What's for Dinner?

I am a huge fan of crockpot cooking. I take 10-20 mins in the morning and throw some stuff in and the rest of my day is free until dinner. The only thing I've never made in the crockpot is (weirdly enough) soup. I love soup. It's my favorite thing to make. But I never make it in the crockpot. Anyway...food. Something else you should know about my cooking is I am not a fan of pork or beef. I eat them occasionally, but I especially hate ground beef. I know it's unamerican, but my mom was a crazy dieter when I was a kid. She spent a few years only using ground turkey or chicken and I haven't been the same since. So this isn't necessairly healthy, but it is delicious and easy. I know a lot of people go for fast food for convenience, but I find this to be just as convenient so share b/c it's cheaper and easier to just be prepared.

http://www.isavea2z.com/crockpot-chicken-stuffing-recipe/

Now I do change one thing for this recipe and that is I use mixed frozen vegetables instead of just green beans. My son isn't a huge fan of green beans so he would never eat it if I used only the green beans. And sometimes I use chicken thighs because they're cheaper. It is delicious all the same and I'm sure you could swap out any kind of frozen vegetable. Fall is an especially great time for cooking with a crockpot. So go forth and cook easy delicious meals!

Whale Shark phone cover

This was too cute not to share. It's a freaking cover for your phone that is a Whale shark. I hardly use my phone, but if I did use it more I would tote it in this bad boy. The good news is that the pattern is totally free. Somebody please make this and tell me how awesome it is. I'm already working on Christmas stuff so it'll be ages before I get to make it for someone else.

Mittens vs. Gloves

For my son, the choice was easy, because who wants to try and get a one year old to get all his fingers into the holes of a glove. So I made him mittens. For me, the choice is not so easy. I used to be a smoker. So gloves were a must b/c you just can not smoke in mittens, unless you want to hold it between your thumb and the rest of your fingers and that's just getting too complicated. Now I'm trying to decide if I absolutely need a pair of gloves or if I can go the easy route and make mittens. I'm one of those people who has exteremely cold hands and feet so I always end up wearing fingerless gloves underneath too. But how dexterous do you really need to be during the winter? What else do we do in the snow? I mean I know I'll be shoveling snow and making snowmen. I'll have to open doors, but do I really need to take the time to make gloves?

So I'm asking you what do you prefer? Mittens, gloves, or glittens? At least that's what I call them. Those fingerless gloves with the little flip tops. I'd like to hear your opinions.

Also a picture of the mittens I made for my son (my pattern, yet to be written up). It's a very simple pattern, but I couldn't find very many simple ones for toddlers. He is not a fan, but he has a bunny I made him using the same yarn and seed stitch pattern. So I told him they were just like his bunny and he seemed to warm up to them a bit.

Hot Buttered Rum Apple Cider

I promised I would not make this entirely about knitting. So here's a non knitting post. I love Fall. I love falling leaves, fall colors, and temperatures below 60. Call me crazy if you will. Once I get some followers I'm sure they will. I also love fall cooking, including hot drinks, and two of my favorite things are rum and apple cider. Don't get me wrong...I am a two drink max mommy. Enough to feel good, but not so much that I am incapable of taking care of my son who rarely goes anywhere without me. So I saw this and I realized this was probably going to become my go to fall party drink. Or maybe just a nice warm drink to sip in the evening. I can't wait to to try Hot Buttered Rum Apple Cider.

My hobby keeps me healthy

A lot of people think that crafting is for people with too much time on their hands. Allow me to enlighten those of that mind set. I make time to knit. I have so many others things I need to do, so I push them all to the side for later. It's not being lazy. If I were trying to exercise more (which I'm also doing) I'd be applauded for my effort. I have strained tendon in my knee that I'm terrified of making worse and nothing has seemed to help make it better in the year since it happened. Except for short walks, which was the last thing I tried, so that's a new thing.

Knitting is more about keeping up with my mental health. My family suffers from various problems. I had an uncle commit suicide, my mother suffers from depression, my sister and I both suffer from different anxiety disorders (mine is social, hers is stress induced), and in the past I myself tried to kill myself. Recently I've suffered from depression, postpartum depression, and large amounts of stress due to various life happenings. This is enough to drive anyone into the nut house. Instead, I knit. I wind down. I destress like no other activity can. Even when it gets frustrating it's still helping.

