letterpress cows and shop update news

I've been printing alot lately in bright yellows, terracotta reds, and soft greens and I am really enjoying these cows. I recall drawing the cows in my sketchbook every morning on the VCCA grounds when I was a resident in 2003. It was always such a nice way to begin the day, with those quiet, slow, ponderous creatures. I wonder where that sketchbook is now? I need to find it, for sure.

I'm preparing for a shop update of cow letterpress card sets and more jotters. It will happen sometime Monday morning, June 8.

moo,
H

summer is...

Howdy,

I mentioned yesterday I would have an invitation for you today. Well guess what? We are getting together again at echoes for the summer and we'll be considering the theme summer is...

Here's what we're going to do: on Mondays and Wednesdays the four of us will post our own artworks at echoes and on Fridays we will select submissions from the echoes flickr pool to post. We would love for you to join us! All you have to do to participate is join the flickr group and then make a kind art/journal piece in any size, & any medium (ie. painting, drawing, print, photo, ephemera) and upload to the group pool to share. All the details & guidelines are here. Sound fun? We think so! Oh, and since it is summer after all, we're keeping it low-key, asking for only two submissions to the pool per week.

So if YOU are reading this right now, consider yourself invited! Echoes begins this Friday!

back to printing cows for me,
H

golden

Today I printed some golden yellow cows for cards and have a handful of cow jotters in the works too. Tonight we ate our first golden beet and kohlrabi from the garden, along with our lettuce and bok choy. So it's alot like last night's dinner {you can see we like to kind of pour everything all on one plate} but spritzed with a little something new too.

} Jen's my Paris series are rather dreamy aren't they?
} Have you checked out Good to Know #2 {asking the question, when does one know that a personal style has developed?} over at Pikaland? Thanks Amy for asking me to contribute! :)
} Also, a sneak peek of UPPERCASE Magazine, Issue #2.
} Tomorrow, an invitation!

I hope your day was golden too,
H

berry good day

Today we went strawberry picking and I think we each probably picked about ten pounds. While I was out there in that hot field I began restructuring my goals for Molly's challenge. The point for me in this, is to be more creative in the kitchen and work harder in the garden. It felt good to be out working and picking our own food, even though I am still all hot and sticky. I do think I will savor those berries a little more because of it.

So really the aspect I am omitting from my original plan is I'm not going to forbid us from going to the store over the next week to ten days, when we need something basic. We are pretty simple when it comes to cooking and I realized yesterday when I made bread that we are now out of flour.

Following through, I did cook a big batch of granola and black & pinto beans which we topped on our salad tonight for dinner. The lettuce greens, sugar snaps, and beets are from our garden and on the side you see my butter patted homemade bread. {I like butter.} And our dessert, can you guess? Strawberries with honey and greek yogurt.

So I guess I feel good about my realizations of what is important in my goal re-structures and don't really feel like I'm bailing on the challenge, but scaling it to fit us.

Now. I need to decide how to prepare all these berries!

about food

{brunch today outside was quite nice. we'll see how the next ten days go!}

A couple days ago I read this post of Molly's about a 'no grocery shopping and getting creative by making use of what's in the pantry challenge' and it's been on my mind since. I've been thinking about how easy it is for us to just go get food at the store when we run out, in fact we're within walking distance.

And then I recalled the summer after M. and I were married when we were so broke that I cashed in the change from our piggy banks just so we would have $22 to buy groceries. We pretty much ate bean burgers {that I made from cooking dry black beans and rice, forming into patties} and tomatoes, okra and peppers we grew in our garden. And while it was a hard summer in some ways it was also quite memorable and we made it work and certainly did not starve.

So I will take part in this challenge because I want to be a bit more creative about cooking. Our recent store trip was last Wednesday and I stopped today to got milk, yeast to bake bread, tempeh, yogurt and coffee. Now tomorrow I will go strawberry picking but then after that, no store trips until let's say, June 10. yikes.

The three things I will allow for a trip to the store are milk, bananas, and coffee. We do have dry beans in the cabinet and are getting sugar snaps and lettuce from the garden now. Today I need to make bread because we are out, should make granola and soak some dry beans. I'll get right on that after my afternoon nap.

Go read Molly's post, and perhaps you'd like to join the challenge?

I'll be back tomorrow or the next day with some tags,
H