Look, Ma, a normal dinner!

My go-to recipes have titles like "Egyptian Kusherie," "Red Lentil Dahl," and "Pakistani Kima." They are heavy on cumin, curry, and turmeric, and are usually one-pot meals served over rice or couscous. Oh, and they're often vegetarian. Not because we're vegetarians. We're budgetarians. Once we decided to go organic with the vegetables and dairy, we had to cut something, and meat usually gets scratched.

 So a dinner like this sticks out at our house. "What IS this, Mommy?" "It's a chicken leg." (Which, I might add, is breaded with homemade bread crumbs. It's one of my nerdy food things to save every heel, extra roll, stale loaf, etc. in the freezer and then bake them into homemade breadcrumbs. Why is that so satisfying? I just get such a kick out of using up every last thing. Like I said, nerdy.)

So here we are enjoying an all-American meal: chicken, mashed potatoes, and broccoli. Totally normal! Oh right--except that the mashed potatoes are pink. That's because the locally grown, organic potatoes we've gotten from our CSA this year are purple! We've eaten purple cauliflower, purple peppers, and now purple potatoes. How perfect for a family of Baltimore Ravens fans. And it is really cute to hear the girls exclaim about the anti-oxidants in naturally purple or blue foods (to think I lived so long under the impression that blueberries were the only blue/purple food! Seems our grocery stores have been holding out on us. Kudos to the brave, local, organic farms!)

And yes, these girls put away ALL that broccoli. They make the clean-plate all-star team!

Now that summer's over...

...we'll reminisce about it. (Mostly because I'm so slow at getting the pictures off our camera!)

 Amelia was..and still is...in her Laura Ingalls phase. She wore this bonnet a lot this summer. Many thanks to the Licharowicz family, who handed it down to us in a very appreciated bag of costume goodies.

 Evelyn had a play date, so Alan and I took Amelia (in her bonnet) to the Hamilton Tavern for burger night. She sat perfectly quietly in the restaurant reading her books and writing in her journal. Oh yeah, and eating a burger. Then we took our shadow picture on the walk home.

 Our little babe-in-bonnet had a GREAT time digging holes in the front yard. She would slip out quietly and amuse herself quietly...which is why it took us so long to realize what a land mine our yard was becoming.

 But she was so doggone cute, especially when I went out to tell her she couldn't dig holes in the front yard and she was giddy with delight over finding a worm. That's our little treasure-hunter...with her treasure.

 Alan played an awesome gig at The Cylburn Arboretum. Speaking of treasures, this place is one of Baltimore's relatively undiscovered ones. We love coming here.

 Isn't that the most incredible tree? 

 And look at the English Garden. And you can come wander around here for free!

 I love the sister conversation happening here. We highly recommend the Cylburn Arboretum.

 And our summer is never quite complete without the annual trip with my mom to the state fair, which always ends with ice cream. It starts with a tour of the animal barns and has a huge marathon of midway rides in the middle.

 Every year I'm always a little disappointed in myself--I get so worn out so fast, or get a headache or just have that out-of-body feeling as I follow my kids and my mom around in a fog. This year I felt incredible. What was the difference? I rode no rides this year. 

Wanna bet I'd have felt differently if I'd ridden these two gems w/my girls? Yep, they're on both of these, which were their two hands-down favorites of the fair. Me? I took video while sitting on a bench having pleasant conversation with my mom. Another happy summer memory--this one with no headache attached!

Biblical Phonetics

Amelia was reading aloud from her little, pink Bible story book in the car the other day. She turned to the account of Absolom and said, "King David's son..." (long, thoughtful pause) "Ass-a-bum..."

Your Room, M'Lady

Finally. I uploaded pictures. It's been a long time and I'm itching to blog! 

 Here's the girls' Victorian bedroom. I know--an IKEA tent doesn't quite fit the theme--but it does go perfectly with the name of the paint color (which was precisely why the girls chose it): "Fairy Tale Pink."

 Evelyn's bottom bunk. There's more, so much more hanging on the entire wall along the bed, but let's leave something to be desired (after all, there's an element of reserve in Victorian decorum, in spite of the effusive decorating.)

Amelia's decorating style is different than Evelyn's. She's all about containers, and they all contain something. Because she's also all about collections: rocks, sea shells, money, and (her latest) nails. Yes, the kind you hit with a hammer. Amelia swiped her doll's shiny pink workout bag to accommodate them. Many thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Blackman for the shadowbox to accommodate it all.

