We grew those cute little white pumpkins ourselves! I like the white with the contrast of the orange insides.

Then I made Jack’s costume:

I was a little nervous about it since he was being sort of bossy and demanding about what it should look like. I had to explain that I would do the best I could and that if he complained my head would explode and he would have to clean it up.

I might draw up a little tutorial as making this alligator tail was pretty easy and came out so cute on him:

We did the Piedmont Ave Halloween parade and trick or treating event on Saturday:

Then on to the haunted hallway at the elementary school, then to the free hot dogs and bouncy houses at the cemetery. I love this neighborhood.

Sunday was a Halloween birthday party at which they beat the crap out of a unicorn, chased a ghost, made magic wands and ate cake.

Monday at preschool they went to the pumpkin patch wearing their new screen printed shirts and they bobbed for apples. heh. When I picked jack up after school one of the other kids said she was going trick or treating. Last year we did not do that on halloween night so i sent out a hurried e-mail to my neighborhood toddlers mailing list about when and where to do it. We went out at about 6:30. jack refused to wear his crocigator outfit and instead wore a ninja sword and a mask he made at school.

It was pretty cute watching him trick or treat. He rang doorbells, said trick or treat loudly and said thank you after getting candy. It was fun to watch and fun to see the people who live around here and all the other kids in costumes.

What in the heck do we do with all this candy? I ate a few baby snickers and a butterfingers. It’s all too sweet for me now. Jack likes the sour candies and the lollipops.

Jack sorted his candy and crouched over it like a dragon on a pile of gold

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The next thing I am hoping he will do for us is to build us a new front gate and fence. Right now the side gate and fence are flush with the back of the house in effect making the side yard part of the public front yard. I would like to have the fence and gate brought up to be flush with the front of the house so that the whole side yard become backyard.

Our house was built in 1895 and is what I like to call a plain victorian farmhouse. It is tall, from the street it can look 4 stories high because you see the basement/garage and the very high roofed attic, and narrow but it is a lot of WHITE.

I did some internet searches on gates and gathered some examples on Pintrest. I was originally thinking that we should have a white fence and gate to match the house but then thought it might be TOO MUCH WHITE. So then, black. I thought black would be nice since I plan on having the window trim be black as some unspecified date when we replace the windows, also a black front door.

I did some photoshop mockups.
black:

white:

black:

white:

The other thing in favor of black is that I can think of a ton of lovely california natives that would look good against a black background. Many natives are sort of a dusky gray green foliage color that would look washed out against white.

I was super annoyed when taking those pictures that i couldn’t get the whole house not obstructed by the tree in the shot. This morning I walked across the street to get a coffee and turned around to look at the house and realized that all I need to do to get a full pic is walk across the street… so maybe i will do that later.

The front yard obviously needs work… I was holding off on giving it serious thought due to our need to have a new foundation. Speaking of which, we are stalled on that mainly due to our not quite being up to confronting that architect who sucks. We need to fire him and maybe make a partial payment to him and then we need to visit the oakland planning department a few more times with plans and questions and then take the plans out for bids form construction company’s. It is very daunting.

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We have a kick ass new blender. A BlendTec in a snappy red color. The BlendTec is in the same family as the Vita-Mix, one of those blenders that will basically pulverize anything into a delicious smoothie in 2 minutes or less.

I haven’t been particularly creative with my shakes. I use spinach, kale, banana, ginger and fresh or frozen berries in all combinations. Spinach, kale and ginger is very good and spicy and has the added bonus of making feel so very accomplished to have eaten 2 servings of leafy greens for breakfast. It’s like I expect some kind of angel of leafy greens to come down, bless me and give me a medal every time I have one. I’m so fucking smug about it I want to kick my own ass.

Our cute strawberry plants are steadily dribbling out 3-4 ripe strawberries a day and they are sending out runners like crazy. 3-4 strawberries is great and all…. but sometimes you just need LOTS of strawberries so today Jack and I and some friends took a mini road trip down to Davenport to Swanton Barry Farm to their U-Pick farm. I picked 14 pounds of strawberries! Okay, Jsack helped a little. Although mostly he ran around with his friend making up games until it was so cute I almost forgot how much of a huge pain in the butt he was this morning (almost).

