-
Loved: pipsticks
Pipsticks, a subscription for sticker lovers, was begun by a graphic designer who hunted for great stickers for her children and fell down her very own rabbit hole of an idea. She started a company sourcing cool stickers, packing them up, and sending out them to the delight of children everywhere.
I took an instant liking to this little project, besides the mom-invented part which is super, because the packaging is so cheerful and fun.
One envelope lasted us several weeks as we parceled out “two sheets” at a time for ferry rides, special treats with babysitters, and quiet time activities. Included in each envelope are a few sheets of paper and a postcard to decorate, an easy addition that is just right for those of us who fling distractions in our bags as we walk out the door and hope for the best.The price runs between $13-15 a month, with at least 15 sheets of stickers included every time. For you bargain-hunting-whizzes, I know this is not a total steal. But for a mom who wishes she had stickers on hand much more often and who can never remember which store nearby even sells stickers, (me, me) it’s perfect.I think it would make a fantastic gift to request from loved ones because 1/ Ultimately it adds nothing to the toy pile. 2/ Lux asked over and over “WHO sent us these wonderful stickers??” Such a fun thing to get in the mail regularly and say they came from Grandma and Grandpa or an old friend.If you try Pipsticks, and you sign up for a Club or Family membership, enter the code DEAR at checkout and get your first month free. Win.
Pipsticks sent me two free months of stickers to see if I liked the service, posting about them was my own decision. Hooray.
-
nods, bows
Aside from under the kitchen table sweeping up black beans, here are some places I’ve been lately:
I answered a few revealing questions for the “our favorite moms who blog” feature over at Iviebaby (most stylish crib sheets in the land).
I wrote a Literary City Guide to Boston: a guide with a bookish flair (my favorite kind!). All her guides are fabulous, I love her style.
I created what I believe to be the most pleasant clickable way to plan travel–Ideal Itinerary boards on Pinterest for Bridget. The combo of foursquare images + map backdrop + pinterest organization = dynamite….in my oh so humble opinion.
Back in March I wrote up a dream for my children someday for Nina’s sweet blog Wee Mountains.
These aren’t really interviews but I’m FOREVER grateful to all of you hard working bloggers who link to me now and again, and again. It means a lot, despite near-radio silence on my end. I just want to write all these down here for a minute:
-
Longest Shortest Time, continues
I gave money to the kickstarter of the Longest Shortest Time podcast awhile back, but I did not expect her forthcoming episodes to be so, so good. Rewriting your birth story? So important, so powerful. The one about a late term, stillborn birth? Possibly the most beautiful thing I’ve ever heard over headphones. I was weeping, obviously, but I’ve thought of that episode every time someone has mentioned a death to me since. It changed the way I thought about mourning. The one about how to talk to other moms without boasting? Kindly discusses a difficulty I brush up against every time I hang out with other moms. INTERVIEWS INA MAE AND COMPLAINS?? Amazing. Did not know that was possible in this life.
This is very cool stuff happening over there, in 30 minute increments. Well worth your time.
-
Ruby (& frankie too)
If you’re missing my 52 photos of the girls, please do go check out this mom’s tumbler of her daughters. There is magic in these photos. Looking at them reminds me so much of passing moments at our house; I can begin to see the sticky slippery affection/disregard mess that is universal with siblings (and how much of life is lived on the floor at these ages!).
-
Blue Bottle Tips
Extremely enlightening things I learned while browsing Blue Bottle Coffee’s brewing guides:
- French Press coffee should only sit/brew for four minutes
- Pour all of the coffee out of the French Press as soon as it’s done brewing
- Pour-over coffee should take 2.5-3 minutes of pouring to brew
- A Moka Pot (Italian stovetop) is best done with already hot water
- Pulling a perfect espresso shot is an art form.
The writing is a little snobby, but in a charming hopeless-nerd way. The photography is amazing. And the knowledge (particularly that French Press bit) is transformative. Nice website, guys!
-
favorite podcasts
One of my favorite things about living in the year 2013 is podcasts. Among my favorites:
- spilled milk which is like having two giggly foodie pals over for dinner on the back porch
- the sounds in my head which is like listening to the hippest radio station with a goofy self-deprecating DJ and no ads!
- the writer’s almanac which, though just five minutes long, is like drinking a large glass of pinot noir while looking at the mountains
- the longest shortest time which is like talking on the phone to your funny best friend about how your baby won’t stop crying and having your friend successfully calm you down and make you laugh.
I want to highlight the longest shortest time as I have a bunch of readers who are new moms and because she’s just launched two cool campaigns.
The first: free cards that you can send for to jump start conversations in playgroups, library meet-ups, drop off at your OB’s office, pin on the bulletin board at your local playground, and the like. Printed on heavy card stock with funny quotes from the show, they are beautifully done:
Read more about those and order them for free right here.
And: she just launched a kickstarter campaign so she can afford to begin a whole new season of episodes. I love Hillary’s style–she has a wonderfully relaxed way of interviewing and asking all the questions you hope she’ll ask. One of my favorite episodes had personal interviews with the two sides of the sleep-training debate. It was so refreshing for me to hear it all hashed out like that. I think once you have the chance to listen to a few episodes, you’ll be pledging for a second season, just like I did!
by the way, I use Apple’s free podcast app to easily download and listen to podcasts on my iphone when I’m cleaning up the kitchen, driving, or walking around in circles waiting for Joan to fall asleep.
