2010 Projects – A Book a Week

One thing I started a few months ago was to get back into the habit of reading a book each week. Doing this helped me remember how much I like reading and how happy it makes me. I really enjoy the arts and crafts, too but reading has a special place in my heart. So for 2010 I decided to continue my “a book a week” goal. Some weeks I on’t get to finish it and that’s ok but I know that I will read a whole lot more if I set this goal.

With that, here is my current list of books. They’re alphabetically sorted and you’ll see most of them are fiction. The ones with the star at the end are non-fiction. The little “a” in the paranthesis is a link to amazon, mostly for me since I like to read about the book each week when I am choosing my next book.

  1. A Fraction of the Whole (a)
  2. A Gate at the Stairs (a)
  3. A Spot of Bother (a)
  4. Await Your Reply (a)
  5. Both Ways Is the Only Way I Want It (a)
  6. Chronic City (a)
  7. Fluke (a)
  8. Good in Bed (a)
  9. Heat Wave (a)
  10. Homer and Langley (a)
  11. I See you Everywhere (a)
  12. In the Woods (a)
  13. Julie and Julia (a)
  14. Let the Great World Spin (a)
  15. Made To Stick* (a)
  16. Night Train (a)
  17. Noah’s Compass (a)
  18. Now You See Her (a)
  19. Revolutionary Road (a)
  20. Sag Harbor (a)
  21. Saving Fish from Drowning (a)
  22. Shanghai Girls (a)
  23. Slam (a)
  24. Something Borrowed (a)
  25. Spooner (a)
  26. Stitches*(a)
  27. Empire Falls (a)
  28. That Old Cape Magic (a)
  29. The Accidental Billionaires* (a)
  30. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (a)
  31. The Anthologist (a)
  32. The Art of Racing in the Rain (a)
  33. The Black Swan* (a)
  34. The Blind Side* (a)
  35. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao (a)
  36. The Coral Thief (a)
  37. The Crowning Glory of Calla Lily Ponder (a)
  38. The Devil in the White City* (a)
  39. The Fire (a)
  40. The Forgotten Garden (a)
  41. The Gift (a)
  42. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest (a)
  43. The Girl Who Played with Fire (a)
  44. The Girl With No Shadow (a)
  45. The Last Song (a)
  46. The Last Time They Met (a)
  47. The Museum of Innocence (a)
  48. The Poisonwood Bible (a)
  49. The Road (a)
  50. The Sea (a)
  51. The Secret History (a)
  52. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (a)
  53. The Unaccustomed Earth (a)
  54. The Wishing Year (a)
  55. The Year of the Flood (a)
  56. This is Where I Leave You* (a)
  57. What I talk about when I talk about Running* (a)
  58. What I Wish I Knew when I was 20* (a)
  59. What the Dog Saw* (a)
  60. When You Reach Me (a)
  61. Wishin and Hopin (a)
  62. Wolf Hal (a)

Here’s to a year of high quality reading. As always, if you have suggestions please leave comments. Last year, I read a lot of the suggested books and loved them.

December 26, 2009 | Literature | 2 comments

Eating Puffs

Recently, I decided I need to take more videos. My kids are growing up too fast and I will miss it a lot. Knowing exactly how they do something. So here’s my way of documenting.

Aurelia loves eating these puffs and I love watching him. Warning:might be super-boring for you.

Excuse the dirty tray, he had just eaten so it’s a mess.

December 26, 2009 | Aurelia | Leave a comment

Daily Photos – December 25 2009

Christmas in our house started last night when David got to open one present.

As it turned out, it was a science toy so, of course, we got to working on it immediately.

While Aurelia hung out with Daddy and relaxed.

Then, everyone went to bed and Aurelia decided today was to start at 4:00am which is when he began crying and would not stop. So after we all woke up, he fell right back asleep and slept all the way until 8:30.

While he slept, I set the table.

This year, I’d decided to make some pancakes. The recipe was from the Barefoot Contessa book I have and it’s baked pancakes. I had never tried them before and while they look a bit funny, they actually tasted quite good.