There are quite a few places to pick strawberries around here but note that Swanton is organic and a union farm. It felt good to buy from them.

In local news the city of Oakland is going to change some laws so that people can legally grow food (read about it on Oakland North blog) on their residential lots and sell that produce. How cool is that? I’m so glad. I know that Ghost Town Farm was having some trouble with the city an I hope this helps Novella out a little, although I think she already shelled out like 3000$ for a conditional use permit. It also means that I’ll be sitting out on my front lawn selling snow peas tomorrow from 10am-12pm. (just kidding) (sort of).

On a totally different note – The food truck craze continues to explode into more and more ridiculous awesomeness. The other day Jack and I were at the playground and we got the most delicious potlatch seasoned french fries ever made on the planet from the Doc’s of the Bay truck. And our local play cafe has died a natural (if very sad) death in order to allow it’s owner to start a food truck called Sue’s Sassy Pies. Their menu sounds delish and I can’t wait to try them out. I can’t approve of the word sassy really in conjunction with food but I’ll let it slide.

If you’re in the East Bay I recommend coming to the Friday evening Bites on Broadway. Food trucks flock from all over the bay area like 3 blocks from my house and you can sample all kinds of stuff and then hang out on the Oakland Tech lawn. I hope it isn’t too crowded…

Is the food truck craze all over the US? Anyone?

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– flowers are good for drying and are nicely aromatic
– has a bunch of medicinal uses including fever reducer and, get this, can be used as snuff for a mild stimulant. heh.
– likes full sun, well drained soil and does not need to be fertilized
– spreads by rhizome
– can be propagated by root division
– attracts good insects,lady bugs and predatory wasps
– good companions plant for raspberries.

I think i will put it over by the comfy. the chickens are going to eat it, darn it. We really need to make the new coop but don’t have time until like 3 weekends from now. I really don’t know how to build stuff so i have to wait for Vim to do it. And i can only badger him so much. This makes me very nervous and makes me feel out of control of my own life.

Our coop idea has morphed into a coop/shed. i sketched up a design a few nights ago. It’ll go along the back wall and will be a very effective barrier between our yard and the post office truck parking lot and it won’t block any sun there either and will still comply with Oakland laws about chicken coops.

OR we could just spend 600-700$ on a coop that someone else has built… and then we will have to buy or build a shed. I’m not having one of those shitty plastic sheds.

We just spent some time flipping the grass and dirt in the front yard. the front yard dirt is interesting, the top 3-4 inches is a very loose combination of soil, dead and composting grass (some tallish variety) from several years and also several years worth of detritus from the weeping blue atlantic cedar that towers over our house. i love our tree. When you pitchfork and flip a patch over you can see how it is decomposing with the help of some mycelium and it’s easy to flip it.

why am i doing that? Well… eventually I am going to put in a native grass meadow. obviously I can’t spend time and money doing that until after construction on our house. Or front yard is small and I’m picturing massive construction machines, porta-potties and hunky sweaty half clothed men drinking diet cokes or shoveling dirt or whatever.

However, the front yard, being in the front of the house, is what everyone sees and comments on. There’s this guy that I really like that lives a block away and is a horticulturist and as i walk Jack to school he often accosts me and gives me advice about the front yard. Friday he told me i should do this pitchforking of the grass to help kill it off and make sure it doesn’t go to seed again. It sounded possibly like a satisfying activity and it was for about 6 sq ft. then i got tired and went inside.

I’m feeling annoyed and helpless and generally stupid because there is this pallet in my backyard that i have been trying to nail some boards into for like.. ever. Finally today I went down to the garage and got some nails, Vim’s nails ie not ones i would ever have bought or chosen to use, and they were too big and i couldn’t nail them in and the boards split and WTF. really, it’s just like 3 boards that need to get nailed! I decided to give up and ask Vim to do it. Now it is almost 6pm and i am finishing up my coffee from this morning. SMRT.

