handmade: fabric letters and a blanket for mia

Alice June shares the same initials as my grandma, so I wanted them to show up somewhere in her nursery.

I'd planned to buy something but then I realized I could just make my own. These were super easy, fast and addictive to make. I drew my own letters (but you could easily print any font) and printed them out, cut the fabric, topstitched, and then stuffed them. I had some left over tape measure printed trim that I used to make hanging loops. Easy and cute.

Then I made a blanket for a friend's baby girl, Mia. I wanted something a little girly, but not overly so. A pretty Anna Maria Horner print flannel that mixes sweet pink with blues and greens, a white minky back, and dark pink rick rack trim.

manly cupcakes

This year for Josh's birthday I wanted to make manly cupcakes. The manliest of cupcakes. These are Guinness cake with Irish cream frosting. With plain silver cups that look downright stainless. Cue the Tool Time grunting.

The best thing about marrying someone a few years older than you is that they are always, from then on, older than you. If you ever get a little down about how quickly you're aging, just turn your head a little to the right, and just like that: someone even older than you.

Happy Birthday Josh.

{ anatomy of a bathroom } tile

We're tiling the floor of our upstairs bathroom. The bathroom I had *hoped* would be done while I was still pregnant so I didn't have to run downstairs in the middle of the night. Now Alice is 5 months old and being up in the middle of the night is old hat.

I like tiling. It's actually one of my favorite projects. There's a natural rhythm to work. Scrape out the mortar, lay some tiles, space them out, check occasionally to make sure the grid is still straight. Place a bunch of whole tiles at once, then some cut work, then back to whole tiles. It's satisfying. And at the end of the day there's a lot to look at, a big plus.

I usually gravitate toward neutrals so that I don't feel locked into a color palette, but this green was just too pretty. It is called Mr. Green Jeans, a medium leafy green with a lot of yellow in it and I love it.

{ anatomy of a nursery } handmade

While I was pregnant I got it in my head that I simply must learn to sew. I think it's natural to look down at your growing belly and start daydreaming about what kind of mom you might be, or might like to be. I wanted to be the kind of mom that knew how to make things.

My first sewing project outside of junior high home-ec class was this baby chew toy. It's wonky and full of silly colors and a perfect first project. Alice loves these kinds of toys right now because they don't require much coordination to get them from hand to mouth.

Next up was a swaddling wrap with super soft fleece inside. I went all-out girly on this one. Alice grew out of it approximately 45 seconds after I turned off the sewing machine.

Lastly I made these little monster bookends so that I can rotate out a few books from her collection and display them on top of her dresser. I deviated from the pattern and added (my first!) zippers to the bottoms of these for easier washing. This resulted in only minor cussing.

All of these patterns are from "Simple Sewing for Baby" by Lotta Jansdotter, which is not only full of great pictures and patterns but also illicited the response 'I could actually make that' which I wasn't finding in other books.

100 days

Alice and her friend Dagny were born on the same day in the same hospital, just two hours apart, over three months ago now. Saturday they both turned 100 days old.

We all pitched in and made homemade potstickers (jiaozi) mostly giggling at our poor handiwork, while Dagny's mom Jing made perfect specimens and a whole spread of stir-fried dishes for our celebratory feast.

May both of our girls live for 100 years!

{ anatomy of a nursery } alice's room

Let's take a little tour, shall we?

Awesome Alice in Wonderland print was a gift from Brooke.

We managed to fit both a crib and a twin-sized bed into her tiny room. I wanted to furnish the nursery with pieces she could grow into. The bed serves as a cozy corner for playing and nursing.

The dresser is vintage danish modern. That it matches the hand-me-down crib is a happy accident. The rug is Flor tiles, cut in half to make narrower stripes.

The closet had to be a work-horse to fit everything we needed into the room. It serves not only as typical storage, but also as changing station, cloth diaper storage, and library. I love her book collection made up of gifts from friends, garage sale finds, and books from my own nursery.

