Ding! "Bring out cha dead!" Ding! "I'm not dead yet. I feel haaaaappy!"

Well I was in a Monty Python kind of mood. I happen to see The Search for the Holy Grail again this weekend and now we find ourselves reciting lines from the movie. Anyway, the title reference does relate to me. I'm not dead...but I thought I was dying for how sick I was last week. Folks, food poisoning has got to be the most awful sick experience of my life (and hopefully ever). You're so sick you think you're dying and so sick that you almost wish you were so you wouldn't be so sick anymore.

"The Pants" and I went out to Iowa for Andrew's baptism (the godson) and we missed our connection home on Easter Sunday through Cleveland. So we decided to grab a quick bite to eat. My husband is known for his scoffing of junk food, unless it's a dessert (that's another show), so he brings back hummus with pita and a yogurt parfait with fresh fruit for dessert. So the hummus was quite good, but I though the yogurt parfait was sickeningly sweet to me, especially a little post-hummus. I don't particularly do back flips for yogurt so I wasn't particularly impressed with it.

We proceeded to board the next flight and it was packed. It was warm and bumpy. I started to feel a little something going on inside and a slight headache, but it was nothing had hadn't experienced before in all my travels.

To make a long story short, I made it to a farm road about 2 miles from the house and had to have him pull over to the side of the road. I proceeded to get home, shower, and lay down for 2 hours before he came to bed. Then all hell broke loose. I was up until 3 AM and in the facilities every 45 minutes. I will spare you the details but let's say neither end of me was happy. I got to sleep for maybe two hours and started the routine all over again although not as intense. Eventually, things subsided, but the doctor said I was very quickly dehydrated and it was definitely some sort of food poisoning. I don't wish that on my worst enemy. The waves of that awful nauseous feeling continued until at least Saturday, although things were "staying put" since Monday. So needless to say, my hiatus is hopefully over.

Now to the good stuff: Please meet my godson, Andrew.

He's a little peanut. My goodness, he's tiny. He's a little over 2 months. He's a really happy baby.

And the two most highly anticipated Finished Objects of 2008 get to meet up. Andrew and his christening gown, booties, and bonnet.

I never did show the bonnet. It was done out of 1 skein of the Royal Bamboo and I added ribbons to tie under the neck. We didn't end up using it, but they had it anyway.

Here he is when we tried it on him on Friday to make sure it fit. I ended up taking in the neck a bit with adjustable seams. I didn't know how big his head would be so I gave myself the adjustable room and also in case they would like to use it for another baby.

He's a big wiggly to photograph, but a talented family member, who is also a professional photographer, took lovely pictures during the christening which I will eventually get to post. She took some great shots of him sound asleep on me in his christening outfit. I was very humbled by the kind words from the guests on the christening gown. We went for a very early Victorian look and we got it.

Other projects right now would be the kitchen renovation. It all started with a leak in the ceiling back a few months that lead to new counter tops, lights, appliances, stripped cabinets, new hardware, new floor.....it's amazing how a leak in the ceiling can snowball into a large renovation. Damn HGTV.

So here is the new granite counter top. We had a crappy off-white counter top before that I just despised. This is Amazon Uba Tuba and it looks charcoal here but it's actually a almost black, mossy green.

We are just waiting on the stove delivery this Saturday and the Pergo flooring that's coming in today. Then we need to paint, wait for the custom pantry cabinet and we're mostly done. We want to bust out the back splash tile and do a tumbled marble, but for now, it's ok.

The new stove is stainless and black as well. It's a 5-burner convection oven. It has a second oven as well, which I am very excited about. I can cook a turkey in the convection, and side dishes in the second oven, which has it's own separate, temperature controls.

In the spirit of the new kitchen, we dumped the old knife block and got some swanky professional chef knives that all a solid piece of stainless, new bamboo cutting boards, and stainless/copper pots. I think I'm done spending money on the house for a few weeks. I also suppose I won't be eating out as much anymore. :-)

Also, the very talented Mr. Knitballs, decided to make better use of that pesky, skinny cabinet that is virtually useless except to store cutting boards or baking sheets. I now have a custom, spice rack AND cutting board rack. There is the same space on the other side of the slide out for my baking sheets. He was not paying like $800 for a the Harmony pieces to do this so he built one himself. Sweeeeet. I am one lucky girl who is now expected to cook...a lot more.

The cabinets have their polyacrylic coat and hardware here in this picture.