Grandparents Discover Photo Booth

pirates! pirates!

Caine’s Arcade

I’m not big enough!

oh yeah, I bought some maternity clothes.

I was going to try not to buy m/any maternity clothing items and just see what I needed as time went by. It didn’t last long. I gave in at about five months due to a combination of clearance sales and discomfort in daily life.



 

Basic maternity items I recommend:



- Maternity underwear. You could just buy a size up and wear ‘em low for awhile, but as soon as I put on a pair of trial undies my entire body said “AHHHHH.” I bought two colors (black and tan) and several of each after using a trial pair. Would NOT recommend the synthetic-y stuff put out by GAP/Old Navy. Go for cotton if you can.



- Maternity tank tops. I have been squeaking by with just two (one black, one white) which go with everything but I have to do a lot of laundry because I wear them almost every single day as a base layer. As soon as I tried these out I was amazed – I had gotten used to being drafty in the clothing gap between my pants and shirt. NO MORE DRAFTS!



- One good pair of dressy pants. This is where I recommend investing more money because you pay more for better fit. I chose black to match with everything, but I could have alternately gone with navy or brown to match my preferred wardrobe colors. I read the reviews and went with a GAP customer favorite that happened to be on sale at the time. GAP Full panel modern boot pants #761852. Since I was mail-ordering the bulk of these items I was super happy to use information from the user reviews which informed me on fit and pant length. Expect off-the-rack maternity pants in most stores to fit terribly, especially in the under-$30 range. Pony up for the tailored fit of one nicer pair!



- I did end up wanting one more pair of full panel jeans so I could comfortably roll around on the floor of my photo studio. I originally picked up a clearance pair from Target that was supposed to sit below the belly but didn’t have a panel, and that didn’t work out very well. I went with some random pair from Motherhood Maternity. The dark blue goes with everything. It’s fantastic for everyday wear and looks a lot more fashionable than the Lululemon yoga pants my husband cringes about!



- The biggest surprise to me: I ended up keeping 4-5 tops (I actually ordered a lot more but returned the ones that didn’t look right or fit correctly). If I could choose only ONE item for fashion purposes it would probably be a cute, flattering top. Stripes are pretty adorable on the pregnant belly, and I enjoy wearing soft fabrics with a couple of sweaters thrown in. Around the house I tend to default to a couple of cozy knits but when I go out I bust out the trendier stuff. DEFINITELY USE CUSTOMER REVIEWS to guess on sizing for tops.



 

Believe me, when you pair a cute maternity top with a tank top, the undies, and pants that fit for the first time… you feel like a new woman who can conquer the world.



- MISCELLANEOUS: I also got one pair of black leggings for layering (not used often), one dress specific to maternity for a holiday party (most regular dresses will accommodate a belly anyway), and a pair of maternity tights I have not yet worn (regular nylons are NOT fun to try when you have more than 6 months of belly on you).



 



Maternity items I say skip:
- Belly bands. They’re $20 at Target. I didn’t think they were worth the trouble. I was able to get away with stretchy pants and skirts until transitioning to full belly-accommodating pieces. The bands just rolled around uncomfortably all day when I tried them out.



- Sweaters. If I worked in a cold office, I might invest in one basic layering cardigan, but for the most part you can either go up a size or just wear regular sweaters unbuttoned.



- I feel torn on maternity-specific tights. I am tempted to just go way upsize on an opaque pair and wear them low if I ever need to wear them again.



- Synthetic materials. Stretchy is good, but I was sad about the tank tops and undies I got that were 90% synthetics. They’re just icky on the skin and cause a bunch of static electricity. Go cotton!

The five best places to live in the world, and why

Bored with Blighty? Then why not up sticks and move somewhere else? Tom Dyckhoff spotlights five perfect places – from a surfer’s paradise in Hawaii to a bohemian rhapsody in Portland, Oregon

Tom Dyckhoff – guardian.co.uk – Friday 20 January 2012 17.59 EST

ARTICLE SOURCE

Portland – the city has been the capital of liberal, hipster USA for decades. Photograph: Getty Images

ARTICLE SOURCE

ALSO: What Portlandia Really Says About Portland: A Portlander’s View by Seth Colter Walls | slate.com | Posted Friday, Jan. 13, 2012, at 5:16 PM ET

The Cone People, Portland Street Parking “Reservations”

Most of the houses in our North Portland neighborhood do not have driveways, so we are all left to fend for ourselves to find a parking spot on the street. I understand the urge to want to park in the space conveniently close to your house (it feels like an unstated right); it can be a real source of frustration when people have overrun from the recently gentrified nightlife one street away to take over our available parking. Some evenings I have had to park a couple of blocks away from the house due to these visitors, or due to neighbors’ guests who have thoughtlessly double parked in front of our house.

