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Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Constant Craving: Color


So many ways to saturate my life with color... So little time.

I always do this when I near the end of a freelancing project. I set up a little corner and stash all the projects I'd rather be doing instead of writing advertorials for the paper. I also sign up for swaps on swap-bot so I have a more fun kind of deadline approaching than just a newspaper deadline. Newspaper deadlines are the opposite of fun. They are the stuff of nail biting and woe. Unfortunately, I am not exaggerating. 

Crafting is my carrot. Whatever works, right? It motivates me to get my work done. Once my evenings are free, I can jump into the middle of my colorful toys and play. With autumn here in every way but official date on the calendar, it is my season for pulling out the art supplies and making pretty messes and I am itching to begin!

Only one week until freedom! Which means I'll also be free to catch up on reading blogs and blogging once more. Yay!

Friday, September 10, 2010

Eat, drink and be merry...

Eat: CAKE! What else?

 Cake with lots of filling. Mmmmmm....

Cake to wish on. The best kind.

Speaking of cake. Have you ever tried Birthday Cake ice cream? It is cake batter flavored ice cream with blue frosting swirls and rainbow sprinkles. It is like my happy place - in ice cream form. I haven't figured out if this is a good or bad thing yet... Okay, yeah. Probably bad. But seriously. Birthday. Cake. Ice Cream. There is nothing but joy, even in the name.

Drink: Morning beverage routines make getting out of bed easier.

Current morning drink ritual. Iced coffee for me, iced fruit tea w/local honey (good for pollen allergies!) for my girl, and iced chai for my boy. 

Seeing this photo makes me want an iced coffee big time, even though it is way past caffeine o'clock. I love that these cups even have reusable straws. I saw them and knew it was finally time to replace my kids' near decade old sippy cups that were sort a bit scary by now. Yes, we tried just normal cups around here, but the combo of my boy, my dog, and the constant spilling and shattering glass that goes with those two - non breakable w/lids just works better.

My little drink assembly corner. I want to be a barrista when I grow up. Oh! Have I ever talked about the way I make coffee? When my coffee maker died over a year ago, I ordered this and never looked back. It is the presslike thing next to my teapot in the picture. I love it!


Be Merry: Merriment is rather subjective, no?

I mean, squirrels in a chimney? Well. They make me happy. However, my neighbor - probably not so merry. Another neighbor with squirrel issues. I never knew how fascinating and adorable a family of squirrels could be until my neighborhood became infested with them. Here is a link to the last time we had squirrely neighbors. This time they made a home in neighbor #2's scary old chimney.

I completely missed the shot of the mom squirrel grabbing one of the BIG babies in her mouth and hauling it away. Here are the siblings all... "Ooooooo, she's gonna get it now. I told her not to get out of the chimney when mama wasn't here." I don't exactly know what was happening, but frustrated mama body language is understood across the species divide. I should give that mama squirrel some birthday cake ice cream. It helps.

Oh, and this picture makes me feel all warm/fuzzy inside too. Merry? Yeah, it fits. More than any ice cream on the planet can actually. I love watching them get absorbed in information. 

I have found a love for geography along with my kids. We received this set in a packaged curriculum last year, and have since separated it and made it our own. We color in whatever places go along with our current song, and then point to each place as we sing it over and over throughout the week. Then we learn a bit about the places in the current song. It is fun. Easy. And completely works.

Example: My son was doodling on his notebook last winter and showed it to me. I glanced at it quickly, not really seeing and mumbled something lame, like 'nice' thinking it was a space battle or something. He then started to sing and point and I realized he had drawn a map of the middle east. A kid version that no one would know what it was without being told, but everything was in the right place. Well, I was pretty much sold after that.

So basically, I love, love, love this program. I might try more of their offerings as I think it is the music connection that roots it so far into the brain. Anyone know of a program that sets calculus to music? By the way, I'm raving out of my own true love for this set, the company has no clue I exist. Just a fan.

Okay, that is enough of my rambling on for the evening. Way past my bedtime. Not a lot of computer time lately, well. Not a lot of fun computer time lately is more accurate. I'm finishing up my last freelancing project for the year and it has a very tight deadline. Combine that with all the fall activities starting this week and WOW. Tired. Hence my longing for iced coffees and ice cream and all those good comfort objects.

Happy weekend everyone!

Friday, September 3, 2010

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Keeping me away from blogging...

A bit of this...
 Just me and the kiddos for windy canoe adventures.

 Her first time paddling and she rocked it. Calm in the face of strong currents. Awesome.

Well deserved picnic breaks.

Some of this...

Magical end of summer vacation at this kid paradise.

Wow. Right?

 Waterpark. Mini golf. Arcade. Chocolate/Ice cream shop.
Physical, mental and emotional exhaustion... Well earned and totally worth it.

 Magi Quest. Which was FUN!

Complete with interactive magic wands. Our kind of vacation!

Then of course a whole lot of sleep was is in order - Except thisthis and this made that sort of pursuit impossible...
Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.
I'm listening to the series in audiobook form and it makes it even more intense I think. Anyone else caught up in this world right now? I love my Audible account, but the big drawback is the lack of being able to share. I want to pass this series on to everyone I know!

OH! And one more thing that is big for me. I taught myself to crochet! I found a lot of pdfs and ebooks online, printed a few out and took them with me on vacation. And finally after 10 years of pretty dismal knitting attempts, I finally have a yarn consuming hobby that doesn't have me revisiting the failure dragon I used to face during handwriting class in school. (My hands don't love cursive, and apparently knitting either.) Despite the difficulty involved, I really enjoyed knitting, it just doesn't love me. Perhaps my brain is just too split for the ambidextrousness that knitting requires? No clue what my deal is with cursive...


Crochet, though. We are pretty much MFEO (made for each other - to all those out there that don't speak Sleepless in Seattle). True love always kind of stuff here. The above is just a little garland-type thing I'm stringing out of the million or so flowers I've created while listening to Mockingjay. Mindlessly crocheting flowers is better than chewing my nails down to the cuticle due to audiobook induced stress, I'm thinking.

Well, that is what has been keeping me out of blogland. Just trying to eek as much out of each summer day that we can. I love autumn. It is my favorite time of year, and I am lucky enough to live in a part of the world that does the season proud. But. This year has flown by with a speed that has me digging my heels in, trying to claim some time. Is it just me, or was it just winter a few weeks ago? I just am not quite ready to let go of summer just yet. So we're busy trying to squeeze the sunshine out of every last humid second of this season, savoring the warm days and lazy fun that goes along with it.

How about you? Is fall raging up on everyone this year? Or is it just me? Wishing everyone a few more lazy days of summer!