2.27.2014

currently... not actually asleep


Currently is a weekly link-up co-hosted here & at Harvesting Kale. We hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using our themes or your own) and please join us by linking up.

psst. Randalin is taking a few weeks off from regularly scheduled programming in order to wear mesh undies and snuggle the brand new darling Beatrix. While she's away, we have two new co-hosts for Currently.

This week our co-host is Kate of Just Pirouette & Carry On. Muah, Kate! Thank you for co-hosting; I adore you!

So! What have you been liking, thinking, planting, blooming, pinning this week? Over here, we have been...

Liking bread and butter. Oh yum. A couple of weeks ago I tried making this no knead bread recipe from the Bleubird blog, except with whole wheat flour instead. It was a dense disappointment and I've since learned that when it comes to bread you cannot be fast and loose with recipes, which is exactly how I am with every recipe. I am a recipe ho! I love to eyeball measurements and make on-the-fly substitutions and sneak flax and chia into everything. Well bread, it turns out, is a lovely science that cooks like myself are bound to fuck up. So this week I went and redid the whole thing, except I was incredibly careful to measure everything and follow each step. It was actually kind of thrilling to see the bowl with the dough rising, sitting on the counter, as the hours-til-the-oven countdown went by. In the end, we ended up with a delicious, crusty, brown, soft loaf of yummy homemade organic bread.

Thinking too much. It sort of feels like brain panic. Which has me not sleeping enough and looking like a mangy alley cat during the day. It's super annoying.

Planting oh not yet but it's coming! In the mean time we're going to figure out composting, maybe even involve worms! These are not ironic exclamation points! I am so excited to start composting!

Otto and Loretta have been Blooming great sports about the chaos of our homelife lately. This huge oral exam that will either send Rob on his way to the last 2 years of his PhD program **or** on his way to not getting that degree (scary) is happening in a week so we've gone into crunch mode as far as his studying goes. The house looks like a pack of dogs has gone through and strewn everything we own, everywhere. So I guess between the four of us we are: an exhausted student (Rob), a frazzled stray cat (me), and two feral dogs (the two feral ones). Aren't we fantastic?

Pinning has become a therapy for me lately. I'm dreaming of a future not too many days from now when I'll have the time and energy to cook nice things and start a garden and decorate my home and exercise and thrift some great new clothes and craft my little heart out. High hopes! Also, I seriously hope everyone who uses this category for Pinterest links to their account so we can all follow each other. We're all so busy but it would be fun to socialize here and there beyond our blogs, I think.

That was this week and here are next week's themes:
declaring, saving, demolishing, sniffing, despising 

2.26.2014

two in two weeks


My Loretta Cecille, the fiercest woman I've ever met, will be two in two weeks. This isn't going to be a bittersweet post. I don't have it in me (after touring a KINDERGARTEN for Otto last night I'm all emotionally dried up right about now, let's not even talk about milestones, blargh). But I am thinking about how to ring in her third year. Last year we did a simple birthday picnic, just us and my mom who was visiting, and it was perfect. If the weather allows I'd love to make that a tradition, until she's old enough to start demanding birthday party details, that is.

Here are some sweet things I've seen that would make for an awesome 2nd Birthday Picnic...
Images from 1, 2, 3, 4, 5

She's been pouring herself into old tutus lately and so I think some less snug dress up clothes would make a perfect second birthday gift. I'm hoping to find some at the consignment shop this weekend, otherwise may have to get out my sewing machine and make a few things.

And that's it. Plus hopefully a little sunshine and music and lots of big smiles from my baby girl. Two is still so small. But up to so much! I'm excited for her, for all the new things she will get up to this year. She's such a little pisspot, so adventurous and bold, she keeps us exasperated but with smiles on our faces. And I just seriously can't believe she's about to turn two.

I mean, come on, where does the time go?

2.19.2014

currently... seeds of spring

Currently is a weekly link-up that I happily co-host with the fabulous and amazing  Randalin ♥ of Harvesting Kale. We hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using our themes or your own) and please join us by linking up.

psst. Randalin is taking a few weeks off from regularly scheduled programming in order to snuggle a brand new baby girl, Beatrix. While she's away, we have two new co-hosts for Currently.

This week our co-host is Colleen of Mommy Panda. She is straight up rad.

So! What have you been snapping, stopping, spending, starting, skipping this week? Over here, we have been...












Snapping pics of some pretty great moments. Loretta makes it impossible to exercise BUT... I mean hahahahahahahaha! Ok. Laughing > Exercise.

