amelia studio

V V V V V V V

So, how was your Valentine's Day? Growing up, this holiday was always just a day to celebrate having love in your life -- any kind of love, not just romantic. So I've never had the bitterness about the day that lots of people seem to have. It's a fun little break in the middle of February -- a month that so needs a glimmer of happy in the middle of it.

For this year's valentines, I pulled out my little stash of gouache. I came across it while cleaning my office, and thought it would be fun. It was leftover from the color theory class I took pre-children, so some of the tubes were unusable. (Blue in particular. Boo.) So I used purple. I don't think my gradient would have passed muster in my class, but it was still fun. I miss my design classes. Maybe I'll finish that degree someday.

The girls got mini Caboodles with new hairbrushes. (Remember Caboodles?) Lice has been going through E's school, so I made a gift out of something that was a necessity: separate hair brushes. They were a hit!

Chris and I made dinner for ourselves after the kids went to bed -- something we should do more often. It's hard to have dinner conversation with people throwing cups of apple sauce on your pants or complaining how we never eat anything good.

I hope you had a sweet holiday!

Jolly Lollies

The girls and I finished up their school Valentine's treats yesterday. We used this idea. I cut out the craft foam, but E was able to assemble them and attach signed notes to each one. Then we all amused ourselves by posing for the camera and in the mirror. C was very confused about my choice of mustache over lips. She kept asking if I wanted to be a boy. (She's super into gender designations these days.) Do I look like my dad with a mustache?

Cookiepalooza

This year's Christmas cookie selections included Swedish Gaylord Thumbprint Cookies (lower left) with currant jelly, easy pretzel candy-nut melts, sugar cookies, mocha slice cookies, and peanut butter fudge. The pretzel melts were great with kids -- not so complicated that they got bored. The mocha slice cookies are one of my favorite things ever. The peanut butter fudge frustrates me to no end; I never get it right. The thumbprint cookies tasted like childhood, but weren't my favorite. I'm not a fan of fruit in my cookies -- except maybe lemon bars, but even then I have to be in the mood for them. The sugar cookies are always a favorite -- love that hint of almond.

They are all gone now and safely stored away on everyone's hips and bellies.

Advent

We try to stretch out the Christmas season here a little bit by using an Advent calendar. We burn part of a candle down every night, and while that often calms the children a little, I'm hoping in future years that we can sit silently while it burns.

Here are some of our activities:

• Make paper snowflakes to put in the front windows. (This site was helpful to me.) 
• Get out the Christmas books and read some.
• Go get a Christmas tree.
• Decorate the Christmas tree.
• Pick out a toy for another child. (donation box at school)
• Make button wreath ornaments.
• Drive around and see Christmas lights in your pajamas.
• Paint your nails Christmas red and green.
• Roast marshmallows in the fireplace.
• Have a picnic under the Christmas tree.
• Have hot chocolate.
• Go meet your new baby cousin!
• Put out cookies for Santa and read “The Night Before Christmas.”

We also watched a number of Christmas TV specials, and some nights we just had some little letters to place on our calendar that spelled out "cheers."

I can't tell if this helps the children to have a more peaceful holiday by savoring the season, or if it just prolongs the over-excitement. Either way, they do seem to enjoy it.

Halloween Love

I love Halloween.

I love it, but not for the crazy gore and spectacle (though that is fun). What I love is my home on Halloween. I love my house at Christmas, but I may love it more on Halloween. Every year, I make white chili and cornbread, so the place smells wonderful. (And I don't have to cook the next day -- bonus.) My mom and step-dad come over, so everything is tidied. The kids are (usually) in a joyful mood. And they look adorable. The evening is crisp. The crabapples look like little pumpkins on my trees out by the driveway. The burning bush is still glowing. I get to hang out with my mom and drink wine while we hand out candy. Then we blow out the jack-o'-lanterns, pull the blinds and rest.

And I get Reeses peanut butter cups. There's that, too.

Getting Past the Vacation Photos

I've been at a blogging impasse for a couple weeks now. When we got back from our vacation to Washington D.C./Virginia, I was faced with hundreds of vacation photos. I haven't had the energy to get through all those photos, so they've just been sitting there on my hard drive, polluting my bloggy mind.

In the meantime, other stuff has been going on: Father's Day, a first day of school (er, parents' day out), swimming lessons, a power outage, a job change for Chris, back pain, two ugly glucose tests, two girls sleeping in the same room now, many sleep-deprivation-induced temper tantrums, and days on end of temps in the upper 90s. So, the blogs became easy to ignore.

Here are some pics of E's interpretation of Father's Day. Chris is watering the gardens, Lloyd is on his crazy tractor in the corn field, and Grandpa H is painting. After she made these, we went and looked at photos of Papa (what we're calling my dad, who is no longer with us). She still does not understand the concept of someone not being alive.

Anyway, for Father's Day, I made a spread of snacky foods for dinner, and the girls were in heaven. E wants to know why we don't eat like this all the time. I made the artichoke-olive crostini that Alicia recommended, because Chris likes olives and artichokes. I also made this mint ice cream and added some good chopped dark chocolate. It was very good -- it tasted just like my mint plant smells. But it didn't turn green like the recipe says. I made Lloyd this rhubarb pie, which I hear was good, but passed the pie on without trying it. Elise stepped on it in the car when we were delivering it, which about gave me a heart attack. So, lots of cooking.

I'll try to get through those vacation photos at some point! Ay.

Holiday Weekend

Memorial Day weekend is always a triple holiday at our house. We also celebrate Chris's birthday and our anniversary. (eight years!) Here are a couple of the things I made for the festivities.

We generally make our own cards around here. This time I tried a little paper cutting. I'm not sure if I have the patience for this. (particularly considering that this card was completely rumpled by C just minutes after Chris got to see it)

I was much more within my comfort zone with the cake. Chris likes German Chocolate. I used this recipe for the frosting, and it's really good. I'm not a frosting person. But this is more like caramel than frosting. There's some more of this cake waiting for me as soon as I finish this post. So I'm in a hurry, people.

We also got to go out for the birthday/anniversary. Our very nice friends Chris and Adam watched the girls while we got a bite at One Bite and saw "Star Trek." I have never seen an episode of "Star Trek," and I've never seen one of the movies. Complete blank slate. But I still enjoyed it.

All in all, it was a pretty laid-back weekend. I got to finish the sixth Harry Potter book, and have moved on to the last one. I am a little too excited about the new movie this summer. I just now am reading the books, so this will be the first time I've actually read the book before seeing the movie.

I hope your weekend was as relaxing as ours!