Under Construction

Guess who went and turned into a big boy?

Yep, it's true. Oscar is one!

As we do most years we spent Memorial Day weekend camping in Tahoe with family so it was a camping birthday a week before his camping birthday party.

He liked the cupcake. It was a buttermilk/lemon/rhubarb bundtcup cake--recipe from Rustic Fruit Desserts. Adults agreed--it was yummy even after two days in foil and a road trip.

He spent a good bit of the weekend sampling pine needles which are, apparently, delicious.

Unlike vegetables. This kid is a fruitivore plus a carboholic and a cheese lover. But he sure does avoid his veggies. I'm sure pine needles are part of a balanced diet.

That's his excited face. He puffs out his cheeks, purses his lips and blows. Sometimes he even whistles on accident. This is accompanied by kicking and most often exhibited when he sees an animal. The boy LOVES watching dogs, birds, cats etc.

Look! Daddy can do excited face too!

Happy boy

Fake angry boy.

Kind of impossible to believe that was a year ago today.

We love you, Oscar. Happy Birthday!

Reading

It seems to be reading season around here (as opposed to blogging season, crafting season or fitness season). So books. And stuff about books. In a list:

1. I downloaded the (free) Kindle app for my iPhone. I had resisted thinking it'd be confusing or a hassle to set up. It's not! It's WONDERFUL!

    a. iPhone is backlit and silent--perfect for reading in bed/while feeding Oscar

    b. automatically syncs with the Kindle so I can switch devices easily

    c. I pretty much always have it with me so can read a bit here and there

2. I'm loving GoodReads. I mostly follow blog people -- Jonniker and Temerity Jane read a lot and post useful reviews. I never post reviews but still like to keep track of books there and get reading ideas.

3. In paper book form I am currently reading The Fault in Our Stars which I'm pretty sure is going to be 1000% sadder than I want it to be (I'm not really wanting sad books but I didn't know what it was about until I was already interested).

    a. I got it from the library. Loving the library.

    b. Now when 2 or more folks mention a book or author I automatically add it to my library request/to read pile but I never read the back cover or any reviews. I like the surprise (except when it's sad).

    c. This is how I ended up reading State of Wonder (I believe Swistle recommended it). I had zero idea what it was about--just started at page 1--and I liked it! Oh, and Blackout and All Clear as recommended by Lissa I believe. Liked those as well!

4. In ebooks I'm reading Jane Eyre. It was free on Kindle and I've never read it. I usually dislike classics women usually love (sorry, Pride and Prejudice) but 40ish% in I'm really liking Jane Eyre. Go figure.

5. I'm really enjoying "test driving" non-fiction from the library.

    a. Quilt books--I LOVE Block Party. Amazing, unique quilts and the level of instruction is JUST what I like in a quilt book. No fussy pattern pieces, just explanation of technique. I LOVE this quilt below. LOVE.

    b. Cookbooks--I checked out a whole stack but these two stuck in my head.

        i. Jamie at Home by Jamie Oliver. Loved how this book looked (the layout, the paper, the art) but the recipes? Eh. Although I did make the deep fried pizza balls which were just as ridiculous/decadent/yummy as they sound. Don't really recommend.

        ii. Kitchen Express by Mark Bittman. LOVED this one. Found myself renewing it and I probably cooked 12 things from the book. I'm going to buy it for sure. Love! But make sure you love the unusual paragraph style recipes. (this is where I'd post a photo of the recipes but having technology issues so, no)

    c. Other non-fiction

        i. I'm reading The Philosophical Baby which I had to return and go get again. It's not exactly gripping but interesting enough I did get it again and plan to finish.

        ii. I picked up some sort of zen/meditation/mindfulness book by Jon Cabot-Zinn (sp?). Haven't read it yet. I sort of got interested in meditation/mindfulness stuff after reading Buddhism for Mothers of Young Children which I liked much more than I anticipated.

And there you have it. The world's wordiest post on books. Let me know if you have anything I should add to my reading list.

Winner

The winner of the drawing for the Irresistable quilt was.....KrisFun! Navy Blue it is! Email me KrisFun--your email bounced! Thanks to everyone who entered and I loved reading your favorite colors. Lisa's was my absolute favorite with a link to a website and some numbers (what was that? CMYK?)

Can't wait to see how it works for KrisFun.

::

Here's my baby looking very skeptical about boating. It was a beautiful evening on the lake.

Return of Toddler Fixation

The other day--watching Oscar steal yet another apple and crawl off with in held tightly in his teeth--I realized it was time to resurrect my long neglected blog Toddler Fixation.

It was such fun to look back on old photos and Biscuit was loving the videos of herself. I only remembered a handful of the things pictured which made me extra glad for that little piece of dusty, abandoned internet.

Now it's all Oscar content (as often as I remember to post).

Little by little

I'm not what you would call a good housekeeper. I actually suck at it. But one of my birthday resolutions was to freshen up the house and do a photoshoot pretending that Design*Sponge was planning to feature my home ;).

Progress has been slow but I've cleaned out our coat/game/medicine/luggage/snow gear/outdated textbooks/shoe polish/tent (some might call it a junk) closet and that felt really good. Then I started moving around nightstands and making tiny bits of progress.

