that you can only keep one or the other:
house
or
kids.
or
kids.
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Monday, May 17, 2010
greenhouses galore
We went to Carman and Morden to visit greenhouses with Helene today and Luke was quite a tired guy after all the heat and sun and exercise! He's already in bed (8:30pm), and I'm tired enough to be on my way shortly. We had a very good day, and you can expect pictures of our purchases in the next few days. The weather is supposed to be perfect for yard work - it has been the last three days and you can bet we've taken advantage of it. See our vegetable garden? Derek got me wood chips and made me a proper compost bin. What a guy.
Friday, May 14, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Conversation:
Luke: I hear birdies singin' Mama.
Mama: They sing so pretty don't they?
Luke: They're singin' happy birthday to YOU, Mama!
Mama: To me?
Luke: No, to me, Mama.
Mama: But it's not your birthday for another month and a half!
Luke: It's my birthday now Mama. I hear birdies singin'.
Mama: They sing so pretty don't they?
Luke: They're singin' happy birthday to YOU, Mama!
Mama: To me?
Luke: No, to me, Mama.
Mama: But it's not your birthday for another month and a half!
Luke: It's my birthday now Mama. I hear birdies singin'.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
A dog with no name
Okay, I won't even begin to make excuses for our history with dogs.
I will just ask you to look at these pictures and tell me
this little boy doesn't need a puppy.
Luke and the dog have an arrangement.
Weiner dog will eat his vegetables for him,
and dig in the dirt with him,
and let Luke dress him up like a cowboy.
And Luke loves him back.
Cat on the other hand,
hasn't shown her face in 18 hours.
I have a soft spot for dachshunds.
I will give my Mom credit (blame?) for that one.
How could we say no to this hairy little man?
He came home to live with us yesterday.
At his previous home he was called Puddles.
"Puddles", like "Prince" or "Peaches"
just won't cut it around here,
so at lunch we discussed names and these
two are at the top of the list so far:
Inigo
and
Linus
I will just ask you to look at these pictures and tell me
this little boy doesn't need a puppy.
Luke and the dog have an arrangement.
Weiner dog will eat his vegetables for him,
and dig in the dirt with him,
and let Luke dress him up like a cowboy.
And Luke loves him back.
Cat on the other hand,
hasn't shown her face in 18 hours.
I have a soft spot for dachshunds.
I will give my Mom credit (blame?) for that one.
How could we say no to this hairy little man?
He came home to live with us yesterday.
At his previous home he was called Puddles.
"Puddles", like "Prince" or "Peaches"
just won't cut it around here,
so at lunch we discussed names and these
two are at the top of the list so far:
Inigo
and
Linus
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
A Tree to Call Home
So, some of you are wondering why I'm changing my business name and how I came up with this new name and logo. And I will tell you.
I felt like Laura Ann Thiessen Photography was not only bulky, but didn't quite shape what I want to do with my at-home business. I wanted a name that could cover my multitude of interests/skills including photography, sewing, pottery (potentially?), design and anything else I come across that I want to pursue in the future. Rachel Regier suggested I use the term "mixed media" instead of photography and finally I had the phrase I was looking for...now for a name.
Last Summer Katie Elias and I sold homemade goods at the farmer's market here in Winkler. We called ourselves Farrago (far-rey-go), meaning "a confused mixture", which I thought was cool and definitive, if somewhat foggy for people with very small vocabularies (truthfully, I'd never heard the word until I looked up 'diverse' in a thesaurus). However, this name wasn't working for me personally. I felt a little stunted by it. It just wasn't open enough to spark any creative imaginings for me. So I continued to look.
I was reading "The Runaway Bunny" to Luke over and over and over and over again (he gets stuck on particular books), and suddenly this childish prose seemed to hit me over the head like a bell clapper in full swing. The baby bunny says, "I am going to run away" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will follow you!", and the baby bunny proposes several different ways to get away from his mother all of which the mother has a clever answer to. The bunny finally says, "I will become a bird and fly away from you" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will become a tree that you come home to". As you can see, this phrase, while being such a beautiful spark for creativity, leaves me once again with the problem of length. So with some help and suggestions from friends I managed to maintain the image and trim the wording down to "A Tree to Call Home", which I am very pleased with.
