third story(ies)

busted

2012-01-28T14:58:00.000-06:00

Two things: One - I should have bought a yard of the curtain fabric, and not a chintzy 1/4 yard. But I still dig it. It just looks like a silly little valance hanging up there right now. And two - I'm not sure why it looks so creamy in this picture, but the background looks more like the background of the pillow on the couch in real life. I was a little concerned in the store that the background wasn't white enough for this room with an abundance of white painted trim. But it's more of a gray background, and I really do like the contrast in person.

Two more things: Third - the real curtain won't hang from clips, but will be mounted to upholstery hooks so you won't see a gap at the top, and likely won't see much of the track either. And last - I went to get the camera and came back up to find this. Um, hum. Sneaky.

52 projects: week four

2012-01-28T08:28:00.000-06:00

This week's project might seem like a silly one - pick a fabric already! But F's curtains are something that I've put off for a long while, and if I plan to actually get the car sheets and the foamcore out of the windows, then I have to start somewhere. (Side note: M and I have been scratching our heads over the location of all of E's flat sheets, and it really took me typing that sentence about the car sheets to realize that they are hanging in F's windows.) More on where we currently stand on the curtains here.

Picking a fabric is daunting for me. So is calculating how much I will need, purchasing it, buying a fabric liner, hiring someone to make the curtains, and then installing them. But until I actually pick a fabric, nothing else can get done. I keep my eyes peeled all the time for something that really grabs me. Lots of things do grab me, but I still think it's hard to decide what I like on a bolt of fabric, and what I want to live with for a long while on the most prominent wall in her room.

I like birds. But I've got a lot of them. I like small, simple prints, but it's a big window, and little things tend to get lost. Just seeing the small blue striped sheet and the sheet with little cars on it hanging there showed me that if the pattern is too small, and too faint - well, it might just look like I'm trying to hang bed sheets at the window. It's a huge three sided wall, and the neutral nature of the gray walls and white woodwork gives me the freedom to get a little bolder on the curtains.

I think I may have found the fabric.

It's an Alexander Henry fabric and I can purchase it locally here at Fabric Nosherie. I bought 1/4 of a yard today to bring it home and see the colors and the scale in the room. I've photographed it below to give you an idea.

It's one of those strange kind of things that I can't really explain. If I look at the fabric swatches that I've collected and admired for awhile and I place this one among them, it might not be the first one that I gravitate towards. But there's a reason I haven't pulled the trigger on any other fabric - and I wanted to figure out just why that is. So I gave myself a little exercise. I put together a sort of quasi-mood board or images of the room, images of other things that I love, images from the past, and photographs of some of my favorite moments in this room. Here is it - you can click on it to view it much larger.

There is a special light that comes into this room that is so different from any other room. I have shades of pale blue and white in other areas of the house, and those rooms really receive a great north light - very white, and very diffuse - throughout the day. It's calming, and the calming colors look great. F's room is south facing, and it's up in the trees, and it gets the afternoon light, and the setting sun light, and the gray walls aren't in the least bit institutional. In fact, her room kind of glows. I started out thinking that I loved a bolder aqua in that room with the gray, and I still do. But I've noticed I've shifted to golds as well, and I think it's really because of the light.

I've liked those colors in clothing as well, and I can see hints of these colors and patterns showing up in some of my favorite things the little one has worn. I see the colors in her favorite friends, in her photo albums, in artwork that I particularly love in her room or have made for others. I see them in found objects, and displayed objects around her room. To me, it makes it feel like it belongs.

I also love the departure from the birds, and the focus on botanical prints. To me the two are very much interwoven, and they compliment each other. I love the simple flower shapes - they remind me of a favorite invitation I made for E's second birthday party years ago - it's a shape that shows up in cookies that I make and drawings that I share. It feels like it will grow with her, and even as her room evolves as she gets bigger, there are plenty of jumping off points from these curtains.

It looks great with the things that she already has - particularly the couch that it will frame, and the collection of pillows that reside on that couch. It's a vertical print that I think will look good in a floor to ceiling curtain, with just enough color and just enough white space to not overwhelm.

So I've done it. I've picked a fabric. It's going to take me some time to take the next jump - I need to track down some options for getting these things made. But I've picked a fabric so I can take the next step - it's a fabric that's new, available, and that gives me a little time to order and get it made without worrying about missing the boat. Hooray!

friday finds

2012-01-27T17:33:00.000-06:00

We found ourselves up to a few things this Friday, but the best thing we found was some time in a bookstore - and a new llama llama book.

I also love finding a book that seems so particularly appropriate at the moment. A few things I've noticed reading and reading and reading to F (and watching her operate in a bookstore) - she loves letters, she loves flaps that she can lift, and she loves remembering the sequencing in a story, or how one thing builds on another.

I found this alphabet book today, and besides having all sorts of quirky things for the different letters...

...it also has a "door" on each page that opens to show the alphabet room slowly filling with the cumulative menagerie of items from earlier letters. The relationships between the objects and animals and characters change on each page, and we spent ages looking at this book again and again. One of my favorite parts is after you pass "I" is for "Ivy", the pot of ivy in the room grows and grows, and then every once in awhile gets eaten by the lamb. You can see the poor pot of ivy with just one lone stem, and the telltale ivy hanging out of the lamb's mouth. Hope this Friday finds you well.

to be fair

2012-01-27T16:23:00.000-06:00

Today at lunch I asked F to split up the remaining blueberries between our two plates while I made the rest of our lunch. The photo above shows her first go at it. Can you guess which plate is mine?

I asked her if that seemed fair, and she didn't seem to grasp what I was saying. Equal didn't work either. "Same" seemed to do the trick. She quickly made adjustments, and later on as we were eating and I finished my half of the blueberries first, she offered me some of hers. She is fair, more than fair, most of the time. Even with blueberries.

She's gotten a bit of the short end of the stick on the blog and around town lately. It's easy to isolate out those moments of independence as measures of our day. It's not as easy to remember that although those moments might be louder or demand more attention, they do not represent her on the whole - they are not the biggest part of who she is and who she is becoming. She's delightful, and inquisitive, and loving - not always free with her affections, which makes those hugs and kisses that much more treasured and appreciated. She's smart, and funny, and precocious in the best sense of the word, and she persists until she masters something new. Good girl, my girl. That's what we want you to do.

To be fair, she's amazing, and I'm lucky she likes to spend her Fridays with me each week.

stinker

2012-01-24T22:46:00.000-06:00

If I could bring myself to type OMG, you would know how I might choose to preface this brief chat about the current state of affairs in our house with this two-

"and a half!!" she yells from the wings, interrupting my train of thought momentarily,

-and-a-half year old.

We know, dear one, we know. We haven't forgotten. How could we?

I remember this, I've lived it, I've survived it without visible scars. I should be prepared, and really, I think that I am. But I've reached that point when I can no longer hit the snooze button until the last possible moment in the morning, content in the fact that we can accomplish all that we need to do to get up, dressed, fed and out the door in a set amount of time. Because that is no longer a guarantee. It's not even a strong possibility. It laughs in the face of any hint of optimistic leanings. It's a big, fat joke.

She wants to do everything. Every last thing. I love the independence, but holy pete, it can be such a chore to watch, and you cannot imagine the wrath one might face if you dare intervene too early or too forcefully. She had a particularly lovely meltdown this morning in the kitchen over something that I can't even recall now. Her older sister took the brunt of this one (although, in the little one's defense, her sister has been told one blue-zillion times to back off a step or two). E was frustrated, F was screaming, I was just trying to put some oatmeal on the table while resisting the urge to fling it across the room onto the wall, and I turned to E to try and fix the one kid that still lets you fix her.

"I know this is frustrating. This is a frustrating age, it's a phase that we went through with you, and we'll get through this with her. She just wants to be her own person, and do her own thing, and she doesn't want any help, and she's going to scream and yell about it all the time. It stinks, I know it, but we'll get through it, and she'll master some of this stuff and give up on the rest. But I know it stinks. It's no fun for anybody."

E looked at her sister kneeling on the floor over the giant bin of oatmeal she had wrestled out of the pantry on her own, scooping dry oats from the bin onto the overturned lid, and spilling most of them in the process. She rolled her eyes and then corrected me.

"It's fun for her."

(F this morning - pre-kitchen meltdown - wearing the just-returned sweater portion of her 2010 Halloween costume. The smile is post-bedroom meltdown over having to wear a shirt under the sweater because her insistence that she wear a sweater sized to her body a year-and-a-half ago left her forearms and belly exposed to the world. She could wear that sweater, by golly, but she was not wearing it as a midriff. Is it wrong to bask in the glory of that tiny victory?)

Also - I know by writing OMG, I actually did write OMG. I swear it won't happen again.

auctions

2012-01-23T22:33:00.000-06:00

Tis the season for fundraising auctions, which means donation collection begins. Both girls' schools actually have a trivia night this weekend, and I threw up my hands between the two of them and decided on neither. I'm just a bit worn out.

I do always contribute to the auction part when asked (my "no" button is stronger now, but still no match for my "sure, no problem" button). Custom cookies are what I usually settle on. They seem to go over well, and who can't find a reason to eat or share good cookies? The problem is I lack good marketing materials. Let me back up a bit. The problem is I had really good marketing materials and they got pitched.

Several years back I had accumulated quite the collection of cookies. I know that sounds gross - keeping cookies for years and years, but it's not like they mold or anything. They just harden and still look good. When an event like this rolled around I just put together a "platter" of individually wrapped cookies for the display. And because I'm paranoid, all of the little cellophane packages had labels on the back that said NOT FOR CONSUMPTION - FOR DISPLAY ONLY! I thought that should cover it lest someone actually pick up an item off a display and think it was actually placed there for them to eat.

So one year at E's school someone bid on the cookies, and when they went to claim their gift certificate, they also walked out the door with all of my cookies (and my really nice platter from Williams-Sonoma). Later that night as I was preparing to leave the event I noticed it was gone. At that point I was really freaked out that the person might eat the cookies and keel over or something. I tried to track down who claimed the prize, but they were only listed as a guest of another school family, and that school family wasn't even in attendance. It was after midnight and I had no choice but to worry about it all night and then start making phone calls at the crack of dawn that Sunday morning. Long story short, I finally got the phone number of the lucky purchaser. I called her and blazed through the phone introductions. Breathlessly I asked her if she had eaten any of the cookies. She replied that she hadn't. She had seen the warnings on the back, and she had pitched them in the trash. I asked her (nicely) to retrieve them (carefully, please!) from the trash, and she said it was too late. Her husband had taken the trash out to the dumpster. Before seven o'clock. A.M. On a Sunday morning. Ugh. All those cookies were gone.

I've never saved another cookie since.

Epilogue: She ended up returning the platter and ordering pirate cookies for her nephew's party. She was delightful, and to tell you the truth, I don't really miss having a bowl full of stale cookies lying around anymore. And I also just realized that I should have included those pirate cookies in this brochure. Because they ended up being some of my very best work.

And they were 100% fresh and edible.

busy

2012-01-22T08:13:00.000-06:00

Seems like I use the word "busy" a lot lately. Busy we are, but a lot of it's fun and involves leftovers. Like leftover chocolate cupcakes with chocolate mint filling and mint buttercream icing. That's the kind of busy I like.

Photos from the Open House at E's school yesterday afternoon. Lots of good food from school parents. And a few yummy leftovers.

52 projects: week three

2012-01-20T13:33:00.000-06:00

Do you remember Y2K? Do you remember all the hysteria around the "end of the world"? The world's computers would crash and the planet, perhaps even the universe, would explode at that moment? The only explosions I remember were the amazing fireworks displays across the world, one timezone after another. And lucky for us all, the end didn't come - which is a good thing, because I was in Ft. Wayne, Indiana, and I didn't really want to spend my last moments there.

What I remember most about that New Years Eve was receiving these earrings from M (who was still my boyfriend at the time).

