state fair

bean at the petting zoo, now i really want a miniature pony...

the best diorama EVER

here's the full thing (disclosure - rick and i are crazy for the diorama displays.)

bean on the gator ride

bean and her cousin doing acrobatics in the fun house. (no idea who the kid in blue is!)

happy birthday, bean!

i can't believe you'll be three.

(taking the weekend off to celebrate!) enjoy the holiday weekend!

new baby

i am so excited - my dear friends kristy and chip had a baby yesterday! a long-awaited, somewhat late (following in his parents' footsteps) but now-here baby. i am not baby-crazy in the least, but i really can't wait to see this little guy...

i'm trying not to bug them, so i was looking back at the gift i bought. it was a struggle to find just the right things, but i did! an organic cotton carrot rattle from oompa, a dinosaur onesie from red praire press, a bib made from material from recycled bottles and organic cotton hat from sweet pepita, and the crazy cute frog bowl and chopsticks were from Japan at EPCOT. (kristy and i share a mutual obsession with sushi and disney world.)

congratulations guys!

off to a gallery!

these (and more) are all off to the muse, if you find yourself in frederick, maryland... stop in and visit them!

the pack runs wild

BEST had a big end of summer bbq last weekend, and the bean had the best time ever playing with all the mini-BEST. thanks so much for having us, jill!

works in progress

waiting to be sewn onto barrettes. i kind of want to sew them onto a canvas, just like that. as soon as i finish all my barrette orders, maybe i will...

what i want for fall

yo ho, yo ho

we spend a lot of time playing pirates, which usually involves saying, "argh, i'm a pirate, are you a pirate? hello pirate." (unless her dad gets involved, and then it's much more interesting!) but lately the bean has very much been into role playing with the menagerie of little animals we have. and this week, playing pirates has really just meant making sure that her favorite guys get on the boat.

i don't know why, but this picture cracks me up to no end. i need to get out more.

have a great weekend!

oh baby, obama

sweet pepita is having a t-shirt giveaway! for the democratic preschooler, a size 5t t-shirt, in a combination of recycled fabric adorned with a way cool iron-on transfer and combined with the softest organic rib knit cotton.

just leave a few words in the comments on shannon's blog describing your earliest memory of going to the polls! the contest ends on august 29th, so hurry! and good luck!

going ape!

i adore these little guys... they're new work from teresa over at sewing stars... get 'em fast, her work goes quickly!

new work

i made this flower to go with the dress i wore to the best of baltimore party last week, and i am loving the color combination... i cut it out while i was waiting for rick to get ready, and sewed it together as much as i could in the car on the way to the party. the rest was held together by straight pins.... i loved the way it turned out, but now i have to re-sew it for a little more permanence!

sunday, butterflies

what a gorgeous day - we have tons of butterflies in our yard right now... hope you're enjoying your weekend!

flickr friday - gooseflesh

i really can't put into words how much i love gooseflesh's crocheted temporary installations.

like these, "clandestine photographs taken on location at the Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow"

she also makes these beautiful, naturalistic coral meadows, both small...

and large, shown here at the Broadway Windows, NYU

and what makes me really happy is thinking about what all of these bits will turn out to be. the potential.

of course, should you prefer to wear your fiber art, you must see this necklace in her etsy shop.

check out gooseflesh on etsy, or on flickr. i promise you'll smile, too.

want to be on flickr friday? go to my flickr page and mark me as a contact, and you may be chosen for an upcoming feature!

wishlist - hollystalder

there are so many amazing clothes on etsy... but right now what's catching my eye are those by hollystalder. ok, well, i want everything, but especially this shrug, made from antique tablecloth fabric and one giant pouf of french lace netting. sigh.

now that i mention it, i'm kind of in love with this tank too. i love the use of salvaged fabrics and trims against the modern black shirt.

everything in her shop is either one of a kind, or a limited run. she is based in Portland, but you can visit holly at www.hollystalder.com.

i want to break plates too!

i think i may be a little too in to juliet's new belt buckles... the other day i was driving through ellicott city, and when i stopped at a light i noticed a beautiful display of vintage dinnerware - and all i could think about was having juliet smash them!

anyway, she's having a contest, so head on over to her blog and you could win a new necklace!

confetti necklace

new...

i was a really good mom

i picked this book at Red Tree a few weeks ago, and finally got to read it while we we are the beach. it's a light read, and probably simplifies things a bit too much, but i highly recommend it if you are a mom and ever feel yourself headed toward the edge of insanity.

