{take me out to the ballgame}

This weekend, we'll be cheering on Justin and the fifty-five other people who are setting a new Guinness World Record by playing forty-nine hours of baseball, to raise money for Mercy Project. Stop by and cheer them on if you can!

Meanwhile, Tilly will be working on setting her own world record for the most times a toddler can try to escape from a baseball stadium in a weekend. So many exits...

{photography amongst the bluebonnets: a beginner's guide}

As any Texan will tell you, it's rather a tradition around here to take family portraits in the wildflowers that grow alongside the roads. Justin was away, but Tilly, a few friends and I took a little road-trip down to the town of Independence one morning, to frolic, picnic and take photos in the fields.

This is what happened when I tried to sit Tilly down in a nice fat clump of flowers, as I could see the other families were doing:

Major scowls... and then attempted escape! So, as perhaps there are other families who can't magically produce smiles out of thin air, these are the things that I found did work for getting a semi-decent photo in the bluebonnets.

1. Find a spot far enough away from any roads that you can let the children run free. No matter how good your photos, no one wants to remember the day little Suzie was squashed by an eighteen-wheeler.

2. Wear your running shoes. As your children run towards something -- a butterfly, a family member, someone's discarded lunch -- sprint ahead, quite far ahead, and then turn and get a shot of them running towards you.

3. Accept, and work with, the back-of-the-head shot (from behind, no one can see them scowling, at least). Try to angle yourself so that the wildflowers fill in the background, and it might look as if your child is gazing thoughtfully across the meadow (when they might really be turning away in a sulk).

4. Find something for them to hold onto. A fence, a tree trunk, a flower. A large enough prop will prevent them running off so quickly, and the little props serve to hold their attention for a second, while you snap away.

5. Remember, one good shot is enough. You're probably not going to wallpaper your house with this roll of film -- just one, lovely photo to frame or save is all you need.

6. But... take lots. My 400 photos yielded less than a handful that I really liked.

7. Try something different. Lie the child down and take a photo from above (if it isn't too muddy). Throw them in the air a bit to get them laughing. If they're a little older, perhaps let them try a self-portrait?

8. Bring help. Bonny and Jonathan, who joined us, were a wonderful help, serving as safety officers, entertainers, photographers, subjects, and, perhaps most importantly, navigators to actually get us there.

And for those of you with children who will sit and smile, well, perhaps there is a secret that you could share with the rest of us? 

{tea for twenty}

A long time ago, while waiting not-so-patiently for Tilly to arrive, I sewed twenty tea cups to a big bit of linen, which has hung, framed, for a few years. I've actually never really liked how it came out -- the fraying edges and bumpy linen just didn't seem to belong on the wall. With garden tea-party season upon us, I thought it might be enjoyed a bit more turned into a quilt for Tilly and her friends and toys to sit on.

This is the first time I've used linen in a quilt, and I just loved it. I don't usually use a lot of yellow, but it's so trendy-Japanesy next to the linen.

In other news, I've spent the last five days trying to fix my broken Internet -- turning everything off and on again, on the phone to customer service, at my wit's end -- before discovering today that I had been messing with the wrong box. So sorry to the lovely Indian fellow who tried so hard to find out what type of modem I had, in vain, (uh, it was a hard-drive) and was so helpful to such a moron!

And because I've been Internet-less for almost a week, here are a few others things that I've been filling my time with. 

• Planning for the New Year. What, you're supposed to do that in January? Well, I just discovered Susannah Conway's printable (free) workbook recently. Great for dreamers and self-analyists, and those of us who get to things a bit late.
• Baking and sharing honey-comb cookies (that's when you squish too many on a sheet).

• Listing (and numbering) everything I get rid of as I organise and simplify. Yes, it takes a bit longer, but is so satisfying, and will no doubt make quite amusing reading in retrospect. A few favourites from the list so far: 46. a bag of four-year-old jelly beans, in flavours I don't like.   78. five half-finished felt rabbits.   95. crusty chocolate lip balm (9 years old) which I bought at Heathrow airport the first time I flew to China alone to see my family. 
• Sewing yellow-and-linen potholders for friends who recently moved into the most amazing modern house, and believing that if something I've made lives there, part of me gets to, too!