And I don't need to tell you that when you receive a box like this from your boyfriend on such a momentous occasion like the precipice of the apocalypse, you might just think it contains another piece of jewelry. That piece of jewelry came a few weeks later, and proved not to be the end of the world either. We're still around and ticking together twelve years later.

And what does this have to do with 52 projects you ask?

Well, I didn't take those earrings off for over a decade until one of the backs was lost awhile back. And it's been one of those tiny to-do's that never got done because it required a trip to the jewelry store (that I don't frequent) with the earring in hand (which I never carried around with me). It felt so good to get this little sparkle back (although it didn't feel too good to put them back into my ears after the hiatus). And while I was there I had the diamonds checked in my anniversary band and one was very loose, so I sent it off for repair as well. No sense backtracking on the diamond years, right?

So even though I was so incredibly busy this week, I still got to mark another thing off my list, and I have the earlobes to prove it.

f is for family (and you-know-who) and mmm is for cupcakes

2012-01-20T13:29:00.000-06:00

This Friday found us busy with errands and tasks for E's school's Open House this weekend, so there wasn't a whole lot of fun going on this morning. But we tried to make our errands enjoyable, and we finished off the running around with a great lunch. I love that cupcake face. It just about sums up the cupcake experience at SweetArt.

(Side note: The veggie empanada is to die for.)

busy

2012-01-20T13:23:00.004-06:00

Busy perfectly describes this girl, as well as the current state of our lives. What a week. Sorry I've been spotty here at best.

There is no baking in our house without a helper, which is perfectly fine with me. Last night we were making corn muffins to go with the chili on the stove, and I let her do most of the work except for the scooping for two reasons. First, I was ready to get the pan in the oven, and I'm much quicker at doling out 24 scoops of batter than she is. And second, I'm much neater. I turned to check on the chili and when I turned back she had her own spoon in hand and the scooping well under control.

They were delicious.

to cut or not to cut

2012-01-17T20:53:00.000-06:00

I always struggle with this decision - when is it time for a haircut? The other day F told me she wanted to get a haircut. I think it's because a few of her friends at school have gotten haircuts recently, and maybe the process sounds exciting. Who knows.

Personally, I think she's got some killer layers going here. She's getting a lot of new hair in, and so her hair hangs down in many different lengths. Some people pay good money for these kind of face framing locks.

Still thinking on it...

on the dresser

2012-01-15T23:10:00.001-06:00

A few other things making me happy these days on my dresser. Vase, above, from Anthropologie - some good gift action from my sister. I was at the mall the other day (working on an upcoming 52 projects project) and I passed by Anthropologie without going in. There were four shelves of these vases - all lined up and smiling their happy red flowered smiles at me. Beautiful. And the Design*Sponge at Home book below - another favorite on my dresser right now. I almost forgot - salt and pepper shaker gift goodies as well. I haven't actually filled them yet, so I think it's perfectly acceptable to have them in the bedroom.

52 projects: week two

2012-01-14T22:12:00.000-06:00

Two weeks in. Maybe this is more promising than I first thought. Like more promising than my self-renewing resolution to stop biting my nails every year that I break about ten minutes after midnight on January 1st. (I know, I know - it's a disgusting habit. And an impossible one to conquer - at least for me.)

Week two - artwork scanned, printed and framed. And like last week's project, this is the continuation of a project started long ago but not touched in quite awhile. If you refer back to this post you'll see how I started taking some of E's artwork and, after scanning and resizing and printing out on glossy photo paper, I displayed it in this nifty little frame that calls my dresser home. I've even had thoughts about where this thing might hang more permanently, but it's never moved from its initial resting place. It has also had some blank spots for quite awhile, and a serious lack of work by the younger child in the family. That's actually a common theme throughout the house (photos, artwork, etc.). Not enough representation for the wee one. I'm working on it.

Here's the frame as it looked earlier this week with thirteen blank spaces.

Here's the paper I've been using. It's shiny, but not super shiny. Hence the "soft gloss" name I guess.

I've had a stack of artwork that I've been setting aside for awhile. F's more of a play dough and puzzle kind of girl - she's certainly not as prolific with the artwork as E was (and is), but I still have several that I really like. The ubiquitous handprints, of course, but also the series of drawings she did when she finally mastered a circle. I remember the afternoon we were drawing when she kept trying to make one end meet the other end, and how excited she was when it happened.

I also have a few other pieces that E did a few years ago, and so I scanned the lot of them a few nights ago.

I have a template set up in Photoshop, so the layout went pretty quickly. I printed out a test sheet and then the real deal at the highest quality print settings available.

This afternoon I cut them out...

...opened up the frame...

...laid them out where I wanted them and affixed them to the back of the mat board with tape.

With a little better planning I would have filled all thirteen spaces this time, but I'm hoping that as the girls get older I'll continue to add pieces in, and swap some old one out for new ones. Those blank spots will keep me motivated. (And might encourage me to get out the paints and mess a bit more often.)

I like how the scan of the handprints actually shows the shadows on the paper that's wrinkled with the addition of paint. It looks like the real thing (only in miniature.)

It feels good to get another thing off the list - and this project - while small - accomplishes a few things. First, it gets the growing pile of artwork gathering dust under the computer desk out of the pile and on display. And the real pieces are now filed in each girl's art box in their wardrobes. When those boxes get too full I'll take them down, sort through and weed out, and even if some of these don't make "the cut", they are still here for me to remember and enjoy. Second, it comes a tiny step closer to equality between the kids in this house. Tiny, but still there. Progress.

The initial cost of this project was probably in the neighborhood of $100-$150 if you count up the oversized frame, the archival mat board, the x-acto knife and blades (that I already had), the photo paper, the printer ink. But for this round it cost $0 - just a couple of hours to scan, resize, print, cut, attach and reassemble the frame. Even the little projects are easy to sweep under the rug, so it feels pretty darn good to get this one off the list.

And here's a photo my sister sent me yesterday of my niece's flower arrangement. I want that one in my frame. Is it wrong to hire out work for your kids' artwork displays? (Awesome flowers AP.)

so long holidays

2012-01-14T14:42:00.001-06:00

Putting away Christmas is never as fun as bringing it out. But there is still something very satisfying when you vacuum the floors after the last bauble and branch are put away - not to mention the reclaimed square footage once the tree is gone. And the live tree bonus? Thousands of pine needles sucked up into the vacuum cleaner mean that every vacuuming occasion for the foreseeable future will smell like the cardboard evergreen air fresheners you hang from a rearview mirror.

making ravioli

2012-01-13T22:17:00.001-06:00

These photos are from last Sunday. We made a recipe I haven't made in ages - it's for sweet potato ravioli, and it's delicious, but most certainly a weekend meal. I roasted the sweet potatoes while F napped, and when she woke up we mashed them with some ricotta, some parmesan, a little basil and garlic and then, using egg wonton wrappers, we made large ravioli squares. E's were perfection, and F's were crooked but delicious. A simple cream sauce rounded them off, and everyone waddled off to bed afterwards. I finished up the leftovers today (which is probably stretching it a bit, but this isn't a meal you want to eat multiple nights in a row). Delicious.

snowy day

2012-01-12T12:36:00.003-06:00

Instagram pics from the office. It's taken until mid-January, but we might actually have winter after all.

how to eat pesto

2012-01-10T20:39:00.001-06:00

This is what she chose to eat on her half birthday. She ate three helpings.

We use disposable napkins on pesto night. Do you blame us?

It was M's idea to capture what it's like to eat with F on pesto night. We're not normally this quiet but we were trying to let the eating technique take center stage. We took one other video, but I'm afraid if I post it you might lose your appetite for the green stuff entirely.

She ate just three bites of her half-birthday cake.

I think if I could craft a pesto cake she'd think she was in heaven.

This will definitely be used against her in the future.

bigger

2012-01-10T07:38:00.000-06:00

The other day I took this photo at the Magic House - another photo in a string of photos that document how tall you are growing. You are growing for sure.

Friday it was seventy degrees here and we got the bikes out of the basement. It felt like April and not January. We threw them in the car and drove a few blocks over to the park.

And you, my little one, were so absolutely thrilled to be on your bike, in the park, without a coat, free to ride and ride and ride.

And then your sister zipped past you, making giant loops through the trees and on the paths, turning into a tiny speck in the distance before circling back to us again.

You couldn't keep up, and you didn't like that feeling. You wanted to go faster than your legs could propel you on that little push toy. You wanted pedals and gears and speed.

Soon you abandoned your bike and used your legs. They are faster, and you are tougher - especially with a stick in your hand. You chased your sister on that bike until she broke away, and then you waited until she was on her way back before racing ahead to an imaginary finish line.

I know this is just the beginning. You have days and years and miles ahead of you to wish that you were older and taller and faster and bigger just like her. But you have no idea just how old and tall and fast and big you are.

You turned two and a half yesterday, and we celebrated your half birthday like we celebrate them all - just the four of us, with dinner and dessert of your choosing. You blew those two and a half candles out, ate a little cake and then quickly melted into the sleepy child you become just before seven o'clock. You curled into a ball in my arms in the rocking chair, thumb in mouth, listening to book after book, forcing your eyes to stay open as you watched the pages turning.

You are big and you are little and that's perfect. You'll get the speed and the pedals and the gears and the legs eventually. But don't be in too big a hurry. Think of all the cake you have to enjoy between now and then.

We love you sweet, sweet girl.

other rad toys

2012-01-08T22:51:00.000-06:00

F got this tree house. It was intended to be a simple jumping off point for imaginative play, and on that front, it has succeeded. Playmobil characters mix with the Ladybug Girl, various stuffed animals and a few dogs and bunnies. And occasionally a xylophone.

rad gifts

2012-01-08T22:08:00.000-06:00

I find myself with a couple of new toys for 2012 - toys that weren't even on my radar screen so I'm not quite sure I even believe they are mine. I'm looking forward to really putting the above items to use - I think a common frustration point in trying to capture kids and action is the limitations with zooming in. I haven't tested this out in a crowd or across a soccer field yet, but I did play around with it over the holidays. Mostly just testing my eyesight out, and amazing the crowds (fine, just amazing myself) by reading tiny print on newspaper clippings from thirty feet away. I don't really have a cool way of demonstrating this, but here's my dorky way. Here's F's wall shot from across the room (I'm sitting in the rocking chair in the opposite corner). Like the car bed sheet still hanging at her window? I thought so. Can you say "52 projects?"

Anyway, back to my first point. Wall, from across the room.

Wall, at maximum zoom with original lens.

Wall, mid-zoom with new lens.

I even zoomed in on the photo above in Picasa and could count the number of tears on this birdie's cheek. Which makes me stop and wonder why the bird is crying.

That bird is tiny though. See it to the right of the square piece. And then look at how tiny it is in the big shot of the wall. Crazy. Can you imagine what I'd do with a telescope?

I'm sensing lots of fun coming up with this. And I can't not mention the other toy. If you knew the piece of junk phone I had for years and years - well, you'll know just how fun this thing is to me now. And the girls made me that custom cover - I love it. I'm an instagram addict already.

Got any fun new toys your way?

(Also - I got my knife set completed as well, but I just can't figure out how to photograph new knives and post them and not look a little bit creepy. Or risk cutting off a digit while trying to photograph me slicing garlic cloves into paper thin slices, because they do, yes they do.)

52 projects: week one

2012-01-07T15:03:00.000-06:00

I have two resolutions for this year, and they both kind of tie into this blog. Well, at least one of them does, but I plan on reporting on the other one as well just to keep me on track. Sometimes I just need a little outside pressure - even self-inflicted pressure. This post is about the first one.

