Turn That Brown Thumb Upside Down!

Or turn it green?

I come from a long, long, long line of green thumbs. Both sides of my family have grown beautiful yards and house plants and fed their families the fresh fruits and vegetables they've grown. My mom grew lovely things in ALASKA. Somehow this enviable genetic trait jumped right over me. It landed and settled nicely with my brother, but not even the teeniest bit wiped off on me. Let's be serious, I'm a danger to anything green and growing. Lucky for me, we live in Portland, and it seems if you plunk something in the soil outside it just grows and grows! It might have a little something to do with the tender care of my husband, but don't tell him that.

And what is my new project? A HOME GARDEN!! That is right, I'm going to plant these lovely things, I promise to take care of them to the best of my ability, and we will eat and store the harvest!! The price of organic fruits and veggies is outrageous and my son is incredibly sensitive to the damn pesticides, so we are going to do this ourselves!!

Here is what we have so far:

Not really! That is Martha Stewart's garden. We hope to have a tiny corner of this yard!

Our back yard was hyped as "RV parking" when we bought this house, which means half of it is paved into a horrendous concrete pad. The neighbors said at one time a sweet little garage sat in the concrete pad's spot, but that it was knocked down when a tree fell. We'd love to replace it, but for now we can afford a few above ground garden beds!

Our plan is to put thin beds along the fence and plant "climbing growies" (this is an architectural term) to soften the hard fence, and large beds along the rest of concrete. My husband started making them:

He drafted out plans on the computer and we found lots of great tips about mesh and drilling holes and planting guidelines for Oregon online. We plan to start small: 3 large planters and 3 against the fence for growies. We'll also plant some blueberry bushes in the little bit of actual soil we have along the East wall. I'm so excited to get planting!

Tissue Paper Hearts

Miss Mae and I made these for a couple of her friends for a party she went to today. I saw them on Crafty Crow, and they brought back so many memories of when I was young!We used leftover pizza boxes (that I, AHEM, found), lined one side with some pretty valentine-y paper, glued the tissue to the other side, punched a hole in and tied it up with a pretty, spring-y green ribbon.

The party was a KICK! She actually went to TWO Valentine's parties this year! What a lovely idea to have a Valentine's party. I hope we can do this in a couple of years when things slow down a bit here... I hope to get the pics of the parties up tomorrow - so incredibly sweet.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Everything is all ready to go for making Valentines:Miss Mae's friends: Mr. H's: and:

I believe I have a glitter/glue/horrible-scissors-that-hurt-my-hand/tissue paper hangover.

Happy Valentine's day to you all! (is it St. Patrick's Day yet?!)

Paper Dolls.

These lovely little darlings are free to download from Teri Pettit! I found them at Found It. Love It by Divine Caroline - one of my very favorite daily emails. I haven't talked my daughter into actually playing with any of the paper dolls we've gotten her her entire life, but I'm holding out hope!You can print out her entire tea party. Oh, I'm in heaven!

Hysterical

I know this book has been out for ages - I've given up thinking I'm going to read ANYthing hot off the presses - but holy crap it is funny!!! I am laughing out loud reading it! I read at night while everyone else is asleep and I have tears streaming down my face and I'm biting my lips together to keep from laughing so loud that I wake everyone up.

I'm a fan of Chelsea Handler, but I worried that even an incredibly funny stand up comedian wouldn't be able to put an entire book together intelligently. The first couple of chapters I could hear her voice as I read her words, but that has fallen away, and those words are just FUNNY!

She is crass, she is shocking, she is hilarious. Seriously. READ IT.

Her next book comes out March 10th and I might just be reading it "hot off the presses".

Surprise Plates

Do you have words or phrases that are part of your consciousness - part of you - but you haven't spoken them since you were a child? Surprise plates are that for me. When I was very young my brother and I would make "surprise plates" for each other. If either of us was feeling low or ill, we would put a little of this and a little of that on a plate with a paper towel over it to hide its contents until the other one would whip off the towel and say "SURPRISE!"
My sweet Miss Mae is home from school today, and my first thought was "surprise plate!!"

Another one is "Fishy-toe-bite" but that is another story.

I finally got the courage to sit down and watch a tiny bit of the news this morning about the earthquake in Haiti. I just couldn't stop crying. I can't imagine what those people are going through. Seeing moms screaming for their children... - it simply is horrifying. Too, too much.

There are so many places and ways to donate the money that is so desperately needed - a quick google search will turn up a list - however, another way to help is by donating your gently used shoes and boots. Souls 4 Souls is putting together shipping containers of our shoes to send to Haiti. Right now with all of the broken glass, twisted metal, raw sewage and building rubble on the ground they need shoes more than ever.

Even if you don't have the money to spare, we all have extra pairs of shoes in our closets. In fact it is estimated that "Americans have 1.5 billion pairs of unworn shoes lying in our closets."

Just rubber band each pair together and drop them off at the designated locations. Here in Portland, the drop off location is:
Foot Solutions on SE 82nd.

God be with all of the people affected by this unimaginable tragedy.

Towel Tags Are HERE!

Finally, the Towel Tags are up on the site.
Make sure you all know whose towels are whose, and tag your towels! Don't worry about whether or not your monogrammed towels are clean. Don't wash the family's towels every day. Tag whichever towel you grab and know it is yours for a few showers. Save the planet. Save YOUR energy!

