In the sewing room

(aka my dining room)

 Fall is a season of birthdays in my life, and consequently, there have been some births as well!  I decided to pull together my meager sewing skills to see what i could come up with. I found the pattern for these simple baby rattles in Lotta Jansdottir's book Simple Sewing for Babies. Some of the newborns in my life will be receiving one of these:

Our neighbor's son turned one last month, so i whipped up some small beanbags i found on The Artful Parent blog:

These were super easy and quick to make!

And finally...a halloween costume!!
These days you can buy some pretty cute, warm halloween costumes for kids. But they're not exactly cheap. I'm always much more impressed with handmade costumes and so I've sworn myself off the buying of costumes. Especially when it comes to my daughter. I was inspired by the wings shown on this website. Olive loves watching this video by Elizabeth Mitchell so i thought dressing up as a bird would be perfect for her! I kinda ended up with my own version of the wings, and admittedly, they need tweaking. They need to be made stiffer or something. Or else O. needs to grow just a little bigger so that the wings don't flop over when she wears them.

Here's how they turned out:

She wore them to a play group we attend. I think she might have been the only one wearing a handmade costume! Anyhow, the wings were only worn for about two minutes before she decided to take them off. Maybe after i fix them a little she'll decide to wear them more.

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~Amanda Soule 

Three new works

I've been busy. Every year around this time calls come out for submissions to the Art From the Heart Art Sale and Show. It's a great annual event with submissions from such a diverse group of artists. There are amateur and professional artists, artists with different ethnic backgrounds and those with or without mental and/or physical disabilities. The only common denominator with this group is either being in a lower income bracket, and/or living in the inner city. It's such a fringe-y group and i love to be a part of it.

Preservation

Spoon Collection

GMO, Irradiation and Hybridization

These are my three submissions for the year. The great thing about this show is, well, the showcasing of underrepresented artists, and that (usually) all of the artwork is for sale! It's a good place to get yourself some new art. Also, 100% of the sales go to the artists! Art From the Heart has recently updated their website so that if you are interested in an artist's work, you can look them up in their directory and see what type of artwork they make, with the option to contact them.

The deets for the show are as follows:

Art From the Heart Show and Sale
November 18  7-9pm
November 19 10:30-3:00
M.E.R.C 4:30 Langside
Free Admission/donation
Cash sales preferred

I'll be there!

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. ~Amanda Soule 

Alternatives

Thank goodness for alternatives. I love that there is usually more than one way to do things. In the mathematical department (so i've heard), there is more than one way to solve a problem. Can't go running because your joints bother you? Start swimming. Can't eat gluten, dairy, or eggs? In the kitchen, there are still alternatives that make baking possible. I'm sure there are much more creative examples i could have come up with, but this last one pertains to me in particular.

I've been on a detox diet now for over a month. It was prompted by a visit to my naturopath and i've been on a road of exploration and discovery in the kitchen (especially in the baking department) since then. There is something about biting into a piece of freshly baked something or other that is unlike anything else. And when you are used to using gluten based flours as your primary ingredient in baking, you kind of have to relearn everything you know about baking.Thanks to the world wide web, and avid alternative flour experimenters, i have gained access to a plethora of gluten, dairy and egg free recipes, for free! I'm not going to get into the politics of eating gluten and dairy free, but eating this way has definitely improved my general well-being, and i wanted to share some of the treats i've been making for myself.

Almond Thyme crackers were my first endeavor. I found the recipe on this website.

It's nice to have something you can snack on now and then since almost everything else in the munchies category from the grocery store is on the "no" list.

It's fall out here right now and somehow eating muffins feels like a fall-ish kind of thing to do. I forget where i found this recipe for teff-carrot muffins. One of these heated up with a pat of coconut oil? yum. (coconut oil is my alternative to butter).

And my most favorite baked treat so far...

These sweet buckwheat cinnamon rolls from the Making Love in the Kitchen blog. I hadn't really had anything sweet for sooo long and these were like heaven. Instead of using brown sugar, this recipe calls for coconut crystals/sugar which apparently has a lower Glycemic index than sugar. Definitely not the same as eating a fluffy wheat (and butter) based cinnamon bun, but tasty none the less.

Let's hear it for alternatives!

Back at it

Yes! I'm happy to announce that my period of abstaining from painting (well, pleasure painting, not house painting) is over!! There was a commission i had to do that had been brushed aside for a very long time, and i'm happy to say i've tackled and completed it. It's for two cute and fun kids:

And i'm also happy to say that it's fall, and my creativity has been exploding. I'll have more work to show you soon! and maybe some other treats too. 

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember. 

potato harvest

 This year we tried our hand at growing potatoes vertically (since potato plants otherwise require a lot of room/yard space). We found instructions online and built a 2 x 2 foot box for them, adding soil and nailing up more boards whenever it grew to a certain point. It kept growing up and up and up and it wasn't until last weekend when we finally decided to see if anything came of our efforts. We were pleasantly surprised!

I'm bad at keeping track of how many potatoes or pounds of potatoes we got, but it was enough to make us happy, especially since non-organic potatoes are on our list of things not to buy. We'll definitely try it again next year!