Felted Bird Mobil

I am so blessed to be rich in good friends.

The kind of friends who are thoughtful and loving.

The kind of friends who send gifts for new babies that make this mommy's heart melt.

My friend Lisa made this adorable felted bird mobile for Davy.

Isn't it the sweetest thing ever?

In addition to the little birds, there are all these balls of soft, felted wool in bright colors.

Here is a close up of one of the birds.
Lisa created him free hand.
She claims it was easy: "you just shape the wool into a bird."
Oh.  Just.  How easy.
I don't believe her.

She hung the birds and balls from a little embroidery hoop.
Those guys are so handy.

I hung the mobile over Davy's changing table.
It's right next to a window so everything twirls around slowly in the breeze that blows through the window all day long.
This is his view looking up.

And here's a look at the whole thing.
I absolutely love it.
I'm so glad his changing table is in our room so I can enjoy the mobile for a while.

Of course, now I want to learn how to felt.

I can see so many possibilities for fabulous garlands made out of those soft, little balls.

I think I could make the balls.

I can't be sure.  I'm not too crafty at anything related to sewing, knitting or sculpting.

Or drawing.

But I think I could do those balls.

In fact, I think I am going to have to spend an evening at Lisa's house and she is going to have to show me how to felt.   OK Lisa?

I did some investigating on the intranet to find out more about felting.

Here are some sites to check out if you are interested.

Martha: this one involves water and wool

Good Mama: this one involves needle felting and pantyhose

Craft Evolution: this one is needle felting

Crunchy Parent: this one is a you tube video for those of you who need to see it in action in order to figure out how to do it.  (that'd be me)

This is the wool roving that Lisa used for Davy's mobile.

She said you could find wool roving at any good yarn store.

The same site also has these kits which I thought were cool.

Especially the spring flowers kit.  Sooo cute.

So there you go.  Now you can go forth and try wool felting too.

Do any of you already know how and have great tips for me?

Maybe if I start on a garland now, I can have one done in time for our Christmas tree.

Or, maybe not.  But I can dream.

Thank you, Lisa, for crafty inspiration and for one of the cutest mobiles I have ever seen.

Love from,

Greta

Berries For Breakfast

Ever since Aaron put up these, our berries have been going crazy.
The trellis is completely covered in new vines.
And, even this late in the season, the vines are covered in new blossoms, new, green berries, pink, ripening berries and big, beautiful, ripe blackberries. 
They look like jewels hiding amongst the leaves.


This morning I picked a bowlful for breakfast.

I ate them with the sweetest peaches imaginable.
Peaches from a friend's tree.

Is there anything better than just picked, summertime fruit?
I have all kinds of ideas in mind for jamming with them, and making cobblers, crumbs and cakes.
But right now I am content to eat them just as they are.
They taste like the essence of summer.


We're loving every part of these lazy summer days.
I am so glad there are lots more to come.
Now off to the beach--for the 5th day in a row.
Hope your summer days are just as nice.


Love from, 
Greta

The Studio Project

Aaron has been home with us for the past 2 weeks.

And while I have been doing a whole lot of nothing, he has been very, very busy.

Not only taking care of his wife, newborn son and 3 other kids, but knocking out walls,

painting,

and especially spray painting, everything in sight.

He's taken on another project.

Because he likes to have about 15 going at once.

He's finally started on, and almost finished in these past 2 weeks, his studio.

He's dreamt of this studio for years.

Many years.

And it's almost done.

It looks so great.

Can't wait to show you all the details.

But for now he's back to work and I'm back to days at home with all 4...yikes!

We'll see how we all adjust.

I'll try to be back soon.

Love from,

Greta

Homemade Lemonade In Recycled Glass Bottles

Do you ever make homemade lemonade?

It's such a nice treat for summer.

My kids love it.

So do I.

A friend just gave us a bag of lemons from her tree.
They're Meyer lemons.  The very best kind of lemons.
We desperately need to plant our own Meyer lemon tree.
They're that good.
And if you don't have a lot of space, you can get a dwarf one and plant it in a big pot.
These lemons are super juicy, they smell divine and taste even better.
They're almost sweet.
Perfect for fresh squeezed lemonade.

After Lilly and I mixed up a big batch, I decanted them into these glass jars.

They originally held sparkling lemonade.  I bought a few bottles for a party once.
(I think it was this kind.  but I got mine from Fresh and Easy and they were cheaper.)

I liked them so much, I hung onto them.  

