- when was the last time you danced?

This is a busy weekend for me, though you wouldn’t know it by lookin’ this way. My final project is due in my art class on Monday night. We’re doing an exquisite corpse type thingy, with each student telling a story in 15 drawings and then doing a 16th drawing to transition to the next person’s story. I decided to do all of mine in Adobe Illustrator. We’d done a project earlier in the semester where we analyzed a painting, this was mine.

Jar of Apricots by Jean Baptiste Simeon Chardin

I’ve got 8 more images to do in the next 2 days. I blew through 5 today so I’m not worried but I am busy. Aurelia had a brownie meeting this morning, Patrick had the usual Saturday errands to run, and Saebra is off to her first sleepover birthday party with 9 other 6 year-old girls - brave parents, those.

Somewhere in the middle there my Auntie Jo and cousin Tiffany popped in. I’m sitting here at the computer, clicking away at my assignment and I begin to wonder who the strange female voice is speaking to my children outside. It wasn’t one of the neighbors and I wasn’t worried so much as curious - Patrick was out there with them - when I looked up I saw my Aunt. I should clarify and tell you that no one in my family just pops over for a visit, they all live at least an hour away. They were out looking for hanging baskets full of an assortment of flowers that contained no purples. Not finding any to their satisfaction in the usual neighborhood haunts they had driven over to Northampton. Still unable to find the elusive purple-free flower basket they headed over the bridge and ended up on the road that eventually - and by eventually I mean that you take two lefts, an immediate right, merge right and then two lefts over the course of 15 miles - leads to my house. We visited for a bit and I’m proud to say that I didn’t feel compelled to hastily clean my bathroom before letting my Aunt “use the facilities”. I am not a good house keeper, its usually a mad scramble around here in the hours before we know company is due to arrive. They stayed for a bit to visit - crap, I never offered them anything,ugh. I loooove you, Auntie. Tiff too! - and they headed back out to find their prey.

I’m going to go make some pizza for dinner, doughs been rising for a couple hours and it smells so good. Soon I’ll fill you in on my sudden need to make bread. I’m also sneaking in a few stitches here and there on a drawstring bag for my crochet 1 class. Its leftover sock yarn from these and I SO love the colors - it reminds me of Wardi’s Happyscapes.

Toots

- everybody needs a good tweekend

I am on the verge of deleting part of a post from November. I try to never edit stuff - just let if fly, it was truth at the time. But I am seriously tired of this:

These are terms people used to find your blog.

Today

Yesterday

My blog had over 300 hits yesterday, yay. But I want those hits because of my humorous, crafty, artsy, entertaining content NOT because of one little pixie. Knowing, with a sinking feeling, that over half of the people who view this space on a daily basis are looking for one image or pron - and animated at that! - makes me a little ill. I mean, there’s pictures of my kids all over this place.

So yeah - post edited.

Toots

ahhh the velvet fog

Pat and the girls picked these yesterday.

We usually use them to make this:

Violet jelly, mmmm. Cool color, huh?

This year I decided to make an extra something. Super simple.

Violet scented sugar.

I’m finishing up my final art project,  working out kinks in projects for my Crochet 1 class and thoroughly enjoying the return to warm, sunny weather here in Western Mass.

Toots

I promised sock pics.

I made these for Aurelia with what was left over from a baby cardi and bonnet set that I’d made for my friend Erin. She loves em, says they’re SO cozy. *sigh* happy Mama

I decided to make something quick for myself today. I’ve had an itch to do some sewing lately and this seemed just the thing. A while back my friend Annie brought over her copy of bend-the-rules sewing by Amy Karol and in it I saw this:

I though, wait a minute. that looks familiar… because I have almost the same fabric and some green velvet ribbon.

Yup, gotta make this one.

So I did. Love this little bag! I added an inside pocket so I have somewhere to drop my keys. What girl doesn’t like a new purse? I’ll be sewing up a little something for the girls tomorrow, still sketching out the details, pics soon and more socks.

Toots

Final project for my art class is to tell a story in 15 frames. Strangely I feel inspired by Pat’s homebrew.

