summer produce, summer projects

summer produce - mmmmmm

I stayed up waaaay too late last night reading Emma Donahue's Room; it wasn't until 12:30 that I gave in, put the book down and turned off the light. At first I wasn't completely into reading the kidspeak, and I ended up doing some skimming here and there - reading the grammatically incorrect and chopped up language was a bit too much to read word for word. The story behind the story is creepy (reminds me of the Austrian man who kept his daughter etc etc - so so so so horrible) but since you don't get much of that and it's all coming from a very naive perspective it's good; I don't stay up until 12:30 that often any more (sad sad sad), so that's saying something. Mr Muffin was up at 5:00 this morning, and I cut to the chase and fed him right away in a half-awake zombie trance, and then it was back to bed for the both of us thank goodness... and we all slept until 7:45 - bliss! On the topic of books, my current favourite kiddie tome is Love is You and Me - so poignant and cute, and the pictures are simple and perfect.

art projects! better pictures to come once they're up on a wall where they belong

for now they'll just hang out with all of the stuff that should be in our furnace room, but is stashed in a corner; the ceiling in there (drip drip drip) still needs to be put back together

We've had a few projects this week - some impromptu and some planned for weeks, or er, actually, months. I bought canvases from Michael's hmmm, when would that have been? Well anyways, it was months ago, and we finally got around to taking them out of their plastic wrappers and dousing them - or one of them - with colour. I didn't take any pictures of the artists at work, but armed with brushes, wine and lots of little bottles of paint, vee vent to vork! (said in a french artiste voice) and were totally prepared to be disappointed by the end product. BUT! It worked out and we love it. Now the challenge is getting this ouevre up on the wall before another two months jet by. Art project number two (inspired by this post at Young House Love) is in progress, but may have to be put up on the shelf until Steve gets back from his trip. Is that news? Yes - Steve and his team of vballers are leaving for a European tour/trip on Sunday for two(ish) weeks :( It will be strange not having him around, and even more strange for him to not see his son - for that long. Mrrrr... but there's skype and email and yadda yadda, so it won't be so bad, right?



So the art thing was our non-impromptu project, and our spur of the moment deal was buying a whole bunch of fruit and prepping and freezing it for future enjoyment. My mom has always canned - or frozen I should say - fruit, and throughout our childhood we enjoyed peaches and applesauce, plums and rhubarb, strawberries and apricots throughout the winter. Of course, we had no idea how amazing it was to have such delicious fruit in the throes of winter - it was normal for us to have fruit and cookies for dessert every night. (YUM.) Here and now, it was Steve's initiative, and the freezer is now stocked with 6 or 7 jars of raspberries, and 3 jars of strawberries... mmm mmm good. I mean, yeah, okay, we're not sure that we'll be here in the winter (Plan A is for Steve to get a vb contract overseas somewhere) but the fruit will either be there or already gobbled - we'll see how long it lasts in there.

Okay, and to finish (I'm fading fast here), one - just one! - pic of our cute little boy.... oh how I love him!!!