Blog salad

 Often a quality of light will compel me to take a photo. Sometimes the subject itself isn't all that special,

like the morning light shining off of my baking pans, or the same morning rays on the brick wall across from my kitchen window.

Sometimes the appeal is more obvious, like the afternoon golden light reflecting off of the cornice of my building.

Right after I took these pictures I ran into a young neighbor and encouraged him to look up. I don't know if he appreciated what I was seeing or was just indulging me.

The right light can make even the most mundane building look beautiful

Even this bit of 1950's city housing gets a glow up in the late afternoon light.

Sometimes it is a bit of color in an unexpected pace that pulls my eye.

 This leaf was resting on the service gate of my building. My building's garbage is stored on the other side of this gate.

For those of you who don't reside inside of my head, I am switching topics. 

I purchase a 25 lb bags of flour about once a month or so. I usually decant the flour into gallon sized bags so it is usable. There are times when either I don't have the storage space in my big plastic (keep pests out) bins or I just haven't had the time to get to the task that we leave the bag of flour in our front hallway.

My husband started adding gloves, slippers a hat, and occasionally a head to the bag of flour. We began calling these not yet decanted bags of flour as Floury--- our new favorite child.

An early manifestation of Floury with a stuffed shopping bag head and paper eyes.

Here is Floury, hatted but headless.

 We are easily amused.

Still on the topic of flour, decanting the flour is a bit of a messy job, mostly because I didn't own an appropriate scoop. I had been using an oversized tea cup for the job but the lip of the cup was to fat to work well. I am generally not a fan of single use kitchen tools. However I did a bit of a cost/benefit analysis and decided that it did make sense to get a serious scoop to help with the monthly job of decanting the flour.

The scoop is huge. It takes up quite a bit of space and it improves my life.

Now, for another topic shift. My great niece and nephew came to visit this past Sunday. My great-niece loves sparkly clothing. Fabric Mart was selling wonderful sparkly fabric that I believe is manufactured for gymnastics uniforms for two dollars a yard. I bought a bunch assuming that it would appeal to some of my various young relatives. 

I showed the fabric

to my great niece to see if I should go ahead and make her a dress out of it. She was delighted. Her little brother asked me to make him a pair of pants. I traced off a pair of his pants to make a pattern. We discussed design choices ("NO POCKETS!") I cut the fabric and put together the pants.

I still need to create the waistband  (elastic) and add elastic to the ankles.

My great niece didn't have an extra dress with her---she is past the age of needing to travel always with a spare set of clothes, so I took measurements.  I look forward to these kids wearing this clothes.

And now for the last topic of the day.

This girl, now a woman celebrates a birthday today.

On her first birthday