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Last weekend Biscuit and I spent a good long while on the back deck painting pictures. It was SO fun. I am a terrible painter with no training whatsoever but I find painting with a four year old very freeing. Who cares what it looks like, anyway? Can you even tell who painted what?

I was inspired by my friend Lauren's work and wanted to try painting some landscapes. (clearly, I branched out from landscapes after a while).

I basically reminded Biscuit that the sky meets the ground (no white in between!) and that she should look around and try to paint what she saw.

 

This one with two trees was looking amazing until she got ambitious and turned it red. Oh well. I was trying not to be controlling. Well, until I made her stop on another one before she added any more special effects.

Oh, and her hair is purple with glitter from a makeover birthday party.  I know, makeovers on 4 year olds. Not what I would have chosen but it was actually hilarious fun and the girls loved it.

 

Her nails were also purple and beglittered.

Anyway, each of our acrylic paintings was done on a 4x6" piece of 1/4" cherry veneer plywood. After the paint was dry I shellacked the surface because

 

We turned them all into postcards.

 

The first three postcards have reached their destinations in apparently good shape. Mission accomplished!

 

Of course now I have a big stack of totally amateur postcards of various subjects (painted by yours truly). I also have a pile of stamps adding up to the $1.39 in postage needed to get the postcards (considered parcels by USPS because they're rigid) to their domestic destination.

If you live in the US, managed to actually read this far and would like to get some mail, send me an email with your snail mail address and the Biscuit and I will get one in the mail to you! I'll probably just send to the first 5 or so folks who email me but if I get a largish response I'll do a drawing to make it more fair. The mail will go on Monday so email quick.mdhaworth at gmail dot com

You might get this one

But you won't get this one. It's my favorite and I made Biscuit give it to me ;)

Garden things

I found this robin's egg in the garden bed sitting next to the ripe strawberry I was pointing out to Biscuit. Kinda sad. I got up on our super tall ladder and searched through the cherry tree for a nest to no avail. So I put it in the nest in our house and crossed my fingers it wouldn't hatch. It hasn't.

In the same garden bed, right next to the strawberry plants, the rhubarb is finally getting tall so I harvested a few stalks tonight and made my first batch of jam for the season. Rhubarb strawberry of course.

In the second garden bed, the seed tape I planted is finally starting to sprout. (these photos are from planting day. not today. obviously)

Biscuit and I made carrot and beet strips by pasting seeds onto a piece of newspaper.

 

I based this on a tutorial I saw online and now can't recall where. Basically, dump some flour in a bowl. Mix in water until it's a thick paste. Dab a bit of paste every few inches on a thin strip of newspaper (no colored ink) stick on a few seeds and let it dry. This makes it much easier to plant small seeds but it turns out it's not a great project for the four-year-old set. Live and learn.

 

The third garden bed is lonely. Only four weak tomato plants to keep it company. Hopefully the tomatoes will live and I'll plant some beans to keep them company.

It's been a bizarrely rainy Spring here in Northern California. Gotta squeeze in the gardening when we can.

Today's project

A sneak peek--more on this later.
Hope you had a weekend as filled with relaxation and pleasant family time as I did. Happy Monday.

Birdhouse updates

Today I noticed a bird going in and out of this birdhouse. And there was a whole lot of commotion and cheeps inside whenever the bird came or went. I think we have a bird family making use of our birdhouse! So exciting! Even though it was built for a nuthatch, I believe a family of Ash Throated Flycatchers has taken up residence.

 

Today's discovery is much more uplifting than last month when we noticed this carefully constructed nest on the Robin platform in the cherry tree and then realized it's been abandoned. No baby Robins for us. But I wonder when the little flycatchers will learn to catch flies....

(thinking about) Reading

For some reason I've been obsessed with books the last few weeks. Not obsessed with reading. Just books. So, while I've been re-reading YA novels (The Hunger Games, if you must know) (ok, and Twilight because I'm a dweeb) I've been thinking about reading literature. Or something.

I've also been totally into reading blogs by authors, wanna be authors, people in publishing, wanna be people in publishing etc, etc.

Then, yesterday I struck up a conversation with my co-worker (who wrote this novel) and he recommended How to Be Good which, ironically, is one of the few novels I've read this year. He then recommended Gilead which I've never heard of. Upon overhearing this, my other co-worker popped out of her office to explain how she had not liked Gilead AT ALL.

Then co-worker #2 went to lunch and came back with a typed list of "books recommended for Melissa*" along with notes about each book. (Wow!).

Later that same day I came upon this post from Crazy Aunt Purl asking her readers to suggest "classics" for her summer reading list. So many books. So little time. I started copy/pasting interesting sounding titles into my Amazon wish-list-come-books-to-not-forget-about list. Based on that, my Amazon recommended-for-you list is kind of funny right now**.

Also in the past few weeks Biscuit has officially learned to read. Just like that and she can pretty much read her own bedtime stories. I'd like to start reading her simple chapter books and had been trying to think what would be appropriate (The Secret Garden=no) (too much cholera).

So it was perfect when, today, Wisecraft linked to this new blog about books for children. I left a comment there requesting ideas for simple chapter book for pre-K kids and the very kind MC came over to my blog and left me a comment recommending DaddyRead which is awesome.

And while MC was leaving a comment, I was at the thrift store scanning the shelves deciding that serendipity would decide my reading list. Here's what I came home with; $8 worth of possibilities***.

 

Now I just need to get off the internet and into a book.

