It was a quiet sunday. The rain subsided the night before and the house was flooded with light. We spent the morning dyeing eggs.

Claudine’s been going to class at Mia’s school since September and despite the fact that she’s been going once a week for 7 months, she’s still shy in the classroom setting. I’ve seen some small progress, but sometimes it’s a bit frustrating because I know how brilliant she is (haha, doesn’t every parent say that?), but in class she is like a little lump. She really loves the painting portion of class, however, and she becomes really focused and serious about her painting. It may take more time and I’ve seen her exhibit rare instances when she comes out of her shell, but it would be great if one day people could actually see the awesomeness that is Claudine.

And we dropped off these packages of cardamom marshmallows, rose hearts, and label samples to Martha Stewart Weddings today. Like most press inquiries, some things pan out and some things don’t, but it’d be really cool if our marshmallows did make it into the photoshoot. Most of our wedding favor clients have chosen to do their own labels, but I quickly made up some samples over the weekend for today’s delivery upon their request. They may end up becoming templates for labels that we can offer, in addition to the cookies and sweets that make nice wedding favors.

And it’s completely thrown me for a loop. I can’t remember being this sick in a long time and it’s been 3 straight bed-ridden days with no signs of getting better. I’m grateful that work is a little slow right now, but when you’re in a sick fog of fever, chills and lots of coughing, your mind tends to wander to the strangest of places. When I was a kid, I used to hallucinate whenever I had high fevers – bodies emerging from walls, arms stretched and coming towards me in bed. Pleasant, huh? I still remember those hallucinations clearly (and I swear it stemmed from watching The Wiz with Michael Jackson. Wasn’t there a scene like that in the beginning? Or did I just totally make that up?). Thankfully, I haven’t had hallucinations like that in a long time. With nothing to do but lie here and rest, however, I’ve been trolling the internet out of boredom and catching up on celebrity gossip (did you know that Milo and Hayden from Heroes broke up?), reading blogs (seems like everyone is pining for spring), and the news (quite frightening, actually).

One of the things that I’ve been pondering while laying in bed is making mobiles. I made this one with birds 3 years ago and I would like to make more. Perhaps it was our trip to the Whitney and sitting down with the kids for what seemed like quite a bit of time watching the Calder sculptures gently move. They were mesmerized and we sat there very quietly and watched, which these days is no small feat considering the recent bout of hyper energy that is Mia. But for now, I will file this away for another time when I am not one with the couch. Off to bed.

We had a great day yesterday. Seriously, it was the best birthday yet and I’m convinced more than ever that simple is just fine when it comes to birthdays. The birthday banner became cupcake toppers for the school party and I’m going to allow myself a little pat on the back with that one – I am really into the whole idea of cupcake toppers and it made the birthday spread that much more festive. As part of the celebration, the kids decorated chef hats and paper cups, and Mark brought the juicer and all kinds of fruits and vegetables for a live juicing demo where each kid got to pick their own juice combination. What’s cool about our juicer is that you can shove a whole apple and juice it so the effect was quite impressive to the kids. I think we got a little ambitious by bringing in spinach, ginger, kiwis and beets when most kids chose apple with a combination of strawberry, but it was all good.

Later that night, we went for sushi at Mia’s favorite neighborhood Japanese restaurant (she made sure to tell the waitresses that too). As a surprise at the end of the meal, they brought out this crazy candle flower thing that when lighted, shot sparkles in the air (was too late in the photo taking to catch the sparkles). It then unfolded like a flower with candles lighted on each petal and slowly rotated around. OMG. We had never seen anything like it and we were all standing back a bit afraid, not knowing what would happen when this thing got lighted. It was magnificent. And when the entire restaurant stopped and sang happy birthday, it made this newly turned 5 year old very very happy.

Miss Mia is 5! She’s sassy and funny and so many things that Mark and I are not. I still don’t get how we made a kid that is as outgoing and sometimes hyper as she is, but we wouldn’t have her any other way.

We had a very small and casual brunch over the weekend with Mia’s 2 best friends. We decided to keep it simple and small with brunch items and cake (lemon curd with lavender buttercream). There will be a little party for her at school today. Done. And she was very happy with all of it. As a little surprise I made this birthday banner for Mia late at night using some construction paper and decorative scraps. I’m thinking of turning the banner into cupcake toppers for school today. More birthday celebrations to come!

This is an experiment for sure, but I made these printable pdf recipe cards, available only in our etsy shop. When purchased, you receive the digital file in pdf format and all you need is a color printer, paper, ruler & knife (or scissors) and a touch of glue to make as many Valentine’s Day greeting cards as you want. I’ve been looking at the popularity of DIY printable downloads with interest and with the encouragement of my Etsy/Twitter friends, particularly LittleBrownPen, who have a fantastically successful etsy store, decided to try out recipe greeting cards. I can see these as sets of thematic recipes introduced every month or so (or as much as my time allows). As mentioned in an earlier post, I would love to experiment with our etsy shop now that we have 2 other online stores. This is a first little baby step.

After cleaning, organizing and decorating all week long, the photoshoot for the Japanese magazine took place this morning. I didn’t get to do as many Christmas crafts as I would have liked, but I did make garlands out of coffee filters after seeing it here, and made colorful felt garlands for Mia’s room. I also managed to sew a couple of throw pillows at the last minute from the fabric scraps I purchased at the holiday trunk show from Hable Construction. While the photoshoot ended up being a lot of fun, it was also a good excuse to clean the apartment from top to bottom and purge the place of baby toys and the changing table. I took a few photos during the shoot that are posted here because the issue won’t be out for another year, and maybe I was down on our place when I posted this because we were in the middle of Holiday! Cookie! Madness! and the place was piled high with cookies and boxes, but now that all of it is gone, I’ve decided that our apartment is pretty fabulous.

Mia and I cut paper snowflakes every year before the holidays and these are this year’s additions to the ones we made last year. In a few years we might have enough to paper the entire apartment with snowflakes! Hope everyone is having a happy holiday. It’s fairly mellow and quiet at my parents’ house. I think the day is even bordering on “boring”!

Both girls are done with classes and school this week (C takes 1 class a week at Mia’s school) and starting next week they’ll be on holiday break. While attending the last class with Claudine, I noticed these great handmade library cards sitting on the fireplace mantel that the kids in Mia’s created created. She’s been bringing home books from school every now and then and while I understood that they were on loan, it all made sense when I spotted these in the class space. Such a cute and clever idea to start a little library system for the kids! Much of what Mia does in school remains somewhat of a mystery since she never really talks about it at home so it was pretty nice to see this glimpse into her world, even if it was just a library card on a mantle – it still showed so much. Mia will start her last semester in January at her current school before being shuttled off to Kindergarten at our neighborhood public school in September. It will be a huge change (7 kids to 2-3 teachers right now, compared to the 20+ kids in Kindergarten; classes held in an old mansion built in the 1800s vs a pretty standard institutional space), but she is ready to go to a “big kids” school and talks about it everyday. Yes, the kid is most certainly growing up.