halibut point state park

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family, halibut point state park, photos

One of my favorite places to visit in the Boston area–really, in the whole WORLD–is Halibut Point State Park in Rockport, MA. A mere $2 will buy you a day parking pass; a short walk through the woods brings you out to an old quarry and a fantastic view of some very New England coastline. You can see our favorite beach from the scenic overlook, and you can even see Maine on a clear day! Nate and I bring all of our visitors here to show off.

We “discovered” this park back in 2009, before we left Boston. Even though Boston’s not a big city, it can get to you. The trains, the noise, the crowds, the smells. A body needs to get outside and see some green, hear the ocean, smell the salt. I always leave Halibut Point feeling well, like I’ve been fed, and I can go on tolerating the asphalt. It’s a great place to take pictures, too.

My sister Mary caught this picture of Lucy and me. It’s maybe my favorite picture of myself, ever. Love how the light makes Lucy look like an angel! She’s not. But…pretty close.

Halibut Point: take 128 North into Rockport, then take a left at that intersection in Rockport instead of taking a right to park down in the town. Drive about a mile, and there will be a sign for the entrance of Halibut Point on your right. Allow about 1.5-2 hours; the walk isn’t very long, maybe a mile TOTAL, but you’ll want plenty of time to gaze at the magnificent vistas.

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thank goodness for pinterest

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baby, family, pinterest, rainy day

I only have one kid, and she’s a) easy to get along with, and b) still really little, so I cannot. even. imagine how difficult rainy summer days are for most moms. It rained most of the day yesterday and Lucy and I felt pretty cooped up, despite having gone out for a quick power walk before the storms started.

Thankfully, I’d “pinned” this idea a few weeks ago. (Pin here, original post here.) I’d NEVER in a million zillion years have come up with this on my own: squeeze finger paint into a ziploc bag, tape it to a window, and let the baby finger-paint, mess-free! Lucy loved it. And I love that there are waaaay smarter mommas than me out there, who share their good ideas on the internet.

ladylike

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baby, family, photos

I’m not particularly invested in teaching Lucy to act “ladylike.” I think it’s much more important for her to learn to act “kind” and “polite” and “respectful.” But on a warm evening walk, she pulls a move like this…and I have to bite back my “little girls don’t sit like that!” words. What, Ma? It’s hot. Don’t want my legs to stick together.

another birthday, another pillow

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quilts, reading girl pillow

I busted another one of these patchwork reading girl pillows out this morning. Seriously, the girl wasn’t even embroidered when we got up, and I managed to finish it by 10:30 am.

This is the LAST one I make before I make one for me to keep. Seriously. I got the idea to use black stitching from a picture I saw on Mary @ Molly Flanders’s quilt blog, and I love it so much that next time I’ll use TWO strands of embroidery floss.

The embroidery pattern is Aneela Hoey’s Bella Bookworm, and it is seriously one of the cutest things I’ve ever seen. You can tell I love the friend who’ll be receiving this pillow for her birthday: I used some of my treasured AMH Good Folks Cathedral print. This is my #1 favorite fabric ever. I reckon I had about a yard and a half at one time and I’m down to about a quarter of a yard. I’ll be heartbroken when it’s gone, but durned if it didn’t make the cutest pillow back.

more like daddy

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baby, family, photos

When Lucy was born, she looked like me. The midwife traced her tiny newborn brow with her forefinger and said, “Yeah, I think she looks like you. Your eyes, nose, brow…” When she smiled her first smile, there was no doubt she was MY KID. Poor Nate couldn’t find any resemblance to himself. These days, as Lucy starts to make more expressions, and as her face becomes more a kid face and less a baby face, she favors her daddy more and more. 

This is a good thing. After all, Daddy is pretty much Lucy’s fav these days. She asks about him all day long, from the moment she gets up (pointing, from her changing table, towards our bedroom: “Daddy?”), through every meal (pointing at the door: “Daddy?”), all day long until Nate calls to let us know he’s headed home from work. She knows when the phone rings between 5 and 5:30 pm that it’s Daddy coming home! 

You couldn’t ask for a bester set of buds than Lucy and her Daddy.

green quilt layout

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quilts, she only smiles quilt

Yesterday I laid out the blocks for my She Only Smiles green quilt. I’m…warming up to it, but slowly. Probably only I would have chosen these odd fabrics to go together. (And this is probably because I am a fabric-choosing doofus.)

I’m thinking one of my quilting goals for the year needs to be “learn to choose fabrics correctly,” and/or, “no more using fat quarter bundles of a collection and calling it a quilt.”

