It's been looking like this in Portland these last couple weeks spurring a long rainy drive to Salem to find an apple orchard that doesn't seem to exist, a trip out to Sauvie island for pumpkin and gourd gathering, lots of throwing and jumping in piles of leaves in the front yard and for me, a flurry of fall sewing. I saw these pictures and decided my children must have wool pants and sun lit fields to romp through wearing them. 19$ a yard later, only Finn gets a pair and Henry will have to inherit them later and because I spent so much time on them, I'm feeling a little worried about the wear and tear a field might cause. But because I had a certain investment, I spent the time to make pockets and buttons
and cuffs and topstitching and all sorts of little details I wouldn't normally waste my time with. And they turned out great. But then I put them on Finn and they were significantly too big requiring some taking in and altering that messed up some of the details. So a lot of work with a mediocre outcome. In this picture, Finn is wearing the pants and an orange t-shirt I made for fall, Henry is wearing a pair of red chino pants I made from a pair of goodwill pants in the spring and a sweater made from an Aunt meg hand-me-down. I didn't make either jacket but seriously right? Who can resist little kids in blazers? They couldn't care less that a certain number of hours went into the making of their clothing but it makes me feel good. Like I've accomplished something and have something to show for the day. Somedays I have little else.
Now I have to come up with something for Halloween. I wanted them to be Clue characters-Mr. Plum and Colonel Mustard maybe?--but I think that might be too involved and it might be creepy to have an 18month old carrying around a lead pipe and a rope.
Working at Anthropologie brings me in contact with an interesting group of people. The women who shop in my store have careers and children and bohemian, eclectic styles but mostly they have money. A lot of money. Like 98$ for a striped t-shirt kind of money. And when they line up at the register to drop 700$ on candles, scarves and ruffled wool pencil skirts, it makes me wonder who they are and why they have this money. It has started a little game I play where I look around the store and wonder who the most interesting or famous person is: the shockingly attractive wisp of a girl trying on ten dresses, the middle-aged man wandering around after his well-heeled wife who is looking at glass ware, the frizzy-haired woman wearing rainbow tights and asking about buying the 3,000$ display cabinet? Who knows? Maybe I'm talking to an Australian real estate magnate or the daughter of a music legend or the inventor of some brilliant vaccine. It fascinates me to think about. Because if you shop for full price clothing at Anthropologie on a regular basis, you have the kind of money that I can't really comprehend, the kind of money that is limitless--which basically for me right now where money is very limiting is a land of make-believe. So everyone can be some kind of star, a little debutante or genius, a mogul or a legacy. You never know.
As John Beeler pointed out, it's been a year since I last posted on this blog. I've been busy. We moved back to Portland from Hawaii, set up house in an amazing old craftsman home on the near north side of town with great friends, got a part time job, lost a full time job, got two more part time jobs, took a roadtrip cross country, welcomed two new nephews in the span of two weeks, had a reunion, turned one, turned 27, turned 35, turned 3, flew to Phoenix, rented out our house to new renters, bought a serger, got potty trained, grew some new molars, let our hair grow long and bought (almost) nothing new, in no particular order. So there. Ha.
As I'm looking back on this blogging void of a year, it's been one of the hardest and one of the best years I can remember. Our roles in Hawaii were difficult but the process of being there set us on a track that we needed. The last time I posted, I mentioned the need to take control of my life, be the captain, change what I can and accept what I can't, find ways to make my mark, be creative. This has continued, making this last eight months some of the most creative of my life. Not in writing, mind you. I've written hardly anything of note in a very long time and I think the boat where I thought that writing would be my profession may have sailed. But I am making things, tangible things that affect our lives. I am sewing and building things, a literal construction that brings an intangible sense of putting things together, of having value and power.