I started to notice that several residents down the street always put out orange cones to “save” their parking spot on the street in front of their house. This is not okay. (I get it. I understand why people want to save “their” spot.)


It is illegal to put anything other than a working vehicle* in the street. Streets are public property, a right of way for all to use. It is not right to try to reserve a spot for yourself or put out cones to save your spot.


Today I called the Portland Transportation Parking Enforcement Division (503-823-5195) and was advised that anyone facing the issue of Cone People should just move the cones or park around them. The staff member I talked with clearly knew this as an ongoing issue, yet seemed to imply that there was nothing official to do about it. When I pressed further to tell her about one particular person on our street who started storing old car tires and a slab of wood next to his cones on the street, she transferred me over to someone in maintenance. The staff member in maintenance informed me that they can not issue compliance notices, those have to come from “elsewhere.” He then advised me to speak with someone at Neighborhood Inspections (503-823-2633). BINGO!


I spoke with Bill (Portland Neighborhood Inspections, 503-823-2633) who took down the offending addresses and information and assured me they would send out an inspector and cite the property if they find a violation. If cited, the resident would then have 15 to 30 days to fix the violation (!!) or face fines.


While I would feel a lot more justified in my righteous indignation if there was an official statement on the Department of Transportation’s website about the unlawfulness of putting cones or other obstructions in the street, after some time clicking around online, I was able to dig up the official city code that addresses this issue.

Portland City Code: Chapter 17.44 Street Obstructions


17.44.010 Unlawful Acts Enumerated.
A.  It is unlawful for any person to obstruct or cause to be obstructed any roadway, curb or sidewalk by leaving or placing, any object, material or article which may prevent free passage over any part of such street or sidewalk area. This Section does not authorize any action in violation of any other Title or regulation.

Here is some more information about rules and such:



Portland City Code: Title 16 Vehicles and Traffic
specifically, street obstructions


Parking Regulations & Violations


Chapter 17.28 Sidewalks, Curbs and Driveways


Oregon Vehicle Code Book


* FYI: Technically, any car parked more than 24 hours in one spot could be considered abandoned and will be cited and towed if the Portland Transportation Department has discovers it (report abandoned autos [more info here] by calling the Parking Enforcement Division at 503-823-5195).

Street Storage and Abandoned Autos:
Any type of vehicle abandoned and/or stored on the public right-of-way in excess of 24 hours will be subject to CITATION and TOW AWAY. This includes boats, campers, trailers, etc. Click here for more information about Abandoned Autos. Questions on abandoned autos? Call 503-823-6814, 8:30 am to 4:30 pm, Monday – Friday

perfect gifts for a new mom

I have been thinking a LOT about US culture surrounding the birth of a baby. The baby shower route kinda grosses me out; we sit around playing silly games and then sit around watching the mom open a ton of gifts that are cute but not necessarily helpful (and quite possibly not in her taste anyway). As a guest I am never comfortable with any of this, and as a potential receiver it actually fills me with dread. #firstworldproblems


On the other hand, my love language is gift-giving, so I understand that it brings many people joy to give gifts and celebrate being a part of a community; they are showing their willingness to support the family in a time of great transition and often need.


I’ve been working on my own attitude, and trying to appreciate gifts people share with us (and everything has been in great taste so far) while struggling to understand why I am so violently opposed to being on the receiving end of this process.


1. CONTROL. I have to admit that part of me wants my kid to look cute and artsy, but on my own terms. I don’t want to feel obligated to outfit him in cheesy “grandma’s little cutie” print shirts and well-intentioned but horrific handmade booties. When we weren’t sure if we would have a boy or girl I was ready to keep the gender secret just to avoid an influx of terrible pink and ruffly baby clothes. This is a control issue, I will freely admit.


2. MINIMALISM. We live in a tiny house and do not have the physical space to store any extra items. I was visiting a family member shortly before they gave birth and their ENTIRE GUEST ROOM was full of unopened boxes of [generous yet] gigantic plastic baby things relatives and friends had shipped to their house. While we will be moving into a larger space sometime within the first year of Burrito’s existence, we just don’t need or want to be equipped with everything until the kid actually needs it.


3. THE PLASTIC. We have been making a concentrated effort to bring less plastic into our home. We’d like our child’s toys to be as organic and natural as possible.