Do you like how i go from not posting at all to rampant posting about stuff no one gives a crap about? me too! Whee!

oh, one more thing. I am feeling proud of myself for not getting involved in someone else’s drama. I ALMOST let my self enter but this time I actually stopped and thought about how if I entered at all i would get sucked in and stressed out. So i stepped away even though it was kind of hard. I did my time and now it is someone else’s turn.

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We played several games this morning. First we played Alien (dad) is attacking us and we must build a red tailed hawk attack robot. The later, in his room, he built a sword and a gun out of tinker toys and then said we each had a ring of power and must now fight and go to Mount Doom. Then, on the way to school he had part of his tinker toy sword that had turned into a magic key and we had to go through a series of magic gates to get to school.

All of those games were pretty good. Watching him be a red tailed hawk robot is hilarious and I liked how he built the things out of tinker toys and how the sword later turned into a magic key.

I’m still feeling a little guilty about watching the ring movies with him and that is why I am confessing it on the internets.

I read the book “Killing Monsters, why children need fantasy, super heros, and make-believe violence” and it made me rethink my stance on play violence yet again. I admit that I over reacted when two yr old Jack killed me with a gun. I’m sure many people reading my original post about it rolled their eyes at me. What can I say? I’m a chronic (and slow) overthinker.

As far as I’m concerned now Jack can toss me into the fiery chasm from whence I came and shoot a ring of power at me all he wants. NOW, the thing that makes me sad is that he tried to set up a game in which he was rescuing a princess. .That can not stand. I told him i was a princess with a sword and would rescue HIM from the huge squid that was about to grab him.

I still change the genders of the characters in kids books when I read to him. Speaking of books, Jack has been doing a lot of reading on his own lately. I worked out in the yard for like 2 hours the other day and came back in a few times to check on him and he sat up in his room the whole time looking at books. In preschool right now they are talking about one letter a week. Last week was A and he came home and said, “mom! there’s a letter A in my name!”. so cute!

Yesterday Jack and I went to the new Target store in West Oakland. The Target sign is huge and tall and you can see it from far away… so yeah. Everybody loves Target, right?

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I went to the Etsy craft Lab hosted by MOCFA and sponsored by Giant Robot and Britex Fabrics in downtown SF. This months was hosted outside in a little craft corral and there were two main activities: making a plush robot or make a fabric flower. We opted to make a robot and did manage to finish it between 3 grown-ups and one kid.

Friday night I had a small table set up at the Oakland Art Murmur with a friend who runs the East Bay Church of Craft chapter. We had a borrowed button maker and a bunch of colored circles and pens, old magazines, and church of craft logos on paper, and a one inch circle cutter.

I love doing demos and having interactive activities like this. We were more popular that I expected. It was also unexpected (but great!) that most people opted to design their own button, next time I ill have a wider arrayof pens and markers. We had a donation jar set up and made like 50 bucks!?!

A woman came up to us and told about this event happening in the East Bay in October called the Mini Maker Faire! I am unreasonably excited about this event. It’s sponsored by Maker Faire and they are encouraging people to start up mini maker faires all over the place! woot! So we might have a button making or craft demo booth. I’m not an official Church of Craft rep but I hope to work on this. You can follow them on twitter here and check out their blog here. They are currently taking apps for Makers and Crafters now.

Oh and a guy made a button and then taught us the penny trick. This works with a one inch button. Instead of using the wire pin back insert you can use a penny. just sandwich your fabric between a penny and the button and TA-DA, your button stays put.

On Saturday I went to the craft sale at Oakland’s Knit-One-One. Lots of nice vendors, I talked to people about CCE – Conference of Creative Entrepreneurs (which BTW has extended it’s Early Bird Pricing!) and Bazaar Bizarre. I bought a couple of nice things. Some cards from Blockhead Press, a wrist strap from blissful and some bacon chocolates from Socola Chocolates. Italked with the woman from Cut Throat Sewing about making swimwear and underwear and I was inspired by that and by Em to come home and make my first pair of underwear! Which came out fantastic BTW. I do not want to take them off!