We have also had the most marked financial windfalls and frightening shortages of our marriage. Our relative employment and unemployment has rocked our balance but to our constant surprise, has an arbitrary effect on our ability to pay our bills, travel and buy the things we need. In fact, unemployment has made us buy less that is unnecessary and plan more carefully, which we also needed. I make more food from scratch and sew more of the boys' clothes because it is cheaper but as a result I also feel more connected to our consuming and have motivation to be creative. And because we didn't have jobs where vacation time would be used up, we traveled for a total of about 6 weeks over the span of the last three months, staying with family and working out the details of our ensuing poverty among the network of people who would support us by both tangible and intangible means.
So It's been really great and it's been really terrible. Overall we are happy. I think if I can get out of the way long enough to enjoy it, that is not worry about the zillions of things that could be worried about, I will be happy even more of the time. So that's the goal. Get out of the way. And maybe blog about it once in a while.
Having my sister Heather here has brought our life under inspection and been found loud, regimented and quite boring. She's right, really. There is almost always someone crying or screaming. We are always within an hour of someone needing a nap, a meal or a diaper change and because it takes longer to prepare for an outing than the actual outing takes, we stay home a lot. We are often amused-- like when Finn runs back and forth on the lanai with a tin plate serving Heather and me imaginary eggs, bacon and pickled herring like a harried waiter. Or when Henry skates around the baby gym on one foot until he inadvertently rams into Jake who turns and pushes him away only to be rammed again. Or when Finn sings at breakfast and gets both the little babies laughing hysterically. But then, mostly we are boring and we are tired.
I've set out to take control of the things we eat, making more from scratch and buying less packaging. This weekend I started with pureeing vegetables for baby food, and baking teething biscuits and bread. So far, other than the wallpaper paste consistency of the sweet potatoes, it's been a great success and I really enjoy it. I wrote Mandy an e-mail to tell her about the first week of the experiment and I realized as I typed out the message that both Mandy and I feel isolated and tied to routine, and we have both been trying to find ways to interrupt the routine, make something beautiful, have a personality separate from the duties we perform and have control over a part of our world. For me, I think portioning liquid green beans into labeled jars and pulling batches of dinner rolls and loaves of bread from the oven gives me that. It's still pretty boring but it has my stamp on it. It's loving and in a basic, practical way, it's important--which in a life that often seems like a constant maintenance, feels very good to me.
The shirt is from the Children's Place but I made the jacket and the pants in a couple of hours over 3 days for about $7 total. I have yet to make the button holes (and may not because I hate button holes) but otherwise it's finished. For half a yard of fabric, no pattern and lots of interruptions, I'm a little proud 
actually
.
the really icky kind of sick with body aches and unpleasantness, which is no fun anyway but with the boys, there's no taking the day off to lay around in bed and watch HGTV so everything is a bigger drama and much less easy. Thank goodness for James and strong medications found only in the house of two doctors.
Living in someone else's house, while financially liberating, is creatively a bit stifling. The furniture is arranged, the walls are painted and being in the middle of the ocean, all things purchased or created must be packed into airplane approved luggage at the end of our time here. So I've been working on "small space" projects like photo album/baby books for the boys and sewing seat covers promised to a friend in Indianapolis and thinking about making henry a little man suit for my uncle's wedding. But I still spend a really shockingly large amount of time thinking about beautiful things that cannot currently be mine and searching for them online.
Here's a little list, I'll call it: "someday, we'll be home together"
These notebooks on etsy would almost be too beautiful to write in...but I would try just so I could turn the lovely covers and leaf through the vegetable dyed pages.
I think I have the taste of a nineteenth century old woman because if I could afford to wallpaper every room in my house with these wallpapers, I think I would.
Mornings with this stovetop cappucino maker would make me feel like a well bred european with a flat in the city, and a cottage in the country with an aga oven, a few spaniels and some wellington boots...basically a character from a rosamund pilcher novel and my dream come true.
I'm all for the modern conveniences looking like electronic fossils of bygone eras so this and this would likely find a place in my future (dream) house (where money were no option).
What joy to stir my cappuccino with this spoon!
Sort of trendy but seriously, who wouldn't want a pop art poster of an owl, typewriter and or telephone pole?
Who says these roofs are only for pole barns and outhouses? I want one on my house.
And of course, all things anthropologie but especially this towel and this table cloth