summer dresses

Sewing for summer: Heather Ross's flower girl dress, from Weekend Sewing. Love how flexible this pattern is, and how quickly it comes together. (Note: be sure and measure for chest size before you make this - the pattern runs small, but it's easy enough to add an inch to either side of the bodice pieces.)

Minding the Unruly: Photo Keeping

I don't know if you are like me, but I have about a billion pictures in my iphoto library, and have not printed out pictures in about four years. (!) Periodically I think about this and can feel my heart rate go up and the panic begin to circulate through my system. What if the computer crashes? What if my iphoto starts eating itself? What if our house burns down? What if we lose the computer in the airport? Any number of scenarios could be insanely devastating.

S0 I've been trying to think through some systems that could potentially work for our family, and here are some of the ideas that I've come up with. I would so very much love to hear what other families are doing now that there are so many options (and so many pictures and videos being taken!)

My current (and future) systems:

-The blog book. One thing (actually the only thing) that I have done with success is to maintain our private family blog, where I try with regularity to upload photos and note down funny/meaningful stories. I've been making an annual book from this each Christmas through blurb, and the books are a big hit with the kids. But - the obvious drawback with a blurb book as your main photo album is that you can't readily pull out pictures to tape to school projects, bring to "guess who the baby is" contests (you know love that game :) ), etc. Also they are expensive, because ideally I would like a copy for each child, for every year, for them to take with them when they are all grown up and in their own homes. And so far I pretty much just buy one copy for us (and one for the grandparents) because I'm always trying to be frugal around Christmas and then forget to go back and get more copies at other points in the year. All that being said, I guess it is something. And as I was on the blurb site today, I came across this example, which I think is one of the prettiest family books I've ever seen. (I have no idea who this family is but I totally wanted to buy a copy of it. Is that creepy of me?)

-Old Fashioned Photo Albums. I should just bite the bullet and do this for our favorite pictures, right? Maybe try to print out pictures every few months and slide them in? Is it worth it to do that in this day and age?

-Plastic File Box. I thought about this about 4 months ago and bought the file box but have yet to put anything in it. But when I get around to it, I will take a manilla envelope and put a child's name, their grade, and then important school papers and some pictures from the year. That might be a simple enough back-up system that I could regularly do, right? One manilla envelope per child per school year.

-External Hard Drive. I will admit I haven't really taken the time to figure out what this is because it just sounds like a boring thing but my husband bought one last year and I think he backed up our pictures onto it (good job, Steve. You are awesome).

-putting all of those camera video clips onto cd's. Why haven't I done this yet? It would probably not take too long. And they are so fun to watch. This week I promise I'll do it!

Now, your systems - I'd love to hear! There must be other people who are literally kept up at night worrying about this!!

pick up your brush

It is an indisputable fact that there are few things cuter in this world than chubby baby feet.

what's on the pantry door for this week

What are you eating this week? Here's our menu. We have leeks coming out of our ears in our garden (hooray that we didn't kill them) so tonight we're having my 7 year old's favorite,

Potato Leek Soup

2 medium leeks, diced

1 small onion, diced

4 T butter

4-5 c. diced potatoes

4 T flour

6 c. chicken broth

1 c. heavy cream

salt to taste

Cook onions and leeks in butter for 2-3 minutes. Add flour slowly, then add the chicken broth. Salt to taste, and bring to a boil. Add potatoes. Cook 20 - 30 minutes, or until potatoes are tender. Add cream and serve with crunchy bread.

Yum.

Do you have any hearty vegetarian dishes that your kids love? We're trying to move more that direction and I'd love to find more winning (and filling) recipes to bookmark.

Also not dead yet in our garden, our mint box (see below). I LOVE having mint around because I LOVE this recipe for mint chocolate chip ice cream, which is my most favorite thing to make in the summer. Mint ice cream with real mint tastes totally different than store-mint chocolate chip ice cream (which I also happen to love) - but if you like the taste of mint leaves it's like a minty backyard party in your mouth.

Wabi Sabi

Wabi Sabi is a lovely japanese concept that means, as far as I understand it, imperfect beauty. It seems that this is a fitting idea to describe the state of a household with young children. Or maybe that's a complete mis-application, but hey, it makes me feel better.

Nothing is ever quite finished... or if and when a room or surface is cleaned up, it quickly goes back to a state of messiness. I used to think about this as kind of that scientific theory that everything always slips towards the direction of chaos, which really frustrated me. It is much pleasanter instead to embrace the notion of wabi sabi and enjoy the signs of life that our imperfect beauty reflect, right?

hooray for teachers!

I know I've mentioned this before, but I always struggle with finding perfect gifts for our beloved teachers at the end of the year. I seem to come back to flowers or gift cards to the bookstore, along with a sincere letter of appreciation. Nice but not fabulously wonderful.

What do you do? Any brilliant ideas I can file away for next year?

Summer fashion inspiration for the girls

Oh my. This morning I am swooning, SWOONING over Dagmar Daley's gorgeous shifts from their summer line. My girls' flower girl dresses last summer were from this lovely little company, and the fabrics were so pretty: silky white cotton eyelet lined with the softest grey linen.

(Look at those little leggings with the tiny buttons at the ankles. They are 70% cotton and 30% wool. Gorgeous - they would last forever.)

linen apron

stripey dress

Furthermore I'm having a hard time convincing myself that my baby doesn't need an old-fashioned bathing suit for our trip to the beach next month.

fairy fun

Our little friend Lolo just turned 5. She's my daughter's first and best friend.

We decided to have tea for her because we adore her.

We made her a cake

(the ubiquitous rainbow cake. I couldn't help myself! It was hard to cut, but fun)

here they are, the party girls. After this picture was taken they trotted off to play their favorite game, "Honey and Sweetie," which is basically pretend mother and daughter. I overheard them talking about bombs through the bushes, though, and when I asked them what exactly they were playing, my daughter sweetly replied that today they were playing "Honey and Sweetie, and the Dangers of Hell." Nice. Come over for some cake, and my daughter will play a game with you about hell.

Thankfully we had a gift for Lolo to make up for all the talk about you-know-where. We made a FAIRY TRAP from a stick & thread & hot glue (kind of like a dream catcher - put a dab of glue on your starting point, and then wind the thread back and forth, gluing a little as you go to secure the thread). The fairy trap is meant to be woven with flowers to lure unsuspecting flying folk into having a little nap on the wee hammock you've made for them.

(fairy trap in action)

We also made her a FAIRY ROOM out of a small box with clear sides that I found at Michael's. We filled it with a nest, bags of moss, glitter and sparkly string, and a bundle of pretty fabrics (see below, being mauled by the baby).

The point is to decorate the box, and then leave the top open at night so that maybe a fairy might pop in for a rest while you are asleep. You never know, right?

Sparkly play dough was also in order. Because play dough is awesome and with glitter even better.

Happy birthday, Lolo! We're sorry you learn swears when you come to play with us!