ActiviTy

Tuesday has been singing a mixed up version of the alphabet lately. Something like, “a b c d e f g h i j k l m o p h i j k l m o p h i j k l m o p” (repeat the last bit as much as you can before you break down into giggles). And she likes to point to letters she recognizes. I really wanted to do the letter learning based on sounds, but she wants to know what they are called so I’m trying to honor her way of learning and go with that. M’s she recognized first, but I thought it would be fun to do a T day, for obvious reasons. She loved it! I had way too many activities for us to do, but got to a some of them. It’s weird because we seem to do “nothing” some days, and yet they are so full.

We’ve done this activity before, I think with M’s. She loves it, pointing out letters for me to circle with a sharpie. I choose an old magazine and by the end of it she’s finding smaller and smaller letters. I don’t worry if she misses some, I just go with what she finds.

She takes it very seriously as you can see. 🙂

I had pinned these types of sensory bags and made this one up with a lot of tempra paint and a whole little bottle of glitter glue. Tuesday didn’t care about making T’s, but she did like experimenting with the Q-tip. As a bonus I have the bag still in my “no prep” activity file.

I printed off giant T’s for her to color. This didn’t hold her interest long, and I thought it was maybe too limiting an activity for her.

This picture is deceiving because she only did this activity for about 60 seconds total.

We had tea for lunch of course. Did you know parfaits are much better than yogurt with fruit on them? Oh how fancy names change things! Also we eventually did get dressed, and Tuesday wore her T shirt as you can see.

By far the favorite activity was this one that I came up with at the last minute. I got this set of felt letters at Goodwill a while ago. I just jumbled them up so she could find the T’s, grab them and squeal! I told her to hid so I could keep mixing them up. It was so funny, she ran over to the corner and kept trying to peek while I did it. I think I need to do some more hiding/finding type of games with her because this was seriously such a huge hit.
Tuesday is 32 months.

Home Orchard

Last weekend I joined the Home Orchard Society. Of course I only have a small city plot, but I have big dreams. My yard already had a plum tree, hazelnut, and walnut in it (the latter two I never eat, the squirrels do). Last year we planted blueberry bushes and two fig trees into the landscape remodel. This year we planted bare root asian pears, an apple, and a dwarf cherry tree (impulse buy). We also added raspberry and marionberry vines. Oh and then those two little paw-paw plants that seemed so intriguing. Did I mention the strawberries around the apple tree? I hope to have lots of fruit in the next couple of years (we do love sweet things so). But I’m not really serious about it all yet, it’s more like shopping for me. This looks good, I’ll take one of those, etc. I know there is a lot more out there to learn so when we heard about two events nearby in the same weekend celebrating fruit I was all over.

The first place we went to was One Green World (they ship by the way), where I got the paw paws and cherry trees. They have lots of unique fruit that grows in our area. Many things I haven’t tried before (like this one!).

So many weird beautiful things out there in the natural world (although I wasn’t a fan of this one’s taste).

Tuesday was a fan of the gelatos they made from their unique fruits, and the many apples and pears. This one is a pink pearl (I have a better picture of it below). I wasn’t going to get anything…. but I just couldn’t walk away from these honeyberry plants. So beautiful! Now I just need to see where I can squeeze them in, hahaha.

Next up was the Home Orchard Society convention. 400 varieties of fruit to sample! I am a pear LOVER so this was just awesome. I have this great memory of my mom holding a pear for me and telling me what a wonderful smell a ripe pear is. She’s right, there is nothing like it.

Tuesday had so much fruit this day, oh my goodness goodness (as she would say). She was disappointed that all the grapes had seeds though; and quite surprised.


This thing had me running for a garbage can. Oops, didn’t realize the kiwi berries weren’t quite ripe! YUCK!

LOOK AT THIS APPLE! This is the most amazing thing. The Pink Pearl I was talking about above. I did not do it justice either… oh how I want one of these. We have been going out of our way to save the beautiful walnut tree in our yard (special treatments, vitamin type injections, pruning, etc.). I will be so sad if we loose it, but If we do you can bet I’m going to get this apple tree in there. I mean, look at it! And it was tart and sweet, yummy!

Next we got to try to out the cider press. Now, I really had no idea how easy this process is (even though I think I watched Cider House Rules about a hundred times back in the day). And I had no idea that as long as the fruit was clean it could be banged up and bruised. In fact many people use windfall fruit because it’s nice and ripe, talk about easy picking!

They also threw in pears, it was so yummy.


Her second cup.
Even though we got a late start on the day (hey thanks for keeping us up all night little sparkly pants), I’m so glad we went. A great fall event that I hope we will visit again in the coming years. I really want Tuesday to understand seasons, and what is in season. It’s so easy to forget when most anything can be gotten almost anytime of the year at the supermarket. I don’t think it tastes quite like this though, on a crisp fall day, right off a tree.

