A little quilt + tables for three

This past weekend was the first in about two months where I didn't feel terrible when it ended. We've been too busy in the week and I've packed too many hopes and dreams into our weekends (a sure way to build yourself up for disappointment). This time we walked along the boardwalk with coffee and our little running boy, I got a few things done and we had quiet time to relax Sunday evening.

This little doll-size quilt has been in pieces for about two months now, and it's so satisfying to have it all come together. It has some of my favorite, happy, reproduction feedsack fabric in it and I just turned it the easy-peasy way (it's a doll quilt, after all) and eyed the diagonal quilting. It's going in the little shop as soon as I have time to add it!

So on another note, I really am trying to introduce more variety, better ingredients and new recipes lately. Our New Yorker usually comes on Friday afternoon and I get a deep, odd pleasure from turning directly to the restaurant review (Tables for Two) in my first quiet moment. I don't think I'm really that into food but I love the New Yorker restaurant reviews. They're snooty, include obscure references to the atmosphere of a place, describe at least one other customer and they write about the food in the most unique, elaborate language. What a great gig... Imagine getting paid to flip through your thesaurus and go out for incredible food (on someone else's bill) with friends. Aside from maybe a birthday or our anniversary we don't go out to eat. Anyhow, there's something so odd and satisfying about these reviews. What if one of the reviewers stopped by our humble eatery?

Tables for Three
Kitchen Table Mama

The green cabinets are a bit 70's avocado but the eclectic family-farmy table at Kitchen Table Mama is inviting if cluttered. Frequented by a few loyal diners the site is long on offerings for the short and short on offerings for the tall. On a late weeknight a thirty-something waitress seemed a bit harried with a customer's request for "MORE, MORE" but variety (banana? rice? chicken? frozen peas?) keeps coming for the younger set. The fajitas were without panache but left memory of a spicy kick with yellow, orange and red peppers (a splurge) mixed with chicken. Juice, flecked with spices and dripping from mouth and wrap, leaves a neighboring patron flustered. Tortillas, though sufficiently round, lack heat and "oomph" and seem, somehow, to come directly from a grocery store bag. Grab an crunchy, delightfully orange carrot stick to quell the torrent of dull from the salsa. Drinks fail to delight but the water is filtered.

Stick with the brownies and ice cream. It's hard to do a brownie wrong and Kitchen Table Mama does it right. When plates are cleared and the lights are low you may find yourself with the inkling of an idea to return the following night. Explore your options. (Open Sundays through Saturdays for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. Entrees very cheap.)

Let's just compile it, shall we?

I absolutely love oilcloth. I was so scared when I first thought about getting some, then cutting into it was nerve-wracking and then I fell in love with the punch, punch, punch noise the machine makes as the needle pokes through and it was all over. It's so easy to work with and there are such beautiful oilcloth designs out there now. When I have a few scraps I'm going to make this lunch bag. This little tote is actually about the size for a nice, big lunch (or a good lunch with a water bottle) and I have no idea what to do with it (meaning: who's it for?!). It's lined in a fuzzy, red flannel. I do like it!

I have 80 million bookmarks for different things I've seen lately (all courtesy of other blogs, for the most part, so thanks to you if it was from you!) so let's just get them all on here and tidy up a bit:

• This is absolute insanity. It makes me want to distance myself even more from popular culture and, well, people and that's not healthy. Who buys this stuff (if it's you, more power to you but why?)? These cardboard doll houses are cute and all, and bright too, but they're cardboard doll houses for insane amounts of money. Any child would rather make their own given the time, scraps and tools, don't you think? And I get the novelty (which I suppose is novel only if you don't have to do it, by the way) of putting your infant in a cardboard box but spend $100+ to do it? Huh? How many cute little wooden kitchens could I make for the money someone spends for one cardboard doll house?

• We're having a pretty great week around here, I've got to say, but there are times when I think I can't possibly take one more hour of sitting on our living room rug, spotting the boy as he climbs. I've said it before and I'll likely say it way too much in the future: this mama business is tough stuff. So it's sort-of refreshing when someone else says it too.

• I love this series of Smallpeople on applehead.

• There are sites about everything! The Mayfly noted this Street project and I note that the first street is my last name. It's fun to get a glimpse of streets all around the country.

• Hey, hey, I won something today (well, yesterday). Honeyflake is sending the boy and me some of her darling little gnomes. I feel so... lucky!

• Evidently I'm the very last person to try No Knead Bread, but I "need" to try it (oh, this is bad... I think what I really need is some more coffee to wake up a bit). It looks quite yummy.

