Urban Planning

This a little city my kids and their cousins created. I would not be opposed to living here or at least painting my existing city more colorfully.

Drawers on the Lawn

School started and I lost track of the things I was doing. Every day and all tasks suddenly revolved around my kids' school. Then, sometime around mid October, I remembered my blog. Now, sometime near Halloween, I post, finally!

I took these images at my husband's great aunt's house. She and her only daughter have passed away. The task of clearing the house has gone to extended family. Here are the drawers to a dresser we are moving to our house. The other image is of the view across the road.

A Horse of Course

Today we went to the Little Buckaroos event at the Crocker Art Museum here in Sacramento. There, the kids got to make very simple, but very inventive crafts: a cowboy hat, a fake mustache to go with the cowboy hat and this horse (consisting of a paper horse body, button eyes, feathers and two clothes pins.) None of it required glue!

Each craft station was held in a different part of the museum. There, in the middle of the modern art exhibit were a dozen children on the floor creating horses. It made one feel a bit nervous to see the kids so close to priceless art, and yet, it was also very good to see the kids in such close proximity to the art. Making art surrounded by art...

A Brief Note and A Random Photo

Nearly three weeks ago I broke our computer by using the wrong power cord. In less than a minute, I fried the mother board. It dawned on me only last night that perhaps I could use my phone to post. Here's my first attempt. I'll keep it short for it takes me a long time to type with my thumbs on my phone's mini keyboard.  Also, I'm not sure how to spell check yet.

Something Nicer

When we moved into our house, it had many wallpapered walls--wagon wheels in the kitchen, black in the dining room, and black in the bathroom. In fact, the bathroom was covered in a black wallpaper flocked with a repeated image of those Chinese terra cotta soldiers, near their Chinese horses and a Chinese tree, all in gold.

That was the only room we didn't remove the wallpaper from right away. We lived with the gold Chinese soldiers for awhile and then decided we should tackle a minor bathroom redo. We removed the wallpaper and then lived with drywall for a year and half. ("Lived with" is a nicer way to say:  "Lazily left the drywall")

Finally this summer, my husband tackled the rest of the job. We haven't redone the floor yet and hopefully some day the counter can be replaced, but at least the gold flocked terra cotta soldiers are gone as is the bare dry wall.

As for these little vases, I have had them for 13 years now. I got them on my first trip to Japan. They have been sentimentally hidden away in a box for a long time now. I hesitated to take them out of their hiding spot. I have not been using them out of fear of something happening to them. But, I often go through this argument with myself: saving versus using. And I know the right answer. Don't save. Use and enjoy. So, here they are...enjoying a spot in the newly freshened bathroom.

Finally, something a little nicer to look at.

  

Every Year, Obon

Every year Obon comes around. Obon is the Buddhist festival honoring one's ancestors. It involves dancing and lanterns and kids in kimono. At least, that's somewhat of an outsider's interpretation. I am glossing over the more spiritual aspects. The lanterns, the colorful kimono and the setting of a warm summer evening always make the festival a beautiful one to be part of.

Every year, the church holds dance practices the week before Obon. Every year I say I am going to attend the practices, but fail to. Next year, for sure, I really am going to participate. This year, I did as I usually do...take pictures, eat a snow cone. (Snow cones are also part of Obon, but I don’t have a picture of that.)

 

A Visit to the Bazaar

We visited the Walnut Grove Buddhist Bazaar last weekend. Walnut Grove is a small, old river town south of Sacramento. It once had a thriving Japanese and Japanese-American community. Now, there is a historic street to remind us of the once large Japanese presence in town.

I am not sure how common bazaars are, but since I moved to Sacramento, I’ve been to many. Is it a Japanese-American thing? I’m assuming not, but all the ones I’ve been to have been organized by various Japanese churches: Buddhists, Methodist and Shinto.

This one in Walnut Grove was no different. First we go for the food. There was the prerequisite teriyaki chicken, sushi and noodles. There were the carnival-like games for the little ones that cost a quarter. The funniest to me is always the “fishing” game, where the child flings their line over a plywood panel painted like a fishing scene, then a person hiding behind that panel quickly clips a goodie bag onto the child’s “hook.” Surprise! They caught a prize! I should ask my daughter next time how she thinks that prize got there.

Also, this bazaar stood out to me because it had bingo, which we did not win, but had fun playing. Actually, the girls did not really enjoy me playing. I think they thought I was being a little neglectful of them as I was paying a lot of attention to the bingo numbers. I can see how that game can get addictive.