When I finally got back into photo sorting and printing for the two grandmother's albums that I do of the girls, I realized two things. First, it was really, really satisfying sitting down to a task that was long overdue and getting it done. And second, I have about a billion of those tasks that float around in my head at all times, and I think I underestimate how much the "not doing them" really bugs me. It's not really a matter of trying to do it all. I think it is more of that elusive goal of balance that I'm always struggling with. Last year was a taker. The year took a lot out of me. I felt bogged down in obligations and things that I had to do. And because there was just so much on our plates, when I did find myself doing the things that I love I found myself fighting that persistent little bugger called "guilt". I fight that guilty urge a lot. I discovered long ago that giving into it makes me miserable along with everyone else. But it still hovers around like a gnat, a small nuisance that can ruin a perfectly good picnic.

For a few months now I've been writing down items that I'd like to tackle - in the house, in my life, and this year I'm going to hit that list hard. Some are small things, some are bigger. Some are very tiny, but persistent like that gnat. Like the fact that we try to hang two dozen coats on three tiny hooks attached to a wooden plaque that I got from Pottery Barn a decade and a half ago when I moved into my first solo apartment. Every morning from early fall to late spring I take coats and jackets off the hooks, searching for just the right outerwear for me and for two kids. We rehang those coats multiple times a day. It's ugly. It's non-functional. It doesn't work, and it complicates a process (getting out the door) that's already complicated as it is. I'm going to squash that coat hook gnat this year. I'm not sure how, but I'll let you know the process I go through, the inspiration for a particular solution, the how-to's, the materials, the cost and the results.

Once a week. That's my challenge, to myself, to my closets, to the art projects in my head, to my pile of winter coats. The projects themselves might take twenty minutes or several weeks, but the goal is to plan to knock one thing off the list each week, and keep a record of what I've done. I'm hoping by the time December rolls around I'm feeling a little less beat down by the year, and a little more energized by what I can do when I put my mind to it.

So here's week one: Photo Albums Updated. Like I mentioned in my holiday message last month and earlier in this post, I've been working on this project for quite awhile. I think I started sometime in September. It took that long for several reasons. First, I had two and a half years to cover, and I take a LOT of photos - photos almost every day. Second, I was filling albums for four people (two that I did for gifts - which aren't part of this challenge, and getting F started and E back on track - those do count).

I have a pretty consistent method of transferring photos from the camera to my computer, and so the organization part was covered. But it is still a little mind-numbing to go through each day and select those images that I wanted to print out for the books. I aim for roughly 10-12 images a month for the grandmother's albums, but I put a lot more into the girls' albums. I sorted, sized and saved over 2200 photos, uploaded them to Shutterfly, and ordered 4x6 prints. I spread the orders out over a couple of months, and always bought the 600 print prepaid plans for the lowest cost ($54 each). I watched for free shipping offers and used those as well, because ordering 600-1000 photos at a time costs about $40 to ship - it's a heavy box.

I also discovered a long time ago that it makes more sense in the long run to save the photos into individual albums for each recipient and have a file naming system with first initials rather than selecting a bunch of photos, uploading them, and then going through and choosing the quantities for each one. That's a little more time on the front end, but saves a load of time on the back end. Each of the photos then come labeled with an initial, a month and a number, so that sorting the photos into stacks and then later into books in chronological order is much easier.

Because that many photos is, well... a lot of photos to sort. (Below is just F's stack after about a hundred were already in the album.)

I talked in detail a long time ago about my album of choice. I love Kolo's cloth covered albums, and the Catalina style is hands down my favorite. It holds two hundred photos, and has a few blank sheets that I write the dates on. They aren't cheap - they are currently $38 each, but in my mind they are worth it, and for at least eight years, this model has always been available - although colors change. I'd like to be able to stock up for everyone and not worry about them being discontinued, but that's an expensive prospect. I just keep my eyes on them in case I see them phasing them out. Occasionally I'll order them in bulk from Paper Source when they offer 20% orders of $100 or more, and I also purchase them here locally from ArtMart when I have a good coupon.

My favorite part is the small square opening in the front. I find photos of the girls that I like, and that represent the age covered in the book. It's sort of a graphic representation of the order the books go in rather than writing "F, Birth - 6 months" or something like that.

Picking the cover photo is one of my favorite parts.

When E turned one she received a striped photo album from Hallmark that was the exact same size as these Kolo Albums. I used it for her birthday party photos - the stripes are all the exact colors of the other solid colored albums, and she's always enjoyed looking through an album that just tracks that special day of hers through the years. I've hunted high and low for a similar type album for F to no avail, so for now she has a red one, and I've put a birthday party photo in the front to delineate it from the others. The next time I place an order with Shutterfly I'll get another copy of this photo - this one came out of our printer and so it looks a little blue.

I'm torn on the cover photo for F's first book. I like the tiny sleeping photo of her, but that cheeky little monkey picture really captures who she was in those first couple of months. Decisions, decisions.

These are the photos I printed for E's books - I usually choose a bunch, and then cut them out and choose them once I've filled the books.

This afternoon I gave F her books. We looked at them on the floor of her room for over an hour. Just like her big sister (her albums have been updated as well!), she's fascinated with photos of herself doing things that she doesn't remember or that she can't imagine (like being born). And I love watching her look through those photos, giggling at familiar faces, asking me hard questions about loved ones who are no longer with us, remembering little moments with friends and family.

52 projects, week one: Success. I mean, look at that face. Inspiration enough, isn't it?

P.S. I have a little New Year's Resolution for you - speak up more! You guys keep me going. I'd love to here what you are tackling this new year, or what you think of what we've got going on. Hope your year is off to a good start.

friday finds

2012-01-06T23:47:00.002-06:00

This Friday found me doing what I like best on a Friday. Hanging out with this little one. She is busy, so this is just the kind of place for her. And afterwards we found ourselves with a big appetite and a big lunch. Later on we found ourselves enjoying the ridiculously warm weather (70+ degrees!) outside with her big sister and a couple of bikes, but I'll have to add those photos tomorrow. I'm just squeaking in on Friday as it is...

These kind of Fridays are numbered as things are picking up at work (a good thing), but it's still a little bittersweet. We're making the most of it though, and there will be plenty of vacation days on Fridays coming up.

Working on a few new features for the blog, and of course, the much anticipated New Year's Resolutions (one week late). Hope you found something fun this Friday.

(And how much do you want one of those oversized lite*brites??)

speaking of quiet

2012-01-05T07:20:00.000-06:00

This child is most certainly not quiet in the car.

We've entered the age where car travel is a little bit draining. When the girls were little they could be counted on to sleep if the car was in motion. Now that the little one is a little bigger she's likely awake (save for a nap or two), and she's also very likely being loud. I know that we're not too far from a time when she can see better out the window, when she can read to herself, when her body doesn't ache from lack of movement for a few hours at a time. It's tough to be two and be pinned to a seat with a five point harness for hours on end. So she moves her vocal chords.

The other thing she's started doing is cheesing for the camera so I have to be pretty subtle about it when I'm taking photographs. It's easy to be subtle when she's playing and her mind is occupied with other things. It's not as easy when she's stuck in the car and I turn around to take her picture. I thought I'd try a photo through the tiny gap between my seat and my headrest. She couldn't see the phone, and although it looks like she looking right at me, she's really not. A secret camera perfectly catching one of her signature looks. (And a rare glimpse of a quiet child.)

quiet moments

2012-01-04T20:47:00.001-06:00

The holidays are a busy time for us (like they are for a lot of people), and we seem to go, go, go through them all. But there are moments of quiet amidst all of that going. And if I'm lucky, I catch a few of those moments with the camera. And if I'm even luckier, I notice them while I'm in them, and take a big, deep breath before the action begins again.

I'm not sure which of these I like the best. The house seemed oddly quiet about mid-morning on Christmas Eve. I don't know where the little ones were at that time, but when I walked into the den to find something I thought it was empty at first. And then I realized that there were two people sitting on the couch, completely engrossed in their own books, elbows touching, with miles and miles of legs. Later on I found the other two in that same room, quietly sitting in front of the pile, contemplating the contents within. It was pretty funny to watch my grandfather trying to read the Curious George book that he was just handed without his reading glasses on. Do you blame him for trying? If she crawls into your lap with a book you make do with the eyesight you have on you. After the big balloon drop midday on New Years Eve, it was nice to find ourselves in a little room where four girls could make bubbles the size of their head. But maybe my favorite is the last one - four cousins gathering around the first opened gift of the season. Maybe it's because they look calm (because they rarely are), or because they look like they are working together (which they do in fits and spurts), or maybe because they look so oddly color coordinated (we're rarely that coordinated, trust me). I think it's really because my niece looks like a little angel there, don't you think? I do love a sweet face in a photo.

I can't decide. I like them all. Quiet moments in the middle of the going.

cousins

2012-01-04T07:40:00.002-06:00

One of the best parts of the holidays for the girls is hanging out with cousins. E gets to shift from being the oldest of the pack to the youngest (aside from F, but she doesn't count - she's always in bed when the real fun begins).

One thing I did notice while sorting through the holiday photos - it is way easier to pose the older group than the younger one!

Photos above: Cookies for Santa, Watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and After the Balloon Drop.

balloon drop

2012-01-03T11:17:00.000-06:00

One of the things we like to do on New Year's Eve is celebrate at noon that day at the Science Center. They have a big countdown to 12:00 pm and then they drop a ton of balloons on the crowd. From the moment we walked in the door F said she wanted a red balloon. When the balloons finally did come down (and she was standing a safe distance away from the crowd, watching from above) she cried. "Put them back up there," she sobbed. She did not like them falling, and certainly didn't like them popping. But her cousins managed to get her a red one, so she's a fan again. I'm not surprised she chose red. She's got a history of it...

definitely iowa

2012-01-03T06:52:00.000-06:00

I may be of a (very) different political stripe, but politics always interest me, and it is fun spending the holidays in Iowa just days before the caucus (which is today). The above photos were taken on Friday, December 30th, and Monday, January 2nd. Same place. Which just goes to show you one of two things: the candidates are all over Iowa right now. Or that we are fairly predictable in where we'll stop for lunch on a road trip.

Both photos taken at Smokey Row Coffee in Oskaloosa, Iowa. I've got some better photos of the town coming, I promise.

on the road, off the road

2012-01-02T22:28:00.000-06:00

Instagram photo of E's monkey on the road to Iowa*

It's 10:20pm on Monday night and we've just clocked 1500 miles since December 23rd. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed at the moment, but not sure exactly what is causing it. The laundry? The empty refrigerator? The four zillion photos on my camera? The piles of new things to unpack sitting on top of the old things to unpack?

A little of all of the above I'm sure.

I've got plans, baby, plans for this new year. For the house, for me, for the blog... But I'm starting my new year next Sunday. I'm taking a week to catch up before I'm off and running.

But I'm back, and have a lot (and not much) to say. So expect a lot of random posts about nothing with the occasional post about something.

Hope your holidays were magical, and your laundry piles are light.

*conversation in the car with M:
Me: Iowa is so brown in the winter.
M: Everything is brown when you shoot it through your 1977 Instagram lens.

2012-01-02T22:10:00.000-06:00

Instagram

She, of course, did not make it to midnight. Not even to our wimpy "midwest midnight" of celebrating the new year at 11pm (when the ball drops in New York, EST). But I felt like she deserved a spot in the annals of our celebration. Even if I took the photo around 10am the following day.

happy new year

2012-01-01T12:20:00.000-06:00

I'd post a lengthy rambling on my resolutions for the new year, but I'm too busy playing with a new phone and a ridiculous amount of camera toys. I'll save the "work" for tomorrow. Happy New Year to you all!

fashionista

2011-12-29T22:08:00.000-06:00

I know that I said that I'd be back in the new year, but this girl is cracking me up. She got two hats for Christmas, a gold and brown colored one (below) and a hand knit one in aquas and pinks (above). She also got this dress (see below-below) which she wore two days in a row and begged to wear three days, and then four. On Tuesday we woke to snow, so you can imagine her joy when she got to wear 1. her new birdie dress, again, 2. her snow boots, and 3. a new hat. I grabbed the gold one out of the drawer and she stomped one of those snow boots promptly down.