• These little bunnies for a Bunny Toss are so cute and I know the boy would like them. She notes that for her boy the simple toys are the best ones, and the same goes here. I will say that the boy heavily campaigned for a little kid flip phone (I suppose it was a cell phone) at Target yesterday. It does the same "beeps" as a real phone and when the little girl said whatever she says when you press a certain button he talked right back to her excitedly. He's never actually really, really wanted us to get something at the store before and he even brought it up at the dinner table which I thought was a little crazy for a 17 month old. Hmmmm....

• Some of this yarn is just so beautiful and it would be so neat to dye your own. I'm the slowest knitter of all time though.

• I want a little of this, and this and oh, no... I just went to link to my favorite and it's GONE. Gasp. Amazing fabric.
  

Happy Friday

We did a little of this yesterday, and the peanut butter balls (with substitutions... it seems you can really mix these up!) are almost gone.

We did a lot of this yesterday too. Tomorrow I'm going to work on birds, mats and those poor doll quilts. They were started before the craze, and now would you just look?!

Thanks, everyone, for all of the fantastic food advice. I went crazy and bought the olive oil I'd been holding out on for six months (too expensive for the current budget, I thought) and a bit o' prosciutto to boot. Forgive the busy look of the site but it is a really good resource and the No-Bake Granola Bars are a family favorite here. I thought I should share right back!

When I first started writing here with two posts last November it was a bit about dinners too, but a lot about wishing I was more connected. This morning, when I checked the comments, I found all sorts of wonderful suggestions about one of the things that's really been bugging me. Then I quickly found all of the beautiful doll quilts I mentioned (how inspiring) and checked in with Kristin's Free Friday and read a little about her philosophy of raising her daughter and was inspired once again. On my first cup of coffee in my bathrobe I already felt connected to other mamas who work to create what I'm working to create each day. Somehow what I wanted so deeply last November is already there, bit by bit, here. I'm so thankful. Oh, and I'm going to buy that book.

Happy Friday. I wish you a wonderful weekend.

Peanut butter + jelly without the jelly

I had a dream (don't you just love it when people tell you all about your dreams?-- I know, it'll be short + painless, I promise) where something was happening that I should have been worrying about. In the dream I was worrying about why I wasn't worrying, and then when I first woke up I was worrying about having a dream about worrying about not worrying. Crazy.

Anyhow, I've been worrying about too much and I've been too hard on myself. This Mama/being at home with the babe stuff is tough stuff sometimes. I love it, even the more difficult moments, but there aren't any sort of standardized units of measurement for success. The boy is happy and healthy and brilliant (!) so that is the big success. The little things, at times, seem a bit out of control though and at the moment there are a lot of little things.

So, one thing that's been bugging me is our food situation. One of the boys around here can't have any dairy at all in anything, and the other (bigger) guy has had to try a wheat-, gluten- and dairy-free diet lately. It feels like we cycle through the same ten or so meals all the time, and though I'm in love with the new kitchen I think I hate to cook lately (and you can't, um, actually cook on the boy's cute stove). It's hard to find combos that will suit everyone's dietary needs and I always feel like I need to cut corners at the grocery store to save a little money.

This morning:
"Did you eat some breakfast?"
"Ummm... I had a little applesauce."
"No cereal?"
"Aah, no... There isn't actually any cereal left."

Yesterday morning as I'm sticking cold cuts onto plain tortillas as "wraps":
"Sorry for the pathetic lunch. I guess I could have made these into peanut butter and jelly tortilla wraps?"
"Do we have jelly?!"
"Um, no. They'd be peanut butter and jelly wraps without the jelly."
"Oh... No, that's fine."

Anyhow, time for an intervention. I found lots of cookbooks for inspiration at the library (Book Babies yesterday, of course, and can I just add in how adorable the boy is when he does the handsigns for "Twinkle, Twinkle?"). And because we can't just go healthy all the time I even got this book on pies too.

I've written down the ingredients list for this granola, these spring rolls (it's spring!), these peanut butter balls (let's help out those lunches a bit, eh?) and some of this crostini. I suppose I'll just adapt as I go so everyone can eat everything... Other suggestions? Like I said, it's bad around here. Today's big goal is a super-duper grocery shopping bonanza (sometimes I say stuff like that to make it sound like what it's most definitely not: exciting + fun!).

I have help with my ongoing craft tidy, which can be hilarious fun. I really do love that point of total disaster as you're redoing things, one step before the panic and two steps before it's all so much better. With the boy's hands in everything we hit the disaster point a bit earlier. He's so good now about taking things places. He'll bring all of the ribbons to the front door, for example, ribbon by ribbon. This is serious business.