can you say hats ten times fast without saying sats?

If you've read this blog for a while, you may know that I have a bit of a hat-making habit. Actually, I'm just not very good at anything else. I'm impatient and hats are quick and easy (and a stockpile of baby hats is nice to have when your friends are having new kids left and right.) That picture shows just a few of my most recent pile-o-hats. I think it was the result of those four straight seasons of Eureka on Netflix.

Our friends, Shawn and Elaine, had a new baby girl not too long ago, Amelia (I just love her name.) They will be moving out to the Pacific Northwest this summer so I figured a baby could use some warm things. I also figured she probably has a ton of pink stuff already, so I picked out a cozy fleece outfit in blue and made a hat to match. I adapted a simple pattern, adding a scalloped edge and eye-let row and then realized I already had some polka-dot ribbon that perfectly matched the outfit! Score!

Yes, I like finding joy in the little things. Like little baby things and surprise crochet successes.

12/52 knobs

project 52 ~ week 12

alive again

spring blossoms glow in sunshine that warms, awakens

bare earth and branch adorn themselves with color, making way

daffodils line roads, a chorus of trumpets calling wake up! wake up! it's time!

can you hear it?

winter is over, death has no hold

all of creation is telling us something...

friendship

Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value;
rather it is one of those things that give value to survival.   ~C.S. Lewis

Got to spend a couple of days with Ryan and Sara over the weekend. We did a little touristing, probably too much cake eating and a lot of picture taking (well, Sara and I did...the guys did a lot of eye-rolling and waiting). It was fun. It doesn't happen often enough. Friends like these, who have shared this many years, are something pretty special. More photos to come...

11/52 tulips in the light

project 52 ~ week 11 ~ darks and lights

I love how a bunch of cut tulips will continue growing in their vase. Through the day we watch them, bending and reaching in a slow dance with the light.

They are peaceful, perfect.

At the moment, I'm looking around and wondering how I missed the tornado that ripped through the house today. It scattered remnants of a school day, a toddler's kitchen, an afternoon in a muddy park and dishes (everywhere, dishes! did we also feed a crowd I overlooked?) There is the science project, the mango peels, and somewhere in the mess is this mama's mind...

Then I see them, standing tall and proud on the table; lone survivors on a windswept plain. The tulips. They make me pause, breathe.

Ah, all is well then.

I'm going to bed.

saying goodbye to winter

On a sunny day at the close of Winter, we hunted for Spring among bare branches as our feet crunched leaves. The sun warmed our faces as the wind numbed our fingers.

"It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light and winter in the shade." -Charles Dickens

Children and puppies react to freedom and fresh air in much the same way; running, sliding, tumbling, wrestling. They looked like ants on that great hillside.

We didn't find our friend, Spring, that day, but she was so close. We could hear her whisper, soft as a maple blossom, I'll be there soon.

my *other* camera

Sometimes I just can't manage to lug my camera around with the squirming animal-child or the diaper bag or the half-eaten banana or the bikes-up-the-hill. Or my sanity.

So a lot of times, I rely on my phone to capture the moments worth remembering within those moments.

Or I might grab a quick snap of the something I forgot to photograph at home when I did have my camera handy.

Or of friends when I don't want to annoy everyone with beeping and flashing and clicking.

Then there are the times when I feel the urge to take random pictures of random stuff. Like myself at the gym.

But if you take a lot of camera-phone pictures, you know they are usually really poor quality. So, you have to get an app that makes them poor quality on purpose...
which means they look cool.

The Hipstamatic is definitely my favorite (and second most used, after my Bible App). Sometimes I use it even if I do have my *real* camera on me, just because I love that grizzled edge and those vintage colors.

I love that it can go to school or to the park or to the breakfast table or right back into the pocket when that kid on the bike needs to be pushed up a hill.

The photos do tend to pile up in there since I'm bad about remembering to download them and see what I've got.

And I've been known to accidentally hang up on people as they were calling because I was about to click the shutter button when the ignore call button popped up. So if you ever have trouble getting through to me, keep trying. I'm probably just in the middle of taking pictures of something weird.

Like a half-eaten snack with some tree branches.

