Mel's Baby Shower (and Planning a Party for Someone Who Can Hardly Eat Anything)

Confession: In the past, I always thought of people with food allergies as being kind of high-maintenance-types, akin to picky eaters.  (Yes, I recognize that this was terribly judgmental of me.)  Then my beloved sister developed intolerances to dairy, gluten, soy, peanuts, sunflower seeds, most tree nuts, and shellfish.  Most of the time, I'm able to alter recipes so that I don't poison her, but this became even more challenging when I wanted to throw her a baby shower.  Given her allergies plus the added food restrictions of pregnancy (no deli meats, sushi, alcohol, raw sprouts, etc.) and I stepped into a veritable culinary minefield.

After an undue amount of recipe searching and deliberation, my mom, sisters and I pieced together this menu that is friendly to the majority of food allergies.

Food
Cowboy Caviar and tortilla chips
Zeek's Wild Green Salad with Balsamic Dressing - cashews and gorgonzola (aka poisons) on the side
Veggie platter and hummus

Lumpia with sweet chili sauce - this is just an example of a recipe, not the actual recipe.  In fact, there is no recipe.  Mom is just magical like that.
Mom's pancit - Again, I won't even bother with a recipe because NOBODY can make pancit like my mom.

Gluten and Dairy-Free Chocolate Layer Cake - I skipped the coffee and instead made the frosting chocolate, then garnished with toasted coconut, which covered a multitude of frosting sins.  I'm really bad at frosting cakes.

Beverages
Spa Water
Seahawks Punch in honor of the Superbowl, which immediately followed the baby shower (Yes, there was Hawaiian Punch in it. Don't judge.)

Party Favors
Coconut Macaroons - I substituted all-purpose gluten-free flour for the white flour and vanilla extract for the almond extract.

Decorations
Lucky for me, the mom-to-be's friend also named Mel handled decorations with the theme of kites and clouds in teal and orange.

Games
I spent way too much time searching for ideas on Pinterest but eventually settled on two games.  One, based loosely off the Newlywed game, I entitled "What Would Nathan Say?"  This is where we learned that Nathan thinks newborns use an average of 3 diapers a day, and yet he still thinks Mel will change most of them.  The next game I entitled "Mel or Nathan," where guests had to guess who played with toilet water at 10 months, who hit his/her baby sister, and who ate a jade plant, requiring a call to poison control (Mel, Mel, and Mel).  Yup, that's my sister!

The Starting Lineup (with yet more crocheted Seahawks hats)

Last week I introduced you to my favorite superfan, Mom, and today I'd like to introduce you to the rest of team Chow and our Seahawks hats.  That's right, we sported a team uniform to watch the Superbowl.  After seeing my mom's hat and the girls' hats, the rest of the family wanted in on the action, too.  So I whipped together a few more beanies so we could watch the game in style.  Chow-style, that is.

Announcing the starting lineup:

Dad: The Psychic Swearing Superfan

In addition to knowing the minutiae of every rule in every sport, Dad possesses the uncanny knack of predicting exactly what is going to happen in each play.  Before the ball is even snapped, he can call an interception, a fumble, or a play-action fake.  This skill is countered only by his inability to hold back expletives in the presence of children.  Final Superbowl tally: accurate predictions 6, swear words 4.  Good thing the Seahawks won, or his stats would've been much, much worse.

For the big game, Dad sported a double crochet beanie based off this pattern.

Mom: The Dancing Superfan

True to form, Mom led the family in a rousing half-time dance party.

See the making of Mom's hat here.

Ata: The Pregnant Superfan

Ata didn't let her bun-in-the-oven status keep her from busting a move during the half-time dance party, nor did it keep her from walking 3 miles and standing 4 hours in 20 degree weather to watch the Seahawks parade three days later.  Now that's one tough cookie.  Pass the woman some chips, please.

Ata & Nathan's baby: The Superfan-to-be

He got his own little hat, too.  Gotta train them up early.

Becky: The Superfan to Rule All Superfans

This girl knows the players, the rules, the stats, and the standings.  She even knows the refs by name.  And let me tell you, she puts the heck in heckle.

Since Becky has enough gear to put a team store to shame, she required something a little different for gameday and sported a  newsboy-style hat in Seahawks blue and green.

Jenny: The Softer-Side Superfan

Her job as a Nike engineer wins her insider knowledge of the players' gear, but her true strength lies in her knowledge of players' lives off the field, especially those traits that endear them to sentimental folk like us.  Because we don't cheer for mean people.  Jenny fills us in on details crucial to our enjoyment of the game, such as who collects teddy bears and who establishes a foundation to rescue sick kitties in developing nations.

Like Becky, she donned a newsboy-style hat to cheer on the Hawks.