"That is not the matching one", and she grabbed the aqua one and put it on her head.

And she's right.

And she knows it.

Okay... as you were. See you back in a few.

holiday message 2011

2011-12-22T07:27:00.000-06:00

2011 has been a difficult year and I'm not going to sugar coat it. I'm glad to see it go.

This may seem a bit harsh, a bit glass-half-empty, a bit whiny, and even a bit ungrateful. But it's also true, more true than I even wish to share here, in this place that I feel more comfortable sharing in than any other place.

2011 - I'm glad to see it go.

This has been the catch phrase - the theme - that has embedded itself into my brain throughout the year. You may know by now that I talk to myself in letter form quite frequently. Words bring order to my thoughts and sometimes I find a good opening sentence can provide just enough structure to my musings to give me the strength to make a decision, perform a task, analyze a situation. In E's class they call this "the grabber". Once you've got a good opener you've drawn them in and provided the foundation for the story to follow.

I run into someone I haven't seen in awhile and they ask "How's it going?" I find myself shrugging, non-committal. Okay. So-so. I can read the questions on their face. "It's been a tough year," I offer up, a vague explanation of a more complicated formula for the general state of things. I always smile - it's the optimist in me. Things do get better, they slow down, they ease up. Right?

I carried this phrase with me for most of the year. It started so early, in the month of renewal and promise that January is supposed to be. It came in the form of a cruel and unjust diagnosis for someone that we love.

It wove its way through our heartbeats, and we felt the stress and the weight of it as we waited for our father, our grandfather, to have his heart that we love so much opened up, scarred, forced to heal in a new way. We thought we would be the most terrified during those hours when his heart would stop operating on its own, nervous that we had to trust a machine and a pair of hands to bridge the gap between non-function and function, death and life. Looking back we know now that those hours were not the difficult ones. The moments of his pain, his discomfort, were the stressful ones. Make it worth it we whispered in our heads as we tried to work, to eat, to sleep, to play.

Work stress began to pile up, and the hours in the day to get done what needed to be done just weren't there. So we took them from the nights. Two years into my title as "underemployed", the shift of roles at work from getting jobs done to trying to find jobs was starting to wear thin. I'd like to think of my husband as "overemployed" - too many tasks for one person to sanely do. Our beloved daycare was faced with finding a new home after twenty-three years in the same location, and M's role as simple board member multiplied overnight, and the responsibilities and weight that he carried added into the mix. I worked late hours each week in long meetings and through stressful presentations in an effort to shape a beautiful, sustainable, functioning church out of our beautiful, dated, sometimes non-functioning one. Sleep is vital, and we got little of it.

The spring brought words like "hospice" and "decline" into our lexicon, and in the span of just a few days we lost two of the most precious people in our lives. I lost both of my girls' namesakes. It was a time when we could never be in the right place, and despite all of our family's work throughout the years to remain connected to one another despite our geographical locations, when death comes those distances are magnified and wrought with pain. In the moments of my deepest, most guttural pain I was alone - in the car, or in the air, surrounded by strangers, so far from home. The moments of grief did not end, they came in waves. Dear friends lost their baby, just a few days into this world. We lost friends at church in an instant. I attended more funerals in the middle of this year than I had in the entirety of my life.

The summer wore on with no vacation, no respite. It was a bit of belt-tightening and a bit of practicality. There simply wasn't the money or the time. We had started out the year full of hope for new projects to complete and tasks to finish. Again, there simply wasn't the money or the time. The list of things that I needed to be working on never shortened, and the weight of those unfinished tasks became heavier and heavier. I found that I could manage to stay on top of those things that needed to be done in the present, but the underlying things that needed to be done (or that I wanted to do) just never surfaced to the top. I long ago mastered the art of taking photos of the everyday. I almost daily upload them to my computer, sort and size them, post them and write about them. But the photo albums that I had started for both grandmothers and both girls sat unfilled as the months and years ticked by. The dropping off point was April 2009, and I know that it was because I was well into my pregnancy with the little one, and every waking moment spent outside of work and family was spent studying for an exam. And then the baby came, and the months piled up, the task growing in size, becoming more daunting with each passing day.

The girls celebrated birthdays in late summer in true birthday style, and as the schedules and rituals of the school year started up I suddenly felt the urgent desire to get this one thing done - caught up - on track. I made a chart on a clipboard of those months of photos and began going through the archives day by day. Reviewing photos, making copies, sorting them into files for my mother, M's mother, both girls, and a few for the photo wall in the hall so long out of date. It's a task that takes hours, it can be monotonous, but in little pieces in the evening it was manageable, and sometimes downright enjoyable.

And then something funny started to happen.

The two places that I found respite from the stress were Sunday mornings in church and in the late night hours sorting those photos on the computer. After a very sudden and profound loss in our congregation, I remember the words of our pastor talking about those last moments he had spent with our friend, how mundane and ordinary and regular they were. He talked about moments in his life where he had gone to his spiritual cupboard and it was bare. I knew that feeling, I know that feeling. This year had too many of those moments. And I knew how difficult it was to articulate that feeling. My real cupboards were not bare. We are fortunate beyond belief in this way. Missing a vacation is not missing a mortgage payment or a meal, but the strain of that bare cupboard of a soul can be just as debilitating. I would fill that cupboard up on Sundays, and then spend weeknights looking back through those moments of our lives - the mundane, the ordinary, the regular. And God, they are beautiful. They are full of color and smiles, parks and playgrounds and books and food and family and celebrations and art and toys and school and music and joy.

And then I read this quote, and I have sung it in my head for the past few months, through all of the lettering and the cutting and the printing and the assembling.

For in the dew of little things, the heart finds its morning and is refreshed. Kahlil Gibran

That was it. I know that what I strive for most in this life is to enjoy those little things. Those everyday moments that restore me, refresh me, give me the strength to keep going and moving and making and doing. I feel the strain of the times, and I know you do to. I talk about this with friends, with family. It's not been an easy road for anyone of late. I hope that if I know you personally and you receive one of those frames in the mail that you will take a moment this holiday season to find an example of one of those "moments" to frame for yourself. And if we just meet in this space, thank you for visiting. Your presence here lifts me up daily, and I am always grateful to share these moments with you in this way.

Thank goodness for a season that reminds us to focus on the little things: the candlelight, the familiar carol, the tiny baby. Thank goodness for the places that we can go to restock our spiritual cupboards: our sanctuaries, our gardens, our kitchens, our homes. Thank goodness for those little things we make and do and share and love.

Happy Holidays to you and yours and best wishes for the New Year from the four of us. I'll meet you back here in 2012.

admiring

2011-12-21T13:12:00.001-06:00

For a week or two I've been admiring Geoffrey Keating's handcrafted furniture. Design*Sponge did a feature on his work, and the piece that first got me was that desk with all of those lovely little drawers. If you don't think I could fill that thing in about two minutes flat, well... then you don't know me very well. The stool keeps me coming back though - gorgeous. I'd pull a few of those up to the giant work station of my dreams. (I get a little dreamy about dedicated studio space while I'm working on those Christmas cards...) He has a gorgeous website, and a wait list I'm sure, so I won't hold my breath that these are coming down a chimney anytime soon!

unbendable

2011-12-20T07:30:00.000-06:00

Unbendable: Firmly, often unreasonably immovable in purpose or will: adamant, adamantine, brassbound, die-hard, grim, implacable, incompliant, inexorable, inflexible, intransigent, iron, obdurate, relentless, remorseless, rigid, stubborn, unbending, uncompliant, uncompromising, unrelenting, unyielding. Idioms: stubborn as a mule. See resist/yield.

December 19: After being a bit nervous at the, ahem, heft of my Christmas cards once I assembled one, I decided to run by the post office and make sure the single forever stamp I had affixed to the envelope over a month ago would be sufficient. I first weighed it on the postage scale in the office (2.3 ounces), and as best I could tell from online sources I knew I was going to be out another stamp of some sort of denomination. When I handed over my test envelope the postal worker laid it on the scale, typed in the sample zip code and various numbers flashed across the screen. Eighty-four cents was at the top of the list, and I knew for a few pennies more an envelope I was looking at a second ornament stamp for the bunch.

Then she picked it up and gently gave it a bend. Nothing. I knew it wouldn't give - there was a layer of mat board inside that envelope, stretching rigidly from end to end.

It's unbendable," she said, typed a few more characters into her computer, and the numbers on the screen changed. $1.28 it read. She explained that because the letter could not bend, it was considered a different type of letter, thus requiring a flat rate fee to ship. Perhaps it's because it cannot roll through an automated machine and will require hand cancelling, perhaps because there will be mailboxes too small to slide it into, it will need to be delivered to the front door. She made a move to print out a label to make up the difference in postage but I stopped her. "It's not just for this one, I have a hundred," I explained, and she started dealing out the books onto the counter while I reached into my wallet to pay the bill.

The synonyms for unbendable are not too flattering. Grim, relentless, unyielding? But I was committed now, and I suppose you could say uncompromising. The attribute I think that I strive most for in this life is flexibility. It doesn't come naturally to me, but I work at it. So I guess sometimes going with the flow can also mean unbendable. They seem to occupy different corners of the arena, but there is a similar undercurrent to both of them. And like the Christmas season, once you're in it, you're in it. And even the careful planning and the diligent oversight sometimes have to take a backseat to the reality that you made a hundred little presents that need to go on their rigid little way. I swiped the card and didn't give it another thought. Unbendable? Absolutely. It's Christmas, after all.

to-do list

2011-12-19T17:19:00.000-06:00

Is your to-do list winding down this week - or ramping up?

I find myself getting to a tipping point every December that teeters precariously upon the insertion of one hundred envelopes into a mailbox. Much like we date points in history with BC and AD, I balance the ongoing to-do list in my head the same way. Call it "Before Cards" and "After Delivery". A few nights ago I was sitting on that seesaw, my end as high up in the air as the device would allow - as if an elephant were perched on the opposite seat, not budging one bit. As I worked through the weekend, bouncing from pile to pile and task to task, my seat slowly lowered towards the ground and I could see the end in sight. There are always moments when I feel like I'm dangling off the ground and in need of a good, firm grounding (or a nice long nap), but for the most part I enjoy the challenge, the busyness and then the relief. The joy of completion, the triumph over time. Tomorrow I'll slide those out-of-town envelopes into the box, and on Wednesday the local friends' will follow. Looking forward to that, and the relaxation time to come. And glad I tackled this personal challenge once again (even if the last minute postage snafu nearly kicked my tail!).

baby shower, part two

2011-12-17T13:51:00.000-06:00

The take home favors for the baby shower were these gingerbread onesies with some coordinating baby animal toys. I love this gingerbread recipe - it's always a favorite. It cuts beautifully into cookies that hold their shape and are sturdy enough for packaging, but when you bite into it, it's super soft and heavy on the ginger. I was particularly happy with these cookies - sometimes simple and sweet (and a little bit spicy) is just the ticket.

baby shower, part one

2011-12-17T11:36:00.002-06:00

I did some baking for a baby shower this morning. The baby-to-be is a boy, and the theme of the shower was animals, with a neutral sort of vintage, old school feel. The mom-to-be doesn't like chocolate, but does like flavors like carrot cake and spiced goodness, so I decided to do two flavors of cupcakes that I think fit the bill. The first was a meyer lemon cupcake with a tart cranberry filling, and meyer lemon cream cheese frosting. I tend to always go back to Cupcake Bakeshop for recipe inspiration. She is always spot on, and this time was no exception. The cupcakes were moist and buttery, and I used the cone method of removing the center, filling it with the cranberries, and then replacing the top. All evidence of sneakery is hidden under that delicious frosting. I hope no one wears a white shirt to the event.

