white apples . a blog

in-between days and a new little friend

Yes, that's chocolate on their mouths, first thing in the morning. Ah, the magic of Christmas morning. What better time for indulgence.

Their Christmas day was certainly sweet and indulgent. As usual, it's hard to balance the spirit of magic and gratitude and mindful appreciation of the season with the overwhelming influx of so many exciting things, so much stuff. As things calm down though, in these in-between days, they are slowly discovering the lovely, thoughtful gifts they received and much engaging, imaginative, musical play is happening all over the house.

This little dolly was my one handmade achievement of the Christmas season (other than a couple of quick Dolores Park cowls here and here). And actually, I finished sewing her up over the summer, so I just needed to tweak her hair and make her clothes before wrapping her up and placing her under the tree.

Juni named her Ginger and has been getting to know her now that the bustle of the holiday is winding down. Apparently, she likes carrots and hot chocolate and "being warm and cozy". She makes a good "matey" (see previous post) and she enjoys being twirled around by her hair. They will be good friends, these two.

I had been hoping to get Juni one of these Waldorf-style dolls for such a long time, but they are quite in demand and difficult to acquire without lightning-fast mouse-clicking skills and a rather deep pocket (for good reason, this is meticulous, labor-intensive handwork). So I thought I would give dollmaking a try and, well, this project has been my very favorite. I already can't wait to make another and I can think of a dozen different things I would like to change the next time around.

(After checking out my amateur attempt at dollmaking, click over to Fig & Me to see Fabiola's absolutely gorgeous dolls.)

Details, details... I used the pattern, instructions, and materials from Weir Dolls and Crafts for a 16" Waldorf doll and I used the hair instructions from Meg McElwee's wonderful book Growing Up Sew Liberated. Juni chose the yarn for her hair from our local yarn store ("I want it to be black like mama's and also purple"). It is the very luxe Madeline Tosh DK yarn in the Duchess coloway. She also chose purple embroidery thread for her eyes. The purple corduroy overalls and purple shirt are made from patterns in Meg's book, as well. The knitted sweater is the Poppy Cardigan by tikki (and yes, now that I'm looking at the photos, I forgot to sew on the middle button). I used Malabrigo merino worsted yarn in the Verde Azul colorway (Ravelry link here), which is a nice bluish-green sprucey color (that didn't translate well at all in these photos).

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

*** *** ***

inspired by Amanda Soule. join in on her blog.

holly and jolly

Thank you for sharing in our family's journey this year. Happy holidays to you and much peace, warmth, and joy in the coming year!

And hugs, too. Lots of big, squishy hugs.

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

*** *** ***

inspired by Amanda Soule. join in on her blog.

three!

Juniper turned three last week! She's been practicing her "three" fingers for weeks in anticipation.

Of course, it seems like just yesterday that I held those newborn hands in mine, impossibly small and perfect. I remember the perfect "O" of her slow baby yawn. I remember the sweet comma of her body and her big, big eyes. But then again, has it really only been three years? If feels as though I've been kissing her forehead goodnight for so long.

This girl. Her world is so exciting. It's full of amazing, magical things. Things like acorns and moonrises, glitter and glue and pet rocks, rock music and carousels and hiking in the woods, salty pretzels and fairy wings and rainbow picnics. She loves pirates (argh! ahoy mateys!) and nutcrackers (who knows...). She loves to run super-fast and feel the wind on her face. She loves gnome stories and hugs from Owey and dancing around the living room. She loves making vegetable soup and cheering for sports teams. She wrinkles up her nose when she smiles.

She can do so many things.

Three is going to be such a fun year.

Juni had a sweet little birthday, filled with all her favorite things. We ate yummy treats and rode the carousel. We had lunch outside in the unusually warm weather. She decorated her own (ice cream) cake. She opened all her lovely gifts and was over-the-moon excited about every single one of them. She ate spaghetti and meatballs and blew out her candles and sang her favorite songs and fell asleep as one happy three-year-old.

