Hazel could be Mrs. Hazel Mae Iafrate-Reindel-Swan. And she’ll have an abundance of things for her wedding reception slideshow. At least that’s what Kelly and I tell ourselves.

“Should I be taking pictures of this?”

“YES. We have to have SOMETHING for the slideshow.”

Several years ago our friends Eric and Colleen started working out a vision of a new work farm / intentional community in West Virginia. Though Chicago natives, they had both served at Nazareth Farm and were modeling many of their ideas around their time spent there. Five years ago, all of their planning and praying and networking and connecting and money-saving and falling in love with WV paid off, and Bethlehem Farm was born. Their first baby.

This September they will welcome Miriam or Isaiah, their second “baby” and first child. Kelly and I took Hazel and Xavier down to the farm over the weekend for a blessingway for Colleen, to fit in a much needed break from reality, visit with the ones who are the friends – you all have these, right? – who seem to Have It All Figured Out And Do Everything Exactly Right And In The Simplest Possible Way. There is nothing these people do without first contemplating how it will affect their immediate community, the earth, and humanity in general. They know the origins of – if not the actual hands that grew or made – practically every morsel of food that passes their lips. They are humble and gracious and really stinking smart. Eric is a master gardener in every sense of the word, and Colleen makes quilts that could be sold at Tamarack. They are the epitome of People Who Have Their Shit Together. I’m pretty sure that, among other things, it has a lot to do with how little time they spend facebooking (or something like that). If I didn’t love them so freaking much I’d be insanely jealous and probably a little bitter. Which reminds me that, also, they are way better at our religion than I am… clearly. In sifting through photos to share I realize that I did not take any of THEM. Fail. Here they are with Kelly, PJ, and a freshly baptized Xavier. I miss PJ’s huge beard. Eric’s beard is not that huge these days, either, unless it’s just blending with his plaid shirt and looking bigger than it really is – neither is my brother in law’s. There is some kind of beard recession going on.

To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter; to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird’s nest or a wildflower in spring – these are some of the rewards of the simple life.
~John Burroughs

Clifftop 2009

Today we left for Clifftop. I planned diligently, squirreled things into a tidy heap for weeks, made food, made lists, made it the most organized trip ever. Got on the road two minutes ahead of schedule – just in time to get us there a few hours before dark when it would be nice & cool for setting up camp and finding friends, two minutes early EVEN after a mad half-hour search and rescue of Andy Floppinberg (and two worried phonecalls to places that she might have been left behind)…realized ten minutes from home that the only thing we’d forgotten was one of our camping lanterns …not a big deal. Picked up a couple of last minute things in town and Hazel was almost asleep, sure to remain that way for the whole two and a half hours of driving that lay ahead, banjos and fiddles comin’ through the ipod, killing time until the real things put me to sleep later this evening.

And then we hit traffic at construction and sat still for awhile. And then our air conditioner died. And then we hit more traffic at an accident, where we sat at a standstill for 45 minutes while sweat poured in buckets from my child’s head and she kicked me repeatedly and I actually YELLED at her (Mikey’s banjo & guitar get to ride shotgun). And then we heard a weird rattle under our hood and smelled something funny for about four and a half seconds, that may have been us or may have been the huge truck we were behind. And then we made calls for car advice. And then we stopped at an auto parts store to check our coolant (fine) and belts (fine) and figured we must just need freon in our AC (deal with it later) and decided to get on our way and just set up the bare minimum of camp in the dark and get totally settled in the morning. And then we needed to make an impossibly fast dinner stop and chose Taco Bell. Couldn’t find it (seriously? we’re 15 minutes from home), did a u-turn at a bank and stopped for some cash while we were there. Called friends to let them know we were on our way south, and that if something else happened traffic-wise we might not make it to the campground before they stopped letting new people in for the night – if so, knowing they have a group this week, a random tent in their yard in the morning would be us. Weird rattling noise started again as we idled in the bank parking lot, talking on the phone. Drove next door to a(nother) auto parts store. Employee and random customer and Mikey stare at the innards of our car for 15 minutes. Still nothing visibly wrong and it won’t make the rattling noise of course. Mikey is very mad. Hazel is SCREAMING. It has been three hours since we left home and we are only actually twenty minutes away. We should have set up camp an hour ago. Walt tells us to bring our car to his house so he can look at it. We do. The noise magically happens but nothing is going to fall off of it anytime soon, he says. We each drink a beer in his driveway. I get 27 bug bites, Hazel gets none. We go to Black Bear as a consolation prize (and since we’re saving the $30 we would have paid to camp tonight). Hazel freaks. We order our food to go. I hug an old friend I haven’t seen since 2006. I iphotograph a giant yellow moth laying eggs in the parking garage. We drive back home and unpack a single toothbrush, a binky and four beers.

Today we came home from Clifftop.

Try again tomorrow.

…but when she farts in the bathtub she cackles and says “duck?!!”

And then I laugh until I cry. I think I’m a pretty smart, educated, well-rounded lady… and still… doesn’t really get any funnier than my kid farting in the bathtub and yelling duck. I live a charmed life.

