BIG

 Big things are happening. Big things with our family, our jobs, our friends, our home, our genius children. Hmm? What.

Why YES Ruby learned to write her name and Oh Yeah! Taught herself to swim.

No big deal.

She's four.

Above average you say? Very good looking? Brave? My, that's kind of you. I agree.

We've been traveling, finishing records, raising funds, planning bachelorette parties, end of summer parties, you name it. We fly to Colorado tomorrow for my baby sister's wedding.

The world is upside down! More updates soon, but this old computerbox is on its last leg and every time I sit down to upload some memories there are at least a dozen things I am putting off to do so.

ever bloody heaps,

Mami

Steak Pie

That's right! Pie. With steak in it. And GRAVY. Sometimes I crave things that don't actually exist. I read the Robin Hood stories years ago and never forgot the slices of meat pie they used to eat, full of savory meat and dripping with gravy. I tried to look up a recipe and the only kind of meat pies I could find were chicken pot pie or simply a crust full of ground beef and onions. (blarg)

If it doesn't exist, just make it yourself! I used a pot pie recipe as a guide but then changed everything and added steak. Since it was my very first pie ever (I don't really bake) I cheated and used ready made roll-out pastry and it turned out divine. I will definitely be making this again. (not too often...heavy whipping cream directly to thigh danger) It is special enough to maybe become a new birthday tradition. "birthday boating and steak pie". I could definitely get behind that.

I haven't been blogging as much as usual which means I've been trying new recipes as a creative outlet and my house is a bit cleaner. I had a lovely quinoa salad at a friend's place made with black beans, avocado, lime, cilantro, olive oil and mangoes. When I made it at home I substituted peaches and coconut oil and added grilled salmon. DO THIS. You won't be sorry.

I also figured out that you can make gravy out of anything. I made chicken fried chicken with mashed potatoes and onion gravy the other day. I wish I had known that when I was a vegetarian. I also mimicked an asian chicken salad we had at a restaurant with chopped cabbage, sauteed kale, soy ginger sauce and those fun crunchy things. I love adding new things to my mental menu. Check out these beautiful little egg flowers!

happy feasting.
love,
Mami

Crafternoon: altered found photos and light

A present for Wolfie. Besides underwater themed art and photography, I also have a penchant for using light in art, glowing art, strange lamps, 6 foot ladies with light bulb heads.

When I saw these pieces utilizing vintage photographs AND light, I knew I had to try to make something like it. This was my first attempt and as you can see, somewhat poorly executed, but still pretty satisfying.

I plan to find the perfect photo incorporating water and people, have it printed on a huge canvas, then shine lights through it so that I have  an entire beautiful wall. I already made a large piece like this on a movie set to act as a romantic headboard for a steamy love scene but it only featured cherry blossoms.

I think a photo of actual people staring out of the past illuminated will be much more interesting, though slightly less *cough erotic.

My Dinner with Edie

I love an intimate dinner party. So much more meaningful than a restaurant or a huge bash. Home cooked meals, fresh baked bread, new exciting toys for the monsters, a peek into the daily life of old friends. Long discussions of real life. Books, film, art, parenting, God. Things completely unrelated to tv shows or the internet over chilly pinot grigio and gelato. Does it get much better than this?

I adore this peter pan window seat. Built with love.

*donate to Evan's album project
(only 10 days left!)

Mary Cassat

Ah Mary! How I love her. Some of her favorite subjects are mothers with their babies doing mundane every day things, but she can capture a look in the woman's eye or an accidentally marvelous pose of the limbs and it becomes extravagantly beautiful and moving. Fat infants being bathed or reaching to caress a face, the morning toilette, the mixed splashy patterns of rug, dress and wall papers. At the risk of extreme cheesiness, seeing these women make the same adoring faces and gestures that I make on a daily basis is almost like time travel.

In our modern world I sometimes feel that all the good dirty wholesomeness of human life has been lost with the advent of television, the internet, cars, running water, microwaves. We scarcely even sweat anymore, unless we pay a gymnasium to let us do repetitive motions on a machine in an air conditioned room in order to sculpt our bodies to look amazing at the beach- which we slaved away hunched at a desk all year and flew a plane in order to reach. Even a mere one hundred years ago people were fit because they looked after crops, made their own furniture, chopped firewood, milked cows. They read anything they could get their hands on, taught themselves music and drawing and they rode horses for fun. I'm not entirely anti-technology, I mean- this is a blog after all full of digital pictures taken with a camera that works black devil magic. However, we all seem to think that we get smarter and smarter each generation because new things to help us be more comfortable keep being invented. It's all a lie!

Have you ever read the Bronte sisters? The books they wrote before the age of 25 would shame any English speaking blogger today. There are a million other examples, including native Americans and their herbal cures or the 1839 McGuffey's Reader (meant for ages 7-8) not to mention those pesky pyramids, but what I'm actually trying to say is that these paintings give me hope because I am just like these women. Nothing much has really changed when you can still see the intense love between mother and child. It is a wild, wolfish, ancient love and technology hasn't managed to killed it yet.

Glass Crab

I was doing an experiment with my photo uploading, but please enjoy this crab in a glass shell. (which I grabbed from the internet somewhere). He is so cool! A joke about glass houses and being naked is here somewhere, but I haven't thought of it yet.

Hrm

The blog kings say I can't upload any more photos without paying them money. Although it's not very expensive, I'm so offended that I'm putting it off. I'll watch the Olympics instead. Oh wait! The tv kings say you have to have cable in order to watch that. I guess I'll read a book.