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Lets take the old vs the new aquarium areas. Now the tropical reef and california coast exhibits are amazing and fun to look at. I am entirely unhappy with the rest of it. It’s so effing loud down there that I simply cant enjoy it. You can’t hear a thing except a steady too loud roar of voices echoing around in a tiny enclosed dark place. The flow of the downstairs is confusing and it’s easy to miss stuff. The petting zoo part is total crap. It’s ugly and boring and the clear tanks are confusing. The volunteers sanding around with their thumbs up their butts are more of a hindrance than anything else. Oh, and if you have a small kid you are screwed. Small kids can’t reach or see anything. and the dirty lip of the tank is right at my kids mouth level so he always starts licking it. GROSS! Remember the old one!? It was light and nice and interesting to look at. I loved it.

Actually, the whole place must have been designed by people with no kids. The old aquarium area was so nice and peaceful and dark and there was a carpeted step that kids could get on to see all of the exhibits. Yeah, the exhibits were plain old tanks with fish in them, one after the other. but so what? That was totally fine and made perfect sense for museum goer flow. You know what they should have done is just PUT UP MORE INFO. in plain old text. GOD! What is it with museums and their unforgivable lack of signage explaining details of what you are looking at? If some people don’t want to read about what they are looking at they can SKIP reading the signs.

It is funny that I see kids tapping the signs thinking they are touch screens. hahaha.

Oh and remember the old penguin set up? Where there were bleachers so that more than 5 people could see what was going on? yeah, GONE. again, wtf?

The weird ugly ass silver globular styling of the middle areas of the aquarium are ugly. and weird. and boring and unhelpful to kids. Kids trying to see the fish are like all pathetically trying to climb up to see and just slide right off. There is one part of it with like, a lungfish and a tiny boring fake stream about 2 inches long that doesn’t do anything or have anything in it. whhhyyyyyy? I think it occasionally squirts water making kids think it might become interesting but then it doesn’t and then if you have a small kid who cant see anything anyway it sucks even more. bad.

I think that whoever design the place wanted to shunt the littlest kids off into the toddler play area. Fine, toddlers are annoying, parents of toddlers will be the first to tell you so, but a person is a person no matter how small! The toddler play area isn’t all bad. My kid loves the boat and play food. But it also gets super loud and too crowded, it’s too small and is often full and closed. And if you’re a parent you can’t bring your coffee in… FAIL.

Also, when you enter the kids area there is this weird ass fifties looking waiting room behind a wall of glass. Just sitting there. It’s not clear what its for, I’ve never seen anyone in there and the doors leading to it are locked. What is it. It creeps me out, like it’s a window in time and I might see Don Draper walk in, sit down and have a cigarette. The only bad part of that would be that the doors are locked and I would be unable to get at him.

Kids under 4 are not allowed in the planetarium. In the old museum the planetarium was my favorite part and now, me and my kid, who maybe be only 3 but still would totally like it can’t go in. He has been in the one at Chabot and he didn’t like barf or destroy it somehow with his kid germs.

Let’s talk about the bathrooms of this building, this building that cost FIFTYFIVE HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS. The bathrooms are a fucking joke. I may need to draw you a diagram. Whoever designed it has obviously never used a public bathroom. Maybe they were born without an anus. I don’t know. First off this museum is always VERY crowded. The one restroom on the main floor has… 6 stalls. SIX! I will walk you through a visit to this bathroom.

First, wait in line for like 30 minutes. The line is trailing 20 feet out the door. There is only one door so there’s the line of people waiting and then there are people attempting to exit, it’s a mad scrum. Everyone has a like 4 kids with them somehow. There is one changing table and it’s in the one disabled accessible stall. Which is fine because there is no fucking way a person in any type of wheelchair could even get in there past the milling hoards of confused people. why are they confused? Probably because they have just washed their hands and turned towards the exit to look for something to dry their hands with. Nothing. Finally they might figure out that they have to turn back to the back of the bathroom to find one of the two fancy hand blow dryers. Wait 20 minutes til they can get over there and then fight their way back towards the exit. If you have a kid with you, which you do, they might need to step unto the clearly labeled “toddler step” in order to reach the sink. However, once there their tiny arms flail around like tiny pathetic pink tyrannosaurus arms trying to reach the faucet. They are doomed to fail. I’m 5’1″ and I can barely reach them.