-
oh life
Because each day of My First Week is uniquely woven with its own challenges, such as:
- go outside
- go outside and go to the pediatrician
- go outside, get caught in rainstorm, find out Joan hates rainstorms
- drive to the midwife and gently rear-end someone and resolve that midst newborn screams
- go the grocery store with one in the cart and one in the sling
- (and it’s only Wednesday!)
…I’ve been trying to jot down daily life notes more frequently. Of course this is the same goal I’ve had for awhile, and to that end I’ve used this easy set-up offered by Oh Life since last year:
Nice notes, but tragically widely interspersed, right? Once you sign up, Oh Life emails you at the end of every day and asks “How’d your day go?” Just respond to the email and they compile it all for you in a pseudo-journal (skeuomorphism!) style. Despite all our complaining, the internet is still full of great free things, I think.
It’s decompressing for me too. I find that the wonderful moments bob to the surface of my memory once I’ve written down a few of the more embarrassing and chaotic ones. For example, in the case of the unexpected rainstorm: after we arrived at our friends house totally drenched with Joan screaming, I settled on to their couch and watched Lux learn to cut out hearts and airplanes in sugar cookie dough. Soon it smelled like baking cookies and my sling, Lux’s shorts, and bunny (of course) were spinning in their dryer, and I decided I didn’t need to go to the grocery store that day after all.
And that’s really all this week adds up to, I think. Feeling embarrassed, exposed, disorganized, messy, and learning to love it or ignore it, as the case might call for.
-
5 Links
Happy weekend! We’re going to Maine and it’s going to rain but I still want to do everything we did last time to the letter. And stop by the More & Co shop in Portland, and Cape Porpoise Outfitters on the way home. And maybe pick some strawberries.
1/ Momfilter has an interview with the directors of the Birth Story. When is that documentary coming to Boston? I might just have to buy it on iTunes.
2/ This pretty pretty movie preview sent to me by Kellyn.
3/ This spring playlist by Kinfolk magazine.
4/ If I can write something like this by Kim Foster about my daughters making me breakfast someday, all will be well.
5/
Hot summer bedrooms (not hot like sexy, hot like stuffy and “I waited the whole school year for summer and now this feels miserable, and it’s sunny but everything is not automatically fixed”). Summer homes and cottages, camp, secret neighborhood hangout spots like bridges, overpasses, rivers, and cemeteries. Feeling homesick. Taking sad baths. “Last Days of Disco” by Yo La Tengo/everything by Yo La Tengo. Miranda July’s short stories.Gerhard Richter‘s paintings that look like old photographs. Mark Borthwick, Corinne Day, Ryan McGinley, and Sally Mann. Overalls, white cotton dresses, chain-link fences, the beach, lighthouses, clotheslines, backyards, watercolors, pencils, butterflies and butterfly nets, seashells, the pool and all the gross pool chairs, homemade lemonade, sunflowers, dandelions, straw, fields, all those dirty-looking flowers, and those vaguely Scandinavian floral patterns that you find on dish towels and shit.
-Tavi’s Editor’s Letter about Longing and Summer.
-
Escape
Do you have blogs you visit to escape? Some of the blogs I visit, I read every word, and then there’s some where the photos and I sit together for awhile and my eyes mull in the colors. Like listening to an album, but visually. Usually this ends up being relaxing and inspring. Sometimes I get overwhelmed and jealous. It’s a fine line, and I find it is up to the tone of the writer to make it work well. 101cookbooks is one that inspires me. She’s much healthier and more intentional than I’ll ever be, but I still feel comfortable in her presence.
In this case, I’m inspired to get some more interesting glassware. Photos below, the rhubarb & rosewater syrup, and the blood orange gin sparkler.
-
5 Links
The internet has been down in our apartment since last Tuesday. I was trying not to panic, but I was definitely panicking. It’s back at last, and the good news is I have a bunch of stuff I want to post this week since I was so unfairly suppressed and sequestered last week.
In honor of its return, I thought I’d post a few things I’ve enjoyed (read via iPhone) in the last week.
This little collection of food photos with the stories behind them, by Youngna Park at First We Feast–she’s the best.
Kate’s dispatches from pregnancy-nausea-induced-couch-living made me laugh. Oh nausea–you’re so funny from far, far away.
Lisa’s post about useful things, and the small things behind them. Maybe if I get some good silver polish I will soon have a bucket with champagne chilling as well.
Betsy’s post at Eco-Novice about what she has bought and sold on Craigslist over the years. Oddly intriguing in that other-people’s-business way. I’d like to be someone who managed to use Craigslist more. (if you’re in Boston, I’m a fan of Crocodile Tears who super-curates local craigslist stuff and posts almost every day.)
This morning we went to the Brimfield Antique Fair; we seem to go to almost every spring and fall. I’ve read a lot of bloggers post-Brimfield recaps but I just loved Amanda Soule’s approach: what she wanted, why she bought it, how she used it.