Hello!

Between that little angel face not taking naps, me trying to be more engaged in real life, and a lack of anything substantial to write about I've been pretty absent around here. I can't promise that this is going to change, but I will hopefully at least find time to share snippets and say hi. I miss this place!

Lately we've been drinking iced coffee a lot, though it's not hot here yet. We plan on making an iced chemex brew guide video soon, and perhaps a cold brew video as well. That will be a few weeks down the road though because...

We're driving to Idaho on Thursday and will be there until Monday morning. My middle sis and her hubby are over there visiting from San Bernadino right now for her 20th birthday and we haven't seen her since Lorelei's first birthday. We're really excited about it, minus the hot, hot heat they're sure to be having. We also get to see my best friend, whose second baby I haven't ever met, so our littles will get to play together for the first time ever! Oh, and also, snow cones...because in Seattle there are no shaved ice stands. What?!?!?!

So aside from not napping Lorelei is now memorizing lines from movies (yeah that says a lot about how awful I am for letting her "watchy" too much, but seriously I would accomplish nothing otherwise). Her favorite is "Eating green is a special treat." From Bambi. So...my favorite Disney movie, and the most vegan baby line I ever did hear. I die. Also, see that fake toothy "for the camera" smile up there? Those kill me too. I love that silly little bug. :)

How are my lovely readers doing?

Project Lanterns

Since I don't at all claim to be a DIY blogger (this is honestly the second project I've done all year), I don't feel too bad about forgetting to take the appropriate pictures for this post. So more than instructional, this just serves to show a little bit of the process and result. Doing a project like this is really case sensitive because measurements will be different, and you can use all kinds of different materials.

These paper lanterns have been around a long while waiting to be repurposed. I fell in love with them and bought them for my someday wedding before David and I even met (so over 4 years ago). We used them for decor at our little back yard wedding and then I became sentimentally attached to them, so I saved them.

Originally I planned to hang them directly from the ceiling at various lengths, and using ribbon, but I couldn't find ribbon I loved and without a ladder it would have been too hard to execute. So I decided that I would drape/swoop them instead, and remembered that I had this vintage blue sheet that I got at Goodwill months and months ago. 

These are to show how I attached the fabric so that it wouldn't be able to move or shift with time and get all wonky. 

I tied all of the lanterns in a string by the fabric strips using a basic knot, I wasn't seeking perfection, I like quirk. Then I added bows to the tops of all of the lanterns.

I wasn't patient enough to measure the fabric pieces in proportion to the swoop in front of the chosen wall, so I had to do some improvising, adding a piece of fabric to the center lantern and attaching it at the ceiling so that Lorelei couldn't reach it standing in her bed. The single swoop looked cuter, but I wasn't going to risk having her rip any more of them like the one you can already see in the last picture.   The last picture that does the project no justice, because I am truly terrible at interior design shots apparently. Haha.

Note: I wish I had outtakes of this to share with you! In order to hang the strung lanterns I moved all of her furnishings out of the way, brought our table in her room, and climbed on that to get it done. I'm crazy like that, or resourceful...

Now We Hurry On

Hello friends! It has been a while. Things got busy in our parts for a while. Back on the 8th my mom, dad, and baby sister (I say baby and she's 17) came over from Idaho for a visit and to go to my cousin's wedding. They were here for two and a half days and 3 nights that were packed full of catching up, shopping, and trying to decide what to do in Seattle, just like every short visit they pay us.

The week following their departure I tried my hand at caring for miss Lorelei along with someone else's five month old boy. It was a good learning experience that played a vital part in this new growing and changing season I'm going through at the moment (this will have to span it's entirely own post). You see, I had a bad case of baby fever from the time Lorelei was about 3 months old until, well, when I had two youngins in my care. I want to be completely honest and say that I was 110% overwhelmed with the situation. Trying to get started on potty training and weaning, and managing to get anything done (including blog) was nigh impossible! The lesson I learned is that I am 110% happy with my one, darling little girl. I also learned something about her (I already had thought so, but it was confirmed) and that is that she is very nurturing, loving, and not at all an introvert like me. So since we don't plan on giving her a sibling, we're really looking into getting her into the right pre-school and out of home activities. I was waiting on the activities (like BALLET!!!) until she was potty trained, and we tackled that this past week. Last Monday she decided she wanted to wear big girl panties, so I jumped on board and we tried it. She missed and piddled herself 9 times that first day, but since then has had dry diapers every night and only 3 accidents total! In 9 days... She's totally a big girl now, excuse me as I go bawl my eyes out...

I just LOVE seeing the little lady she is becoming.

Moments With Mama Nature: Hands, green, bare.

Tiny handses, capable of much destruction...

She informed me later that, "I eat it, polish."

The time it takes to go from this....