{in my shoes}

These seven words always arrive when I need them. Sung, barely in tune with how much I want them to be true. And then shouted, louder and louder, as these amazing people around me show again and again what it's like to walk through life together. Thank you.

P.S. Sadly, these shoes will never once ever walk again -- after six years, this week their feeble little soles have snapped completely in two. Rest in pieces, stripy friends.

{a few letters short of an alphabet}

• Freshly-picked chives make a breakfast of leftovers -- turkey, potato, and cheddar omelettes -- so much tastier. 
• Our garden community of woodlice and a yellow bucket provide hours of quiet entertainment for the littlest family member. 
• Watching Susan Cain on video bravely, nervously, discussing the power of introverts. Now certain she's an INFJ, too. 
• A new addition to the household -- a potty -- is catapulting us into the unknown. How quickly the next stage always arrives.
• Loving this version of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros' "Home". It's like people living in an overexposed Polaroid.

{watercolours: a first attempt}

Life with a toddler is colourful. Sometimes, it's a wash of warm pinks and yellows, spread across the blank page that was our life beforehand. And other times it's more of a frantic "if you try to drink that cloudy water you just washed your brush in one more time, that's the end of watercolour painting forever".

How true it is that the most joyful moments of parenting aren't the ones you plan. Laying out the paper, collecting the paint and brushes and water, imagining wonderful, peaceful hours of artistry together -- it guarantees nothing. Peaceful, our painting was not. I didn't picture so much splashing. Or so much time spent trying to squeeze a small hand into a smaller jar. Or such general wetness. (Surely, the 'water' in 'watercolour' would have warned me? Wouldn't a bucket of water alone have been just as much fun?) But it was wonderful, in a different way.

Rather than painting on the paper, Tilly loved painting on herself. And she loved painting spots (a.k.a. repeatedly banging her brush on the table). She also put these two together, and worked out that she could paint her own freckles.



Both Justin and I have quite freckly arms, and one of Tilly's favourite pass-times is poking those freckle, to which we're supposed to respond by pretending to be electrocuted (this game, if you hadn't guessed, was Justin's invention). Now, finally, with her watercolour-spotted arms, Tilly could join in all of the game. Shaking, convulsing, buzzing -- what good family fun!



So we raise our glasses -- or cloudy-water-filled jam jars -- to the fun that's to be found in mess and chaos and painting outside the box, outside the paper, outside of our plans. (But, no, don't drink that!)

{getting geometric, paint-chip style}

One of these days, we hope to paint the kitchen a stormy, stony grey. But rather than live with dozens of grey paint swatches taped haphazardly to the wall, I thought it better to give all those samples a point (or three).

Poor Pinterest followers, you've been patiently putting up with months of pins simply labelled "triangles". I love them, the trinity of shapes, just as good right-angled as isosceles, stacked or built into squares.

Some recent favourites:

1. Castle artwork, via Tres Plus Cool  2. Anthropologie quilt  3. Znak mosaic wall decals, via Apartment Therapy  4.  Susanna Vento interior, via Emma's Design Blogg

The pattern I finally settled on is a take on the "flying geese" pattern in quilting -- a pattern I have yet to attempt with fabric, but love the directionality of. If I remember anything from art teachers of yore, it's that every part of a painting works to lead your eye somewhere, and the overall effect can be static or dynamic -- dull or interesting.

Using triangles is perhaps rather an obvious way to explore that idea -- arrows for the eye to follow! -- but a nice base from which to play with colour. Greys, blacks, the palest of pinks... and a little red, of course.

Yes, that's a two-step tutorial -- cut triangle, stick triangle. Repeat.

Note: Glidden's paint samples are by far the best to make things out of, being large, solid squares of colour, without any fancy poke-a-part-out bits. 

Also note: For the backing, I used a sheet of cut-it-yourself mat board. A large piece of paper would work as well, but I've lost the glass to my frame and need something a bit sturdier so there's no mid-section flop-down. 

And a note for Justin: This has been up in the kitchen for four days now -- please notice soon!

{new pajamas, old pajamas}

These flannel frogs, for Tilly, are the first pajamas I've made. What, I cut out the pattern upside down? No, no, they're Australian frogs.

The pattern came from this tutorial (via Pinterest). Very easy. Very forgiving.