I never did finish that Rainbow Blanket, so Juni didn't get a handknit for her birthday. She did, however, get her birthday crown, which she wore all day long. She requested that it have purple on it and a gnome. My gnome ended up looking like some sort of wizard, but she seemed satisfied. I also added a forest of mushrooms and a big snail button.

 

Me: Hey, Juni, what's your favorite color?

Juni: Orange.

Me: What's your favorite thing to do?

Juni: Hug.

Me: What's your favorite food?

Juni: Tubey pasta.

Me: What's your favorite game to play?

Juni: Frisbee.

Me: What's your favorite book?

Juni: I am a Bunny.

Me: What's your favorite animal?

Juni: A giraffe.

Me: What's your favorite place to visit?

Juni: The park.

Me: What's your favorite thing in the whole world?

Juni: You.

like a leaf or a feather

I spend all those long summer days dreaming of autumn - of leaves crunching and wind rustling, of bright, crisp afternoons and leaf piles and acorn treasures and pumpkin-scented goodies. And our autumn was filled with all those lovely, russet-colored moments. But it was also filled with trips and deadlines and all the general busy-ness that seems to pick up towards the end of the year.

These photos are from a trip into the mountains with dear friends in early November. The leaves were still clinging and the water was swift and cold and the spice-scent of autumn was still heavy in the air. All that is gone now, of course. The Advent season is here and the winter solstice is just around the corner and, goodness, the year is almost over.

Our Decembers are a crazy collision of birthdays and holidays, plans and hosting and preparing. Every year, I create a long to-do list for the holiday season - crafts and sewing and decorating and baking and whole host of handmade gifts. And every year, I fall way short. Instead of the lovely pieced and quilted tree skirt, we have one from Target. Instead of the hand-crafted, customized Advent calendar, we have the little cardboard ones with the awful chocolate behind the squares (Juni and Owen, however, are huge fans of awful chocolate, so that worked out just fine). And instead of mostly handmade gifts, I will be lucky to finish two, perhaps three, things before Santa comes a-knockin'.

Winter, though, is surely the season for patience and letting go. And so, we will bake cookies and decorate gingerbread houses and sing Christmas songs and talk about Santa and little baby Kings in hushed, awe-filled voices and forget all those silly plans I made in the heat of summer. Perhaps next year.

I am, however, working on Juniper's rainbow blankie for her birthday. This is what she requested in lieu of a birthday sweater.

"Is it going to have all the colors, mama? All of them?"

The pattern is the Forever Baby Blanket from the Purl Bee. It is an easy knit with a nice thick, squishy texture, perfect for snuggling. I'm using some bits of Dream in Color Classy yarn for the rainbow, inspired by Waldorfmama's beautiful garter stitch blanket. And for another lesson in letting go, Juni found a little embroidery scissors a few days ago and snipped the blanket in several places, forcing me to frog back a couple of stripes. Oh, the heartbreak. Now I have seven more days and five stripes to go before my baby girl turns three.

(And because I just happen to be posting about knitting on a Wednesday, I'm linking up with Ginny from small things for her wonderful knitting and reading Yarn Along. I just started reading The Lover's Dictionary by David Levithan.)

halloween outtake

Oh, the business of photographing children... the keys are luck, patience, flexibility, and a large memory card.

cloudy with a chance of rainbow

Halloween costume discussion began months ago and, as expected, she changed her mind constantly. She wanted to be a frog, a doughnut, an autumn fairy, a doughnut fairy. She wanted Owen to be a nice princess. But one day, while staring out the window, she said, "I'm not going to be a fairy. I'm going to be a cloud." And she stuck with that idea for the whole two months until Halloween. She even decided that Owen should be a sun and mama should be a raindrop and daddy should be a lightning bolt. Our very own meteorological family.

