Tableau Photography

Jon and I went to a fascinating lecture tonight by a visiting artist. Gregory Crewdson makes these elaborate tableau style photographs, using complicated lighting, fog machines, burning houses, and a whole crew of hirelings.

It was very interesting to hear where his passion for still pictures comes from, and how much work goes into a single photograph. We're talking months and months for one image.

He attempts to make his pictures seem apart from time and place - neither coming nor going - an unanswered question. Really intriguing stuff.

inkablinka

I'm experimenting with a new blog format. I can use my iphone to upload posts and pictures, so it may turn into a picture-a-day kind of thing. You can check it out here.

Eat Here

I put Jon to work on Saturday, hanging up mugs (no more used water cups laying around my counters!) and my awesome vintage metal "eat" sign I found at a local antique store (on sale - bonus!).

chicken salad bliss

Chicken Salad Pitas are my new favorite lunch.

Cranberry-Walnut Chicken Salad

1 c cubed cooked chicken
1/4 cup walnuts, toasted and chopped
1/4 c celery rib, diced into small bits
1/4 cup dried cranberries
dollop of mayo
splash white wine vinegar
dash salt and black pepper

Combine and stuff in a couple pieces of red leaf luttuce in a toasted pita.

peanut butter playdough

I introduced Hope to the joy of peanut butter playdough yesterday. She was more interested in the pretzels than the dough - I think she was confused as to why I would suddenly encourage her to eat the playdough. Tragedy struck when my pb snowman suffered a debilitating pretzel blow to the head. Ouch.

I tried to motivate play by making pb kitties...

pb suns...

pb bunnies...

pb trees...

But Hope only wanted to eat pretzels and dismember my creations. Oh, the humanity!

Design at the Henry Ford

We had a fun trip to the Henry Ford Museum yesterday. Jon wanted to see the design exhibit with all his favorite chairs. Above is the famous "marshmallow couch".

Hope got busy at the jr. design studio. She is really into tracing hands right now.

Occasionally she stops and puts her pencil or crayon to her lips and thinks while saying "hmmmm.".

We also made our own "house of cards". Afterwards, we saw "Alice in Wonderland" at the Imax theatre. It was a lot of fun.

Dress Up Day

Madelyn and Cailin dressed up this morning to go to school as a favorite book character. Cailin is Luna Lovegood.

Madelyn in the blue witch from "The Key to Rondo".

See the resemblance?

Hope had to go incognito as well. I call it Looney Tunes meets Casablanca.

Big Red

Amelia rode in Big Red for the first time yesterday. The most thrilling part seemed to be chewing on her shoulder harness. Ahhh, the good stuff.

Spring Fever

Watch out - it's contagious.

toddler chatter and baby raspberries

We made a couple videos this morning to highlight Hope's chatter and Amelia's kicking and raspberry skills.

Fake Fatigue

Hope is always getting into the girls lunches that they have packed in the mornings. She steals their cookies and crackers with glee. This morning after we took Cailin's lunch away from her, she took matters into her own hands and found an empty lunch sack and filled it with 10 jars of baby food and the crackers from Cailin's lunch. She carries the heavy thing around for 2 minutes then fake collapses on the ground from fake exhaustion.