The second cupcake flavor was a carrot-ginger cupcake with organic carrots, fresh ginger and candied ginger. It also had toasted pecans in the mix and was delicious for breakfast which is when I tried one. The frosting on that cupcake is a vanilla cream cheese frosting, and I topped each one with a gingerbread "animal cracker". Yum. Just the right amount of spice and winter sweetness for a December baby shower.

I'll post the cookie favors later.

christmas kitchen

2011-12-17T10:11:00.001-06:00

More to follow...

friday finds: with dad

2011-12-16T18:50:00.002-06:00

I had a pretty full day today, and while I was at a doctor's appointment, F went downtown for lunch with dad. The highlight of the trip was the gigantic tree in the lobby of his office building. Or maybe it was walking around downtown, or hanging out in his office by the windows on the nineteenth floor. Or the bagels. Who knows? There's always something fun and magical to find when you get to go to work with dad.

I like the weird perspective in the photo above - it looks like super baby, with little, tiny grownups in the distance. Thanks for pinch hitting with the photos, M. And for always making the hectic schedule that is our life work.

good job sissy

2011-12-15T07:00:00.000-06:00

E performed in her winter concert Tuesday night. It's one of those events that I like to have a camera for, but I get torn between just wanting to sit and watch the performance vs. trying to wrangle a halfway decent shot. I chose to sit for most of it, and tried to sneak one in at the end. And then I tried not to annoy everyone with a gigantic flash so this is the best I got. Thank goodness for friends who send iPhone pictures like the bottom one. (Thanks RH!) If we were smart, we'd get one person with a camera to take subtle photos throughout, and tell everyone else to just sit down and listen. But cameras and phones are everywhere, and you can't watch anything without seeing a dozen rectangles held up in the air, recording every moment.

Somehow this post turned into a speech on digital recordings rather than an elementary school recital. Back to my regular programming now...

I love watching E play, and really love listening to her practice at home. What an amazing transformation over the past three and a half years. The best part was watching her little sister throw her arms around her when she was done. F is fascinated that her sister can make music come out of that instrument, and she is hands down her biggest fan. (Her grandparents come in at a close second - they drove 660 miles round trip to see her play for fifteen minutes!)

tis the season: for thank you notes

2011-12-13T12:13:00.000-06:00

Bookmark this site, and check in each morning. Daily gratitude with a twist. You'll thank me, I promise.

brown paper packages

2011-12-13T07:50:00.000-06:00

This year our presents to others are wrapped in brown paper and covered in drawings. Our gifts have to travel in a couple of different directions, so years ago we learned not to cover them in ribbons and bows. I like the simplicity of having a nice roll of brown kraft paper on hand, and once we stopped having to sell and buy gift wrap for school fundraisers, I stopped buying gift wrap altogether. I reuse the boxes from the office - we always have tons on hand - and then when I'm sitting down relaxing with family I doodle. If you know me very well, you know that I don't sit still - at least not for very long. And if you've ever sat next to me in a meeting, you'll know that I have a pen going the entire time. It's much more fun to draw on Christmas gifts and think of the recipient than to sit through long meetings. Maybe I should show up at the next one with a few brown paper packages, a black pen and a white colored pencil. I might get a few looks, but I'd be sure to get a lot done.

busy

2011-12-12T20:35:00.001-06:00

One of the reasons I have this camera focused on this one so much is because of the expressiveness of her face. Occasionally she catches me watching, but for the most part she's in her own little world - talking or singing to herself, acting out a series of conversations with the things around her. Here she is taking in the Christmas trains at the garden for the second day in a row.

ten on ten ::december 2011

2011-12-11T08:20:00.001-06:00

sorting :: stashing :: licking :: Christmas trains :: our candy shop :: filling pez :: dessert :: first movie (and first popcorn) :: after dinner with friends :: back home - four sleepy people

I haven't participated in awhile - the tenth of the month sometimes slips by before I realize it, but this was a day of doing some of those favorite Christmastime things, and then celebrating with a movie and dinner with dear friends. Enjoy.

friday finds: holiday predicament

2011-12-09T15:54:00.001-06:00

This Friday finds us with loads of things we just can't share. I did find myself with an oh-so-helpful helper all morning, and so here's a little sneak peek. Notice how I made it black and white. All in due time, I promise. I find myself with even more help this afternoon - a nap that just hit the three hour mark. Sometimes that's the very best kind of help of all!

Earlier in the day we found ourselves something decadent - and I'm not talking about the french toast, although decadent it was. Notice three plates there - which signals the almost unheard of weekday breakfast for three. As in, two adults, one child. When's the last time we did that? Eight years, I'd guess. Granted, he worked until 3am to have this "vacation day" off, and even then it was full of things that had to get done, but still. A leisurely breakfast = rare find indeed.

And the last thing we found (that we can share) is our own sense of style. Hats are in, coats are out. Boots are totally in, especially with dresses.

Our Friday find? A breakfast break, before the busyness begins.

What did you find this Friday? Do share - you've been a quiet lot lately.

PS: RK found herself a very good letter in the mail yesterday - so I'm sure she's finding herself extra smiley this Friday. Congrats!

on the branches

2011-12-08T07:17:00.001-06:00

We've had a long tradition of purchasing ornaments on our travels. We have an old house, with high ceilings and we put a pretty tall tree in it every year. In the early years it was pretty bare, but over time it's filled. Our families know that we love ornaments, and they find some pretty amazing ones throughout the year as well. But those travel ones are some of my favorites, and we remember and talk about each place as we unwrap them from the tissue paper and hang them on the tree. Because they are collected throughout the year, they are stored in a cabinet and not with the rest of the Christmas things packed away each season in the basement. So when they come out at the beginning of December to join the collection they are a very real and present representation of what we've been up to throughout the year. Two years ago we had a stack of them - and it was fun to recall all of the adventures our family had taken together. This year was much smaller - just two small ornaments picked up in a small town near my grandmother's farm. It's been a year of cutting back, and travel has been one of them. But the tree is there - it's tall, it's full, and when you think of where we started eleven years ago and where we are today - well, the branches are dripping with sweet memories and colorful blessings. And truly, no matter where our travels take us, it's coming home that we like the best.

goodbye fall

2011-12-07T05:01:00.000-06:00

We had snow yesterday. As much as I liked looking at those apples and that butterfly and especially my girls on the bridge, I had to face facts. It's winter. So winter it is - even in blogland. And winter can be beautiful as well - right?

**other fact I have to face today? My niece is six. SIX. Snow flies, time flies. Happy birthday, kiddo.

admiring

2011-12-06T23:07:00.000-06:00

When I got home tonight M was putting the way the last of the dishes from my scone baking this morning. And my cookie making session this weekend. And dinner dishes from last night. Sometimes the amount we use our kitchen grossly exceeds the amount of space required for setup, staging, storage and stashing. I found this photo awhile back and for some reason just saved it to my desktop. So the little thumbnail of this corner of a kitchen was just staring at me as I avoid my own kitchen, and the last round of dishes that need to be loaded into the dishwasher.

This lovely little appliance just gives me happy kitchen dreams. I love the white - and it's particularly gorgeous with the stainless and the wood cabinets. But it's those burners and that extra large oven space(s) that really get me going. I'm getting pretty jazzed about the addition to my sister's house we're working on. I'm going to fill it full of beautiful things like this (within reason, of course!) and then just move in. Hope you don't mind, sis!

things I'm loving right now

2011-12-06T06:42:00.001-06:00

::blueberry scones in the oven, and a quiet, early morning house

::the sounds of stirring above me - the quiet before the noise and bustle of the morning

::the addition of lights to the pine garland on the wrought iron fence

::after trying fifteen ways to configure extension cords and strings of lights over four panels and bypassing one gate, the fence is finally lit correctly. Yesterday it had a nice trip hazard of lights across the sidewalk at the gate, but I promised that I'd find some camping stakes in the basement and secure them tightly to the ground

::while I caught up on some emails, M found the camping stakes and fixed the lights so that I didn't have to

::and then, while looking for the stakes he found something else I've been looking for - the final gift for Christmas. Hooray!

::reading the holiday books that come out just for the season

::having the little one point out familiar letters that start her friends' names, and remembering the early days of letter joy that the older one experienced. I do love watching the reading process unfold, especially in those beginning stages

::going to bed at 10:30 and not 1:30

::footie pajamas (not mine, but F's)

After a whirlwind of a weekend, it's nice to sit and think of ten (or a hundred) things to love. Share one of yours if you'd like.

cookie study

2011-12-04T23:46:00.000-06:00

I got this wild hair to make these cookies. Saturday night. Around eight. PM. Let me back up a bit.

I actually knew that I was going to make cookies at some point over the weekend to go into college student finals care packages from our church - forty of them. I had a very busy Friday and didn't get to the grocery store that day. It's been a working weekend, and we're still working. (I just had to take a moments break from the laptop and look at cookie pictures for a moment.) So I found myself on Saturday night going to Hobby Lobby (for blank stencils) and then the grocery store for fresh ginger around dinner time, in the rain, with both girls so that M could get a bit of work time in before the evening stretch. Note to self: No Hobby Lobby in the month of December. Ever. Again. Actually, I'll extend that to all retail locations. Which is fine by me (minus the occasional toothpaste or shampoo run) because I'm done - with the presents at least. Hooray! Done. And by the second of December. All those Friday finds have paid off.

F was having none of the fresh ginger shopping, and climbed out of the grocery cart no fewer than eleven times between the produce section and the checkout. I held my reusable grocery bags in my hand while the bagger put my groceries in plastic. It wasn't until he asked if I wanted my milk in a bag when I noticed that I hadn't handed my own bags over. We pushed our cart and ourselves out the door, into the pitch black parking lot, past the Salvation Army bell ringer - angering the little one because she didn't get to put money in the slot on the way out like she did on the way in - into the beginning of a cold rain, and the kind of toddler car sobbing that can really make your hair stand on end.

I made two batches of the best gingerbread recipe ever, and stacked the parchment lined sheets on top of each other. Then I busied myself with other tasks while the dough chilled for a few hours. Just before ten I rolled the dough out in a bed of flour, cut fifty or so large circles, and transferred them to sheets. I rotated cold sheets in, hot ones out every ten minutes, and the house filled with the scent of warm spices.

Around eleven or so the first few trays were cooled enough. I took the stencil of one of the rose windows in our church's sanctuary that I had made while the dough sat chilling, and tried brushing gold luster dust over the surface. The end result was pretty cool, but I still liked the idea of using a little icing, and I was concerned that the gold dust might rub off and just end up looking like a giant blob of sparkle. I tried white icing over the stencil, which was pretty cool as well, and certainly stood out more than the gold. But by now it was approaching midnight, and all my good reason had long since turned in for the night. What about the stained glass? I knew I could do it - so blue icing was made, with a little red and yellow swirled in for effect. A few hours later the base of the cookies were complete and we turned in (finally) for the night.

This morning I woke up and tried plan A - brushing gold luster dust over the swirled stained glass icing. It didn't work - or at least it didn't look very good. So I made a second batch of icing - white (again), and applied the window frame to the cookie. They aren't perfect, but they look pretty cool, and despite a few drying issues which were quickly resolved with the right amount of time - the kind of time you should have when you properly plan ahead for cookie making - they were done. They are wrapped and ready for tomorrow, and I'll likely make a few more. Now that it's all said and done, I really like that gold one. Simple, elegant, and the first idea before the sugar went to my head.

Now, back to work.

Update: The real window.

this time last week

2011-12-04T08:07:00.000-06:00

This time last week we were enjoying a leisurely (delicious) breakfast with family. This time this week we are icing cookies, trying to clean up the house, getting ready for church, practicing lines for the Christmas musical, and all other sorts of hectic morning things. Guess which one I prefer?

Happy Sunday - let's all agree to sit for awhile and just... sit? Okay?

friday finds

2011-12-02T23:57:00.000-06:00

Friday found us here! I'll let the pictures speak for themselves.

