At last, I finished something so very simple that I started last July. It’s an accessory scarf. Not sure what I’ll do with it; I’ll probably package it up and store it as a “someday gift” for someone, or maybe one of these days I’ll get going on an Etsy shop and try to sell online.
In any case, this is the outcome of my creative efforts this week.
Updated to add: Why wait? If you want it, you can buy it.
A dinner for two:
Quinoa and Portobellos
2 portobello mushrooms
1 medium onion
1 Tbsp. safflower or olive oil
Pinch of salt
1 tsp. dried chopped basil
Black pepper to taste
1 cup of quinoa
1 3/4 cups water (or use vegetable stock)
Rinse the quinoa well. Bring water and quinoa to a boil in a pot. Reduce the heat to a simmer, leave the lid on partially. Turn off the heat after about 15 minutes and let it stand.
Meanwhile, slice the mushrooms and onions into strips (not finely chopped). Over medium heat, sauté onions and mushrooms in the oil for about 10-15 minutes, until vegetables are tender and a little carmelized. Add basil and black pepper, then serve over a bed of quinoa with a lettuce salad on the side.
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I thought this was very tasty. Husband dutifully ate some; he doesn’t like portobellos. But maybe I’ll make it again to eat for lunch.
It’s late. Here’s this week’s work for Creative Every Day. This is one of the things I do all day. Every day. Don’t let the brevity of my text lead you to think I dislike this or find it a chore. I enjoy each day, even if I do find it a little challenging to keep thinking up new stuff to draw (or to keep repeating the same thing because Bean’s focused on it. For example, one day it was the letter X. She wanted me to write X all the time.) No, the shortness of this post (in terms of word count) has to do with my level of exhaustion. In this case, several pictures are worth several hundred (or thousand) words!
And here is what the bottle fairy looks like! (Created on the fly. No pun intended.) We’ve been telling Bean about her. She can say who it is when she sees the picture, and she says “Bye-bye bottle” when asked what the fairy does. I don’t know that she comprehends what is really coming, though. Time will tell. I’m waiting on delivery of the item that the fairy will leave. I also need to get to a point of mentally committing to doing this, and to let go of my attachment to this particular way of being intimate. We have many many other cuddles and intimate times. She’s getting almost too big to hold like a baby anymore.
Husband is a researcher. For months he has diligently tracked the housing market to see if house prices will enter a range we can afford. In the past couple of weeks, we have taken field trips to various parks in San Jose neighborhoods to see if we like the area, and to see what our money could buy. Unfortunately, this also means a much longer commute for Husband. He works in Mountain View, although this is not a given forever. Yet we cannot afford to buy a house north of Santa Clara.
So far, we’ve learned that the house we want (about 1,400-1,700 square feet, two baths, and a small yard) we can’t afford in certain neighborhoods (or we can only afford a town home, but those rarely have yards), and the houses priced so that we could buy are in neighborhoods that are run down or downright scary. It still galls me that $500,000 can only buy a shack. But we will continue to look, to eliminate areas and narrow down a few regions we might afford. Then we’ll see what happens to the market. It continues to move in our favor, but we’re still talking scads of money. Since we already pay $2,200 a month for rent — and since we know it will go up again this year — we might be better off at least getting some equity built up (though it will take many, many years for that to happen).
I took the photo below at the San Francisco Zoo. If only my housing issues were as simple as a ladybug’s. This looks like an inviting place.
While Bean naps (fitfully today, I might add), I’m going to crank out a post about her.
First of all, her language acquisition is amazing. When asked what a rooster says, she replies with “Cocka do do!” When she eats food she likes, she says, “Mmmm, ‘licious!” (for delicious). She is game to try saying any word or phrase and often comes very close. She always asks, “Doing?” and we describe what we are doing to her. She is saying short sentences, such as “Mommy brush hair,” or “Daddy go potty.” Her fourth molar is nearly through completely, thank goodness. Then we’ll have cut the four canine teeth and then some peace until the last molars come in around 24-36 months.
She has quite a will, and it shows in several ways. For example, in the first year of her life, on rare occasions we would go upstairs to watch a PBS show called Between the Lions. It’s a language show featuring a muppet-like family of lions that run a library. (The pun is twofold — you go between the lions into the library, and you can read between the lines to understand more.) Anyhow, she had seen it maybe ten times in her first year. About five days ago, Bean stood at the bottom of the stairs, pointed up and demanded, “Lions! Lions!” and made her lion roar. When we understood what she wanted, we took her up to watch an episode. Now it’s a daily request. It doesn’t matter if she’s seen the episode before; repetition is how kids learn, after all. So I figure 30 minutes a day won’t hurt. We watch with her, although we do this in part because the room is NOT child-proofed. I also reserve the right to say no, but this usually creates a tantrum.