"I don't know how she does it!" is an oft-heard refrain about mothers today. Funnily enough, most moms agree—they have no idea how they get it done, or whether they even want the job. Trisha Ashworth and Amy Nobile spoke to mothers of every stripe—working, stay-at-home, part-time—and found a surprisingly similar trend in their interviews. After enthusing about her lucky life for twenty minutes, a mother would then break down and admit that her child's first word was "Shrek." As one mom put it, "Am I happy? The word that describes me best is challenged." Fresh from the front lines of modern motherhood comes a book that uncovers the guilty secrets of moms today . . . in their own words. I Was a Really Good Mom Before I Had Kids diagnoses the craziness and offers real solutions, so that mothers can step out of the madness and learn to love motherhood as much as they love their kids.

i could totally relate to lots of stuff in this book, particularly since i am up at 6am on a saturday to shoot photos of everything i've been making but not had time to photograph, only to find that i had left the camera on, and thus, had a dead battery. ah, the futility.

the book made me take a good hard look at what's really important to me. it made me more willing to let go of the little things, and more ready to focus on the moment. and it made me really, really grateful for my friends who are willing to admit that they don't have it all together either.

in that spirit, i'm off now to play with the bean. happy weekend!

my new obsession

i am lusting after all of Amy Sol's work. i just got rick a new illustration magazine, and found her work again... i want to live in these paintings.

elvis cake

i made a cake for rick's birthday. there are no photos because a) food i make never looks photo-worthy, and b) we ate it immediately.

apparently elvis liked peanut butter and bananas. i did not know this, but every time i mention this cake, people say, "oh! an elvis cake." since it's chock full of peanut butter and bananas, it's the elvis cake. it's delicious.

the cake can be made from scratch. i find with the help of my little bean baker, there is often a power struggle over measuring which causes me to often lose track and miscount, and ultimately leads to me spending the next several hours cleaning flour from every inch of my kitchen. so i use a box mix. here's what you do:

• use one box of yellow cake mix. (if you want to start from scratch, only use the dry ingredients from the plain yellow cake recipe.)
• in a bowl, combine 1 stick of butter and 2/3 cup of peanut butter (i prefer the natural, creamy kind.) beat it until it's combined.
  
• add 2 ripe bananas, medium size. (this is where the bean likes to start tasting.)
  
• add 4 eggs.
• begin to add the cake mix. start with 2/3 cup of water, and start alternating adding water and cake mix. only add enough water so that the batter looks like cake mix (and not thick like banana bread.) how much water you need seems to vary on the bananas.
• butter 2 - 9" round pans, cook at 325 degrees. check it at 25 minutes, but most likely it will take 30 or so. it's done when a toothpick comes clean.

that's it! i think it would be fantastic with chocolate icing, but rick isn't a fan of chocolate, so i just use plain old buttercream icing.

Portrait of Elvis Linoleum Block Print by HorseandHare

happy birthday, honey

today is rick's birthday. i haven't had time to make him a card yet. he always makes me the best cards, and i look forward to getting them more than anything else. i think maybe i love them so much because while he makes excellent drawings and can render anything perfectly in 3d, the cards are just so sweet and simple.

this card was from my birthday in 2005 while i was pregnant, and yes, that is the first ultrasound we had taken of the bean photoshopped in there. i now feel guilty and will have to go enlist the bean's help to get the job done in time.

happy birthday, rick. we love you!

south carolina aquarium

after we had taken just about as much beach as we could handle, we headed in to charleston, and took the bean to the aquarium. rick and i really, really like aquariums (we've been to more than i can count,) and the bean is starting to enjoy them too. rick and i had been there before, in 2002, for his cousin's wedding, but this time it was slightly easier to tour without dinner tables and dance floors. (they had rented out the whole building, and we were able to roam the whole place!)

the south carolina aquarium is not a particularly large aquarium, but it does have great stuff for kids, and the bean touched a sea urchin (sharp) and a snake (quickly) and crawled though logs, "steered" a ship and saw the otters. (rick's favorite. perhaps because of this?)

i was messing around with my newly discovered "aquarium" setting on my camera, still not sure what that does, but on a regular setting i was able to get this photo of the bean, which i just love. she doesn't sit stll for photos these days, so it's pretty amazing that i got a photo in the dark at all.

keeping cool

we've been away, did you miss me? i've got lots of cool photos to share, as soon as i recover from the 11 hour drive, i'll start tell you all about beautiful charleston, sc!