My big week!

Bye Bye Meme!

Lilikoi's Meme (soft e's) left today after two fun-filled weeks. Since we don't have a guest room yet she slept in a tent right outside our house (what a trooper!). Here you see a photo from 2 years ago when Mom and Paul came down to help us build our house. I am including this because I know it is so hard for all of our parents to live so far away from us... and yet they support us. They fork over tons of time and money to drive and fly thousands of miles to see us and their grand kids. They helped us build our home...

We miss you all too... XOXO

Our date out...

Alex and I got to go out just the two of us to a fancy dinner at a tapas restaurant in town the other night. Becca and Mom babysat Lili, and my four parental figures footed the bill as an anniversary present(Thank You!). It was very special, and awkward at the same time. We sat across from each other and it was like hmmmm what should we say? Almost like a first date, only we have been together close to 7 years. It was a lot of fun. There was incredible food. And we got big chocolate ice cream cones afterwards. We strolled through the city with our ice cream... We even would have held hands except Alex had poison ivy on them...

car trouble/ car dreaming

We have known for a month and a half that our 96' Subaru Legacy's transmission is going. The mechanic told us it was a matter of time- he just couldn't pinpoint an exact time of failure. I work 10 hours a week as a secretary figure (processing orders, accounts receivable, customer relations) at Red Moon Herbs. It is a wonderful job and close to home. Well, on my way there this morning it turned out to be that time of failure... The car just couldn't make it up the tiny hill just past our driveway. It never died, just more gave up trying. I had the petal to the metal and it never even died or sputtered, it just crept along until it just stopped, idling halfway up the hill. *sigh*

So... I don't know what will happen now. The cost of the transmission is about the exact price that the car is blue book valued at (around $1,500) I have heard advice never to put more money into a car than it's value. But it has been such a reliable car... I feel like I took the news with relative grace this morning considering car trouble is right up there with going to DMV and the dentist in terms of not fun things to deal with. I just calmly backed down the hill (reverse seemed to be just fine) and parked the car. I haven't sworn or felt hopeless about it yet. However now we need to figure out what to do :(

We have been day dreaming about buying a Honda Fit It has many of things we want in a car: great gas mileage, roomy considering how small it is, made by a reliable company, has a good safety rating esp for front passengers, and it has room to load bigger things in the back. The pitfalls for us are that it is not 4WD (hence the better gas mileage...) and the safety rating for the rear is only a three star and we will be putting our most precious thing in that rear...

Hopefully, since we have been enjoying using our new budgeting program we will be able to tell if we can swallow a car payment, or be able to fix the old one. Either way, it felt therapeutic to share my car woes with you.
If anyone has any wisdom for us, we are taking advice!

Lili crawls around and begs for food...

Balance

Detail.

This is a detail of an unfinished painting (pen and acrylic so far) that I have been working on since my Mom has been here. I thought it was serendipitous when Caren mentioned feeling like a spinning compass in the comments to my "letting go" post, because that is what had come out in my painting that day.

Musical talents I have the pleasure of knowing

My friend Jon (aka Jar-e) commissioned me to paint his album cover last year. I thought that I should show it off and also tell you about how great the music inside is. I love it when I walk in the door and Alex has this CD playing.
A long time ago Jon was a roommate of mine. I remember some nights feeling like I never wanted to live with a musician again as I witnessed firsthand the experiments that make up his unique music. I think he is brilliantly talented (I did back then too- It was more that I had to wake up at 5:30 am to open the bakery). When I look back on it, that was such a fertile time for my friends and me in terms of art. We lived in a big old house in downtown Asheville, I was just out of college, we had simple jobs that allowed us to focus on other aspects of life, big parties in which whole rooms were filled with people painting or making music, we had no kids or mortgages... just a lot of freedom...

Here are some more musician friends worth knowing about that I am lucky enough to call my friends:
Brianna Lane, Eliza Lynn, J. DiMenna, Lindsey Schust, and David Garlitz

PS- one of my favorite things about the album cover I painted for Jar-e is the font you see. I was meeting him and his graphic designer in a coffee shop and they asked me to doodle out an alphabet. So I practiced a little on a napkin, then made an upper and lower case letter for the alphabet on the back of a scrap paper. The designer took it back to his office and made it an official font. That kind of stuff makes me want to become more computer literate. I would make up a font a week if I could.

letting go.

Lili's enthusiastic baby-sitter (my mom) is in town for a couple of weeks. Just a bit ago the two of them drove off in my mom's blue car for a day on the town. They are headed to my sister's house for a dip in her pool and other adventures. They will be gone 5 to maybe 7 hours. I know it sounds crazy but I am having a hard time with her gone. I have left her for this long (three times) but the difference was that I left, not her. She is almost 10 months old. It is time to let go of my grip a little, but... to love with an open hand- to let go, to trust, or to know I can't control it all, and most likely she will be safe and happy- Well, I am working on it as I write this.