I know everyone says their kid LOVES the bright plastic play seat with little animals that move and music that plays and buttons to push, I don’t want to train my baby to have a short attention span and demand constant entertainment. Give the kid a dishtowel already! Or a stick! (HA.) I remember being intrigued by a friend from MIT who came to the US from Slovakia; Daniel kept talking about how he didn’t like the way people in the US buy all the toys in bright, unnatural colors for their children, as these colors don’t really exist outside of the plastics factory. HE’S RIGHT.


So those are basically my top three reasons for not wanting to participate in the US baby shower culture. I also don’t want friends and family to feel obligated to purchase things for us. Supporting a friend in your community should not be relegated to one afternoon of awkward game-playing — then cross them off your list after you deliver a lasagna or two after birth! Being a good friend is an ongoing relationship where you figure out what the other person really needs and make yourself available to help with that.


I apologize if that sounded didactic or preachy, I’m just trying to get out my thoughts about the gifting thing because a good friend remarked to me last night that she has never heard of anyone not wanting help with a new baby. It’s not that we don’t want help, but that we want people to seek out creative ways to support us in this huge transition time.


To be honest, I’m quite anxious about the upcoming change in lifestyle and loss of personal freedom. Having another being to support is going to be a full time commitment for the next twenty years. It’s scary and wonderful, and we’re excitedly preparing ourselves for this change. And hoping we don’t turn into the stereotype new parents who only talk and think about their children and forget how to be interesting.


Inspired by a friend’s recent facebook post, “[friend] gave me the best gift ever last night – she took care of Ransom all night long so I could sleep!!!” I put together a list of what I think are PERFECT gifts for a new mom. I realized after writing the list that most are services, and therefore potentially pricy, so I am envisioning a few friends getting together for some of the bigger items.


ETA: Ali and I continue to urge friends NOT to buy us any gifts, but for those of you who insist, here are ideas of the type of thing that works for us:

• ★ contribute toward diaper service (my mom is gifting this to us for the first few months, what a brilliant idea!)
• ★ gift a couple of hours of pro house cleaning service to use before or after birth
• ★ bake cookies, fudge, or other sweets; bring meals the week BEFORE the kid is due and when mom is feeling too big/tired to cook
  check out mealtrain.com for an easy way for a friend to coordinate meal dropoffs and share dietary preferences with well-meaning others
• ★ give the mom a couple of “coupons” that you will take her out, buy her coffee, and hold her child while engaging in adult conversation with her – to redeem at ANY TIME in the first three months of having said child
• ★ [very close friend] babysitting and washing all the dishes while mother rests or gets out of the house
• ★ Commit to praying for the new child and the family once per week on one specific topic. Let them know what you’re praying for!
• ★ group of friends contribute toward credit with a pro house meals service [like The Good Plate or DinneratYourDoor in Portland]
• ‎★ pedicure credit + promise to hold the child while mother is being served
• ‎★ consultation session or credit with a professional organizer or life coach
• ★ gift certificate to your local bookstore and a list of recommended books (thanks, Michelle & Paul!)

Personally, I would be thrilled with receiving a luxury like pro housecleaning or meal services. I’m not suggesting friends should be burdened with spending more than they would otherwise just because I’m snobby about synthetic clothing; even if the gift was small (like one hour of cleaning or one meal’s worth) it would be a treat. I can’t figure out any classy way to communicate this to people… is there one?


What would you add to the list? What would have thrilled you to receive before or after the birth of your first child?

Kitchen Zero

Today I have been toying with the idea of taking one day every week to get to Kitchen Zero. To me this means one glorious moment every week when:

• dishes are all washed and put away


• compost, recycling and garbage all emptied


• surfaces cleared and disinfected


• floors are swept


• food, dishes and pots tidied

I have been in a low energy state for the past several months, and as my pregnancy advances find it progressively more difficult to bend, clean, and keep up with chores. Our house is small enough that losing even one corner to clutter has a big cumulative effect. I think a small weekly goal like this will be enough to keep the energy up and the house a little bit nicer.


How often do you disinfect your counters? Take out the recycling?

Archiving your social media output

My end of the year personal project is to gather as much of my social output from 2011 as possible into one format. My goal is to try to get facebook status updates, tweets, personal photos, and blog entries in some semblance of chronological order and printed in a book. It sounds like a lot of work but I am kind of excited to make it happen.

As I find ways to integrate this info, I’ll keep this post updated.

