The wheels on her skates are plastic and terrible, but they’re adjustable (locked, rolling forward only, and freewheeling) and they fit shoe sizes 6-12. I figure they’ll be good for getting used to being on eight wheels, and eventually we could get her a real pair. Three is a little young for full-fledged skates anyway, right? I chose the green “boy” version so they could be handed down, but Eleanor says we should get August a pink pair.

Here’s my girl on her inaugural run.

(Looks like Elle DeGore is working on a kids’ issue.)

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Eleanor’s First Skates | 26 comments

I’ll be taking a photo of August sitting in the Eames rocker and wearing his pin each month until he’s two years old. I also took monthly photos of his older sister, Eleanor, until she turned two.

I don’t usually do a direct comparison here between Eleanor’s and August’s photos, but I had to chuckle when I saw that they both struck the same pose at fifteen months old. Translation: “Come get me! You know I must be held at all times.”

August’s Previous Photos
The First Year • Thirteen Months Old • Fourteen Months Old • View All

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Fifteen Months Old (August’s Monthly Photo) | 15 comments

The big conductor train engineer turned 34, two days later.

The party invitations promised train whistles and caps for all, and we delivered. Bandanas, too.

My idea for the table was to create a forest in the center with train tracks all around, and little bits of scenery. The cats destroyed my maiden hair fern centerpiece almost immediately though, so I went to a big box store for more plants and found the selection lacking. I ended up with a rubber tree plant, and I used the moss I had leftover from making my terrarium to fill in as shrubbery.

We had the usual party decorations up too, and pretty packages all wrapped up for giving.

The Marimekko tablecloth on the table was the one I’d written about last year. I didn’t buy it at the time, but I thought of it when I was trying to find something that would suggest a landscape for the table, and I was able to find one on eBay. We had a birthday cupcake train, led by Thomas. The cupcakes were from a bakery, and Eleanor and I made the flatcars out of graham crackers, mini Oreos, frosting (from a tube, used like glue), and wafer cookies (as axels, for stability).

It was a good day, with no confusion or delay.

Happy birthday(s), my loves.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Eleanor’s Third Birthday Party | 45 comments

I’m smart. It’s not something that one brings up often, and especially not me. When I was a little girl, my father got annoyed with me one day because I had corrected something his friend said, and he told me to keep quiet and stop showing off. That offhand comment stuck with me and made me equate letting people see that I have a brain with bragging, so I sort of hide my intellect.

But yes, I’m smart. Really smart. But I never wanted to be the kind of genius that can manipulate numbers and solve equations, no. I wanted to be well-read with excellent verbal skills. I wanted to be an author or a poet, or maybe an artist, but nothing that involved math. I was disappointed every time if my scores were higher on standardized tests in math instead of verbal, even when I did exceedingly well across the board. I was the geeky girl in high school that custom programmed my TI-89 graphing calculator to make vector-based art that was dependent on the variables you would enter into an equation I wrote… and I thought I didn’t like math. I know how to code and design websites (ahem) today because I’ve been coding since I was 13 — for fun. I am good at a wide variety of things (jill of all trades, master of none), but foremost I’m mathy, and it took me a long time to accept that about myself.

I got a little lost in these fun videos by Vi Hart the other night. If you are at all curious about what it’s like to be inside my brain, the frenetic pace and mathematical tangents in the video below are a good start to understanding my thought processes. I especially enjoyed the little aside in the video about the parallels between art and math, and the cute take on calculus leaping from algebra’s limitations. It took calculus to make me really fall in love with math. (Everything leads up to it and culminates and is beautiful.)

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as My Mathematical Mind | 176 comments

We needed flowers for Eleanor’s photoshoot, so she and I took a walk to the local florist.

If there’s an upside to Chicago’s six months of cold temperatures and dead-looking landscapes, it’s that when spring’s warmth and lush greenery arrive, we really appreciate it.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as A Walk in My Neighborhood | 10 comments

My baby girl turned three on Sunday. Here is her yearly photo.

