Peter and Stephanie and the Kitchen Tiger...

ummm.....this one is my favorite...definitely...

Happy Easter!

Happy Maundy Thursday more like it...He is risen! Hallelujah Indeed!

Thank you for your kind words and emails about my breakdown yesterday. They lifted my spirit and confirmed what I knew to be true - that we are designed for community and this crazy internet thing is just us being human and learning how else we can reach out.

Spring truly provides a great background for the ongoing narrative of death and life and reminds us of that inevitable cycle. I hope that this holiday weekend finds you and yours celebrating that! we are off to Santa Barbara for a weekend of relaxing and celebrating and egg-hunting. i will leave you with some pics of my last Easter sewing project...linen pants for the busy body bodie boy...i could not get a great pic of him - he does not know how to stand still quite yet - ha! plus right after i took these pics he spilled blackberries all over them and threw some dirt on top of it...i gave up...as i should have!

my dear devon...

we went for a walk the other day. i happen to live on the same street now that Devon did when she passed away. we pass her old house often on our walks and i try to remember the happy times there...not the chemo times. the parties she loved to throw...the girls nights...the just stopping by and saying hi and her always being so excited...the trashy TV nights....girl loved her some trash TV :) i tell my boys - "thats where Devon lived - do you remember her Bryson?" he always says yes :)
i still miss her incredibly. it hurts that i will never see my friend again. i have been crying...a lot.
i think i have been thinking of her so much lately because 3 years ago around this time she was forced by a co-worker to go to the ER because she had been having head-aches and had become dizzy. what she thought was maybe just stress turned out to be a "weird mass" and then a possible cyst and them a benign tumor and then a JPA tumor and then the most aggressive brain cancer there is...it, of course was always the cancer - it just took her Kaiser doctors a few wrong guesses and several botched biopsies to know it...around this time she had her first brain surgery. she was so scared. so scared. i had never seen devon scared of anything and when i stopped by the hospital before she went into surgery to drop off a Bible (at her request) i could see the fear in her eyes and they started to water and i sat on her bed and held her hand and she just looked at me and cried. an you know what i told her? i'll never forget. "you're gunna be okay devon...you're gunna be fine. everything is going to be fine." i tried to be positive the entire time...i couldnt let myself believe that devon wouldnt be okay. i couldnt accept it until she told me it was glioma.
what else prompts this post is that i recently heard an interview on NPR about the internet and what happens when someone dies and their on-line content. it was an interesting discussion. They were talking about when to take it down - do you take it down? i can't seem to erase her phone number from my phone - her address from my contacts - her blog from my reader - her email from my group lists (it always bounces back, but sometimes i like to think she reads all her email in heaven) i visit her blog often - she didnt start keeping it until after she was diagnosed with cancer, but it brings me comfort and it makes me laugh and it feels like she is still around in a small way.
a friend was also saying that a lot of people turn facebook profiles of people who have passed into memorial sites. i am kind of a fan of this on-line memorializing. i think it makes the grieving process so much more communal and ongoing...because it is...here i am a year and a half after she passed away still crying and yearning for her.
any thoughts on this either way?

my lazy garden (part 2: my garden boys)

i am lucky to have a *very* hot husband who is also not afraid to get dirty and dig up the entire backyard in one afternoon. he, in fact, enjoys it. he has a gardening problem...some people collect baseball cards or hats...he collects plants. at one point he ordered some crazy palm tree seeds on-line and germinated them for like 3 years...he has also ordered ladybugs on-line and mantis'...and this was all before we even had a backyard. we had a porch and he was doing this...i love that he enjoys it - i tease him quite a bit - but i love it and i love that we all can reap the benefits of his hard work.

so it was pretty joyous the other weekend to watch him and the boys join in. they had these shovels at Lowe's for $3.98 so bryan bought one for each of the boys.

in this picture they aren't really doing much of anything, but Bryson did help a bit...he is finally becoming useful :) i mean that in all the positive ways...i was telling Bry that this is why people have sons...i forget that one day they will actually be useful and not just super-destructo boys!

i was speaking of bryson...bodie is still in destruction mode...and loves to get in whatever he can...usually whatever he isn't supposed to...my little grubby sneak!

here is the little gardener...goodness he is becoming quite the little boy...my heart aches a bit whenever i see pictures of him like this...looking all big...he is turning into quite a sweet little guy too...at least tonight he was :)

the lazy garden (part 1)

i decided that because A) i am pregnant with my third child and 2) we got a late-ish spring start and F) i am lazy that we would forego all the seeds and trimming and waiting and just plant baby plants for our garden this year. the problem is that it is expensive...i feel so lavish planting a plant, rather than a seed...this is probably the last year we will do this too, i think because we had to dig everything up and add all the soil and all that we wanted the actual planting part to be somewhat instant gratification....and it was/is...(here is a pic of Bodie who "helped" with the garden...he likes to be one with the earth...

so here is the "before" pic (someone had planted an herb garden that got severely overgrown):

and here is the "after" pic:

some additional notes/specifics...

we used Mel's Mix (1/3 peat moss, 1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 organic compost) again - only this time we got it pre-mixed! we got it from a lady in fullerton and if you are interested in knowing where - email me (carleekajsa at gmail dot com) and i will give you her info (it was at her house and $10 a bag)  - i cant tell you the time it saved...not just from mixing, but from tracking down all the different ingredients and having to determine how much of each we would need since they all come in different cubic feet sizes....the math hurt my brain a bit. (my girlfriend Jen the SFG diva tells me that Lowe's here in LB may be selling it pre-mixed soon too!)

