List #6 - I'm Into It

1. Scandal. Oh my god, Scandal. This show! It's so good! We're almost halfway through season 2, and I'm loving it! Kerry Washington has the most amazing snarl-face, Joshua Malina is as sassy as ever, and the President's Chief of Staff is just brilliant. I wasn't sure about it for the first few episodes. See, in the pilot episode, Olivia Pope goes and rescues a baby from some kidnappers, and then when she brings the baby back to her office, she leaves the baby in a box while she and her associates eat Chinese takeout. Not cool, Mz. Pope! But about 3 episodes in, it gets reeeeeally good. I'm glad we stuck with it. I was figuring it would end up as one of those shows that we watch just to make fun of, but instead we're totally obsessed. If you like West Wing or House of Cards, Scandal is right up your alley.

2. Salad. All the time. Now that I've got my salad dressing down, it's like the only thing I want to eat. Except for

3. Soup. I've been craving it pretty regularly. Ross makes this hot and sweet and spicy noodle soup that's completely inauthentic but so good. Cook down some small-diced onions and garlic on low heat til they practically disappear, add in homemade vegetable stock, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, a spoonful of sugar and a ton of Sriracha and Sambal Olec, and then let the noodles cook in it. So nice on a cold night, which is all the time right now.

4. These boots.

 Like I said, it's been cold. And they're warm and fuzzy and comfy and go with almost everything I have that's warm. I get compliments on them all the time, and I have to restrain myself from being like "I totally got them on sale at Target" because that's not what the cool kids say. But seriously, they're from Target, and while they don't have them in the lovely green and brown anymore, they do have white and black.

5. Sake. See above, about the cold.

6. Wearing my hair like a giant cinnamon bun on top of my head. It looks like this, but less sticky, and I think it's very festive. If I could glitter it too, and still be work appropriate, I would.

Image via Another Good Thing

7. Christmas. We decorated the tree today, and put up lights. Ross says it looks tacky, and then we had this conversation:

Ross: I really prefer a classy and elegant "Courier and Ives" Christmas decorative theme. All white lights, all wooden ornaments, blah blah blah artsy stuff.
Me: Babe. You know I've never made anything look classy or elegant. You want Courier and Ives? Get out here and decorate.
Ross: Bah humbug and harumph. Also, why are you hanging things where we can't see them?
Me: grrrrrrrrrrfalalalala-la-la-la-la
Ross: Good point. I'll go do some more art in the other room now.

Anyways, here's our poor little crooked Tree-in-a-cage and my tacky (aka awesome and sparkly) decorations. I love it, and Santa will definitely know where to find us! E likes it too. He calls the tree a flower and smells it all the time. My kind of kid!

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I'm thankful today for warm sweaters, living near enough to a Target to be able to run out at bedtime to get more nighttime diapers because we ran out and forgot, living in a neighborhood that really does it up for Christmas (just wait til I tell you about Christmas Tree Lane - it's too cool), enchiladasagna lunches, and the mini marshmallows that come in packets of Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate.

Christmas music was playing in the background to all of this

When I walked in the door with our little Christmas Tree today, Ross looked like he'd been run over several times by a toddler. (Do you capitalize the "tree" in "Christmas tree"? I think the lots just always do the whole thing in giant red-and-green capital letters...) Anyways, we did a quick kid-swap. I think he was out the door within 5 minutes, poor thing.

E's reached this stage of constant chatter. And, believe me, this kid was chatty before. He loves to talk and loves to ask questions and is really a pretty cheerful guy. He's just also loud about it.

So we've started counting some of the most frequent phrases. Today's count:

"s'Daddy dooooing?" - 64
"s'Mama dooooing?" - 10
"s'Dat, Mama, s'dat?" - 28 (between 5:45 pm and 7:15 pm)
"s'Dat, Daddy, s'dat?" - Ross has no idea
"Nank yoo" - 7
"Oh, ok!" - 31
"Daddy, a twain!" - 3
"Post. Office." (with arms up in the air) - 39
"Kitshen" (only said while opening the baby gates to get into the kitchen) - 6

So Ross needed a bit of quiet time. Fair enough.

E and I put the lights up on our tree while he was gone. It was adorably, ridiculously, infuriatingly cute. He was totally uncooperative, except for when I asked him to hold the lights. He spent most of the time either scared of the tree and asking for hugs, or throwing a little nerf ball into the tree and then running up and getting it back. By the end of it he was shouting "Cwissmuss" at the top of his lungs and really into the lights.

I think tomorrow we might try to make ornaments. It's going to be a huge mess. Ross is gonna be really anxious about his table while we're doing it. I'll take pictures.

