February 2012
30 posts
6 tags
Bananas plus coconut milk. Snow plus bin.
Came across this recipe for banana coconut milk pancakes I scrawled dwon this summer, and lo and behold I had both cocnut milk and bananas in the house. So I tried ‘em, and they were deelish.
And I made a few important calls on my cell phone over lunch.
Also, propelled by Axel’s desperate boredom, (being tired of all his toys and all his climbing/wrecking-shit-up stations...
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Mess 11
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Wearing caps, holding hands
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Honey, honey
Don’t want to forget this combo, it totally worked: cheddar and raw spinach rolled in a Swedish pancake (kind of like a crepe) topped with honey and served with bosc pear.
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The more it snows (tiddely pom) the more it goes...
It’s snowing. Everyone is asleep. I’m leaving the dishes for tomorrow. It feels so different when it snows in late winter than when it snows before Christmas. Then there’s this buffer, you feel like it’s making everything cosy and picturesque. This feels more ominous somehow. No it doesn’t. It feels more peaceful. Or what is it? Neither, it feels like it’s...
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“And that was what she often felt the need of- to think; well, not even to think....”
– Virginia Woolf
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I`m flying my plane, right? No, I am flying my...
In Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones I read about a study on how women add qualifiers to their statements. For example “‘I like this, don’t you?” Or “This is terrible, isn’t it?” The study showed that in their sentence structure women were often looking for reinforcement for their feelings and opinions. They didn’t just make...
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“Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries.”
– Theodore Roethke
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What is it?
I guessed a bear, but no, it is a groundhog. (One who sees with his body and his paws as well as his eyes, apparently. )
And this page painted black that I almost threw away, but then didn’t after I asked what it was?
His shadow, of course.
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Dirty boots are on (Sonic Youth)
Country for a couple days. Got to slow down and got to be outside a lot and got to get muddy. It was good. Went to a secret spot, climbed up to it sliding on the mud, ducking under branches.
And this was up there: green itself.
And these dark red and light straw colours were restful.
Even in winter there was plenty of play food around to collect. And when you play that your house...
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4:30
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Before we drop the subject
A. found a pile of Valentine’s themed scraps and fabrics lying around my desk. I’d pulled them together thinking I’d make a Valentine collage but didn’t get around to it. So I let her use the stuff and she came up with these two beauties. (In the first one I made lines for her to get started with.)
Inspired by hers, I made a quick one today before putting all the...
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Weekend-y
There’s been so little snow that when we get a bit we literally drop everything and run out to play before it gets rained away again.
This snow was so wet we were all soaked pretty much right away. But children, they do not care about such trivial matters.
Made asparagus quiche for my mother’s 60th birthday party dinner.
The “Puzzle Machine”. (And the...
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Today, randomly
-EA saying “hej då” (goodbye) to Per and waving
- buying asparagus
- EA and A sitting in the grocery cart looking all blasé instead of the more usual whiny meltdown mode
-coffee oh blessed coffee
-time to write for the hell of it
-clementines
-EA eating, so happily and satisfied
-A’s awesome collages she made while talking to herself in Swedish as if she was running a kids...
11 tags
Build! Use everything!
There’s definitely something in the way kids play.
There’s something in their urgency. Build! Get in! Have the party! Tear it down! Build a different one! What’s next? What’s next? Don’t stop to analyse. (What does analyse even mean?)
There’s something in making spaces for yourself to crawl into and be whoever you
want.
There’s something...
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Fave Valentines
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Biscuits
I like watching things rise in the oven. An odd form of relaxation. You’re done, now all you have to do is wait.
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Everything flimsy
I got out and it was so windy and cold my fingers were immediately frozen and I could barely see or breathe but I just wanted to see, for myself, and not just from the car windows.
I only stood there on the boardwalk for maybe five minutes, but it was long enough to shake away my cobwebs and remind me that the Wild exists. This was exactly the kind of wild ocean I used to picture and miss...
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Hard at work
You catch a toddler doing this and they look at you like, What, lady? I’m just doin’ my job! It’s part of my job description, already!
