garden update

In the garden things are happening! Tomatoes have flowers, bell peppers and carrots are sprouting.
The sunflowers that birds planted in the fall are 8 feet tall and blooming.



Sunflowers Greta planted are popping up everywhere.

Sweet peas that I worry will get too much sun.

Apple blossoms on the stick we planted in January.

pamper me purple

Before today my feet looked like those of an eighty year old woman living a hard life in an arid climate.
In other words, really bad. ( I am sparing you any before pictures.)
I've had one pedicure before in my life. It was okay, but I'm just not that comfortable with strangers touching my feet with sharp or extremely abrasive objects. I buy the foot creams that don't really work and the pumice stones, but being that I'm getting older and always bare footed, they just aren't cutting it. So this afternoon I took Greta and went for a pedicure at Mademoiselle Nail & Spa in Eagle Rock. Greta pulled up a chair next to me as I soaked my feet in an unsettling neon blue bubbling foot bath and we breathed some toxic nail polish air while a very sweet Filipino woman worked on my feet.
I felt bad for her at first, but she didn't cringe when she saw my feet as I expected. Then I thought her work must feel more gratifying on someone like me. If she works on feet that were just buffed and polished two weeks before, where's the satisfaction, where's the transformation? Well, she did work hard and I gave her a nice tip. Now, instead of having eighty year old feet I have feet that look thirty four almost thirty five-ish.
I'm going to try and make this my new custom. Pedicure once a month.
I wont feel so guilty now when I ask Zach (who by the way has feet and hands softer than Henry's bottom) to rub my feet at the end of the day.


Happy Monday.

Stay tuned: Tomorrow...garden update!

girl

that's cool, i guess.

The North Wind Blew South from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

one year ago

One year ago this week we were frolicking on the beach in Santa Monica. The kids sure have grown.

sunday matinee

This weekend we met up with friends from our homeschool group at Glendale Community College and watched the final performance of Once Upon a Mattress. A great time was had by all.
Here are a few shots of Mae and Greta outside the auditorium after the show. When these girls get together they bring out a certain je ne sais quoi in one another. They are funny, fabulous... and four!

i love...

...thrift stores that organize by color!

Did you know that it is National Thrift Store Month? Well, neither did I, and it's almost over. So go out and get yourself a pair of $5 designer jeans and a cashmere sweater for $3, maybe a vintage pyrex bowl that looks a little stained but with some elbow grease comes off and looks as good as new.

Happy Thrifting!

The Thrifty Chicks

clip on

No, Greta doesn't have her ears pierced. Maybe when she's 12...or maybe whenever she asks. Surely she'll go to papa first.

Have a nice weekend. I'm going to try and catch a nap.

went to the huntington, what did i see?

Love,

a camellia lady,

a cute couple,



interesting light,

and Greta being sneaky.

freedom

Henry is mobile! He is scooting his way all around the house now. Sometimes he does something that looks almost like a crawl, up on his knees, but he prefers to scoot on his bum. Whatever works.

In these photos you'll notice the lovely pink fuzzy looking blanket on Greta's bed in the background. This was a gift from our beloved Grandma Peggy. It is a beautiful wool blanket that she had when she was a girl living in France. It's in great shape and is so very warm! I had been looking for a wool blanket, preferably vintage, and I couldn't have found anything as perfect as this one. I will have to take a better photo of it. We love it.
Hoping we can squeeze in a few more chilly days before the warm weather is thrust upon us so we can burrow under our new but old wool blankie.

And this is totally unrelated to anything mentioned here, but I found this to be amusing and a total time waster. Thought I'd share, because who doesn't like to waste a little time on the computer.

spring!

Almost spring? Can it be?

Yesiree!

now, thats a cozy phone!

His and Hers phone cozies. Made from felted wool sweater scraps. It took maybe an hour to make each one, and I LOVE being able to use up those bits of fabric and buttons that I just can't seem to let go of. It's fun to recycle...AND good for the environment.