David got “full” immediately because he knew we’d open presents after breakfast. And as soon as he was allowed, he opened everything in his stocking and moved on to his presents.

Since Aurelia showed no interest in opening his, David kindly opened all of Aurelia’s presents, too.

Here’s a shot of our room right after all the presents were opened.

After all the present-opening was done, Jake fell into a deep sleep on the living room couch.

While the kids both played with their new toys.

And then while Aurelia napped, we all watched Mary Poppins and then Jake and David made some of David’s new pirate legos while I relaxed and worked on some upcoming posts.

And we ended the day by making some royal icing and preparing our graham-cracker gingerbread houses so we can decorate them tomorrow.

Baths, nursing, stories, snuggling and the kids were both asleep by 6:30. Now it’s time for us to relax and enjoy the last few hours of Christmas Day.

I hope your day was full of delight and joy like ours. I feel very blessed today.

December 25, 2009 | Daily Photos - 2009 | Leave a comment

Photography Tips – Lenses – My Favorite Lens

It’s been a while since I posted one of these, I know but this was the last one I recorded a long time ago so I wanted to make sure to post it.

I was just talking about this lens to my friend Manu last night. This really is the greatest lens. It takes beautiful photos in low light and it’s the perfect focal length and most significantly it’s really affordable. The thing with having expensive photography equipment is that it makes you worry about it constantly which might make you reluctant to use it and you should never be worried enough about your camera/lens that you don’t take the photos to document your moments. In my opinion, of course.

Here’s the little movie.

December 25, 2009 | Photography Tips | 2 comments

Merry Christmas

Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones.

December 25, 2009 | Holidays | Leave a comment

December Daily – Day 24

For day 24, I knew I wanted to tell the story of some photos I took of David and Aurelia. For the front page, I adhered this photo of David hugging Aurelia.

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On the back, I put three photos of Aurelia and David playing and wrote journaling to Aurelia about how incredibly lucky he is to have David.

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Here’s the journaling:
Aurelia, even though you are not aware of it right now, I want you to know that you have the world’s greatest brother.

Not only does he love playing with you but he puts up with all of your curiosity and torture. Today, you crawled up to him, grabbed his nose, stepped on his face, and twisted his arm but all he did was laugh and encourage you on with giggles and hugs.

I hope that when you grow up and start taking his things and going through his drawers, he will exercise the same level of patience and love that he feels for you today.

(Wishful thinking, I know.)

Regardless of how things change as you grow up, it is one of the biggest joys of my day to get to watch you play together, David giggling, and your belly laughs. Even though, I yell at David to stop running around and screaming, I know he does it solely to enterain you because, like me, he loves watching you laugh. He loves getting and keeping your attention. He loves hugging you.

I am aware of what a pure joy it is to have the two of you. But you are still too young to tell how lucky you are and I know that things might change as you both grow older so I wanted to make sure we have records of days like this where you can see all that you did to your brother and how very much he loves you.

You are one lucky boy to have him.

December 24, 2009 | December Daily 2009 | One comment

Daily Photos – December 24 2009

“Look, Mom, he’s holding his head.” My son has a sense of humor.

This photo isn’t technically or artistically interesting, but look at those toes peeking out.

And here’s David staring at the Christmas tree (or maybe all of his presents.)

And my little boy laughing.

Nicholas and Ty came to have lunch with us today and played with the kids. They are great friends and we’re lucky to have them.

David got to open one present and it was a science kit so we did one of the experiments and it needs a bit of waiting so while it’s doing its thing, we’re watching one of the best movies ever: Mary Poppins!

Can’t imagine Christmas eve can get much better. Happy Christmas eve.

December 24, 2009 | Daily Photos - 2009 | Leave a comment

December Daily – Day 22

I moved the transparency from Day 23 to 22 and just added a sticker with some journaling. Hard to see in the photo. Apologies.

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In the back, I put a piece of paper with a small sticker..

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Simple page.

December 24, 2009 | December Daily 2009 | One comment

December Daily – Day 23

For day 23, I printed the cookie photo from yesterday and added a simple number on it.

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On the back, I arranged some more photos and added a few words.