 Evelyn's artful arrangement. Note how the lady in Great-Great Aunt Irene's painting is echoed in the photograph of Great-Great-Grandma Maria Christina? And the rose theme--Evelyn loves roses--the rose plate on the wall and the rose-covered box. The glittery Tinkerbell birthday card is a nice touch, too.

Here we have a little more reserve shown. Probably because this is atop a dresser both girls are still unable to reach. So Mommy arranged the giant ceramic cherubs (one of many of my mom's contributions to the Victorian bedroom) under the thrift store painting (yes, another real painting. The clock may be plastic, but the painting is real.)

 The little living room for the girls' dolls. Isn't it adorable with the little tea set handed on the photo box coffee table? Wanna bet that wooden furniture displayed teddy bears in the 80's? We love thrift stores.

And speaking of tea, we had afternoon tea just, well, this afternoon! Alan gets total credit for the inspiration. Our porch was perfectly lovely, and the company lovelier.

Howdy Neighbor, Happy Harvest!

This is from one of my favorite, somewhat obscure musicals, "Summer Stock," with Judy Garland and Gene Kelly. My dad video taped it off the TV when I was in high school and I used to just watch it over and over.

Now that I'm into growing food and have joined a Community Supported Agriculture...this song is even more enjoyable to me! It's got all the silly elements of musicals--such as, if you've ever driven a tractor (or tried to yell to someone who was) you know that no one could sing loudly enough to be heard over its din, or that any of us would be excited to have "crispy lettuce in our jeans!" But I love that about musicals--the need to overlook all the groups of people bursting into spontaneous song and dance and how unrealistic it is for the joy of imagining just how great it would be if it really happened! (I know, I know, not EVERYONE thinks it would be great!)

So, since the weather cooled and we had locally harvested vegetables at two meals today, I found myself humming this song...and wanted to share. :)

My Victorian Children

Why did I NOT take pictures of the girls' bedroom at ALL last year? I wish I had. We spent all of summer 2011 painting their room pink (Alan and I are good at spreading projects over weeks and weeks. If you want something to take much longer than it should, ask us to do it for you!) Then we had to determine the girls' style.

This truly interested me. Because if I had my druthers, I'd spend hours simply leafing mindlessly through decorating books. Then I'd hire someone to create those rooms in my home (because it would take too long to do it myself.) So the girls and I went on a style search. Yup, Victorian. Why not? It's flowers and lace and glitzy stuff on every wall and surface! It screams "pretty" and "feminine!" And, thanks to the decline of the 80's style, thrift stores are full of gilt-framed pictures of flowers and birds and ladies in big dresses.

We took apart their bunk beds and moved a formal rug from our room into theirs. Then began The Hanging: long IKEA drapes and mom's yard-sale lace valances; pictures, more pictures; candle sconces with plastic jewels dripping around their edges; shelves upon which to perch pretty, shiny, things; old family photographs in old fashioned frames. As each item was added, Evelyn clapped gleefully shouting "YES! Oh that looks BEAUTIFUL, Mommy! That is just PERFECT! I LOVE it!" It was awesome.

After that, every time I crested the stairs to our second floor, I'd glance in their bedroom and chuckle, thinking, "It looks like someone's grandmother lives in there."

I could kick myself for not taking a picture of it in that original state.  (Because after that, they moved all the toys back in and Alan and I neared nervous breakdowns each time we picked our way through their room. Plus, they kept adding to it: wall stickers, school artwork, plastic jewelry, etc. Everything but the ceiling was dripping with stuff.)

This weekend we rearranged their room. I get a charge out of this. They wanted their bunk beds back to recapture some floor space. I thought I'd recapture wall space, too. Thought I could gently take things away and awaken them to the serenity of Shaker style. But Evelyn cried at the "plain, boring walls." (Amelia doesn't seem to care too much. She was happy once her shadowboxes were hung next to her top bunk perch and she could fill them with her "treasures. Her favorite is a little oil lamp I found at Salvation Army--it aids in her Laura Ingalls obsession.) I wanted to sit down and have a serious talk with Evelyn, tell her how nice it would look without all that stuff looking messy and cluttered.

Then Alan stepped in. "It's their room. We don't live in here." And I realized that they LOVE it this way. It's THEIR room, and they love it. And boy do I love them.

So I need to take pictures of the NEW version of their Victorian room (Alan and I took back our formal rug and filled a corner of the room with a very non-Victorian but very-popular-with-them IKEA tent), and all is well with the world. Except that, after lights out tonight, Evelyn bumped into one of the shelves hanging on the wall next to her bottom bunk and knocked off the ceramic mermaid perched on a snow globe. She may be re-thinking just how much is too much...