tgif true thrush

TGIF errrbody! my husband showed me this last night and i just loved it...

have great days! xo

just this minute

just this minute Otto is sleeping in a pile of books in his bed (he doesn't join us in the "family bed" til around 1am most nights) with visions of Ralph S. Mouse riding a motorcycle probably dancing in his head. at bedtime tonight i told him that my favorite part of the day was when i was laying on the floor nursing Loretta while he was doing flashcards with Daddy on the couch next to us. he said, "i don't have to tell you my favorite part because it's the same thing." well he was probably just lying to be lazy since he did go on a field trip to the nature museum today but i don't care, that bedtime declaration freaking made my day.

just this minute Loretta is sleeping in her bassinet about four feet away from me. i'm drinking night coffee, eating some oatmeal banana bread (i wasn't kidding when i said we've been making it nonstop. never stopping!), and just feeling kind of mellow and peaceful. i wanted to share a few things that are making me smile tonight...

i won an instagram giveaway from bebehblog <-- ♥ --> a little "i heart gingers" pin came in the mail today and totally undid a frown i was making because i hit a parked truck in a parking lot on the way home from work this afternoon. i don't usually drive home through parking lots but a really neat sofa caught my eye in front of the St. Vinnie's and i pulled in to check it out. up close i realized it was a tiny loveseat and we are in the market for a full sized couch so i decided against and was zipping out of there to get to the babysitter's on time and so the fastest way to leave a parking lot is obviously to smash through all the other cars and then stick around passing your insurance information around. obviously.

funnily enough i'm not even obsessing over the damage to my bumper, how stupid it was of me to hit a parked truck (no should drive van into truck duh), or the cost of fixing my van (his truck was unscathed luckily!)... i'm just kind of whatever about the whole thing.

but i WAS frowning and then i got my little pin and it just kind of turned my afternoon around. thanks Suzanne! i hope Loretta turns out to be a ginger! what little hair she has sure is looking strawberry blondish ♥

then, with my frown turned upside down, we had a really great evening. bedtime was by the book. once Otto was asleep i cut myself a little piece of banana bread and put it on this nice plate i thrifted ($0.49) last weekend. brewed a little coffee. and now i'm about to snuggle up under this so-great-rainbow afghan that i also thrifted last weekend ($4.00) and delve into book three of the Fifty Shades series.

kind of a great evening. now to not vomit every time Ms. Steele talks about her inner goddess :) xo

oceans and plastic pools

last week when our family was visiting we had some really perfect days. smiling kids running in sunshine from morning to night. one was a daytrip to the coast. the following day we just made homemade ice cream sandwiches (//robot voice// "cannot stop making the good sandwiches") and played in the kiddie pool. god bless summertime and cousins! and now,  i will dump-a the good times summer love photos:

it is windy and cold as f&ck on the oregon coast but also --> magic. in other magic news, see 'pool day' -->

on a little sidenote i just want to point out my super cutoffs. you are witnessing my only shorts i own and they are fugly and i LOVE them! i only wear them on the summery-est of days and when i do i just feel like a big, relaxed summery summertimer. like i just wanna put them on and curl up in a hammock with a tuna salad sandwich and fifteen Star magazines and a beer-hat loaded with mimosas.

Loretta in a swim suit also wins some kind of prize for The Greatest Thing That Ever Happened Ever. Ever.

Ever!

her little swimsuit with the rosettes is Circo from Target. i think it cost $12 or something ridiculously affordable like that. TGTTEHE.E.E!

ok, well i'm off to watch Louie and  Newsroom with Rob. Breaking Bad started up again Sunday! it's like a tv party at my house. i'm five minutes away from drinking night coffee and basking in the warm glow of the boob tube. yay for that and oceans and plastic pools. summa summa summatime :)

ps. yesterday i was guest posting at Musings of a Manic Mama since Rebecca's on double vacation. a little easy craft/learning project for the kiddos that we've been doing around my house lately. so you should check it out and Rebecca's blog. she's a rad chick!

we love chapter books and some other thrifting

side note, as Ot gets bigger and bigger i am having a harder and harder time thrifting clothes for him. i just wanted to proclaim this and then make a downer face at this fact. i suppose boys are just too rough on their everythings... anyways, it's not that i only buy clothes for the little miss but that's what ended up happening on our latest, greatest thrift trip...

direct your eyes to the right in that picture. something really super freaking awesome and amazing has been going down at Casa Muth lately and that is the nightly reading of chapter books! this is something i have been looking forward to since, who knows, like wayyyy wayyyy before we ever even started trying to have kids. reading is one of my all time favorite pastimes. spending hours and hours with my nose in a book, curled up on the sofa, being glum, totally got me through some super emo adolescent and teenage years and helped me learn how to be a good person and that i wasn't the only one who felt awkward and lame and odd and hated myself and just. wanted. to. be. liked. books expanded my vocabulary and my life horizons.

i really believe that the books i read back then gave me the courage to become "myself" even if that meant being different from the crowd. so anyways, i am clearly pro books and have been collecting kids' books for the future generations in the house since i was 19 (married yes, but it wasn't til i was 30 that Ot was born and now he's 3 1/2) so ya see? ya see! i am old AND pro books.

some of my favorites from those awkward emo years were Anne of Green Gables, Are You There God, It's Me Margaret, Babysitters' Club (yo, Claudia, i love you, yo), Bunnicula, Harriet the Spy, Little Women, Matilda, Nancy Drew, Nothing's Fair in Fifth Grade, Pippi Longstocking, The Phantom Tollbooth, Wizard of Oz...

books books books books books books books! so how jiggy with it was i when Ot suddenly was all interested in some of the chapter books on his bookshelf? we started with The BFG and i realized pretty quickly it was a little too "rough" so we had to kind of edit-as-we-read but Otto just loved the word play. he collapsed laughing when BFG said "crocodilly". like cackling, face plant on the bed, body heaves of laughter. me = floating to the ceiling and grinning like a goon to see that! so while we were reading BFG a chapter a night, we went thrifting and hit the chapter book motherload. the following pictures are like porn for my book-lovin eyes...

a chapter a night is now a concrete part of our bedtime routine and my heart sings, "laaaaaaaa!".

i'm linking this post up to Mandy at The Haps for her High on Thrifting Thursday. me so high! so high!

so i would really love to hear some of your favorite chapter books so i can be on the lookout. i've heard great things about Gruffalo. what others do you and your kids love or do you remember loving? aren't books the best?! <-- not a real question because they just are.