Last night Eduardo and I ventured out to see The Afghan Whigs play at Doug Fir. They'd come to Portland about a month or two ago and played a sold out show. Tickets for those sold out faster than you could blink. We weren't fast enough to get any. So when Eddie learned they were kicking off a new tour starting with Portland, he seized the opportunity.

Two days before the show, we discovered the opening act was Joseph Arthur. We love Joseph Arthur! He had a popular indie song when E and I were courting, called "Honey And The Moon." We included the track on CD music favors we created and gave away to our wedding guests.

I tried to take a picture of Joseph Arthur at one point of his show, because I like to post and keep track of the shows we see on the blog. He had just finished singing a song while painting the picture you can see on the stage (Joseph is a bit of an artist, anyways). Right after I snapped this, a security guard at the show immediately appeared on my right.

No photography during the show.

Ooops!

This really explains why no one else in my line of sight was snapping photos, a common event at concerts these days and everyone having cameras on their phones. Strangely, though, I don't recall seeing any signs saying 'No Photos' which are usually pretty evident if they don't want you doing that.

Oh well, blurry proof we were there!

By the way, The Whigs put on a very electric and highly charged show! GregDulli, the lead singer, stopped the show mid-song early on to chew out a guy in the audience who was behaving badly and making his lady friend uncomfortable. Totally stopped playing, cut the music, turn up the lights. I don't know if the guy was fighting or slam dancing, but Greg totally called him out on it and put him in his place, much to the audiences approval. It was very cool, actually, to see go down.

Lulu doesn't have summer camp this week so I took her into work with me yesterday. She loves to come to my office for the day, now, as it means if she's been quiet and good, we'll go around the corner to Sushiland for lunch. Yesterday, Lulu expanded her sushi repertoire and added the Krab-stick sushi to her favorites along with her current favorites, fried pot stickers and shrimp sushi.

My plates are stacked to the left, her are a mess to the right! She hesitantly tried a piece of my fried calamari. I could tell she wanted to dislike it, but she couldn't once she started chewing it. "It's good!" she offered me, "But I don't want any more, thank you."

Baby steps...

Before I could get the waitresses attention to close up the bill, she grabbed one more plate from the conveyor belt. "I need one more plate of dumplings before we go!"

Fair enough.

I couldn't stand my hair so I had Charles cut it short again...

My mom said that last week when Bean spent the night at her house, she found her walking around, saying out loud to no one in particular, "I do love my dad, Eddie!" over and over again.

When we came back from Sunriver a two week ago, her nose was a mess from her cold. She took a tissue and said, "I have the booger sneezes..."

Having sick kids the two weekends prior to going to Sunriver, and then coming home from Sunriver the following weekend, my last three weekends have been shot. This past weekend, I made up for those missing weekends by sewing up a storm!

I riffed on my Lynn Mizono dress pattern and made my own shorter skirt pattern. I had this fabric for a good ten years in my stash (I bough it a long time a go when I lived in Las Vegas) and it was due to be sewn and my fabric stash minimized. Eddie called it a Fast & Dirty sewing project, and it was. I totally winged it on the pattern and didn't care if the insides were not pretty on how they were finished. I may end up adding a second panel to the bottom, to make it longer in a coordinating fabric in the future (I only had so much fabric and used it all up in this skirt) but I'm happy with the at-knee length for now. Can't wait to wear it with boots and my new moto jacket!

The color is a pale sea glass green and black check, though you can't tell from this picture. The fabric looks great with dark brown as well, though.

My new moto jacket I referenced above. I spied this at Target on Friday while popping into the downtown location to get the girls fluoride prescriptions refilled. They didn't have my size but it looked amazing for only $40. Can't beat the price! It's made of soft vinyl, but it's a pretty damn good facimile of worn napa leather. The wonders of modern science as it relates to textiles and fashion in the 21st century! I also have to give props to the juniors department at Target. I can keep things hip in my wardrobe without breaking the bank...

Then I decided to experiment off a button bracelet design I saw on Pinterest. I used leftover fabric for everything: The purple fabric was from couch pillows, the silk from wedding centerpieces 10 years ago, the leopard cotton from an old pillow case that fell apart and the button, from a collection of buttons Grandma passed on to me to do crafty things with. I love how the bracelet turned out. It's a cuff style. I did the buttonhole in the manner shown by a designer whose bag pattern I have. This is his signature buttonhole and I'm a huge fan! It looks so impressive when it's done and on something, and not as tricky as you'd think it is to create.

Now that I have a better idea of what I'm doing on this front, I can make a more universally sized pattern and maybe make up a bunch using my old fabric scraps and buttons, for gifts.