Have a beautiful weekend.

ninjas on wheels

nails pink

my venice family

It was seven years ago next month that Zach and I were married and I left my funky little shack in Ojai and moved to the big city. It was not an easy change. As I remember for the first few weeks I would get lost driving just about every day and I cried a lot. But I was able to quickly adapt and find my place in this wacky city and actually start enjoying myself with the help of my most loving and considerate husband and also the kindest and without a doubt the hippest family in the world, the Eliots. My friend Sarah had been caring for their daughter, Sydney who was close to 3 years old at the time and couldn't continue. I believe Sarah had 4 other jobs at the time. She asked me if I would be interested in the job. Me, a nanny? It was very intimidating not having any real experience caring for little ones, but I thought I would go for it, I had nothing else lined up. Before I started I imagined I would work a few weeks  until they could find someone else more qualified and capable. Mom, aka Kendell was 8 months pregnant and I had no experience with newborns.

To make a long story short, I fell in love with Sydney. She was shy and sweet and she liked me. Soon Jasper was born and I fell in love with him too. Dad, aka Jefferson and Kendell worked from home most of the time and I got to know and love them too.  I spent a few days a week with the kids, walking all around Venice, the beach, parks, cafes, libraries, the farmer's market, shops on Abbot Kinney. I quickly fell into a groovy rhythm, finding the good things that this city has to offer and beautiful little people to spend my days with.

I have watched Jasper and Sydney grow to be smart, kind, creative, funny, and just plain wonderful kids. Sydney just turned 9 a few days ago and Jasper will be 7 this summer. It's hard to believe that so much time has passed and they seem so grown up now. ( Can I write this without crying? I can hardly see my keyboard for blurry eyes.) The kids got older, started school, Greta came along, I was only going one day a week or so before we packed up and moved to the other side of town. I go to their Waldorf school festivals on occasion, I was able to sit in on one of their Garage Band practices, and sometimes we chat on the phone. They still sleep at night with the quilts I made for them. Since Greta was born they have treated her like a baby sister, making her dolls, drawing her pictures, passing on clothes and toys. Other than my own mum, Kendell and Jefferson have proved to be my parenting mentors. Always happy to offer help and support. And I haven't even mention how amazingly talented and creative they are. (They wrote and produced this play!) I find my self sometimes in a situation with the kids and I think , " What would Kendell or Jefferson do?" Really. They are that great.

We were able to meet up with our friends a couple of weeks ago at The Huntington Library. As always we had a fun time and as always I was in awe of the kids and how they seem to change so much in between our visits that are sadly too few these days. Someday if we leave LA, well, I guess we will just have to take them with us.

To my Venice family, I love you.

unschool

"What makes people smart, curious, alert, observant, competent, confident, resourceful, persistent - in the broadest and best sense, intelligent- is not having access to more and more learning places, resources, and specialists, but being able in their lives to do a wide variety of interesting things that matter, things that challenge their ingenuity, skill, and judgement, and that make an obvious difference in their lives and the lives of people around them."

-John Holt
Teach Your Own

the beckoning of lovely

Watch this.

Then this.

Then get out there and do something lovely!

Happy Monday to all.

lil hen

trash or treasure?

Greta's friend Poppy (cute as a button and as sweet as her name) some months ago was gifted a large cardboard chest filled with princess dresses, every 3.5 year old girls dream, or so it would seem. Well, Poppy wanted and still wants nothing to do with these shimmering and fantastically synthetic gowns. But Greta is all about that right now, so I was happy to take them when Poppy's mom offered them to us.

The dresses were all tried on and taken off over and over again for about an hour this afternoon until I broke the cycle and threw the kids in the car and headed to Cafe de Leche for a (much needed) late in the day coffee. Greta wore the purple one with gold trim, I wore a pink tiara, and on the way home, Henry cried. So feeling fancy we sang to him as two sopranos might, about putting his "japamas" on and going to bed.

Greta loves her new dresses and has asked me repeatedly why it was that Poppy doesn't want them. She finds it very perplexing. She thinks we should hang on to them for her just in case she wants them back in the future, maybe when she's 4. The moral of this story, one little girls trash is another's treasure. Thank you Poppy for making Greta's year.

bones

mas verde

green

Zach's favorite. I jumped on the green bandwagon midweek. I didn't have time to take new photos so I dug through some of our travel photos. Find more green for your soul here. Here is Zach pausing at a bus stop in London with some serious jet lag. We had just arrived that day and instead of hitting the hay we decided to hit the town. Not the best idea. All I remember here is feeling incredibly tired, loopy, and like we were going to die. We stood there at that bus stop and laughed hysterically.
My dogs were a'barkin on a Paris subway. "Degoutant ces Americains!"