The girls did not enjoy the heat--even the snow cones and quarter games could not remedy the 100 degree heat. And because of the heat, we didn’t stay long. Although it was only twenty-five minutes from our house, the Bazaar felt much farther away. A tiny break from, if not the heat, then from our usual routine.

Summer Time

As it does, summer has brought with it a change of schedule. I didn't really see it coming. I thought summer vacation was a thing for parents with older children who needed a break from homework. It's been a while since I've felt the time shift of summer.

Still, I've noticed that I have been staying up late and sleeping in more. My kids are sleeping in a bit (we’re making it to 7am some mornings!) which lets me sleep in (I'll take any excuse to sleep late) and then the late light of evening keeps me from turning in. During the winter and spring I was trying very hard to go to bed early. Every night I would go into a panic around 9 pm--fretting that I wasn't already asleep. Now, that feeling has relaxed a bit and eleven or twelve sneaks up on a still-awake me. That’s when I think, oh well, it’s summer.

Another sign of summer is this Kool-Aid Ice Art. This is a project my daughter did in school the other day. Then, while walking through the grocery store, she spied the kool-aid shelf and wanted to do it at home too. I appreciated the very little prep work required on my part. Tear open some kool-aid packs and get out some ice. The resulting colors are rather intense considering they come from something meant to be consumed by children. And the raspberry lemonade flavor stained our table. Nevertheless, it does seem like a nice, wholesome summer activity. Like sleeping “late” into a summer morning.

Now I'm Sweating

It is hot now. Suddenly the cold spring turned into 90 degree summer days. The girls are in their tiny pool telling me that I'm not allowed to look at them or listen to them. (They don't want me to hear them playing "princess." Which, I can hear (because I'm roughly two feel away) involves playing "Cinderella" while "swimming" in the ocean and arguing about who has to be the prince.)

Train Time

 

Last weekend some friends visited us from out of town. They suggested we all visit the train museum in Old Sacramento. I had heard that the train museum was worth a visit, but it took out-of-towners to get us there. It really is a neat; lots of history brought to life--really brought to life, for some of the decommissioned trains really rock as you walk through them and they have mannequins "playing" the part of the long-gone train employees.  (including a looped recording of them "talking.")

Our kids were a bit young to really enjoy it. The real, full-sized trains were big and a bit frightening for them. The historically-dressed, talking mannequins were eerie. The parents among us tried to impress upon our children that this place was cool. But our oohs and ahhs did not convince them. We still had to carry them most of the time we were touring the place.

They did enjoy the train sets (shown in the bottom two photos) set up for them to play with at the end of the tour. There is something simply magical about miniature trains and miniatures tracks. I'm trying to put my finger on it...I know it's related to dollhouses and miniature golf. I'll get back to you when I figure it out.

Bubbles When It's Sad Outside

It's been a sad month on my street. Two different people have passed away due to poor health. One lived next door, the other across the street. I didn't know either of them well, but happened to see the ambulances come for both.

Today my daughter and I were blowing bubbles. She was chasing them around the yard with a goal to pop as many as possible. I was attempting to shoot a good photograph of the bubbles while blowing them. This was trickier than I thought it would be.

I am always surprised at how wondrous bubbles can be. They are so simple. And yet, if I stop and watch one float away, I can't help but wish time would stop so I could somehow capture their luminosity.

Still, I have to work at being in the moment. I have to make myself choose a bubble to follow and watch it go. My tendency is to keep blowing more bubbles instead of taking a moment to enjoy the ones I've already made.

Today as I was blowing bubbles with the little one, I was distracted by the memory of seeing the men being wheeled into their ambulances and my thoughts were with the people left behind. My daughter does not know yet of death. And she obviously doesn't have my same attachment to bubbles, seeing as how she was trying to pop them all. I knew I should be there really with her instead of in my head, wondering about people I didn't really know. It's hard not to be affected by reminders of this short life. On the other hand, a two year old laughing at bubbles...well, it's hard not smile at that.

Tiny Dancers

On Monday night I came down with food poisoning. Before that, I attended my daughter's low key, pre-school dance recital. The "stage" was a rug and some spare floor boards to tap upon. The backdrop was the gym door and a fire extinguisher. As only a parent would, I found it to be the best dance performance I've ever seen. Well, close to the best. In the top three for sure. 

This is the little one wearing a tutu to be like her big sister. I didn't mean to crop her head out of the photo. I think she was doing her version of "Jazz Hands!"

