plants & playthings

Moving on with the pictures I took in October, after we got home from Italy... I feel like I have to preface this by saying that my attentions were on editing pictures, rather than on taking new ones. I kind of half-assed it on a lot of these days, since the editing required so much time and effort.

This particular Saturday was no exception. I didn't really feel like going anywhere or doing anything that would have provided a more interesting photo subject. I just shot a few pictures of Steve's padron pepper plant in the utility room. I think the flowers were a new development since our vacation, but it took much longer to actually yield any peppers. We've gotten a few in the last week or so, although we haven't tried eating any yet. It's probably been too cold for them to really take off.

288/365 pepper plant

Steve made some brown butter almond cakelets with huckleberries on Sunday afternoon, but I wasn't feeling very excited about any of the pictures I shot of them. I ended up taking pictures of the dying dahlias and cosmos on our kitchen table instead. Carmen had left them for us when we got back from our trip, but they didn't last very long.

289/365 dried dahlias

On Monday, I went on an outing with Carmen and Elsa to Fillmore St. in Pacific Heights. We walked around a while and eventually stopped for some dessert at Citizen Cake. They moved to the Fillmore location from their Hayes Valley one about a year ago, but apparently they're closing at the end of the year. Looks like Elizabeth Falkner wants to reinvent her restaurants after her recent Next Iron Chef appearance. (Spoiler alert: she got second place, so she is not the next iron chef...) Anyway, our desserts were lovely and inventive in their flavor combinations, although they were pretty intense.

290/365 citizen cake

The next day, Carmen wanted to do a photo shoot of Elsa. The plan was to get some pictures of her in the take-home dress that hadn't fit her when she was born. But first, we did some (mostly) naked baby shots. By the time we got around to putting Elsa in the dress, she was getting fussier and promptly spit up down the front of it. That was enough for one day.

291/365 elsa & the hat

Wednesday was another field trip. I tagged along with Carmen and Elsa again, while Carmen looked for a loveseat at some antique shops in Cow Hollow. We weren't at all successful in finding anything, but I got a picture of some toy cars at one of the places. Afterward, we walked around a little more and got some cupcakes.

292/365 antique cars

And then I babysat Elsa on Thursday morning. (Apparently, I was making up for all the lost Elsa time while we were gone...) I believe this was the occasion when she woke up as soon as Dan & Carmen left. She clearly needed some more sleep and wasn't going to fall asleep without help, but I managed to get her down again after feeding her a bottle. When Carmen got home, I got out the finger puppets that we had bought for Elsa in Florence and took a few pictures of them.

293/365 finger puppets

Back to the homemade portrait studio on Friday, Carmen and I finally managed to get pictures of Elsa in the take-home dress. Carmen's dressmaking work did not go to waste. Elsa did the typical little girl thing and spent most of the time trying to eat her skirt, but we got some cute shots. In fact, I'm a little surprised that we managed the one below. At not quite four months, she still needed some coaxing to stay up while lying on her stomach. Many of the ones of her in that position featured a rather concerned looking Elsa.

She was also not a big fan of being put in her skunk Halloween costume after that, but Carmen was able to distract her enough that we didn't just end up with a crying skunk in all of the pictures. Since Elsa didn't actually wear her costume during their Halloween trip to MI, it's a good thing we took pictures of it that day.

294/365 sassy pants

This concludes week 42, if my calculations are correct. Only about 10 more!