Trade Show Preparation and...I Wish I Could Make Up a Story Like This One

I had about less than four hours of sleep last night but this time it was NOT on account of the children.  No, this time it was all about the photobooks.  Last week, Nicole and Georgia, two lovely sister models and I went to Dos Lagos to take some phots for some pictures I need for the tradeshow this week.  With completed photos so nicely presented in one of Nicole's gleaming little CD covers, I got online last night and made my 'Lookbooks' for the show.  You know, so when people come by they can view a lovely catalogue of my designs close-up and also beautifully worn?  At any rate, here is a preview of some of the amazing photos (I'll get to my point in a bit):

Serendipity fascinator.  Hair by Georgia Syrengelas and photography by Nicole Long

Diaphanous headband.  Love her smile!

Ingenue headband

Efflorescence necklace

Fetching decorative headpiece



Halcyon circlet crown

More designs at twigandsparrow.com





I needed to download a bunch of these photos into a lookbook via Shutterly.   Boy I tell you, it takes a heck of long time to arrange, edit, and perfect these little books.  Maybe some of you can master these with a baby in one hand and a laptop in the other, but not me.  I have not developed photos of my kids since Ariadne's first birthday.  Just so you know, she'll be four in two months.  Speaking of developing photos (is this just sooo 2008 or something?), I could not resist the temptation to print out these lovely little gems that Nicole took of my little one a couple of months ago (she modeled some of my earlier designs):

Georgia Syrengelas did her hair...I never even considered ever curling my daughter's hair! 

If you feel that you have nice touchy-feely, warm-fuzzy feelings right now, don't continue reading.  If you are a mommy, you'll appreciate this one.  Just goes to show how far a mommy's love for her children can really, really go.  Sigh, here it is...

Baby is crying.  A lot.  She doesn't even eat any of her breakfast.  I watch her for a minute to see what is going on.  She is 'bearing down' to try and poo.  Uh oh, con-sti-pa-tion.  I go through my usual constipation protocol:  warm water, orange juice, the good ol' tummy rub (clockwise direction please!).  She is still crying.

No wait, now she is screaming.  By this time the older two are coming over to see what is going on.  I take baby's diaper off hoping that her hard stool (yup) will not interfere with her diaper and make it stuck there.  Ouch.

That's when Ariadne says 'I see the ca-ca!'  I turn baby over, and my butt hurts just looking at this.  Her poo is lodged partly out of her anus, and the poor poo-poo hole is stretched painfully out.  Yeah.

Doctor is called and he proceeds to tell me what to do.  The funny thing is that he is so non-chalant about the whole thing as he gives me the following directions:

'Get a pair of gloves, if you want'.  (why would anyone opt out of gloves, I ask myself.)

'Get some vaseline'.  (I knew where this was going when he mentioned gloves)

'Lubricate the outer ring with vaseline and try to pull out the stool' (you mean I can't just push it back in???)

Hang up phone.  Go upstairs with bare-bottomed baby.  Get towel, tissue (sorry, no latex gloves in the house, go figure...because well, you know, everyone has a pair of those lying around, right?  Riiiight???)

Lay baby on floor.  Stick finger in vaseline and proceed to lube.  Grab tissue, pull out stool, which, by the way, is harder than a rock. 

At this point, I am pushing down on baby's lower abdomen too.  Why?  I dunno really, but it felt like I was helping my infant daughter give birth to a hard shit.  Not fun.

I could feel that she had more, so I kept trying to take out more.  Finally, it all came out.

The crying immediately ceases.  Baby gets up and starts playing like nothing happened.

I am sweating like a midwife after a baby is born.  The kids continue playing together.  Wow, it takes one stubborn turd to bring kids together and foster sympathy.  Wow.

I felt guilty because today was the first day that baby got dropped off at daycare.  And this is where the reality of the trials of motherhood and work and trying to balance it all come into play.

Countdown to the tradeshow:  three days.  It is crunch time, and mommy has to go back to the drawing boards and workbench to finish samples and get life going.  Baby is all better and happy as a clam playing with her siblilngs at daycare.

(Yes, this is what I have to tell myself in order to keep the machine of life humming and running)









Countdown to the California Gift Show and I Need Sleep!



Origami pinwheels for booth design at the gift show.  Wanna try some?  Click here


There are exactly six more days until the California Gift Show, my very first tradeshow to showcase my pieces from Twig and Sparrow.  I have had an amazing amount of help from my husband and I have to pinch myself every now and then, due to the fact that he is behind me in this crazy venture 100%.  Sometimes I think that someone up there looked down on me ten years ago and said 'ok, this girl need someone amazing in her life'...and boom, there he was.

In the midst of all of this, my sleep issues have slowly crept back.  For a while there, I was very gung-ho about getting up before the kids (hence, waaaay before the sunrise), working out to some videos, getting a head-start on some work, then making breakfast to some happy, well-rested children that ate whatever tickled my fancy that morning.