Previous Photos
• View the Entire Series

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Three Years Old (Eleanor’s Yearly Photo) | 29 comments

Eleanor is old enough now to be interested in arts and crafts (YAY!), so we’ve been doing a lot of little projects lately. Beaded bracelets, pom pom critters, painted birdhouses, braided pipe cleaner things, and now, clothespin people. Most of the time, I let her do her thing with a little supervision and a little guidance, but I couldn’t resist making a bunch of these myself.

I’ve missed making pretty little things for the fun of it.

Eleanor plays with them all, the ones I’ve made mixed with the ones she did and the ones from daddy, too. Here, they are exploring the icy landscape of a Star Wars toy that was Brandon’s as a kid. Hoth, maybe? I have no idea.

Reunited, and it feels so good.

Brandon made his first, and he used a sharpie (markers bleed and feather on the wood). He says he would have made his better had he known I would be photographing them. Eleanor used paint for a few, but markers are better for a toddler (no drying time), so I encouraged her to use them as much as I could. I used craft paint for mine, because you know I am hardcore like that. Also, Brandon says all of mine are hunchbacks. I say it’s better to see the arms from the front so they don’t look limbless. Tom-ay-to/tom-ah-to.

I put together a roundup of all my favorite clothespin and peg dolls, but I did it after I made mine. Now that I’ve seen how many good ones are out there, I might have to get my hands on some different shapes to expand our set.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Handpainted Wooden Clothespin Dolls | 30 comments

It was originally published in 1951 and though it is now out of print, it’s easy enough to find used copies for sale. I ordered one from eBay (a first edition copy!) with plans to use some of the illustrations inside for our party invitations. The title page had the perfect layout, so I scanned it, cleaned it up, and based our invitations off of it.

I printed them on cream colored paper and rounded the edges with a corner punch, then paired each invite with a burnt orange envelope.

I’ve created a free blank version, available for download below. You can print them four to a page (the second link has them laid out for you already), and the invitations will fit perfectly in an A2 envelope (like these).

• Train to Timbuctoo — Individual Blank Party Invitation

• Train to Timbuctoo — 4 Blank Party Invitations to a Page (4-Up)

These are for personal, non-commercial use only, falling under the Fair Use Copyright Act.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Train Party Invitations (Free Printable) | 55 comments

Sky Umbrella

Tibor Kalman’s Sky Umbrella is 20 years old. I remember seeing it in the MoMA catalog for the first time when I was 15. I was so taken by it that I begged my mother to buy it for me.

To my mom’s credit, she did come through with a sky umbrella, but it was not the Sky Umbrella. The shape was slightly different, the clouds not as beautiful, and the handle plastic instead of wood, but that was not its biggest affront. It was blue on the outside. Did she not know the how the umbrella’s symbolism struck me? Aye, the morose teenager with the dark, brooding exterior, braving the storm and cloaked in black — she contained an optimistic (though clandestine) scene beneath! An argument could have been made that I was “blue”, I suppose, or perhaps that I just had my head in the clouds but OH, THE HUMANITY!

What? I was 15. (Sorry, mom.)

So, yes, when MoMA asked if they could send me an umbrella to help spread the word, I happily accepted. You can enter SKY20 to save 20% on all versions of the Sky Umbrella, now through April 30. All proceeds support MoMA programs and exhibitions.

This is not a sponsored post. I agreed to accept an umbrella and write about it because I’m a fan of MoMA and their mission of educating the public about modern art and good design.. I had one of my most moving museum experiences there a few years ago, in Olafur Eliasson’s Take Your Time exhibit.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as Sky Umbrella | 26 comments

August seems so much like a toddler now, and Eleanor, a child. I love them so much, but moreover, I really like them.

I took these photos a couple of weeks ago. I tend to take photos when the house is picked up, not when toys are strewn about. I read other blogs and I think ‘in their house, the toys look artfully placed, and in my house, it looks like chaos and plastic.’ Looking at these photos though, I love the informality. This is how we live. This is what our living room usually looks like.

This is the environment my kids will remember, and it’s a pity I don’t document it more. If not for you, then for me. And for them.

© 2012, published by Making it Lovely as An Everyday | 57 comments