Here is where my schoolhouse-living fixation began: about five minutes down the road from my parents. I have driven by this place a thousand times in my life and never thought too much of it until someone started renovating over a year ago. They have gone really really slowly, little things here and there. The light fixtures are new since the last time I drove by. I don’t even know who these people are or where they live. The other side of the building has amazing rows upon rows of windows, but I didn’t want to walk around through the snakey, tickey weeds to photograph it while my mom sat in the car with the sleeping kidlet.

Dear people,

Please do not get rid of that old ceramic doorknob. I love it. The new light fixtures are perfect. Also, I think the glass bricks are weird. The rest is awesome – keep it up.

love,
emily

After months of scouring the ReStore, every Goodwill in my path, various other thrift shops, no less than 50 yardsales and innumerable trash drivebys, I finally found the perfect piece of furniture to revamp into a tiny kitchen for Hazel’s second birthday in October. A tiny kitchen that I’m hoping will be almost entirely thrifted/repurposed/handmade, with some ideas stolen from this retro pottery barn kitchen and a few other places (I hate it when a company like pottery barn gets something so damn perfect!) I have been finding little details for months, I have fabrics picked out and felt food planned (and crocheted food hopes using this book from VD), I have a piece of furniture to make into a tiny fridge, but I’ve been missing the main component – the sink and stove. I looked at this piece at least three times before realizing how perfect it actually is. As soon as the lightbulb came on (while standing in line at the post office) I drove back to the ReStore, strapped Hazel onto my back, wrestled this puppy into the front seat of my car and brought it home. And then spread out a few of my favorite little details to photograph and feel like I’m actually accomplishing something other than spending money and shoving things in a box and daydreaming.

nightstand = $15.00 @ the Habitat for Humanity ReStore
faucet = $5.00 @ the ReStore
mixing bowls = $.50 each at Goodwill
tiny bamboo utensils = $.25 each in chinatown
tiny wooden mixing spoon = $.25 in chinatown
egg whisk = $1.00 at a yardsale
most perfect plates = $.99 each at Target (and I kind of want four more, but even though this line of picnicey stuff is still out the tiny polkadotted plates are gone in every store I check – please grab some for me if you see them!)

I have this recent obsession with living in an old schoolhouse – I *love* this one.

My mom has a list of trees around home she wishes she could transplant to their yard. This knotty, holey dude is on it.

Out of commission.

Random aqua paint seemingly applied after the house started falling down – win.

The past couple of weeks have been so busy and so strange and I feel so mentally unhinged that today I organized, purged, and then rainbow-ordered Hazel’s books as a means of destressing. It worked wonderfully.

EmmaLee & Hazey reading my current favorite & most perfect & wonderful book: All the World. I was so taken with the text that for the first twentysomething reads I overlooked the illustration of a breastfeeding mother (not uncommon for me to see in real life, so it didn’t register for awhile that it’s so uncommon to see in a BOOK). Also: community, various family arrangements, farmer’s market, old Volkswagen bus, dogs, peace and fiddling. What else do you need?

Slip, trip, stumble, fall
Tip the bucket, spill it all
Better luck another day, all the world goes ’round this way

I can think of about 47 adults off the top of my head who could benefit from reading this book :)

All of this brings me to the current week: a grocery bag of stuff to ebay (mostly camera equipment), two to goodwill, *altoids tins repurposed into Etsy shipping material, three old phone chargers finally went to the reStore after being moved from place to place in this house since November, and I sorted out a pile of my stuff at my parents’ house to go to goodwill.

*Remember when I washed out all of those altoids tins during a snow-in? I have been experimenting with packaging and shipping since then. Shipping out Etsy orders has always been the bane of my existence. I’m very fickle about how it looks, I don’t want to be wasteful, but I also don’t want to spend more time making recycled mailing materials (as in my cereal box mailer obsession, which lasted most of the winter… as in sewn bubble mailers, which were amazing and I should make more because they didn’t take that long) than I do making product to sell. I finally put my foot down and made myself come up with a packaging and shipping method that looks cute, involves a bit of upcycling, and will hopefully lend itself nicely to reuse or recycling on the other end. Have you ever heard the statistic about how many estimated bubble mailers went into landfills during the first five years of ebay? I can’t bring myself to bulk order a giant box of bubble mailers, and I don’t want to jack up my shipping prices to compensate for nicely recycled & recyclable ones. So until I can figure something else out: a plain brown paper envelope with contents wrapped in a neatly cut to fit sheet of bubble wrap. As long as my dad keeps me in altoids tins, this works perfectly. In the meantime, I am still on the lookout for a giant paper punch that’s the size & shape of the top of an altoids tin, because I’m not totally overjoyed about how they look…

Listening: Billy Bragg & Wilco
(I am) Reading: Last Child in the Woods and The Midwife
(Hazel is) Reading: The Family Book
Working on: some custom stuff; some destash sorting; in the mood to sew some more Oliver + S skirts today. Alice also needs some new clothes. hmm.

Tonight I’ll dream while I’m in bed
When silly thoughts go through my head
About the bugs and alphabet
And when I wake tomorrow I’ll bet
That you and I will walk together again
I can tell that we are gonna be friends
I can tell that we are gonna be friends

- The White Stripes