Don't tell me you haven't thought of that, either.  We all have.  'Today is the day that everything will change!  We will start eating clean, eliminating sugar from our diets, going to the park more often, and darnnit, I will regain my muscle tone to pre-baby days!!!'.

It works.  For a little while.  And then, like a strong riptide on the shore, we get lured back into our old ways.  It happens so slowly, so gently at first.  You begin to sense a slight change in things and think, 'ok, I can bring it back to center.'  And you do.  But then, you become outnumbered. 

Kids start waking up in the middle of the night.  You 'accidentally' take a nap in the afternoon while the kids are at mom's.  You give in to the temptation of a nice frosty frappucino.  Everything starts to get, well...blurry.

This is what happened to me.  Everything just sort of gave way to the massive, relentless forces we all know as children.  Pretty soon I end up picking up pieces of responsibilities here and there, doing a crappy job all the while, trying to fit in getting my samples done for the show next week, answering phone calls, refereeing fights among siblings, and making sure that the little one doesn't fall on her head for the seventh time today again.  And then, it happens.  They take away your SLEEP.

Yesterday, in the frenzy of my sleep deprivation and aches and pains, I decided to buy a new pillow and mattress pad.  It seems in my advancing age (yes!), my body has become less accustomed to our bed.  Or something to that effect.  I brought them home, excited to use my new sleeping tools, looking forward to waking up to a sore-free neck and pain-free lower back.

Now because I have somehow thrown myself into a self-induced state of jet-lag in my own time zone, I could not get to sleep.  At all.  Funny, I was about to fall asleep on the 405 earlier that afternoon, and here I was, wide awake at 11:30pm.  Great.

Then this amazing phenomenon happens that I never believed could happen before having given birth to any children.  They start to SENSE their mommy's rhythms, her waxing and waning of hunger, consciousness, energy, and all that other hoopla.  I start to drift into the fantastic first stages of sleepiness.  And the middle child, Ariadne, starts to wail.

She needs to go to the bathroom.  So I take her.  End of that.
Then an hour later, as I am tossing and turning in my newly comfy bed, Conrad the Eldest comes in.

'Mommy, my jammies are wet'

Guess what?  We throw a towel over the wet spot and he goes back to sleep.

An hour later (I love how these are so perfectly timed in hour intervals, it sooo fits my OCD!), the baby starts wailing.  I go in and give her some water.  Done.  For now.

Half an hour later, she wails again.  Loud.  I pick her up a little, then put her back down quietly.  Done.  For now.

Half an hour later, she cries again.  Maybe it's her teeth.  Oh, F it, give her some ibuprofen.  Done.  For now.

Half an hour later, she wails again.  I need some sleep, it's 3 am!!!  So I put her in the guest bed with me and she falls asleep while I sleep with one eye open so she doesn't fall off the bed (again).

5am...Conrad walks in the room yelling 'where aaaaare youuuuuu?!?!?!?'...I put baby back in her crib and take Conrad back to my room so I can polish off some sleep. 

Nope.  He starts yelling 'Lilo doesn't really have sharp teeth mommy!'
So Ariadne hears this and wakes up...then baby wakes up.

I become 'mean mommy' and begin to say the following to my children: 
'Today is a special day!'
Children's faces light up.
'You are going to watch mommy take a nap for two hours today, doesn't that sound great?'
Faces fall down to the floor.
I think 'that's what I'm talkin about'.  Yeah, reasoning goes pretty much out the window from here on out.



Did I also mention that in the midst of all this, I space out in bed and the kids end up in my bathroom? 
Conrad is on the counter cleaning his ears with about 74 q-tips and the baby is eating Colgate straight from the tube.  Ariadne is flossing her teeth with about 23 floss sticks.  I go in to take my birth control pill that I left on the...

...counter?

Where is my pill?

Conrad informs me that baby has eaten my pill. 
So does this mean that if I just go ahead and take the next pill, I am in the clear?  Maybe not.

We're ok with three kids, but a fourth would mean we would have to get rid of this fridge magnet:

Magnet from amazing Berkely-based green gift boutique TreeHouse Green Gifts



And by the way, as I am writing this, Conrad has just informed me he has peed his pants yet again.

Thank God it's Friday people.  Thank God.

Grilled Veggie Pizza with Goat Cheese

Start with prepping the quick pizza dough

1/2 cup frozen corn
12 stalks frozen asparagus
two ripe tomatoes
1/4 cup red onion, thinly sliced
1 tbs basil, finely chopped and divided
1 cup goat cheese, divided

Grill the following in a dry pan, one at a time:
     frozen corn....set aside in a bowl
     frozen asparagus...set aside in a bowl
Add about 1 tsp olive oil into same pan, add the red onions until soft and caramelized
Thinly slice two ripe tomatoes...set aside
Finely chop 1 tablespoon fresh basil
Chop the asparagus into small pieces

Divide the pizza dough into two sections and roll out each onto a floured surface.
Brush both sides with a generous amount of olive oil

On a barbeque grill, set heat for about 350 degrees.  These will cook VERY quickly, so keep an eye out.

