cien

Well, would you look at that?  This happens to be my 100th post!  I've decided to return to blogging (some thanks to the encouragement of my husband) now that my daughter, Quinn, is 1 and I have regained some of my time to use as I wish  Have you noticed that maintaining a blog necessitates having enough free time to have ideas, follow through with them, and then write about it? 

This'll continue to be a hodgepodge mix of observation, art, food, and experience and hopefully a good motivator to keep me on track collecting new creative projects, recipes, contests, media, and more - to share with you.

A comfortable, organized environment with plenty of supplies is key if I want to get anything done, so I spent some time yesterday getting things in order and discovering items that had been tucked away and nearly forgotten.  A ton of art paper that I'd rolled up in heavy duty cardboard tubes (stored in the back of the closet) now live in a clear rolling paper tub under the bed.  I was pleased to find a variety of brand new sheets that will make great book covers.  (Though my tastes have apparently changed a bit.)

Our craft room (i.e. our walk in closet that still needs to function as a closet) is overrun with my supplies, but I managed to clear some more room and make everything more accessible.  Those tubs need some labels!

I also took some time to reorganize the small bookcase I use for all our art, craft, and design books.  An unfortunate Christmas day incident resulted in Christmas tree water pouring onto some of them, but I managed to salvage them all with fairly minimal water damage.

Here are some of my favorite titles (click to view on Powells.com):

Real Life Journals

500 Handmade Books

The Handy Book of Artistic Printing

1000 Fonts: An Illustrated Guide to Finding the Right Typeface

Simple Sewing

Amy Butler's Little Stitches for Little Ones

Martha Stewart's Encyclopedia of Crafts

Stencil 101

So what's in store this year?  Hopefully lots of book making and paper craft, refurbished furniture (?!), photography, typography, crock pot recipes as well as those that take me 4 hours to make, prizes, outings, craft nights, vacations, and everything in between.  

Thanks for sticking with me!

cinnamon

As the weeks wind down and D(elivery)-day approaches, I'm trying to keep up with increased work responsibilities while also enjoying the last remnants of my pre-child social life.  Last week held two nights in a row of rowdy concert-going.  We caught Foals at Doug Fir on Thursday night along with my coworkers Nikki and Emily, and Jesse's friend, Danny.  Surprisingly enough, I was deemed DD for the night, but still managed to have a good time despite my pregnant sobriety.  At one point, both Jesse and Danny each brought me a soda.  I felt like a princess.  Other highlights included seeing the singer from Spoon in the crowd and then witnessing a dressed-to-the-nines hipster chick falling off a couch she was trying to climb over (the 4" heels didn't help).

The next night we hit up the grand opening of a new location of Dr. Marten's on Burnside.  The Builders and the Butchers were playing (odd scenario) and free food and beer were offered.  The beer ended up consisting of 2 oz. samples in tiny plastic cups and the "food," if you can call it that, was a platter of crustless watercress sandwiches.  Bite size.  The place was packed, as you can see below.  Certainly provided for interesting people watching.  (See if you can spot the band.)

Toward the end of the show Emily (what a trooper!) joined us with her three friends, Erin, James, and Jaime.  We determined that more food was in order, so we set out into the streets of downtown on foot.  I had mapped out various food carts that were supposed to be open, but that was a bust.  Instead, we found ourselves at Mother's, dining on decadent Chanterelle mac & cheese and laughing up a storm about performing test procedures on willing (read: paid) volunteers in nursing school.  Scary stuff, I tell you.  I remarked that the evening felt like the "olden days" - those in which Portland would draw us in for hours and we'd aimlessly wander the dark, curious streets.  It was a good night, particularly with the last minute addition of Voodoo Doughnuts just before the rain started to fall.

Other than that I've been preparing for a Halloween bake sale I organized at work, which is to occur this Friday.  The event will benefit two non-profit organizations associated with my employer.  I've never organized anything like this before, but it's been a worthwhile experience.  I can't wait to see what my volunteer bakers will come up with!  I'm still trying to finalize what I'll be making in my home kitchen - likely bags of fudge and jars of homemade granola.  I'll do my best to complete my preparation in an organized, photo-ready fashion, camera in hand.

Here are some miscellaneous photographs in the meantime.

Oliver's green Halloween glare

This is where we live - isn't it beautiful? 

