Uh-oh...

And down she falls.

Yesterday Little Berry was playing on her toy car that my mom (hi mom!) bought her. She stood up in the seat as I was stirring some boiling spaghetti...and fell. She chipped her front top tooth and now it seems to be causing her some sensitivity issues. I'm more than a little scared about taking her to the dentist. I don't want my daughter to be sedated...or drilled on...or scared either. I feel pretty awful. Hopefully (and I've been told) it's not that big of a deal. They should just be able to put a little cap on it/or file it down a little bit. I hope it is that easy.
(when this photo was taken, I had my foot on the car. I feel pretty stupid now for letting her do it at all. yes. I'm stupid)

Helping Haiti

For many of us, it is difficult to fathom the tragedy of living in poverty and the despairing conditions that face the people of Haiti on a daily basis. Right now, however, we need to reach out and help in any way we can. Understand this: each of us DOES have the power to help. By virtue of being untouched by the disaster, we are also in a position to affect the people who are on the ground working night and day just to save lives. We have the power to reach out to our networks of people and help support the organizations that are there fighting to pull people from the rubble and provide food/water/shelter/medical support. It seems the greatest current need is money. Money to buy diesel, water, money to get children and injured persons out.

Here is what I am proposing: Each of us has the power of our networks and I don’t know one single person who cannot spare $1. I am asking you to go to Real Hope For Haiti and donate $1 via the paypal button. This organization is helping with injuries, children, and running low on critical supplies. On an average day, their positive outreach is greater than anything I’ve ever exacted in my life. Please help them. If, once you get there, you feel compelled to give more than $1, I commend you. But I am asking you to give at least $1. And then to tag 10 (or more) people and ask them to do the same. Let’s pour their account full. Let’s make money not be an obstacle to saving lives.Reach out to your twitter followers, your facebook friends, your neighbor, your address book.

Please go. give. And ask your friends to do the same. I am working on setting up a ticker so that we can track this. Please leave a comment if you have donated, please please tag others to do the same. If ten of us can get ten more people to ask ten more people…we can exact real change quickly. If you’re sitting there thinking “I don’t want to go get my wallet” then SHAME ON YOU. You're as bad as those who don't care. That’s all I have to say.
Get up, and give!

Please let’s meet their needs.

101

My last post was my 100th post. I didn't even notice it. I guess that goes to show how fast things are moving these days. It's been feeling almost balmy here and this is such a wonderful thing because I was feeling so blue to be cooped up indoors all day every day. I'm sure it will not last, though when we were further East it certainly felt Springlike much sooner in the winter and I can't tell you how much I loved the way the city would fill our apartment in the winter. It made being inside seem like being just behind the curtain on stage to hear the rattling of the trucks on the freeway echoiing into our little space, filling the walls with the humming noises of someone else's adventure.
Little Berry loves being out of doors with me, brings me her shoes and my own, her jacket, the keys, just to get my attention that she wants to go walk. When it's bitter cold though she doesn't want anything to do with it, and squalls to be picked up so she can tuck her face into my neck and poke the freckles on the side of my face. She calls them each a "ball" though, or somedays, "murse?" which is Little Berry for nurse and I have no idea why she thinks my freckles are going to yield milk.
I'm in desperate want of a bicycle, I want a lovely vintage style one that's on display at Target and a sweet baby carrier that goes behind the seat. I've been spying on them at the Thrift stores and have found a few contenders but they all need work and they're not that much less than a new one here. So I'm saving my dollars and waiting, and when Spring comes and I have a summer to look forward to on flat roads of rural Mississippi (or Arkansas, who knows?) I will buy my bike and buckle in my Little Berry who by then will be quite a BIG Little Berry, and we will ride.
We're having that language explosion age, I've been warned about it before but it just slipped away from me that this is what's happening, until this morning I was putting laundry on the clothesline and she was standing a few feet away pointing at the sky and saying skyyyyeeeee? followed by burrrrd? 'reeeee? (tree)and turtle? In the past week or so, she's learned mouse, and keys, and socks (shocksh?) and cow as well as that cow's go Mooooo?! and points to their udders and says "Murse?". She can say Pig (pigsh!), which sounds a lot like her enthusiastic "fish!" and snort when she sees their picture. She spots airplanes in the sky that look like mere pinpricks in the clouds and shrieks about them until they've again faded into the mystery that is a cloud. This morning I was telling her something and I said the word "one"- I think I said "oops! That's only one shoe." And she said: "Two?" but she usually gets pretty lost after four.
I have two pieces to her little kitchen set painted a pretty white, and am waiting to paint the last, the stove. It is somewhat tedious because my minutes to do it are spare but the reward is great. She loves it immensely and has been pilfering from my silverware drawer every few minutes to play whatever games it is that gets her so wrapped up and immersed in taking things out and putting things back in again. I've decided to try my hand at making toy food for her. I have plenty of felt wool but I don't like the feel of wool toys enough to do that, so I've decided to use pre-knitted fabrics, like organic cotton sweaters I picked up at the thrift stores in heavy weight yarns and cut them apart to make them from. I will post photos of this when I'm done as well as a tutorial if I succeed.
Here's something to think about until I post again:
Which is cutest?
Little Berry, last January