I also recently introduced crayons and a spiral drawing book. (I tried the toddler crayons, but her hands are too small to hold them, and she prefers the regular shape anyhow.) Several times a day Beanrequests “Crayons! Crayons!” I take them out and draw pictures for her, then write out the word. She says, “Again!” and “Drawing, writing.” She tries to scribble and is still working on her grip. Her grandparents gave her wooden blocks with letters, and more than making towers, she loves to have us spell out words with them. Her other grandma gave her a Leapfrog game (but it cost much less than the Amazon price) that resembles a computer (she is dying for one of ours) that teaches letters and sounds. Several months ago, Bean knew the letters O, Q, T and X; since Christmas, she has learned to identify A, B, C, D, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, R, S, W and Z. I’ve lost track of her vocabulary, but it’s large.
The last area where her will is formidable is the milk in the bottle issue. She still refuses milk in a sippy cup. She still wants to take milk in a bottle with only me holding her. She can produce a huge tantrum if other options are offered. So, I’ve got a plan. Did you know there is a bottle fairy? She comes to children who are ready to drink milk out of cups and takes away all the bottles and leaves a gift! (A mother at preschool told me this idea, which she said worked with her 19-month-old.) I talked to our pediatrician, and she loved the idea; she thinks it’s a gentler way to introduce the transition (though there will still probably be tears). She suggested I talk about this to Bean for a couple weeks; tell her about the fairy, show pictures (which I will have to draw), and build it up. The gift that the fairy will bring is a rocking horse. At the holiday party last weekend, Bean monopolized the rocker there, and since then she has tried to rock on every type of rocker she has seen at the park and preschool. Rocking soothes her (she does it a lot even without a rocker). I couldn’t find one locally I liked, so I ordered one from Little Tikes.
I will say this: she has relatively few tantrums, and usually it’s due to a thwarted desire and not to frustration over being misunderstood. We have the good fortune that she speaks as many words as she does and that she enunciates so well. It could be worse!
We adore her so much!
The first week of January is nearly past! I have only a few minutes to write this post, so it’s a bit scattered. I signed up to participate in Creative Every Day 2009, so here’s my first post about it. For Christmas I received some culinary items: a jumbo muffin pan, four really heavy cookie/jelly roll sheets, 6 tart pans, 4 mini loaf pans, and 2 mini cake pans, along with a book called Small-Batch Baking. I really enjoy baking (even more than cooking), but most baked goods are indulgences. And as we should know but have forgotten, an indulgence is a treat, something enjoyed specially; however, the quantities most recipes create are many dozens of cookies or large pies and cakes that a family of three does not need.
This morning I put the loaf pans to use by making more pumpkin bread. I’ve found that large loaves don’t get consumed quickly enough, and another point to baking small is to reduce the amount of temptation to overeat. I was really pleased with the results and look forward to making more goodies. The recipes in the book make very small amounts; for example, a recipe for a cake makes 2 little cakes (slightly larger than a jumbo muffin) or a half a dozen cookies.
I’ve also decided this year to get creative about food in a different way. I received three other books, some of which provide ideas to ponder and one of which also has recipes. One of my relatives has undergone a significant weight loss, and she and I discussed eating habits and the need to remain healthy, and how excess weight impinges on health. Eating differently — heathfully and in less quantity — is also a creative response to environmental issues.
I realize I have, for too many years, consumed food mindlessly in quantities that would shock a large percentage of the world population. As I watch my daughter learn to eat and to feed herself, I’ve felt my conscience poked and prodded. She follows her natural hunger and satiation. It’s been so long since I stopped at satiation. I know what hunger feels like but often eat as recreation, and I often eat beyond simple fullness. So many people live on much, much less. And in fact, as my relative and I discussed, our sense of proportion is extremely skewed. We have grown accustomed to large servings and lost the understanding of how truly little a body needs to thrive. By reducing how much I consume, I can save our family money, and some of that money will go to organizations such as Feeding America and Heifer International. So the books I will be reading are:
We have family we are born into, and we have family we create, and since our culture beckons us to wander in search of better opportunities, we are often far from our born family at holiday time; so we turn to celebrating with our intentional families. Today was such a gathering. The core of the group is three men who’ve known each other many years. They met “back in the day” at college and at their first professional job. They’ve seen each other through flush times and rough times, called-off engagements and divorces, the death of a parent, cross-country moves, weddings, and the births of their first children. Husband, M, and S, and those “born to” family members nearby this holiday gathered to feast and catch up today. Bean, as usual, loved the party. She is a smiley ray of sweet charm. She managed to rise to the occasion despite the discomfort of two molars pushing through (but they are almost done, thank goodness).
My mother-in-law arrived today and we had Christmas again. I caught this shot and decided it was one to share.
I’m leaving soon to go see my friend in Oakland. I uploaded a bunch of photos and videos to Flickr for friends & family to see. Bean enjoyed Christmas immensely. Here’s one photo to tide you over.
We had a lot of fun in San Francisco. We started later than planned and took the car instead of Caltrain, because Bean was cranky and had a slight fever in the morning, and Husband has been sick. I wanted to see how things would settle out. But it seemed okay to leave them, and we arrived around 10:30. It was very chilly and breezy, but the sun was out, so we walked from the AT&T stadium (where we parked) up the Embarcadero for awhile. Then we caught the MUNI and went to Fisherman’s Wharf.
