…just as fast as my feet can fly…

August, please don’t leave me as fast as July is seeming to slip through my fingers. How is it possible that we were just digging ourselves out of more than three feet of snow and now we’re making piles of stuff to pack for Clifftop, and this morning Maggie and I trekked to our favorite consignment shop to get fall clothes for our little ladies? How how how?

It has been insanely hot for the past couple of weeks, and over the weekend our godfamily came to stay over night as heat-refugees from their inferno of an apartment. We had a delicious feast that reminded me that in the summer, really all I want to do is roll around in the delicious food and mourn the fact that there is no rational / logical way for a family of drifters to put food by for the winter. We just… don’t eat tomatoes or strawberries for months on end. Will I buy a four-dollar pint of strawberries from California in December because my precious, fruit-fly toddler pleads for them with her big brown eyes in the grocery store? Probably… on occasion.

And also, I really just want to have another baby so we can have more compadres. They’re all the fun and awesomeness rolled up in love and funny of real family, but, you know… you hand-pick them. Ha!

(delicious little rainbow of tealights / PJ-homebrew and Kate-made butter / the essence of summer / a feast / ohmygod I love comparing the aesthetics of a meal on several different colors of Fiestaware / the g-fam)

Bring a song and a smile for the banjo
Better get while the gettin’s good
Hitch a ride to the end of the highway
Where the neons turn to wood…

- CCR

(I know that song is supposedly about draft-dodging, but really, I just feel like it’s about summer.)

Listening: CCR
(I am) Reading: Never Let Me Go (which so far I totally do not understand, but it seems really amazing in a The-Giver-for-adults kind of way, possibly…)
(Hazel is) Reading: Freight Train
Working on: random little things – I need to try to make Hazel a strap for her little toy banjo, but I’m still pondering this one. Sew? Crochet?

I feel like I have not had a normal existence since we got back from Toronto – busy busy busy, five million things to do, teething teething teething TEETHING <—although the last two are cutting rightnow, and then we’re home free until the second year molars make their appearance.

Despite that, I have been getting things made here and there, in tiny little chunks of time. I just don’t realize it until I sit down to think about it in blog format. Is that sad?

I’ve been making these little round face scrubbies here and there, mostly in the car, to replace the disposable cotton ones that you buy in a tube. They’re made from the same plain cotton yarn I already had on hand for dishrags, and take less then ten minutes apiece to crochet. They work soooo well, and I just toss the used ones in a lingerie bag to put them through the wash. I don’t wear makeup anymore, but I can only imagine that these would be 500% better than thin cotton rounds for makeup removal, applying toner, etc… they are the perfect amount of soft & nubby.

Laundry soap. Since Mikey and I have freakishly sensitive skin we hate pretty much all laundry soaps. I’ve been meaning to try making my own for awhile, but don’t know anyone who does and didn’t want to pick some random recipe from the internet or a book. Conveniently, Amanda at soulemama.com posted her trusty recipe this week, so I decided to give it a try. For a 10 cup, 80-load batch at 1/8 cup per load, you need three 1/2 oz bars of finely grated castille soap, and one cup each of baking soda (93 cents per batch), borax (67 cents per batch), and washing soda (1.00 per batch). I picked up the couple of things I needed while I was out yesterday and made a batch when I got home. It smells delicious, and I am using it right now. I used Dr. Bronner’s peppermint soap, which makes a batch cost about the same as an equally-sized bag of Charlie’s if you can find it on sale for $2.99 per bar like I did. We DO love Charlie’s around here, and will still use it on diapers, but since it’s so hot and muggy and almostsummerey right now, peppermint laundry is just too good to pass up for the convenience of mail-order laundry soap. (And since you asked, Paisley does not have sensitive skin and prefers that her blankets and towels be washed in the cheapest, perfumiest laundry soap I can find.)

To fill the LOST-void and soothe my stressed-mommy-brain, I spent 3.5 hours after Hazel went to bed the other night crocheting the blanket that will never end (the one I ONLY work on when I need to calm down), and watched Dexter. It was magical. I love them both.

Goodies for the little teeny You-Are-Having-a-Baby-Yayyyyyyyyyyy lunch that I gave for Maggie on Saturday. Delicious. Such instant gratification to make AND to eat. (Do you sense the blue & gold theme in my life?)

Listening: The Beatles
(I am) Reading: The Last Child in the Woods
(Hazel is) Reading: When I Was Young in the Mountains, which I had the urge to read with her after kindly booting this guy from our porch the other day (I don’t know why I always assume they are male)