Hope you found something festive this Friday! We need to find some Saturday napping time - Christmas trees can keep you up very, very late.

city smiles

2011-12-02T10:06:00.000-06:00

Our little city traveled hundreds of miles and finally got unwrapped last Sunday morning. I had about fifteen minutes to hang it before we were scheduled to be at breakfast with family, and once I looked at the photos I realized that its still a little crooked. We'll be back in a few weeks, so I'll spend a little time spacing it out better and getting it all straight, but for now it's up, and much loved. I think I'd like it a little lower, but my sister is worried a bit about it getting knocked with a wayward pillow, and she's probably right. She's spent a little more time with that guy than we have! He's pretty pleased though, and I was so excited t see how well the colors and the shapes looked with his bedding - not a copy, but nice and complimentary. He seems happy - and that's what really matters.

okay, it's time

2011-12-01T22:58:00.000-06:00

I have this strange aversion to holiday lights/trees/music before the month of December. So even those these photos were taken just after Thanksgiving, I've been reluctant to start with the reds and greens on the blog. Now that December is here (already!), I suppose it's that time. These are the family tree ornaments that ~~fill~~ encompass my grandmother's Christmas tree. Each person has an ornament, and they hang them on the tree on the day after Thanksgiving. This should give you an idea of just how large our Thanksgiving feast is because these are the people that attend. It's a big family, five children, fifteen grandchildren, and then dozens and dozens of great grandchildren and great-great grandchildren. Toss in the spouses for all of those, and you get the picture. Five generations is something else, and watching the littlest ones find their spot among the older ones is a pretty nice ritual of the holidays - even if it starts before December.

p.s. my Mom did all of those ornaments!

scenes from the farm

2011-11-29T22:35:00.001-06:00

Every year we transport ourselves from the middle of the country to pretty far down the southeast corner. It's a huge gathering of family on my father's side, and my grandmother who is nearly ninety-seven, is still there in the center of it. We left colder weather and left our coats in the car. We ate barbeque till our hands and cheeks were stained, and left plates full of bones. We found the dirtiest, rustiest, simplest things the most fascinating, and we wandered around the cotton and threw frisbees and footballs and tried (almost successfully) to avoid the fire ant beds and the bees. And of course, we ate way too much - which is a testament to those who do all the cooking and the baking. If I could figure out how to balance a triple layer cake on my knees for seventeen hours in the car, I'd be all over some of those recipes. But we just stretch our legs out, run a few circles around the yard to get the circulation going again, and then feast. And there's a whole lot of gratefulness while we're doing it.

(last) friday finds: nothing "black" about it

2011-11-29T07:33:00.001-06:00

We skipped the crazy crowds on Friday and opted to do our shopping and eating in a downtown not too far from the farm. We found ourselves on twisty stools eating ice cream before noon. I've really come to love the habit of finding interesting and unique things while I'm wandering around on Fridays, and although this city is nowhere near my local (think 33 hours spent in the car over the five days!), it's still a nice collection of small businesses, and not a line (or parking lot) in sight. We had a hard time pulling ourselves out of that bookstore, but lunch (a real one, not an ice cream one) was waiting.

I hope you found something interesting and unique last Friday - whether it was in the crowds, or well outside of them. Share if you'd like.

back from the farm

2011-11-27T21:32:00.001-06:00

We're back from the farm, and a little bit cleaner. Hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving.

gratitude

2011-11-24T09:00:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I was lamenting what is lost. Today that sadness may still linger, but I appreciate the time and space devoted to the gift of gratitude. I'm thankful for so many things, and thankful that I am able to name them and speak to them on a daily basis here. Thank you for sharing a bit of this space as well.

I'll leave you with my favorite words on gratitude, as shared each year in E's school:

Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend. Gratitude makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.

-Melody Beattie

Have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

bittersweet

2011-11-23T08:38:00.000-06:00

I found out yesterday that the bakery around the block from our house is closing, and the final two days were this week. Rarely a week goes by that we aren't in there - E's artwork hangs on the wall behind the counter, and F stakes out her favorite chair of her favorite table as soon as she enters the door. We missed it last Friday - the day was just too busy, and now I regret it. F and I dashed over in the rain to say goodbye and to pick up as many of our favorite things while we could. I love their rosemary bagels - it's a love affair that I'm not ashamed to admit, and I bought eighteen of them and they reside in our freezer now. I should have bought jam - I love the jam. But I also love the savory pastries, the incredible quiches, the house made ice cream, my girls' birthday cakes... the list goes on and on. I understand the owner's desire to find balance in her life between the demands of a bakery and family life with two little ones. I'm happy for her, but it's still so bittersweet. Having places like this in the neighborhood is what makes city living so good.

We ate cakes tonight (mini ones) and I thought about my favorite Thanksgiving cake that will be absent from the table this year. It has been a year of missing things - missing people that we love, saying goodbye before we were ready to. I know it's just a bakery, but still. We kind of like life to stay the same, don't we?

fair weathered fan

2011-11-22T07:59:00.001-06:00

E finished up her outdoor soccer season several weeks ago, but had a stray tournament game on Friday night. Friday was a crazy busy day, and the weather had turned colder and the wind had picked up, and the game was at night, long past F's bedtime. All of these were good reasons for the whole family not to attend, and it was decided that I was the one who would stay home while M attended. I love watching the game, and I was sorry to miss her last one, but I'm going to admit that I didn't feel all that badly. In fact, I felt a little relieved. Cold+wind+ancy toddler+long day=not a lot of fun. They came home wind burned and chilled to the bone. I was warm and had been baking chocolate cupcakes.

Yesterday morning M was packing up the truck for a two day camping trip with E's class. He went on the last one, and he also volunteered for this one. The morning was cold and blustery, and rain and storms were in the forcast. As I headed out the door to work, E grabbed me fiercely around the waste and apologized that I was missing out on the camping trip yet again. "I promise," she said earnestly. "Next time, you can go." I smiled and wished her a good time, and spent the rest of the day in my warm, dry, quiet office thinking fondly of that cold, wet group tromping through the woods and thanking my lucky stars for willing dads.

would ya look at that

2011-11-20T08:22:00.001-06:00

No more foam core! And it only took two-and-a-half years to do it!

I wasn't kidding when I said we were tackling some of the window issues in F's room. We ordered the blinds from Smith+Noble - they are similar to the ones in E's room, but those were from Home Depot, and we've not been really pleased with the way they hang, so we opted for a little upgrade with these. I got the camera out to photograph the installation and one very happy (and curious) resident, and as soon as they were installed and opened and closed a few times, F grabbed her Prudence and jumped on the window seat saying "Mommy, take my picture with Prudence and my new window." And then she smiled this fake-camera smile while I snapped and immediately demanded to see the camera screen. So much for feeling like I photograph my children without them ever really realizing it...

The next photos weren't posed - it's the kind of activity that happens around here when I simultaneously thank my lucky stars for big sisters, want to sit down in the corner and watch them interact like this, and work like mad to get something done (laundry/dinner/vacuuming) while the peace persists. I'm frequently torn. That night I just watched (and photographed). The laundry can wait.

Is it just me, or do they look older?

sunset

2011-11-19T21:09:00.001-06:00

Friday was a bit of a whirlwind, and F didn't get down for a nap until pretty late. When she woke up, I was the only one home, and we played a few games and worked a few puzzles in the quiet of the house. The view out her windows of the sun setting over the rooftops and the church steeples is usually a good one, but on that afternoon the sky was particularly stunning. The colors outside of the window are distracting to me in these photos - they look like the colors on a cheap romance novel, or the cover of Gone with the Wind that I read in eighth grade. But never fear - Tara (or our neighbor's house) was not burning in the background as we played round after round of the picnic game.

All is well, inside the house, and out.

friday finds: pasta thief

2011-11-18T16:28:00.001-06:00

Her cheeks may be chubby, but not that chubby. This Friday finds us in the kitchen, both before and after E's Feast of Thanks at her school today. F's favorite thing to find herself doing is cooking. "I cook with you?" she asks anytime you get remotely close to the kitchen. This morning we were making a pasta dish and corn muffins. The pasta was cooked, the sauce was simmering on the stove, and she was supposed to be tearing the spinach leaves into bite sized pieces. Usually tearing is great fun but today there was a distraction.

Proper technique...

...but don't let the busy hands fool you. The cheeks don't lie.

She rallied a bit for the cornbread. One time I taught her to whisk to the tune of Ring Around The Rosy, and now she'll do nothing else. You should see the pouf of flour when "they all fall down".

And after a busy morning, we found ourselves feasting with friends that are like family, and expressed our gratitude to the school community that we are so lucky to be a part of.

I hope you found something good to eat (or bake) today. Friday full cheeks, perhaps. Share if you'd like.

this time last year*

2011-11-17T07:37:00.001-06:00

*Okay, who am I kidding? This was more like six days before Christmas.

I was working on Christmas photo calendars for the family and so I had my head in key photos of the last year. That's when I discovered these photos and realized that I never posted them. And since a lot of the things I'm working on right now are top secret, this seemed like a good placeholder. I loved these cards but to make one hundred of them was quite the undertaking. I tackle one piece of them at a time and then duplicate it over and over again rather than do a card from start to finish. I think that's more efficient, but it also means it is hard to get an accurate idea of the amount of time that each card will take. Which means that I never actually do the math in my head to multiply that number by one hundred. Which means I enter into the project with optimism, joy and a blatant disregard for reality. Sounds like the holidays to me!

At some point I was forced to accept reality, and do the math, and I calculated over an hour per card - something like 72 minutes - start to finish. The scoring, the folding of white, the scoring, the folding of blue, the drawing, the cutting, the gluing in three stages under heavy books, the application of additional paper ornaments, the painting of the snow, the folding, the stuffing, the sealing, the addressing, the stamping... you get the picture. But still, I'd have to say that I enjoyed every last minute of it (with the exception of maybe the ten minutes it took me to calculate that time). I got all but six done before the holidays, I finished the last few just after and the earth didn't stop its orbit around the sun.

This year will be different. That's what I'm telling myself at least... Happy holiday making to you all.

admiring

2011-11-16T15:00:00.001-06:00

I was very struck by these lovely paper flowers when I saw them. And then I realized what is triggered in me when I see something that I truly think is beautiful. I instantly want those materials in front of me, as well as an open stretch of afternoon and no interruptions. Not to copy what is there, but to just be open to the possiblity of creating something beautiful.

Which reminds me - I have a BIG project in mind for after the holidays, and after getting further down the road on my sister's house project. I'm so excited! (About it all - the holidays! My sister's house! My BIG idea!)

Flowers by Thuss and Farrell via Anthology, via Simple Lovely

a love letter to my daughter

2011-11-13T20:13:00.001-06:00

I always write letters to the girls at significant milestones like birthdays. The birthdays are flying by now at a rapid pace, but still, the years in between those dates stretch out into many moments that I want to savor and remember. And sometimes a letter forms in my head during these moments and I think about what I would say to her right then if she were listening, and what I would say to her grown-self as I imagine her thinking back to the days of her littleness. How much of it all is remembered, and what filters will slip into place over these memories? What will retain significance, what will grow in meaning, and what treasures will slip away on a gentle wave, out to sea, never to return? I suppose my letters take some of those treasures and apply them to paper, coil them up in a tight cylinder and slide them into a glass green bottle. I have no idea if they will ever be read again - will I be around long enough to pull them back out of the surf? Will she? No matter. They are still there and they will be what they need to be as she grows, and I grow and time passes too quickly for my liking. Too, too quickly.