This is my current crowning glory of baby toy organization.

From walking in the front door to see this:

To this:

Mr. H built that shelf.

Oscar is primarily obsessed with the top shelf. Once he's conquered that.

It's off to check out big sister's room.

As you can see from the wide angle, still a good bit of work to do around here. But it'll come together. Someday.

P.S. Still time to enter to win a quilt--just tell me your favorite color on this post.

Irresistable

I think it's time for another It Takes Two quilt project! I finished the sample of this "Irresistable" quilt the other day and I'm pretty excited about it.

The details of this project can be found here.

To enter you need to:

• have a washing machine (front loaders are fine)
• be willing to PHOTOGRAPH your finished quilt and EMAIL me photos within one week of receiving the quilt. (of course you can also post your results on your blog/flickr/whatever)

This quilt will be smallish--probably a wallhanging size. I'm still making as it as it will be partially made to order for the winner.

Contest over. Winner is: KrisFun!

All readers in the United States are encouraged to enter to win this quilt by leaving a comment below. Your comment must include your favorite color. Be specific! Not "blue" but "powder blue" or "navy blue" or "teal blue." I'll draw the winner this Friday night, May 18 so enter by 6 pm.

Good luck and thanks for playing along!

Jam job

My sister's friend paid me to make 30 tiny jars of strawberry jam and package them up cute for engagement party favors. As I suspected making the jam was tons of fun. Packaging was sort of annoying.

There must be a better way but the best I came up with was to use a rubberband to temporarily hold the fabric "hats" on the jar while tying with string. Worked well enough.

::

I'm pretty sure all internet posts today are supposed to be about Mother's Day. So here's a cute photo of my mom, the girl who made me a mom, and my sister getting ready to go to a bike race.

Nothing says Mother's Day like the Tour of California bike race. Am I right?

 

 

Week in the Life 2012

Gosh time is flying by! A few weeks ago I carried my camera around and tried to document a week of our life. It was a super busy week (as evidenced by the very few pictures of Mr. H--I barely saw him all week.)

On Monday I finally finished up the scrapbook.

My goal for this project is just to get it done. Simple. Cheap. Done.

I print photos at Costco, shove them in the little plastic things I found at the thrift store in 2010 and am still using, journal what I can remember, glue in receipts and detritus and close the book on another year.

I don't purchase any supplies other than the photos and the $1 for the woodgrain binder I always find at the thrift store. I use cardstock I have around and mostly do my journaling directly on the photo.

This year I wanted to do one new thing. Each day I took a photo of the sky (we were supposed to have varied weather that week including sun and storms). My original vision was to journal about the day directly over the sky but when the photos were printed I liked how they looked without being covered in pen so I used the sky pages to mark each new day.

I like how the bit of land/tree/building at the bottom is a little reminder of where I was that day.

The week included the huge 100th Birthday Event for the Girl Scouts in our region. Very cool thing to be a part of! And how awesome is that photo (bottom right of left hand page) of Biscuit rockin' out to Dynomite? Really awesome!

And that's it. 2012 done. This is about the only way I scrapbook anymore but I figure something is better than nothing and an annual glimpse will be fun for the kids to look back on someday.

If you like this project, check out Ali Edwards' blog. She's the gal that started it all. But try not to be intimidated by how awesome her stuff looks. After all, she's a professional :)

Picture windows--done!

I'm so excited! The first quilt of my It Takes Two project came out even better than I could have expected. My mom won the drawing (which totally sounds like a set up but it wasn't). These are the directions I sent her.

She employed her class full of preschoolers to get the quilt wet.

 

Teams of kids hit it with the spray bottle.

 

This is what it looked like all wet (before the colors bled over night)

After letting it set a bit my mom rinsed, washed and dried the quilt. The colors faded to what you saw in the first image but still pretty vibrant. I'm amazed you can actually tell what I was trying to make! (mountains in case you can't actually tell :)

I need to finish up the next two projects which are already in progress. So excited!

WITL

Last week was a total blur. We were uncharacteristically busy with something every night of the week plus Saturday. Phew!

It just so happened it was also Ali's Week in the Life (WITL) project week. Timing wasn't great but it never is, right? So I decided to just go for it.

Last time I did this Oscar turned one month old in the middle of the week. Now look at him.

Our floor is totally hygenic. Promise ;)

Last year I didn't get a single picture of myself so I tried harder this year with pretty poor results :)

And once again I tried a "come as you are" family snapshot. Funny stuff.

My goal was to print the photos and start the album the day after the project ended (that would have been yesterday) but, as it does, life intervened. I've almost got the photos uploaded and hopefully I'll get the album done this week before I forget everything like how Biscuit described to her class going to my work for Take Our Daughters to Work Day.

Blah, blah, blah and then we went to a reception

Kid in class: What's a reception?

Biscuit: It's when you have to be on your very best behavior and you can't whine. But I usually whine.

True story, she spent an entire day at work. Mostly doing actual work. But we did a sideline tour of the campus wildlife museum which was very cool. Bluebirds on a stick anyone?