*My co-worker's list of recommended books (sans notes, links and proper italics because I am lazy)

• Austen, Jane (Pride and Prejudice, Sense and Sensibility)
• Fforde, Katie (Thyme Out)
• Frazier, Charles (Cold Mountain)
• Green, Jane (The Beach House and Dune Road)
• Groff, Lauren (Monsters of Templeton)
• Hardy, Thomas (Tess of the d'Urbervilles)
• Helprin, Mark (Freddy and Fredericka)
• Lipman, Elinor (The Family Man)
• McKinty, Adrian (Hidden River)
• Niffenegger, Audrey (The Time Traveler's Wife)
• Pilcher, Rosamunde (Winter Solstice and Coming Home and The Shell Seekers)
• Winspear, Jacqueline (Maisie Dobbs series)
• Non Fiction
• Kingsolver, Barbara (Animal, Vegetable, Miracle)
• Krakauer, Jon (Into Thin Air)
• Sacks, Oliver (Seeing Voices and The Island of Colorblind)
• Winchester, Simon (The Professor and the Madman and Krakatoa and A Crack in the Edge of the World)

**Amazon currently recommends for me (again, sans links/italics/etc)

• Rules of Vengeance by Christopher Reich
• The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula LeGuin
• The Possessed (DVD?)
• The Devils: The Possessed by David Magarshack, Michael Katz and Feodor Dostoevsky
• The Lathe of Heaven by Ursula LeGuin
• Garlic and Sapphires by Ruth Reichl
• Hmm, apparently I should check out Ursula LeGuin. Who knew?

****The books I bought in my swing through the thrift store. Top to bottom:

For Biscuit

• The Magic Finger by Roald Dahl (picked it up because I like Dahl then saw it recommended at DaddyRead)
• Junie B. Jones Has a Peep in Her Pocket by Barbara Park
• Mrs. Piggle Wiggle by Betty MacDonald
• True Stories (from the American Girl series which I have heard recommended many times)
• Encyclopedia Brown (for a friend's son)

For me:

• Tuck Everlasting (can never resist a book I read as a kid)
• Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende (someone on Crazy Aunt Purl recommended Allende)
• The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath (have never read it, recommended on Crazy Aunt Purl)
• Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain (I think Jamie mentioned this book ages ago)
• Esperanza Rising (maybe this is for Biscuit? Saw it mentioned on a list of best child heroes from books.)
• Kitchen by Banana Yoshimoto (Recommended on Crazy Aunt Purl. With an author name like Banana it stuck in my head and jumped out when I spotted it at the thrift store).

Oh, and my friend loaned me The Secret Life of Bees yesterday. See you in a few months, internet!

Something fun

I like how Sweet Juniper has a section of his blog dedicated to doing something fun every day.

Today our something fun was making lemonade from scratch. I made it from a frozen can last night for guests and realized Biscuit had never made/had it from scratch. Oops.

 

Situation remedied. Of course she finished this and requested more of the frozen kind.

Weekend snapsnots

Picnic Day

Animal encounters

Music appreciation

 

Back at home

Reading on the porch

Family feud--your input needed

Mr. H has recently taken to watching a tv show called American Pickers. This seems to me to be SO unlike him. I love all sorts of junk and old crap. He loves to clear things out and rarely (never?) appreciate the "treasures" I bring home. What can I say? We're definitely products of our upbringings.

Anyway, American Pickers follows these two guys as they drive around the Midwest buying old stuff for what I assume is an antique store they own. I still haven't seen an entire episode so I'm not sure what they DO with the stuff they buy but it's beside the point. They offer cash to folks with garages full of old gas station signs, airplane propellers, oil cans, you name it. The kind of stuff I love.

Over dinner I asked Mr. H about this show and how he can possibly like it when he doesn't like "junk." He said he likes their junk because it's "old" and has "history."

Which is when I pointed out my eye chart that hangs on our wall. I love it. He has disliked it since the day I brought it home (from an antique store but I realize that doesn't necessarily mean anything). I pointed out that it's "old" and has "history" and he disagreed.

Much googling and ebaying and I cannot find a chart like this so I turn to you. What is your guess as to the year this was produced? I have a lot of pride riding on your answer (I ALWAYS lose when I make a bet with Mr. H.)

Here are some close ups of the wording on the chart (the back is blank).

 

 

So, what do you think?

Housegoods

Today I made a new bathmat.

 

I'm not crazy about the binding fabric but it was the only turquoise fabric I had on hand to match the turquoise stitching.

 

I also worked on embellishing the burlap table runner from Easter. I had grand plans to do this before Easter but it was still fun a week later.

 

And I got to re-set the table to take pictures.

 

So that was a good time.

In unrelated news:

Last night I didn't know what to make for dinner so I scrolled through Smitten Kitchen vowing to make the first (non dessert) I found for which we had the ingredients on hand. Which is how we ended up having this for dinner with kale rather than spinach. It was really good. Laura, you should make this.

::

I really want (to make) (a version of)  this couch. Really.

::

I like this painting a lot. Too bad it's sold. But she has others and I just re-discovered her shop.

Twee wheeler

I swear it was just last month Biscuit called her bike a twee wheeler (two wheeler). She can barely say it. How is it possible she can already ride it without training wheels?

Apparently Madelyn can ride without training wheels so she was determined to do it too. And so she did. From wobbling to riding in about a half hour.

 

She's not perfect (at all!)

 

But she keeps getting back on which is cool.

 

So now she can: make a sandwich, read a book, ride a bike and pump on a swing. I think Mr. H and I are officially unnecessary. (Or we would be if Grandma and Grandpa hadn't bought a new (to her) bike that is slightly too big requiring a parent to help her start and stop riding. Whew. Thanks, Mom and Dad.)