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!

BEST is the best!

"Our hearts swell with B'more pride whenever we log onto The Baltimore Etsy Street Team's site, baltimore-etsy.blogspot.com. This is a compilation of all the local designers and crafters who have pages on Etsy, the popular online marketplace. The talent is awe-inspiring. Some of our faves: TheBrokenPlate takes vintage and contemporary dinnerware and gives it new life as a necklace or a ring. And vwstudios, where images on clay are created using a process that includes photography, painting and printmaking."

-from Baltimore Magazine's Best of Baltimore issue 2008

Yay, BEST! Thank you so much, Baltimore Magazine!