Passover Beans

As a Newbie Jew, or Jewbie, I am always thinking about how to create a home for my children that is clearly Jewish while still being able to, um, eat Easter candy. I mean, come on! Don't even get me started on Cadbury, what with the Creme Eggs and the Mini Eggs and now the Mini Creme Eggs, and all the variations of cremes and eggs that a girl could ever dream off.... drooooollllll... But, we don't celebrate Easter. And there were bags of Jolly Rancher and SweeTart jellybeans looking all lovely and springy and just begging to come home with me. So, come home with me they did (that sounds like yoda-speak. And by the way, according to the Which Star Wars Character Are You? on FB, I am Yoda. Or rather, Yoda I am.). I will train my daughters to associate jellybeans with Springtime! Easter, schmeaster.

Also have been thinking about coloring and decorating eggs, which is so fun. A hard-boiled egg features on the Passover Seder plate, so I think I can somehow rock it Modern Jew-style. Maybe decorate eggs with images of the 10 plagues? Little frogs, locusts... um, death... Still working on it. Stay tuned.

And I still have to figure out how to sell everyone on the idea of Hanukkah Angels, so I can bust out my collection of Wendt und Kuhn orchestra angels. That's a tough one.

So here are the happy springy beans who live with us (though their numbers are dwindling, as they suffer from an incurable outbreak of Delicious-itis).



Delma noticed them the second she walked into the room. For some reason she calls jellybeans "magic beans."


Then began the coveting of the magic beans.


And the smelling of the magic beans.


And the "Why can't I have the magic beans?"


And the "Screw you, Mom, I am taking the magic beans."


And then, because it was lunchtime, she asked for a spoon so that she could feed her magic beans their lunch. She didn't try to eat them, she just wanted to love and nurture them. I guess we're doing something right after all.

Hattonettes

I made some dresses this week for the wee Hattonettes. I used the Flower Girl Dress from Weekend Sewing. Oh, such a great book. I can't wait to make some more garments from this book. Very inspiring.

This pattern seemed to run small... The size 3 bodice that I made for Delly ended up fitting Mimi, who wears 12-mo clothes. I made the size 4 for Delly, who normally wears size 2 or 3.



Instead of sewing the straps, I attached them just to the back and put snaps in the front, so I can extend the life of the dresses by making the straps longer as these rapidly growing get taller.



These dresses are for my great pally Moira's wedding tomorrow. I'm looking forward to the photographer getting some nice shots of them.



And here's some photographic evidence that Beany does in fact occasionally crack a smile.

cuff

Here's a little snizzy that I made a few weeks ago. I used my new handy-dandy Snapsetter, which totally rocks. I'm a little snap-happy. I might just not ever learn to make buttonholes now.

6-month-old bean

Who loves 6-month-old beans? We do. We call Mimi The Bean because her middle name is Binah. Anyhoo, she is 6 months old. Wow.



Josh and I don't know where this kid came from, she is so unlike Delma that we often are at a loss as to how to relate to her at all. She is a serious little thing, a tough nut to crack, she is not quick with a smile at all. She really makes us work for it, which of course turns us into maniacal baboons trying to get a reaction from her. And that chin! Those ears! That kooky face! Who is this person??



In the past month or so she's started babbling like crazy, sitting on her own, eating solids, she stopped crying in the car (the BEST development so far!), and the other night she finally started sleeping at night without her swaddle. Those long, painful new-baby days are mostly behind us now.

Happy Half-Birthday, Bean!

crafty club

I get so jealous when I read in blogs about people having little craft clubs where they make lovely things for each other, swap crafty goodies, get together to do projects, etc... So I decided to reach out to some of my crafty lady friends to start our own club. Round I included 4 of us, the others came to my house a few weeks ago and we made our exchanges and drank champagne/blueberry/pomegranate cocktails and chitty-chatted for hours. It was lovely.

Josefa made us each these beautiful bags with Japanese fabrics outside and silk inside, perfect for packing jewelry in when traveling. Check out the cool button detail!



Moira made us each cool pouches. She learned to sew zippers for this project, good girl! Each zipper also got a sweet little felt heart fob. And she somehow didn't think this was "enough" (as if!) so she also gave us each cute bracelets. Delma fell in love with my yellow bracelet and it was days before I could go anywhere near it.



Sarah made us all bags using hex hinges, which are so totally rad. For mine she used vintage fabric.


I made little fabric baskets for everyone using this pattern, and different fabrics for everyone. Of course I took NO pictures. Duh. Maybe one of my girls will snap a pic and send it to me??

How we roll

On Valentine's Day, Josh and I went up to City Steam in Hartford. On weekends they have a comedy club in the basement, the Brew Ha-Ha club, and we love it there. So we left a sick and sad Delma and fussy Mimi with the sitter, and headed on out for a long overdue date.

Food was good, the comedy was good. When we'd finished our meals, the waitress came over and asked if we were interested in dessert. I think I screamed YES! before she'd even finished asking. She said they had a special that night. "Spicy Lentil Chewable Pampers." All I heard was the "spicy lentil" part and was very confused. I asked her to repeat it. She did. I cracked up, because it's from an SNL skit from a few weeks ago that Josh and I loved. The waitress handed me a diaper, all wrapped up like after it's been used. Laughing, I opened it up to find a jewelry box containing these:


And here, in Still Life with Ambivalent Cat and Ice:


I should probably have taken a picture of me actually wearing them, because these photos make them look small, and they are not.

Oh, I love my husband. Those who know us well know that he proposed to me by stuffing a diamond ring into the decapitated head of a stuffed monkey on Valentine's Day. That doesn't sound even remotely romantic, I know, but it's perfectly "us." That's how we roll.