Thurs(Pink)day

The snow in the dell is crisscrossed with deer tracks, though I haven't seen them on the move.

My grocery bag, waiting for the next shopping trip.

These bibs used to be huge on Roo and I hated them, but now that she is bigger and feeds herself they are the best thing ever.

Roo never took to her crib very kindly; maybe I'm projecting here, but she seemed to hate being confined in it. So for her 18-monthiversary we took the front rails off and converted it to a toddler bed, and started gating her doorway at night. The wailing, and chewing and hitting her mouth on the crib rim, and the waking several times a night disappeared, and instead of hours waiting for her to go to sleep, we could leave her to go to sleep on her own in minutes. The catch is that she wants to be as near us as possible, so we put her down in bed, read, sing, and when we leave she follows us and sleeps the night through just inside the door. We lay this blanket out on the carpet every night so she has something comfortable to sleep on.

Why she doesn't mind the gate, I don't know.

Yellow Wednesday

Tomorrow's high: -9 degrees Fahrenheit.

So I'm making some rice pudding.

Roo's ducks wait for her next bath.

It's getting closer...

Tonight's and tomorrow night's lows: -21 degrees/-31 degrees.

Tuesday Purple

Zero degrees, brilliantly clear sky, more snow on the way.

I couldn't decide whether to use this yesterday or today, but we have lots of blue and not a lot of purple around here.

We drink a lot of tea, and this boils water for us fast.

Plumeria bowls from Hot Island Glass in Makawao, Maui, from our trip last September.

Color Week!

I'm unofficially participating in Curious Bird's Color Week. It is blue Monday:

I love the color the snow on the slope turns as the sun sets. It gets richer and richer as the sky darkens.

I make granola every week or so.

A Christmas present finished Saturday for a good friend.

It's good this week is color week; Roo is off her nap schedule so I have no down time during the day to blog.

No Nap

All of a sudden Roo is having a hard time with her nap. Maybe more teeth are coming in?

This is another rescued plant from Lowe's, also showing a lot of potential.

Evergreen

Tomorrow I think I'll have to start taking down the Christmas decorations. I'm kind of sad about that.

Well, maybe the lights will be up for a little while longer.

Cobalt

It's sunny again, cold again. I have a lot of dishes to wash, but I have to empty the dish rack first.

The mug is from the Monterey Bay Aquarium. It belonged to my mom or my dad, and I appropriated from the cupboard it at some point in high school for a pencil jar, then took it off to college for tea around my junior year. Now Roo likes to point out the 'ishies' on it, the boat, and the octopus.


Roo and I ran a few quick errands this morning - always errands in the mornings now, because she naps from noon-ish to past two, or three, or some days she naps two-ish to past 4. I never know, but she goes down when she's ready and gets up when she's ready, and it works out pretty well. Anyway, the morning errands were to get her a bigger pair of shoes, and then to get some groceries. In the shoe aisles she found some XS rain boots that captivated her interest, so I helped her into them and she clumped around while I searched for shoes in her size. We picked our pair, comfortable, brown, boys' shoes, actually, and then I asked her if she wanted the boots. (My grandpa sent money at Christmas with instructions to buy her a little something, and I thought the boots would be fun to play in and use in the snow/slush now and in the muddy garden in the spring. Fun and useful.) "Roo, do you want the boots?" I asked, gesturing 'want.' "No." So I asked her again. "No," shaking her head. I put the boots back on the shelf and said "bye bye, boots," just to be sure. And Roo calmly said "bye bye," and then we left. But I wonder if this spring I am going to be longing for them, in their pink and purple waterproof glory.

Midweek

I think a bit of sun every other day isn't so bad a streak. Today we had a faint dusting of the tiniest of snowflakes in the morning, before the clouds took off. When I passed our room on my way to the kitchen to make lunch, I saw the light gleaming off the family cradle.

While eating I searched our soup cookbook for a recipe for dinner. I had settled on Carrot Ginger Soup by the end of the meal, but at 4pm when I started cooking I had changed my mind and made Vegetable Minestrone. And then we met up with an out-of-town friend and had dinner out, anyway.

But dinner tomorrow is mostly made now.

Flat

Again with the no-afternoon-light here today. The sky is gray, the snow is gray, the grass and trees are brown, the houses are brown and gray; Roo on the jungle gym is dressed all in pink. I try to avoid that, but it happens every once in a while.

We eat a lot of these around here. Roo likes them. Even when she is tired of bananas and apples, she will still eat pears. When she says the word 'pear' it comes out like purrr.

My mom gave me this calendar book for Christmas to record the coming year, and I have a lot of dreams about what I hope to write in it. It's filled with beautiful simple illustrations reminiscent of the advertising posters of the '20's and '30's. I could learn a few lessons from the art in there. So I think today's theme will be not flat, or gray, or pink, but pears.

Sun

We had a glorious cold sunny day here, and both the cats and I gravitated towards the afternoon sun patches.

Our bedroom faces west, and we have golden curtains that glow in the sunlight. It was hard to resist lying on the floor with the cat, watching them.

Fabric folds are always a fascinating study for a still life. I should sharpen my drawing pencils. Watercolors might work for this, too.

This morning Roo and I went to the grocery store. I stood for a long time picking out my two bulbs of garlic. One in the bin had sprouted a fan of green shoots, and I almost bought it to bring home to a pot on the windowsill. Then I remembered we don't have sills in this house.

Art

Last night I played around in Photoshop with the fairly blah picture I took, and through some fortuitous combination of processing, I made this. And I really, really, like it.

I've been experimenting with colored pencils in a style very similar to this for a few years now.

Quiet day

It's been a day of dishes, laundry, leftovers, and relaxing. A very gray day, with no nice afternoon light in the house for pictures. Here's the best I could do. I rescued these begonia plants from the clearance table at Lowe's last spring, and now one of them is blooming in the laundry room.

This is my latest knitting project, the Odessa hat by Grumperina, and I love how it is coming together, how the greens and purples are playing so nicely. I'm using the solid green skein every fourth row, since I didn't have a full skein of either yarn. I hope I have enough to finish.

It's a now-late Christmas gift. I think I'm going to have to knit myself one of these when I get a chance.

Garam Masala

We're having a small New Year's party tonight, and Todd is cooking up some Indian dishes to share. And we were out of garam masala, so Todd made some more of his own - and now the house smells deliciously spicy.

He's also prepping some little eggplants our friends brought us from Chicago for a side dish, to go along with the chicken tikka, chapatis, and lassi. Todd feeds us well.

I'm helping with the chapatis, and making mochi and teisen lap for dessert.

Delicious.

Starting over (again)

A New Year, a new idea for blogging, taking inspiration from one of my favorite pages to visit. I'm going to try to post nearly daily, mostly on knitting and sewing projects and dinner recipes, and (hopefully) eventually on art projects and ideas. I'm pretty busy, so we'll see how I do... a day with a little one rarely includes much time to sit and concentrate, and then I'm usually knitting away.

I'm also intrigued by the idea of taking and posting a picture a day. I think those photos will usually be a part of whatever I am blogging about, but there will probably be many days where all I do is post an image and say 'hi.'

Resolutions for a busy mama. We'll see how far I get.