Should Be Sleeping...

Wondering if officially getting back to work with students this week will keep me from the special place this has become for me.

As per our Saturday ritual, we visited our local farmer's market. I must have been hungry when I shopped, because I bought soooo much. I don't know what I was thinking. I had at least five recipes floating around in my head. One recipe was for Indonesian corn fritters. I found the recipe here, if you'd like to try it. This was incredibly quick, easy, and very tasty. Cub loved it too. I served it with my new food obsession...yogurt cheese. Sounds strange. It's just low-fat plain yogurt, placed in a coffee filter, placed inside a strainer that sits inside a bowl (to catch the moisture). It's all covered with plastic wrap and sits in the fridge over night. The yogurt gets super thick and creamy. I've made raita out of this recently. In the morning I added honey and sliced almonds. For a late night snack this evening, I've spread it on whole wheat crackers and topped it with cucumber slices. There are so many things you can do with it. A family member who was watching her cholesterol used to blend it with butter and use it as a healthy alternative to pure butter.

And for the random photo of the night...We were leaving my grandparent's house tonight and I walked by this room, looking for Cub's sandals. Then I back-tracked and took the photo. There was something I wanted to capture here. The warmth of the light and the way it filled the room reflected my feelings. Way back when, this was a room my brother and I shared when we first went to live with my grandparents. There used to be two beds, two dressers, two lamps.
As the years passed, the room has had many incarnations. It became my brother's room for many years and then my grandfather's office. Now, it is a simple guest room, intended for my daughter and I when we spend the night. Funny, after all these years, it still feels like home to me.

Crafts and Ketchup

Welp, we did okay today. We made it. The thoughtful calls and emails wishing me a good first day back to work kept me going. Collective energy is a beautiful thing! This evening, Cub played with her friend who lives downstairs. It was a nice way to end the day. While they were having a ball, I finally listed those items in my etsy shop. There are a couple of other goodies as well. I still have some more notecards, notebooks, bookmarks, and necklace plaques to whip-up and post. I'm aiming for after the weekend.

Birthday Girls

Butter Bee Notecard Set

Back to School Horsey Notebook


Now that I am making all of our bath products by hand (including toothpaste and shaving cream), I'm on a mission to make all of my own kitchen condiments. I can not wait to make homemade ketchup, something I've been thinking about for a few weeks. This recipe looks perfect. It comes from one of my favorite places. After that, it's homemade mayo and salad dressing. Anyone have any good recipes?

On this day...

My day started in chaos after a young woman who was supposed to buy our old car seat, kept me waiting two hours. I went back and forth between being really mad, trying to understand and be patient, before deciding that nothing was going to make me miss out on a second of this day. At the last minute, I cancelled plans to meet friends and headed to our special place.

I had it in my mind all along that we would spend this last day of my vacation at our favorite spot. We had a picnic lunch, played hide-and-seek, collected rocks for painting tonight, talked a lot, watched a short film on Alice Austen's life, and just enjoyed being together. I even signed-up to begin doing some volunteer work for the museum. (In all my spare time!)

My girl told me today, "Mama, you will always be with me. You will be in my heart."

I will replay those words at least one hundred times tomorrow.

My Girl, Mama wants to thank you for a beautiful summer. It didn't go exactly as we had originally planned, but it worked out better than I ever could have imagined. We were blessed with spending each day together, doing the simple things we both love the most. I am so sad to see it go, but we have another wonderful season approaching, and so much more to share.

Besides cooking when I'm stressed or sad, I tend to clean, pray a bit more than usual, stay up really late, and...play with Sculpey. Cub's dad and I started this when we first began dating. I made him all sorts of little animals and would paint them with nail polish.

Anyway, I unearthed some Sculpey a few nights ago and decided to make a necklace or brooch for Cub to wear when she starts school next week.

The "chocolate pretzel" became a necklace that she wore to the doctor for her back-to-school visit (and shots). She did so well. The rest are now living on our fridge as magnets. I'm so proud of my little apple and acorn! I know, I'm pathetic...


Kristin, here are the first paper beads I began rolling. They are very therapeutic to make. I shot them on Macro, just because. I have been making these like crazy and have advanced from supermarket circulars and fashion mags to Chinese take-out menus, old wallpaper, and more foreign language newspapers. I bought all kinds of wire, beads, and findings to begin playing around with jewelry-making.

I have all but abandoned my poor etsy shop, but a few days ago I posted two things just to warm it up. I sold another bluebird snow globe. Yay. Thank's Muse Lily. Below are some more things that will go in my shop soon: One of my Back to School notebooks, a Birthday Girl snow-globe, and the Butter Bee Stationery complete with yellow flower seals. The little package is my thank-you gift to Lily.

And to show you the "other side" of the island that is Staten, in all it's glory...

Here is a totally random photo I took yesterday as I approached THE MALL. I can't be the only one who thinks this is b-i-z-a-r-r-e!