You just can't throw away perfectly good bottles like this.

I mean, they're from France.

They say citron.

I like them lots.

I like the stoppers on top with the red, rubber seal.
And the metal clasp--so vintage looking.
Best thing is, they were about $3.00 each and I can use them for years.
I put water in them and put them out for parties.
So much better than small, plastic, water bottles with an ugly label, am I right?
It's all in the details.
Besides, doing it this way is cheaper and less wasteful.


So go on, make some lemonade this weekend.
And keep an eye out for glass bottles you can save and use again, all summer long.
Cheers!
Love from,
Greta

I used this lemonade recipe.  

It's super easy.

It's goooood.  

But I'd change the sugar amount to 1 and a 1/2 cups or even test it at 1 and 1/4 and then add a bit more.

I like my lemonade a little less sweet.

We still have some left.  I think I'll go have a glass right now.

Best Baby Blanket

I think I may be a bit late catching onto this trend.

I don't keep up with a lot of trends.

Unless they're in Sunset magazine, Bon Appetite or on the blogs I read.

But maybe you don't know about this trend either. 

So I'll tell you.

I found the perfect baby blanket.

Actually, I had nothing to do with finding it.
It was a gift from my friend Lindsey. (creator of the amazing nursery)
I love it madly.
I have 2 friends about to have babies and you can guess what I'm giving them.


These blankets are big.  
So they are perfect for swaddling.
But they are also light weight: soft, breathable muslin.
That means when you swaddle baby, you won't overheat him.
Which is especially nice in summer.


I have Davy wrapped up in that blanket all the time.
Isn't it cute?
Isn't he cute?

This particular blanket is from here.
But I was just in a baby shop yesterday and she had oodles of them.
Which led me to believe I was behind the times in this baby blanket trend.
No matter.
If you need a perfect little baby gift, now you know what to get.
I give it my seal of approval.
The best baby blanket.


Love from,
Greta


PS.  They are often called muslin swaddling blankets and I found more here and here.
But I bet if you went to any baby store you'd find some.  Or, if you're the sewing type, you can whip some up yourself.  

House Tour: Our Living Room

At long last!  The living room tour!

I know you've all been dying for it. Ahem.  Or something like that.

Anyway, to all my new readers and followers, (thank you for following, by the way.  you make my day!) I know there has not been a lot of new content around here.

I've been pretty busy with the wee one and most of my blogging is taking place over at my other blog.

There are so many moments I want to remember in these first few weeks.

You can head over there if you want to see the other side of our life.

But first, hang out here long enough to see our living room.

It's a pretty fun spot.

I like it a lot.

Have I told you that we lived in a 600 square foot house for 8 years?

It was more of a cottage, really.

Or a shack with charm.

But what it was mostly was tiny.  In our living room we had room for a couch and that was about it.

A small couch at that.

So when we bought this house and finally had a real living room, it was really, really fun to decorate.

To our little couch, we added a coffee table and 2 orange arm chairs.

I have dreamt of a coffee table for years!

They're vintage.  No surprise, right?
In fact, the couch is one of the only new things in or living room. (7 years new that is)
Everything else is vintage, garage saled, or gifts to us.
The arm chairs were in the first season of Mad Men.  
I've never seen the show, but maybe you remember them.  
I was not real sure about them at first, but Aaron convinced me.
Now I love them.
That turquoise lamp we found at a garage sale.
It was the first thing we bought for our new living room.
Some people have said, when they first walk into our living room, "wow.  That's a big lamp."
Not sure that's a compliment.  But, whatever.

Our wall unit is from Amsterdam Modern.  They have beautiful furniture.  Check out their site.
They buy vintage furniture from Holland and ship it here.
We waited a while to find just the right piece, for the right price, to fill that big wall.
There is still a lot of empty space on those shelves, but we're filling them as we find the right things.

The trailer painting is by Aaron.  Not everyone has a huge painting of a trailer in their living room.
But not everyone has a giant swordfish hanging in their living room either.
I guess we're different that way.
That Eames chair was the first "grown up", designer piece of furniture we bought as a married couple.
We love the shape of it, the wood and also, it fit perfectly in our tiny house.
Those were the days when we could splurge on a chair like that for a Christmas gift to each other.
But we'll have it forever.

One of my favorite pieces in the living room is the credenza.
Aaron designed it to fit exactly in the one open space in the living room of our first tiny house.