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December 24, 2009 | December Daily 2009 | Leave a comment

2010 Projects – Crafting with David

A few weeks ago, we went to David’s school for the bi-annual parent-teacher conference. One of the things the teacher said was that David is well-rounded in that he is interested in art as much as playing with trains and blocks. They thought it was wonderful that he enjoyed art and baking and I totally agree. So I decided that this year, I will take time (at least) once a week to sit with him and do some crafts.

Since I know from experience that it’s more likely to get done if I already have a list of ideas, I made an initial list of ideas. I might do all of these or none of these and I will likely add to it throughout the year. If you happen to know of fun craft ideas for kids (he’s going to be five years old in February), please please leave me a comment and I will add it to my list.

As we do them, I will post them here and change these links so you have both our creation and the original idea’s link.

I’ve also made a visual version of this on tumblr so we can quickly look at the photos and David can pick what he wants to do that week.

Here’s my initial list:

  1. Cut-out stencil prints
  2. Halloween bats
  3. Halloween gourds
  4. snowman doorstop
  5. leaves art
  6. make a kite
  7. miraculous leaf rubbings
  8. messy leaf prints
  9. robots
  10. Paper plate dinosaurs
  11. Paper people chains
  12. stencils
  13. flowers
  14. flower pot
  15. xmas advent
  16. xmas countdown advent
  17. nature bracelets
  18. origami tree
  19. wrapping bottles
  20. yarn pompom
  21. felt xmas trees
  22. fabric ornaments
  23. hanukkah – city
  24. cereal box houses
  25. fun wreaths
  26. leaf stenciling
  27. popsicle pencil holder
  28. paper heart
  29. glue resist dinosaur
  30. froggy jello
  31. recycled milk carton truck
  32. felt cuffs
  33. bath ice cubes
  34. sun prints
  35. body flip book
  36. bead bugs
  37. ice cream sandwiches
  38. juice box boats
  39. ice cream cones
  40. felt caterpillars
  41. fairy wings
  42. fall tree
  43. felt shapes
  44. fishing game
  45. apple trees
  46. apple cake
  47. crow puppets
  48. halloween mini pumpkins
  49. halloween haunted house
  50. spider cookies
  51. gourd ghosts
  52. halloween bat garland
  53. halloween painted jar luminaries
  54. 3-d tree with felt leaves
  55. paper chains
  56. yogurt cup houses
  57. thanksgiving wreath
  58. acorn painting
  59. paper roll squirrels
  60. gingerbread man puppets from felt

A wide range of ideas. Some easier and some more challenging. Here’s to a year of crafting with my (big) little one. As Aurelia grows up, he might join us for a few of these, too.

December 23, 2009 | Craft with David | 3 comments

Daily Photos – December 23 2009

Today we baked the cookie dough I’d prepared yesterday. And David decorated to his heart’s content.

All the while Aurelia sat in his chair with a teething biscuit which I figured would keep him busy for a while.

I didn’t really work. He ate for a while and then got really upset. So in the end he was a mess and crying at the same time.

but we did make some cute cookies.

The rest of our day was quiet. I didn’t feel like doing any art today but I did finish my book. I am hoping to work on my page 22, 23 and 24 tomorrow (mostly simple or digital now) and ideally on my two tags, too. Just feeling behind still, but I don’t care. I will eventually catch up. Even if it’s in 2010.

Happy Christmas eve eve.

December 23, 2009 | Daily Photos - 2009 | Leave a comment

Weekly Digital Downloads – Heart Shaped Stamps

This week’s download is a set of stamps that can be placed on your pages or photos.

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You can download it here: heart shaped stamps set download. (the file name is “masks” – don’t ask me why, I made these a while ago so I don’t remember what I was thinking.)

You are welcome to play with these as much as you want and use them anywhere you’d like. You are NOT allowed to sell them ever. You don’t have to but I’d appreciate a link back if you do use them.

If you like my downloads, please click here and give me ideas/requests for 2010. I would like to continue this feature but I am not sure I can come up with enough ideas on my own.

This is part of a weekly digital download series. They are posted every Wednesday. You can find all of the ones that were posted here.

December 23, 2009 | Digital Downloads | 5 comments

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