We ate New England clam chowder in a bread bowl, then did some shopping for gifts. Then we hiked a few blocks to look at some art at Lahaina Gallery (my eyes almost popped out of my head when I heard the prices). We looked at a couple of works by Dario Campanile — Il Banchetto (which I really liked) and La Tazza Blu. We also looked at originals and prints from James Scoppettone (the photo on the site doesn’t do justice to the vivid painting). Since we didn’t have a spare $17,000 for the original or $3,000 for a limited edition canvas giclée print, we left without purchasing anything. Then we walked to Ghirardelli Square for hot chocolate and yummies.
Then it was back to the Wharf for dinner and a little more shopping. We ate at Neptune’s Palace and saw the sunset. We had a perfect view of the bay and Alcatraz. From the angle we sat, the island looks like a large tanker ship. Then we got a trolley to MUNI and took that back to the car. We were home by 7:15 p.m., in time to see Bean a little while before her bedtime.
She and her Daddy had a good day together, but he was exhausted. We were originally going to take a little day trip today to the coast, but since it’s cold and might rain, we might just stay home and bake cookies instead.
Here’s a photo from the other day. It was close to dusk, windy and cold, but we had to get out of the house for some fresh air. This is a sweet shot.
I should have been in bed several hours ago. Instead I spent it tinkering with photos and movies and uploading nearly two dozen of them to my Flickr account.
We are going to SF today. I’d better sleep.
Creativity is at the core of my life. At least, this is how I’ve felt for several years. So I’m diving in and will participate in Leah’s 2009 challenge, Creative Every Day 2009.
Christmas just isn’t Christmas to me without a tree. For years I had a teeny table-top tree that my mother gave me, and each year she gives me more teeny ornaments for it. Last year she sent me a slightly larger version of that tree; since horizontal surfaces are scarce, I didn’t plan to put it (or the teeny one) up this year. But Husband persuaded me that we could put it on our dining table. I went one better and put it on the counter near an outlet so the lights can be on and little hands remain safe. So here is the Grandma Tree (it is actually tucked against the wine rack and against the wall):
So LKD, now things are all better. 🙂
Hurray! I did it, I did it! And now it’s time for the Yule season. Given that Bean’s little hands find it hard to resist touching interesting stuff, and that holidays are about happiness rather than scolding “No, don’t touch!” we have opted out of a tree this year. Plus, we need the floor space to play, and a tree would seriously crimp that.
I’ll get out a few decorations in addition to this garland — I just need to find ways to make do without horizontal surfaces. Bean is getting into everything now.
While including food might be pushing the definition of “art,” I decided that today’s creation would suffice for AEDM. At least it’s a domestic art, and one can enjoying looking at, smelling, and tasting it. I cooked the little pumpkin we bought last month and pureed it, and then I made the bread from a recipe on Allrecipes. (Note that I used two 9×5″ loaf pans instead of the three 7×3″ in the recipe.) It is really good — Bean devours it (and this is how she gets an orange veggie, since she refuses them in other forms), and so do my friends and I. It’s the kind of bread that tastes better after a day or two as the spices meld.
Happy Thanksgiving!
My contribution to Illustration Friday’s topic this week: Opinion.
Our date was lovely. We decided that since we rarely get to enjoy a meal without refereeing someone, we would have a leisurely dinner. Then we went to a toy store to look for possible gifts for Bean (we are setting a budget) and then to a bookstore to drool over books we want for ourselves. It was a later night than usual, but I’m glad we made time for it.
Here is today’s piece. I’m feeling unsure if I can come up with stuff for the next eight days; my inspiration well feels dry. Oops! I hear Bean awake from her nap.
Tonight when playing with her father, Bean said “I see you!” in response to Husband. In a little while there will be a video uploaded at Flickr for friends and family viewers (you need to be logged in to Flickr for the video to show). (Being a private man, I don’t share photos and videos that include Husband on the blog.)
I’ve lost track of the new words she’s got now. Let’s just say that we are now spelling certain words and are very, very careful not to cuss near her. Not that we cuss much, but every now and then a damn might slip out if we aren’t being mindful.
Bean also now says yes as well as no when asked direct questions. This has made feeding her much easier. “Do you want grapes?” “No.” “Do you want pineapple?” “Yes!” Or: “Do you want to play with puzzles?” “No.” “Do you want to read a book?” “Yes!” Until recently, one-syllable words that end in “s” were pronounced as two-syllables: bus was bah-ss, mouse was “meh-ss”, and yes was “yeh-ss.” She’s getting more fluid with practice, but it’s still really cute the way she pronounces these words so deliberately in that little voice of hers.
Also, while we were at a friend’s home today, Bean interrupted her play to walk over to me and give me a kiss (she’s still learning so it wasn’t quite a pucker, but it was clearly a kiss). Then she returned to her little friends. It was really endearing.