He drew the legs and had them made by someone in Oklahoma who custom makes hairpin legs.
He drew up the plans to the inch to fit our tv inside so we could hide it away when we're not watching it.
Since tv is not important to us at all, we were more interested in hiding it than putting it on the wall.

The other side of the cabinet holds our movies.
Mostly Seinfeld and the Office.  We have to watch them on dvd because we get no tv channels.

Using Aaron's design, a cabinet maker friend built it for us.
He left it unfinished and Aaron attached the legs and then gave it its custom paint job.
I love the way it turned out.
I think my man is amazing.

Besides the furniture you place in your home, it is really all the other things you fill your rooms with that tell your story.
Here are some of the things that fill our living room.


In addition to loving cuckoo clocks, I love other clocks too.
That one hanging in the wall unit was a gift.  It fits so perfectly there, don't you think?

We use our wall unit as our nature table.

It is full of the things we find on our hikes and adventures in the great outdoors: pine cones, acorns, beautiful shells and birds nests.

There are lots of the heart shaped rocks my son William finds for me on every trip we take to the beach.

And yes, even the skulls he finds.  My kids love finding and identifying bones while we're on the trail.  
To find a full skull is considered a treasure.
To be honest, that big one is still staying outside until it gets cleaned off better.
But it will be inside soon.  William wants to display it.
And I'll let home because I'm nice like that.
Or crazy.

In addition to the bird collection, I also like owls.
Here they are.

I love this little guy.  
I found him at an estate sale.  He's made of vinyl and opens up.  We keep a blanket inside for cuddling on the couch and reading a book or watching Seinfeld dvds.
I really like the shape of the legs.

Another clock in some of our favorite colors.
This one was a gift from Aaron's mom and dad.  It's another favorite.

Succulents do well next to our big, sunny window.

And, of course, we have to have a stack of vintage books.
These are some of my favorite field guides.
We also always have a rotating stack of children's books on the coffee table.
I change them out every week or so for reading time throughout the day.
A room without books lacks soul.

So there you go.

I squeezed a lot out of this room didn't I?

The best part of the room, though, isn't the furniture or even all our treasures that fill it.

It's the view of the backyard through those big windows.

I can watch the kids climb the avocado tree or swing on the swing.

It sold us the moment we walked in that living room.

Even if they do let in a lot of heat on summer mornings.

We put up with it.

I'm not sure if the living room is my favorite room in our house.

I really love our kitchen.  And our schoolroom/office too.

It's hard to say.

If you haven't done so already, check out the more room tours of our house.

The links are on the side bar there.  Just click on one to take a peek.

I love looking at other people's homes and I love sharing ours with you.

As always, thanks for being here.

See you soon.

Love from,

Greta

Raspberry Crumb Coffee Cake

I know.

It's been a while.

It's almost like I went off and had a baby or something and have been choosing sleep above blogging.

Yes.  That's just what it's like.

When I did catch a moment to blog, I blogged about Baby Davy.

Because, frankly, he's the just about the most important thing in the universe right now.

But today is Father's Day.

And last week was Aaron's birthday.

Remember, I made these biscuits?

I never got a chance to finish that post because, as I suspected, that was the day I went to the hospital and had Baby Davy.  

Yep, he was born just 2.5 hours after Aaron's birthday.

Not only did I not get to write about the biscuits, (they were amazing, light, delicious and super easy--now on my go to list for biscuits) I also did not get to make him a cake.

It has been bothering William an awful lot that his Daddy did not get a cake.

Daddy should have gotten a cake.

So today, Daddy did.

This one.

Raspberry Crumb Coffee Cake.
It is quite good.
Quite.

I found the recipe on one of my favorite food blogs, Smitten Kitchen.
Do you read her?
I am becoming addicted to her site. 
Just like Molly, I now go to SK's site when looking for a recipe.  
It kind of feels like calling up a friend to ask for a recipe.  
I like that.
I got the amazing yellow birthday cake recipe from her, too.


For this cake, the recipe calls for rhubarb.
I wanted to do rhubarb, I really did.
Aaron loves rhubarb.
But I was on the way home from the dr. with a newborn in my car and didn't much feel like visiting any extra stores to find fresh rhubarb.
So I went with what they had at Trader Joe's: raspberries.  Frozen ones at that.
And it still turned out to be delicious.


