Binko Blog

more portraits

2009-09-28T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am working on more portrait photography just for fun. Rob let me use him as a test subject recently. He is such a cutie, so it was hard to take a bad photo of him. I am one lucky girl. It was a fun day at the Huntington Gardens wandering through the Chinese & Japanese gardens snapping photos, working with my camera, & hanging out with my family.

L.A. Live Steamers

2009-09-05T11:00:00.001-07:00

if there's one thing that Sydney loves, it is trains! Casey Jr. is her imaginary best friend. I hear stories about Casey Jr. almost every day. Rob and I discovered this place in Griffith Park called L.A. Live Steamers one day when it was featured on Huell Howser. We knew Sydney would love it and she certainly DID! These little steamers are part of the non-profit museum and they only accept donations for rides. Everyone there was incredibly nice and we will definitely be back to ride the trains again.

Sydney anticipating the arrival of our train. She kept saying, "We're neXT!" and "The train's coming! We have to WAit for it".

Half Moon Bay Girl's Getaway Weekend!

2009-08-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

The title pretty much sums it up. A couple of Mom friends and I decided we needed a getaway weekend. I mean, what Mom doesn't need a break from the every day madness every now and then? Once you have a baby or two or three or four, those days of sipping coffee and catching up on the latest gossip with your girlfriends are pretty much few and far between. I fully believe that after you become a Mom, you still need to nurture that independent side when you can. You just can't forget who you are as a person once you have a child.
We spent the weekend in Half Moon Bay, California, which is one of the most peaceful places we could have chosen. We rented a beach house there that was just across the street from the ocean. Being the ocean lover that I am, I was immediately refreshed and relaxed at my first glimpse of the beach. The place was totally quaint and beautiful. We spent our kid-free time wisely. Having that option of just picking up and walking out the door on a whim was an impulse that I had almost forgotten I had. We made blueberry pancakes, sipped coffee, and talked about the latest celeb news one morning. We popped into town for massages, manicures, and pedicures. We went for a hike along the cliffs over Mavericks. We went to the HMB brewery one night and another night we just stayed up eating popcorn and brownies, drinking red wine, watching movies, and gossiping. It was a weekend we all needed and, although we desperately missed our families for the 4 days we were away from them, it made me remember that there is a part of the soul that can only be nurtured by great girlfriends and I am so grateful for the ones in my life.

Palm Springs - Part deux

2009-08-05T19:37:00.000-07:00

The warm nights, the dry heat, the swimming, swimming, swimming.....Who doesn't love Palm Springs?? I would love to have a vacation home there. It may not be possible for me to do that, but at least for a weekend I was able to pretend like that was my life. A friend of ours has a friend who owns this amazing vacation home in P.S. and she was gracious enough to let us live vicariously through her for a weekend. Rob, Syd, & I + his brothers and a few other friends spent the weekend lounging by the pool & seeing how the other half lives. It was amazing and I didn't want to leave this little oasis.

mud bath anyone??

How the othe half lives

2009-07-20T09:36:00.000-07:00

Anyone who knows me knows that I absolutely love the summer sun & they also know that I love to swim. When I was a kid I used to spend entire summers in the swimming pool. My average summer day was 8am tennis lesson, swim, swim, swim, swim team practice, swim some more, crash out around 9pm. So, I was happy to see that Sydney loves the water so much. Any time we are near a pool, she immediately says, "I want to go in the pooooooooool". We decided to take a weekend trip to La Quinta, because you can get great deals on house rentals out there during the summer. The reason there are great deals is because it is usually in the 110 degree range this time of year. However, if you rent a house that has a pool you can just swim all day and not feel hot. It is the perfect combination: Sun, Swim, & discount rentals. I could not believe my luck when I found this incredible house for an affordable price! We spent 4 amazing days reliving my childhood - minus the tennis lessons and the swim team practice.

The master bedroom was amazing and had the best view out over the pool & the mountains beyond.

Amanda & Ryan came with us. Amanda is my best friend whom I met when we both worked at the local swim club as swim instructors/lifeguards. She just adores Sydney, which makes me so happy. Sydney feels the same way about her! Here's "Auntie Manda" teaching Sydney how to swim & a few other shots of them hanging out in the water together. They are so cute together!

www.desertluxuryrentals.com

Loves her some bubbles!

