Summer Hair Cut

On the first Monday of vacation, R got her summer hair cut.

Hair damp from the shower and ready to go to the salon. The sticker on her shoulder has a line and says, Cut here.

Nine inches later, or lighter.

I think she likes it!

Mosaic Pots

I'm finally getting around to posting pics of the grouted garden pots. The first one was grouted in charcoal. The shiny, white pieces are mirror.

This one in a slate blue:

And then it was time to grout the bigger pot. But what color? I thought about sandstone.


Then I asked for advice and got a lot of ideas. After considering dark green, I settled on terracotta. Unfortunately, the bag of grout I got that was labeled terracotta turned out to be more of a dark, dull brick red, certainly fine for some project...well, I hope I will be able to use it again...but this really needed a warmer, more earth tone.

Baking bread

Last weekend in the midst of kids in tents, visits to area farmers' markets and a surprise water heater emergency (as if there's a such thing as a planned water heater emergency) I decided to bake bread. Not throw the ingredients in the machine and push a button bread, but three different risings and kneading bread. Bread that matured and became more complex and interesting through its longer, cooler rising times and over night stays in the fridge. I started the bread just after noon on Saturday as a half whole wheat and half unbleached white all purpose poolish (a watery starter that sits out and develops), and we ate it at dinner Monday night. Bread is a deceptively simple thing: flour, water, yeast, a little salt (unless you're in Tuscany, but that's a different story, and you can always just throw a few grains on a slice when your host or waiter isn't looking.) Serious bread makers usually have brands and types of flour they prefer, and some recipes very definitely specify bottled or spring water. This time, just by accident (water heater, remember?) I used bottled water in the poolish and in the dough itself. After the first rising of the dough, it was so big I didn't know if it would fit on my pizza stone.

Dough ready to go on hot stone

This is basically the America's Test Kitchen Rustic Country Bread with a little rye flour. The loaf was gorgeous.
Rustic country bread in the oven

However, while the bread was yummy, and made great toast for our artichoke-crab dip later in the week, the crumb was a little dense; it didn't have those big holes I thought it should have. I think I'd add a little more water next time.

To go with the bread...because after 3 days in the making, the bread was really the focus of the meal...I made a very fresh and light lentil and basmati rice soup with diced carrot, cumin and fennel seed, and diced yellow squash, shredded spinach and arugula from the garden. It was even well accepted by the 10 year old, and the cup of it that was left over was even better for lunch the next day.

Lentil spring vegetable soup

And yes, I finally got a hot shower.

Mosaic Garden Pots WIPs

Sunday I started working with thinset as an adhesive for the first time. In addition to being the correct adhesive for outdoor objects, I am enjoying working it for these pots over other glues I've tried for non-flat, non-horizontal surfaces. I am still getting used to it.

One of my biggest problems with something vertical, or 3d, is impatience! In fact, I have been known to try to rush things along, not let the pieces dry long enough before turning the work, mess everything up and get really frustrated....like a million times. So today I solved that problem to some degree. I just worked on two pieces at once.

The larger pot


One pot ready to grout, splotchy with thinset and another sealed and drying.

The pot to the right is now about 1/3 done with blue, lavender and blue, and white and blue tessera, as I alternated between that and the bigger green, black and white pot...much less frustrating to wait out the drying time that way. I worked out on my deck much of the day, in spite of the wasp that began hovering around and around under the table, until a little after two. It was 92 degrees and definitely time to come in. Of course my child hurried through her math this afternoon and ran outside to ride her bike.

Garden Harvest!

Today we woke up to our first daylily.

Everything in the garden has been growing like crazy with the warm (now hot!) weather and the rain. Besides all the lettuces, spinach and arugula we have been eating from the garden for over a month and a half now, this week we harvested our first two tomatoes and one yellow squash. Yippee!

Here's a look at the garden this morning:

This view is looking over the carrot greens and strawberries to...

...our daughter's cosmos.


More tomatoes to come from this Early Girl Bush plant.
The heirlooms are a little slower.


And more yellow squash. Mmmm.

Mixed Media Collages

Last week I worked on two pieces of art.

The first is this diptych that I haven't titled yet. I think I had some ideas in mind as I chose images and started working on it, but I can't remember now what they were. This is mostly acrylic with collage, ink, colored pencil and Caran d'arche water soluble wax crayon on canvas.

Aidan's Solo Exhibit!

We, of course, remember Aidan toddling around at 2 and 3 years old with a disposable camera in his hand. Today 12-year old Aidan has the opening for his second solo photography exhibit. On Monday The Santa Barbara Daily Sound did a front page story on him and his photography. The link will take you to his interview and to 2 nice pictures of him at home, surrounded by photos.

Some of his photography can be seen at his pbase site.

We just wish we could be in Santa Barbara this evening for his opening.
(I hear there are going to be homemade chocolate chip cookies!)

Congratulations Aidan!