These are my pajamas. My favourite/oldest/softest/most hideous pajamas. As Justin so tactfully put it yesterday, "Don't you have lots of nice pajamas? Don't you own a sewing machine?" Apparently the thread-bare, lop-sided look isn't for everyone. Perhaps they'll be given a new life as toddler-sized 'jamas. Just one more night in them, please...

{international studies for beginners}

People often ask us what sort of accent Tilly has -- British or American. So far, it's a complete mixture -- trash has beaten rubbish, but jumper has won out over sweater. Here's a taste of our daily cultural chaos.


TILLY (holding a Beanie Baby): Anteater!
JUSTIN: Hey! You've made her say it the British way!
ME: What do Americans call anteaters?
JUSTIN: Anteater.
ME: That's what I say.
JUSTIN: No. You say antea-ta!

-     -     -

JUSTIN (going in to get Tilly out of bed): Guten morgen, Til-Bear.
TILLY: Goo-goo mo-ney, Daddy.

-     -     -

JUSTIN (pointing to a herb): What do I call this again? Oleander?
ME: Do you mean coriander?
JUSTIN: Oh, yeah. What do I call coriander?
ME: I can't remember. But this is parsley.

-     -     -

TILLY, JUSTIN and ME (in three-part harmony): A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q, R, S, T, U, V, W, X, Y...
JUSTIN: Zee!
ME: Zed!
TILLY: Dzzzzzz!

{a weekend of one's own}

 A room of one's own is nice, but a weekend to one's self is even better. Twenty-seven glorious diaper-free, tantrum-free, cleaning-mashed-food-from-the-carpet-free hours in Austin with friends, and this is what we did with ourselves.

refreshments

An Iced Turbo, from Jo's very popular queue-around-the-corner coffee shop, shook off the two hour car-ride. And what a simple pleasure it is to stand out in the sun, waiting, while all of Austin and their dogs pass by. 

Later, a chilled bottle of the sweetest local peach cider revived us again between shops.

browsing the shops

Austin sells everything. Giant metal alphabet? Check. Cowboy boots in any size or colour that you could imagine? Check. Plastic dinosaurs with plants growing out of their backs? You'd better believe it.

Perhaps the best shopping spot of the day was Uncommon Objects. A giant maze of trendy junk, we picked through it all for about an hour. Too pricey to take home, sadly, were a large grey ampersand ($140) and a tatty little cardboard puzzle with interchangeable animal heads that Tilly would have loved (for an outrageous $28). But I did come away with an emormous map of Britain ($2) and a lovely little porcelain letter 'A' ($4).

The vintage clothing shops were a bit more work -- oh so many over-sized polyester little-house-on-the-prairie dresses. But the grey striped beauty above was just my size, with such a fun chevron detail on the front. But for the price, and rather worn-out condition, I thought I'd rather have a go at making it myself. One day.

And Anthopologie -- my first time! What fun to pick out beautiful clothes, try them on and twirl a little bit... and then put them all back again. Pure luxury.


eating

 

Food in Austin isn't made by whole people, but by solemn little faces peeping out of windows. Pass your order and your money up into the truck, and the little face disappears, to be replaced by the sound of sizzling. A few minutes later, your name is shouted, and an arm pokes out through the window holding your food. 

Sadly, I came down with a bit of food poisoning a few hours after lunch, and so missed the rest of the meals on our trip -- but, it was definitely a tasty crepe while I was eating it. So no hard feelings.

people watching

There were times when I wondered if we'd stepped onto the set of The Hangover 3...

... or perhaps American's Got Talent, Street Music Edition. People were playing their guitars, banjoes, and harmonicas wherever they could squeeze a folding chair, out of their parked vans, and sometimes just leaning against a lamp-post, as if they were a permanent fixture of the street.

And here are some friendly faces doing a incredible job of not looking posed, as requested.

yelping

None of this would have been possible without the lovely Bonny, who insisted on looking every restaurant -- and then every dish on the menu -- up on yelp.com, and checking how many stars it had. My crepe now has 1 star, incase you're wondering.

IKEAing

And can you imagine a trip to any big city without stopping at IKEA? I think someone once told me that a saying in their family was "IKEA, not a good idea", but I'm more of the opinion "IKEA, always a good idea". 

And so ended our lovely trip. Luckily, it's equally lovely to be home again with Justin and Tilly and Bella (who had their own weekend of fun in San Antonio, with Justin's parents).