signs of life: virginia

did you know that we moved? it's pretty much all i've talked about on facebook and i've just about drowned my instagram friends with pictures of cows...but if you haven't heard, we totally moved, ya'll.

texas to virginia by way of louisiana, mississippi, alabama and florida. then north by way of alabama (again), georgia, south carolina, north carolina and finally, VIRGINIA!

we moved in to a pretty place called the shenandoah valley. people use the words blue ridge in describing all sorts of things (like businesses and mountain ranges) so there's that, too.

we found a cheap farmhouse, complete with a herd of cows that jumps our fence a few times a week and stomps on our sunflowers.

i found a job that was pretty awful. but then, as of last thursday, i found a much better job more aligned with what i want to do with myself. i'll finally be a reporter again and i can. not. wait.

i spent a few weeks driving around this new hometown (and a few other hometowns) and i took a few photos. mostly, though, we've been trying to make this house ours and that means being creative when you run out of bookshelf money. (hint: use cardboard boxes to hold your stuff off the ground.)

not our house. Just one of many sort of creepy, awesome, and beautiful old buildings around here that just sort of ...are. not in the process of being torn down. not being rebuild. not lived in. just...there.

love this barn. not on our property, but one i pass often. not sure why i love it. i just do.

this is my very favorite animal on the planet. his name is chippy. he moos at us all the time. the farmer told me that when the steers get to be about 400 pounds, they get moved to the family's other field north of town. from there, the trucks from the slaughterhouses come by and gradually pick them up. i tried to block that part out. i'm also putting chippy on a diet so that he'll never get near 400 pounds. when you see chippy with a sweatband on his head and ankle weights on his feet...you'll know why.

old chicken coop or pig stalls next to our house. i'm not sure which and i refuse to investigate to figure out what it is. thar's snakes in them thar buildings. no lie.

a field on a stormy, foggy day. our house is just beyond those trees a ways.

i know, this studio/writing room will never make its way to pages of  "where women create" but i am so happy, happy, happy to finally  have a room where my art supplies and projects can live and breathe. i just sort of tacked up everything that inspired me to that wall you see. it's hodgepodge but, hey, so is my brain. there's a san pascual acrylic in progress taped to the wall. i got bored before i was finished, but i'll get back to it soon.

i'm in an angel/folk art phase right now. oh, and a "94-cent wood plaque at Walmart" sort of phase, too. cheap is good...

happy happy happy....

this is creative: fiep westendorp

i love the illustrations of the 60s. seriously. the whimsy and the "chicken scratch" aspect of the composition. LOVE IT.

one of my favorites is fiep westendorp, a dutch illustrator (1916-2004) who did a lot of work with annie m.g. schmidt.

speak dutch? (not the jump rope game double, of which i failed miserably, but the language...) here's a great fiep westendrop site.

stuff of life: state plates

my mom's an expert thrift store shopper.

in her world, i'm the noobest of noobs and add in the fact that now i usually have four kids in tow, i'm a near nightmare when it comes to thrifting.

but i've been itching to poke through used stuff lately, so early on a thursday morning, we dropped off the fourth grader and zoomed up and down the aisles.

first things first.

is it just me or does it seem that whatever the color of the day special is (it was yellow tag day when i was there), there are NO items in that color on the shelves? are they messing with us?

i don't have the patience or the stomach to zip through the clothes. they usually smell like cigarettes and mothballs. or pee.

i'm always on the hunt for three things:

1. furniture that i can do gruesome mod podge experiments on
2. kitchenware (namely china cups and saucers, milk glass, and all sorts of pyrex)
3. art. i like frames mostly, but i've found a few winners this past year

what i was NOT in the market for, however, were those kitschy state souvenir plates from the 60s.  but i hit the motherlode this week and in a flish/flash/bang instant i was addicted.  i picked up six for a buck each and now i'm on the ebay/etsy hunt. i love these things and i've stopped to wonder more than once...where have they been all my life?

i also found a really, really ugly china cup and saucer that looks like its straight outta the 80s, but it makes the clink sound (as opposed to the clunk sound) when cup hits saucer and i bought it for a whopping 0.79 cents! a small investment for feeling fancy when you drink your tea, friends.

also in the haul were two 1973 commemorative glasses from a railroad station in new hampshire and some caverns in missouri. never been to either place, but i'll dream about them while sipping lemonade outta the glasses this summer.