2009-06-12T11:09:00.000-07:00

Sydney loves her some bubbles! She would have me blowing bubbles for her all day long if she had her way. Why is it that kids are so fascinated with them? I guess I can remember being fascinated, too, when I was a kid. They are shiny and floaty. :)

Sydney now knows about the camera. When she sees me pull it out and try to take a picture of her she looks at me and says, "Say cheeeeeese!". This is the wacky smile I get every time. Plus, the teeth coming in make her look like a vampire.

an attempted portrait of the 2 of us. Didn't work so well, but I was tired to taking pictures, so I'll have to try this again another day.

a toddler's entourage

2009-06-01T10:06:00.001-07:00

Syd has always loved carrying tons of toys in her arms at once. Over the past 2 years she has developed a few favorites. More like 10 favorites. When I tell her, "We're going to the car," she runs around the house and grabs all her buddies. It takes 5 minutes to walk from the back door to the car, because she is trying to carry them all at once. She doesn't want any help. This she knows for sure. And it is the 'no stuffed animal left behind' rule that gets them all into the car seat with her.
In alphabetic order, they are Elmo, Kitty Cat, Michael Bear, Monkey, Nemo, Percy, Pig, Pooh, Sausage, & Simba. If she drops one, it is, "Oh no, I dropped Nemo. You o.k. Nemo? I love you Pooh. I be right back Monkey. Sausage fall down." You get the idea. Then when she's in the car with them all, she takes inventory. "one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight". I don't know why she skips over 5 every time, but we're working on it. :) There are countless other stuffed animals in her room and she loves them all!

This is not a real cat! No animals were harmed in the taking of this picture. Sometimes when I go into the bathroom there are random stuffed animals sitting on the toilet. I caught her in action this time! Busted.

fabrics

2009-05-27T14:48:00.001-07:00

Here are a few fabrics I currently have in stock for me+b items. A few of them are pretty new. The zoo animals is always one of my favorites. I'm making some blankets and hooded towels out of these, so look for them in the store soon. Sorry for the wrinkles. I'm going to scan them again, but this is just something temporary so Katherine can choose one for her order. Thanks Kath!! Love ya! :)

Zoo Animals

Stuffies

Geometric Pink

Farm Animals

Birdies

Spring

Stacking the Books

2009-05-21T10:04:00.001-07:00

I was running around the house this morning getting some things in order and I heard Sydney's little voice from her bedroom say, "I stacking the books". Now remember that she is still in that baby talk stage of talking, so she always says things with a higher pitched emphasis on the last word of a sentence. It is really cute. "I stacking the BOOKS". When I went into her bedroom to see what she was doing, I found this! Books taken from her bookshelf and stacked on the table next to the rocking chair. Ha. Gotta love the things kids do.

Ravelry

2009-05-18T14:55:00.001-07:00

This post is for my fellow knitters out there. If you haven't heard of Ravelry yet, well, consider yourself now informed. It is one of my favorite sites. It is an online community of knitters, but more than that, it is a place where you can keep track of all of your yarn/projects/patterns as well as get project ideas from other knitters and find patterns that suit the yarn you have in your stash. Behold some screenshots from my account. BTW, it is free.

This is my account section called "stash" where I have cataloged the yarns that I currently have that are waiting to be knitted.

Then in my section "projects" I have my next project selected that will be an awesome sweater from a Debbie Bliss pattern book. You can fill in the information about the project and select the book that you got the pattern from as well as show how much progress you are making on the project as you go along.

One of my friends on Ravelry is a knitter I have been following online for a while here. I LOVE her knits and she is amazing. Here is a screenshot of her projects. Since I only have a couple in mine I thought this would give you a better idea of how you can rack up the projects in your account. So, if I see a project of hers that I like, I can click on it and find out where she got the pattern and what yarn she used, etc. SO cool.

There are so many cool features at Ravelry, but here is just one more. Say you want to find a project to do with some yarn you have. You can search that yarn and browse all the projects that people have done using that yarn.

Here I searched Debbie Bliss cashmerino aran and shown below are just a few of the many that popped up.

So, if you are a knitter/crocheter, get to this site and request an account. It is open to everyone and is a fun way to connect with other knitters. It only takes about a day for them to grant you access. Hope to see you there!

mini me

2009-05-01T20:29:00.001-07:00

I have had many, many people tell me that Sydney looks so much like me. I knew we looked similar, but I literally have strangers stop me on the street to tell me how much she looks like me. And any time I am checking out at the grocery store or any store for that matter, the cashiers always say, "Oh my gosh, your daughter looks JUST like you!". When Sydney was brought home from the hospital, my Mom busted out the photo albums and showed me some pictures from when I was a baby and I thought I was looking at Sydney. It was crazy. Here are a couple of pics to compare our look-alike...ness. I'll have to post more when I get to it, but here is Wier family portrait circa 1977 vs. Ettenger family portrait circa 2008. Wier genes dominate!