On Saturday afternoon E and I went to see Billy Elliot at the Fox. We do things together all the time, but there is still something so rare and special about attending an event like this with each other that I love. It's like the rare date with your husband without all the babysitting arranging and hoopla involved in getting out the door for a bit of escape. It felt so good to stay in pajamas until noon, and then clean up after lunch and do just that - escape. I watched the corner of her face in the rearview mirror, watched her gazing out the window while she talked. I followed her eyes just as I was following the road, trying to see what she sees, what she notices, what she takes in. She poured out of the backseat, miles and miles of lanky legs that grow each day, and she slipped her hand in mine without a bit of hesitation. This age is magical. You can catch glimpses of a teenager and a woman and a school girl and a toddler in her face, and you blame it on the lighting because if you acknowledge that it's more than that then your heart squeezes too tightly in your chest and you have to check the corners of your eyes for dampness. She will catch you in those moments, and call you out on them. She will turn to you in the darkness of the theatre and see the tears on your cheeks as Billy reads a letter from his dead mother and she will smile that knowing smile because she is smart and observant and she know your buttons better than you know them yourself.

I am the letter writer in the family, although M can write a good one, and won my heart that very way. At the beginning of the school year E wrote a letter to us outlining her goals for herself for the school year. We were asked by her teacher to write our own letter back to her. It was one of those tasks that gets filed away on the to-do list, and because it does not exist as a handout or form or invoice it never surfaces to the top of the pile. After a friendly reminder or two, M sat down to write it himself while I sat through a long and difficult meeting somewhere else. When I came home exhausted and drained with my head pounding and swimming at the same time, he handed me the letter and invited my input as well. I took a deep breath, shifted my focus, and read.

DearElla,

We areproud of the work you are doing in school and have a few goals foryou this year. First, we would like to see you continue to improveyour hand writing skills by practicing your careful and neat writing. You have very creative story ideas and we would like to see you getthem on the page without being frustrated by spelling, crowding, andmessy writing. We know you have been interested in cursive for along time, so maybe you'll get a chance to start learning that!

One ofour favorite things about you is your creativity with art projects. Our goal is for you to continue to be open minded about trying newthings and not getting frustrated if they don't turn out exactly asyou planned. We would like you to remember that art is an experimentand may take more than one try to get the results you want –especially if it is the first time you are trying a certain project.

Wereally enjoy helping you with your math homework and watching youlearn about numbers. We hope you find new and creative ways to usenumbers, and get a better understanding of how numbers relate to eachother. We also hope that you notice how your school uses math insome pretty cool ways outside of “math class” (like menu planningfor culinary arts and budget planning for your field trips, just tomention a few).

Finally,we love seeing you perform. Whether it is out on the soccer field,in a violin concert, or standing in front of a group presenting yourideas. We would like to see you continue to be brave, speak withconfidence and have fun with everything you do.

Have agreat year!

Love,

Mom & Dad

P.S. Weforgot to say anything about reading! You are an incredible reader. Our goal is more for us than for you – we want to make sure wealways have a new and interesting book for you on your bookshelf ornightstand, even when you read it all in one night!

What a gorgeous letter, I had nothing to add. I can see all the lovely things in my mind that I wish for her. I can lace my fingers through hers and tip my forehead to hers and lose myself in a play, all the while wanting a promise that I will always be allowed to lace my fingers in hers, that it will always be that way. I can marvel in the discussions we are able to have post-play about language and innuendo beyond her years, and know that she is growing up into a person that can be exposed to a variety of viewpoints and still maintain who she is. But I cannot place all of that expectation, and the weight of all of those dreams on her eight-year-old shoulders. I can wish for her happy cursive writing and creative math problems, always take the time to stop into a good bookstore, and celebrate her triumphs on the small stages she chooses to climb on. The rest is a love letter to myself, to let her be, to savor these moments, to touch foreheads with her whenever I get the chance but to release those fingers when I need to, when she needs me to.

park it

2011-11-13T06:39:00.000-06:00

Here's the latest (and probably last) addition to the cityscape for my nephew. The park. I thought of putting a kite, but then the balloon seemed right. And I love it. I drew inspiration for the trees from the book Follow the Line, which was the starting point my sister gave me when she asked me to do this for C. Once I finished the park, I really wanted to put these on the wall, step back and look at them for a few days. And since M was at work (self-punishment for taking a vacation day on Friday) and E was still up (and suddenly hyper), we decided to hang them with museum putty and stand back and admire ~~our~~ my work. She just thinks it's hers because I did so much of it in her room with her standing over my shoulder critiquing each cut and paste.

And here is the bed and the bedding in my nephew's room. (That is not his orange room, although it is cute. But very, very orange.) His bed is from Room and Board, and the bedding is Dwell Studio's Skyline. Below those are some photos of his room before he was even born, and the original artwork I made him for over his crib.

So E and I hung the canvases up over her bed, and then she thought that they needed to be spaced out a little more, and I agreed. So I did.

And then I looked at the park on both sides. It balances out better next to the residential building but E likes it by the school for practical purposes. To which I say that it's art and not reality... and besides, the park will certainly raise the property values of the adjacent condos.

And then there's the adorable crane that is kind of too small really to look right anywhere. Except maybe on the roof of the school, working on the high rise commercial building. And the helicopter. Suspend it with wire? Mount it directly to the canvas? I love it, but I don't want it to look like it's about to crash into the building. Happy art.

So, still thinking about a few things, and M has arrived home and is providing commentary behind me like - "There are cranes that go on top of buildings, but not that type of crane." and "What, no pigeons?"

Which means it's time to call it a night, and set this to post in the morning for your viewing pleasure. Comments or suggestions welcome.

guest blogger

2011-11-12T19:27:00.001-06:00

Today's guest blogger is E, who happily manned the camera in my absence on Friday. So without further ado, here are some of the moments she captured (including a self portrait) while hiking with her dad and little sister. (With the exception of the first and last photographs - the first documents her eleventh lost tooth that fell out just before the hike began, and the last looks to me like two tired cookies!)

Update: Make sure you drop her some comment love. I posted a couple of minutes ago and she's already asked twice if anyone has commented yet.

city progress, and working with helpers

2011-11-12T12:31:00.001-06:00

Some days I wake up ready to dive into a project, and that kind of motivation is catching. It can go either way. I can find that my "helpers" aren't really so helpful, or I can just embrace the fact that we'll all make a royal mess in the effort and clean up later once the work is done. That's what our Saturday morning looked like. M was working in the basement, and the rest of us pulled paints and crayons and markers and paper and then cars? out and the mess began. This is what came out of it.

One very tall building, the world's cutest parking garage and even a three dimensional revolving door (E's stellar idea).

I also made a helicopter which I might float above the building with a wire, but for now it's sitting there on the canvas looking cute. One park left to go, and then a final pass to see if anything is "missing".

Earlier buildings and links can be found here.

friday finds

2011-11-11T16:36:00.001-06:00

This Friday found me working on a day that I normally don't. Actually, let me back up that statement a bit. I should have said a day that I normally don't work in my office. I know the pictures portray long, leisurely Fridays of garden strolling, local shopping, good eating, and afternoon napping, but mixed into those things is always work of a different sort - the work of school and church and cookie-baking-paper-making kind of things. And sometimes it's just a huge catch up point from a hectic week of wearing and working under too many hats on any given day. Which may explain why I was a bit grumpy that I had to work in the office, particularly on a day when not one, but both girls were at home.

I got over it, and quickly.

One thing I try to be mindful of is my attitude. I know that any given day might find me doing things that I'd rather not be doing, but for the most part I'm incredibly fortunate to be able to fill most days with those things that I really love to do. So whether they come in bits and spurts, or stretch out leisurely through the entire day, I usually manage to find them somehow, and be grateful for them always.

I ended the day wedged into a restaurant booth halfway between our house and the Shaw Nature Reserve where the other three spent the afternoon. The girls were tired, but they rallied a bit for good pizza, and even the antsy little one had her moments of sweetness. There's nothing much better than watching a toddler eat an endless string of melted pizza cheese.

It is 7:53pm, everyone's bathed and pajama-ed and all three are asleep upstairs. The house is quiet, and I find myself in need of a long, warm soak in the tub and a little reading before an early night. Sometimes finding an attitude adjustment is the best find of all. And a big tub full of bubbles is a very close second.

Hoping you found a few moments of peace in the busyness that is Friday.

cookies done

2011-11-10T22:00:00.000-06:00

Now that's a lot of writing...

(Thank you gifts for various people - hence the different logos and images.)

admiring

2011-11-10T06:30:00.000-06:00

If I married again... to the same man, of course... this is what my invitations would be like. For me, a wedding is a moment in time, and ours was very much a reflection of that moment in our lives. But even more than a decade later, I'm still inspired by the resurgence of individual touches and unique twists to what seemed to be a fairly formulaic ritual for many years. Martha started it, and everyone ran with it.

So naturally, when I saw this invitation on Design*Sponge today, I loved it. Perhaps for two reasons. One, because the color is the same as my Christmas card (prototype, at least) this year, and two, because I'm employing the same paper cut message idea into my cards. These certainly recall what I love most about Famille Summerbelle's pieces - the combination of words and images cut from a single sheet of paper. I love how fragile and sturdy they are at the same time. I love the handmade aspect to them, even those these are eventually laser cut. They are lovely.

Take a moment to check out Avie Designs - they have some lovely holiday card designs as well, and I know some of you are working on that right now. As I should be. Yikes.

cookie fonts

2011-11-09T06:59:00.000-06:00

Working some cookies into this busy week. These are progress photos (with really bad lighting and a dead battery in my speed light) of the cookies with the first few colors applied. There are four logos in all going on the cookies in various configurations. And then all the cookies will get a nice white border, so ignore the unfinished look at the moment. That's a serious amount of writing though - very tedious, but kind of fun for us weird types that like tedious work. Looking forward to the Ignite logo to shake things up a bit.

admiring

2011-11-08T23:37:00.000-06:00

I've been admiring fabrics lately - there are just so many great ones out there, and the addition of a new fabric store in town doesn't hurt.

Of course, my admiration of fabrics just makes me lament the fact that a. I don't have time to teach myself to sew (it's been a few decades since I made clothes, and even then it was just your basic skirts and shirts) and b. fabric can be expensive (especially if it just sits there, doing nothing).

But still, I do love the idea of one day finding the time (and space) to sew, and I really love the idea of putting curtains in F's room, because even the hanging bed sheets make me happy in there.

So I'll link to those fabrics I posted a few days ago, if you're so inclined. If you are just looking for a good one-stop shop for fabric browsing online, I like Alewives site. They have a nice selection, but it's still just the tip of the iceberg.

1. Little Florine Urban Sunshine by Lotta Jansdotter for Windham Fabrics
2. Ivy Bloom Lake by Amy Karol / Westinster Fabrics
3. Sparrows Vintage Yellow by Joel Dewberry
4. Wrenly Collection, Wren Cobalt by Valori Wells for Free Spirit
5. Meadow Dot by Michael Miller
6. Dove Anais by The French General for Moda
7. Majestic Oak in Grass by Joel Dewberry
8. Robin by Duralee, Thomas Paul Prints
9. Multi by Duralee, Thomas Paul 2
10. Snow White Gray by Heather Ross
11. Doodle Art Blue by P & B Textiles
12. Stone School Dress by Moda

city progress

2011-11-07T07:20:00.002-06:00

And now we have a school. One more really tall building and a park to go! I love the school - I had a few more ideas for it - like a little more dimension (maybe a frame?) to that circle window), but I'm trying to get all the buildings to a certain point, and then I'll add things if I think they need it.

Earlier buildings here, here and here.

a story about daylight on daylight saving time day

2011-11-06T16:21:00.000-06:00

As you can see here - we had a bit of an annoyance in F's room related to daylight control. Meaning, we had none of it.

Her room has seven windows - two East facing, four South facing, and one West facing. And she's perched up high on the third floor above the treetops, so her room gets a lot of sun. There was a fairly easy fix for her big double hung window - wood blinds to match the rest of the third floor windows. But we waited on that window until we determined what to do with the other six. And then once we decided, we just never got around to it.