Rob & Jeff: The Keep-Em-Laughing Superfans

If these superfans were to have a superpower, it would be their ability to keep my family cheerful in any sporting circumstance.  That's no easy feat considering how the rest of us are all terrible losers.  In fact, Jeff once made us sign a "sportsmanship agreement" before he would play board games with us.

In lieu of a superhero cape, I crocheted like a crazy person to finish Rob's hat during the Superbowl, leading to more than one remark: "Sew, very old one.  Sew like the wind!" (Mega bonus points for recognizing that movie reference)

Poor Jeff didn't get a picture.  Or a hat.  Sorry, babe, you're up next.

Anna: The Sensitive Superfan

The first time I watched a football game with Anna, I kept scaring her with my yelling, so I had to come up with new ways to, how shall we say, express disappointment when the opponents make a good play.  Apparently I didn't tone it down quite enough, when on the day after the 49ers game, Anna looked up with a troubled expression from her smiley-face pancake and asked, "Mama, why didn't you want that guy to be happy?"  Confused, I asked her what she meant.  She explained, "You know, when you said you wanted to wipe that smile off his (Kaepernick's) face?"

Tess: The Fashionista Superfan

Regarding all of our hats: "They would be nicer with a pom pom."

Miri: The Hungry Superfan

Enough said.

Top 10 Reasons to Watch Sports with My Mom (and her crocheted Seahawks Beanie)

Many adjectives might spring to mind when looking at this picture of my mom.  Super cute- yes!  Warm and hospitable- better believe it!  Gourmet chef- you betcha!  But crazy, die-hard sports fan?  Perhaps not the first thing to come to mind.  But let me tell you, she's more than meets the eye.  Under her warm and fuzzy exterior lies an ultra-competitive, raging, veritable sports fanatic.

She may not know all the stats, standings, or heck, even all the rules, but she definitely wins the award for most entertaining fan.

So in honor of this wonderful woman, here are the top ten reasons to watch sports with my mom.

10. She makes great grub.  Did I mention she's a Filipino grandmother?  'Nuff said.

9. She sometimes forgets which team is which and cheers for the wrong team.

8. When the game gets too intense, rather than freaking out like the rest of us, she goes into the kitchen and cooks (hence reason #10).  In the 1998 NBA championship nailbiter, Bulls v. Jazz, Michael Jordan hit a clutch jump shot with 5 seconds to go, giving the Bulls the lead and clinching the title.  Where was Mom?  In the kitchen, chopping vegetables.

7. She knows the height of all major sports figures and preferentially cheers for the short ones.

6. When the Mariners blow a big play (which is often), she yells what we can only presume to be expletives in Tagalog.

5. She never cheers for mean sports stars.

4. She gets up at 3AM to check the Australian Open matches because she just can't wait until morning. On a similar note, she has to play tennis matches against people half her age, since the "old people" are too easy to beat.

3. She practices Zumba and Tae Bo moves during particularly slow or boring games.

2. After good games, she leaves noteworthy voicemails.  My all time favorite, in its entirety: "Yankees lost!  Yankees lost!  Love you.  Mom."

1. She makes great grub.  Yes, I mentioned this already, but if you know my mom and have eaten her food, you know this bears repeating.

So when my sweet mom saw the girls' new Seahawks hats and asked for one for herself, how could I say no?  This is the woman who taught us to yell "sack him!" right around the time we were learning to say "mama" and "dada".  Mom requested a hat with a folding brim and no earflaps, so I threw together a a quick double-crochet beanie in Seahawks blue and green, roughly based off this pattern.  With a pom pom, of course.

The best part?  I get to watch the Superbowl with this cute superfan!  Go Hawks!

Raising Sports Fanatics: Crocheted Seahawks Beanies

Sports fanaticism runs deep in my family's heritage.  It's right up there with the love of a good bargain, a predilection to eat anything made of shrimp, and a genetic mis-wiring of the brain's signals for feeling hungry and feeling angry (aka "hangry").  Let's just say you don't want to be in the car with my family on the way TO a restaurant, but that's a discussion for another time.

Anyway, back to sport fanaticism.  You might wonder how a family of four girls inherited such a love of sports.  Well, it wasn't from my dad.  My sisters and I were lucky enough to grow up in Chicago in the era of the Bears, and one of my earliest memories is of my petite mother pounding the ground in front of the TV yelling, "Sack him!  Sack him!"  As toddler girls in 1985, we danced the Superbowl Shuffle right alongside Jim McMahon and Refrigerator Perry (on VHS, of course).

Fast forward a few years, and we reveled in the era of Da Bulls and Michael Jordan's dynasty.  Over the years we found other teams to love: our own high school Bears, the Mariners, Huskies, Storm, Seahawks.

As fans, we were no strangers to body paint.

cheering on a high school basketball game

Or electrical tape.

My big sis is the U; I'm the apostrophe

My little sister even once made a sign protesting the sale of the Seattle Storm and Sonics to Oklahoma, landing herself on the front page of the Seattle Times and every other major paper in Western Washington.  She also achieved the highest level of superfan-dom: making it on ESPN.  Now THAT's a fan.

