to see them.  Please feel free to share the pics in the comments.