There have been numerous studies done that prove there are health benefits to knitting. I've tried meditating. Can't do it. My brain doesn't shut off. It's constantly going. I fidget, especially my hands. I think they only still when I'm reading. Knitting is my calm place. It's been said that it can put you in a similar state of mind as meditation does. I don't know because I can't do it, but if I'm angry or sad it just pushes all that away. When I'm done, I've some glorious piece of something to look at.

It doesn't just help with emotional problems, but it helps physically as well. I can't say much because I over did it during pregnancy and I got carpal tunnel, but that can happen even without knitting. So here I will leave you with this link with a little more details.

http://www.craftsy.com/blog/2014/02/the-health-benefits-of-knitting/

If anyone has a deeper interest in a topic I lightly touch on, such as this, let me know and I will delve deeper into it.

I wanted to put this out there for the skeptical crafters. Some people are afraid or nervous because they think they might be terrible or some other insecurity. I was awful when I started, but I took some time and I got it and now it's my go to stress reliever. I even avoid alcohol so I can knit, because I tend to mess up a lot if I don't. Knit responsibly.

I was in hiatus getting my house back together after a failed potty training attempt, but I've finally started a new project. Nothing fancy, but I'll go into it for my next post and maybe something about cooking...until next time....allons y! (Ten is my Doctor!)

So as you can see from the title this blog is about being a member of the group called the millennials or Generation Y. I think we've earned this name from our tendency to ask the simple question of why. Why do I have to look, dress, act this way? Why do I have to do things that way just because it's the way you did it? Why do I have to work 40 hours a week and make lots of money to be happy? Or my personal question: why do I have to go to a poorly lit office, wear uncomfortable clothes, leave my kid with a stranger, and work a job I hate just to live? The answer is: I don't.

I'm going to tell you a little about myself just so you understand me a bit. When I was a child I loved to read. I still do. If you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up I would say an author. Fast forward to adult hood: while my grasp of the English language is better than most, my story telling abilities are lacking. I'm blaming this on my best friend who is a stellar story teller and us always listening to her instead of writing our own. As I got to be around 9 or 10 I thought I wanted to be veterinarian. Then I realized if I ever had to do a surgery I would probably vomit. So that was the end of that.

After those two revelations I never really figured out what I was going to do with my life. And then I graduated high school. My mother was especially insistent that my sister and I were going to college. So off I went to The Ohio State University still having no idea what I wanted to do. I changed my major twice before dropping out. What was the point if I couldn't find a major I liked? I now have an Associates degree in Alternative Energy. The material was interesting, but I guess I should've thought about how the outdoor physical labor just wouldn't be my thing. I tried doing a few classes at Devry, but that wasn't for me either.

So after all that I think " I'm an intelligent person. Why can't I figure out what I want to do?". I don't work jobs I don't enjoy. If I don't like it I find a new one. Everyone asks " well, what do you enjoy?". I'm sure there are lots of people here with me on this. It gets frustrating. I like video games and I'm good at those, but I already tried the computer stuff and I didn't like it. I love to cook, but it's not something I want as a job. Everyone has those days they just don't feel like cooking and you always smell like way too much food. What if I have to go to work and I don't feel like cooking that day?

It becomes like this cycle. Until something happens and you just find THE thing. My thing is knitting. This is where we get to the futzy office bit. I learned to knit because my mom thought she was too old to get pregnant anymore and I ended up with a little brother. I wanted to make him something. So I learned to knit and made him a hat, booties, and mittens (he was born in December). Then I just kept knitting. I was still trying out school so it was a hobby.

Then I went and I had my own son and now I'm a stay at home mom. My husband makes enough money to take care of us because, unlike me, he is perfectly ok with the suits and office. I enjoy being a mom, but eventually he's going to grow up and I'm going to be left with nothing else to occupy my time. So I've got to find something to do with my life and I've decided to make it knitting.

So now that you know about me I think the title of this blog may be a little confusing to some. I'm  trying to live my life by continuing to ask why. I don't want to live my life by the book. I want to live an extraordinary life. With the way my life is right now don't except me to be going sky diving or exploring caves. Not that those are things I want to do anyway, but we have just moved so our life is still in that adjustment phase.

I want my blog to be about the things that I do. So if I travel you'll see that or whatever project I'm working on or a new recipe I tried or just some new experience I've had. It will most likely be most about knitting and food, because that's what do most. I guess I didn't want to limit myself to the topic of knitting exclusively because sometimes I just don't get to it and I have so much more to talk about. So I suppose I'll see how this goes and I hope you like it.