My Birthday Week

I just love celebrating special days surrounded by little kids. All week, there has been whispering and planning and little scurrying feet running around gathering supplies for secret projects. The girls and John made my birthday so special. Ginger was sad that it was a school day on my birthday, but kindergarten is a pretty fun place to be on a birthday.

John asked Ginger what she wanted to give me for my birthday and she said a book, since I love books. He asked her what kind of a book and she suggested a craft book. How thoughtful! She got me a soap making book and train stickers (that she insisted I share with her). Ruby made me a fabric covered book that she and John bound together. She included a sweet dedication that is so touching. She worked really hard on this. John bought me the most awesome bag from Irenes’ made by Appetite. I just love it.

I got to chaperone with Ruby’s class on their field trip to the pumpkin patch.  The next day, I took my own class to a different pumpkin patch where I got to drive the hayride tractor out to the field! On the bus with Ruby, we sat with one of her new friends. They whispered and giggled the whole way there, it was too cute.

It was an amazingly beautiful week full of sweet small moments. I am a lucky girl.

Pumpkin Patch!

This has been the most incredible fall! We are in peak leaf season right now. Every view, even in a parking lot, is breathtaking. It makes me so giddy! I love fall and feel so lucky to live in a place with fall color.

This weekend we visited “our” farm, Gathering Together, for a CSA member pumpkin harvest celebration. It was sunny, about 60 and I was so excited. They welcomed us with freshly made potato donuts, hot apple cider (from a friend’s farm – La Mancha – the best!), chips and house made salsa, coffee, and house-made wine! We saw a bunch of friends, including one of my students. 🙂 Then we gave ourselves a little farm tour (we didn’t wait for the farmer to give us the hayride), walked out to the huge pumpkin patch and hunted around for just the right ones.

It was the perfect day.

Cupcakes!

A friend recently traveled to San Francisco Miette and brought me back a treat. I thought it was cookies, but when I looked in the bag, I was pleasantly surprised to see a cake pan! Miette cakes are baked in 6″ pans and I haven’t been able to find one in town. So I baked the tomboy cake, which is on the cover of the Miette cookbook.

The recipe makes two cakes and enough raspberry buttercream icing for both. I only had one cake pan, so I made a batch of cupcakes and froze them along with the leftover buttercream.

We’re having our first stormy weather of the season – leftover of a Japanese typhoon! I thought some cupcakes were in order to cozy up by the fire. I thawed them out, whipped up the frosting and piped it on the cupcakes.

The moist chocolate and raspberry pairs so well together.

Shop Update

I’ve had a lot of people ask me recently if I’m keeping La Petite Vie open. Yes! I’m attempting to juggle teaching kindergarten, being a patient and mindful Mama, AND making soap. I know this sounds crazy, but I really love what I’ve created with La Petite Vie and want to continue. Plus, it helps me take care of myself – I’m surrounded by bath products. 🙂 Keeping all that in mind, I would shop early for the holidays. If its as busy as it was last year, I won’t be able to rush orders.

New scents in the shop:

The fresh scent of ginger is balanced in an original blend of essential oils to create a woody, sweet, spicy scent that men and women love.

Gravity was so named for it’s sweet heady rose scent that is grounded by woody vetivers and cedarwood oils. Just when you start to lose yourself in the floralness of this soap, the earthy base notes bring you back to reality. And, it’s on sale right now!

After making the Little Bee Balm, one of the shop owners I work with suggested I make the balm in her favorite scent (and one of my best selling soaps): lemongrass rosemary. Applying these balms is a daily ritual I love and I can’t get enough of this one. The lemongrass rosemary balm will be popular, I’m sure.

Enjoy!

 

 

Jumping in

Well, this big school year has begun! Ginger is enjoying preschool. When I pick her up, the teachers tell me how sweet she is. We were nervous that she would have a hard time in the morning and anticipated some tears, but she has been very brave. She even counted to Spanish in front of the class one day!

Ruby has a wonderful teacher – all the families that had her before can’t say enough about her. Ruby loves staying at school all day and eating lunch there. She keeps talking about how much bigger she is now and can’t wait to meet the kindergarteners and see how little they are.

We have “gentle start” for kindergarteners here. The first week of school, the kinders visit school for a half-hour with their families to meet the teacher one-on-one. On Monday, I have half my class, on Tuesday, the other half and Wednesday is our first day with everyone together. So, I’ve met all my students and have a lot of really sweet kids. I can’t wait to get to know them better!

We were all exhausted after the first week. John is dropping off the girls at school in the morning and has to get them ready by himself. I leave for work not long after the girls are awake. That is no small feat! So we’ve all had big adjustments, but things have gone as well as we could have hoped so far.

bookworms

As I type, Ruby is reading a chapter book to herself in bed, Ginger is picture reading (with lots of memorized phrases from the book) in her bed, John is flipping through a magazine on the couch and I am willing myself to finish this post before I check out the new books I brought home from the library today. We are definitely a family of readers and I couldn’t be prouder!

Lounging at the library

Creating a cozy book nook while I unpack my classroom

Snuggling up to read with Richard Scarry

We have consciously made reading and books of all kinds accessible to the girls from a very young age and built reading into all kinds of routines in our days. It calms, it connects, it makes us laugh. I’m so grateful we can all share it together.

Etsy Shop Love: Alice Nightingale

Vintage-inspired Alice Nightengale’s shop is full of gorgeous clothes that I would love to own. The shop photography is inspiring as well. Sometimes I feel like I was born in the wrong decade (70’s? Really? So not my style) and shopping in Alice Nightingale confirms it.

