Months are 30ish days long.

    Last April I jumped on board a 30 dresses in 30 days group project on Facebook. A friend started this a few years ago and I had admired another friend's photos that she would post when she was part of this challenge. The premise is that you wear a dress every day for the 30 days of April and take a photo of yourself in the dress and post the photo on Facebook, on the 30 Dresses in 30 Days group page. It took a few years to realize I could join in this event and when I did I fell in love with a few things. 

    My camera was the first thing. Being an artist and a stay at home mom can be frustrating. I have a hard time finding time to be creative or make art while I am caring for my alien. Teaching him all the ways of planet earth takes up a lot of time and brain power, not to mention energy. So "finding" my camera was a gift. Taking photographs is fast, it is immediate gratification, especially when they are digital. I am a painter so taking a photograph that looked like a painting was so soothing to me. So much less work than actually painting. I tried every setting on my camera, in all different lighting and settings. I learned a lot. 

    I remembered what it was like to put together an outfit for the day. One that I enjoyed coming up with. Most days comfort is king. But there was a time when I had time to "play" in my closet and come up with interesting things to wear. For the month of April, I played dress up. I wore dresses and skirts I had not worn in years. I fell in love with my clothes again.

    Having an assignment for the day that had nothing to do with my son, my husband, my house, or my dog, was GOOD for me. Every day, I spent time deciding what to wear, then deciding where to take a picture, then I would take a mizzillion pictures and pick one to post. It was not easy to take an interesting and flattering picture of myself every day. It took some patience and thought.  I fell in love with a daily creative outlet. 

   My favorite day was going to a small graveyard by myself and running and jumping around in the cold barefoot..... I would not have done that otherwise. Running around a graveyard barefoot on a 40* day would not have made it onto my list of things to do. And it wasn't where I planned to go that day, it just happened. And one of the last days, I went to a park in town with my friend who I enlisted in the 30 dresses endeavour, with 30 balloons as the sun was setting, wearing sequins. That would not have been on my to do list either.

                                

    Of course as April ended I thought I must come up with next month assignment! I came up with the idea of doing a portrait a day. I invited people to join me. So many people jumped on board on Facebook. The group page is still there, 176 people are in the group. 31 Portraits in 31 Days. And although I started off strong, it sort of peetered out for me. I had a hard time keeping up. I had such high hopes. But after the dresses of April, my house suffered. It was a mess and there was no food in the fridge and my clothes were everywhere. It took quite a bit of extra time. And the portraits were not as much fun. I don't know why exactly. I drew some, painted some, took some photographs too. I thought I would paint them all. 

   I did love seeing everyones posts and at the end of the month the portraits group started a new group and the assignment was landscapes for the month of June. I bowed out. I couldn't keep up. 

                                         

    I have a vague memory of deciding to do a daily monthly assignment that I totally bailed on. I cannot even remember when or what it was.

    Last month I decided to write haikus every day. This seemed easy enough but still I missed some days. And some days, I wrote 3 or 4....

you've driven me mad

meet me in the snow filled field

leave your gloves at home

let my mind rest now

just scooch over a little

I might  miss something

answer me quickly

this loud calling through the woods

may wake all the bears

     Lately I have been thinking about taking photographs of things I do every day. Ordinary things. Then somehow I got into a conversation with someone about those kinds of photographs. Other peoples photographs of their every day life. How interesting they can be. I think they are interesting and also boring. And there is something about the things we do every day that are boring and lovely at the same time. This day to day life that can be so dull, that I may miss some day. I think about the day to day things I used to do, in other houses or apartments, with other people that were in my life that are not around anymore. 

    The idea of using my camera every day makes me happy and hopeful. So, I have decided for the month of February, to take photographs every day of everyday things I do. Either things I do every single day or things I do at least a few days a week. I imagine it will be a 28 day waltz with a tripod around my house. So far, I have 11 people joining me on Facebook to post a photo every day of their own everyday. February Everyday. And this time I want to write about it. Because I am itching to write. Something. 

    Happy February. Another 28 days of winter. 28 days of everyday living, God willing. 

   

   

Astronaut Cake

   Last week, I whipped up a quick and simple yogurt bundt cake for a friend's birthday, in a super flurry before my little one and I ran out to the gym, where we would see her. Brought that hot out of the oven cake right into the gym. A gym without a cake is a safe place. A birthday without a cake is a sad thing.  She works there, so we brought it along. But making a cake with a three year old is tricky business. If the three year old does not get to eat the cake, it is a bit like torture. Even though he got to lick the spoon and the bowl. And we were invited to go over our friends house after nap time to try the cake, which was delicious. 

   (Here's the recipe for the yogurt cake, 4th one down on the page. Really nice. I think I used  3/4 C of sugar to cut down a little bit. http://chinadoll-bakingdairy.blogspot.com/search/label/Cakes)

    So, he wanted was his own birthday cake.  "It is not Nikki's birthday! It is my birthday!" Yes, I know, you are three. Every day is your birthday. And everyone else's birthday is yours. I know. "I want an astronaut cake for my birthday!" Of course you do. 

   So, why not. It's not like we had anything better to do than bake a cake. I mean, another cake. Our days at home this winter are so lack luster, I must say. He takes a long, fantastic nap in the middle of the day which I wouldn't trade for anything because it gives me time to rest my brain. But when he gets up it's nearing dark and it takes him some time to wake and be ready to "do" something. So, they are funky days. We bake cakes. We eat cakes. I usually eat too much of the cake and then throw it away or make my husband bring it to work. I never wonder why I can't lose those last five pounds of post baby weight. I know exactly why. 

    Even though his birthday is in July and we then talked about  having an astronaut party at the campsite where we'll be for his birthday, we were going to need to make an astronaut cake right away. You know, to practice. He is still wondering when we are going to cook hot dogs at the campsite for his birthday party. I will do a lot of things for this kid, like bake and eat many cakes, but I will not go camping in January.

    First thing we had to decide was what flavor cake would it be? After listing many flavors he jumped on ginger bread. A ginger bread cake with frosting. It would look like the moon and we would put astronauts on it. So I found a recipe for ginger cake that looked pretty good. Here is the recipe for the cake. It turned out to be really good. My husband loved it, I love it and of course the little guy just wanted to eat the frosting. He ate the cake too, but mostly the part that had the frosting attached to it. 

                     

     http://www.ecurry.com/blog/desserts-sweets/spiced-ginger-cake/

* I used whole wheat pastry flour, I did not have candied ginger so I omitted that, I left out the pepper too since it was for a little guy, although I bet it would be really good with it in there, I replaced the vegetable oil with coconut oil, and I used 1/2 C molasses and 1/2 C honey instead of the sugar.*

    The frosting, I had to make up with things I had in the fridge and cabinets. It was not great but it was okay. I learned you can add flour to frosting to thicken it instead of powdered sugar. White flour is okay but oat flour is not. You can also add cornstarch. Too much yogurt will make your icing too runny. You know, experiment frosting. By the time it resembled frosting, I had so much of it, it was ridiculous. I had a great sort of healthy recipe for frosting somewhere but it seems to have gotten lost in the shuffle of bookmarks, pins and cookbooks. The frosting had powdered sugar in it which kicked my ass. I ate spoonfuls of it. Dumb crack sugar. I was able to slowly throw it away. I should know better. 

   And here is the pretty cake we made. And the little love who requested it.