Get out that phone and go take some pictures today, people! It'll make you smile, I promise.

breakfast bears

"When you wake up in the morning, Pooh," said Piglet at last, "what's the first thing you say to yourself?"
"What's for breakfast?" said Pooh. "What do you say, Piglet?"
"I say, I wonder what's going to happen exciting today?" said Piglet.
Pooh nodded thoughtfully.
"It's the same thing," he said.

(A.A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh)

10/52 childhood toys

project 52 ~ week 10 ~ childhood toys

She had that just-woke-up-from-nap kind of grip on her bunny and doll. She's growing so fast, the baby pudge in her arms and hands is almost gone. Sniff.

in the air

Spring is less than two weeks away, set to arrive on Sunday, March 20. As I sit here, shivering, while cold rain splatters my window, I can't help but dream of cherry blossoms and bare feet in soft green grass. Better yet, our first day of spring is also bringing my dear friend, Sara, and her hubs all the way from Texas! I can't think of a better way to enjoy the shift of seasons to what will likely be our last East coast spring for a while. As much as I love snow and the coziness of winter, I think I've had enough. I'm good. Bring on the sunshine! Although, I might miss seeing the combinations of winter garb that my girls dig out of their closet...

kool aid play silks

One of the kid's favorite playthings is their stash of colorful silks. I've seen a ton of random tutorials on dying your own play silks and thought it would be a fun thing to try with the kids.  Dharma Trading Co. has great quality silks in several sizes as well as dyes and silk paints, but we opted for the simple, kid-friendly kool aid option. We had a bag full of packets in red, purple, yellow, and what I thought was blue, but turned out to be red as well (darn fruit punch). 

I won't bore you with the exact steps we went through because you can google "kool aid play silks" and get a thousand tutorials. I read a few and figured it looked pretty fool-proof. Basically, we soaked our silks in vinegar-water for a bit, then soaked them in vinagar-kool aid-water for a bit, then microwaved them a few times, then rinsed them (and the water runs clear! amazing how much color they soak up and hold!), hung them to dry in the breeze, drank a glass of kool aid, and...voila!

We really wanted to make a rainbow with one of the long silks, so we draped it across several bowls of color. Then I realized I could not lift four bowls up to the microwave much less fit four bowls in the microwave. After a messy transfer to glasses and a call for help from dad, we had our rainbow (minus a few colors of the rainbow).

They turned out beautifully! I was amazed by how much color they soaked up -the red especially. (My hands soaked up a lot of that red as well and are only just beginning to look normal again after a couple of days.)

After they dried, the kids all grabbed a favorite and quickly turned it into something of their own imagination. These silks have a long life ahead of them as fairy dresses, butterfly wings, super hero capes, baby wraps, pirate garb and oh so much more. 

All in all, it was a fun afternoon craft that resulted in something lovely, useful and lasting. That's my kind of project.

9/52 express yourself | kate

project 52 ~ week 9 ~ express yourself

the national gallery | tristan's recap

This past Monday, I took Tristan and Kenna to the National Gallery of Art where we joined a group of families from Classical Conversations. I have been several times before but this was the first visit for the kids. About ten minutes into our docent-led children's tour, Tristan whispered up to me, "mom, this is a lot funner than I thought it would be!"

Since he enjoyed it so much, I thought I'd let him tell you all about it...

"We started at Daniel in the Lions' Den. We were asked which lion was our favorite and why. I chose  this big one on the side because I like it."

"Then we went to another room with a painting and we were given a little cloth to find the same color on one of the paintings. Mine was blue and I found it. I was the last one to find it because it was hidden in a picture of a battle and it was somebody's cape. Kenna found the little pink tie. She looks funny. She looks pretty small, like as small as a small mouse."

"I forgot what this place was called but if we got lost we would go back to it. But I didn't get lost! The columns were like the rooks in our chess set."
(mom note- The rotunda in the center of the museum is absolutely beautiful. While my eyes always go straight for the flowers, Tristan's first observation was the columns because he often gets to play chess with a special ceramic set Shawn bought in Greece.)

"That is a statue that Degas made. There was another copy of it behind us and we read a storybook about it. I liked the story about the Little Dancer. I wondered why parts of her dress were all brown and kind of a little messy too. I don't know why it was."

"I had fun at the museum.

love, Tristan."