Even still, I’m in love-love-love with some of these prints, like these aqua scalloped diamonds, or see the yellow-cream-and-grey plaid in the upper-right of this photo? What a great Joann’s find from DS Quilts! Today found me piecing the rows in the air-conditioned apartment while the baby napped for three and a half hours. Which, really, is sometimes all you can do on a hot day.

chocolate chip cookies and 5:03 am

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baby, chocolate chip cookies, family, kitchen

When wakeup calls are at 5:03 am,

and someone small doesn’t understand that 5:03 am wakeups mean a SEVEN-HOUR stretch until afternoon naptime,

sometimes, all you can do, short of grumbling back at the toddler (though, trust me, that doesn’t work, and never will), is bake and eat chocolate chip cookies.

I use America’s Test Kitchen’s Thick and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies recipe. I’ll NEVER need another one, never not ever. (It alone is probably worth subscribing to their site, or buying the America’s Test Kitchen Family Baking book.) I eat one, freeze the rest, and then eat the rest of them all straight out of the freezer. The only acceptable chip is Ghirardelli 60%. Please, do yourself, your spouse, and your toddler a big favor and eat yourself a batch today.

Review: Modern Patchwork, Elizabeth Hartman

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book review, modern patchwork, quilts

I’ve been enjoying my prize, signed-by-the-author copy of Modern Patchwork for a week now. It lives on my pile of quilt inspiration books on the table in my bedroom, and it’s actually displaced Denyse Schmidt’s Modern Quilts, Traditional Inspiration in the top stack spot. That, my friends, is the highest kind of praise.

Hartman’s blog, Oh, Fransson! is one of my favorite quilt blogs. Hartman’s style is so different from my own. She’s a strict quilting modernist, with an occasionally whimsical representational side. (Her newest pattern, Refrigerator Magnets, is exactly what I mean.) I enjoy her style because it’s so refreshing to look at different things. I’d never dream of the quilt designs she comes up with, and her approach is very unique. Lots of quilters say they’re modern quilters, but rely on classic blocks made in modern fabrics to get where they’re going. Not Elizabeth Hartman. She’s absolutely unafraid to come up with new blocks, new designs, new ways to think about the quilt.

This book, her second, is full of new quilts. My husband enjoyed paging through and picking out quilts he liked. He says they remind him of IQ tests, where you have to figure out the emerging pattern and guess which block comes next. He chose the most challenging quilt in the book–Escape Artist–as the one he’d like most to have. I promised I’d at least consider making a queen-sized version for our putative new bed in our putative new home this winter fingerscrossed. Even though this quilt looks terribly challenging, Hartman’s written some beautifully detailed instructions and diagrams, and I feel like I can just about get my mind around the project with her help.

I also think Hartman is great at helping quilters with the basics without seeming condescending. This book is meant as a next step for intermediate quilters, quilters who feel they’ve conquered the basics of patchwork and are ready for some challenge quilts. And then there’s me: I live for a quilt challenge, but don’t really have all my basics down, because I am so self-taught. Hartman’s helpfully included sections on basic techniques (pinning! I’ve already changed the way I pin my blocks at her suggestion, and oh my gosh what a difference) and fabric choices, illuminating some of the aspects of quilting I find most difficult.

In short I’d recommend this book, even to a beginning quilter, because it’s a fresh, new look at quilting. Hartman’s pushed the boundaries of modern quilting past their simple beginnings (please, please, no more wonky log cabins), and I feel much more ready to take on my first real “modern” quilting project with her guidance.

reading notes

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a gay and melancholy sound, anthony powell, book reviews, books, mary wesley, nancy pearl, reading notes, the healing, treasure island!!!

It’s summer, and still, to me, that means time to laze on the sofa with a tall stack of (library? they’re free! and they take them back and put them on their own shelves!) books and unlimited Diet Cokes, for days at a time.

Alas, I can’t quite convince Lucy that’s how summer should go. I’ve still managed to work in some reading in the evening time I usually spend watching TV. Funny how many books I’ve managed to read since summer TV started; perhaps I should reprioritize when real TV comes back? Ho hum. At any rate, some notes on recent reads:

father’s day

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baby, father's day, hiking, old town hill, photos

Nate isn’t much for making a big deal out of…ANYTHING. Father’s Day is pretty much a bother for him. I could make a big deal out of any made-up ridiculous holiday, i.e., “the sixth anniversary of the night you came to my dorm room because you forgot your mug and I had it in my purse and I thought OMG you  might like me.” Not Nate. Nope. So, I’ve learned to ask him what he’d like to do to celebrate his occasions. Often the answer is, “Pie.” More often, the answer is “Nothing.”

For Father’s Day 2012, the answer was, “Hiking.” We bought a Trustees of the Reservations sticker this year, and have been exploring the reservations near us. Today we checked out Old Town Hill in Newbury, and it was amazing. Didn’t hurt that the temperature was about 60 degrees while we hiked. Plenty of woods, plenty of low land marshy flats, and a view of the ocean, too. Happy Father’s Day to my wonderful husband who always carries the baby backpack. (And who doesn’t mind when the baby pokes at the back of his head during the hike.)