A Birthday and the happenings around it

I'm now 28! We celebrated with a thai dinner out, and peach upside down cake at home!

and we played the guess-how-many-m&ms game, and Julia won!
The prize is a block print from Dad. Way to be awesome, Julia.

I sewed Julia another felt crown for her dress-up stash. 

and I made tomato ketchup!

I made a sandbox for Julia. (Just a bag of sand in a metal tub) and Olaf was a big fan too. 

Mom and I decided that Julia needed a baby doll, so I went out and got her one. I was kind of surprised by how much really loves it. She calls it "Bree-Bree" and carries it around. She especially likes to go find Bree-Bree before she nurses. 

I also built/sewed a tent for Julia. I found a tutorial at Grosgrain and turns out I had the wood laying around, and a piece of fabric the perfect size laying around. The only thing I had to buy was a dowel for the top! 

I took Julia in to have a portrait taken. (This isn't it, just one I snatched during the ordeal) It's a family tradition to get the toddler's photos taken in black and white. We have a wall of 8x10s of all of us kids, and I had to carry on the tradition with Julia. She was perfectly charming for the first 3 minutes, while the photographer was having technical issues. After that, she wanted nothing to do with sitting in the chair or smiling. We managed to get one pretty good shot though, so I'm happy. 

I also made an earring and necklace holder using a vintage hanger and little hardware hooks. 

This spring I asked Grandpa Dave to make Julia some little houses out of scrap wood, and I asked Grandpoppa Jack to draw on them. They are finally done, and really neat!

and Grandmomma Dawn made a basket, perfect for carrying them!

Early this summer we created a bean trellis out of string on the front porch, hoping to block some of the traffic noise and to create a green space. It was a raging success! The beans are tall and dense and producing like mad, and the front porch is much more pleasant to sit on now. 

And we have two more chickens! I posted on freecycle asking for two laying hens to add to our small flock, and someone offered two from her huge flock. I had to go catch them, but it was surprisingly not too hard. We tossed them in to the pen yesterday and while there's been some pecks thrown, they all survived the first night in the coop together

Julia is very fond of chasing them around the yard. Joe wants to eat them.  Loki the dog doesn't want to eat them. 

Midsummer creativity and fun

corn and green beans and apricots

apricot sauce and plum sauce

driftwood candle holders

denim booties

ocean pants

A hat for Julia that I designed and knit from Hommespun yarn spun by my friend Trevor.
If you want the pattern, contact me and I'll e-mail you a copy. 

A felt crown for Julia someday (a little big)

a baby bonnet from old t shirts made from a captain crafty tutorial

and the second one, much nicer! (i used manufactured bias tape for the edging instead of the t shirt hem,)

I made it slightly larger, but it was still rather small for Julia.  Perhaps I'll do a third. 

Olaf gives Julia horsey rides

He also discovered the town's skate park and wants to go at least twice a day!

but he's not too cool of a skater kid to hang out and eat popsicles with Julia

Our friends Andy and Carolyn came for a visit. They let me live with them in Dubuque, Iowa for two semesters of high school after my parents moved to Nebraska and I hated it. Very kind of them! 

I bought Julia a rocking chair at an antique store for $10. She's pretty fond of it! 

Julia helped me bake Zucchini cake

Excellent Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cake

1 cup wheat flour

2 cups white flour

1 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

3 tsp cinnamon

3 eggs

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1/2 cup applesauce or yogurt or mashed banana

1 cup white sugar

1 cup brown sugar

3 tsp vanilla

4 cups grated zucchini and/or summer squash (do not drain, grate over a bowl or use a food processor. add with the juice)

1 cup chocolate chips and/or walnuts

Mix dry and wet ingredients separately, then combine gently. 

Pour into a greased 9 x 13 pan and bake at 325 for about an hour, until a toothpick comes out clean. 

More camping and some crafts to

My sister Anna has been here all week, her final stop before a year in China. We've been celebrating this by camping! This time we drove west to the southern tip of Oregon and stayed at Harris Beach. It was beautiful and dramatic and lovely, but it was also cold and damp, and since we are not plan-aheaders, we could only camp for one night and then we would have had to move to another site. Driving west, we passed through a tad of northern California and we were excited about the redwood forests, so instead of a second night on the ocean we opted to move inland to the redwoods. It was a good move! We got a beautiful campsite surrounded by huge trees and a 3 minute walk brought us to the most beautiful wonderful small river. It was clear as glass, rather shallow and refreshingly cold. Just beyond that was classic redwood forest full of giant trees with millions of nooks and crannies to be explored. We found the hole to china, the hole to canada, the hobbit house and the bridge to tarabinthea, to name a few. Julia loved both camp sites, running with abandon into the waves of the ocean, rolling in the sand, learning the word "blackberry" in reference to the fruit, not the technology, rolling in the dirt, and insisting that her marshmallows be served on a stick. Her language capacity has suddenly taken a step forward. She is much more interested in learning and repeating words. bak-bweh, (blackberry) Neh-neh, (Anna) beh-plene, (airplane) dah-brey (library) and tee-tee (pee) are a few of the latest. My family has always camped for vacation and during travel, because we are not monetarily rich, and because we are fond of nature. I became aware of the term "glam-ping" to refer to those who camp with the most luxurious things they can find, and there are some funny things that we do that fits in that category completely, such as bringing down comforters to cozy around the sleeping bags, bringing fancy root beer and boxes of wine to sip with our dinner, making wonderful food like slow roasted chicken in bbq sauce and homemade sourdough bread and smores with almond chocolate bars. We have never camped with a camper, or with a mosquito tent over the picnic table, or with a jet-ski or any number of what you might consider traditional luxury camping items, but I love the way we camp with our old plastic dishes and the wash tub that has "barbie clothes" scrawled across it in my handwriting. (Though there are certain memories of certain trips best forgotten, like the foot-of-water-in-the-tent-night) Oddly enough, Dave and I have not camped together yet. It will be interesting to see how our styles mesh when we finally do get around to taking a camping trip together.

Auntie Anna taught Julia that if she drags her toes, she will get swung up high!

lovely ocean

but cold! only Olaf was brave enough to get more than his toes wet.

happily filthy

more lovely ocean

She's pleased to have gotten her hands on Olaf's hat. 

she was not so pleased to get washed of sand in the cold shower. 

she would be much more pleased about car trips if only she could drive

dad the gnome, at home in the redwoods

that be Olaf, dwarfed by the tree

a hobbit house

mom has stories about dad falling out of trees in their pre-courtship

I can nurse on a rocky beach, no problem!

and she can nap on a rocky beach, no problem!

not so pleased to be awake though. 

we tried out pigtails. super cute but she looks much older!

I made this! (by made I mean that I found the driftwood and got Dad to drill me a hole for the candle. pretty nifty, eh?)

I made these too! in a much more legitimate sense of the word. 

little leather-soled, fleece lined booties for the winter!