...happy happy....

stuff of life: some tea with me

i didn't grow up around my grandparents too much, so i don't have many of those memories that start with "my grandmother always..." or "my grandfather loved to..."--i just don't have them. but if i were to guess, they were coffee fans. i'm almost sure of it.

my mom was the tea drinker and if memory serves me well, it was her grandmother who also was a tea drinker. it's all very murky in my mind because i never paid much attention to things like tea and traditions when i probably should have been.

 a big box of red rose tea sat in my aunt dee's pantry when i visited her this fall. i think she drinks tea when she's not drinking coffee. half her house is decorated with those adorable little collectable figurines red rose gives away. i took so many pictures of the funny places she displays them because it gave her house such a magical feel. aunt pam? i'm not sure. coffee? tea? i'm going to ask her next time i talk to her....maybe it's a genetic thing and all larsen descendents know their way around a tea pot.

my mom is funny about tea. it's always a black tea (even decaf if the hour was late) and always half and half. sugar was rare for her and more than once in my adult life, she's raised an eyebrow at me for sugaring up my own tea. we also disagree on earl grey. i love it. she loathes bergamot. she loves a good irish breakfast tea.

i didn't drink much tea in my 20s. as far as i'm concerned, done correctly, your 20s are best reserved for other types of beverages that we spend the rest of our lives healing from.

it wasn't until i moved to alaska in 2005 and i met my best friend fawn (if you're reading, hi fawn! i miss you!), that i rediscovered tea.

she's fearless with tea. herbal, blend, decaf, black, red, white, orange. there isn't a cup of tea that girl won't try and my favorite favorite memories of friendship (any type of friendship) involve her kitchen table, a house full of toddlers, and tea.

and her, obviously.

i also think about my alaska friend cindy when i wax poetic about tea. we started a random tea conversation back in the hdr office a few years ago and she gave me a bit of a chuckle when i asked her if she "drank tea." she slid open a desk drawer to reveal the sickest stash of loose leaf teas i've ever seen. to this day.

 ah-may-ZING.

these days, tea is a constant. i love black tea with creamer AND sugar (sorry mom!).

 i dig the wacky blended Yogi teas that promise to detox my liver and enlighten my mind. i love love LOVE bags of chai tea something fierce. i'll drink a nice chamomile honey. i'll pour you a cup of raspberry zinger.

trust me, i've hoarded them all like gollum and that ring. they're my preciouses...

i never paid much attention to tea cups versus mugs. i'd microwave water in a crappy mug and toss a bag in, often forgetting it and having to repeat the process.

lately, though, i've been paying more attention.

giving the process more respect.

i pull out a small teapot and warm it with plain hot water while the awesome electric kettle my mom got me (thank you , mom!) warms the tea water. i use two or three tea bags in the pot and i let it steep like i'm supposed to. i pour the brewed tea into a cup with a saucer and i take my time to sit at the table and drink it. nothing more. no computer browsing, no clearing the dishwasher. just sitting. and drinking. magic.

a few years back, i came across a couple recipes for hong kong milk tea.

 it's also called pantyhose tea, but i don't call it that because i don't want to imagine drinking tea that was passed through somebody's pantyhose.

it's a simple recipe. i drink it when i'm writing. it's a ritual of mine now.

my simplified version goes something like this: boil black tea leaves. add evaporated milk and sugar.

voila.  hk milk tea.

albert yang explains it better in his video: how to make hong kong milk tea.

you should watch it and let me know how much you love it.

here's a tangential tea story for you...

my favorite youtuber recently passed away. sad. have you ever heard of the internet grandad? shame if you haven't.

i always loved watching peter's videos.

whether he was talking about geriatric cooking (his microwave bangers and mash looks fantastic), the loneliness of being a widower, or serving in the british army during wwii, he was such a charming, lovely man.

he passed away march 23 and i'm so sad.

silly, isn't it?

a man thousands of miles away who wouldn't know me from anyone else on the street and he'd made such an impression on me that the news of his death last week left me a little bit empty.

anyway, his was the first youtube video about making the perfect cup of english tea that i ever watched.

you really should watch it, too: making an english cup of tea. raise a tea cup in his honor if you happen to drink some today. lovely man.

etsy fan? you should search "tea" and see what freaking cool wallet zappers you find. a few examples:

from the sweet little tea things i love, above:

1. Dachsund & Gnome Tea Towel (VivaSweetLove)
2. Tea Pot Shaped Pink Sugar Cubes (WishingWellArts)
3. Some Like It Hot Hand-Stamped Spoon (Milk and Honey Luxuries)
4. Loose Leaf Thai Tea 2 Ounces (BlueLadyTeaShop)


i wish we closer, you and i.

i'd totally have you over for tea. and biscuits...which are really cookies. did you know they were the same thing?

peter taught me that.

stuff of life: toy portraiture

Do you ever wonder about the secret life of toys?

