Kelle, Author at Enjoying the Small Things

Book Looks

August 20, 2010 By Kelle

Oh, Friday…how I love thee. You bring with thee the promise of prolonged morning coffee hours, of lazy afternoons, of sprinklers and sidewalk chalk and impromptu walks where littles get tired half-way through and mamas have to carry heavy tricycles for blocks.

Behold, we baked.

Behold, we took pictures.

Behold, we failed to fold the now wrinkled pile of laundry that’s been sitting on the love seat for two days now.

But we do have some nice caught-up books for the littles.

Lainey’s Four Year Book:

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And Nella’s First Year Book:

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…and Friday night has a nice little heat lightning show goin’ on in the driveway now. Three little chairs lined up and my little waving me on from the window so…I’m off.

Happy Weekend.

This & That and the end of a hot August

August 19, 2010 By Kelle

I am a Michigan girl at heart. I like a good crisp autumn where the bleachers at a football game are filled with mittens cradling steamy styrofoam cups. I like raking heaps of crunchy leaves–Maple and Oak and Aspen–that once were green, then golden, then brown. I like picking out the biggest hot sugared donut behind the counter at the cider mill and shamelessly telling the donut-getter, “No, not that one…that one.”

And while I used to spend this time of year rifling through catalogues, dreaming of the perfect camel-colored pea coat for fall, I instead wipe the sweat off my brow, brace myself for a hot September and accept that Bismarck and Pygmy Date Palms might not lose their leaves, but they shade the Florida autumn sun just right.

Seasons change differently for some…in their own way, in their own place. And we bloom where we are planted. We are planted in the deep south of Florida where the late August sun is sometimes hot and unforgiving but still casts deep shadows over little bodies on walks to the lake.

And though we run barefoot in November and dance along shore with the tide in December, we still sip apple cider and hang cinnamon brooms from our pantry doors once the season has officially changed (okay, and sometimes before). This last weekend, as I watched Brett sink into a comfortable recline on the couch and heard the sounds of pre-season football, I smiled knowing it’s coming…that season shift. And as I contemplate just what ridiculously cute costumes in which my girls will parade our neighborhood streets this October and just how many pies I will attempt to make in the coming months, I am noticing that my thirties and all the beautiful surprises they have brought with them are shaping me more…to be content. And to bloom where I am planted.

It’s hot. And while the rest of the country prepares for all the things I love in the coming months…so will I. Because I will make it what I want it to be. Our sun may be hotter…but it’s still the same sun that hangs above every blessed creature in this great big world.

And today, it’s heat still whispers summer. The last of it. The long and languid bridge to September. To football and orchards and parent teacher conferences. To huddling hot chocolate in styrofoam cups in some parts of the world and running barefoot on shell paths through foamy ocean waves in others.

Behold…the beauty of August.

Where just my big girl and I enjoyed an evening at the lake. Where she held my hand and skipped on the way there and unleashed her curiosity and wonder of the world once she arrived.

She asked to wear my necklace tonight. And who am I to say no?

And sometimes when I am watching her–all three ripe years of her–I squint my eyes and imagine looking at her years ago…before I was a mama…and I wonder just how astounded I would have been if you told me she was gonna be mine someday. If I could have quite possible believed that I would be so lucky. Or that I would have understood the magnitude of love and happiness and soul-stretching that would occur from a blond little sprite with mossy eyes and marshmallow hair and a willowy frame that curls into my arms just so.

She is divine. And fiesty and funny and predictable and surprising all at the same time.

And the way she loves discovery and imagining things and creating beauty just makes everything in my life so much richer.

And in the midst of the hot August sun and going and doing and folding and putting away, amidst the hub bub of the every day is this.

I love this.

And I love that too.

I love my This & That.

And when the two are present, it doesn’t matter what season it is or what’s around the bend.

The sun still shines.

There’s still more August to be enjoyed. And I’ll be enjoying it in a fabulous Shabby Apple sumptuous-bowed dress.

…along with Commenter #231, Winner of that same dress:

#231 Musing Truth: I’d love a dress with a bow – thanks for being a breath of fresh air, all the time!

Congratulations, Musing Truth. To rock out that bow, please e-mail me your size info and address to kellehamptonblog@comcast.net

Lots of new scrapbook spreads coming up in next post!

Happy Wednesday.

Good night.

I like to lay in streets.

August 16, 2010 By Kelle

…and the craziness of this behavior and the fact that, under the right conditions my maturity level can be subtracted to exactly half my age, can mean only one thing.

She’s back.