We used also the Square Foot Gardening techniques...(which we did last year - read the post here)

we made sure to plant a little of everything that we use a lot...strawberries, tomatoes, zucchini, onions, corn, green onions, watermelon, artichoke, lettuce, spinach, basil, green beans....

i always underestimate the time it takes to garden...this little plot took all day to dig up and re-soil and plant and i didn't even finish planting until the next day! but i am quite pleased with the result...now we just need to be patient before we can reap the benefits!

plaid sash

with the leftovers of Bryson's tie i whipped up this obi sash from Heather Ross' Weekend Sewing book. i also realize this is the first "belly pic" - thanks to bryson...i like these sashes...(i made one about a year ago) because belts are not usually comfortable with a bigger belly and because you can wash them!

take that cute easter bonnets!

boys can have cute Easter projects too...even boys who protest the very idea of a tie. even boys who tell their mothers, "everyone's gunna laugh at me. little boys don't wear ties." even boys who will only put on this tie for a picture if the mother promises he can finish watching his movie.

even those boys. i was intent on making 3 ties for all the boys...which is no longer the plan for a couple reasons: 1) the plaid doesn't look as cool on the bias and B) the thing is a lot of cutting and a lot of hand sewing and a lot of ironing which are all things that must be done at evening time and i don't have a lot of those left before Easter! and III) the husband hates ties too...so i would have 2 that hate ties and the little one who would probably end up strangling himself with it to get it off...maybe a tie-shirt for him?



i am just hoping i can get him to actually wear this on Easter Sunday....for like a minute hopefully? long enough for a family picture...to say in the distant future - oh look - i remember spending all that time and love hand sewing that tie for you...and you hated it...oh wait...i am doing that now...

















P.S. - got it from the Purl Bee's Little Boy's Tie tutorial and pattern available here.

i cant believe i am doing this again...

i mean a quilt...not this pregnancy...although at the moment, after a day like today, that too. but back to the quilt. i had no intention of doing/starting a quilt. in fact my "projects" box is overflowing with already cut pattern pieces and "need-to-do" birthday presents and my fabric bins are also overflowing and i certainly didnt need to go buying any fabric - just cause i fell in love with the gingham and the colors and thought how cute a comforter that would make...certainly i didnt need to do that. but that is, in fact, precisely what i did the other week and for a week have been cutting little 5x5 inch squares....garrr...right now i am pretty mad at myself for starting this cause i cant stop!




i am completely blaming this on pregnancy hormones. because this is a little shade of crazy right now. i have this awkward obsession at the moment with aqua and orange and gray...it is overtaking my closet and the boys' room and it just makes me happy...so i found this gingham and wanted to just marry them all. it is satisfying some weird tick in my crafty brain i guess. so this is big and has taken quite a few of my evenings up, but i am pretty happy with it. i know i have to completely take out the last row because it is about a half inch off, but other than that i can live with the other mistakes. i still am undecided about the backing and have a lot of gingham leftover, that i am just obsessed with as well - it was only $2 a yard, so its not like i went too nutzoid...but still. i need someone to snap me out of it and keep me on track. i have a craft fair coming up and at this rate i am not going to have anything in my booth!

so all this rambling to say - i need your help...i have a brown gingham that i was originally thinking of using as the backing - not sure if it is too harsh...i was thinking a gray linen border that would match the big gray linen squares and then strips of the gray and brown gingham on the back...i guess at the time i was thinking it could be reversible if the colors change in the room...but also - i do have all the gingham in the quilt leftover...or i could do just a plain white back...and i am crafted out at this point and need some help...so please...HELP!

a word on composting...and worm poop...good ol' worm poop

dont tell my mom, but we left our old compost bin at our old house. it was a trash can that my husband drilled holes in and we would manually turn it every so often. i cant remember if we ever added worms. but it became neglected (around the time Bodie was born...hmmm...imagine that) and too much work so we left it.

we just planted our garden this last weekend (pics and posts to follow soon promise) and my BIL gave us some wonderful worm poop (pic of said poop to the right) to help boost our garden and so we have been trying to find the best way to compost. My BIL Pete took a class on composting and is super into it and his worms...which i dont blame him...worm poop is pretty awesome stuff.

The thing with the composter is - I dont want one that is a lot of manual labor...and that takes forever to produce....and that will get filled too quickly. basically - i want a lazy-woman's composter...to go along with our lazy garden :)

a girlfriend shared this with me a year ago and i have been dreaming of one ever since - The Nature Mill Compost - ohmigosh...this is oh so perfect for me - it can compost up to 120 lbs a month of kitchen scraps! and you can compost meat and dairy too! it makes it in 2 weeks! now you ready for this...its $300! so...there are a few other things we could be spending $300 on right now...maybe bryan will get this for me for a birthday present or something super romantic like that :)







if you are interested in composting and live in long beach check out our environmental services webpage on composting here - if you aren't in LB, then perhaps your local city's environmental services have a similar thing going on? you can purchase a composter and they will just tag it on your bill...even if you live in an apartment they have options for you.

we are thinking of the earth machine (pictured right) not only does it look like a darth vader helmet...it also is only $40 - has a convenient harvest door and i believe it supports vermicomposting.

we havent purchased anything yet, so if you have any other brilliant ideas - let me know! i am all for letting our little wormies do all the work and i can just reap the benefits...

Bryson Golfing

you've heard me talk about my boys and golf quite a bit...i am so excited Bryan finally uploaded some videos...he took this one with his phone, so its not the best quality, but hopefully you can still see him take a shot. this is when Bryan took him golfing last week to a par 3 / 9 hole course. i think Bryan said his score was 72 :) i think its funny he kept score. anyway - this is him on the last hole.