This year, Juniper was over-the-top excited about Halloween. She kept talking about all the treats. She wanted to fill her treat bucket to the "tippy top". "Then it will be enough, mama." She asked if trick-or-treating would be scary but also fun. She couldn't wait to have a lollipop and also some chocolate. And some for Owey too. She was so, so thrilled to be a cloud.

I waffle on the idea of making my kids' costumes and had almost talked myself into buying them before Juni decided on the weather theme. But, of course, I couldn't find cloud and sun costumes anywhere. I couldn't even find any examples or tutorials online for making them.

If my approach was more organized and meticulous, I would have written a tutorial myself for any kindred parent of sky-infatuated toddlers. But I pretty much improvised these costumes, making adjustments as I went along. They are both made of fleece with cotton jersey lining. I constructed the sun in a similar manner to the ubiquitous toddler pumpkin costumes that you find in any discount store this time of year. The shoulders are velcro and the bottom opening is elasticized to achieve the spherical effect. I stuffed the whole thing with polyfill including the pointy, triangular bits. The cloud was made much the same way, except I extended the sides quite a bit and traced out a cloud-ish shape. I also eliminated the velcro and added stuffed bumps to the shoulders. It is lined with gray jersey (a silver lining!).

Both costumes are delightfully poofy and squishy and bouncy, though the cloud in particular turned out to be quite the jack-o-lantern hazard while trick-or-treating. And as with most things, these were absolutely worth making myself.

he's one!

Oh this guy. This sweet, snuggly, huggy guy. He melts my heart into a big puddle of goo.

Truly, cuddling up to those cheeks is just about the best thing in this world. They cuddle back.

Now that he's a whole year old, I have to keep reminding him that he's my baby. He seems determined to prove otherwise.

He walks across the room with a big, proud grin on his face, climbing on and over anything in his way.

He makes his little voice heard, full of words and phrases and songs, suprising me every day with something new and clever.

"Excuse you!" he teases.

"Read a booook?" he asks (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? is his favorite. What is it with babies and that book?).

"Want a Bapple!" he pleads, asking over and over again for an apple. He likes them whole, so he can nibble his way through and around it, spitting the skin out all over my floor. 

"Touchdown!" he yells, with his arms straight up in the air.

"Wuv you... wuv you, wuv you, wuv you." And I melt all over agin.

His birthday was a sweet, simple little affair, with singing and cake, a sushi lunch and a Lo Mein dinner, and many lovely gifts from our families.

Lately, I've become quite enamored with the idea of cakes looking like cakes rather than like cartoon characters. This is at least in part due to my love affair with the gorgeous, nostalgic perfection of Sweetapolita's many-layered confections (Charlie made this cake for my birthday and it was incredible). So we made Owen his own double-layer cake to enjoy. Charlie mixed up chocolate and spiced pumpkin batters for the cake and I made the leftovers into cupcakes for the rest of us. It was topped with a drippy maple cream cheese frosting and, per Juni's insistence, a variety of "nice, pretty sprinkles".

Owen was certainly less fastidious with his cake than Juni was, but he did insist on an arsenal of spoons and sporks rather than digging in with his hands. After about half an hour of nibbling, he nearly fell asleep in his frosting, at which point we gave him a warm bath and a warm bed and a warm snuggle and the tired, happy little birthday boy fell right to sleep.

Owen's birthday sweater was knit from this simple, quick pattern for a toddler t-shirt vest (I adore woolie sweater vests). The yarn is Malabrigo Rios merino wool in the lettuce colorway - it is ridiculously, incredibly soft... almost too soft. I haven't made up my mind whether I like it or not. It feels more like bamboo than wool, with none of the sturdy body that I expect from a woolie thing. Here's the Ravelry link.

The birthday crown was my own design, using wool felt and ribbon. I was going for an autumnal woodland theme (with a bear for my little O-Bear). Juni calls it the banana hat because she insists that the moon looks like a banana. "That's not a moon! Silly mama..." 

{this moment}

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

*** *** ***

inspired by Amanda Soule. join in on her blog.