The african hall is still good in that weird horrible way that giant hall of taxidermy can be.

The upstairs might be awesome but I’ve barely been up there so I’m not sure.

Also, I’m oddly disappointed in the gift shops. I might by a white alligator stuffy next time I go although now that I have written all this out i am not sure I will go again. Except that I jsut renewed my membership… So I will be going again.

The rainforest thing is neat if you can get there at a time when it is not crowded and so loud your eardrum might explode. So you walk up like 3 stories on this ramp looking at stuff and then you get shunted into an elevator that brings you down into the final crescendo of horrible loud confusing dark crowdedness that is the underwater swamp part. The clear tunnel is kind of neat but I’ll take a old not state of the art quiet museum over it anytime.

Fuck man. What is wrong with these people?!

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(my R key is sticking and it is very annoying)

I almost bought some of that kokka fabric with birds on it but balked at its 17.99 per yard price tag. So instead I bought a bunch of other fabric that ended up totaling more anyway. I am determined to sew myself a few skirts. Ones I can actually wear…

Hart’s Fabric is great! The staff is nice and the selection is huge and best of all they have a children’s play area!!! What a fabulous idea! I wish Stone Mountain and Daughter would do the same thing.

Instead the staff at Stone Mountain often follow you around and comment on your kid and how he better not run around because a bolt of fabric might fall on him. oh yeah lady? That is totally absurd and if like half of your weekday clientele isn’t women hauling kids around I will eat my hat.

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You Bazaar is just around the corner! Next weekend, November 2nd at the San Francisco County Fair Building (Hall of Flowers in Golden Gate Park) local crafters, toy and plush designers and other indie artists will be showcasing and selling their work. Oh, and there will also be some craft workshops at You Bazaar! They all look really good! I’m looking forward to checking out the fortune cookie one since I am secretly obsessed by plush food.

Please tell your friends and family! Blog about it if you have a blog!
Here are all the details and you are welcome to cut and paste the following text and badge to add to your blog.

Sunday November 2nd 2008
10:00am – 5:00pm
San Francisco County Fair Building
Golden Gate Park, San Francisco

FREE ADMISSION

You Bazaar! will be on November 2nd 2008 from 10am to 5pm at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park. You Bazaar! will feature 30 select craft vendors selling quality handmade wares and a series of rotating workshops throughout the day with some of your favorite plush designers. While we would like to use this event to promote plush art we welcome all crafters to apply for a vendor space. This will be a fun family friendly event to kick off the Plush You SF Show, opening Friday, November 7th 2008 and excite customers for the holiday shopping extravaganza Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco on Sunday, November 30th 2008

Check out the Vendor List!
Get directions!
Peruse You Bazaar Crafty Workshops!

Oh and don’t forget to check out the SF Bazaar Bizarre blog for updates on other local bay area craft fairs, crafty business tips and interviews of crafters (by me!).

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I was in Peidmont Fabrics the other day when my hand reached out for this gorgeous Liberty of London cotton lawn print. I mean look at it?!!! Doesn’t your heart go out to it? However, my hand trembled and quaked as I check the price tag at 37.00 a yard. Instead of a dress then, I bought a tiny bit and made some handkerchiefs. Raise your hand if you think I am nuts.

Then i made a tiny one. Raise your hand if you have changed your mind.

The handkerchief goes really nicely with the pair of delicate rose colored with pearl trim spats I just made too.

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“Tie Silk is Back for one Final Engagement
You love tie silk, we love silk, everybody loves tie silk. The East Bay Depot has gotten in its final donation of glorious silk swatches. Thousands of samples with bright colors, designs, and patterns. This time we have extra large samples in addition to our usual packs of rolled sqaures. Bulk priced at $6.00 a pound.”

Also! Major alert! they have 5,000 empty toilet paper tubes! Woot!