The Man Hat

2009-04-23T09:14:00.000-07:00

I'm working my way up to knitting a sweater for Rob. It is daunting when I think about how much yarn and knitting time it will take. So, for now a beanie will have to suffice. This pattern came from one of my favorite knitting blogs: Brooklyn Tweed. I followed this blog for about 6 months before I realized that the knitter/blogger is a dude. So, for all of you out there who think only women knit, check this guy's awesomeness out.

Easter Eggs

2009-04-17T11:20:00.000-07:00

Sydney has always loved carrying around a million toys at once. She also loves putting things inside of boxes/bags/baskets, etc. So, I knew this year's Easter would be a fun one for her. Last year she couldn't quite enjoy the festivities, but this year with easter basket in tow, she collected the hidden eggs from the yard and stacked them gently in her basket with such a cute little smile on her face. It was so fun to watch her discover this new game. Since Easter she has been constantly asking me, "find-a-egg?"

Knitting Needle Case

2009-03-26T10:11:00.000-07:00

Last weekend I designed a knitting needle case to sell in my Etsy store. This is the test model, so look for it in the store soon. I am trying to get a few items in there by the end of this weekend. Time just seems to get away from me. That probably has to do with my tendency to try to do 5 million different things at once, which seems to somehow promote getting nothing finished. I know some of you know the feeling. At least I hope I'm not the only one who is like this. So, the whole reason I named the company me+b was so that I could make some items for Moms, too. I know there are a LOT of knitting Moms out there and I think this case is great for traveling with. I don't take any trips without mine. Next on the list of "me" items is a messanger bag that this case will fit inside of. That way you can put the case+yarn+knitting pattern book inside and have the perfect set to take with you when you want to knit on the run.

I added this little pocket inside, because I am always having to dig for my yarn needles and if they aren't at my fingertips, my projects tend to sit around with unsewn seems or unwoven ends. This way I can make sure to have a yarn needle and a crochet hook on hand to finish up projects. Let's face facts, finishing those projects takes the most motivation. Why not make it easier to accomplish that?

Double Pointed Needles

2009-03-26T01:10:00.001-07:00

I had never tried double pointed needles until this week. All you have to do is look at the picture below and you'll probably have the same reaction I did when I first saw someone using them. What the??? It looks like something so advanced that it would take an expert knitter to unlock the mystery. Well, I was working a hat with a circular needle because I got tired of sewing up the seam on my hats and decided to try a pattern that used a circular needle. Suddenly as I'm about 3/4 the way through the pattern, it says "now switch to your double pointed needles". I went, "uh-oh". But I sucked it up and followed the pattern's instructions for transferring the hat from the circular needle to the dp needles and it turned out to be really, really easy. Who knew? Here is a picture of the madness. I'll post some pics of the finished hat in action next week, but Sydney is going to be my model and she's not a huge fan of hats, so we'll see how that photo shoot goes.

I don't usually use multi-colored yarn, because it usually looks a little 1980's Cosby sweater to me, but the website LittleKnits is a site I frequently check for yarn sales and there was a good deal on this yarn so I tried it out and kind of tried to modernize the hat with a fun pink stripe in the middle and a ribbed edge. I also did a matching toddler scarf. Stay tuned for pics of the ensemble.

Remodel

2009-03-21T20:09:00.000-07:00

There have been so many different schemes for my parent's house remodel that I have lost count. It doesn't help that right when we were getting to the point of a finalized design, the economy took a dive and so did the funds required to build the design we had decided on. All in good stride. I have been revising the plans to reduce some cost where possible, but I just wanted to put out there into the world the little house that could have been. When things had to be eliminated, the glass wall in the front was the first to go. I am still trying to keep some special design elements. You'll see the new design sometime soon and you can compare it to this one. It is still going to be pretty awesome when it is done. It is safe to say, however, that this design will never come to fruition. Too bad, so sad.

Knit, Purl

2009-03-19T14:40:00.000-07:00

I have always loved the way the seed stitch looks. There is something about the texture of it that really appeals to me. I hadn't tried to do it before this attempt, because it kind of intimidated me for some reason. I don't know why. Probably for the same reason all of those cables intimidate me. It just looked complicated. Turns out it is really, really easy. Just knit into the purls and purl into the knits and after a few weeks (if you knit as slow as I do), you'll have a scarf!