Stopping myself from going all apeshit crazy buying stuff on Instagram. For example, Nooks Footwear has been sorely tempting me to break my New Year's Resolution and buy Loretta a lifetime supply of slipper shoes and pinafore dresses. I mean look and then tell me it doesn't hurt to stop yourself. It kind of hurts right?

Give me all dem shoes!

Spending time planning out my garden. I'm reading The Essential Urban Farmer and intend to start composting by mid-March. I started a little notebook for gardening notes with a page for each variety of seed I'm planting so that I can look up pointers online, compile notes, and plan out the dates for seed starts and that kind of thing. I have heirloom variety seeds of each of these plants and am so excited to try my hand at growing a few varieties of tomato and then pumpkins, watermelon, cucumbers, sugar snap peas, and beets. I'm also thinking of doing a raised bed inside the kids' wooden sandbox and having them grow their own child's garden (herbs and carrots?). Wish me luck I have a black thumb but a heart of gold and am so excited to do a good job! 

Otto is Starting to freak me out with what a real actual boy, like a little GUY who does DUDE things, he is. He has been watching videos on YouTube of people explaining how to play the new Lego Movie video game and he is saving up his gift money and allowance to buy it. He tells poop jokes and gets irritated when Loretta won't leave him be to do his maze workbook (latest obsession) and he's taken to doing this "cool kid handshake" that goes, "up high, down low, cut the jelly, Fonzerelli." He says Fonzarelli like Fonzi did, like it's really funny. But also freaky. He is just growing up so fast, it's unreal.

Skipping
 my beauty routine. Which is basically soap, lotion, and toothpaste. I can always tell when I'm in a funk-a-lunk when I can't bring myself to wash my face before bed and that's been the last few weeks. Not to go on and on about the fact that I pretty much get Seasonal Affective Disorder around this time every year but I basically just want to curl up in a sleeping bag and turn on power ballads and eat chocolate and cry. So, you know, I can't wait for the mother flubbing sun to come out and be Spring!

That was this week and here are next week's themes:
liking, thinking, planting, blooming, pinning 

2.18.2014

blogging ebb and flow

See the little plaid bit there? That's my new boyfriend, Heating Pad. It's so funny how every little thing in life affects every other little thing in life. I feel like the past few months my energy for this space (the blog I mean) has fizzled, and I know it does that every year about this time, grey skies for weeks on end, chilly rooms, fried nerves from being trapped inside, it just totally totally affects me and sucks all my extra energy. I wake up tired. I crave outside time and so when it isn't raining I stand in the cold, filtered sun, but the weak sunlight doesn't satisfy. I still laugh and dance and play and all the good things. Coffee and baked things... But it feels like everything is happening under wet cheesecloth. Also I think I need a chiropractor. There are probably other whines that I'm forgetting to mention.

2.12.2014

currently... I love you more


Currently is a weekly link-up that I happily co-host with the fabulous and amazing  Randalin ♥ of Harvesting Kale. We hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using our themes or your own) and please join us by linking up.

psst. Randalin is taking a few weeks off from regularly scheduled programming in order to snuggle a brand new baby girl. While she's away, we'll have two new co-hosts for Currently.

This week our co-host is Kate of Just Pirouette & Carry On. I adore Kate and you will too! She is the funnest, funniest, most earnest and honest and awesome mama of 2 adorable little lasses. She crochets and lives in England and scoffs sweets and says things like "scoffs sweets". I dream of one day sailing an ocean, just so I can hug her!

So! What have you been shoveling, ignoring, inhaling, hugging, throwing this week? Over here, we have been...

Shoveling snacks into our complaining faces and wallowing in comfort food and did I mention eating garbage? Snow and ice brought down many of the power lines in town and we ended up without electricity for about a day and a half over the weekend. If it were just Rob and I we would have camped out at home with candles and been cold but fine... but with the kiddos we decided that was a lot to ask. So instead, we went to a hotel (with a pool!) and made it a little adventure. It was so fun for Otto, he will remember it as the time of his LIFE at least until the next neat thing happens. He's been loudly wishing for a storm to knock down all the trees that are still standing so our power can go out again and we can go back to the hotel. I'm like, "dude, just wish for us to win the lottery and I'll take you to a hotel." Smart wishes, people! Anyways, OK, for Rob and I it was honestly a little trying. We got snacks and pizza and then came home Sunday to a fridge full of food that had to be tossed. Rather than doing a proper re-buy of quality foods to eat we got some more snacks and easy stuff to just get through this week and I'm pretty much looking forward to some legit grocery shopping this weekend.