Heidi has returned from Michigan after seven weeks, and our forces have finally reunited to bring more moments like this to a street near you. And half of her age plus half of my age equals something around one whole of us, so the mature moments are bound to happen eventually. The truth of the matter is my back went out this weekend–like I bent down to get something at the exact moment something snapped in my back and I screeched and collapsed and just laid there in some chalk-drawing crime scene position in the kitchen, laughing hysterically because I seriously couldn’t move and a grown woman lying under the stove while people walk around her, pouring coffee and washing dishes completely oblivious to the scene is really, really funny..

So, the stretching in streets thing serves a purpose, really.

When we weren’t stretching in streets last night, we were catching up behind hot wings and cold beer.

Nella had a few things to say about Heidi’s absence which she reenacted in this scene I like to call Where the Hell Have You Been?

Followed by Much Love, Much Love.

Notice Nella’s enthusiastic wing-flap.

There’s something extra delicious about a jammied baby out past her bed time.

I like when she does tai chi on my face. Hai-ya!!!

And the moral of the story is something like we had a lot of fun. And we have big plans for enjoying-the-small-things this fall. Like I do believe we threw around the words “Road Trip.” Enough said.

Back to the weekend.

Ah, the weekend. Where much crafting was done. If your kids are ever bored and climbing the walls, might I suggest the handy-dandy collage. Cut poster board, a handful of buttons, beans, yarn scraps, paper and a bottle of glue…voila. A half hour of creative silence. It’s beautiful.

And then when they’re done, you have this beautiful creation to hang on your fridge. And, as we all know, in a perfect world, all fridges are covered with three-year old collages.

While other weekends have us beach-hopping and Isle-of-Capri’in it, this one had us home-basking and enjoying the randomness of our every day life.

I set out for a Mama date yesterday with my sprite, but five minutes down the road, I turned back to see this:

So, we U-ied back home for some rest and later settled for some post-nap dress-up and big-girl fun with mama’s dresser accessories.

And if they made this dress in my size, I too would parade about the house in it.

Me loves metallic polyester. And the fact that the tag on this dress not only says “Warning: Keep away from fire” but also “Do not wash. Do not dry. Do not iron. Do not dry clean.” In other words, just throw it away if it gets dirty.

I love the time-slowing phenomenon of weekends. Because life flows a little more gently and hours pass a bit more smoothly so that we focus a tad more on our family unit and how we make deposits in its account. Our account grew richer this weekend. And the interest rate is pretty high. So, that makes us gazillionaires years from now.

Well, Hello there Little Pea.

And, finally this brings me to the Dora Cupcake episode of the weekend. Lainey saw this commercial on Nick Jr. last week featuring these adorable Dora cupcakes that totally sold me with their cool chocolate shell wigs. After asking me to make them several times, I folded and made a grocery trip to gather the necessary goods.

I’m a pretty ambitious mom in that I attempt to make crazy fun memories for my girls. But ambition only gets you so far. I guess what I’m trying to say is my ambition for this project got me three cupcakes.

Three cupcakes that were carefully crafted to look just like Dora.

But after tediously piping three faces with various shades of eye-color brown and lining up chocolate chips for pupils and kitchen-shearing tiny triangles out of fruit roll-ups which, might I add, takes about fifty cursing attempts to get it right without the roll-up sticking to the scissors, and when I finally got it to land in the frosting right where a mouth should be…well, let’s just say I called Dora some not-very-nice names in the process. And, like many other shoot-for-the-moon attempts in super-momming, I got three nice cupcakes and half-assed the rest.

And Lainey pointed to them and cried.
“That’s not Dora!” And I, frustrated and frosting-stained, snapped back. “It’s Dora. Eat it.”

She only ate the good ones.

And what was left of the weekend was 21 sloppy-faced cupcakes and a whole lot more love.

Her Price-is-Right wheel is still her favorite toy.

And, finally, what’s a Monday without a giveaway?

I was thrilled when Shabby Apple contacted me about a giveaway. Thrilled because one of my very best dreams was that I had an online shopping spree to their store and I cleaned them out of their Central Park and Oh La La collections. You see, a perfect world not only has three-year-old collages on all the fridges, but one of every Shabby Apple dress in my closet.

You like? Well, a lucky random commenter will be winning the Bethesda Fountain dress (top left) like mine. I’m thinking holiday dinner with pearls. Get a load of the bow. The sumptuous bow, as the site describes. Delicious.

Winner will be announced Wednesday evening.

Have a sumptuous Monday.

“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs; ask yourself what makes you come alive.
And then go and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

– Howard Thurman