Here’s where it starts, we’ll see where it goes.

toots

Annie, we were both wrong. Its Fannie.

I have had a great recharge weekend. The kids left with my Mom at noon yesterday and Patrick and I had a whole 23 hours to ourselves. This was our first weekend alone in 6 months, we spent the first 20 minutes enjoying the silence. Then we munched a quick lunch of homemade egg rolls and headed off to Lowe’s to pick up some bark mulch and a new timer switch for the oil burner. Once we got home I worked on cleaning out one of my flower beds, trimming my lilac, and laying down some mulch while Pat put my clothes line back up. It had fallen down last year and instead of having him put it back up I pondered a new home for it. I’m much happier with it on the far side of the garage than right out my kitchen window. Its a longer walk but it gets more sunshine and its out of the way, before it was kind of in the middle of the part of the yard we use. Much happier now

We fired up the grill for the first time, of course Pat had to cut a new bottom grill rack, the old one had rusted out. He makes a nice fireworks show

We then enjoyed deliciously perfect steak, potato salad and surprise beer, (Surprise! You left homebrew in the garage fridge last fall and its still good!). We finally watched The Simpsons movie, “I can’t believe I paid to see something I can watch for free on TV.” eh, it was ok. We watched last weeks episode of LOST and then I pretty much crashed. *snore  snore  snore*

This morning I headed out for a beautiful day in downtown Northampton with good friends. I met Annie at her house, her friend Heather was already there, and we headed to Luna pizza to meet Dierdre, mow some pizza and beer and prepare for enjoying the Harlot. We stopped at Valley Fabrics - *GAH!* - every time I step into that shop I drool, then on to a quick stop at Webs before strolling back down to the Calvin. Stephanie was as entertaining as ever and I laughed some good laughs.  8 hours with friends, thats a good day. I finished one sock and started another, hopefully I’ll have a finished pair for Aurelia tomorrow afternoon - I’m 2 inches away from done Right now I’m off to do a few quick sketches for class tomorrow night and do some work on my final project.

Toots

He’s such a good hubby. He remembered.

Chapter one: A Hanging in Eden

whisky -3, wee-1, ye - 21, dinna - 6, Sassenach - 6, expressive Gaelic phrases - 5, aye - 8, bonny - 1, laddie - 1, ken - 5, scairt - 1, verra - 1, and various wilnas, didnas, cannas, havenas and wi’s.

The bank of mid 18th century Scottich colloquialisms is full and I’m ready to cash a few checks.

I did a bit of weeding today, cleaning up a bit of one of my flower beds, watered my seedlings, finalized my garden plot plan. Hopefully Pat and I will be working in the garden all day tomorrow after the kids leave to spend the weekend with grandparents. I cut away some of last years dead flower cones from my lilac today and saw the new ones poking out, so pretty and petite. Garden pics tomorrow and maybe sock pics as well.

Toots

I am officially out of new “verras, dins, ochs, ayes, worrits, and Sassenachs”

That handsome fellow above is about as close as I can get to how I picture a one Mr. James Alexander Malcolm Mackenzie Fraser. MAN! I’ve been so good, too. I devour books and I purposefully moved in slow-mo through Voyager. I mean, Pat brought it home for me (surprise) last Friday and here it is Wednesday and I just finished it. Verra unlike me.

So. The question is, “Can I wait 25 hours for Patrick to bring home The Fiery Cross?”

How long can a girl live without Jamie?!

(I promise I’ll have a much more in depth post about the Outlander series in the near future. There will even be some knit/crochet involved)

Toots

When did I get old enough to say, “Twenty seven years ago…”? When I realized that Raiders came out in ‘81.

We’ve had a great weekend. A nice pleasant start to a week I can honestly say I have been dreading. February vacation, even with all the distracting activities at the  library and playdates with friends was not a “good Mommy” week.

