Johnny and mommy goodness.

It's a little blurry, but this is pretty much my favorite baby photo as of yet:


I. Freaking. Love. His. Face!

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We used to have dogs' nests in the living room, now it's baby nests:


No, that is not Johnny's Kong ball, we are still trying to convince Luckie that this is not his nest.

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The lovelies over at the Rogers' house made a tag blanket for the boy. Love love love the colors! It's the perfect size to tote around and he has already claimed it with copious amounts of saliva.

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It's still winter here, naturally. In fact I heard that it will be winter until May?! That is ridiculous, but at least we are warm in our fashionable sweaters:


I scored this Alpine wool sweater at the thrift shop, brought it home, felted it up and copied a little sweater Johnny wears all the time to make the perfect little winter wearable.

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I've also been working on organizing. Using a tutorial I found here, I made a few bags to stash stuff.
The toy bag, in frontier-kid fabric, full of his favorite toys:


We don't usually tote all those toys around daily, but it will be handy for future travel plans.

Then the diaper bag, in awesome tennis shoe fabric:


I love nursing, it makes the diaper bag soooo simple to pack! The one thing I forget the most is a Ziploc bag for dirty diapers, but soon I will have a real wet bag and it will be easier to remember. I also love German stuff. Those are the best wipes evvverrrr, and are even washable. And they sell traditional flat diapers for cheap that make amazing burp rags. The sling takes up the most room, but usually it's actually on me and not in the bag. I made this to keep stocked and just toss into any ol' bag I want to use that day. I do want to make a real diaper bag and have big plans for a cool one, it's just going to take some time.

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Our very first Calvin Hair picture:


The Calvin Hair photo is a tradition I have been planning for many, many years, just waiting patiently for a little one to come along and grow some hair!

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So, my favorite thing since I've had Johnny is my eyeliner. I had it tattooed on three years ago and it makes me feel a little more human when I hardly have time to even brush my hair.
I went last week to have it touched up, and took the plunge into tattooed eyebrows!

Cat is the best, I'm sure I'd never let anyone else touch my face with a tattoo machine! I know I would have never, ever gotten my eyebrows done if she wasn't so *dang* good :)


And it didn't hurt as badly this time, I'm very happy for that!

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I decided to forgo a garden this year. We'll be gone for a good chunk of the summer and I don't like the idea of wasting time or food. I'll be very happy to be settled somewhere nearer family so that we don't have to take these long trips to see everyone all at once, or we'll have to start planning them in the winter at least.
For now I'm riffling through the pages of Mother Earth News magazine and The Backyard Homestead dreaming of the day when I can fill our yard with food to last the whole year through!
I will be foraging like a fool tho! And I'll be planting an herb garden on the balcony again, and maybe growing a grape vine or two.

Really, really looking forward to summer by the way!!

Alt, liebt Hund

This past week we lost our dog Kato to old man-ness. We actually had to have him put to sleep because his legs just gave out and he wasn't getting better.

He was a really sweet dog, always just wanting love and cuddles. We got him when he was seven years old, but he was as much a part of our family as if we'd had him since he was a puppy. Really, the best dog you could ask for. He loved to sing Jingle Bells and Happy Birthday, I'll miss that a lot. He loved Luckie and the baby and followed us around the house all the time while Johnny cooed and laughed the whole time.

Kato-Bear, we'll miss you old man. Thank you for being such a cheerful part of our lives!!

Vier Monaten

Four month old Johnathan is a super special kid! Of course, haha..

He loves his Auntie:


He's always moving, moving, moving. I got him a little play gym and he looooooves it, he kicks it all over and is occupied for quite a bit of time :)




I love this shot:


But for now he's sleepy baby because he got a couple shots today.


We love him soooo much! He gets more and more fun everyday. He coos all day, I think he's trying to say "Heyyyy," something that is said all day long to him. He smiles and smiles and we love every single minute of him.

Sonnigen Tag

Look what I bought Johhny (who's four months today!). It needs handles and a rope pull, but it's really cool!


Proof that the sun shines in Deutschland!


It's a good thing, that so called sunshine. We don't see it here often in the winter, and it's driving me nuts... It's so rare that I frantically ran around the house taking photos of whatever just to get in some good light!
And now I share:


A seriously good stack of pancakes (a la Chris) and warmed blueberries...and maple syrup of course!


Tricia's haphazard and lovely dressing table. I think it looks a little boudoir :)


Johnny's rocking horse. His great-grandpa made it for Chris many many years ago and now it's been passed along.


The living room window! I'm wicked proud of all my ALIVE plants (three blooming orchids at once?!) and they really can cheer you up in the middle of winter. Even the hibiscus is about to bloom for the first time in two years.


A stack of new-old skirts I was able to work on this week, hopeful for spring. Some are shortened skirts, some are dresses turned into skirts and some are shortened dresses to wear over jeans.


The bazillion stitches on the new-old sewing machine.


The sun shining through our tablecloth curtains in the bedroom.


And this is silly but it makes me super relaxed; my new laundry system. Actually, the only laundry system I've ever had, heh.