Ignoring unshaved legs and a softball sized knee bruise (my boots turned to bobsleds after walking in the snow last Thursday and I fell down on a hardwood floor, while holding Etta, and bit it hard... She was fine but scared and the whole thing was awful and I'm so sore still, my poor weak hips!, and my knee bruise is large and in charge), a winter-perfected ultra squishy muffin top, and a whatever is the opposite of a Brazilian wax ::jazz hands:: in order to take my kiddos swimming in a heated pool during this snowpocalypse nonsense. This was not cuter than it sounds. It was fun though.

Inhaling this new bedtime banter that Otto and I have been doing lately. I think I say, "I love you," maybe too much (impossible I know). The words just pop out all the time. Anyways, at night when I say, "I love you," to Otto he says, "I love you more," and that starts a back and forth. We used to try to top each other with just how much we love each other. When he was three-ish he once said, "I love you bigger than the biggest tree," which is forever etched in my heart. Lately, it's become more of an inside joke for us. I say something along the lines of, "No, I definitely love you more. I was eating Chinese food and when I read the fortune cookie it said I LOVE YOU MORE!" and then Otto will say something like, "Well I was walking to school and the Incredible Hulk came over and smashed everything and yelled I LOVE YOU MORE!" We are hilarious. 

Hugging the stuffing outta my kids.

Throwing epic kitchen dance parties. For a good cry hold your daughter and dance to Silver Springs and imagine the day she gets married. Why are you so emo? Tonight was more high energy, turns out Loretta is a huge MIA fan.

That was this week and here are next week's themes:
snapping, stopping, spending, starting, skipping 

2.06.2014

currently... Yes Week!

Etta actually really loves shoulder rides, I swear she does. She does her riding Weekend at Bernie's style though... So unhelpful.

Currently is a weekly link-up that I happily co-host with the fabulous and amazing  Randalin ♥ of Harvesting Kale. We hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using our themes or your own) and please join us by linking up.

psst. Randalin is taking a few weeks off from regularly scheduled programming in order to post Instagram photos of her cat and eventually snuggle a newborn (any day now!). While she's away, we'll have two new co-hosts for Currently.

This week our co-host is Colleen of Mommy Panda. Colleen is the craftiest, thriftiest, sweetest mama of 2 adorable little lads. She's a military mama and I've watched her turn a new house into a home within minutes, hours, days... a few times over the years. It's something she's currently in the midst of. Go Super Woman!

So! What have you been watching, saying, losing, admiring, making this week? Over here, we have been...

Watching Sesame Street and eating mostly only snacks. Let's call it Yes Week! That sounds more joyful and affirmative than Don't Anger the Sick Loretta Week!

Saying funny stuff. Otto wet the bed last week and it must have stayed on his mind. When he woke up on Saturday morning, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, he declared, "Well I didn't wet my Mom's bed but I sure do need to poop!" And that should be everyone's Saturday morning wake up call, always, because awesome.

Losing my ever loving mind when it comes to grey days and cold. If it snows, like it's supposed to, I swear I'm going to hate that snow so hard.  

Admiring confident, simply stylish women (even back to Pinning a bit lately). I think mostly I'm just in the mood for Spring and a little wardrobe redux. Some t-shirt days and a little sun in my hair and I'll be a new woman!

ps. Speaking of confident women, the Ladies Who Book Club (the FB group Katherine and I founded a few months ago) is starting in on Decisive on Monday. We go a chapter at a time so it's an easy club to keep up with and a really great group of ladies to chat with. Join us!

Making a thrift shop & consignment shop wish list. I'm a month into my New Year's resolution of not buying anything that is new and it's going fine. But I do have a few little things I'd like to pick up that so would have been Target purchases by now if I wasn't into arbitrary self challenges. I want a little basket for Etta's toy kitchen to put the fake foods in... and some new-to-me jeans. Sorry if your face just exploded from all the excitement!

That was this week and here are next week's themes:
shoveling, ignoring, inhaling, hugging, throwing 

2.04.2014

not our finest hour

There was a time, not crazy long ago, when being forced to take a day to stay home with a sick kiddo would have been a "rise to the occasion" kind of occasion. Instead I started out the day pissed. Not at Loretta, but just at all of it. I didn't want to stay home, I was already dressed and ready for work when we decided someone needed to stay home and because Rob's in a crunch time at school that someone needed to be me.

Loretta is a piss pot. Like she is awesome and amazing and hilarious and sweet sweet sweet. But she is also a pain in the ass. And when she doesn't feel well, she is just awful to be around. She recently discovered "Elmo" (Sesame Street) and stood at the TV screaming, "Elmo!" for exactly 1/2 of a second yesterday morning before I caved in... ordered up every episode of Sesame Street they have, got myself dressed as a pigeon lady, and curled up scowling, next to my scowling girl.

Let's all cross fingers that today > yesterday. xo