Palms Provide No Shade

Tonight, as I blow dried my daughters' hair, my mind started to wander to this blog. What should I write about tonight? The felled tree, the cardboard bakery or the tea party attended by naked Ariel? I hesitate to write about any of these topics because I don't have particularly compelling photos to go with them. Nevertheless, the photos were taken today so at least I can claim they're current.

First, the felled tree. I don't actually have any photos to illustrate this subject, but two days ago the condo association that borders our back yard cut down a large pine tree. I was the one who requested that they do so, but I didn't actually think that they would. The tree was tilting over our property at approximately a forty-five degree angle, dropping needles and making lots of shade.

I feel a little guilt about this tree, but not a lot. I will plant another, better-suited one to make up for it, but one can't help feel sadness when a tree is cut down. Before we bought this house, I felt that no tree should be cut down. I remember talking to a co-worker about the large tree in her yard. The roots were damaging her foundation and the tree was going to have to go. I naively thought this was a tragedy. That a mature tree should be saved at all cost.

Now I see that sometimes trees that weren't appropriately planted become dangerous or silly. (I'm going to seem like I'm tree-cutting happy, but we also had two palms trees removed from our front lawn a couple months ago. These are the silly trees that I'm referring to: two fifty foot palms sticking up in the middle of a lawn, not providing shade, not close enough to hang a hammock between and tall enough that all you could see of them was two brown trunks. This is silly tree planting if you ask me. I don't live in Hawaii or Los Angeles. I don't need palm trees next to the pine tree and azalea bushes also planted-by someone else-in my yard. Out of all the beautiful trees available, why plant palms that you know are going to grow three stories or higher?) I don't generally rant on here, but the palms get me going.

Back to newly felled tree in the back. Now that it's gone, a once very shady corner of my garden is very sunny. Everything I've planted there is no longer well-placed. While my shade plants are probably not too happy, the sun shining down on my yard is a happy thing.

Now I've spent a lot more time that I had planned going on my tirade about trees. So I will be briefer about the rest. The cardboard bakery we made today does not look anything like the example in the book I brought home from the library. It's an awesome book by designer Todd Oldham, entitled Kid Made Modern. This book is full of kids' crafts inspired by Mid-Century Modern artists and designers. (I pretend that I check out these kids' crafts books for my daughter but really they're for me.) My daughter also likes this book and she picked out a "modernist fort made from cardboard boxes" based on the mid-century case study houses that she wanted to make (and has been bugging me to make for four days now.)

She decided that she did not want a house, but a bakery. This is what I came up with: (I don't know what makes it a bakery though.)

 Here is the bakery-inspired tea party that naked Ariel attended:

The flowers that graced the "tables" of the bakery/cafe.

The cafe "chairs." Each one decorated by freshly picked flowers. (I have to fight the urge to prohibit any flower picking from my garden. I blame my flower-greediness on being an only child. Sharing, even with one's daughters, is not easy.)

A Wedding-Like Event

We recently attended a wedding-like event in Seattle. It was "wedding-like" because the couple was not getting married that day, just celebrating their love, their friends and family and their baby, due in two months. The bride-like mom-to-be looked all glowy in a teal dress and an ostrich feathered boa. The groom-like father-to-be played the trumpet to announce the start of the party. The as-yet-to-arrive baby looked big in her mom's belly. It was an unusual, hilarious, relaxed affair held in a funky yet enchanted ballroom somewhere near the freeway. It was a personality-filled party, true to the couple we were celebrating.

I have always been enamored with Seattle. The first time I visited I was five. I don't remember that trip much, but I've had a version of Seattle in my head that I've loved ever since. I have been lucky with weather there too. I seem to always catch the city in at least part sun. Seattle on a sunny day is a good place to be, I think.

I'm just including a few photos for it was a short trip. 



The requisite Pike's Place Market shot.



Lanterns aglow at the wedding-like event.



Outside the ballroom was a courtyard filled with potted maples, strung lights and ashtrays. (It is the Northwest after all, where smoking, apparently helps some folks make it through the gray.)



The BEST mac n' cheese in the world! (Actually it's called The World's Best Mac n' Cheese.) It comes from Beecher's Handmade Cheese right near Pike's Place Market. I waited in line for this and it was awesome.

All the Colors of Unreal

  

I am a worry-er with a guilty conscience. This applies to all aspects of my life and covers all actions I take. But I'm not writing tonight about all my life, just this past Easter weekend and more specifically, about coloring things.

Guilt and Worry cause me to generally be quite careful about the quality of food my kids eat. I try to limit the amount of processed things they consume and read labels before I buy packaged foods. (Sometimes I even put the package back on the shelf after I read their labels.)  But, I am not perfect. (If I was, there would, of course, be no need to worry or feel guilt!)

