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.

Aunt Candice

Elliott and I are in Salt Lake City visiting Aunt Candice!

So far, we have attended a fundraiser in Briana's honor to support a midwife going through school. Our friend, Vanessa, planned the event for International Women's Day- if you would like to donate, more info here.

Beside the fundraiser, we also visited Briana's crash site - it has been almost 11 months.

Then we visited friends old and new and played with their babies, had a family pizza party, sweat at Bikram Yoga, soaked in the Ogden hot springs, ate ourselves silly (In-n-Out, SmashBurger, ice cream places, bakeries etc.), and played with Elliott.

Elliott LOVES this vacation. Salt lake is having a warm spell (sunny, dry 60 degrees - feels like Seattle summer!) so E has been in short sleeves, shorts, and no socks for the first time in his life! He has been sweating all day and night. He has seriously never been in weather this warm.

I think Saturday deserves some more photos...First we went to Tulie bakery, then met up with friends to Caravan to the Ogden hot springs.

Elliott was cutting a tooth and very distraught on the drive up. However, he loved the hot springs! He was calm, quiet, and seemed to think everyone bathing outside together was pretty interesting.

Then we drove up the canyon to buy honey from the Trappist monks at the Catholic Monastery...but they had stopped tending bees 6 months ago. We did enjoy the beautiful valley of Eden:

After striking out at the Monastery, we drowned our selves in ice cream at Farr's:

And then...we went to SmashBurger. Yes, it really was quite a fabulous day. Thanks Heather, Erin and Sarah for the minivan road trip!

Elliott likes to ride around in Candice's Jeep because he can see out the big windows and soak up some rays. I know I keep posting about this, but we haven't seen the sun in a long long time. You can't know how exciting it is to be in the sun if you haven't lived in Redmond.

He also got a new "car toy" from GrittyPretty. It's a vintage Fisher Price Activity Center!

...Did you have one growing up? So far, everyone who sees it says, "Oh, my gosh! I had this when I was little!" Elliott adores it and will sit quietly in the car while playing with the buttons/dials/levers.

Baby Elliott met our friend Elliott Ferris: two Elliott's!

Candice showed us her favorite new coffee house, the Rose Establishment:

And I went to The Leo (a science/technology/art museum) with Vanessa and her family.

I drew this funny self portrait using an overhead projector-type reflection box at one of their interactive exhibits:

Check out this cutie - total puppy face! Did you know Elliott's nick-name is Budder Dog!

We had a wonderful visit, Candice!

loveU/meanit!

catching up

Ahhh, I have about 6 half-finished entries to post with photos of Elliott, my parents visiting, our new house, and more...but I am supposed to be working from home today. I'll post tonight after I get my work done (I am aligning and editing ITS and 28S gene regions from some Cortinarius mushrooms...if you were curious).

For now, here are photos of Elliott at work last week and the week before :)

...and this is the box where he takes naps!

One Year

This week is the one year mark since I last saw my sister, Briana.

It's hard to believe it has been a year - it seems both too short and too long. On the one hand, I have so many vivid memories of her I feel like I saw her yesterday; and on the other hand, it feels much longer because she has been out of my circle of contact for nearly a year and so many big events (her death, Elliott, etc.) have changed me.

I saw her today (March 2nd) last year for the last time. We were both in California at my parents' house visiting. There was no 'real' reason for my trip beside wanting to visit everyone before I had a baby...and the flight was inexpensive. I love Jet Blue sales!

Briana was in town to attend the birth of her close friend's first baby. I saw her last as she was leaving for the hospital. I had just made African food and she packed some up to take with her. She was wearing the high waisted skirt I made (I lent it to her while I was pregnant). I remember thinking she was a little over dressed, but she always looked great.

We had a nice visit together, here is my post last year about the trip.