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A motley crew (no, not that motley crue)
If “The Daycare Kids” are whiny because they need snacks, then there’s nothing to be done but to bake cookies for them and make fruit cups, ASAP. Good thing a certain Aunt knows the seriousness of such a situation.
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A fine mess
I was out in the country visiting my family and complaining/freaking out about stuff. My sister Eva, who was painting at the kitchen table with A., said “Want to come make some therapeutic fold-over envelopes?”
I looked over at what they were doing and said, “Yes. Yes I do.”
They were busy making those fold-in-half symmetrical paintings like you make in like,...
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Starting the day off right
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Luminosity
Daylight is too easy. What I want is difficult: the atmosphere of lamps or moonlight.
-Edgar Degas
I love the time of day when it’s dark enough to turn on the lamps. They cast an instant warmth on that late afternoon place where I get a chill and have too many loose ends to tie...
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“Don´t be nervous. Work calmly, joyously, recklessly on whatever is in hand.”
– Henry Miller
(from Commandments)
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Abstract
I can love and hate abstract art. But when it comes to art kids make, I most often love it. They don’t even know what the word abstract means. They just make stuff. And okay, sometimes it’ll actually look like a dog or a house or a boat or, I dunno, say, ” a pig in a storm”.
And then sometimes it’ll look like this. When I asked what these were she just replied,...
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Wendell? Spencer? Stuart? Jasper?
Picked up this little hand-carved fellow as a birthday gift for a friend lately. I can’t for the life of me place what his name should be. He looks very earnest and like he’s hoping to be loved. What is it, what is it?
I wrapped him up in a page from an old magazine, and used a paint chip as the tag. I love recycling old magazines and books as wrapping paper.
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Family mobile
I have to cringe at this dorky, Simpsons-esque title, but I didn’t come up with the idea. (I can just hear Mrs. Krabappel say “Now children, it’s time to work on our Family Mobiles”)
A. came up with it herself out of the blue and was quite insistent that I help her make one. Not sure if she got the idea from preschool or a kids show or what but she had it all planned...
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Judith
I get my love of vintage and antiques from my mother. Last time I was at her house I took a few pics of the latest details she’d added to her home. She found this at an antique shop before Christmas. It even looks a little bit like her somehow.
This garlic in a little holder made of birch bark looks like an odd little work of art.
With all the Scottish history of the family...
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My apron strings
I wear aprons a lot these days. I wear one when I cook, when I clean, when I do dishes, when I give the kids a bath…in other words, quite often. I like keeping my clothes clean underneath, but there’s more to it than that.
Like most roles we play, wearing a costume helps us play the part more easily. If I dress in yoga pants and half-pyjamas all day, I quickly feel that my current...
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Jewellery box toaster
Dolls need breakfast too.
And animals. (I think my last choice would be the plate with the two mushrooms.)
I’ve been thinking about adding a play toaster to the toy collection. But A. beat me to it:
Her jewellery box worked great.
And it even doubled as a toaster oven.
This is what I often forget as a parent- they often need less stuff, and more time spent with us...
January 2012
14 posts
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Monday-ish Monday
Imagine if these were robotic pink gloves you just programmed to do the dishes! That would look so cool, much cooler than a dishwasher.
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Beurre
The latest in the ongoing Atlantic Canadian food products series. Mostly just because I love these place names. Sussex! Tatamagouche!
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Boblaus
I love how possessed and weird Boblaus is looking. Yep, that’s her name. Pronounced Bob-lows.
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“¨Don´t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It´s self-conscious, and...”
– Ray Bradbury
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So slow
This is an early Andy Warhol illustration that I’ve always liked. It seems to have special relevance in my life these days. I can do things, or get things done, just at a much…slower…pace. I like thinking So Slow almost as a positive reminder to myself. So slow…but still things happen. So slow…but still I can work toward things happening. So slow…but...
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Tack för idag. (Thanks for today.)
It rained for most of the day but by late afternoon it had stopped and I could walk to do the preschool pick-up. Most of the snow had been rained away. I left early so I wouldn’t have to rush. The bark of trees looked nice after the rain, like muted abstract paintings, and I always like looking at Halifax paint combinations- this green and black is great.
I like being out at dusk. I...
