I’m making this in hopes that when it’s done and hanging above our family bed that it will sprinkle some kind of magic and all the children will do just as it says.
I love this book. “Carefree Clothes for Little Girls”. I just picked it up at the bookstore and have been desperate to get at my sewing machine every night I can. And I love that most of the clothing calls for linen and natural cotton. I love sewing with linen, it feels so exact. And the little lacy bits and doillies are a big hit with Frankie. I’m also playing around with rubber letter stamps and fabric paint with them, perfect words for my perfectly carefree girl.
Sewing with babies takes patience. It doesn’t happen often here, that I can sew during the day. Most of the time after the kids go down I make a beeline for the sewing machine, making sure to avert my eyes from the dinner dishes and the laundry and the diaper pail and the ever-growing pile of junk that gets unloaded on the ” junk counter”. I used to be really weird about cleaning, I felt like I couldn’t do a thing for myself until the house was spotless, but recently that’s changed. I’ve let go of the obsessive, and given in to the creative urges… And I’m a lot happier now.
Yes, I still love a shiny clean house and we are definetly not living in squalor, but the dishes can wait. I’ve got things to create.
What is love?
Love is sending me thrifting on his day off.
That’s love.
So I’ve been hoarding fabric, unsure how I wanted to take my shears to it. I finally pep-talked my way into the sewing room to USE this fabric and ended up pretty stoked. SouleMama inspired patchwork throw, snuggled in every night since completion!
Sorry. I totally flaked. It was me, not you. I stopped writing inthe summer, when my belly stretched to accomadate a baby and my energy stretched to fulfil a little girls’ day. Oh yeah, and then this happened:
Welcome to the world, Charlie Darkstar.
I honestly could write a novel about all the events that have taken plce since then, but instead, let’s do a photo montage. Who doesn’t love a montage.
My belly got huge and the garden got huge and our friends came back to Vancouver just in time for us to push a baby out and then Frankie became a big sister and started doing big sister things like baking and man, she loves her baby brother and then we decided to move back to the city even though we’d miss my parents but now we’re happier and the kids are happy and growing like weeds and doing things like spelling and eating solids and we get to see our friends a lot and Gabe and I are in love and somehow I’ve managed to get some thrifting and sewing done and now that my machines are unpacked and the baby’s older it’s time to get back to the business of making shit. Life is beautiful.
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- mmmint. always in the footbath.
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- rosemary
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- cilantro
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- basil bucket
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- actually a flower
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- lots of greens
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- lots of peas
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- sunflowers
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- frankie works her garden fairy magic
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- corn – peaches and cream
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- bigger pumpkins
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- pumpkins
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- patio tomatoes
Made with love, by Daddy. This vanity has been traveling with us from house to house and room to room…it made it’s way to the shop for a re-vamp and came out looking like this:
The vanity is painted blue and cracked and Gabe airbrushed clouds on it (the clouds are hard to see in the pictures)
And he scratched in these words on the back of the mirror:
It says “you are beutiful”.
The fact that “beutiful” is spelled wrong is so charmingly and perfectly Gabriel.
Oh and the tiny vintage toy piano is a Daddy find as well.
We don’t just sleep here, we live here. We snuggle babies and each other, we wake and stir in the night, calming fears, changing diapers, feeding hungry sleepy children.
We all kick, roll and steal covers from time to time.
We read stories, we sing songs, we wipe tears and we kiss cheeks here. We are parents here.
Within our warm embrace we are teachers here. We teach our children that they belong, that they matter, and that we love them. That we want them here.
We are companions, sharing each night with our breathing and our dreams. We are connected here.
We talk and we talk, into the darkness, holding hands or not…but our fights always end here. We are lovers here.
Not every morning, but some mornings, the sun shines through our bedroom windows and we get to sit snuggled sipping coffee and reading papers, holding our child and feeling the baby stir inside my belly…
And I know, that life doesn’t get sweeter than here.
This is my favorite place. Our family bed.
Bird Songs 