do i do this every year?

What is going on with me? I have some kind of domestic sickness. All I want to do is cook things, and plan out sickeningly cute, but wonderfully nutritious bento box lunches for Scott and the kids. Yesterday I made two spinach tarts, a pizza from scratch and a loaf of home made bread. Today the kids and I made sushi and we tested out making onigiri.

Look at this adorable blog about bento lunches.
And this cute video blog.
And recipething looks kind of neat. You can store recipes, plan meals and also keep track of what's in your pantry and what you need to shop for.

Also I signed up for flylady yet again. I think that I've been signing up there on and off for something like 5 years.

instructions

Have you seen video jug? Kind of an odd name, but it's a website with instructional videos on all kinds of things, from brushing your teeth, to making a singapore sling.

it's about darn time

Heidi has finally opened an etsy shop, and she has three choice little creatures for sale.

Look! And save your winter scarf budget for when she posts her scarves. I had a hard time putting mine away for the summer!

big projects.more cooking. some funny pictures

My kids are still not back at school yet, and when they do return to school next week, it is again, only part time. We home school and then they go two or three days each week to school. A great compromise solution for our family.

This year, I'm trying to scramble around less, and get back to the way I wanted home schooling to be. Doing interesting things with the kids, taking them places, creating opportunities that they wouldn't have if they were in school full time.

We've decided that each of the kids will have one major project each. Z has decided that hers will be making a podcast! I'm thrilled with this project, and I think she'll learn a lot. It's actually a video podcast, and it's called "Chef's Hat" and it's a cooking podcast for kids. We've already filmed an episode and I'm working on editing it. She has a whole season of recipes planned out. The show will teach people, kids and adults, how to cook a whole range of things that we think most kids will eat.

She hosts the show and does all of the cooking all by herself! It makes me feel very proud.

Sylvan is thinking of doing his project on robotics, and working with Scott, but he's not fully decided yet.

I should be painting every minute of the day, probably. I have two shows coming up in October and I'm not at all ready. Instead, I just want to cook. Right now I have two savory tarts in the oven.

Check out this funny photo set from Scott's Birthday BBQ, photos by Will n Heidi.

yum! pie!

The kids and I went berry picking with Laurel and Heidi, and we gathered enough berries to make two pies!

Caitlin came over and showed Zelia and I how to make pie crust and it was the best pie crust ever. Seriously. It wasn't hard either. She wrote about it on her new recipe blog.

Zelia actually made our pie herself, with some guidance from Caitlin, but no help from me!

indie give away at Modish

If you haven't already, you should scoot over to Modish and sign up for her newsletter and you will have the chance to win a box full of hand crafted and indie designer goodies valued at $450!

end of summer

tomatoes

DSC06425, originally uploaded by monster town.

from the garden...august is a good month

more birds, people, houses

foggy morning

It is a nice cool grey and foggy morning. The summer has flown by, don't you think? The kids are going back to school in just a few weeks and we haven't even gone camping yet, or really even gone to the river! Shocking.

I have to slow down my other activities now and gear up for fall art shows. I got some lovely birch ply yesterday for making panels. I plan to do a little photo tutorial to show how to make them because it's easy and very satisfying. I should have bought the doorskin, which was less expensive, but it was way too large to fit in the car!

Last year, all of my supports for my paintings came from a dumpster behind a cabinet making shop, and I loved that, but this year I have an idea that requires panels of all the same size.

some paintings

I'm listing some paintings on etsy right now for rockity bottom prices. Why? Because I need to buy more paint to make more paintings, that's why!

These are painted on vintage ceramic plates.

meat loaf

Sunday we went to an interesting little dinner party hosted by our friends Will and Heidi (who is an amazing knitter and fiber artist). It was called the first annual "Loaf Off" and everyone was supposed to make a meat loaf to be eaten and judged.

Scott and I used a classic recipe from the Joy of Cooking, and we had a fun time making it. First we had to go to a few thrift stores to find a ring shaped cake pan. Scott found an excellent heavy steel wok and a really cool vintage Pendleton western wear shirt that looks really good on him. see.... here he is, seasoning the new wok in his new shirt.





Anyhow, here's our entry in the Loaf Off...we won third place. It's shaped in a ring, and the center is full of potatoes and shallots.

lots o' stuff

new stuff listed on AppleSeed, and more coming. I'm going to watch some Northern Exposure on dvd and write post lots of goodies until I get all tired out.

yay! thank you!

The first week of running AppleSeed was so much fun! People actually came and actually purchased things, which was so exciting. Mostly it was thanks to being mentioned on Modish, which if you don't know, is a great indie shopping / style blog.

I had a busy week in other areas of life and work, and didn't get as much posted to the store as I would have liked to, but this coming week, be on the lookout for lots of vintage lucite and bakelite jewelry, including some reworked vintage stuff made by me!

Also I have about 20 pr. of new old stock vintage eyeglass frames from the 1950's, and they will be very reasonably priced. And I have a ridiculous abundance of vintage sewing patterns from the 30's through the 70's.

And look at this dress:

me and Edith Heath

K. over at hopingforhappyaccidents wrote about collections yesterday, and mentioned that she collects Heath pottery.

I collect it too. Also I love to think and talk about the collecting behavior and why certain people are drawn to certain things. My Heath collection started a few years ago when I saw this cup and saucer in a thrift store for .25.



When I saw it, it made me think of that book, The Chess Garden by Brooks Hansen, and the character (whose name escapes me) who lives in a tower and collect objects that are "the" one of their kind. Like the ladder that holds the essence of what a ladder is and should be. I saw this cup and I thought wow, this is "the" tea cup.

I went home and researched Heath and found that it was made by a ceramicist named Edith Heath, right near here in Sausalito.

I went back the next day and found a covered casserole dish and a few small plates! Then I had a collection. Over the next few years I've picked up plates, luncheon plates, lots of studio mugs and bowls and ramekins and ashtrays and three creamers and two pitchers and some large serving bowls and platters and every time I find a piece it brings me this strange joy. Other thrift shoppers pass it by as just some kind of boring old stoneware, but I think it's exquisite. I love the earthy colors and the glazes and the shapes (especially of the coupe style stuff).

Here is most of my collection:




The down side to thrift store Heath collecting is that you just take what you find, so I have a wide variety of styles and colors. I only had three pieces of my favorite color (brown outside, pale speckley blue inside) and one of them broke!

The up side of course is that nothing shown here cost more than $3.00 except for the large brown serving bowl that was a gift from Scott.

What do you collect?

80's shirt and dress

Well, I did find one really cool 80's secretary type of shirt.

I think the reason that I usually pass up the 70's and 80's stuff is that craftsmanship is generally lacking, you know? But this shirt is beautifully made, and it's from I. Magnin, so it was originally very expensive and...it's covered in modern looking baby chicks! What do you think?




I also found this sort of granny chic, homemade 80's dress. It doesn't look as cute on a mannequin as it would on a person, with accessories and tattoos and such, but on me...wow, frump city!

produce

The kids and I picked produce from the garden early this morning. The tomatoes and cucumbers aren't doing as well as I'd hoped. We got two cucumbers total out of five plants. The green beans and squash are doing great and the pumpkins are already ripe! We have figs and walnuts too, but the asian pear tree got an infection and we're just hoping that it will make it through the summer.