FACEBOOK

Go to Account Settings and choose “Download a copy of your Facebook data.” It took an hour or so for FB to email me a link, but then I received an archive with all of my photos, videos, friends, and an HTML page with my wall posts (including friends’ comments!).

Now I need to figure out how to convert the HTML page of my wall into a useful table or database and remove repetitive or unnecessary information (my full name, timestamps, etc).

If all I wanted for this project was facebook status updates, I’d probably opt to have this person make a book for 2010 and 2011. Like This book

There’s also a paid service (<$10) to get all of your twitter and facebook updates in a calendar format called social safe. It looks interesting.

TWITTER

I’m having a problem with this one since Twitter’s API limits what outside applications can do with tweets, especially from protected accounts. I am still in research mode for a way to download all of my tweets into a database or spreadsheet. Since my account is set to private, most of the free applications for backing up your tweets do not work for locked accounts.

Side note: I am trying to delete all of the tweets from an old account so I can make it a publicly accessible business account. (Deleting the account would be an easy way to delete the info, but then I would lose all of the contacts I have built up through the years.) I’ve been trying to use twitwipe but receiving consistent error messages and timeouts.

PROBABLY SOLUTION: tweetake is a free on-demand app that will let me backup tweets, direct messages, favorites, etc. into an excel-compatible spreadsheet. Exactly what I was seeking! Right now I keep receiving an error message “Oh no! Twitter is busy and won’t talk to me (error 502). But you may be able to retrieve a partial backup by setting the ‘ignore errors’ option and trying again.”

BLOGS

I can “slurp” all content from a website using Blurb.com booksmart, but this won’t apply for self-hosted wordpress sites. To use that application, I would have to export all of my blog entries into a temporary blogspot blog and then slurp the content. I don’t want to take that many steps.

Here’s an option I started exploring in my blog to book journey, but it costs money and doesn’t seem like it’s editable: Feedfabrik wordpress printing plugin

 PHOTOS

I do a pretty good job of keeping all of my personal and family photos separate from my business image cache, but I rarely have time to go through and really choose which ones I want to print or display. Starting mid-year I have been trying to upload regularly to facebook to share with friends and family, and in the past month I have gone through to further organize the folders and choose out photos for printing consideration.

After editing this mix of imagery (everything from phone snaps to actual photo shoots) down a couple more times I will make a final organization by renaming everything with the date the photo was taken as the prefix to the filename.  Example: ali003.jpg will become 20111227-ali003.jpg

FINAL BOOK LOGISTICS

I’m still deciding which vendor to use to print this book, but always lean toward blurb.com. The right promotion could bias me toward snapfish or shutterfly, but their print quality is SO TERRIBLE I think I will stick with blurb, trusted by photography professionals around the world. Next step is to decide which size book to format, and which date format would be best to use for all of the different social media pieces listed above.

I’m not sure if I will then use indesign or word or excel as a starting place for the bones of the book…

RESOURCES

Here’s a site run by a woman who was trying to do this back in 2009. Her philosophy is the same as mine for the project but the means to getting there have changed a lot.  Social Archivist.

Backupify is a free to paid service that backs up your online presence on a regular basis. Looks solid.

FastPencil is a site to self-publish ebooks and find design templates.

Blog2Print looks a little spammy for me, and expensive. And doesn’t seem to offer services for self-hosted blogs.
Feedfabrik / Bookfabrik looks the most promising.

back home

We’ve been out and about around the world traveling for the past couple of weeks. We spent 10 days in Jamaica to attend and photograph Crystal and Andreas’ wedding in Montego Bay. We also extended that trip so we could celebrate our wedding anniversary a bit early. Then, we found out that tickets to see my family in Texas on Christmas were going to cost almost $2,000 – and made a last minute shift to celebrate holiday visits two weeks early; we spent this past weekend in Austin and Dallas visiting Granny O and the crew.

• With one day between Jamaica and Texas, I managed to get through laundry and a few other things but my plans were derailed when we realized that we couldn’t find the car key. We’re still looking for it.
• We can use the car with the backup valet key, but my GPS is locked in the glove compartment and not accessible with said valet key. And it turns out I can’t get anywhere new in my own city without my GPS. Booo!
• Then that afternoon when I went to the grocery store to get some things for dinner, I hit a curb and got a flat tire. So yeah, a little bit of car drama. FIRST WORLD PROBLEMS!

I’m looking forward to editing a few final shoots for 2011 this week, spending a second christmas eve alone with my husband (secret yay!) and then spending some time with Ali’s family in California before New Years.