I spend about two-thirds of my days picking up, sorting, tossing, picking up,sorting, and tossing the amassed mountain of toys our kids have and I often wonder what their backstory is.

I took my new camera out for a testride today and I couldn't get my kids to sit still for a some pictures for the life of me. But I needed the practice, so I dumped out every figurine I could find and I took portraits of them. They were more than happy to tell me their woes.

toy portraits, session one
january 24, 2014

1. Randall dreams about being a concert pianist and growing organic turnips. But mostly he hates having his ears chewed on by the baby.

2. Gertie's big moment, her very own portrait, was ruined by Construction Carl's immature photobomb.

3. After a decade together, Caillou and Leo find themselves in couple's therapy.

4. Marine Corps Moe (the dollar store's answer to GI Joe) really loves a good cup of coffee in the morning. And some guerilla urban warfare for lunch.

5. Bernard lost his pride in that last battle. He lost his arm in Tijuana a few years back while on leave.

6. Saul and Paul never could see eye-to-eye.

7. Dusty remembers the good old days when pirating was considered an honest trade. He'd give all the legos in Houston to be chasing the fair winds again.

Stuff of Life: What's Your 'Thing'?

The first I remember were the watermelons. Then the sunflowers and all things Tuscany, and now it's monks. But not just any monks, musician monks. But for me, my mom's "thing" started with watermelons.

My Aunt Dee? I think of crows. Aunt Pam? It used to be piglets. I'm sure she outgrew it eventually, but I can't see a cute pig figurine and not think of Pam. My grandmother? Owls. My Aunt Cheryl? Cardinals. I saw my first cardinal in person this spring when I was walking the kids and I swore it was Chery's way of saying hello to me.

When I was a kid, I was obsessed with wolves. Forever. I used to love elephants. Then I moved on to ravens because I lived in Alaska and they were awesome and everywhere and had the greatest legends attached to them. I loved owls for a while. I had a bluebird phase that I'm still dabbling in (I have bluebirds everywhere). There was the St. Jude bug that had me soon after Boy Wonder was born. How many green beaded chaplets can one person own? Well, the answer is seven. In my case, anyway.

I think it's funny how our collections bend, change, and shift over time. Is it a decoration thing? Suddenly we don't like bright colors and we're on the lookout for more subdued shades and more subdued animals who fit the decor scheme. Maybe. A connection to the quality in the animal you connect with? Possibly.

Maybe you woke up and found them painfully adorable? Most likely.

I've shifted as a writer over the past couple years where I went from poet to romance writer to squarely focused on the middle grade age range. And part of that great age group includes novels and stories about animals. Wind in the Willows? One of my favorites. Rats of NIMH? I was a late arrival to it, but now I'm hooked.

This summer I fell in love with an author named Richard Peck and his mousey book "Secrets at Sea." Suddenly, mice are everywhere in literature and I find myself picking up little knick knack mice here and there when I can.

I love mice. Figurine mice, mind you. Real mice make me scream like car alarm and jump from one foot to the other.

They're sweet. They're wise. Unassuming. Easy to care for. And adventurous, if the books I've been reading are to be believed.

Etsy is my addiction and the salve of my procrastinating soul all at the same time. I find mice on Etsy and favorite them in the hopes that some month I'll have hundreds of extra dollars to spend on needle felted mice, porcelain mice, a couple resin mice, but under no circumstances, brass mice. That's just eww.

Here are some vintage (and one new!) mouses from Etsy.

P.S. I think 'mouses' is a much better word than mice. It's true.

So...like I said before...what's your 'thing'?

Stuff of Life: Love the place you live

I'm not the biggest fan of apartment living, mostly because I'm not the biggest fan of people. Living in rabbit hutches so close to people. People stomping around above our heads. People parking too close to our trucks. People letting their dogs do their business outside our window during breakfast.

