June 4, 2010: Augie spent most of the morning bringing me his pirate jacket and asking me to help him put it on. I tried putting it on the right way, but he insisted that I put it on backwards. He’d wear it for about 3 minutes, take it off and then bring it to me to put on again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

June 5, 2010: My sweet little bear right after his nap.

June 6, 2010: Sunday night barbecue: brats, corn and Lip Stinger beer!

June 7, 2010: August and I picked Wyatt and his best buddy up from school and then the four of us headed up to the bakery up the street for cookies and chocolate milk.

June 8, 2010: Augie got hold of my Chapstick and rubbed it all over his cheeks. When I found him, I had to give him a little tickle because he looked so cute.

June 9, 2010: I reorganized all my bento boxes which meant matching the lids and dividers together. I also sorted them all so they fit neatly in the basket.

June 10, 2010: Wyatt’s last day of school. His class put on a little play and had a party for all the parents and families. I can’t believe my big kindergartner is a big 1st grader now.

April 30, 2010: Wyatt tells his baby cousin about the wonders of ketchup over dinner at the Pyramid Ale House.

May 1, 2010: A super fun day with one of my best friends, Allison. She came up from the south bay around lunch time and we spent the day getting pedicures, shopping and eating and drinking yummy things at restaurants.

May 2, 2010: Wyatt and I spent the afternoon at the Help a Mother Out Playdate for a cause. If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you may remember that I am a big supporter of this group who collects diapers for homeless and impoverished families. May was their big fund-raising month (in honor of Mother’s day) and we attended their big party in San Francisco. If you have a minute, I encourage you to go check out their web site and see how you can get involved in the organization.

May 3, 2010: Yowza! This is what Augie’s hair looks like after a trip down the slide.

May 4, 2010: I spent the morning at the Actual Cafe in Oakland getting some work done. The moleskine and the colored pencils came along so I could take some breaks drawing pictures.

May 5, 2010: Wyatt made these stylin’ glasses at school.

May 6, 2010: My sister-in-law and I are still doing “Ladies who Lunch” every Thursday. Today’s luncheon was apple salads at Fatapple’s (I had one too, but my niece stuck with milk).

I have selected a winner from the comments (I removed a couple duplicates from the list before picking) and the winner is lucky #14, Sara Cowley:

Congratulations, Sara!

Can you believe it? I remembered to take a picture of a Monday snack! Wooo! This one had a slice of watermelon, some whole grain crackers and a clementine.

Tuesday:

Wyatt got a hot lunch in the thermos on Tuesday. You know how I’ve been sending him with those rice balls? Well, this morning he told me that he hates them! I have to admit that I was surprised because he’s a big rice-eater at home and I’ve been sending them in his lunch for years now and he’s never said a word. But it does explain why he rarely takes more than a bite out of them. I’m not always the sharpest tack in the box, I don’t think…

So anyway, he told me he does like warm rice so I heated one portion up in the microwave until it was piping hot and put it in his thermos along with some teriyaki pineapple meatballs. I also sent a slice of bread and some robot attack jam (in the little yellow box), as well as some strawberries and blueberries.

Oh, and for the record, he didn’t eat the rice. Furthermore, he was upset that his meatballs were touching the rice.

The toddler’s lunch box had diced, roasted chicken, veggie medley of corn, carrots, and green beans, rice, strawberries and blueberries.

Wednesday:

Wow! This was a really beige lunchbox! I didn’t really notice until I looked at this picture.

The lunch portion of this box had an apple cinnamon scone, clementines and baked tofu. The two snack boxes had an apple cereal bar, blueberries, cheddar cheese slices and pretzel sticks.

Augie’s lunch had flaked sauteed salmon leftover from Tuesday’s dinner, peas, a half a cinnamon apple scone and blueberries.

Thursday:

Thursday’s lunch and snacks repeated a lot of items from earlier in the week: clementine, whole wheat pretzel sticks, banana chunks, and corn and meatballs in the thermos. I had very specific instructions about leaving the rice out of the thermos and I had to show Wyatt the contents before he would let me close it up and put it in his lunch box. Sheesh!

Friday:

Friday’s snack was simple as can be — just some strawberries and a few pita crackers.

In other bento news, the Miami Herald published an article about bento boxes yesterday. They illustrated it with boxes made by some of my favorite bento artists (along with a few of my photos). It’s worth a minute of your time to check it out because it’s really quite lovely! You can see it here:

Let’s Go Bento!

Lucky #46: Lyndsey! Lyndsey has a great cooking blog called, The Tiny Skillet. I totally want to make her Butternut Squash and Walnut Ravioli. Yum!

Congratulations, Lyndsey! And thanks to everyone who signed the petition in support of healthier food for our kids!

Completed:

• #19 Make a softie for my niece-to-be. I used this pattern from Betz White to make this cutie little hedgehog out of some of the many sweaters I’ve felted in the past couple of months. While I was putting him together, I started calling him by the name Hedgie von Hedgenstein. My favorite part is this little heart on his tummy:



• #21 Make at least 30 scrapbook layouts. — I participated in the Layout a Day Challenge that Lain Ehmann put on and I made 28 scrapbook layouts in 28 days! Phwew! That was hard. I already posted about my first 12 a few weeks ago. Here are the final 16 I made. (You can view a larger version of any of these by clicking the appropriate link below the mosaic.)


