Cowboy Photo Shoot

While in Salt Lake visiting Candice, my friend recommended I take Elliott to Fotofly for professional photos. Elliott had just cut a tooth, but you could barely see it, so I thought it would be a good opportunity to capture his big, toothless grin for the last time. I love how the photos turned out.

Which one do you like best? Hard to decide...

Vintage Baby Clothes

While unpacking from our move, I found:

...the suitcase filled with cute baby clothes I thrifted during college!

Some of the clothes are already too small for Elliott, but there are shoes and wool suspender shorts he can still wear.

The real prize, however, is this darling vintage child's smock:

I love the colors this seamstress chose to make a simple, blue checked cotton look feminine with the dainty ric-rac embellishment and red bias tape tie at the back.

The construction of this smock dress is also compelling. It is made from a 15.5" strip of fabric 36" wide (back then, cotton yardage was all 36" wide as opposed to our modern 45" or 60" wide yardage). Since the back edges were on the selvedge, they aren't hemmed. The top has a small channel for the bias tape tie, and the bottom has a tiny rolled hem with ric-rac on top.

The sleeves are U-shaped cuts with tiny rolled hems with ric-rac.

When the smock is gathered and tied, the U-shaped cuts stick out like little angel sleeves -adorable.

I want to make a collection of these all in different colors and trimmings.

If Elliott were a girl, you can guess what he would be wearing! He loves his lentil frog.

Elliott's Room

Elliott's room is not 'finished' but at least it's organized.

I still want to:

paint the baseboards and window frame

hang some curtains

hang some art

get a rocking chair

get a table and lamp near the guest bed.

Here's Elliott, chilling in his room wearing cute shorts

Clearing the Land

Adam and I like to think we are 'homesteaders,' but living in a tiny apartment for 3 years didn't give us a lot of opportunity to show our skills. Now, with our new farmhouse on .25 acres, we have all the opportunities we want.

(Left: Friday, Right: Saturday)

Today we devoted the entire Saturday to "clearing the land." It was a lovely spring day and we were quickly rewarded for our work. Our house is on a large lot in a prime location (sometimes we say this would be our dream home if we could buy it, and sometimes we say otherwise) but it has been vacant for almost 10 years. As you can imagine, a vacant house in a downtown location is a target for bums, vandals, illegal dumping, blackberry madness, etc.

We have dug out many many bags of trash and wreckage. Including this car battery and fluorescent light bulb.

Elliott served lunch: fabulous spring salad with oranges, white beans, lentils and a salmon patty on top.

Yum.

It was a treat to spend the whole day together - especially working together on a common goal - clear the land! Make way for ducks!

Spring!

Elliott and I are outside in our new yard!

It's the warmest, sunniest day of the year and the flowering plums are in bloom!

Spring is here - we are so happy :)

I can't believe my lovely life, I am in the sun (at last) and I'm eating dates and oranges with Elliott in our big new yard. I am catching up on unfinished blog posts, so make sure to scroll down and check fora ones you haven't seen yet.

crawling!

Elliott is crawling and he has 2 teeth!

Mushroom Party

I turned 27 yesterday!

27 seems like a milestone because when I was in college, all my friends who I thought wereway older than me were about 27. Now, here I am 27 - it feels good. I'm going to like this year.

To celebrate the day, we had a mushroom party at our house. This is my typical way to celebrate my birthday, though I skipped 2011 (can't remember why) and 2009 (busy being engaged with wedding plans and drama - and didn't have any friends in Seattle yet!). The general idea is that it's a food party where everyone brings something made by, of, with, or from some kind of fungi.

So:

moldy cheeses like brie, gorgonzola, or bleu, etc.

yeast leavened bread

Kombucha (tea, fermented with yeast/bacteria colony)

tempeh (mold fermented soy beans)

any dish with actual mushrooms (Porcini polenta, stuffed mushrooms...)

any food made into the shape of a fungus or mushroom (potatoes cut into mushroom shapes, mushroom cake pops, mushroom meringues, etc.)

I always make a rolled "log" cake and decorate it with mushrooms. Each year I do different flavor combos; this year, it was a vanilla bean cake with orange-mascarpone cream filling inside, and whipped chocolate ganache outside. I must say it turned out really well :)

Elliott wore his new wool mushroom pants from GrittyPretty:

I LOVE them :)

Friends!

I searched through old emails and found my hand drawn invitation to my first mushroom party in 2007:

raw, sprouted buckwheat granola

Candice and I are gorging ourselves on raw, sprouted buckwheat granola. I made a batch the night before I left town for Salt Lake and brought a giant bag for Candice, friends, and general snacking.

It is so addictive due to the delightful crunch of the buckwheat.

Adam's mom brought some delicious granola from Ithaca, NY when she came to visit for Elliott's blessing in September. It reminded me of granola my raw food friends used to make (did you know I ate only raw food for 9 months?!) so I set to work recreating a recipe to satisfy my craving.

It turned out a little different than the one Adam's mom brought, but very delicious none the less.

Here is "my" recipe:

2 cups soaked and sprouted buckwheat (soak 24 hours, sprout 2 days)

1 cup chopped walnuts

1/4 cup sesame seeds

1/4 cup hemp seeds

1/2 cup sunflower seeds

Combine above ingredients in a bowl.

Then, in a blender (VitaMix), make a thick sauce from the following ingredients:

10 dates (or more)

1 Tbsp honey

1 tsp vanilla

dash cinnamon

1 Tbsp olive oil

1 Tbsp coconut oil

2 Tbsp water

Stir the sauce into the seed mixture; then, spread on dehydrating sheets and dry for 15 hours (or more) until crispy. Break into pieces and store in a glass container.

Snack on it plain or with milk or yogurt.