That's right folks, our house has graduated from laundry living on the floor to sorted bins and folded clothing right out of the dryer! Well, for the most part anyway :)


Yes, the baskets are in the tub. We don't use it since we have a stand-up shower and it's the only place they will fit. You work with what you have, right?

Happy Thursday!

Makin'!

So, finally back to the sewing machine! Working on an extra special bag for a long-past-due trade. There is much more waiting in the wings, but for now there's this:


Just trying out my newly learned pleating and zipper skills. I'm very happy with it! I love the awful 70's colors :]

And for Johnny:


My dad bought him this cute hoodie for Christmas, but he only wore it once and then the season was over. So I reworked it into something Dad would still be proud of and would work for the remainder of winter/spring:


Yay Beatles! That piece of fabric is from a goody bag sent to me from Katie's four year old's birthday party ;D Cool kid, mine can only aspire as of yet, but now he's on his way...

And one more pair of sweater pants:


I like the cable knit on these ones. (I hate taking photos as night, the quality takes a wicked dive.)

I am really happy to be back at this. The baby sleeps well nowadays and so I think I'll certainly be able to get a few hours of sewing in a week. He's also very good at entertaining himself on the floor lately, so maybe even daylight sewing will be had!

:}

Really delicious roots.

I've been making an effort to buy most of our veggies from a farm down the road. On Friday I go and buy a handful of goods and then figure out the rest of the week how to use them. This has been interesting because it's winter. In Germany. Luckily they have avocados from France :) I also scored a huge head of cauliflower, which I normally won't touch, but it made a really good curry with saffron basmati rice.

Mostly we're learning about root vegetables, because that's what's left after the cold and snow come and the sun leaves for these many months.

Last week we had celery root and potato au gratin. This week it's beet, carrot and parsnip soup! I've never had celery root, parsnips or fresh beets (only canned and pickled) until now.


Pre-peeled roots...


Peeling the beets was by far my most favorite thing I've done all week, haha! It's been awhile since I could dig in and get my hands dirty doing anything (usually it's painting, but beets will do!). Did you know that carrots come in almost every color? I want to grow purple ones!

Tricia and Chris are being great sports with this food experimenting!

Beet and parsnip soup:

2 tbsp. olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 medium onion, chopped
2 parsnips
2 carrots
4 beets
5 c. water w/veggie bullion OR 5 c. veggie broth
salt, pepper
juice of 1/2 a lemon

Peel and chop the parsnips, carrots and beets, set aside.
In a large sauce pan heat the oil, add the garlic and onions and cook until soft.
Add the rest of the veggies and cook for 5 minutes stirring to keep from burning.
Add the water/broth, cover and simmer until all veggies are soft, about 30-45 minutes.

Spoon portions of the whole pot into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth. Return to pot and add salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the lemon juice and serve :)

I made baked macaroni and cheese to go with this... Yuuuummmm....

Paper me!

We had a swell Carnival party on Saturday night, lots of fun, costumes and food! Yay! I wore a top hat, my sister was a fortune teller and Chris had tattoo sleeves, very strange to see, haha...
Thank you to everyone who could make it, it made for a very happy birthday! My sister is wonderful and I'm glad that Chris didn't have to work the next day!!

And then, there's this:


It's a wardrobe, full of these:


That, my friends, happens to be ME! My friend Angela is a great artist and she hand drew me into a custom paper doll with all the fixin's...


I've always wanted hair like that. I'm pretty exited that some one interpreted my hair as that hair, hehe...


See? It really is me!


And a snoozing Baby Johnny! (Freakin' AWW!!)


Can you believe the details? How cute is that? (Did you notice my leopard flame tattoo?! You can click on any of these photos to enlarge them and see all of the little buttons and stitches.)



I'm blown away, seriously. What a personal, thoughtful and unique gift! I hope she makes one for everyone she knows- I'd love to see what she can come up with! ;D

Woooo for art!!

Make Music, Not War.

I have a sadly unfinished sleeve tattoo on my left arm, as you can see in the previous post. It's got a music theme and I decided a few years ago that I wanted it to encompass all my favorite eras of music. The one unifying theme in all the music I love is that it all seems to be a sort of rebellion of its time, freeing new generations from previous uptight ones or protesting war and oppression. Not all generations are fortunate enough to witness change through music, but I have a lot of respect for those musicians in the past 100 years that were able to open hearts and change minds and stay true to their art. I was lucky to have parents who encouraged us to listen and learn and I'm hoping to pass that on to our son.
So here a few ideas I'd like to incorporate in my sleeve when I do finally get around to finishing it:

The instruments involved are super inportant.



Obviously in earlier music dancing was a huge part of it.






Then art became intertwined with music like never before...










And I think I need to throw some plaid in there for good measure! It's interesting to me how 'fashion' goes so well with music and always has.





It's not lost on me how these different generations of musicians sometimes down-right hate one another. Punks don't take kindly to hippies, that's no joke. My grandpa's generation thinks mine is noisy and crazy and quite useless musically, I'm sure. But each one has it's own something special for a time and then graciously (or not so graciously!) makes way for a new sound and message for a new crowd, and if we are fortunate enough to learn from previous artists we can probably hear what the new ones are saying and then maybe we can become more understanding of one another!



If it was good in the past, it'll still be good today! ;D