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The fair is November 2nd at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park and is focusing on hand made Plush Art. Here is the description from the web site:

You Bazaar! will be on November 2nd 2008 from 10am to 5pm at the San Francisco County Fair Building in Golden Gate Park.  You Bazaar! will feature 30 select craft vendors selling quality handmade wares and a series of rotating workshops throughout the day with some of your favorite plush designers. While we would like to use this event to promote plush art we welcome all crafters to apply for a vendor space. This will be a fun family friendly event to kick off the Plush You SF Show, opening Friday, November 7th 2008 and excite customers for the holiday shopping extravaganza Bazaar Bizarre San Francisco on Sunday, November 30th 2008.

Go on over to the SF Bazaar Bizarre blog to see my first interview. I can guarantee that you will fall in love with Planet Tokki and it’s creator, not only is her plush art divine but the complex and detailed background of Planet Tokki will make you giggle and swoon.

Be sure to come visit the You Bazaar! Fair on November 2nd!

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This is primarily a social conference, eh? We all want to see everyone in their cute outfits and shoes and we want to be admired too. Although I do need to look at the schedule again to see if there are even any vaguely technical sessions beside the ‘make over tent’.

I’ll be wearing cute dresses and skirts so I better shave my legs, get my eyebrows waxed and a mani/pedi or and redye my hair probably. I’m sure I have roots from hell.

My mom has posted  a picture of her own shoe dilemma.

Also, I need to finish sewing some stuff for the swap meet, clean my house since my mom will be here TOMORROW and entertain a baby with the attention span of a doodle bug. Good luck me! HAhaha. I predict that 1 or none of these things will get done today.

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Yesterday on my way home from the girls weekend at the ranch I stopped to get something to drink and when I got back in my car I realized that I had not looked in a mirror for a good three days. So I had to quickly check to make sure I didn’t have a beer can stuck in my hair or whatever.

I got to sleep in for TWO DAYS! Woo! It was great except for the fact that I didn’t sleep in. The first day the sun hit me smack in the eyeball at dawn and the second day there was clearly a bear or 5 outside my window right at dawn and I never got back to sleep really.

NO MATTER. Our schedule included some heavy duty beer drinking, card playing and reading. With some napping thrown in for good measure. It was my perfect dream weekend of loafing with no one around to be all ‘Let’s do a PROJECT!!’. instead, blissful slacking with no guilt.

I’m impressed with all they have done up there on the ranch! Everyone has their space and is developing it nicely. I LOVE the yurt and I long for it. And I LOVE KT’s container house and covet it!

I signed up to do a project for ‘spurningman’, which is were everyone (okay, not everyone) is going this year instead of the dusty too crowded lame-ass themed burningman. I’ll be making a labyrinth in the 5 auspicious clouds pattern. So I have to figure out how to do that! Vim will help me.

The only thing that make me nervous is that it means I will have to be up there with Vim and Jack of  ‘he who will not sleep in anything other than a full sized crib’ fame. I’m thinking I will buy a cheap ass full sized crib and leave it up there. That way other people with babies will get to use it whenever they go up.

These fucking thistles are teh suck:

I did some drawings the second day even though it meant getting way to close to about 50 million bees.

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LOLCAT mural. hahahaha. i love it!

Directions 

Artist blog 

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The first is where she talks about doing a media cleanse. I’ve been thinking about doing this same thing. Try out a week with nothing but the bare minimum of internet/talk radio/dvd/tv usage. We don’t have a TV so we don’t have the whole TV dominating the room problem. I remember when I first came over to Vim’s house I was impressed by this lack of TV and then I realized that he instead had a massive roll down projection system. Hhahah. Still it’s not a TV one can like, accidentally watch Oprah on and once you’ve gotten to watch your DVDs on a big projection system while sitting on your own couch you will never go back…

So, I am actually a bit scared to to a full on media cleanse. A news fast, yes, I’ve done and survived that before. But no blogs for a whole week!!? I might try it the week I am back from my parents house. There is no debating that I would get more done, sketching or sewing would be a good option.
Last week on NPR I was listening to an interview with a woman who was maybe writing books on different religions, I turned it on in the middle of the interview. She had met the dali lama and one thing he said to her was that he often urged people from western cultures NOT to take up Buddhism but to find things from their own culture that make sense to them.

