Alone for an hour and a half...

David & Olivia went on a date...



And Mommy stayed home and...
1) ate. It was the first thing I thought of doing. Eating without having to share is quite lovely when it's my favorite (ham and cucumber sandwich).
2) put on a movie that I've wanted to watch for a while (and David doesn't want to watch it). Food, Inc.
Then I realize I just ate a ham sandwich and probably shouldn't watch the movie. 4 minutes into it.
3) sewed. Leggings from women's socks & beanbags from some of Olivia's little clothes she had outgrown and we aren't going to pass on.





I hope they come back soon or I'll find myself organizing the garage.
4)blogged this.

Location:Maryland

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Sew like my Mom

My Magic Mom - finding magical moments in everyday life

Shirring (Shirt Skirt)

I love this tutorial and I have spent a couple of hours by now at my sewing machine, try to figure out how shirring works. It just doesn't work out! I don't know what I'm doing wrong. I've looked at several tutorial and it sounds so simple. Jen, have you done this before? It would be perfect for our girls' summer outfits... and I want to do a skirt for myself.... but I'm so frustrated now.

Here's the link The Shirt Skirt

This is said to be a good tutorial: shir madness tutorial

And another tutorial I liked (with good pictures step-by-step): Pretty Ditty. This lady points out that the shirring effect only starts appearing a couple of rows down the road. This was helpful. No wonder I got frustrated after the first row. And she says to water spray the fabric after you finished - the wrinkle effect will turn out more and even. I'll try this next time.

The author also recommends this book (there must be a shirring tutorial in it too): Weekend Sewing - more than 40 projects for inspired stitching. Sounds like our style!

Hey there, Olivia's Mom

1. What ever happened to doll making month in the US?
2. We need to keep our labels in check. Some already double or are really similar.
3. You never commented on the new blog wallpaper. "Like" or "Dislike"?
4. New Year's without you wasn't the same...
5. Any New Year's resolutions? Since mine worked out so well last year... ;))
6. Hi to everyone.
7. Haven't forgotten about the food post...
8. Miss you.

Winter Table Decoration

Since I took down the Christmas decoration, our table looked quite empty with only one "naked" candle. I wanted to do something about it, but didn't quite know yet what. I only wanted to keep the piece of wood and some candle (it's our tradition to light a candle for all meals). On our walk today our goal was to find a snail shell. The snow has gone now and it was extremely fun to stray around, look at all the things on the muddy ground, pick up some stuff, show each other, carry some along (Lenara was determined to carry home a big stone today. Every time she set it down, she made sure, to have it when leaving that place. Some time towards the end of our walk she must have realized that the effort of taking home a random stone - it wasn't even a pretty one - is too big. She left it on the street. I reminded her of the stone, just because I wasn't sure, if she did it on purpose or just forgot to take it along. The first time I asked her about the stone, she went back to get it. She did it another time. I asked her again and she replied "no, Mommy, leave stone" and she seemed very relieved. I thought that was quite interesting to follow her decision making.) Anyway, this was about my table decoration. We couldn't find any snail shells and I seriously started wondering, if there can be found any at all at this time of the year. I never paid attention to things like that. So we were close to giving up our search. But at one little yard - wow - suddenly hundreds of them! This might have been bc I had sent a wish to the universe (Law of Attraction) or just coincidence - but to us it seemed like a true miracle after we had spent so much time looking for only one. What a treasure we had found!

I didn't have any container to put them in, but I had an emergency diaper in my bag. So we put our 15+ snail shells in there to carry them home. Lenara thought that was weird. She kept starring at the diaper. Hehe.

So this is what our rest-of-winter-decoration ended up looking like: a new candle glass (with thready white transparent paper), some stones we had found at Lake Constance two summers ago (all with one white line) and some of our snail shells. I added a white line to them which matches the stones somewhat.