1. August, 2. I Bento, 3. Valentines Day 2009, 4. That Kind of Mom, 5. good bye, old friend, 6. The Bay Area Discovery Museum, 7. Jumpers!, 8. Life Lessons, 9. Sweet Little Evelyn, 10. puzzles and hot chocolate, 11. Good Eater, 12. Laundry Love, 13. the best toy ever?, 14. Augie at 18 months, 15. Breakfast Out, 16. Bean Dirt

• #34 Sign up for a Mommy and Me type class with Augie. — I tried out a free Gymboree class with August this month to see if it was something he would like to do. He was completely terrified by it and it was crazy expensive so we decided not to go that route. I looked around a little more and found a baby gym class at the local Y. It was crowded and chaotic, but Augie seemed to really enjoy himself, so we are going to start attending semi-regularly. And at $5 per session vs. $17 per session at Gymboree, it fits a lot better in our budget.
• #36 Take August to ride the steam trains. — I took both boys up to Tilden and we rode the steam trains. Yay!
• #42 Buy a laundry hamper. — We haven’t had a laundry hamper since we moved into this house. I bought two so we can sort the laundry on the fly. If I had my preference, they would have had lids, but I couldn’t find anything I liked with lids, so I’m making do with these. In any case, it looks way nicer than a big mountain of clothes on the floor of our bedroom.

Before:



After:



• #52 Buy an every day skirt. — I bought this skirt at Old Navy. It’s totally boring, but that’s sort of the point.

In Progress:

• #3 Find five reliable, healthy, delicious soup recipes. — I’ve got one more soup recipe under my belt: Easy Sausage Tortellini Soup. I followed the recipe pretty closely, but instead of cabbage, I added in baby spinach at the end. This soup took about a half an hour to throw together and it was beyond delicious. For a recipe with so few ingredients, it had an  incredible depth of flavor.
• #54 Find a babysitter. — I’m visiting some day cares this week to see if they’ll be a good match for Augie. Wish me luck!

Upcoming:

• #4 Learn to make pickles and/or marmalade. — My brother-in-law gifted me with a huge bag of oranges so I can try making marmalade. I consulted with my friend Shae who is a marmalade queen and she suggested that I pick up a copy of the Ball Book of Home Preserving which I have now acquired. I’m going to need to look the book over and get some equipment still, but I’m hoping to knock out some marmalade in the next couple of weeks.
• #7 Make macarons. — I also got my copy of I Love Macarons in the mail this week, so I’m hoping to try a batch of those in March too.

Would you look at that?! That, my friends, is the result of the money and diapers that you donated via the diaper drive I held for Help a Mother Out.

In the first two weeks of November, friends, family, and my darling blog readers brought me diapers and donated money via Pay Pal to help this fine organization. Tuesday I met up with Lisa from HAMO and passed along 1701 diapers! That translates to 20 boxes of diapers, 6 packs of pull-ups, and 3 shopping bags of single diapers. Because most of the donations were cash-based, I ended up buying the bulk of the diapers. This allowed me to shop around a bit and get the best per diaper price. It also allowed me to be picky about sizes when I shopped so I could purchase diapers in the bigger sizes  — pull-ups and size 4, 5 and 6 diapers –which are more urgently needed. (And in case all you bargain shoppers out there were wondering: even when I took coupons for other brands of diapers into account, Target’s Up and Up brand diapers were the best deal by far. Good job, Target!)

When it was time to deliver the diapers, they completely filled the back of our station wagon and I had to pack some into the back seat with Augie. (He helped me deliver them and even dressed to match the diaper boxes.)

Melissa, the person I randomly selected for the thank you gift chose to forgo her prize and together we decided to use the money I would have spent on it to buy more diapers. Isn’t Melissa sweet?

Many thanks to the following generous donors:

• Amy K.
• Beate K.
• Bethany K.
• Bryan and Erin B.
• Catherine B.
• Celest
• Celeste K.
• Dennis M.
• Elaine E.
• Gabrielle H.
• Lia L.
• Linda K.
• Melissa S.
• Robert and Karen T.
• Sara B.
• Sue S.
• Tawana H.
• Tom C.
• Whitney M.

I also want to give a special thank you to my brother-in-law, Bryan. Bryan kindly sent out an email to his co-workers and collected diapers from them at his workplace.

I’m thankful for two beautiful, healthy boys.

I’m thankful for a husband who loves me and our family and who works long hours to make sure we have everything we need. I’m thankful that even when I’m (mostly) unemployed, our family wants for nothing.

I’m thankful for a huge family who loves me.

I’m thankful for cheese.

I’m thankful for the nice weather in the SF Bay Area.

I’m thankful that my baby always goes to bed in a clean diaper.

I’m thankful for patterned paper and wool felt.

I’m thankful for a roof over my head and a working heater.

I’m thankful I live within easy driving distance of stores that sell bento supplies.

I’m thankful for technology and all the ways it makes my life better. Digital cameras, iPhones, laptops, RAIDs to hold our data, a hosted instance of WordPress — I fully realize that not everyone has the access to gadgetry that I enjoy. And I’m thankful that so many of my other needs and wants are being met that access to gadgetry is something I even care about.

I’m thankful for plumbing.

I’m thankful for the internets and all of the people who are part of my life because of it.

I could go on all day, but I’ve got desserts to prepare (for which I am also thankful).

This morning, my dad found this graphic on an old back-up disk. This was the very first thing I posted on my very first website. My best guess is that this if from some time in 1996.This might have been the first “photo-shopping” I ever did, though I’d be surprised if I actually did this in Photoshop and, really, my dad probably did most of it.

In any case, it cracked me up!