I admit to be woefully ignorant about religion and certainly I know nothing about Buddhism. But in my head I often equate Buddhism with “living in the now”. And I’ve been thinking about”living in the now” lately. Partly I think because I have been violently letting go of the past while I throw away most of the trappings of it, keeping only the tiny reminders that I need to help me remember. A few pictures, a few letters, a few drawings, a matchbook here and there. So I can’t let go of the past completely. It’s true tho, while looking through things I felt a bit useless as tho the past was a waste. Even so, I like the past, even the crappy stupid parts of it where I was a total idiot.
I thought that was really interesting and that fits with this passage from Superhero’s post:

“One was a story that Elizabeth Gilbert paraphrased from a book she had read recently. The question posed was about living in the now and this writer responded that living in the now is overrated and unless you’re a yogi or a monk, pretty much impossible for us regular folk. He said that possibly, the key to a happy life is about having great memories to look back on and great things to look forward to. So take lots of pictures and make lots of plans!”

“Take lots of picture, make lots of plans” really puts into words exactly what I strive to do. To me, making pleasant memories and documenting them to look over later and making plans is the ideal way of life. Vim and I look at our photos together all the time and it makes me feel warm and fuzzy. Here’s a cute picture of Vim and Jack from this weekend. Never mind that I was being a huge ass and was all stressed and pissy… Aren’t they cute?!

Right now, in this moment, I am grateful for all the exciting plans coming up this summer. Hawaii! Maker Faire! Sitting on the porch! Mini adventures! Baby that can walk! Possibly camping! In the desert!

Pictures to follow.

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Usually I want to go to the new whole fuds near my house. The grocery list is carefully crafted to that stores layout in the hopes that nothing will be forgotten. Vim always wants to go to Berkeley Bowl and I’m often not up for the chaos and parking pain in the ass that that involves. However, today I decided to go to BB right after I dropped the kiddo off at around 9:30. I figured the hippie scrum couldn’t possibly have already begun that early (Wrong!).

I had a list. The list was created while hungry a few days ago and whilst sitting in front of a cookbook. I had plans. Vim had plans. But what in the hell were they?! I have no idea which recipes we were talking about but I bought a leek and some pumpkin seeds that are supposed to go into something or other…

I’ve always wondered why avocados are always billed as “haas” avocados because I have never seen an avocado billed as anything else so I wondered if there were some other kind. And is Haas a type? a brand name? what’s the deal? The other day Vim brought home and avocado that looked quite different as it had a smooth lighter green skin, it was weird and stringy inside and Jack did not like it.

Here is an excellent link with information about types of avocados. The one Vim got must have been a Bacon variety. Needless to say, this avocado was not as delicious as bacon. Oh hey! There is a variety called  the “Zutano” like the kids clothes! This must be where they got the name for that brand. They have some darn cute baby clothes thats for sure. I just got Jack a few cute pieces at the baby resale shop. I’m surprised they don’t have a baby jumper with avocados all over it (okay, not really).

Now that the mysteries of the mysterious and wily avocado have been cleared up for me I think that I can go ahead and relax for the rest of today.

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I have made these spats for a friend. Attributes are: exposed brass separating zipper, rubber heel guards, red flannel lining.

Also, a huge glaring pattern mismatch. FUCK! As i was making them i just wasn’t thinking about because usually the spats i make are a solid color or a pattern that doesn’t really need to be matched. so… fuck.

I’m making another pair of cute ones that he can have instead if he wants. a nice tweedy plaid with thai silk lining, brass snaps and a cute button.

My next pair will be ladies green velvet with rounded toe and taller ankles, white pearl buttons and possibly pale pink lining but i havent decided that detail yet.

Also this fucking awesome pink tie material i found at silk road (going out of business sale 20-70% off!) will soon be some ladies spats as well.

oh yeah, I also just got my new labels in the mail! I do love them so!

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