Art

Pinterest, Etsy, 20x200, and free time at work has introduced me to several artists that I love. Here are two.

Leslie Graff:
I was introduced to Leslie Graff via the wonderful blog, Design Mom by the lovely Gabrielle Blair. From the very first time Leslie Graff's work I was super overcome. I am assuming this comes from being a mother to a son. So imagine how overcome I became at Christmas when I received three of her canvas prints. I literally boo-hooed for like 20 embarrassing minutes. She has several series, Mothering, Domestic Organic and Abstract. Her art is available at several price points. I have even seen her cards framed and matted on Pinterest - voila! cheap art!

This one is my favorite.

Caitlin McGauley:
I first saw Caitlin McGauley's work in Lonny magazine and then on Pinterest.  I love the little paintings she does for her (few) blog posts or the more ornate ones of brownstones in NYC and the girly watercolors and really mostly girly themes of most of her work.  I recently snagged a Spring 2012 numbered print: Stripes, picked up a frame at IKEA and had a new mat cut at Hobby Lobby.  She has done work for Kate Spade and Tory Burch.  The ultimate in accessories!

Me. Ha.

Tory Burch

Kate Spade

I cannot handle nostalgia

But this is a neat website. Watch out, you may get a little weepy.

Love etc.

You know there will be sad parts but I would like to see it.

At least they are IKEA colors

Brad scored a Fisher Price McDonald's kid playset at a garage sale this weekend.  It's is beyond adorable with its pictures of McDonald's food served in the Earth friendly Styrofoam containers of the 1980's.  Along with this $4 haul came some play dishes.  The dishes obviously needed to be cleaned so I dumped them in the sink and let them soak in some detergent. 

This morning I went to rinse them all off and set them out to dry when the irony hit me that not only am I responsible for washing and drying my own real dishes but now I am washing and drying play dishes.  Because I don't have enough going on that I needed to add "washes play dishes" to my repertoire?

It made me chuckle and consider my sanity all at the same time.  Now if you will excuse me I have some plastic chicken to prepare.

Laundry

A few weeks ago, I was home all by myself and was really on a roll with getting chores checked off my list. It was a gorgeous, breezy day outside and obviously I was hitting the sauce as I decided to hang my laundry outside to dry in the sunshine. I should note that I do not have a line from which to hang said laundry but I did have hangers and old rusty plant hooks so, who needs an actual clothesline?

This was around the time I was feeling smug about growing my own herbs so it was only fitting that I also get congratulatory with myself about "using nature as my dryer" and "being green by not using my God-given Maytag."  I went outside with an armload of wet shirts and a dozen or so hangers.  Once I was outside I needed a clean, flat surface to dump this giant load of freshly washed shirts on so I could start hanging them on hangers.  I quickly realized that I was out in nature, where there are no clean, flat surfaces to speak of.  So I gathered everything up and moved back in to the dining room.  I hung all the wet shirts up on hangers and took them back outside to be dried in the glorious sunshine.

Since I am never outside and we have never made proper use of the plant hooks (by hanging actual plants) I didn't realize there were only like four hooks.  Well I had 12 or 13 shirts so... I didn't let this get me down though, after all I was growing my own herbs for godssake.  I could hang some shirts in the goddamn sunshine.  So, after I ran out of hooks I used the rain gutter.  After I finished I admired my work and went inside to research "how to install a clothesline" on the Internet.

A few hours later I went to gather my freshly dried laundry and noticed that a few things were missing.  I looked around and didn't see the shirts anywhere on the deck.  Perplexed I kept looking (specifically for Yay Cleavage Raygun tshirt) which of course, was on the fucking roof.  The delicate breeze (or angry winds) had blown several of my shirts onto the fucking roof and while they were still attached to the hangers, the hangers had now WEDGED themselves into the rain gutter.  Naturally I cannot reach this and am now certain that my shirts are covered in nature and roofing tar.

I went to the garage to get the step stool to get up on the roof to retrieve my ironic shirts.  While the shirt was thankfully tar free, it was stiff as a board.  Good job sunshine, you motherfucker.  I realized my expectations of line (hanger) drying my clothes was from a 1986 Snuggle commercial.  And that the commercial was a for a dryer sheet that you put IN A DRYER THAT PLUGS INTO YOUR HOUSE.

