blog contest!!!

Update! Here's my lovely assistant rummaging through the names of the entrants

She can't read so it's ok if she looks while she does it

And the winner is...Shama-Lama Mama. Congrats, lady.

I have an Etsy store! Go check it out, post an entry on your blog linking to it, then comment on this post with the link to your entry and you will be entered in my first ever contest. The winner gets one item from my Etsy store. Contest will close on December 15, I will ship priority.

Please use this URL when linking to the store:
http://www.loriensilverleaf.etsy.com



1. Veganmomma
2. Shama-lama Mama
3. Luci
4. Wannabe Urban Housewife
5. Wannabe Hippie
6. Tracy
7. Laura Williams
8. enviromama

no mirrors in my nana's house

A while ago my mom did a workshop with Ysaye Maria Barnwell of Sweet Honey in the Rock, and ever since then she has been doling out great gifts from it. The latest is a book version of the song "No Mirrors in My Nana's House" which also has a CD of the song. The other day Nina asked me to put the CD in for her and this is what happened:

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com

whose child is this?

Nina asked me if she could take her cl0thes off today and as we were kicking around the house there was no reason why not, so I said "yes, but please put your clothes that you take off in your room." Later I went in expecting to see the clothes thrown on the floor. Instead, this:

It's brilliant and something I almost never do when I take my clothes off. Especially not my underwear.

laugh or cry?

On the one hand, it's so comical that I want to laugh. On the other hand,it's so sad I want to cry.


Seriously, we're not talking about evolution here. Where does she think Jesus came from if there was no existence before christians? Where does she think the old testament came from?

Ok, so on further examination it actually makes me angry. The whole "Is the world flat?" thing was a little funny, but now I'm disgusted.

so just come dancing already

If I haven't made it look fun already here's another awesome video featuring two sock knitters, also known as the Cosmic Otters.

the finished product

Nina's pretty tickled with them.

slippers

It's been a bit chilly lately (rained all day today, Southern Californians don't know how to drive in the rain and don't put their headlights on) so I decided to make Nina a pair of slippers. Fortunately I picked up Knit One, Felt Too recently and it has a cute toddler slipper pattern. They knit up in about 3 hours and Nina is really excited about them. They are in the dryer right now and have felted up pretty nicely; they're not completely felted, though, so I will post the finished product tomorrow. In the meantime, you'll have to be satisfied with the "before" pictures, shown off here by my lovely model.




I really thought I was pretty clever until I saw the clogs Celena knit for her son. They're super awesome. Oh, and by the way, I totally rocked NaBloPoMo!!!

everybody loves a good myth

especially doctors

I did it!

I finally am getting rid of the three nonstick skillets I was holding onto. While cleaning the garage I "found" a giant cast iron skillet--perfect for cooking up big batches of potatoes for co-op pickup day--and a medium one, so I picked up a medium enameled cast iron and a small (for eggs) stainless steel Wolfgang Puck one for 30$ combined today. My local Marshall's has a TON of Le Creuset style enameled cast iron skillets and dutch ovens right now, all for under 70$. I don't need another dutch oven but it was hard to pass up that kind of deal. Off to freecycle the nonstick!

full photo set

Now I've taken you all the way through the trip that we took to London and Paris with Franki & Larry. We used one of those open top bus tours like we had in London, but it was pretty terrible in Paris, I wouldn't recommend it. The audio tours were spotty, hard to hear, and not very well timed. Next time I would probably opt for the TaoCity handheld GPS tour. Next time I go somewhere I don't know very well I will see if there is an option like this available. We ate some lovely food, notably Le Grande Cafe and La Fregate. People talk about bad experiences with people being snotty and rude (which was true on the bus tour) but overall traveling with with a cute kid is definitely a plus. People were nice to us, I think, because we had Nina with us. One last thing: I can't say enough good things about the hotel we stayed at, the Paris Louvre Opera Best Western. It was beautiful, elegant, quiet, and centrally located. They had our rooms ready when we checked in, complete with a bed for Nina.

If you haven't had enough, you can check out the whole photo set for the trip:


You may notice that there are a lot of pictures of Larry and Nina with a book in front of monuments/places of note. We read Madeline a lot and it was Larry's brilliant idea to find the places in the book and take pictures with the book in front of the places. Cool, huh? I will have Larry help blog that because he is more familiar with the place names than I am.

they take their brand names seriously

Seriously, there are a lot of places where selling a counterfeit is illegal, but in France, just owning a counterfeit carries a HEFTY penalty.

parting shots

Does this really mean that there is an Asterix theme park?? A quick web search reveals that yes, there is. I have a hard time believing it is really appropriate for les enfants.


Requisite picture of a dog in a restaurant


Playground in airport. The most brilliant thing ever.


Nina made a friend, though this little girl is clearly a lot older than Nina, they played pretty well together.

more cemetery shots

Nina fell asleep in the backpack so I was able to take lots of pictures and linger places.

Père Lachaise

I wanted to see Jim Morrison's grave. Cliche, I know, but sometimes a tourist is just a tourist. He is buried, along with a lot of other famous people, at Père Lachaise Cemetery. Franki had already been there (though The Lizard King was not yet dead when Franki visited) so we parted ways and our little threesome headed off on the Metro.


Here is Jim Morrison's resting place. The gravestone has been replaced and once looked like this but the original was stolen. There is now an iron rail and a police officer guarding the site. For more on the current gravestone, click here.


The cemetery itself is beautiful and very peaceful. It's also a maze of cobbled avenues that is very confusing and easy to get turned around in.


Here is Oscar Wilde's monument. The red marks all over it are lipsticked kisses.

water tour

We had to walk along the river to get our tour boat. This is a restaurant boat


I thought this guy was pretty cool

bread festival continued

See? Hot chocolate croissant--so good, it made the rain go away for 5 minutes and the little girl came out from underneath the umbrella.


Everyone got in on it.


Hot baguette with chocolate? Also a crowd pleaser.


All that hot bread and chocolate made this little chicken's feathers curl. Seriously, what's the deal with this guy?

bread festival

but first, a beautiful cappuccino

a little girl with wellies and an umbrella


and now on to the star of any event it attends: pain chocolate--chocolate croissants hot out of the oven, here they are before they go into the oven


oh, and did I mention that this bread festival was going on at Notre Dame? No? Well, here's a picture of Notre Dame for you.

The Eiffel Tower

I know that in the next to last episode of Sex and the City Petrovsky's daughter describes the Eiffel Tower as "heeedyooos" but I have to say I think it's not only charming, but also beautiful.

You can walk up the first two tiers at a discounted price from taking the elevator up. I decided that was a good way to get in some exercise. Nina was asleep in the back pack so it was perfect. I felt pretty good about it when I was able to pass a lot of people younger and thinner than I am. The view is pretty spectacular! They didn't let us go up all the way to the top, though, they said it was "closed" whatever that meant, maybe too many people had gone up already, I don't know. It was disappointing but a great experience anyway.


I loved watching people from the first tier. There were some people giving out free hugs and the view of that from above was pretty cool. I took some video but somehow very little of it was hugging, most of it was of the handrail I was leaning against. Seriously, how did I manage not to know?

taking you back in time

I realized recently that I hadn't finished telling you all about our amazing trip to Paris in May. So here goes!

In Paris the hotdogs come in baguettes, of course!


first glimpse of the Eiffel Tower.


The requisite accordion player


funny little house in the middle of other buildings, like something out of Harry Potter (only maybe I'm not supposed to be able to see it, being a Muggle and all)