Close-up of the Studio Violet poster that started the color scheme. "You are loved" wall decal by Shanna Murray. I normally find wall decals sort of cheesy or juvenile but her's are so sweet. Red and white quilt made by grandma for my own nursery.

Otomi textiles from our trip to Mexico, a purchase I had to take home with me even though I had no idea where I would use them. I realized the happy colors and animals would be perfect for a baby's room, and matted them with pin-dotted yellow paper to pick up on the polka-dots throughout the room. Pillows, headboard, and bedspread made by me.

The sweet mobile was a gift from a friend, the ikea pendant lamp is purely aesthetic, as it doesn't actually work. I need a functional lamp in here! I'm pretty happy with how the room turned out. I think its pretty close to the inspiration board below, don't you?

9/9/10 was a big day.

Our baby girl was born that day.

One day you're innocently walking around in a gigantic clown dress and the very next you're holding a baby. Nine months of contemplating this still cannot possibly prepare you for it.

We are very happy and healthy and a little tired.

{ anatomy of a nursery } inspiration board

I pulled this inspiration board together before we knew if our little one was a boy or a girl. Either way I wanted lots of white, primary colors, and animals. I also hoped to squeeze a little daybed or twin bed into our tiny nursery so that there would be a place where we could all be together. I hate the idea of just having one rocking chair in a nursery and no place for dad to sit. Once we found out we were having a girl I thought I could "femme" this scheme up with lots of red, wood, and polka-dots.

I'm due in just 6 weeks, let's see if I can pull this together before little Sayer comes!

one thing leads to another.

So. Much time has passed, and some progress has been made.

While I continue to gather up a few more things for the new nursery (!),

let's divert our attention to the guest room. And grandma Berry's stunning wedding quilt, which has been waiting for a place to shine for years now.

The rooms upstairs are small, so we've left the walls and trim a stark white and added in layers of bright color. The oak floors are the same as what we put in our bedroom, and most all the furnishings we repurposed from other places around the house. The light in this room is wonderful and I sometimes like to take naps in here. As do the cats.

We use the closet area as our equipment storage. At some point I'd like to either hang a curtain over the doorway or, better yet, move the whole storage rack to the basement. Still, this is much improvement from the 1,000 sf of construction space we had last year.

Big things are happening downstairs, too.....

holiday checklist

The perfect tree's been found and trimmed.


The gifts have been wrapped.



It's almost time to go home.



Merry Christmas, everyone.

how could it be nearly 2010?

Have you been to Etsy yet? It is your portal to a marketplace packed full of homemade goodness. Now that you know, you will never need a generic bookstore calendar again.

I've narrowed my 2010 choices down to two contenders:

Simple and colorful letterpress from a long time favorite, Linda and Harriet could be fun and I just love those snowshoes. The images are meant to be cut off at the end of the month and used as a postcard.


I hang my calendar from the side of the fridge. Maybe some wholesome veggie sketches from Claudia Pearson could inspire a year's worth of weeknight dinners:



Last year I went with a clean and colorful kitchen theme from Smack of Jellyfish:


A little better than Twilight pin-ups, don't you think?

right now

Looking at this:


And dreaming of this:


Maybe some hiking

mystic lake

woodbine falls

A dip into a cold, refreshing mountain spring

half moon, in the crazy mountains

Maybe a little fishing

bighorn river

A float with a view:

yellowstone river

We had a busy summer, but I think we managed to enjoy it.

portland.

Oh, Portland. I was so charmed by you.



Accomodations by the Ace Hotel. Whether I found it tragically hip or just a cool slice of the Portland scene, well I never quite decided. But I know for sure that mural was nice.


We continued to eat ourselves across the Pacific Northwest. Mmm donuts.

Travel by train came highly recommended. So much more enjoyable than flying, and the luxury of sitting back of enjoying the scenery gets missed when your fighting traffic on the interstate.


I was enchanted by the mix of sleek and grunge in this town.


New and old. Staid and seedy.
Perfect weather made everything shimmer, belying the city's more notorious weather patterns.

Lemongrass tofu from a food cart? When can I move here? Thanks for taking me along, Jo.