Grill ONLY ONE side of pizza crust, then transfer onto a platter GRILLED SIDE UP

Spread with  1/2 cup goat cheese and top with veggies, except the basil (this will be sprinkled on after pizza is done)

Place pizza back on grill and let it cook for another 6-8 minutes.

Garnish top with chopped basil

If your oven is going to break down, make sure it happens in July

It has been about three to four weeks that we have been without a microwave or an oven.  When you are frantically running around trying to get breakfast to three hungry children (who by the way have decided not to eat any dinner the night before....again), the idea of not having radioactivity conveniently at your fingertips starts to get a little annoying.  What, you mean I actually have to cook veggie sausages in a PAN???? 

So it was annoying for almost an entire month.  Going out to dinner, having leftovers, crashing dinnertime at my mom's house, and the occasional barbeque became the norm. 

Waitaminute, isn't this just the NORM for most people?  Yeah, I guess so.  But if you really think about it, we sometimes use our microwave without even thinking twice.  Microwave popcorn?  Quesadillas?  Trader Joe's veggie burgers?  Leftovers??? 

So on Friday, the oven technician said he would come in the afternoon.  We waited. And waited. Aaaand waited.  Dinnertime was around the corner, we were getting hungry (read: bitchy).  No dinner prepped.  Drumroll, please....

Back to the backyard to pick some Sweet 100s....

Grilled some TJ's frozen asparagus in a pan with a little olive oil...






Frozen corn roasted in a dry pan

Tomatoes big and small with some freshly picked basil...

Quick pizza dough rising (recipe here)

Kids roll out the pizza dough (entertainment while the rest of the veggies are prepped)

On to caramelizing the red onions (I used a little olive oil and um, a tiny bit of sugar)

Goat cheese as the 'sauce'

So here we go, we put everything on the grilled (on one side only!) pizza crust and threw it on the grill.  Added the chopped basil right before serving. This is what came out:

Here is the recipe for Grilled Veggie Pizza with Goat Cheese. 

 ..

Watermelons, a Gardenhose, and some Anticipation

It has been HOT HOT HOT here.  Not just typical hot, but HUMID hot in the early day.  And since we do not have a pool in our backyard (!) we have to keep ourselves occupied and cool in other ways. 
We started off at the beach, lunch at Islands, and worked our way back home only to discover it was only....3pm.  Ugh.

So what do we do from now until the sun goes down at 8:30pm? 

We wander around our garden and see what the little seeds have been doing since we planted them.

Summer squash blossoms make a heavenly dish when cooked with brown rice, garlic, olive oil, tomatoes, and fresh parsley topped with feta cheese.

Of course there was a lot of watermelon involved. 

Cooling off the yard and our toes

Tomatoes are coming!  Lots of salsa to be made, sundried tomatoes, and of course, delicious tomato jam (recipe to follow soon!)

The kids love to pick lavender from our yard and pull off the blossoms.  We dried a load of it and put it in a jar.  Next step:  lavender sugar!  Just throw a handful in a jar of sugar and let the aromatic magic happen.  We sprinkle some over fresh strawberries in a nice cool bowl of Greek yogurt.  A foodie recommended that we sprinkle some over fresh-baked olive oil shortbread cookies.  Mmmm!

My Very First Post!

After documenting so many moments in my little digital camera and posting a few things on my beloved Facebook, I have finally come to terms that I need a place to store all of my memories on life. 
I have been looking for inspiration everywhere, searching blogs and pages upon pages of images to get my so-called creative juices flowing. 

What was I looking for?  An outlet for my creativity, a place where I can live vicariously though other people's lives, eating their food, painting their furniture, modeling their wardrobe.  Yes, I found great blogs on street style (an indulgent vice of mine), cooking, home design, and motherhood.

BUT, I wanted it all in one place.  I wanted to find that street-style savvy mother that still found time to make killer brownies with her kids, sew their dream quilts, and still have time to shop for an amazing bargain in order to maintain her sense of sanity self.

I am not a young mother.  I am not an uber-thin fashionista.  I am not a skilled foodie.  I am a multi-dimensional person that still appreciates the finer little things in life that wants to pass this on to my children.  All three of them. 

Creativity through different facets in life has kept me balanced, well-rounded, and happy. 

I would love to share this with you and hope that it can bring some creativity into your life as well.

Let's go have some fun...... :)

Quick Pizza Dough

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/quick-and-easy-pizza-crust/detail.aspx