This past weekend I went a little color crazy and bought both regular and neon boxes of food coloring. Now, I earnestly try to limit foods containing fake coloring. I really hesitated before buying the two boxes of dyes. But I was no match against the endless shade possibilities afforded by eight different mini bottles of fake food color. (On the package they give you the drop ratios to make such alluring hues as apricot, deep purple, orange sunset, teal, dusty rose, stormy blue and green apple. Who could resist?!)

When it came time to dye eggs, I realized that I am not a seasoned egg dye-er. I only hard boiled eight eggs to start. I am not sure how I came to the conclusion that eight eggs was the right number to dye. The girls and I went a little Mad Scientist with the different color possibilities, wanting to create them all. Very quickly we had way more dye colors than eggs to dye. In the middle of dying those eight eggs, I realized I better boil some more. That's when I cooked another six. (Why am I so stingy with my eggs?)

The next day it was time to make cupcakes for my husband's family's Easter picnic. This is where I failed as a Really Good Provider by making cupcakes from the box (and not the trans-fat-free mix from the natural food section. Target had the classics on major sale and that won out over good nutrition.) And then, we topped those processed delights with some nearly neon food-colored frosting in "Princess" shades, as my daughter described them. (Ironically though, I made the frosting itself from scratch. I realized that this wasn't the best idea as I watched the cupcakes oxidize in the sun, turning yet more shades of unreal.)

What do I take away from this weekend? Use less dye. When it comes to food you're coloring yourself, less is probably more.

Easter Bunnies

I have learned that in the Land of Preschool, holidays mean treat bags. I'm not particularly proud of my participation in this tradition. The kids exchange lots of treats, lots of sweets and lots of stuff to throw away. I don't want to be too negative though or take it all too seriously. My daughter quite enjoys helping put together the bags for her classmates, carefully selecting colors or treats based on her peers' preferences.

For the Easter edition of the goodie bag, we copied. They celebrated an early Easter party last week and made cute bags very similar to the ones pictured above. When we were discussing what she should bring this week, we both thought it would be fun to make more of the bags. The best part was watching her draw the bunny faces.

Happy Easter!

Building Things

My husband has been building this planter for most of the day. The evening light is gone now, but he remains out there in the back yard. When it's nice out and your outside, I've noticed, it's hard to come back in. He has gotten as far as he can on the planter without making a third trip to Home Depot today, so he has found other things to do out there. Organizing, cleaning, general puttering.

The girls think the planter is for them. They asked if it was going to be their stage or their play house. At this moment in the photo, it's their dance studio.

Some of these plants will find a new home in the planter. It's hard to get over the wondrous potential of a new plant.

Building things is really good, but it comes at a price. We all spent most of the day outside, which is good. But, the dishes from dinner have yet to be done, the laundry is sitting in its mountainous piles, the curtains I was working on two days ago remain on the ironing board, pins perilously poking out. It's hard  to look around, once you do finally come inside, and not feel overwhelmed. This is an emotion that I must work hard to suppress. There really is only so much that one can do in a day. It's either build something or clean something. It's hard to do both. I'm working on putting the blinders on and focusing on the task at hand, whatever it may be, and not allow myself to notice the mess here and there and in the other room I just passed.

Still, I'm feeling a bit out of control on the homemaking front. Probably means it's time to go to bed and get some sleep. Maybe in the morning I'll feel like tackling the house. (More likely though, I'll feel like planting some of the plants in that photo up above.)

Really, Officially

I took these photos this afternoon of the girls picking snow peas. I hesitated to post them. In fact, I had another draft started with completely different photos about a completely different subject, but I just couldn't help myself. I had to post the photos with my garden as the subject.

I continue to be overly interested in my garden. The other day I took a video of what was supposed to be the kids playing outside as they splashed around with a bucket of water. I was trying to capture their play and the impractical way they had chosen to wash some paint brushes. (They were supposed to be painting, but they ended up being much more interested in washing the brushes than painting with them.) Before I knew it, I had turned the camera away from my children and began filming my back yard. There truly isn't a lot to film back there. It's still full of rocks and dirt and very young plants, but I thought it would be good to have a record of the garden in its nascent stage. When I showed the video to my husband, he enjoyed the small part the kids were in, but pretended to snore through the long garden shot.

I know I should wait a little longer to post any photos of things growing or things harvested. We have many months ahead for photos like these above, but it's really officially spring now and, well, I just couldn't help myself.

