River in the kitchen

Here is a new drawing I just finished of River in the kitchen! I took the picture several months ago, and something about the scene really appealed to me. The combination of colors, the baby's smiling face, or maybe just my favorite curtains mixed with the baby. That's right, you've seen these curtains before.

You might recognize them from this drawing from around 2011,

 Or maybe from the lefthand side of this fun drawing in 2013,

or this one done later that same year.

It's true, my favorite bedroom curtains are now my favorite kitchen curtains. But what else can you do if the kitchen is already painted yellow and blue when you move in, right?

Anyway, it's a cute backdrop for a cute baby, even with the dirty (yet pretty) dishes in between.

What I like about it: the colors, the style, the curtain pattern, the dishes in front of her face. What I don't like: the layout of the dishes behind her, and the angle of the tiles.

A moring walk

The other morning, Eli, River and I took a lovely morning walk around town. We saw many exciting things on our adventure. All the blocks in our town have a dirt ally right through the middle, and it was down one of these that we started  our journey. The first cool thing we saw was a smushed snake. Awesome.



Then Eli noticed all the new anthills being started all over the place. Or maybe some other exciting bug made these?



The whole town right now is covered in dandelions; Eli likes to call them wish flowers. This patch was especially resplended with color and Eli's hat helped him blend right in.




 One of our most exciting stops was to visit these two horses. While we were standing there admiring them, the owner drove up and told us we could pet the brown one, but the white might not be so amiable. I helped Eli pet it's nose, then scooted River's stroller up so she could get a closer look.
















At first she was pretty excited; reaching her had right out so she could touch the horse too. But when the animal lowered it's head and started to stick it's nose through the bars, River suddenly realized just how very big it was. At that point, she shrank back in her chair and held her hand up, saying, "Don't. Don't!" I backed her up again and she was much happier.



At one spot just after the horses, we could hear this ridiculously loud bird that was sitting in the field. I assume it was some sort of mating call, and boy was it loud!

We saw a few more interesting sights, like these weird seeds on a big tree,




then we went on to the ally behind our house and headed home. Not bad for a morning walk!