playing around

cute little harbor

Have you heard about Tilt Shift Photography? Probably. I usually suspect I am the last to know about hipster things like this. Check out this link here for some fun examples. I tried it for myself (above) by using this online application, but you can also get an app for your iPhone (and since we have established your hipness, you probably have one of those). That song "Little boxes, little boxes, little boxes made of ticky tacky" is what goes through my head when I look at these.

And here's a harbor of another sort. One of our favorite ladies uncovered this childhood treasure from her mom's house. Something so simple and perfect that provided her and her sisters with many hours of entertainment: a simple cotton cloth, with blue parts for harbor and green parts for land, and some brownish parts for roadways; and lots of little wooden boats and barges and buildings and cars and buoys and churches and even a small evergreen. You know, like they put in harbors at Christmastime? See that blackish thing just off the pier? That's a whale! Love. It.

That's what I'm talkinbout when I say toys with play value: toys that are simple enough and open-ended enough to be manipulated in many different ways by small hands, day after day after day. As in, it doesn't need batteries and it withstands the test of time and many loving hands (and perhaps the occasional frustrated whing at your sibling). When we took little 2-and-a-half year-old Jonas to Italy with us we brought a small cigar box full of these small architectural block pieces, same vintage as the above; coupled with a few trucks and cars and plenty of gelato, it made for pretty sweet entertainment.

Oh yes, and it's hunting season here. So we wear our Blaze Orange hats, which is not in anyone's color palette that I know personally (certainly not mine), but it's a great thing to wear when you don't want your gorgeous afternoon hike to end in bloodshed. Also, we were on the "safe," "non-hunting" side of the mountain, but we took no chances that the hunters would stay on their side. Yes, Maine in November!