OR: Little Berry this week

What you can buy for $38

We were at the thrift store this weekend, and in the back of the store without a ticket was this three piece wooden kitchen set. I picked out some other items-
some very sweet vintage books for Little Berry,

some sweaters for $.50 each for my girl,


some super dear fabric for baby skirts (or for my stash of hoarded super cute fabrics, I'n not sure which yet) a coffee carafe for a lady I follow on Twitter who had broken hers minutes before I walked into the store, And these:

I have been on the lookout for Mary Jane's for quite some time, just so I can look up the company and order myself a pair. These are too big for my girl just yet, but you can be sure I will hang onto them until she can fit them. I also found these very pretty vintage doves
which were in the Christmas ornament section for %75 off (I paid $1.50 for all of them) and I think they're very Valentines-ey.
Here's my last purchase: a vintage Vera scarf that I will probably sell for around $20 on Etsy (definitely worth the trip, right?)



I left the store happy about my finds and also a bit sad inside because I had just that morning decided I wanted a wooden kitchen playset for Little Berry. I saw this one and it set me thinking how much Little Berry would love one herself.
After we had lunch and went grocery shopping, it was still nagging me. So I picked up the phone and called the store. After several attempts to explain what I wanted, I was told it was still there. No one had bought it, though they had I suppose removed the ticket and changed their mind. I'm not sure what company this one is made by, but I convinced Papa Starbucks to haul us back to the Salvation Army, getting there right as they're trying to close. It's priced $40 for three pieces- not unreasonable since they usually retail for $150 per piece. Previous owners had painted it a *hideous* navy blue, over the original exposed wood. This has me a little bummed out, and the tin pan that serves as the sink basin is rusty. I approach the manager on duty and he says he will sell it to us for $30. SOLD. So sold, so fast.



Right now, it's in the middle of being primed and painted a pretty clean white. It will get little shelf linings and some apron hooks and I'm stalking stores wanting so badly to buy up little wooden fruits and veggies like these and keep telling Pappa Starbucks (who thinks this whole thing is ridiculous, frankly) that we should go to Ikea, where they have metal pots and pan sets, just right for our little kitchen. I'm cutting down on plastic toys and that makes these situations a little trickier, because it would be easy-peasy to grab a toy plastic shopping cart at Target and some plastic play food...instead I'm going to dig out the felt and try my hand at making some myself, and drool over this, and these and this and wish that I could crochet these myself . This is bad, really. Someone needs to turn my internet off!

The best vegan cake, ever.

Er, it was. Is. I do LOVE the flavor of this cake but it was pretty crumbly. Fluffy and light but perhaps I should have baked it in a deeper dish.







There are two main reasons I like vegan cakes...


You can let your Little Berry lick the spoon without the slightest concern for raw eggs.



And, even though
we're pretty much out of groceries, I had all the ingredients for this, except the vinegar. I simply left it out, though *if* I'd had pickles I probably would have used a tsp of picklejuice and just left out the salt. Here's the recipe with my modifications:

Cake
Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

1 cup all purpose flour
1/4 cup whole wheat flour
3/4 cup organic sugar
1/4 cup honey (you can use a whole cup of sugar and leave the honey out or do more honey and less sugar)
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup warm water
1 tsp vanilla extract
1/3 cup vegetable oil
mix together dry ingredients in a large bowl. In a small bowl, combine water, oil, vanilla and honey. Whisk with a fork until combined. Stir wet ingredients into dry ingredients, mix thoroughly. Ask your toddler to stop sticking her hand in your batter. Attempt to distract toddler with batter covered spoon and spend ten minutes trying to take her photo.
Pour into lightly oiled, floured baking dish, no idea how big it should be, bake on 350 for 20-30minutes.

I think if you have a good icing recipe mastered, icing (or glaze) would really help hold this cake together. Otherwise, just enjoy it. Toss in some chocolate chips to the batter or top with raspberries and ...oh my. That would be so yummy!

Here's the link to the original recipe:http://www.instructables.com/id/The-BEST-chococlate-cake-ever...that-happens-to-be/step1/Ingredients/