{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Pretty:

 

I've been a little photo-lazy this past week, so I actually had to dig deeper into my pictures folder for this post. Earlier this month, I spent a lovely almost-whole-weekend in San Diego with a bunch of wonderful friends. We had a giggly slumber party and went on a photo-walk (among other things) the next day. This is one of the photos I took of the Hotel Del Coronado.

Happy:

A little while ago, Noah decided that he should pour his own juice. And because I like to encourage him in his quest for independence while also avoiding the potential of 2 liters of juice spilled all over the fridge/kitchen/child, I bought him a manageably-sized pitcher (from Montessori services). I fill it with half-juice-half-water, put it on the low shelf in the fridge, and then he pours himself his juice when he wants it. He gets to do it by himself, I get to not be bothered by juice-requests, and as a bonus, the excitement over the pitcher is making Noah drink more fluids. The pitcher is making both of us happy.

Funny:

Conversation this morning:
me: "Noah, do you want to pet a goat when we get to the zoo?"
Noah: "OH, YES! YES! I CAN PET A GOAT!"
later, in the petting zoo
Noah: "Mama, can you carry me?"
He warmed up to the idea of the (really large!) animals milling about when he realized that they were quite docile, and brushed this goat very carefully.

Real:

Earlier this summer, I froze some smoothie in popscicle molds (genius, right?!). This one was in the freezer for a while (too long), and the parts of the smoothie became un-blended. As you can see, there were some berries and juice as well as some spinach involved in the smoothie-making.
Thankfully, Noah didn't mind - he actually thought it was exciting. "I ate ice cream with two sides today, Papa!"
(Just FTR, the smoothie-scicles we ate soon after freezing them were uniform. I didn't realize until now that frozen liquids separate. Live and learn.)


Pretty, happy, funny, real is the brainchild of these ladies here, who are encouraging their reader to find contentment in the everyday perfection and imperfection of life.

{pretty, happy, funny, real}

~ Capturing the context of contentment in everyday life ~

Pretty:
 


I like the way the dew pearls on the edges of my butternut leaves. BTW, I've harvested my first butternut squashes, and they're delicious.


Happy:
 

 
My little kitchen helper. Cheese-grating is not a new skill, but it still makes him happy and proud to contribute to a meal.


Funny:
 

We took a bike ride into town for dinner tonight. Here's what Noah and I did to pass the time while Papa was inside getting us food. I finally got a basket fitted to the front of my bike at the local bike shop this week (it was difficult because my lamp is in the way), so we were able to put our food in my basket and ride to the park to eat. So much fun!


Real:
 

Oh, this kitchen cabinet. My kitchen is small, and I've resigned myself to the fact that this cabinet is doomed to being in this state. When I buy something new (say I'm almost out of cocoa and buy a new box), I do some creative rearranging to fit cram it in. My spices are stacked on top of each other, I have to take the raisins and the honey out if I need to get to the coconut oil (huge-and-thusly-cheaper container), and if I buy one more kind of vinegar (I seem to be trying out a lot of recipes that call for a specific kind of vinegar) we may have to move into a larger home.
You know what though? It might not be ideal, but it's okay.
(That "Really Raw" honey, BTW, is the bomb. Best honey ever.)


Pretty, happy, funny, real is the brainchild of these ladies here, who are encouraging their reader to find contentment in the everyday perfection and imperfection of life.

big boy

The Thing I've dreaded for so many months has happened.
The Thing that other mothers have warned me about with wide-eyed looks of terror.*

Noah no longer naps.

And while I now deal with a tired boy for a couple of hours in the late afternoon (with the fit-throwing and the inability to deal with anything and the crying at the drop of a hat), and I lost my beautiful mid-afternoon break, I also have a child that falls asleep for the night around 6:30.
AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL.

*This might be a slight exaggeration.

craft quickies

We had a wedding to go to today, and while I had done my fair share of thinking about the gift, I stopped thinking about it when we decided to give cash. It wasn't until it was practically time to leave that we realized that we had cash, but not a card to put it into.
So I made one. BAM! I was so pleased with myself!