Wiggly and new

When we were up in Alaska I had the joy of photographing Carmen’s new little baby, Madeline (though Tuesday insists we call her by her middle name, Lucy). I only brought a handful of my gear, since I had to bring it up on the plane. I supplemented with other things I made Andrew drag up to the brightest room from all around the house (like couch cushions). I did bring my sound machine, but despite that I had such trouble getting 6 (or 7?) day old Madeline to sleep! She just did not want to. Of course I stuck it out and got some of her asleep, but my favorites are of her awake and stretching, the unique way only newborns do.





Had to include this last one. Love this diaper cover Carmen made for her sweet baby. Carmen was kind of knitting insane during the pregnancy (in a good way of course). Carmen’s visiting so I got to show her the shoot downstairs in the studio set up, which was fun for both of us (and Madeline’s grandma!). I was pregnant during this shoot, and would be only for a few more days. It seems so far away now, and so surreal to think about. I really do find that the hurts just gets less and less. Time really does heal.

Bring on the Wonder

The concert I posted about happened last Friday (a nice break from all the canning, ha!). Susan Enan showed up to my house a few house early and we chatted while arranging furniture. It was kind of surreal and very awesome. I’m so happy that she agreed to come play at our house. It was such a wonderful evening. Bj was in charge of food and drinks so we had far to much of everything and it was all yummy! I think we had 25 people and Susan relaxed while we ate and talked, then came down for the concert, which we crammed into our basement.

Ok for your photographers, this is with a 35mm lens (on my crop factor camera), so ya, I was sitting this close! She was brilliant of course. She just had her guitar and I loved the simplicity of the music with it. In case you haven’t heard her, go to iTunes and check it out here. Bj and I went back and forth on getting a sitter for Tuesday. Kids were not invited, but I wasn’t sure what to do with mine. We decided a baby sitter probably wouldn’t keep her quite, so she came (with Susan’s ok of course). Luckily she loves music (and totally knows what my death stare means) so she was pretty mellow. Plus my friend’s tweenage daughter was there and Tuesday idolizes her. However at the very end she did get a little bored of sitting still, luckily our friend Luke stepped in.

I was determined to enjoy the concert and not worry about her (grandma was there too after all), and I was able to, I’m so glad!

Some of the group. I know, I know, sorry mom. Everyone told me how much they enjoyed it, and what a cool experience it was. I agree. It was really fun last year in the backyard of someone we didn’t know at all (when she came through Portland), but inside and with so many of our friends it was even better. Bj is on a mission now to find more artists to play here 🙂 And even though Susan ended up spending a couple of nights with us, I only got this one picture under florescent lights!

I’m glad to have it. I wish I had one of her and Tuesday. She was constantly say, “Hey Susan Enan…..” or “Where’s Susan Enan?” Never just Susan, so funny.

Twice as much fun

I have been having so much fun canning lately, but yesterday with my mom it was the best. Not only did we get a serious amount of canning done, but it was so much fun working with her!






1. I brought so much stuff over! We powered through a lot of the goodness from the farmer’s market and our CSA box. Yet we still had to make a trip to the store (and Tuesday and I made two before we came over). It’s official I will never have enough sugar, vinegar, or onions.
2. Apples quartered for apple butter. My first time trying this and it was great (but really with five cups of sugar I was pretty certain it would be).
3. Came up with this: use a steamer basket for lids if you don’t have enough burners to prep them. It worked great. What did not work great was putting vinegar in the water bath. I had read that kept the jars really clean and decided to try it. Result? Our “vintage” canning rack rusted up and the water turned so gross!
4. Bill comes home to our madness.
5. And we had roasted tomatoes going in the oven all day.
6. Some results. Clockwise from left: Carrot Pepper Salsa, Ripe Tomato Chutney, Apple Butter (classic), Tomatillo Salsa, Plum Jam, Green Tomato Chutney, Plum Chutney.

You’re invited

A great indie artist, Susan Enan is doing a round the country concert tour in the backyards of her fans and we were chosen to host one!
You can view Susan’s site here:

http://www.susanenan.com/
And here is a link to her music on iTunes:
http://itunes.apple.com/us/artist/susan-enan/id127995280
I found her when one of her songs (Bring on the Wonder) played on an episode of Bones.
The concert is going to be low key and fun. The doors open at 7:30 and the concert will start about 8. We’re going to be doing a BBQ with hamburgers, hotdogs, and garden burgers. If it’s too rainy we’ll have the gig in our basement, it should be fun either way. Bj and I went to a backyard concert of hers in Portland last year and loved it.
I wanted to let my blog friends know that there are still tickets on her website under live shows. Don’t feel weird if you won’t “really” know me, the concert we went to last year was hosted at a total stranger (to us) house, and it was great. Hope to see you there!