Our resident Red-Tailed Hawk is perched at the top of the tallest tree. 

We love him.

And lastly, a belly progression.  I'm sitting at 33 weeks now and am even bigger than the last picture here.  More to come later, I'm sure.

craft night

Before I knew it, it was Saturday and my first craft night was mere hours away. I kicked my cleaning into high gear and got our apartment into great shape. Having a few people over is always excellent motivation to make your place fully presentable!

I had been gathering crafting supplies for a couple weeks, so I set out arranging everything on our dinner table. Each guest was to select a square of fabric and a contrasting color of thread. They also got a 5” embroidery hoop, a couple crewel needles, and a set of stitch instructions. I set out several of the embroidery books I got from the library as additional reference/inspiration material.

I had asked everyone to bring a dish to share and we had quite an array of delicious snacks! I can’t believe I didn’t get a picture of our buffet. We had bean dip, hummus and pita, chips with salsa and guacamole, caprese skewers, crackers and baguette with cheese and homemade hot pepper-peach jam, and caramel apples. Nearly all the non-pregnant people enjoyed wine while the rest of us stuck to fruit juice. My guests were even kind enough to leave me leftovers since our fridge was utterly empty!

After we dined, I had everyone practice some basic stitches on their piece of scrap fabric. Basic stitches like the backstitch, stem stitch, and split stitch are incredibly useful and take just a little practice to get perfect. After the ladies had gained some confidence in their stitching skills, we got to work transferring simple images onto the items they had brought (cloth napkins, dish towels, baby shirts, etc.). We spent the rest of the time working on those projects and chatting.

I have a tendency to be awfully anti-social, but it was wonderful to have such a great group of women over for the evening! I should really do this more often.

That evening I finally got the chance to bestow upon my friend April the handbound book I’d made for her eons ago for a giveaway on this blog. I still owe several more people books as well, but I figured I may as well get started on the delivery. I made April a blue robot-themed book in which to write down her son Hunter’s funny comments. I wish I had done a better job doing this with Chloe, who continues to make Jesse and I laugh with hysterical, out-of-nowhere quips.

 

After transferring Quinn’s big owl embroidery project onto fabric during the week, I finally began stitching on Saturday evening. So far I’ve only finished two letters of Quinn’s name (which involved outlining in backstitch and some filling in with satin stitch) and I can tell that this project is going to take forrrrevvvvver. It’s a fun challenge though, and one that will definitely strengthen my embroidery skills. I’ll post periodic updates of that piece once I get an initial portion finished.

laser beams

Ta da!  Skully's all finished - now what to do with him?

This weekend I finally convinced Jesse to hang the art we'd purchased for Quinn's owl and bird-themed nursery (this is a man's job, you know).  I also dressed her crib in the adorable bird bedding set my sister and mom got for us. 

There is a small bare wall above the "head" of the crib (on the right hand side of this photo) and I've decided to embark on a more elaborate embroidery project for that space.  In keeping with our decorating theme, I found this gorgeous vintage owl pattern.  I added Quinn's name (which won't be as contrastingly bold when I embroider it) and came up with this template:

How cute is that?!  What color scheme do you think I should go with?  I don't think I want to overdo it with pink on this.

As for a pregnancy update, I'm still feeling pretty good as I near 30 weeks (though Quinn is kicking my guts out as I type this!).  My belly is growing one centimeter every week, and I'm definitely aware of it!  It can feel pretty taut and uncomfortable at times, but warm baths and Bio-Oil help a lot.  Here's an amusing photo Jesse took the other evening (from above my head) after one of my Bio-Oil applications (that's the only reason I ever walk around the house with an exposed belly).  I look fairly misshapen, which would either be because Quinn was struggling to escape or I was having one of my mega-frequent Braxton Hicks contractions.  These poor laser cats don't know what to think.

sugar

Where to begin?  I won three prizes in a raffle today.  :)  My luck had waned after my grand prize of a positive pregnancy test, so I welcomed the renewal.  I was awarded a $5 gift certificate to Sonic, a dinner-for-two certificate to a small, local Italian restaurant, and a free oil change.  Dinner's on me tonight.