House Plants

I've been on an indoor plant kick lately. Our house isn't dark, but it isn't light-filled either. The major windows in our home face directly east or directly west, so I've been huddling pots around a couple of these bigger windows. I know my husband thinks it's cluttered looking, but he hasn't said anything yet. Still, once you commit to a house plant--that is, take it home and put it in your own pot--you want it to succeed. When you don't have a lot of bright windows, grouping all the plants you can fit on one little side table by your couch may be your best option.

I took the above photo this evening. It is not an example of the aforementioned plant cluster. This plant supposedly prefers low light, so it's been relegated to a lesser lit room. As I took this photo in the semi-dark of an east-facing room at dusk, I had to hold as still as possible to get this sort-of in focus image. As I held my breath (to keep from moving) I could hear my children in the next room "falling" asleep: the little one telling a story to herself, talking too loudly for the older one, who came out to tell me so. She crept out of her room just as I was done shooting this. I was about to step out into the hallway when she walked by. I think it startled her a bit when she noticed me. She didn't expect her mother to be lurking in a dark playroom with a camera. Ah well, I suppose it's best to keep my kids on their toes. You can never know what to expect when your mom is trying to be an artist.

The Next Day of Spring

Although I mention it in the title, this post has little to do with spring. I just like to remind myself that it is officially spring. It's hard to remember this fact when the rain has not let up for days.

Instead, I write to you about my messy house.

My home has reached a crescendo of messiness after a busy weekend. It's as if all of our stuff exploded onto all of our surfaces. The floor littered. The tabletops and counters covered. Oh, and I can't forget the (clean) laundry pile up in the living room. It's approaching Everest status again.

To prove my point, I will include this photo of a life-sized Barbie that's been hiding in my living room. The Mega Barbie, as I shall call her, is usually hard to miss (and our living room is not large). She's the size of a small child. She is actually bigger than my small child. Nevertheless, I had not seen Mega Barbie for a few days. It turns out my daughter had tucked her into a blanket by Mt Laundry Everest and I did not notice until today. Even as I piled the clean laundry nearly on top of her, she eluded me. It was a bit of a shock when I noticed this:

And now I think it's time to fold some clothes.

Mysterious Masks

Some things that occurred here today: It rained, I monitored my newly transplanted plants, my husband and I watched my niece and nephew while their folks worked.

In anticipation of the kids' visits, I checked out The Muppets Big Book of Crafts from the library. It's a generous book filled with quirky projects, as you'd expect from a Muppets book. There is a project for making Popsicle Hands out of a juice and rubber gloves and another for making Bread Dough Monsters, which look in their example photos like mini orange Jabba the Huts (made out of bread dough of course.)

My niece, who is a very methodical nine-year old, carefully looked through each of the 322 pages and marked for me all the projects she, her brother and my daughters were interested in making. She noted in the book the twenty or so projects with post-it notes, then charted these projects with their difficulty rating (one Miss Piggy head means it's easy, three indicates difficult.) Finally, she narrowed the list down to the top five, based mostly on practical matters. Last week we made Super Secret Sketchbooks. This time, Mysterious Masks. Next time, it's Treasure Island Dioramas!

With my niece's list in hand, I went to the craft store to load up on supplies. There, I spent way too much money on the aforementioned supplies. Still, the time spent with them seems worth it (Perhaps they'll remember me fondly as the Artsy-Craftsy Aunt who made the funky projects with them) and I really can't pass up an excuse to buy more craft supplies. Win, win.

A Pincushion Photo Instead of A Blue Photo

I'm reaching back to the holidays by posting these photos. I want to share something more recent, but lately my camera has been acting up and giving me blue photos. For now, I will share an image of a pincushion I made for a friend this past Christmas. She's just getting into sewing. To make the pincushion, I modified a pattern from the book Sewing Bits and Pieces by Sandi Henderson.



My grandmother began teaching me to sew when I was young, but you wouldn't be able to tell that from my technique. I am not the most proficient seamstress, but I'm trying not to let that get to me. In the meantime, I collect sewing, quilting and embroidery books so I can drool over the projects.



I hope to have a mini quilt to post soon too. When I get my camera to obey me again, I will share photos of that project.

New Blog, Old Blog

In case you are new to me, here is a link to my previous blog: http://www.bothandneither.wordpress.com/. At the moment, it contains a great deal more than this blog (that's not saying much, I know!) I will continue to work on getting this "blogger" site up to date.

It Starts with F

After a months-long hiatus, I begin work on my alphabet book again. I begin where I left off: at F.

As I begin February, I begin work on F. I alter my blog. I try to just do.