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Phone Photo Friday

08/01/2014

I’m making iPhone rice. It’s Thai.

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Posted by mahlbrandt

My three year old is getting into the age of Barbies. I have a set of beautiful handmade Barbie furniture that my Granny made for me and with it I found two of my old Barbie dolls. They’re in bad shape…each is missing part of a limb from a puppy incident, each had an unfortunate haircut at some point and they were embarrassingly naked. I could have bought my daughter some new Barbies to go with the furniture but I did a little research and discovered these Lottie dolls are an affordable (comparable price to Barbie), funky, young-girl-friendly alternative.

To quote the top reviewer on Amazon: “In a market flooded with weird looking dolls with impossibly enhanced female figures dressed inappropriately (to put it nicely) with faces painted with makeup, in comes Lottie.”

And straight from the Lottie website: “The key point of difference is that Lottie has a ‘childlike’ body – she doesn’t wear makeup, jewelry or high heels and she can stand on her own two feet (always a useful life skill for all girls, big and small).”

For Ali’s third birthday she got one Lottie doll from Grandma and one from us, along with an extra change of clothes. I plan to add to the set over time.

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1 Comment | Art, Art: modern design, Family, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: barbie, dolls, girls, little girls, lottie | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

07/25/2014

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Posted by mahlbrandt

Eggs!

07/24/2014

At 5 months old, our first hen started to lay eggs! Meringue the Rhode Island Red (dark brown one pictured below) is our first layer. She started on 7/7/14 while we were on vacation. We missed the thrill of finding the first one in the nest box but my mom collected them each day and saved them for us. They’re a bit small to start out so we waited until the 9th day when we had 8 eggs (before she laid the 9th) and we all enjoyed a wonderful fried egg breakfast. Meringue has laid a perfect, beautiful, small brown egg every day without fail for the past 17 days. It’s bizarre and wonderful to eat eggs that were collected from our own backyard. I joyfully discovered our first two-egg day, which was almost as exciting as the first egg. Sunny S.U. the Buff Orpington (gold one pictured below), my favorite hen, was our second layer starting on 7/19/14. I’m really proud of my chickens and I’m excited for the others to start laying, too. Within a month Poach and Custard (black and orange ones below), the Black Star and Production Red, should start laying. By the end of October we might be getting half a dozen eggs per day, which is good because our family can easily eat half a dozen eggs in one breakfast. The plan is to have plenty to share with friends and neighbors though.

Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: Cooking, Art: God's creation, Family, Family: Chickens | Tagged: backyard chickens, chickens, eggs, first eggs, fresh eggs, hens, urban chicken keeping | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Naples, Florida Family Vacation July 2014

07/22/2014

The real reason I didn’t write any blog posts for 2 weeks is because we left for vacation a couple days after Firefly left and there was a lot to catch up on at home and work when we got back. Jason and I love to vacation in Naples, Florida. I think we’ve gone 4 times in the past 5 years. This was the first time Ali has been there, though. She’s been to the beach before but this time she was old enough to really enjoy it and play in the sand and water. She’s a little fish and the Gulf in South Florida is warm, clear and gentle. We stayed in Foxfire Country Club in a condo that happened to have a bunch of really cool mid-century modern teak furniture. The pool was warm and we usually had it all to ourselves. Ali did awesome on the 12-14 hour car ride both ways. She’s a pro traveler. We used our DVD player for the first time. On the way to Florida she watched Frozen 4.5 times! Once there we saw so much native wildlife, mostly found by or spotted by Jason. He caught 5 large 9-point starfish out in the ocean. He also found 2 live sand dollars. We released all of them after admiring them. We also saw dolphins, manatees, sting rays (I stepped on one that didn’t have a tail. Phew!) and tons of little lizards in the wild. We visited the Everglades Wonder Garden and saw captive alligators, parrots, macaws, turtles and tortoises, butterflies, flamingos and lots of other birds and reptiles. We ate so much good seafood, saw gorgeous sunsets and had lots of time to play and have fun together as a family of three. We had our vacation planned long before Firefly joined our family but God must have known that it’s timing would perfect for our family to escape the painful realities at home and reset.

Ready for the photo overload?

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Leave a Comment » | Art, Art: God's creation, Art: mid-century design, Family, Family: Jason, Family: Me, Family: Precious/Ali | Tagged: beach, Family, Florida, Naples, sunset, vacation | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

07/18/2014

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Posted by mahlbrandt

“God doesn’t call us to be comfortable…”

07/01/2014

“But God doesn’t call us to be comfortable. He calls us to trust Him so completely that we are unafraid to put ourselves in situations where we’ll be in trouble if He doesn’t come through.” — Francis Chan from Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God

trusthimcompletely_june2014

(You’re welcome to share, pin, use this graphic but please keep the tiny watermark in the corner that credits the creator of the graphic.)

Leave a Comment » | Art, Faith, Family, Family: Adoption, Family: Foster Parenting, Other, Other Things: Wise Words | Tagged: Faith, faithfulness, inspiration, pain, quote | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Phone Photo Friday

06/27/2014

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Posted by mahlbrandt

11th Anniversary Squirrel Buster

06/26/2014

We celebrated BIG last anniversary with a trip to Naples and Key West for 10 days, including snorkeling in a coral reef—the highlight of the trip. Father’s Day, our anniversary, my (30th!) birthday all fall within 5 days of each other. Combine that with newborn baby induced sleep-depravation and schedule-juggling and… This year I ordered a bird feeder. To celebrate our 11 years of blissful matrimony, we have a Brome 1015 Squirrel Buster Classic hanging outside our living room window. (Using this bracket.) It really is a gift to both of us, our whole family, as we’ve already been seeing lots of birds frequenting the feeder and we can see it from the dining room table and from the living room (where I’ve been sitting a lot to feed Firefly.)

It’s pretty cool how this works. It has a spring mechanism that closes up all the feed openings if a squirrel-weight animal clings to it. But for bird-weight animals, there are several openings for seeds. The birds are dropping a lot on the ground, though, so the squirrels are still happy.

1 Comment | Art, Art: gardening, Art: God's creation, Art: modern design, Family | Tagged: anniversary, bird feeder, home, squirrel buster | Permalink
Posted by mahlbrandt

Courtyard Deck and Built-in Bench

06/25/2014

I gave a little sneak peek of this project on Friday. Jason recently constructed this bench and deck into our courtyard. This is the main entrance into our home, a private garden space that’s secluded from the street and neighbors. It’s a lovely space to sit and it just got better! We still need to add some cushions but we’re enjoying it already.