Now I have the high calling of grooming my own three girls into proper sports fans.  Like any other parent, I want to raise them to recognize good and evil, to root for the right team and boo for the Yankees of the world.  Or in this particular case, to cheer for the Seahawks and cry out for the downfall of the 49ers.  For my girls who unfortunately love dress-up and tutus more than TV and sports, the initiation into becoming a fan requires more than a bowl of chips and a TV remote.  For them, the road to fan-dom requires froofy clothes.  So I picked up some yarn and went to town with this earflap hat pattern.  After their initial rejection of the hats, we went into fierce contract negotiation, eventually coming to a deal:  they would wear the hats, give up all photo rights and royalties, not to mention a future first-round draft pick, if, and only if, I added a pom pom.  Done.

Go Seahawks!

A Room of Her Own: Painting

How embarrassing, only one blog post for the entire year so far.  It's true, there hasn't been much in the way of projects this year, aside from one big one (born in October):

Between hyperemesis gravidarum and a couple other pregnancy ailments, growing her pretty much took up all my time and energy this past year, leaving little space for creativity.  Now that she's out, we have some catching up to do!  But first, a few old projects that I never got around to posting.

First, Tess' room.

Why is it that some major life decisions can come so easily while seemingly minor decisions can be agonizing?  For both of the houses we purchased, we literally walked in, looked around, and put an offer within 24 hours of laying eyes on them.  Sometimes you just know.  I also choose my medical school in the span of the five minutes it took to drive through the beautiful forest surrounding campus.  So why oh why did it take three months to settle on the right paint color for Tess' room?  (Not to mention the four years it took for us to select couches for the family room, but that's another story.)

Some of the deliberating stemmed from the fact that my beloved second-born would finally have a room of her own.  She might have her older sister's hand-me-down crib and hand-me-down clothes, but the room decor would be 100% chosen for her.  It was my tangible way of saying to her, "You are important!  You are loved!  We made this room just for you!"

Anyway, after dozens of paint swatches and several trips to various hardware stores, we took the plunge on a light but warm shade of gray.

My super-talented graphic designer and artist sister assisted in painting a flowering branch design using painters' tape to make the freeform branches and a stencil for the flowers.

I added a few splashes of pink and some finishing touches.

And the nursery is complete.  Alas, just in time for her to turn two and a half, graduate to a big-girl bed, and be displaced by her baby sister.

49-cent Dimmer Fix

The dimmer switch controlling our family room lighting started making sizzling noises when you flipped the switch, and finally died. This type of dimmer has an on/off switch and a brightness slider. I took apart the switch and found the little rocker switch inside failed a simple resistance test with a multimeter.

The Lutron S-10P dimmer switch is $76 at Lowes, $65 at Home Depot, $50 online, as it does handle 1000W loads (that's the largest size offered by Lutron.) The simple rocker switch shown above is $0.49 at Jameco (Jameco.com part number 1945284) and is rated 10A @ 125VAC. The switch is black instead of white, but we think the install shown below doesn't look too shabby.

Not much to tell about replacing the rocker switch. Using a soldering iron, you remove the defunct switch and solder on the new one. The trick is finding a replacement having the correct dimensions. This one isn't a perfect match, is a little bit recessed and doesn't have quite the curved switch as the original.

White Noise in a Can

Visiting family for the holidays, with kids out of their normal routine and home comforts. One thing we can still bring with us is the familiar hum of white noise. Our just-about-4-year-old still loves the sound during nap time (yes, we still got it!) and bedtime. We like to think it drowns out surrounding noises too, for a longer nap.

The key ingredient here for making a White Noise in a Can is this small white "turn anything into a speaker" Rock-It 2.0 portable vibration device (yes, despite the description, it's a speaker, people) which I received as a conference promotional item. It uses two AAA batteries and plugs into a music source. (They even have a Rock-It 3.0 with built-in rechargeable battery.) The "rock-it pod" sticks to something and vibrates it to make noise, so the chocolate-covered-cherry can becomes the speaker!

You probably have an old MP3 player lying around. Smartphones seem to have made these little guys obsolete. Upload a white noise MP3 file to the player, and put it on the repeat-one play mode. Our favorite track is a vacuum cleaner sound we found somewhere on the web for free.

Ingredients:

1. Rock-It 2.0
2. MP3 player
3. Chocolate-covered-cherry can (cherries consumed)
4. White noise MP3 track.

Yes, they have smartphone apps for white noise, but during that nap or bed time might be just the time you want to use your phone. And when traveling, you may want to keep your precious smartphone battery life too.

You can also power the Rock-It 2.0 via USB cable. Shown above, an optional USB AC adapter fits nicely in the can too, so you don't need to use as many batteries!