Mad. Mat. Matters.

Mad.

My baby boy is turning 7 months old this week. The days are loooong, mornings too early but months just fly by...  Now that little guy is sitting and crawling and pulling himself to stand.

This made life easier and harder at the same time. Easier, because sitting up makes for a happy self-entertained baby (aka sewing time for mommy) but crawling and pulling himself up and opening drawers... that's trouble! (aka mommy runs for the 10th time from the sewing machine to the little guy who is holding himself with all his might in a crazy weird position at the play table in order not to fall down the life-threatening  4 inches he is off the floor.) But anyways, I finally got around to sew something pretty besides the 20+ prefold diapers made from recycled flannel sheets, which leads us to

Mat.

A made a place mat for my daughter. It's Montessori inspired and shows the proper position of the plate, cup, spoon, knife and fork. I simply traced a plate, cup etc. on cotton fabric, cut it out fabric-glued it on top of the yellow gingham. I waited a bit until the glue was dry, ironed over it and stitched around the edges with buttonhole stitch. than I added a white layer of fabric to the back and sewed the green polka dot binding around the edges of the place mat. Currently we use it on the family table under a transparent plastic table cover (otherwise the place mat would need to go to the wash after every single meal and I'd need to make about 15 of those to have always one at hand...) And here is how she sets the table...

figuring out what direction to turn the knife

Matters.

During those last 6 months or so I've been reading a lot. What better thing to do while nursing, right? Reading a lot of  interesting facts, helpful ideas, shocking truths, good advice. Most of it not entirely new to me, but with the deeper insights I gained I started making some actual changes. I feel good about those changes that made our life healthier, more thoughtful and to some extend also greener. I am sure you'll read about it more here. Though this is still a blog about my sewing and craft stuff, all those new changes will pop up here and there, too, because they matter - to me anyhow. Most likely though in the form of some creative project. Like the Montessori place mat. (Yes, I read a lot about Maria Montessori's ideas and I put some into practice at our home...) Enough, the baby starts eating his sisters shoe's. Got to save those!

OMG - 2 Months Old Already!

shsh, and not even been introduced here yet...

Mr. cheeks! A Happy little fellow. well, not so little actually. he started wearing 6 months PJ's at 6 weeks C.R.A.Z.Y. he is so tall!

not much time at the moment to sew around here, but after following some of the KCWC I really want to get back to making some cute kiddie clothes!

7 happy things.

1. shadows on our ceiling

2. a gift for a toddler friend...


3. and what's in it... tea time! (yeah to having time for crafts!)


4. great stripes for little money in homecenter




5. a cup of wine with my dear husband, best friend and lover!


6. watching all 4 Pirates movies in 2 weeks and humming the melodies of the awesome music in it for days (no more pirates for one year at least!)


7. getting soaking wet from the rain on a summer day. in israel. it's a miracle!
no picture though :(

a new life.

we moved house last week. that was one month earlier than expected and it went by like a storm. I had started packing 2 months ago, but that went as far as 5 boxes of books and that was about it. than 2 weeks ago we found the perfect new apartment for the perfect rent! and within a week we moved. packing up like a freak with an ever unpacking toddler, who carried random items to random places and kept hiding things in empty boxes or trash bins... I felt lost. I didn't know where anything was anymore in 2 houses. that was when we already started moving the packed stuff and still living in the old place. terrible 5 days of transition. I almost couldn't bear it. but "tap on my shoulder *blink" this resulted in a unstopable unpacking energy. the house was set up within 48 hours after moving in. I am still in shock. to keep it real: there are no curtains up or pictures on the walls due to the fact that my husband is on a 3-day conference. I love the thrill of the drill but alone with a kid that gets scared from a vacuum cleaner I don't think that would be all that great of a plan. so what else to do other than blogging farewell to the old house? that's where we lived for the last 3 years...

My Gramma's Cake

I have childhood memories of this cake, because my aunt used to make it a lot. It is a recipe of her mother/my grandma. I am so glad that on one of my visits home I went looking for it in my moms handwritten recipe notebook. Since then I've made that cake maybe a hundred times.

It is probably one of the simplest cake recipes there is and one of the most yummiest also. It is pretty quick and has very simple ingredients and you can vary it easily, too. Sounds pretty amazing, huh? It is, trust me.

That's what you need:
3 eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
6 tablespoons of oil
fruit (either something like 4 fresh peeled sliced apples, pears, bananas or a can of cherries or whatever other fruit you like or have at home)
optional: nuts or chocolate chips
some butter and vanilla sugar

preheat oven to 160°C/320F
pour out cherries into a strainer or peel and cut fruit

mix the eggs and the sugar

combine flour and baking powder, add to the eggs and sugar
last thing add oil

pour the mix into a greased baking pan

spread fruit on the dough. it should sink in slightly (if you want to add chocolate chips or nuts go for it! my favorite combos are banana/chocolate chip or cherry chocolate chip)

bake for 45 min 160°C/320F

when the cake is still hot put some butter on top and sprinkle vanilla sugar over the cake

and now enjoy a piece! it is very soft and fluffy and sweet!

Rain

It is May and we still have rain here in Israel. This is amazing since we went through years of drought and in the beginning of the winter it didn't look like we'd get that much rain this year... I still have some shots I took back in March that I wanted to share. Baby Cookie loved to look out and watch the rain. Actually that's how we got over the rainy days - looking out the window. Here is what we see:

Happy Birthday Baby Cookie!

One year.
And the three of us are still alive!

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One year and countless smiles
smiles that you gave us and smiles that you drew on people's faces
immeasurable love
hours and hours of breastfeeding
not so many hours of sleep
giggles, silly faces, baby talk
many many firsts
first smile, first tooth, first steps
tons of food spread on floors, fingers, tables, faces
thousands of photographs
hundreds of times falling and standing up again
good mornings with your fingers in our ears or noses
mama, abba, tata
so much more to say, so many moments to appreciate
many tears but much more laughter
hours spend watching the rain fall
dancing the baby dance
dragging the tupperware out
"helping" mom
enjoying simple things... like potatoes in baskets as if they were gold

I love you, my baby girl, my mini me, my sunshine!
Happy Birthday!
One Year!

(I am serious about thousands of pictures. I feels like we documented every day of her life and my attempt to get a photo book ready failed due to overload of way too cute pictures)