Daddy Monkey news

Lili has switched from playing the game "How about you are the baby, and I am the Mommy?" to "How about you are the baby Monkey, and I am the Daddy Monkey???"

So I will say "Lili"
and she will say "No! I am the Daddy Monkey!"
and I will say, "Oh right. Um, Daddy Monkey?"
"Yes, baby Monkey?"

When Alex goes along with this game he does so in a growling, gruff, monsterish voice. Lili eats it up. She loves it. We can get her to do most anything if we just call her the right thing.

In other Lili news, I gave her a haircut today. It is a little severe, and there are bangs involved. Ema and Alex have both assured me that it is cute and fine... but my heart was racing for about an hour after I put the scissors down. Our camera has dead batteries~ so no photos of it now. I will just let you picture the very worst, so when you see it you will think: no, no, Lili looks just fine after all.

Saturday night...

and what am I doing?

Well, hanging laundry, and writing a letter to the President (first time I've done that since high school)... Long gone are the days when I felt the need to be doing something social and spunky on a Saturday night.

Here are two small bird collages I made today:also, did you hear Willie Nelson cut off his braids?

new work for pendants

I made these two little dragonflies to use for pendants. Today is my friend Devon's (friend from high school) birthday, and she is in love with dragonflies~ It is fun to work on projects and be thinking of someone or something while you are working on it. It makes it that much more special in the end.

***Oh! and I have been working on a new project that I am excited to share with you~ but you will have to wait until I take some good photos of it, because as you know, pictures are worth a 1,ooo words. Coming soon... :)

some pictures of the little man

Thank you for all of your kind and honest replies to my last post. I haven't been good at replying to the comments people leave me lately, but I want you to know that they always mean a lot to me, so thank you...

(isn't that hairy toe something?)

the flip side.

I have had a few compliments lately about all the cool stuff we are up too. I love to feel like I could be inspiring someone, and as much as it feels good to hear things like this, I want to make sure nobody reading my blog ever feels bad about how or what they are doing in comparison.

Because I promise you it is really easy to look like you are juggling it all so perfectly... and with nice pictures of it too...on a blog. I know I have read blogs of artists or moms who seem like they are doing it all, and doing it all waaaaay better than me. They sew, they paint, they do cool projects with their kids, they have the perfect sunlight in their kitchen, and they have time to capture these beautiful moments so eloquently too.
I don't know these bloggers, so I don't know if they have many dark moments, or moments of laziness, or self-doubt. But I imagine they must.
right?
well at least, I do.

I hope it doesn't seem self-righteous to point this out~ It just is hard to see what other people see you as sometimes. And when I hear my friends or blog readers being amazed by what I am up too I worry that things could seem overly idyllic. Every story and every moment has a depth to it that can be hard for me to capture. And in the bad moments of a day I never think to whip out the camera. Not when I am having a regrettable parenting moment. And I don't think to take snapshots or video when Lili is being rude or is extra disheveled looking. and I don't feel like blogging when I am at the end of my emotional rope, and so days go by when I say nothing here at all.

An example that comes to mind is our goats.
The beautiful part of having goats is how much the children love them, and the delicious, fresh, raw milk we get, and how stinkin' cute they are, and how we farm them in a co-op with our neighbors.
The complex side of the goats is exhausted Alex waking up at 6 am to milk, and the $50 + dollars we pay for them each month, and the long goat meetings we have trying to figure out how to even raise goats, and that we keep them on a kind neighbors land because we don't have the room on our land, and the fact that I don't make it up to visit the goats more than once or twice a week (and they are literally in our backyard), and even our ambivalence about whether it is "worth" it to keep goats right now in our lives. I don't think all that shows through in a pretty picture of the farm.

I can tell this is one of those posts I am going to sorely regret hitting the publish button. I am too far into it to turn back now though, and I do want my message to come through...
I feel like I am living an incredibly blessed life. And I am proud of myself for the choices I have made and for carving out time and leaping into my art. And I am proud of my family and how often we do fun and thoughtful things. But I am often frustrated, and unreasonably sad, and unmotivated so often too. And I don't want those things glossed over.

And I often find myself sucked into the computer instead of parenting. And then something happens like when I turn around, and a little 2 1/2 year old has stolen my purse, found my stamps, and stuck them all over her shopping cart like stickers.

Today's evidence of being a totally distracted mom:
On the other hand, look what we ate for lunch. I made homemade bread (and for the record, it was the ONLY thing I did that day besides parent) with egg salad made from our own eggs, and sugar peas from our garden.
Today's evidence of me being a wholesome mom:So please don't let yourself feel small in comparison to anyone else's blog (I need to heed this advice). Instead, I wish these spaces and stories will inspire us to be the best parents, artists, and humans we can be.

barn owl

I painted this barn owl today in my studio (using the bird book as reference). I cut it out and put it against different backgrounds to use in my glass tile pendants. This way I can not only have a variety of backgrounds for my pendants, but I can also collage it into one of my paintings in the future. And that, my friends, is how you stretch one little painting out. If I had photo shop I am sure I could play with it even more, but I am happy with the owl itself and all of it's incarnations.

I have seen many owls in my life, but I have yet to see the mysterious and beautiful barn owl. I really really hope I do someday.

in my moleskine

recipe box

Remember this post when I was lamenting not having a recipe box of my own? Well, I finally found one at our small thrift store the other day.for only .50 cents :)
It's nice in a vintage yet functional way. It's a big size too.
And why does it say TRIM on it? I have no idea.
Maybe it is trying to encourage me to lose all that baby weight like all the magazines seem to?
I don't know if I will get around to decorating it... or making nice cards to go inside; but it was incredibly satisfying rounding up my loose leaf recipes and putting them in the box. I also discovered that I have an obsession with chocolate chip-pumpkin muffins. I knew I liked them, but I didn't realize how much until going through my random hand written and some printed recipes. I found 8, yes 8! of my 23 recipes were for some variation of this muffin. I was glad to be alone at that moment because it made me look crazy.I narrowed it down to one and printed it on a blank card.
But first I made up a batch.

gosh, nothing clears the heart and mind like a vast horizon.

♥

something cuddly to watch

not too much going on here, but just general cuteness...

more new

new

4" x 4"

my love of glue.

I spent some time yesterday prepping and covering my 4" boxes. And here are some pictures of it in the hopes that you too will be inspired to pick up your own brush when you see the tantalizing drizzle of white glue.

new work

"soft quiet day"
4" x 4" x 1.5"