And now I am off to CREATE some ART!!! (Thank You Mom!)

Pickles!

Last Sunday Ema, Alex, and I embarked on a pickle making mission. We had collected the cucumbers the night before. It is amazing how you can neglect the garden for just a week and then the once cute little furry baby cucumbers have morphed into giant blimps that weigh down the trellis. This is what happened to us, and we realized it was time to make pickles.
Aside from the huge amount of cucumbers (maybe around a five gallon buckets worth?) we had very little to make pickles with though...

Here is what we had: Cucumbers, 6 stems of fresh dill (shown in the picture above), 1/3 of the garlic we needed, 1/5 of the salt we needed, 13 mason jars, and mustard seeds.

Here is what we borrowed from various neighbors: dill seeds, the rest of the salt, the rest of the garlic, a gallon of apple cider vinegar, and 4 mason jars, and a neighbors dishwasher to sterilize the jars.

As you can see, we were really not prepared. But thanks to the generosity of our lending, friendly neighbors we were able to pull of a very hot, but successful pickle making endeavor. There is something very satisfying to see the jars all sealed and lined up.
Cheers!

time well spent

House Update

Alex spent all day on Saturday trimming out our kitchen window and one window in the living room, and building some cabinet doors (to keep Lili out of danger). After a year and a half of looking at foam insulation every time I did the dishes I am as pleased as can be. Seeing Alex with his tool-belt on, working until 7pm, me with Lili all day, and leftovers for dinner...- It wasn't exactly how I pictured our anniversary day to go, however, we will celebrate when my mom comes to town and babysits Lili this week. And it is all worth it because it all looks SO nice.
Here is the kitchen window.... (I have the first tomato I picked from our garden sitting pretty on the sill too!)
And here's the living room window's trim. The wood is just pine because we plan on painting it someday. The painting on the wall is one of my favorite things, one of Edibeth Farrington's encaustic paintings.

4 teeth at once, all on top

Poor baby...

Happy Anniversary!

Today is Alex and my 5th Anniversary. It has been a wonderful five years together. I am so grateful for all that we have and even more grateful to our families who helped us learn how to be loving and kind and forgiving to each other. Each day my heart is open a little more because of Alex.

Here is the banner that I made for Mayme and Papas anniversary party. Alex strung it up this morning in celebration:
And here is the beautiful painting that Mayme painted of Alex and I on our wedding day. I don't think my photographing did it justice though, but you can get the idea. We have it hanging in our bedroom...

Random thoughts on thriftiness and the domestic lifestyle

I am sitting here drinking some iced nettle tea on this muggy day. I am listening to lullabies and our fan (the king of fans as it is known) is droning on upstairs because Lili is having her afternoon nap. The house is truly a disaster, but I hesitate to clean it lest I wake her. I don't know how with my genes in her she got such light-sleeping genes... That is one difficult thing about living in a house that has no doors- everyone can hear everything. Hence me not cleaning, and rocking out to Enya instead...

Alex and I purchased a budgeting program last week, and today is our official launch of our new budgeted, regulated life. I am not a crazy spender, but, budgeting has never been my forte (Alex is much better) However, now that things have been so tight financially (since having a baby. or... maybe since we started building a house. Or, maybe when I realized all I wanted to be was an artist... I guess I can't pinpoint the exact moment things started to feel constricted, but here we are) we decided we needed a little extra budgeting help. To tell the truth, the thing I am most nervous about is remembering and keeping track of all my receipts. You wouldn't think this would be so hard- but for me, receipts are like little birds that fly out of my jean pockets, or the bottom of a grocery bag, or my pocketbook, or my wallet, or the coat, or the car... I have faith that I can reign them in though...Never fear. Anyways, I will keep you updated on this exciting budgeting adventure you can be sure.

Speaking of being thrifty, I have been making baby food the last couple of months. Organic baby food in jars is expensive (around 90 cents a small jar) and she eats at least three a day jarfuls a day. Alex and I don't eat exclusively organic ourselves, but, I feel it is important to try and feed Lili organic food since toxins effect a baby's body more than an adult. We have this great store in town called "Amazing Savings" and they sell all sorts of discounted organic veggies and fruits. I stock up on them when I can, steam them if need be, and then I blend them in this hand held mixer:
Then I pour the blended stuff into ice cube trays. Freeze them, pop them out and put them in labeled ziplock freezer bags like this:

Then each day we pull out an assortment of food cubes to thaw, sometimes mixing them together like so:
This is a mixture of kale from our garden and ripe bananas. YUM. right???
It has been a little extra work, but satisfying too. I have been doing a little reading in this book as well and gotten some good tips.

I hope this day finds everyone doing swell!
XOXO