During production crunch time, I often catch my brain wandering off, looking for fun. Here’s what it found this time.
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Photo by Christy Karpinski. Made me laugh out loud. (The portfolios on her website are very cool, too—but since I’m supposed to be doing other things, I’ve got to keep this parenthetical. And get back to work. . .)
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Toy shoot update. Mel just shot some knitted breakfast foods. Knitted bacon! A knitted fried egg! And toast! Just can’t stand it . . .
Photo (not one of Mel’s; hers will be featured in our November-December issue) snagged from the website of the creator of this adorable breakfast (as well as many other cool, Earth-friendly things), Camden Rose.
Tags: knitted breakfast food, melyssa holik, toys
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So says Mel, referring, of course, to our upcoming annual toy issue and currently-happening toy assembling and playing and shooting.
It’s at this time of year that we, tucked away in our quiet little production hut at the back of the building, get more than the usual number of visits from staff members from the other part of the building with oddly lame excuses for stopping by. Everybody’s got an inner child, you know.
Photo: Melyssa Holik at work. Seriously.
Tags: castle, melyssa holik, toys
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Do you think maybe the empty nest allows room for the return of that existential questioning begun in one’s early adulthood but interrupted (for, say, a couple of decades) by the immediacy of a beloved child’s needs?
Photo: Yet another in my ongoing series of photos surreptitiously shot at Dunkin’ Donuts. Like this one.
Tags: everything, existential questioning
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Best bits from our September–October issue.
Mel, Unplugged
Melyssa Holik, my delightful and multi-talented coworker and right-hand woman, has worked at Mothering for almost two years now. I knew, of course, about her skills in photography, design, writing, print and web production, even her aptitude for foreign languages like Russian. And I knew about her prowess in InDesign, Photoshop, Dreamweaver, Illustrator. . .
But until I needed an image AND needed to stay under budget (“Hey, Mel, want to take a stab at this?”), I didn’t realize that she also is a very capable illustrator. Not as in the software; as in tactile, physical, material, tangible. As in step away from the computer and use your hands.
I told her I wanted: “Horizontal orientation, huge starry sky, crisp February night, man below looking up at stars, his back to the house, cozy house with lights on in right lower corner. Magical feel, quiet, miracle about to happen. . .” And look what I got!
Check it out in our September–October issue.
Illustration for the article Home Alone by Melyssa Holik.
Tags: illustration, issue 156, melyssa holik, September, september-october 2009
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Best bits from our September–October issue, part 1.
Homemade ice cream
While considering how to illustrate an article on how easy it is to make your own ice cream, we felt it would be just plain wrong to hire somebody else to make the ice cream—the how-tos and recipes in the article seemed so simple. And, in an effort to tighten belts around here (figuratively, of course, especially in this case), we decided to shoot it ourselves, too.
So staff photographer Melyssa Holik, features editor Candace Walsh, and I each whipped up batches of ice cream at 
home, using three different kinds of ice cream makers, then gathered at Candace’s house to shoot our concoctions. Naturally, we had to have a tasting bee afterward, for which Candace’s kids, Honoree and Nathaniel, generously joined us. Surprisingly, the overall favorite was the non-dairy lavender (pictured here) which Mel made. (Twice. The first batch not being pretty.) Candace, however, was a fan of the chocolate raspberry ice cream (which she made. Also twice, though her second round was due to freezer temperature difficulties.) (The kiwi sorbet I made was both not pretty and not tasty, but that’s another story.), and Nathaniel really went for the lemon thyme sorbet.
Delicious fun, indeed. Look for the recipes—and our results—in the current issue.
Top photo: Lavender ice cream (photo by Melyssa Holik)
Bottom photo: Mel sets up a shot in Candace’s kitchen.
Tags: candace walsh, ice cream, lavender, lemon thyme sorbet, melyssa holik
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The cover of our September–October issue—our annual pregnancy issue— features a yummy image by Canadian photographer Anastasia Chomlack, who photographed parents-to-be actress Moya O’Connell and singer Torquil Campbell in English Bay, Vancouver.
And then, just two weeks after the photo was taken, little Ellington Beatrice Pepper Campbell arrived! To see photos of the couple with their new baby girl, visit Anastasia’s blog (scroll down to the July 2, 2009 post).
For more of Anastasia’s gorgeous work, check out her website.
Tags: anastasia chomlack, cover, issue 156, moya o'connell, pregnancy, september-october 2009, torquil campbell
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A much belated shout-out to our webmama, Cynthia Mosher, who did a wicked good (as my friend Wendy used to say) job of heading up the recent migration of the old Mothering web site—which entailed moving thousands and thousands of pages—to our new and improved home.
Cynthia, who lives in Saudi Arabia, seemingly never sleeps, is available for us at all hours (of her day and ours, even though she’s 10 hours ahead of us). She’s always there, patient and good-humored. She seems to know how to fix anything that could possibly go wrong online and manages to make me laugh on a regular basis, even when she’s under a ridiculous amount of stress—as she often is. We’d be lost without her.
Kudos, Cynthia, for all you do! Thumbs up on a job well done!
Photo: I was out of town when Cynthia came to Santa Fe in 2007 to meet with the MotheringDotCommunity board administrators. Since I couldn’t be there to meet her but wanted her to feel welcome, I left a cutout of myself in my chair with a speech bubble that said “Hi, Cynthia!” She shot this photo and left it for me to discover upon my return.
Tags: cutout, cynthia mosher, webmama
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Let’s see. . . Timmy has saved the life of a rooster that Paul suspects was involved in cockfighting, but Skeeter, a neighbor’s hired hand, recognized “Clementine” as a champion fighter named Dynamite who was left for dead. Once Clementine was well again, Skeeter stole him*. . .
Oh, sorry. The BLOG! Meanwhile, back at the BLOG. Yes, OK, well . . . Blogwise, things have been quiet for a couple of months while we ironed out the technical difficulties encountered when Mothering.com was “migrated” (the official term, I’m told) to a new home. Like any good migration, different segments of the crowd arrived at their destinations at different times. And the Mothering blogs, chatty and independent and stubborn, took the long way home, finally arriving and settling in this week.
Hence, my extended “pause” in blogging.
So, now that I’m back in action, a brief status update is in order: My man Tim and I are still empty-nesters, but the bird flew home from Glasgow in mid-July for an idyllic few weeks of hanging out with friends, visiting old haunts (many of which just happened to be profferers of green chile), and working at the Santa Fe Opera. 
He even managed to squeeze in some baseball with his parents, just like old times. Now he’s back in school, though not in Scotland this year—much, much closer: New Mexico State, which is less than 300 miles away. And in the same time zone.
In my Mothering world, since my last blog post, we’ve put out a couple of issues of the magazine, launched our new web site, and moved my office (along with those of Staff Photog/Ad Production Manager/Web Production Ace Melyssa Holik and Managing Editor Melissa Chianta) to the space that used to serve as our library and product fulfillment area. So we have lots of room now for creativity . . .
Stay tuned!
*Lassie, Season 6, Episode 27, March 13, 1960. In case you missed it.
Top photo: While taking an early-morning exploratory walk around the campus of Reeve’s new school in mid-August, Tim and I heard a rooster greeting the day, turned the corner and came across this fellow.
Bottom photo: Reeve races for the ball, just one of many poorly thrown by his mother, who, yes, sadly, throws like a girl.
Tags: baseball, lassie, melissa chianta, melyssa holik, new web site, nmsu, reeve, rooster
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