I dream ALL DAY about getting out of here to the point that I sort of neglected our little abode, be it ever so humble. I didn't really decorate. I let plants wither in the heat. I had very little pride in living here because I just don't really want to live here.

Does that even make sense?

I watched the Hobbit with the kids this past week. On top of that, Gandalf got me thinking about a poster in my bestie's house back when we both lived in Alaska. I loved her house. It had dark woods and Baggins colors and all the comforts of a hobbit home. It made me miss her so bad that I had to watch the movie a second time and drink 32 cups of tea.

How many of you can claim you decided to love your house because of a fantasy movie and memories of days spent with your best friend? Never thought I could, either. But I sat dreaming about my farmhouse and my acreage (that I WILL have) and I began to think about decorating it. I've never dreamed about how I would decorate stuff. If it were up to me, I'd still have a Patrick Ewing poster stuck to my wall with pushpins.
I haz no style.

But I fell in love with the dark woods and earthy vibe of Bilbo Baggins' home (it is a hole, afterall). And I wanted a hobbit hole all of a sudden. So I spent three days pulling 13 bags of toys/clothes/trash from the house and dusted off those poor plants and brought them inside and pruned them, watered them, repotted them, and pulled out all the art and knick knacks I never bothered to unpack from Alaska and began rearranging this place.

I have a really long way to go, but I woke up today and I don't hate this place so much. Sure, I hate the concrete jungle full of ambivalent neighbors and serial lawn poopers, but I don't hate what's inside our walls. It's homey and warm (hot, actually, but that's Houston). It's not nearly as drab and lacking character.

It's a start, anyway.

Stuff of Life: Art and Vikings We Have Known

So, about a week ago, baby number Four (we call her Ninja), swallowed a penny. It was a nightmare and I'll relive it here another day. But not today.

Today, I just want to talk about my viking obsession and how all I seem to be able to do (creatively) is embroidery. I love it. It's freeing and loosey goosey and right up my alley. And soon I'm going to experiment combing what I doodle sketch with some mixed media sewing. But for now, I do a lot of doodle sketching. Here's a viking I finished this weekend based on an old housewares design that I revamped a tad.

From there, I created a couple of mugs based on those old designs. I know, I know....I swore off the Etsy shop after the Christmas insanity, but I missed it. And I missed making new designs.

Here are the two new fellas. You can find the listings to the Etsy shop here: Coffee Mug: Olaf the Viking of Love and Coffee Mug: Sven the Musical Viking.

The girls are growing. I mean, they're ALL growing, but the girls are growing in badness it seems. One is swallowing pennies and the other is dumping out all of the boys' new school supplies and making it rain shredded facial tissue in their room when no one is looking. Nightmare, folks.

The only way I get a moment of peace to stab my fingers with an embroidery needle is when I have them preoccupied. They like art lately. Along with that other stuff I said...

Have a great week!

 

stuff of life: buttermilk pie

I never appreciated living in Austin while I had the chance.

I mean, it didn't help that I was 11 years old and not keen on appreciating much (other than my wicked scooter and the ice cream truck), but still. I lived in Austin. Had parents who loved to eat at the original Threadgill's and I'm pretty sure I pouted every time I was there because they didn't have chicken nuggets or an ice cream truck.

But they had buttermilk pie.

And now, my family has buttermilk pie.

It's a southern thing and now that we're out of Alaska, it's a family thing.

It's delicious, despite my first attempt browning a skin on it waaaay too quickly. The trick is to cover the top of the pie with a bit of foil for the first 30 minutes...similar to tenting a chicken.

Happy eating, ya'll!

Buttermilk Pie

Ingredients:
1 10-inch pie shell unbaked
3 Cups Sugar 1/4 C flour1/2 lb (2 sticks) butter, melted 6 eggs1 C buttermilk2 Tbs water1 Tsp lemon juice1 Tsp vanilla extract


Instructions:
Preheat oven to 350.Whisk sugar and flour into melted butter, then add eggs one at a time.Add liquid ingredients.
Bake for at least one hour or until filling is set in the center of the pie.

Pour filling into pie shell (I always seem to have extra filling that I bake in a dish)Place shell on cookie sheeet in preheated oven.