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Grow
Every few weeks I weed out clothes from the kids’ drawers that have gotten too small. It always makes me feel nostalgic already for that little window of time they wore those jammies or that shirt.
I give most things away, but there are some that somehow became the quintessential A. or EA clothes. Those ones I pack away, just to keep and look at later and remember.
If...
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The New Year´s post
So after New Year’s I got to thinking about the past year, and the one ahead, and I kept thinking I’d do a post here laying it all out. You know, all the things that were good, all the things that were hard, all the things to work on, all the things to change and work towards and hope for.
But I kept putting it off. Because the New Year felt too shiny and new to outline or try...
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The right thing
Here’s the right thing. Nice crisp fresh green beans in a charming vintage-y cup.
But there’s something in me that wants to expose all the other things: not necessarily the wrong things, but the less perfect things. The less surface things.
I spilled relish on my pants. Those that need to be washed that I was wearing anyway.
And I cooked and did the dishes and cleaned up under...
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Project File: scrappy mobiles
Made these mobiles as Christmas presents. I’m going to make more of them, with different themes.
These ones had a nature theme. The little glass vials are meant to hold water for some tiny flowers, but in these pics I just used what I had in the house- bits of house plants and fir boughs.
I’m thinking I’ll do a few all-one-colour themed ones. All red scraps and...
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Project File
Astrid and I made these ornaments as Christmas presents and I thought I put ‘em on here for the record. They turned out to be very cute indeed.
I scanned in A’s drawings and and sized them, then printed them onto iron-on transfer paper.
I sewed a lot of them (30 in all!) and it was very satisfying to see them all pinned up on my board like this together.
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Birthday
There was Swedish birthday cake and champagne in bed first thing in the morning
Nice fresh cheerful tulips
This awesome card, in the tradition of cards made on the computer with simple paint program by Per (it’s a laptop! and says Grattis Jessica)
A smashing Marimekko pattern on a bag
An afternoon in the country getting a nice fix of poking at the fire and sitting in...
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Mess 500
With daily messes like this
it’s a good thing I’ve got such a good cleaning crew.
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They had never even thought of such a thing as...
Instead of doing a million things I should do after the kids went to sleep tonight I found myself sitting by the tree and opening, then reading from cover to cover these Little House/Laura Ingalls Wilder Christmas books. A Little House Christmas- Holiday Stories from the Little House Books and Christmas In The Big Woods.
I haven’t read any of the Little House books for years, but as soon...
December 2011
12 posts
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Christmas day walk
I left behind the noise and busyness of Christmas day for a solo walk up the hill. You have to duck under these branches to continue up the path. It was like the entrance to my own secret world.
Continuing up the hill you lose your breath but it’s worth it when you turn around to look out over the water.
It had been a while since I surrounded myself with only nature. It felt...
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Lussebullar/ Saffron buns
I’ve come to associate the baking of these bright yellow buns with Christmas-time.
The dough smells so good. Easy for little hands to learn how to shape it, too.
Poking in the raisins is fun. Per remembers doing that as a kid.
Decorating was going on at the same time. I got a huge amount of fir boughs from a friend whose family has a Christmas tree lot.
Oh you feel...
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“¨When despair for the world grows in me and I wake in the night at the least...”
– Wendell Berry
(remembering my grandfather today, who loved the forest, nature, and wildlife)
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Head in the clouds
3:12 pm: I’m sitting in the car in a parking lot because both kids just (surprisingly) fell asleep on the way to the grocery store. It’s very quiet. It’s been a very hectic, all-uphill kind of day. I’ve been busy making breakfast and getting everyone dressed and cleaning up messes and setting up activities and making lunch and cleaning up the lunch mess and...
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Old Faithfuls
The Christmas boxes have come out of hiding:
But when the decorating and crafting and baking are done for the day, there are still the Old Faithfuls to fall back on:
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In every room so hushed
We celebrated Lucia Day on Tuesday morning before it got light out. Per and Astrid came parading into the bedroom where I was sleeping carrying coffee and treats. (We were supposed to eat saffron buns called lussebullar, but we hadn’t quite baked them yet…so we had Finnish Christmas stars with plum jam, and ginger cookies.) They were dressed up, Astrid as a tärna, (girl in long...