.....to this.

Chatty Cathy

And we're crying because mom asked us to sit on the stool and smile. 

Lately I've been calling her "tiny woman", easy to see why, huh?

"What's that?" "Leaves." "Leaves is green."

Happy to share her leaves.

Shades of Grey

Around here, everything is green. :) 

Curiosity.

Sometimes the baby is still somewhere in this face.

Full size pony tails...

The look of wonder. 

This tree is bare, for now. 

Looking Back Now, Life With Lei Lei 5,6,7/52

Those eyes that sparkle and feel like home.

As independent as she may be, she still thinks playing is more fun with mama in on it. :)

Photography by David L. Clark, all photos.

Somewhere amongst all the business of birthdays this month I neglected to take or post any of my photo challenge pictures. I could beat myself up over it, but life goes on. I am only human after all. It doesn't help that I never set a specific day of the week that I would share the series, so I'm deciding that after this game of catch up it will be Mondays. The pictures here were taken two days before Lorelei's birthday by my husband. I love how he catches both Lorelei and myself just as we are. :) I'm still trying to grasp the fact that she is two, and has been for almost 3 weeks. I swear it was only yesterday...

We Have A Two Year Old?!

Photo courtesy of Photography by David L. Clark

Today my baby is two. A toddler. Less baby, more kid. Lorelei is a nurturer, an entertainer, a lover, a leader, strong willed, cunning, energetic, goofy, charming, hilarious, and sometimes a royal pain, and I wouldn't trade the last two years of being her mommy for anything in the whole world. We celebrated yesterday, because Sunday is David's Monday. We made plans, and plans fell through. There were moments that our big kid was happy, and ones where she was not. All in all though, it was a pretty good day.
I wanted breakfast to be special so I made some crazy, rainbow, tie dye pancakes (her favorite).

Photo courtesy of Photography by David L. Clark

Photo courtesy of Photography by David L. Clark

We went out to Seattle to jaunt around Capitol Hill (our favorite neighborhood) where we were going to visit a toy store (it turned out that it had gone out of business), get donuts (that was in an entirely different neighborhood as well), and get coffee at Roy St. (after we finally found parking and got in there was not a seat to be had). We ended up going to a toy store in the Magnolia neighborhood which was a big fail, but we discovered that we really like that area. The donut shop was in Wallingford, boasts an all vegan menu free of GMO's, artificial flavors, and colors, and was pretty good, but not the best.

Photo courtesy of Photography by David L. Clark

Photo courtesy of Photography by David L. Clark

Photo courtesy of Photography by David L. Clark

After the rollercoaster of toddler emotions, a hangry mommy, and too much driving from one end of Seattle to the other and back we decided to go to Issaquah. There we went to Starbucks (>.<) and shared a sandwich. Lorelei drank as much of my green tea frappuccino as I did. Then we hit up White Horse Toys, which is pretty much my favorite toy store ever. Lorelei discovered a play table with a Calico Critters house set up near the entrance, and she didn't want to look at anything else for the hour we were there. At least that made it easy to pick her present... Every time we showed her a set and asked if she wanted to take it home she told us no, because that meant she had to leave the dollhouse. David purchased the one we decided on and had it wrapped. Lorelei unwrapped it in the car, and cried the whole way home asking me to "gopen" the box. It was the first thing I did when we got home, and she LOVES that toy! She loves it so much that she brought the kitties with her to eat dinner, and we had to remove their clothes and wash two of them because she wrapped some grubby little pasta hands around them. Toddlers...

If you can pardon the mess, the length, and the mangy dog, you can watch us opening up the Calico Critters toy (this is being put up mostly for the enjoyment of her grandparents who like to see everything).

What Am I Gonna Do With Her?! Life With LeiLei 4/52

I set out to snap a cute picture today, and got more than I bargained for! Lorelei didn't want to hold still at all (as per the norm lately). We're only 5 days away from 2 now, and it's more apparent every stinking day. She came up to me the other day, and I had put on a dress and tights (more thought put into my clothes than usual), and she came up, grabbed the hem of my dress and said, "You be-ootiful." Talk about being a puddle on the floor. The same day David was buckling her into her carseat and I was making silly faces at her in front of the windshield and I could hear her inside the car saying, "Mommy's craazy!" When I got in I asked her what she had said and she replied, "You a crazy baby," something I've been telling her forever. She has us looking at each other in disbelief, or trying to see who loses it first and laughs at her when she's bad a lot lately. We kind of suck at discipline because some of the bad things she does set us off in hysterics. She's constantly telling us we're "mean" or "rude. And she has a penchant for "Your face" jokes. I think it's inherited, my middle sister could never come up with anything better than "Your face" either... What a weird, awesome, smart, "Be-ootiful" girl we have. :)