Along with a group of my fifth-grade peers, I memorized The Runaway Bunny for an oral language competition. We didn't win any awards, but I always liked the pictures, and was very pleased when Derek bought me the book to add to my children's literature collection for my birthday several years ago. I love the quirky pictures (a rabbit-shaped topiary and a bunny in the sky with wings), and now that I have moved far from my own mother I connect with the story on a more personal level.
"Have a carrot" says mother bunny, and they do. I want to have lots more carrots with my own little bunny before he flies away, which is why business stuff is sort of moving in slow motion. It's really worth it, and in the meantime I get to develop neat ideas like this new business name, which I think feels less stiff and since it has a story (or several) behind it, invites conversation.
The logo of the tree is sort of a combination of many trees that I've been attracted to over the years. The Visalia tree, the Buttonwillow tree, a random wooden tree that I found in a thrift shop, and the elm tree in my parent's back yard that Derek and I were married under. I am very fond of these trees, and when I imagined a tree for my logo I couldn't pick just one, so I tried to work in elements of each.
I felt like Laura Ann Thiessen Photography was not only bulky, but didn't quite shape what I want to do with my at-home business. I wanted a name that could cover my multitude of interests/skills including photography, sewing, pottery (potentially?), design and anything else I come across that I want to pursue in the future. Rachel Regier suggested I use the term "mixed media" instead of photography and finally I had the phrase I was looking for...now for a name.
Last Summer Katie Elias and I sold homemade goods at the farmer's market here in Winkler. We called ourselves Farrago (far-rey-go), meaning "a confused mixture", which I thought was cool and definitive, if somewhat foggy for people with very small vocabularies (truthfully, I'd never heard the word until I looked up 'diverse' in a thesaurus). However, this name wasn't working for me personally. I felt a little stunted by it. It just wasn't open enough to spark any creative imaginings for me. So I continued to look.
I was reading "The Runaway Bunny" to Luke over and over and over and over again (he gets stuck on particular books), and suddenly this childish prose seemed to hit me over the head like a bell clapper in full swing. The baby bunny says, "I am going to run away" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will follow you!", and the baby bunny proposes several different ways to get away from his mother all of which the mother has a clever answer to. The bunny finally says, "I will become a bird and fly away from you" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will become a tree that you come home to". As you can see, this phrase, while being such a beautiful spark for creativity, leaves me once again with the problem of length. So with some help and suggestions from friends I managed to maintain the image and trim the wording down to "A Tree to Call Home", which I am very pleased with.
Along with a group of my fifth-grade peers, I memorized The Runaway Bunny for an oral language competition. We didn't win any awards, but I always liked the pictures, and was very pleased when Derek bought me the book to add to my children's literature collection for my birthday several years ago. I love the quirky pictures (a rabbit-shaped topiary and a bunny in the sky with wings), and now that I have moved far from my own mother I connect with the story on a more personal level.
"Have a carrot" says mother bunny, and they do. I want to have lots more carrots with my own little bunny before he flies away, which is why business stuff is sort of moving in slow motion. It's really worth it, and in the meantime I get to develop neat ideas like this new business name, which I think feels less stiff and since it has a story (or several) behind it, invites conversation.
The logo of the tree is sort of a combination of many trees that I've been attracted to over the years. The Visalia tree, the Buttonwillow tree, a random wooden tree that I found in a thrift shop, and the elm tree in my parent's back yard that Derek and I were married under. I am very fond of these trees, and when I imagined a tree for my logo I couldn't pick just one, so I tried to work in elements of each.
Monday, May 10, 2010
A few of my favorite things
This weekend I loved:
french fries and ice cream with my boys (my mother's day treat)
new plants in the ground
a finished porch railing
2 dollar perennials from a plant sale
weeds in the compost pile
freshly mown grass
tea and bagels on the back porch in the sun
a not-quite two year old who wore gitch all weekend with no accidents!
BBQ'd hot dogs
sleeping in
waking up to a clean house
fresh baked chocolate chip cookies
Luke licking the cookie dough off the scraper
steak dinner with family
purple and yellow johnny jump-ups
warm sun
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