every once in a while, not so often anymore, i create something for its own sake. this is a digital watercolor of Mia that i have been wanting to do for ages. i like it. it was fun to do

i’m proud that my baby has mastered the fine art of chopsticks at such an early age — stab, aim for the mouth, repeat. sometimes she even gets it in her mouth (and sometimes she really does use the chopsticks correctly… woo hoo!)

so my aunt patty decided that this year would be our first big family reunion. we ended up going to the beach and had a lot of fun. we had a big bbq and played in the water all day long. the only bummer is that we had games and contests planned but it didn’t end up happening. oh well, it was really great that she did it on a saturday anyhow, as we all spent sunday together as well, recuperating from the beach.

there’s an waterpark that’s opened up relatively close to my house and hoping that it was any good, i bought a season pass before it opened. so we go to this waterpark and the first time i’m there, i have no idea where to put my phone. so i leave it in the car. this is not a great solution for me, so after some research i found this thing called an aquapack for my phone. i was leery of it since it just looks like a glorified baggie with a clip on top. i’m scared. i adore my phone. i’m always paranoid about losing it. and the idea of phone + water terrifies me like losing a limb. but i tested the glorified baggie in a bucket the night before i used it at the water park it didn’t leak, despite me freaking out at the droplet i found inside it, which i managed to get inside whilst opening the clip.

anyhow, i take the phone in the water. yikes. a couple minutes in, so far, so good. 10 more minutes, still fine. all throughout the 3 hours we were there, it was great. and the best part about it, it has a clear back so i can take photos and videos in the water! yay! my aunt even called me and i answered and could talk and hear her while we were in the pool. so i basically love my baggie-and-clip thing. it’s so cool i wanted to show a pic and a video i took:

and our crazy video (sorry for the shakey shakey but it’s difficult to keep a 2 year old afloat and keep the phone steady):

i’m not done, but i feel like showing it off, so here it is, the it-took-me-all-frickin-summer entrelac scarf (entrelac pattern here)… ’cause by the time i’m done, it will have taken all.summer.long. i have absolutely no time to do anything but homework, try to sleep, eat, and take care of mia… but i’ve been secretly squirling away a little scarf project so that i’ll have a great scarf by next fall i work on it here and there, when i get a minute to myself or when i’m on the train to school.

and in the typical fashion of fairs, won a couple of goldfish. their names are starsky and hutch, as per marco. even so, we mourn the death of our huge 1 lb goldfish from before (Oscar, Adolph and King Kong). hope these two survive the turtle tank!

when we used to live in the north bay, Marco and I used to pick blackberries off a trail where we used to walk our dog. we did it for a couple of years (we only lived there a couple of years, but the berry picking was prime, let me tell you) but then without any decent blackberry bushes around our new place, our little tradition got pushed to the side. no more! we took mia to pick berries today at a local farm and it was lots of fun. here she is showing off the loot and here are her other pictures with the blackberries.

when we finally got back home, we came home to this amazing sunset.

all in all, not a bad family day

but i think everyone and their mom has seen! here we go:

just want to blog about them so that the relatives can see them (and i can remember them in my old age)

i made these cupcakes for my babywearing group’s baywide annual party. they are based on a wrap that is pretty famous in baby wrap terms. the wrap is called pfau, meaning peacocks, and it’s one of our favorite baby wraps.

anyhow here are the cupcakes!

they were french vanilla cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. the peacocks were hand piped chocolate candy they were pretty yummy if i do say so myself…the peacocks sort of melted in our mouths when we ate them… drool.

so i’ve started an all new blog after having my original blog for 5 years. i’ve moved to this blog for several reasons:

1. we moved to a different hosting company.
2. we migrated the gallery from our self-hosted gallery space to a smugmug account so we don’t keep getting error messages FOR EVERYTHING (what a pain in the tuchus).
3. as a result of migration, i would have to manually re-link EVERY image i had on there for the last five years. i ain’t got that kinda time.
4. a fresh start is liberating, no?

so this is my fresh start. the original blog will soon be migrated to an archive site and the new photo gallery will be rebuilt (again manually) over some time. so they’ll still be accessible in some as of yet undertermined form… until then, yay! i have a “new” blog!