The six windows in the box bay posed several different challenges - three are operable and have hardware, three aren't. Four are small and square and have several layers of trim around them that took way too much time and planning to install to even consider covering up with blinds or shades... and they were too small to install blinds or shades on the inside. Awhile back I decided that a single track system that wrapped the three sides of the bay would be best. It could mount to the ceiling and hold lined curtains that could be drawn for light control at nap and bedtime, but could also be moved in either direction, or completely pulled out of the way to open up the windows to the sky beyond.

I found some fabric I liked, and the type of hardware I'd need, and the name of someone highly qualified to tackle the job. And then I got sticker shock. Like several K sticker shock. The hardware alone - while white and custom made (seamless) and operationally flawless - was a nice chunk of that cost. And the fabric required to cover the three walls, fully lined, was expensive as well. The project got put on hold and I purchased $60 worth of foamcore and spent an hour or two cutting it to shape. We've used it ever since. But when we take it down in the morning and let the sunlight pour in, those pieces always seem to get in the way. I moved them one too many times this week, I think, and so the alternative hardware (from IKEA, purchased a year and half ago) needed to be installed. And so it is.

The system is IKEA's Kvartal, and like most things IKEA, it's inexpensive, has lots of parts, and little instructions. It took awhile to lay it out, hold it up and figure out the clearances we'd need, do the calculations, redo the calculations that I did the first time (incorrectly), and then unwrap the ten thousand pieces, each labeled with identifying stickers that were next to impossible to remove. That's the price you pay for the price - $5.99 a piece - 4 required, plus a few ceiling mounted brackets and three hanging kits. I doubt we spent more than $50. It's been so long ago, I don't remember.

We laid it out on Saturday, and then M cut it to fit and installed it today.

After it was installed, I took a few of E's twin sheets and did some tests with the clips to start to get an idea of how much material I might need, how full I'd like it, and how close together the hardware should be.

With the hanging clips holding the material, it looks a bit like a hospital curtain with the curved corners. But what I do like about this system is that you have three choices for curtain assembly. The best looking, in my opinion, are the concealed drapery hooks.

These will attach to a panel at the top of each curtain panel so when the curtain is installed the top portion of the fabric will nearly reach the ceiling, and hide not only the plastic slides, but also the metal hardware itself. It's a pretty custom look for a pretty reasonable price. And if down the road we're not happy with it, maybe we'll splurge and buy that other track. But I doubt it. It's nice to save the money here, because I'm certainly going to need it for all that fabric.

This window is measured, and maybe I can talk M and E into running out this afternoon to order those blinds. It may be awhile before we can actually do the curtains, but minus one piece of foam core is progress enough for me this weekend.

Here are fabric samples I'm contemplating - if I had more time I'd link them all, but I'll have to do that later. I may have an extra hour today, but that extra hour is already filled with things to do!

the saturdays

2011-11-05T15:52:00.000-05:00

Yesterday afternoon the baby was sleeping and E got dropped off at home after school so that I didn't have to wake up the little one. I was stealing a few moments to work on the city piece, and she hopped up on the only bare spot on the bed and started reading. We had twenty glorious minutes of this - three feet apart, lost in our own little worlds. I love that about this girl. She is dreamy to work on a project with, and just as wonderful to be near when we're doing our own thing.

Side note about the book she's just about to finish in that shot above. She has a four-week assignment for school that required her to select a book off her shelf that she hadn't read yet. She had four, but struggled to pick which one. First she read the summary on the back of each book out loud to her father and I, and managed to put one book to the side. Then she was stuck. M suggested she close her eyes and pick, which she did, and when she opened her eyes she declared that she had randomly chosen her second choice - her first choice had been The Saturdays. We asked her why she closed her eyes and picked a book if she already had a first choice in mind, but she really didn't have an answer. She started reading her book for class, and we left her reading in bed and went about the rest of our evening.

At almost midnight we called it a night and went upstairs to check on the girls. E's light was on, and she was passed out across the bed with an outstretched arm over the side, book in hand, finger holding her place. I slowly took the book out of her still hand, making sure to hold her place until I inserted a bookmark. I flipped the book over, expecting to see Any Which Wall, but instead found this book - The Saturdays. Her first choice won out.

Two afternoons later (I caught her once reading it as she walked down the stairs) - it's done. If you've got an open Saturday (or any day), she highly recommends it.

The Saturdays, by Elizabeth Enright

house(top)

2011-11-04T19:20:00.002-05:00

Once I determined the final layout of the city I decided the residential building needed more height - and a roof garden. Here's the top part of the building, and the clothesline idea that's been floating around for a few days.

city progress and a (photo) confession

2011-11-04T16:45:00.000-05:00

This is the state of my desk most days. I'm embarrassed to show it, but here it is. In my defense, I used to have a whole room devoted to the projects that I like to work on, and now that I no longer have it (enter cute baby), I realize how much I miss it. It's hard to stop and start and get much of anything done, and I've found the set up and take down sometimes don't always happen. Probably because the making part is much more fun, and probably because the making happens right up until the very last second of free moments that I have, leaving no time for the clean up. I found myself with one hour of time this afternoon, and this is what I had in front of me. So I made a wise decision and took fifteen seconds to lift it all off the desk and onto the bed. I'll tackle it later when I'm forced to - you know, when I decide I'd actually like to lie down in that bed.

In that hour this is what I did. Finished off the civic building with a nice, fancy dome.

The bottom section was looking too gray (although I love those dimensional stairs!) so I added some planters and then some bunting. Because nothing says "civic" like bunting.

Here's the city as it's shaping up. That unwrapped canvas will be the top section of the residential building. Check back later tonight for that.

Hour's up! (And so is that baby!)

friday finds

2011-11-04T15:50:00.000-05:00

Well. Once I uploaded the photos it sure seems like all we found today were purchases. But we have had a really fun day today. F and I dropped off her sister and came back home for a leisurely breakfast. After some serious play dough work, the sun came out, the wind died down and we decided to head out for a couple of hours of gift shopping. We hit two areas around here - Webster Groves and Maplewood - and I think we made out like a bandit. First on the list, a hostess gift. Then a few cute things from Verde Kids for the little one to fill a slight gap in the hand-me-downs.

Some birthday gifts for a talented writer and artist...

...and maybe even a talented seamstress...

...or mechanic?

And then I finally got over to Maven - I've been wanting to for awhile, but never seem to do it. F's not the type to do a lot of window shopping - she's a hands on girl for sure. But I gave her a couple of hedgehog fingernail brushes to hold and shopped and smelled my way through all the custom made soapy goodness.

And I really couldn't pass up this cupcake shaped bath bomb for my bath bomb-loving daughter (who happens to be named after a great aunt whose nickname is "Sookie"). Full circle, you see?

And one quick trip back to the Fabric Nosherie where I got three small pieces of fabric that I absolutely adore. I have a few materials in mind for F's curtains (eventually!) - not these - and I really have no idea what I'm going to do with them, but I loved them. If F didn't have sixteen burpies of her own (!) I'd make her some with these.

And these cars. Oh, the cars. Finding lots of sweet things for sweet people - and inspiration to boot. Hope this Friday finds you well and finding a bit of weekend inspiration yourself. Please share!

admiring

2011-11-03T12:48:00.000-05:00

Two in a row. This was something else I stumbled upon that reminds me of when our godson was just starting to ~~join his dad playing~~ play with Legos. They would lay out a giant quilt and dump the pieces out and play - when they were done the quilt was scooped up and the pieces were funneled back into their rubbermaid bin.

We have several toys of this nature in our house - Legos, Playmobil, matchbox cars and plastic animals - and they are stored in a variety of reused containers. The containers work just fine, but they still require a lot of enthusiastic "dumping" out, and then later - less than enthusiastic picking up.

Enter the swoop bags. I love how the bag opens and provides its own play mat - and then practically picks itself back up. And they look pretty awesome. I think I'd take a couple of these hanging on big wall hooks over the odd assortment of plastic containers we have now. This is definitely going on the "list" - we're getting pretty close, but that older one is a little tricky. She plays hard with the things she has now, and hasn't really expressed any interest in adding to the repertoire - except for books, of course.

Maybe we could get a few of these swoop bags to hold books - cheaper than the bookshelves*! (*And that's still on my "list"!)

admiring

2011-11-03T07:53:00.000-05:00

Photo (and bread) credit goes to Heidi of 101 Cookbooks

Both my girls have a real love affair with my mom's banana bread - Nana's Banana Bread. It's legendary in our house, and she never comes to visit without a couple of loaves (sans nuts, of course). I love it as well - especially because it makes the breakfast rush that much easier. But I still like to try new versions, and really enjoyed the roastier / saltier taste of Cooks Illustrated's version. When I saw this photo this morning I knew what my next version would be. But what I'm really admiring is the lovely photography Heidi always has - of her food, and her life in general. If you have a moment check out the photos of this loaf of bread, and also a gorgeous weekend wedding in the same post.

city plans

2011-11-02T07:52:00.003-05:00

Last night, while E was working on a little homework, the three of us (while F sang in her bed down the hall) did a little brainstorming on the city. A few sheets of sketches later and this is what we came up with. I really liked E's idea to put the small canvas on the bottom of the skyscraper after we determined that we'd get a parking garage in there, and I liked M's idea to force the perspective on the tall building to make it look even taller. I like the addition of the roof garden, and I'm excited about that school and park. And we might even get a helicopter hovering in the mix.

I worked on the second building for my nephew's "city" and realized when it was finished that I liked the simplicity of it a little more, so I peeled off the facade of the first building and reapplied it with simpler details. The clock portion is a separate canvas so it will hang just above the bottom one. I love the fire escape. E and I spent awhile with test trips figuring out how to convey a simple version of one. The one rule I've set for myself on this project is no straightedge / no ruler. So everything is done by eye and has a slight wiggle to it - which made the fire escape that much more fun.

Here's the new building with no graph paper background, simpler vines on the side and no added horizontal details across. Slowly but surely, a city is appearing.

post trick-or-treat

2011-11-01T09:13:00.002-05:00

What gorgeous weather we had for trick-or-treating this year! We hit the streets early after a brief stop at our church's trunk-or-treat. The picture below is of the girls keeping a safe distance from a very realistic witch. F loved the candy, but nothing topped the prize ruler she was given. She clutched it in one hand the entire night.

And of course, the sorting while a late dinner was on the stove... and a few late night rousings from bad dreams and too much chocolate. So a happy, sleepy Tuesday to you all.

ice cream break

2011-10-30T16:36:00.001-05:00

We had another busy weekend, but we did manage to take a little time to get out and enjoy the nice weather on Saturday and get a late lunch here. And considering the night before was the victorious Game Seven, many diners looked like they were just rolling in for breakfast. (Take a minute to check out the link - the place really is very cool.)

It's funny how the girls could look at a menu full of the best sounding ice cream desserts and want something called The World's Smallest Hot Fudge Sundae, and The World's Smallest Ice Cream Cone, but novelty often wins out over reason, and the tiny treats were big hits. It's an impressive menu, and not what you might think for a soda fountain - not a hotdog to be found. (Thank goodness.) I used to work pretty near this place, and it's probably good that it's not so close. We'll put this place on the to-go list for the next time family or friends are in town. Consider that an invitation.

the making of a city

2011-10-29T16:27:00.000-05:00

So I've started on the artwork for my nephew's room, so this will be the first of several posts as I make progress. It's not a gift (my sister's paying me big, big bucks for it - right sis?!) so no surprises to ruin here. I scored some canvases weeks ago at half price, and added them to some I already had. I don't have a plan for how this will look in the end, except for that plan in my mind... so it may or may not have this configuration, but this is what I'm starting with.

I'm also starting with the best sources for inspiration - some of my favorite children's books. And also a lot of materials that I have on hand.

A building a day? That's my goal for now. Building one - midrise building, commercial on first floor and apartments above. E's favorite part - the ivy growing up the side. Mine? The awnings.

And because I couldn't stop with one building... some little clothes for a possible clothesline between buildings? Maybe, we'll see. And definitely a little construction equipment - now that was fun to cut out! What do you think, sis?