Quick Embroidery

I have a few onesies for Victoria that are very plain. I enjoy embroidering things, so of course it all came together in this little blue bird that I put together during one of Victoria's naps.
I was going to have the little blue bird sing some notes, but we have been focusing on our French over here, so I decided that he was going to have to be a French blue bird saying hello.
And of course when I think French, I think elementary school cursive... It was such a part of my education while I lived in France as a little girl, and I love the look of it.

Victoria is now walking (running is more like it!) and so all the pictures I tried taking of her with the shirt were completely blurry. I finally managed to take some after she passed out on the pile of laundry to be folded! Such glamorous modeling...

Trampoline!

We are lucky enough to have access to our friend's new trampoline and Victoria is in love... I might as well just let the pictures speak for themselves:

First....

First duckling of the season! Spotted a few days ago at the park we walk to every day. He was all by himself, no brothers or sisters yet, and his mom was not letting him go anywhere far.
I love watching the Spring babies appear!

We also were lucky enough to spot the first swallows of the season, of course my photography skills leave to be desired, and as they were swooping and flying all over the place I did not get a chance to get a good photo of them. But I was so overjoyed to see them as they are simply my favorite birds to watch in the Spring.

A new discovery: Bleach Dyeing

I promised a very long time ago a good friend of mine a cute dress with a print of the Elder Sign on it.
I knew that I was going to use bleach to make the print since I wanted that specific look of spreading stars that you can get with spraying bleach on black clothes.

So armed with a small bottle of a 50/50 solution of bleach and water I started spraying a cute black dress that I thought would work well for the project (this takes a lot of faith that everything will go well, believe me! I am not one to enjoy destroying anything, so not being sure that this would work was a bit scary).

I simply cut out the shapes that I wanted out of cardboard and set them on the dress, sprayed around and over them and waited for things to dry.
The Elder Sign is a bit abbreviated as I am not quite sure how to get small details in yet, usually it was a flame inside the star. I added a few tentacles to the dress as well as I liked the contrast of the black and rust color that was coming out. And then I decided to make another shirt for her. She just adopted a hedgehog... so I made a "hedgehog love" shirt for her.

The first dress was 100% cotton and took forever to dry. The bleach solution was also not working very strongly on it, so I actually added a few drops of pure bleach here and there. The shirt on the other end was a polyester mix and ended up changing colors really fast, I had to rinse it out almost immediately for fear of creating too much color change.

Here's what I came up with, I think they ended up quite nice and hope my friend will love them.

Baby's First Sushi!

We are very lucky to have a diverse community of friends around us. 

Last week-end Victoria experienced her first sushi thanks to her friend Mika’s family, whose dad is Japanese and prepared the entire meal for us.

Victoria tasted seaweed salad, which I adore and she did not. She was at first not too sure about Miso soup either, but then decided she would finish the entire bowl. After those we had sashimi and sushi rice. The sushi rice might have very well been the best I have ever tasted, and the fish selection was perfect. Victoria loved the salmon and the fatty tuna, but left the other fish for me.

She discovered salmon roe rolls as well and proceeded to eat the little eggs one by one. After her first roll of roe, she pointed to the others on the table, signed more and promptly ate the second roll I handed her.
It seems that I’ll have to get sushi as a treat more often!

This Moment-Kitty Sees!

{this moment}- A Friday ritual. A single photo -no words- capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor, and remember.
If you are inspired to do the same, leave a link to your 'moment' in the comments for all to find and see

Sand Dough...

I don't know quite what to call it, but we made a kind of Moon Dough the other day that Victoria absolutely loved!
I grabbed one bag of flour and mixed it with one bottle of baby oil (normal size, not jumbo). I am not one for exact measurements so when I saw the items were about the same measurements as the recipe I had seen online I just poured the bag and bottle out in the bowl and started mixing. The texture was absolutely great. I loved playing with that dough almost as much as Victoria did. And as another mom pointed out it does leave your hands baby smooth when you are done playing, which is always a bonus.
I actually remember buying some moon dough for friends kids a few years back and not being nearly as excited about the texture as I was with this simple recipe. Plus, if you go to the dollar store and get your items from there you can make a huge amount of dough for next to nothing!

So remember:
-1 bag of flour
-1 bottle of baby oil
Makes for some happy kids:

Victoria had the best time flinging the dough everywhere, since it is pretty light it is very easy to throw in the air and watch fall back, which she enjoyed immensely.
Her friend who is older (5) loved the feel of it and molding it into cups, fitting the cups together, and making towers out of them. Victoria could not believe her friend was not interested in throwing it all over the place!