I gathered all of my shirts from the rusty plant hooks and the roof and went in, determined not to tell Brad of my ridiculous laundry escapades.  Fast forward to about 5pm that evening.  Brad gets home from work and is changing into his play clothes the bedroom.  I hear him say, "what is all over the backyard?" as he looks out the window.  I didn't think"oh it's probably my Banana Republic Shirt Dress" but of course, it was.  He goes out to the yard to collect my once smug laundry while Mother Nature has the last laugh.  Again.

Sign of the times

Sometimes I make up stories for Jackson and they are often a blend of other traditional kids stories that I remember off the top of my head.  A kid story mashup if you will.

Excerpt from tonight: 

I sat there with Sally.
We sat there, we two.
And I said, "How I wish
We had something to do!"

 So we tore open the shutters and threw up the sash!

And mama in her ‘kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled our brains for a long winter’s nap.

Take that Gregg Michael Gillis.

Back from the dead.

Mic check one-two, one-two...

So I have been busy pinning shit on Pinterest (which I can never, ever spell), preparing to be on vacation, being on vacation and then unpacking my life to be not on vacation any longer.  For that unpacking part, I took an extra day off work when everyone else in the house returned to their normal routine (work, daycare) to get laundry done and do some cleaning, etc.  Below is a story about herbs, not any of that stuff.

A few weeks ago, on the opening weekend of one of our farmer's markets, we bought some basil and rosemary plants.  Because we are white suburbanites that have a large digital cable subscription that includes extensive food and renovation shows, we thought we would grow our own herbs.  Giada can do it, it looks so easy and pretty in her white kitchen with her white sill boxes, overflowing with homegrown herb goodness.  So we bought three plants.  These plants sat on the counter in their original planters, on a pretty white tray, for about 8 days.  I liked the way they looked on the clean kitchen counter, all herb-y and green.  Just waiting to be baked with some chicken or tossed on a pizza!  Several problems I didn't see coming:

1. Bugs.  We took those sonsofbitches outside every day because the Internet said they needed some ridiculous amount of DIRECT SUNLIGHT EVERY SINGLE DAY.  Like 4-6 hours.  But then I felt like it was too cold at night (because it was like 40) so I would bring them in. (How did people garden without the Internet?)  Enter: bugs.  
2. Real Estate. They looked nice on the clean kitchen counter, but if I am being honest, that was only once, so I could send a pic via Instagram.   Our kitchen counter is constantly full of pots and pan drying, 14 sippy cups and their parts, milk - because milk is always everywhere, and Bento lunch box parts.  Twice I knocked over the goddamn basil plant while rinsing squashed bananas off the high chair tray and had to pick up dirt.  I don't think Giada rinses off high chair trays in her kitchen.
3. No sun. kept forgetting the sunlight.  So I would be in the car, leaving for work and daycare and I would feel GUILT about the plants I left on the counter.  We don't have a pretty window sill for these plants to bathe in so I had to take them outside.  I had plant guilt and I would get out of the car, go back in the house, get the plants and take them outside to the deck.  
4. Rain and wind. One night I forgot about the plants and the next morning a poor basil plant was smashed on the ground, looking pitiful and sad like no one loved it.  I literally ran out to right it and declared that I needed to plant these.  Container gardening! I saw it on Pinterest!  

So while we were gone, my Mom lovingly planted these three plants in a long hanging planter box!  I was excited! My plants would have a home!  She set it on the deck.  I admired the green plants in the dark, rich dirt, in the pretty terracotta-hued planter.   I felt like my plants had a home and soon I would use their generous offerings, thriving on my deck(!) to bake with some chicken or toss on a pizza.

Then yesterday I woke up at 5:45am to the sounds of crazy winds and torrential rains.  My plants!  They would be battered and presumably DEAD and I hadn't even baked them with some goddamn chicken or tossed it on a fucking pizza.  Basically, from a dead sleep, I get up, grab my robe and run to the deck to move my plants (the planter is not yet attached to the deck).  I moved them under the roof overhang so they wouldn't be pelted to death and went back, questioning my sanity.

Next up: A Laundry Story