I've been spending a lot of time preparing for my first craft night.  Jesse recently went back to school (this is very exciting!) and he's now working most evenings out of the week.  As a result, I have a lot of time on my hands and I decided it couldn't hurt to have some girls over for a fun evening of chatting, eating, and crafting.  I'd had my eye on some cool embroidery books for many months, and I determined that it would be the perfect group-conducive craft to try.

We'll be practicing a variety of stitches, learning how to transfer an image onto fabric, and then working on a small project.  I wanted to make sure I knew what I was doing before trying to show other people, so I spent a night trying about 10 different stitches on scrap fabric.  I then moved on to a small sugar skull design that I found in the book Embroidered Effects by Jenny Hart.  Here's my progress so far:

This piece incorporates the backstitch, split stitch, cross stitch, straight stitch, and the lazy daisy (aka isolated chain stitch).  The lazy daisy stitches (in the center of the eyes) was the trickiest, but I think I did a decent job.

I have a couple more lazy daisies to complete, along with several French knots, then I'm finished.  I have a million different projects I'd like to try out, it's just a matter of deciding which one is next!

veinte ocho

28 weeks

dear zachary

You've got to watch this.  Just trust me.

Available on Netflix.

milk

I've been doing some reading on the topic of balancing a career (and personal identity) and motherhood.  It's something that causes me a bit of anxiety, because I don't want to imagine failing at one or the other.  Literature on this debacle tends to fall toward one end of a spectrum or the other, that being that either (a) the mother feels an almost undeniable urge to stay with her baby and forgo selfish career development or (b) the mother cannot imagine becoming a homemaker and is more than ready to jump back into the workforce when her maternity leave ends.  In the first scenario, a mother's identity is tied to her role as mother, first and foremost, and in the second she believes she must maintain her identity outside of motherhood - in order to ultimately be a good mother.

Part of the problem lies in the fact that I don't really know which pole of that spectrum I'll most identify with when the time comes.  I suppose the fact that I'm worried about how this blog entry will be received (I don't want anyone to think my life is already being consumed by my unborn baby and I've lost my personality) indicates that I'm more of a (b) type.

I'll just wait and see.  At the very least I'm concurrently reading one baby-related book (e.g. Milk Memos - I'm serious) and one non-baby-related book (e.g. Paul Auster's Moon Palace) at all times. 

Here's the gratuitous belly photo that I'm too shy to post on Facebook.  This is 23 weeks, though I did grow overnight just after this photo was taken.  That's how it works, you know.

And here's the adorable little cap my friend Nikki crocheted for Quinn.  I plan on honing my infant portrait skills once Quinn is born and I'm off work for a while, and I can't wait to photograph her in this hat! 

What else have I been up to?  I've been using a CD-ROM instruction program to learn Adobe Photoshop, for one thing.  I am already fairly familiar with Adobe InDesign and I think having a solid grasp of both programs will open up unlimited possibilities.  Photoshop may be the most complex, difficult program I've ever worked with, but I'm making progress.

One project that's constantly on my mind are the invitations to my sister's July 2011 wedding.  Though the wedding is a long time off, and invitations won't need to be mailed for some time, I want to have all my ducks in a row before Quinn arrives.  I've purchased all the paper and embellishment supplies I'll need and I'm waiting for the final shipment to arrive in the mail.  Kate and I have developed a plan for the overall construction, now it's up to me to work on design elements, make edits based on Kate's desires, then print and assemble the 150 invitations.  Here are some of the supplies I'll be using for the fuchsia, white, and white shimmer project.

bloom

An in-process shot of Chloe's t-shirt.  Pre-fancy embellishments like glitter and gemstones.

Lindsey's sweet baby, Hadley.  I visited her at the hospital when she was less than 24 hours old.

A crinkly ribbon toy I made for Hadley.

My notes for planning my sister Kate's wedding invitations.  Approximately 100 invitations with 7 components each.  This is going to be fun!

The Seattle Squid.  Jesse and I took a fun mini-vacation up there this past weekend.

The Puma gear I bought for Quinn.  I just couldn't resist...

flourish

A recent Etsy purchase I had to share.  You've got to get yourself some of these...

Lip Balm Set of 5

flourish bath & body

I chose Black Plum, Blood Orange, Asian Pear, Vanilla Mint, and Red Currant.  Deliciously aromatic, with a perfectly silky texture.  Yum!