Author: Carrie Spritzer

Sprung Into Summer

We’ve been abruptly catapulted from rainy Northern California winter weather into full-on 70 degree summer mode.

With a break from the rain, we head out into the yard, pull weeds, plant seeds. We tend the garden and watch it almost instantly respond. The perrenials, after being nourished by four months of rain, during which time they sent roots deep into the ground, show themselves and grow, grow, grow.

The bright California sun shines down. We put on sunscreen, deck out in hats, capris and fancy sunglasses. We seek out shade (at the playground, the farmers market) and wind (at the beach) to cool ourselves.

We go for scooter rides every single day.

We savor every moment outside and try to remember it’s only the beginning of April. I hold my breath as I wait for the rains to return. This week? Next week? The week after? The dry summer isn’t really here already, is it? Only time will tell.

In the meantime, we’re making the most of it.

Starting the Week Off Right

I like to begin the week with a clean kitchen.

Every week I try to keep the kitchen like this but, alas, I find the task to be impossible.

So instead I start my week off enjoying this temporary sense of calm, reminding myself that the kitchen will stay like this for only few hours (minutes?!) before the dishes begin to accumulate and the clutter piles up. I try to take a deep breath and enjoy the moment.

Of course, the kitchen isn’t really clutter-free. There’s always this giant pile of things I need to attend to TODAY… but we can turn a blind eye on that corner and just focus on the cooking space.

Clean. Sparse.

Ready to mess up!

Time to get cooking…

Curtain Swap

In an attempt to make our daughter’s new room more light and airy, we swapped out the dark brown, light-blocking curtain on the east facing window and replaced it with the same curtain material as her bed canopy.

That simple switch has let so much more light into her room during the day. (We keep that window shade closed during the day because the view goes right to the neighbors.)

The old brown curtain was so drab! We still have two brown light-blocking curtains in her room, but we typically keep them open during the day and close them just at night. That south facing window is the one with the view.

We’ve also been hanging more artwork: a nerdy number poster (by the same illustrator who made the oversized alphabet poster hanging over the desk) and the embroidered portrait I made. We have more artwork that’s currently in-progress to hang up and share with you soon.

It’s starting to really look like a little girl’s room up there. She loves it!

Failed Craft Projects

We’ve had several craft project disasters this week.

First there was the attempt at making salt dough with regular flour that made me sick. (Evidently breathing in gluten is worse than eating it for people with gluten sensitivities. Who knew?!) Above it as far as we got before the whole thing went into the trash.

Then we tried to make a gluten-free salt dough with cornstarch and that turned out to be a giant mess. We even followed a recipe, but to no avail! After we had tripled the amount of cornstarch and salt called for in the recipe in a last ditch attempt to save it, the whole thing suddenly turned into a feta cheese-like consistency and we knew the project was over.

I thought the whole activity was a disaster, however our daughter loved every moment of the messy, water play. Half-success?

Our next less-than-successful project: we tried to reveal secret messages (written in white crayon on paper) with water color paints. That sort of worked.

Unfortunately it wasn’t enough of a success to merit it’s own blog post or a place in our daughter’s new room.

Good thing we’re all about the process here in our house, rather than the final product.

Sigh.

So, how’s your week going?