We ran errands on Saturday and listened to Huey Lewis and Enter the Haggis as we did - nice combo, huh? Saebra spent most of the ride with her head almost out the window and Aurelia with her nose buried in Black Beauty , “Mama. I get it! Black Beauty is telling the story.” We had dinner and a lovely evening with friends (sans Patrick. he was changing oil, oil filter, gaping sparkplugs and changing tires on his car, studs are no longer needed ) and we watched a gorgeous full moon on the way home.

Sunday we were busy in the morning, as my car got the same treatment Pat’s had gotten the night before and our weekly pancake breakfast was whipped up. In the midst of all that Saebra fell twice, once scraping up a knee badly enough to need Daddy to wash and bandage her up and a second time out of a tree. Not so bad except that she was wearing a skirt and little girl undies are no protection from sappy, splintery pine. We’ve decided that we’ll only wear pants outside to play from now on.

Then we headed off to Pat’s parent’s place to celebrate his youngest brother Shaun’s birthday. We went on a great hike up to the Boulders. We saw two garter snakes cooling off in a little runoff stream, one wild turkey,  a stealthy turtle, and a pile of beautiful little wildflowers all poking up out of the leaf litter. The girls did great on what ended up being a three hour hike and they we’re still awake when we got home, though I don’t think I’d closed the door to their room before they were conked out.

Today they made me breakfast - english muffin with jelly, and played wonderfully together out side until lunch. Currently they are on a plant hunt down the street, Aurelia with small scissors for cutting “samples” and Saebra with the collection basket. It took them 1/2 an hour to to both sides of our end of the street, I wonder how long they’ll survive (get along) on the way down and back from the other end.(it took another 45 minutes and they were in great, sisterly spirits when they got back )

Hopefully we’ll have an interesting project to do with what they collect, I’ll let you know.

Yarn caressing continues as well. I’m working on a pair of socks for a classmate and my crochet 1 class begins again on Tuesday at Webs. I only have 2 weeks left to my classes at Umass so they will be a bit crunched with the crochet class added in but I’ll manage

Toots

I struggle with my kids sometimes.

I’m pretty damned laid back. It takes a literal ton of shit to piss me off, or it used to. Patrick and I were married for almost 6 years before Aurelia was born and in that whole time I don’t think he ever saw me mad. Sure there were times I was angry and frustrated at/with him but never mad, and I use the word mad because it implies a bit of insanity (someday I’ll tell you about the Lobster dinner). So upset that I shake, I snap, I feel like I’m burning inside. I felt like that a lot as a teenager. Hormones? Burgeoning independence? Fear of being out on my own and desperately wanting it at the same time? Who knows. I do know that I had a good 10 year run when I only felt like that once. Not so much since then.

I grapple with my inner “angry Mom” every day, its usually the same fight. Most of the time me and sanity win.

Daddy, I’m sorry. I never understood what you were talking about when you would use that word. I never understood just how much it bothered you. I do now, I bet Eliza does too.

My kids BICKER!

Over everything. Everything. It worms its way into my head and wakes up the “angry Mom”, its hard to put her back to bed, but I’m getting better. I can’t stand between them and tell them to work it out for the rest of their lives and I also can’t keep them locked up in their room with a silence punishment either. Thankfully warmer weather has arrived and I can at least put some distance between me and the ear piercing natterings that are my children’s constant little arguments. It helps. Now they only call for me when they really can’t resolve their problem, and mostly before they have resorted to blows (though this may be helped by Aurelia’s injury and Saebra’s knowledge that making that injury worse would bring a pile of punishment down on her, hmm)

Deep, spring scented breaths. I do truly treasure my alone time each mid-day, it helps me recharge my bicker battery. I’m hoping that the good weather will hold out and my kids and I will survive next week and come out whole on the other side - it’s school vacation. I think we will. Really, this is just a small part of my relationship with the girls, so small but when its closer, more immediate, it seems so much bigger.

I was contemplating all of this yesterday while cleaning up in the kitchen and I found the bit of artwork above. It’s Saebra’s version of forsythia, not a plant we have in out yard. Maybe we should. Maybe next week we’ll plant some yellow flowering bushes together so we can remember that time together each spring when they bloom.

Toots