Thanks to everyone who has sent me supportive energy over the last few days. I do believe thoughts and wishes are things and that they do reach their destination.

So, thanks and keep the good vibes comin'! They are so needed and appreciated.

The past two days were filled with outings with friends, paper-crafting (I'll share soon), a wee bit of free time alone for a change, and turning these...

into delicious gazpacho from one of my all time favorite cookbooks, stuffed eggplant, raita, jam, and one simple stone fruit crisp. Yes, I did a lot of cooking. It's one of the ways I cope with stress. In this case, I am preparing to go back to work in four short days. I am so grateful for our beautiful summer.

There was a well-attended concert on Saturday morning, too...

Given by none other than "Chelsea!"

Our last weekend of summer, both a little sad. It means changing our lives around again. It means not spending every day with my adorable little one, saying g'bye to seeing all the friends we unfortunately don't always have time to see during the work year. Most likely an end to all of the creating we both did inside and out, the long lazy mornings just being side by side. If you can, send some good vibes over to me and my girl this week.

Love

Wanted to send some love and sweetness out there this evening.

Goodnight, Summer

I've been obsessed with paper more than usual lately. If it's recycled paper, oh my...look out!

Right after reading an Instructables tutorial on how to create elegant gift boxes from old cereal boxes, I flipped. I knew I was saving all of those cereal boxes for something magical.

I whipped this one up, my first, in about 15 minutes. Gotta love a quick project.

I never buy wrapping paper and I'm always looking for new ways to package gifts. For the holidays last year, I made small boxes (for my wee gifts) out of the boxes from a famous brand of stuffing! Sometimes I use pieces of fabric, sheets, pillowcases, plastic bags, whatever I can grab. I aways save tissue paper from gifts I receive and use it for a quick wrap.

This summer, I started putting these little pipe cleaner creations on top of my packages.

Like mother, like daughter. Look who made an Olympic gymnast in camp yesterday! Isn't this a brilliant little project? (Good one, Miss Toni Ann!)



Today, I made a list of all the paper crafts I want to make. It's called my "Someday" list.

Paper Beads (Must!), Dollhouse made out of shoeboxes for Cub, dollhouse furniture made out of cardboard, Mexican inspired paper mache bowls, POIC's (I'm still learning about this one...), paper dolls and their clothes constructed out of the crazy amount of catologues I recieve!



I saw this photo before I took it, while exiting tonight's concert in the park. I thought it looked a bit surreal, like an ice-cream UFO or something out of a David Lynch movie. Looking at it again, I'd title it, "Goodnight, Summer."

Shopping Center Revisited

This past weekend, Cub's grandparents took her way out on Long Island to the Annual Bluegrass festival. My girl likes loves two kinds of music. She is very particular. It's Classical or it's Bluegrass. Funny, I guess the bluegrass music has something to do with her Texan grandfather. It's very cute.

Anyway, this afforded me the luxury of a solo trip to visit my grandparents. They still live in the same house we all grew-up in, my mother included. Long Island was a place I spent my most of my life trying to run away from. In my teens, everything I wanted to do was in the city (30 min. away). In my twenties, I wanted to live in the mountains upstate, so that is where I went for my higher education. Then I travelled around a lot. In the 90's, I lived in Portland, Oregon for three years. At thirty, I came home to the New York area. I lived in Manhattan for eight years, before getting pregnant with my daughter and moving to Staten Island. I never thought I would live here, but it's okay for now. I still have dreams of a more rural landscape and a slower pace. We'll see.

One thing I love to do when I visit my old home, is go to H Mart, the Asian supermarket. There are so many goodies there. I always buy tea, rice, snacks, frozen dumplings and edamame. Usually, some kind of little present for her. This time around it was a large soup spoon.

While cruising down the treat aisle, I found this vision of Japanese cuteness. Who can resist a chocolate mushroom? Not me!

This is what the shopping center looked like as I was leaving H Mart. It may look like just a shopping center to most, but it holds so many memories for me: shopping at Woolworth's (now H Mart) with my mother for Christmas presents for the family. Getting fitted for shoes at Buster Brown. Later years, playing spin-the-bottle behind Grand Union (H Mart!).

This is another one of the many reasons I love that H Mart! Hello Kitty vending machines outside. Yippee!

Now that the cool nights have set it, I'm back to my bread baking, finally. This was the honey-oat recipe I wrote about before. It's very tasty. I had a tough time getting one of the loaves out of the pan. Can you tell which one?


Last night, I learned that it's helpful to read the reviews written by folks who have already made what you are about to. This dough definitely needed more time to rise than was written. So that info was veeeeery helpful! I also substituted one cup of the wheat flour for one cup of spelt flour. I started the bread around 9pm, when the house was quiet. I started reading this very interesting book that I found at the library yesterday, in between the stages of making the loaves. To me, it was the perfect evening.

Any nice evenings to share lately?