Then, my favorite thing made this past weekend! I took the same skirt pattern I'd riffed on earlier, and tweaked it once again. Because I shortened the panel that dropped from the waist, the original bottom pattern panels were too wide to match up with the shorter top piece. No worries, I pleated each of the corners which added a nice effect. The skirt turned out really nice and is longer than the other one I made and so comfortable! I am looking forward to wearing this skirt year round and with many different things. This kind of full, contemporary style is referred to as Lagenlook, which is popular in Sweden/Germany/Norway/Denmark, etx. and means "layered look". 

Here you can see where I pleat-gathered the point of the bottom panel to fit the top panel. Next time, I think I'll gather each corner ahead of time. I still like the effect! I love the fabric too, very soft and fun.

Here is an example of the Lagenlook I'm starting to incorporate into my wardrobe as I get older...This is also how my skirt above looks on, too:

Here is the bounty I gathered the day we returned from Sunriver. There were more tomatoes in that tangled mess of vines out back, but there was a good chance I would have lost my hand and never found it again. (The amount of tomatoes below has been what we have been taking inside about every other day for the past week or so.)

I will admit, that the cherry tomatoes I planted this year are delicious, and the larger are heaven in sandwiches! But I'm still over the garden for this year.

Irish Coffee in my coffee cup, Eduardo making both mango ice cream AND mango sherbet for dessert,  the Bean and the Bear rescuing a wayward spider off the kitchen island,  and  Nick Lowe vinyl spinning on the turn table....Now, I'm off to sew in my room.

The Rosebuds at Bunk Bar...

The Rosebuds sound a lot like Arcade Fire. One of the singers, he moved to Portland recently, we learned during the show. (Everyone moves to Portland, eventually!) 

Here they are, closing out the show ending with a rousing, audience singalong of "Nice Fox"!

Eddie and I started off our vacation right last week, by doing a matinee of "Guardian's of the Galaxy" at the Bagdad Theatre. Nothing says "I'm on vacation..." like pizza and cold beer at  1 pm on a Monday. It also is worth mentioning that on this particular day in P-town, we were experience heatwave temps. Being inside a theater with icy A/C was quite agreeable!

We went back to Diego's Spirited Kitchen in Redmond on our drive over to Sunriver on Tuesday. We discovered Diego's last year and fell in love with the place. Of course, in the span of a year, we had completely forgotten what we'd ordered the year before, let alone portion sizing. I checked the blog for our previous menu selections, then thought we'd have the ceviche appetizer. How big could it be, right?

BIG! There were three of those on the plate (Eddie's got one of 'em). Plus I'd ordered guacamole, plus Eddie and I each ordered the pork carnitas tacos. So much food, we couldn't eat it all but took it with us to Sunriver to eat, later. Below, I snapped a photo of Eddie and Bean. I love her expression, pure bliss at being kissed!

We went to Lava Butte on Wednesday. When we'd arrived on Tuesday afternoon, we arrived with stormy weather in Bend and Sunriver. For whatever reason, we got a brief moment of nice weather while we visited Lava Butte at lunchtime. It was beautiful and sunny, as far as the eye could see!

Gorgeous weather...

Bean loved running around inside the lookout tower and yelling loudly.

What you don't see, is after we left Lava Butte, the weather changed and became stormy and rainy and cold, again. Middle of August, and we needed sweaters and hats. We only got to go swimming one day, and it was iffy at best whether we could do that, too. ("Hey, lightening, outta the pool, NOW!)

Later in the week we did an afternoon trip to Sisters, Oregon. I hadn't been there in YEARS, but it was fun to see an new fountain they had installed in a park and the girls enjoyed playing in it. We got ice cream cones and visited some antique shops before heading back to Sunriver for dinner.

Tuesday night the girls and I went to a colleagues going-away party at a pub after work. I love that both of the girls are very comfortable around adults and would never be described as wallflowers. I got lots of compliments around and about the girls today when I was back in the office. Here is Lulu clowning around with one of the people I work with and his cell phone camera.

She looks like Lord Voldemort from Harry Potter to me when she makes that face and how her noses smushes up!

Lulu has been immensely enjoying her summer day camp program this summer! I have been delighting in all the adorable arts and crafts she has been making. Some of the items have been really cool and clever! We make sure to save the more clever ones to share with Grandma Louise so she can make them with her classes she substitutes during the school year.

The first weeks theme at day camp was Roald Dahl. Each day the kids learned about a different story he wrote and created art work around it. Of course, the Fantastic Mr. Fox was studied, and Lulu made some adorable crafts, like this fox mask:

Here she is pretending to sneak into the chicken coop, all stealthy and fox-like!

This is just getting to be too much fun for me...

I love to buy the more obscure ponies at the store, unpacked them and put them in Beans pony drawer in her room then wait for it to be discovered.

I always feign I have no idea where it came from or anything about it. Which is so much easier with the obscure ponies like this. I have no clue what her name is!

We'll do an internet check after it is discovered which helps my alibi.