The cake is moist and that's nice because sometimes coffee cake can be rather dry.
(make sure you take it out of the oven when the center is still a tad wet--just some crumbs still sticking to the knife or whatever you insert into the middle of the cake) 
There are lots of raspberries (use the whole bag) which also helps keep the cake from being dry.
The raspberries are a tart foil to the sweetness of the cake and the crumb topping.
And that crumb topping, well, everyone knows coffee cake is really about the crumb topping.
This recipe makes a lot of crumb.
And it is goooood.


We had it for brunch with my mother in law's home made quiche.
Coffee, bacon and cantaloupe, too.  (people who come for a meal and actually bring the whole meal are top notch in my book)
It was a pretty wonderful Father's Day brunch.

Don't be put off by the 3 separate parts to the recipe.  

I made it yesterday morning with the help of a 5 and 3 year old on a lot less sleep than most people usually get.  

Like the amount of sleep where they tell you it's not safe to operate heavy machinery.

Does a Kitchenaid qualify as heavy machinery?

I promise, you can do this.

Go here for the original recipe.

My only changes to the fruit were:

Instead of rhubarb, I used 1, 12 oz bag of frozen raspberries.

I did not use the corn starch because I did not have any.

I used the same amount of sugar (they were tart).

For the crumb topping:

I omitted the ginger and used only cinnamon.

Also, the original recipe suggests you let the coffee cake cool completely, but we ate it warm.

It tastes so much better that way. 

In fact, if you have left overs, warm them up a bit before eating.  

It might be even better the next day.

We had it for breakfast today, with sweet ripe plums and coffee.

Pretty much the perfect breakfast.

(Yes, in case you were wondering, I started this post last night but then I opted for sleep again rather than finishing the post. right now, sleep is a powerful draw)

So, if you're in need of a fresh baked, summer brunch treat, try this coffee cake.  

You will not be disappointed.

And once again, Happy Birthday to my wonderful husband, and Happy Father's Day, too.

We appreciate you.  We adore you.  

We think you are the very best.

Love from,

Your Crew: Greta, James, William, Lilly and Baby Davy.

PS.  Living room tour is still on.  pictures taken and being loaded today.  Big kids are at my parents and baby is napping. That means mommy gets to nap AND blog.  Life is good.

PSS.  Also, linking up to Life Made Lovely right here.  Happy Monday!

Vintage, Wooden Puzzles--Add Them to the List

It's time for a little blogging.

Just a tiny bit because I have a newborn in my arms.  

Not that easy to type while holding a baby.

But writing calms my nerves.  So does neurotic style cleaning.

I am trying to conquer my crazy side, so at this point I'd rather write about some vintage puzzles than reorganize my kitchen pantry.

(although I cannot promise that it won't be done at some point before this week is over)

And before I forget, I also want to thank all my new readers and followers.  It has been so fun to see new comments and people visiting.  I am so glad you have taken the time to add me to your list of reads.  

Thank you.

So, The List.

Do you remember it?

Go take a look at some of the things I am always scouting for when I visit thrift stores, garage or estate sakes or any where else there might be old junk for sale.

Now I am adding a new item to The List:

Vintage, wooden puzzles.

My parents brought the big kids home yesterday afternoon, ending our 4 days of babymoon bliss with Baby David.  (hence the need for calm nerves)
They brought along with them a sweet little gift for the baby.
These vintage puzzles my DAD found at a thrift store while they were on a little getaway up in Ventura.
We always tease my dad about not being aware of what color his socks are, let alone what kind of vintage toy I'd love to have for my baby.
I guess he deserves a little more credit.
Thanks for the great find, Dad!


Take a look at these beauties.

Yes, that king is going to eat those sweet, smiling blackbirds in a pie.  
Kind of creepy.  But I love it.

This one I already had. I found it a t a garage sale.
It is newer --plastic handles-- and Fisher Price, not Playskool.
It is cute, but I definitely like the handle-less, Playskool ones better.

This one is my favorite.  
Aren't the colors and art so great?
I love how stylized it is.
Here's a close up of the operator.  Such great detail.

I've used vintage puzzles to decorate a nursery before.  

I screwed 2 mall eye hooks into the top of the puzzle, and strung thick ribbon through the eye hooks to hang them.

To keep the puzzle pieces secure, I hot glued them in place.

The only problem with that, of course, is they don't really come out after the hot glue.

I'd like to hang these, but am looking for another way to secure the pieces well, but still be able to get them out later.

Ideas?

Help a mother out. will you?

And for all you new readers, and old ones too, come back tomorrow for a tour or my living room.

I can't wait to show you around.

Love from,

Greta