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this morning was a morning for two slices of toasted sourdough market bread smothered with butter, piping hot tea and poached eggs whilst drooling over the latest toast + home online catalog.  i'm particularly fond of the soft flannel hot water bottle cozies and all the photos of the french farm-looking breakfasts with washed linen napkins and hand blown tumblers that make me think of lazy sunday mornings when i was a student in paris and had time, on occasion, to sit around reading.  funny, that's what i'm doing this morning.  reading.  sipping tea.  only, i'm sneaking it in between all the other things i know i'm supposed to be doing, so the whole experience is layered with guilt, which can either make it that much more tantalizing, i suppose, or otherwise so much less so, depending on how one chooses to look at it. 

speaking of reading...

today, i have promised myself that i am going to bike down to that coffee shop i love so much and i am going to dive into that pile of parenting books i've recently acquired.  for some reason, i am unable to do this at home.  probably because there are a million other things that need tending to and i get distracted and keep putting it off, but no, i'm going, books in tow, so there are no excuses.  i need to read and re-read about active listening and letting go of power struggles (because, after all, i'm the adult and quite capable of walking away from such things, one would think),  and firm boundaries and the different loving forms of discipline that seem to work better for different ages.  yes.  i need to read about these things, because i need all the help that i can get and i want all the help that i can get.  i hope some of those books are gems. 

if not, there is always this site, which is pretty spectacular. 

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my girlfriend's daughter celebrates turning 11 tomorrow.  she has requested cards and envelopes and i looked at a few of my favorite stationary shops and found nothing and then i thought, what am i doing?  i have so many fun things right here at home i can put together for her!   so my eldest and i worked on these sweet gifts yesterday;  glassine envelopes filled with stars and stickers from here and library cards from here.

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Comments

[christina]

hello friend,
how have you been? things here on your blog, look wonderful.
she will love the stationary you came up with. i know i do. : )

[alexandria]

These gifts of cards are so thoughtful and beautiful. I hope that you were able to sneak away to read.

[tifanie]

hi christina,

so nice to see you. i just spent some time on your beautiful blog and it just gets better and better each time i look at it. your photos and words are quite inspiring.

thank you for the sweet comment about the cards. yes, i think she did like them. i know my daughter and i had fun making them, so i think those good feelings come through in the gift.

enjoy the last few days of summer,
tifanie

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[tifanie]

hi alexandria,

thank you for saying that. i got so frustrated driving around, looking in shops and coming up empty handed and having wasted precious hours, and then i remembered my own collection of cards and things at home, ready to be turned into a sweet gift. things i had bought for my etsy shop customers, once i finally get my little store up and running again. anyway, i think i just need to get into the headspace of seeing what i can put together first, from what i already have, and then seek outward. trying to get there. im a little too used to being a consumer, i think. ah well...

your blog continues to be an enormous inspiration. thank you for keeping it up.

have a lovely tuesday,
tifanie

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[urban organica]

i love them! i so love glassine. tonight the boys began making some advent crafts & asked for some cool paper. i brought down some stash & was feeling smugly proud of myself that i'm so free with the good stuff before i saw some translucent vellum hiding in there. next thing you know i'm sneaking the package off like a naughty squirrel. so much silly guilt in pride in the land of crafty motherhood. i wouldn't mind that typewriter, either, actually.