Please note our temperature thingy in the background. It's not an iPad (yet), but it's digital with radio communication! ;)

Our brand new game

Today while Lenara was drawing and I was making another set of candle glasses, we had a cool new "activity 18+" idea. Lenara must have gotten bored and she got her cars out (including a Landrover - of course!!!) and played with them instead of drawing. She asked me to draw as well. But I had no idea what to add to her expressive-lines-all-over-drawing. Often I feel like all figurative and objective drawing I can think of clearly doesn't match her style. And I don't want her to think my drawings are better in any way or a goal for her (I've had a friend who did painting classes for children and she told me about different concepts. Her concept of giving no instructions at all and not intervening in any way was a great success - not only in the process, as those kids loved the class, but also in the extra-ordinary results).

I started out with doing expressive-lines-all-over, but not feeling authentic doing it. Then for some reason I ended up having two pencils in one hand and I started drawing. Wow! That truely caught Lenara's attention. And as she had the cars on the table - I got an idea: I drew a road and a parking lot for the cars. We had to each take the route many many times. Then we continually added things - she also had her own ideas, i.e. trees, a pond, a gas station where we had to stop with the cars, a duck to the pond, luggage at the starting point which we had to load and unload. We could've continued for a while... but we got interrupted.

Anyway, I loved the process how this little game developed. And how much we both got into it. I think drawing and developing landscapes or houses or whatever we need for playing with our dolls/horses/cars/whatever, will become a new creative element in our everyday playing. Highly recommended!

Christmas is over - now what?

I have to keep remembering myself these days that we have a blog. Before Christmas I checked it everyday and had so many things on my mind to post. Now that Christmas is over - I feel sort of empty and disoriented. Today I cleaned my apartment. It was gross. The floors covered in crums, handicraft leftovers and dead fir needles from our christmas decoration, dirty laundry piles somehow spread in every room, tons of molded leftovers in the fridge... ewwwww! So today, I didn't even care that I didn't have much time to play with Lenara and she turned all grumpy, but I needed to take care of this mess. Which is also proof that I really took it easy over Christmas and New Year. ;) Which in turn, makes me proud of myself. Sometimes I'm just worried that I'm getting too good at taking it easy... and then I read this one post-it I put on my wall:

"You don't live to leave a perfectly cleaned house."

God, how I love that quote. I found it in a women's magazine (which I haven't read any in months) - and immediately fell in love with it, so I cut it out.

What else is going on. One friend visited us today with her 7 week old baby. I loved it! She let me hold him and instantly I got hit by this "ooooh, I want one!" feeling. Maybe I felt so close to this little guy, as we sold our baby equipment to this family. So he was actually laying in our old babysafe, our old perambulator etc. It was a little bit like a flashback.

I know I had a couple of times during those almost 2 years back from now when I promised myself not ever to do this all over again. And yet, I have to admit, I just love children, being a mother just feels incredibly right and being allowed to be part of these little creatures' lives and trying to give them a good start into their very own futures... it's just too amazing. Every bit of exhaustion, desperation, anger, physical pain... it was all worth it in the end. And I know how I grew with every survived little or bigger crisis.

I know this sounds weird, but at times I think, maybe I was meant to do this on my own, as now I have to realize how strong I really am, what I have accomplished - together with Lenara indeed. If I had had P. to live with us, I would probably (like I used) have given him most of the credit for making things work out.

Now I'm at the point that I feel in balance. It's still exhausting at times. Sure. But I know it's a phase. I know how to take better care of my own energy level. And I'm much more self-confident. Plus it's getting more and more fun and rewarding as Lenara is able to communicate and share her feelings with me by now, and everyday there are things she learns and I'm so happy I can help her learn - next to being the happiest toddler in the world. Here's an example:

When she came back from a Daddy day last week, I was taking her shoes off - while Daddy and Grandma were waiting to say their good-byes. Usually she's still all excited and doesn't really notice me. This time she very unexpectedly threw herself into my arms, gave me the biggest hug and said "Mommy, love you". Sigh!

So I guess I'm enjoying day by day again - without having a certain goal (like Christmas) around the corner. I don't have many plans for 2011. Feeling disoriented is just eligible. It's like a white paper in front of me and I'm so very excited before starting to paint it.