And then, later that afternoon, I made a bird bath! I did some googling and then used a terracotta pot and saucer I had in the garage. Five minutes, zero dollars. I like projects like that.

(Just ignore the dead-looking plant in the background. It's hibernating.) (No, really. It is.)

pudding

Since I cut dairy out of my diet last fall (almost a year ago!), I haven't had any pudding. I can't say that I missed it much (I'm just not that big on pudding), but I came across a fairy-food pudding recipe the other day which made me want pudding, so I figured I'd give it a try.

I didn't have any tapioca or arrowroot starch, so I used regular old corn starch instead. It took the utmost restraint not to crank the heat up to high because it took forever to boil I am pretty impatient, especially when it comes to dessert. I sweetened it with maple syrup (again, it was what I had).
Overall, the pudding was good, but I think next time I'll be making it sweeter.

He seemed to approve.

Noah's train party

 This year, I decided to have two birthday parties for Noah. A lot of The Husband's family lives in the area, so having a family gathering can end up being over 30 people strong. I wanted to also invite a few friends and figured that two parties with around 25 guests would be more fun that one party with around 50 guests. It was an exhausting weekend with back-to-back parties, but it was also a lot of fun. I'll definitely consider splitting parties like this again.
Noah asked for a red and blue train party, so I did my best to deliver. I was actually pretty excited about a red and turquoise color scheme. For his first birthday, the most effort went into the invitations. This year, I went with an evite. I was sad I didn't get to send out a pretty card, but I felt good about being greener by saving paper and about not spending money on postage. I consoled myself by mailing actual thank you cards after the party. Also, evite actually had a train birthday invitation that fit our color scheme perfectly, so this was meant to be.

I spent the most time on the making of decorations. I've had this vision of garlands strung under the patio roof and in the tree out by the sand box for a while now, so I went with it. It took a good while longer than anticipated (and it looked bleak for a while when my sewing machine broke again), but I loved my flags, so it was totally worth it.

The cupcake toppers were really cute, but I think I put too much work into them. Oh well - lesson learned for next time. Mainly, I don't think they needed to be double-sided.

I didn't want to have to serve an actual meal, so we had snacks and cake, cupcakes, and ice cream. I had a vision for serving the snacks in a train, so I made a locomotive using a coffee tin, a small cardboard box, and mod podge. It was a fun project and came together much faster than anticipated (I love it when that happens!). I ended up using mini loaf pans for the rest of the train. I bought them especially for the party, but I've already used them again. I know they'll continue to come in handy. While the snack train lived up to my visual expectations, the containers were on the small side. One the one had, this forced me to do a fair bit of refilling, on the other hand, I think it discouraged people from filling up on snacks, and in the end I had less food sitting out going bad. I'm going to call that a win.

For the cake, I used my fancy-schmancy train cake pan. The decorations came mostly from Sweet Factory and from Sprout's bulk candy aisle. It took about twice as long as anticipated to decorate the cake, but I'm very pleased with how the cake turned out. It was beautiful!

We also had beautiful & delicious cookies my friend Debbie made. I emailed her a photo of my flag garland, and she nailed the color scheme. (She has more photos of the cookies here.)

 Now - lots of you know that my food allergies force me to eat what is often referred to as "fairy food." On top of that, I had some guests with dietary restrictions (different from mine), so I made cupcakes that were gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free. I'm sad to say that the cupcakes had a very odd aftertaste, but I'm happy and relieved that the (vegan) frosting I had made completely covered that aftertaste. As a matter of fact, I didn't even realize it was there until after the (second) party, when I had a left-over, unfrosted cupcake. Also, nobody complained! Yay.

 I used this party as my excuse to finally buy a drink dispenser, water-infuser thingy. We had strawberry-mint water (with mint from my herb garden!), which was delicious.

He laid down in the pool. It was actually pretty funny

Fountain play - the water squirts up at random, so it's hard to photograph.

 The kids played in little pools and in our play fountain and sand box.

 We also had a train craft and train coloring pages, so everyone kept busy and had fun.
Noah was so excited about his gifts that he didn't fall asleep for a solid two hours after he went to bed.

Good times.