The Maude Dress is the first item I saw, through twitter, and I was quickly smitten with the shop. This photo reminds me of Funny Face, so of course, I love it.

This adorable watercolor purse is so cheery! Just perfect for the fall, yes?

I can’t tell you how nice it is to have a winter coat you love. You practically live in it and its so nice to get compliments on something that is covering up the rest of your clothes. The silhouette of the Nancy Winter coat is flattering and the Peter Pan collar is so sweet.

The June blouse is paired perfectly with the Belle skirt in this photo. I’m not sure if I could pull off quite so glamorous a look in a rowboat, but maybe for a summer date night?

Be sure to check out their swimwear – the watercolor apple print appears again! What do you think? Could you pull off these vintage looks in your everyday life?

All photos by Alice Nightingale – click to visit.

Portland (kid-free!)

John and I recently celebrated our 1o year anniversary and traveled for the first time by ourselves since having babies. Portland is one of my absolute favorite U.S. cities. If you have not been, hop on a plane right now and go! This is the perfect time to visit.

Food

One of the things John and I were most excited about was eating. Portland has some incredible restaurants and while most of them are kid-friendly, we could be a little more adventurous, wait in longer lines, and order whatever we wanted because we didn’t have to share with little people who can be picky. 🙂

Our first stop for dinner was the recently-opened Grassa, because our friend, Ian, is the chef there! And also, because he hand-makes pasta and makes amazing food. Grassa lived up to the hype and was delicious. We loved watching the pasta being made while listening to records.

Broder for breakfast has been on our list of places to go for a long time. We tried once before, but had the girls with us and couldn’t wait in line (there almost always is a long one on the weekend). Yum!

Several friends highly recommended tapa restaurant Toro Bravo (another restaurant with a usually-lengthy wait) where the shrimp was incredible.

Luce was insanely good. This tiny restaurant was absolutely adorable and the food was divine. I felt like I was in Italy again.

Of course, you must visit Salt and Straw – the famous ice cream shop. It was as delicious as we had heard; so good in fact that we went twice.

Coffee/Drinks

Albina Press is a friendly grungy coffee shop that we have loved for years.

John recently went to a conference in Portland and visited Secret Society, where he couldn’t wait to take me back to on this trip.

I found a little champagne bar called Ambonnay with a friendly owner and warm space, conveniently located next to Olympic Provisions that I loved.

Fun

We wandered the Portland Art Museum, leisurely, for hours. We were lucky enough to catch the Cyclepedia exhibit (John was so excited). I was entertained by the preschool class on field trip there (and even more so by the parent chaperones attempting to keep the preschoolers’ hands off the bikes). We also caught the Gaston Lachaise exhibit, (a French sculptor – we had the best timing!)

Of course, we wandered Powell’s for ages and found some adorable drawing books we bought the girls.

We strolled for a bit around Mt. Tabor Park (an ancient volcano right in Portland) until I got blistered too badly and had to go back to the car and change shoes for our antiquing trip through Sellwood.

 

Just a sampling of our favorites from our trip to get you started on yours! Bon Voyage!

10 Years!

Newport Bay

John and I recently celebrated our 10 year anniversary (!) by retracing our steps of our honeymoon. We both grew up in Florida and lived there until 8 years ago. Neither of us had been to Oregon, but we both had a pull toward it and decided to travel here on our honeymoon. We actually stayed a night in the town we now live in because John thought there was a chance he would apply to grad school here.

Boiler Bay

Bob Straub State Park

My parents came out for a couple of weeks and John and I left the girls with them – our first trip away from them – while we drove up the coast, ate our way through Portland, and spent some time in wine country. It was my first vacation away from the girls. I went away for a few days to visit friends several years ago, but I’m not sure if that counts because I was pregnant and sick the whole time. 😉

Bob Straub State Park

Cape Lookout State Park

We stopped on a whim at Cape Lookout State Park and hiked along a steep, rainforested cliff hoping for a clearing and view of the ocean. It was one of my favorite things about Oregon – the wet, green forests full of ferns and moss that open up into incredibly dramatic views of the ocean.

Cape Lookout State Park

Twin Rocks

We stopped for the night in a small, loveable coastal town in a motel that looked out on the ocean. We were charmed and dreamed of having a place of our own on this coastline.

Manzanita

I missed the girls terribly, but enjoyed the spontaneity, leisurely pace, and ability to do things that we couldn’t have done with the girls tagging along. I’ll try to post more adventures from Portland soon. These photos were all from the first day!

Link love: kid activities

Ahhh, summer. Our mornings are so much more relaxed these days, but there is also so much more time to fill!

Here are some sites to inspire:

photo by Kate from An Everyday Story for Playful Learning

I’ve linked to Playful Learning before, it’s a wonderful site full of authentic activities your children (and you!) will love to experience together. The page of Activities for Kids has all kinds of fun inspiration – from art activities to well being.

Did you press flowers as a kid? I did and loved finding forgotten flowers as I was reading the books I used to press months later. Here’s a little tutorial to walk you through the process.

photo by Skip to My Lou

Skip to My Lou is a fabulous resource of parenting activities – including tons of great gift ideas for teachers! I love this list of literature based activities, especially this lupine seed packet to partner with a reading of Miss Rumphius.

When the weather is beautiful, we like to move our everyday activities outdoors. The girls love to paint outside and the clean up couldn’t be easier. We love using natural materials for stamping or painting.

This just seems wrong, but the girls got sick this week. Ginger seems through the worst of it, but I’m still constantly worrying about Ruby’s cough. We use many of these home remedies for the girls to help them get through their funk. Fingers crossed they’ll be back to themselves quickly, especially because Grandma and Gramps are here!

Any fun activities or helpful sites you can share?