Make you bathroom pretty with blooming flowers. Or spaceships. Or dinosaurs.

Did I mention you won't have to do as much laundry?!

Pretty Enough To Get Me Back To Yoga.

I was just explaining to someone about how I had JUST had a baby and had to answer, "well... he is 15 months old, actually" when asked. It has been 15 months since I worked out regularly. Yes, I worked out every single day of my pregnancy and then QUIT. Maybe if I had this gorgeous wrap to snuggle in after a workout I'd do it again? Seriously. Gorgeous.

New Year's Resolution: Feed My Family

I've never been one for New Years' Resolutions. I've never understood why anyone would wait for ONE time of year to make changes in their lives. This year, however, it coincides perfectly with what is going on with us. There's been a natural break in our schedules and it is a perfect time to start. There are SO many reasons this is so important to our family: we need to save money, we need to eat healthier, I need to get my head on straight. That last one is the biggie - the last thing I need right now is to try to figure out what to feed everyone at the last minute. This is when I give up and tell my husband to bring something home for dinner!

This is a before shot of just a tiny bit of my recipe books piled high with little corners bent over on the pages of yummy recipes I'd like to try. Let's just say I haven't opened one of them since I bent the little page over!I sat down and ripped out every recipe I think would work for us, put them in plastic sheet protectors,and made a binder for all of our family meals. I can take them out and move them around by the week or by dish or by season - anything I want.

I bought this darling little calendar from Clementine NW (LOVE THEM!!)

It stays in my recipe binder and every Sunday night I'm sitting down to plan out the week's meals. If I can swing it I go grocery shopping for the week on Sunday, so far it has been Monday morning. This will work!!!

I know tons of you plan out your menu's for the week ahead - do you have any great tips to help me!?

Free Original Christmas Music!

Download 7 free ORIGINAL Christmas songs today!! The Hipwaders, Brady Rymer, Didi Pop, Gustafer Yellowgold, Princess Katie and Racer Steve, Rock Daddy Rock, and David Tobocman all share NEW Christmas songs!!

A Tudor Feast at Christmas

A Tudor Feast at Christmas Knowledge Network - oh my. Oh my, oh my, oh my. As crazy as it sounds, this sounds like absolute heaven to me! I would give almost anything to be able to be part of a project like this. I love my kitchenaid mixer. I love my Cuisinart food processor. I love my fresh market! Still, the idea of making everything from scratch from the ORIGINAL recipes makes my skin tingle. It was made a few years ago and seems to be a bit hard to find. If you can find it on t.v. in your area, don't miss it! If you happen to be in the area of Haddon Hall in Derbyshire, you can attend a recreation!! Yes, this is where they filmed Pride and Prejudice (deep breath).

Love These Cards!

My kids got these as an early Christmas present from my parents. My parents found the cards at the Elliott Bay Book Company in Seattle, but I couldn't find them on their website. If you can visit the store, buy them there, otherwise they are here at the MoMA store. Or if you can VISIT the MoMA store, oh my gosh go, there! Each matching pair of cards has one complete image of the original painting and one close up shot of it. My kids love them and are learning all of these great works of art! We have our own names for a lot of them at this point - for instance The Seed of Areoi is "Naked Lady On A Rock", and The Jungle is "Moon Head Guy". But don't think for a minute that I'm not planning to teach them about each and every painting, the artist and the year they were painted as they grow up!! Think about the images from books you read as a child - these images will be part of their childhood. (Yes, my arm hurts from patting myself on the back...) We've been playing Old Master (Old Maid) and go fish all week and loving it. Usually, Girl with Ball is our Old Maid because, really, it's only fair.

If you check out the paintings above, seriously get lost on MoMA's website. YUM.

Perfect Stocking Stuffer

LOVE these mixes, too. They are just real ingredients: no trans fats, no high fructose corn syrup, no refined sugar, no artificial flavors, colors, or preservatives. They even have low fat, low cholesterol, and vegan mixes. Mixes are SO much easier, but I hate what they bring with them - these let go of all of the guilt and make just really, really yummy cookies and brownies and more. I chose the mudslinger brownies with a sweet mixing spoon for our Mr. H's stocking, and the snow angel sugar cookies with her own mixing spoon, too, for Miss Mae. I know they will love them!

Attic Journals for Christmas!

I just gave my kids' teachers their Christmas presents. I know some of them celebrate Christmas, I'm pretty sure some of them don't. But we do, so we get to give them presents. I adore Attic Journals. I adore Michelle and Miguel who make them. They are the most lovely vintage books, that would have otherwise been lost, turned into journals - the PERFECT gift for teachers - and everyone else. I found children's encyclopedias turned into journals and wrote personal notes in each one. Miss Mae dictated notes in a couple of them and drew pictures in all of them. I hope they inspire these awesome teacher people to take time for themselves and write their thoughts, or even give them a place to keep their to do lists. I wish I had taken a photo of my teetering stack, but the photo above is one I stole from Attic Journal's website.
I got each of my nieces and nephew one as well. A vintage vampire and werewolf for my Twihards (with photos of Jacob and Edward inside (sigh)) baseball for the little Mr., and palm trees for my California dreaming girl. They are the perfect gifts to encourage little ones, tweens and teens to write, too! Get some for everyone you know!