My friend, Robin, is my single best customer. I call her my "gold card member". She has been unbelievably supportive of my side business, from when it started out as Baby Binko with my partner, Christina, to when it morphed into me + b. She is the first person to order something from the new me+b. Here's her purchase (a satin trim blanket and 2 burp cloths). Thanks, Robin!!

self-portraits

2009-03-19T14:34:00.000-07:00

So, I have been trying to test out more functions of my camera. I had been wanting to do some portrait shots on some friends of mine, but I figured I would mess around with the settings and try to get the hang of things first. What better way to do that then to set up the camera on a tripod and try different things on my own self? Here are a few of the self-portraits I ended up with. What do you guys think? I had a few problems getting the focus right so excuse the slight blurriness.

Sydney is 2!

2009-03-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

Saturday was Sydney's 2nd birthday. It is so hard to believe that it has been 2 years since her birth. Time really flies. We just had a small family birthday party at Rob's parent's house. They have a little inflatable bounce house that Sydney and the kids had the best time playing in. It was a fun day and now if you ask Syd how old she is, she says," chooooo".

cousin Aiden on the slide

Sydney and her best friend, Auntie Manda

red velvet cupcakes...yummmm.

New Onesies

2009-03-11T19:34:00.000-07:00

I've been working on some new onesies for me+b. I've had the concept in my head for such a long time and have tried a couple of different designs, but I am finally happy with these. They are not ready for sale yet, as I am still trying to get the best product before I start selling them. I want them to be able to wash a certain way, so look for them in the store in a month from now. I am also developing a screen printed version of these which I will be able to print on different colored onesies for more variety. I'll put some pics of those up next. Let me know what you think, because I definitely value the feedback I get from you guys.

me+b

2009-03-09T11:17:00.001-07:00

Many of you know that I have been developing a new name and logo for the baby blanket business I run. The new business name is "me+b". I came up with this name, because I want to sell items for Moms a well as baby stuff, so this way I can break the merchandise up into each particular section. Mom stuff (me), gift sets and mom&baby coordinating stuff (+), and baby stuff (b). I am temporarily selling stuff on Etsy.com, which is a fantastic website where people can sell their handmade items. I have linked the website www.meplusb.com to my Etsy store until I develop my new website. I have been working on it sporadically over the past 4 or 5 months, but it is slow going as I am mostly focusing on completing the construction documents for my parents remodel. Nevertheless, I am proud to say that I have finally received my new business cards, hangtags, & bookmarks in the mail and I have completed some clothing tags to sew into the items. More about the sew-in clothing tags later. Check out the pics and tell me what you think!

Happy Birthday, Twins!

2009-02-21T09:41:00.001-08:00

Most of you know that my brother and his wife had twins last year. Well, it was exactly a year ago today! They are too cute for words, so here's a couple of pictures of Alexis and Jason. :) Happy Birthday!

10 years!

2009-02-14T22:25:00.001-08:00

Happy Valentine's Day! This is a special Valentine's Day for Rob and I, because ten years ago today was the day we started dating. We have always considered Valentine's Day one of our anniversaries. It was on our "second anniversary" of dating that Rob proposed to me. I feel so blessed to be with Rob and it is hard to believe we have now been together for a decade. I am looking forward to many more. :)
Here's some complimentary pictures of Sydney, too.

Photo Shoot

2009-01-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

My neighbor and friend, Ibarionex, came by last week to shoot some portraits of Sydney. He is a photographer and I love his stuff, so when he asked me if he could take some photos of Sydney I was ecstatic. I knew he would take some great pics of her that I would always be able to treasure. Here are a few of the shots he took. She is such a little girl now. Ibarionex teaches an online Portraiture class at betterphoto. Check it out here.

life

2008-12-08T09:54:00.001-08:00

ok, I realize I am falling miserably behind on blog posts. Life has been getting in the way. I can't believe it is December and I am finally posting Halloween pictures, but here is Sydney in her Dorothy from the Wizard of Oz costume. We went to Rob's work for their Halloween party, so here is a pic of the finalists. That's Rob as Abe Lincoln. The head on the platter guy won.

Sydney had a great Halloween and really enjoyed running around the neighborhood trick-or-treating. Now we are getting ready for Christmas. It should be fun now that she is old enough to open presents!