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Today, I'm thankful for vodka sauce, the fact that I don't work in a post office around the holidays, the Christmas decorations my grandmother made, and the terrible and excellent comics I saw today. The first got me in trouble with my cousin's wife, because he loves puns SO much that he works them in every chance he gets, and he's driving her crazy. He is the king of dad jokes, so I posted this one on his Facebook:

From Cartertoons by Carter

to which he replied "I always love it when new puns are throne out there!" This guy is a genius! I love it!

And then this one, from the always awesome XKCD, shared by a buddy on Facebook:

From XKCD

It makes no sense and also it's totally logical and wonderfully geeky and just my sense of humor. The only thing I'd add is glitter, because that makes everything better.

Pancakes and Butterflies

Pancakes are a weekend tradition around here. Actually, the two houses tend to battle over who makes the better pancakes (I should clarify - Ross battles...Tommy doesn't know it's a competition yet). And I'm just happy to get pancakes mostly!

Should we call it "Hole in the Fence," or "The Secret Garden"? 

 On Saturdays, we go through the secret door in our backyard and have breakfast at my sister's place. How cool is that? Our yards connect, which is possibly the neatest thing ever. Eventually I'll get to telling that story, of how we found our home, and then how she found hers. We have big plans for that yard, but for now, the fence just has a few missing boards, and with a quick climb through the ivy and over a garden-gone-wild, we can be in each other's yards.

 So, most Saturday mornings, that's just what my little family does. In our pajamas, we head through our little backyard portal and arrive at "Auntie's House," which usually already smells like pancakes and bacon. All 5 of us crowd into the little breakfast nook in her adorable, black-and-white tiled kitchen. Emmett sits on books, in between his "dahdee" and his "tahmee," and pretty gleefully eats his "pancheeks" with dip (which is what he calls ALL condiments...ketchup, mustard, sriracha, maple syrup, etc).

Boys side versus girls side

Tomorrow, Ross will make pancakes again, but it'll just be the three of us. Which is nice, but it's not this silly dream-come-true of a little family compound that we're living on Saturday mornings. Every once in a while, I try my hand at pancakes, but I almost always go for the Swedish version, like this one I pinned. Being 1/4 Swedish by marriage and family legend, I know a good Swedish pancake when I have one. If there's not a lot of butter and a little bit of sugar, they're not right. And this recipe has both.

Also, tomorrow, we're heading off to the art store to make some big purchases. Blick's having a big sale, and Ross needs new colors, and more paper, because dang, has that guy been working. We decided to launch this business 3 days ago, and he's already got one near-completed work and two more in progress. I've been sneaking around the house snapping pictures of his paintings, and I love being able to share the progression of his works. I think he was inspired by our niece, who has a butterfly bedroom. Thinking about what parents might want to decorate their kids' rooms with, and while reading the wonderful The Very Hungry Caterpillar to our kiddo, he was inspired to create this watercolor and colored pencil piece, which is now our first item for sale on our Etsy store! Click here to buy

A Beautiful Butterfly

Boat and Picture Day

I took a boat to work this morning! It's not the first time I've done that, but it is the first time that I noticed something about myself on these "boat days."

When I take the SF Bay Ferry to work, I also take pictures. Lots of pictures. And I think they're actually pretty neat. I've got no formal photography training, and I probably use my phone's photo editing apps way too much (I like snapseed and Camera Awesome, both of which I think are getting discontinued soon, because of course they are), but I think some of my photos would actually make pretty cool artwork. Get nice prints made, glitter or mod-podge them up a bit, mount them to a canvas, and they could be pretty cool! Here's a little sampling: 

 This is the Ferry Building in San Francisco. Really, a damn cool thing to arrive to.

 Trees, sun and fog...I tend to be drawn to this kind of thing

 More trees and sun (and a little fog). There's something about the way the sun makes these lines through the photo, and the way the trees become like silhouettes...just shadows almost.

Trees and very misty fog (not much sun). I liked this one more for the shape...like giant maple leaves, or Christmas trees that ate too much.

 So these things! They're at the Port of Oakland, and rumor has it that George Lucas based his "AT-ATs" on these guys, and they're totally reminiscent of them. Every time I go past them, either driving my car or on the ferry, I'm reminded of giant animal-like machine fighters. The kiddo calls them "camoos", which I think means camels, but I readily admit I don't know all of his words.

 Tilt-shift San Francisco and Coit Tower just after sunrise. Such pretty colors...I hardly even edited the colors at all, I don't think!

And finally a cool ass window deal from on of my favorite bars - the Wild Side West. This place, on Cortland in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of SF, is too cool. The backyard is this mashup of kitschy decoration, bird feeders, repurposed toilets and your adorable grandma's backyard. I take lots of pictures here actually. 

So yeah! I'm thinking about maybe throwing up a few prints on the Etsy store, and see what happens...they could totally be legit pieces of home decor!