Pretty Punk Princess

Jasper went from having a nasty case of the stomach flu to a cold that just won’t go away. Right now he’s in bed watching Casino with an onion tied to his head which has the unmistakable smell of old, fat man b.o. The onion thing is a typical home remedy against ear infection, at least in Germany. Do we do that in the U.S. too? I’ve lived abroad so long sometimes I don’t even know anymore.

He stayed home from work so when I got home with the babes I left them with him for twenty minutes or so I could go take some product photographs in my studio, a.k.a. the stairwell of our apartment building which has amazing natural light. Sometimes I get annoyed when the neighbors have the gall to, I don’t know, come home and walk by too often. I mean, can’t they see I’m working? Jeez…

Anyway, at some point when I was photographing some new necklaces I want to post soon I heard a lot of screaming and crying soon followed by kicking and hair pulling I’m sure. To give Jasper a break I asked Mia if she wanted to come to my “studio” and have her picture taken. Of course, she was wearing her princess dress.

She would wear that dress 24/7 if I let her and yes, I’ve washed it plenty but it’s pretty much permanently stained. It’s her Snow White dress (at least in her mind because Snow White wasn’t so into pink puffballs as far as I can remember) though not the Disney Snow White because I’ve realized recently that I don’t really Disney, though of course as a kid I did. The Snow White Miss Mia knows is the regular old grim Grimm’s version complete with the “bring me her liver” line.

The funny thing is she has no idea how punk she actually looks. Granted, the punk look also comes from the 99 cent lipstick she likes to constantly "refresh", though I’ve told her repeatedly there is a very fine line between princess and clown. I especially love the second photograph in this post. She looks like a fluffy pepto-bismol-clad Patty Smith.

Little Li joined us at some point, though she was dressed in normal clothing as she calls herself the monkey princess meaning she would rather climb and jump and make various squeals than deck herself out in feathers and sequins. I loved taking the pictures though. It something we’ll have to do again.

A Fool For A Fool For Spool

Spring has finally arrived in Berlin which means me and the girls get to spend time hanging out in the Hof again.

Hof is the German word for courtyard and ours, luckily, has a sandbox filled with toys from the two small pre-schools on the ground floor. Look at my neighbors bikes there in the corner. I have not lived abroad so long that I don’t know how deliciously European they look together.

Less appealing are the trash cans a mere few feet from the sandbox. I’ve decided to block out how kind-of gross that is…On a lazy afternoon, these few feet of sand can be quite the godsend.

Check out Baby Li’s bad ass cowboy boots.

Like daughter, like mother.

Miss Mia is personally more into Princess Crowns these days. We went on a princess crown run today to Deko Behrendt, an amazing, old school Berlin costume and party supply shop in Schoeneberg.

I knew they would have princess crowns there, but I wasn’t quite prepared for HOW MANY they would have. Seriously, at least 35 different varieties in all sort of color combinations, length of feathers, degree of sequins, etc. Go Deko Behrendt! Luckily for Mia Lilly lost interest in hers in about 5 minutes which meant she could wear both, creating one mother of a princess crown.

But I digress. I started this post to write about an old and dear friend’s new shop, A Fool For Spool. She sells hand-painted spool and knitting dolls there. I was the fortunate first customer and got my doll, Rich Relation, in the mail a couple of weeks ago.

Here she is, hanging out in front of a traditional German Osterbaum…

Ok, so it’s actually a living Christmas tree one of our neighbors didn’t have the heart to throw away which we recently decorated with plastic Easter eggs we got from the drugstore. Mia is pretty proud of it.

As for my Rich Relation, she is oh-so-proper and very well painted. She also dealt well with the fact that Lilly calls her “Humpty Dumpty”….

Meaning that she gets put in all sorts of precarious situations....

…............

And yet she always comes out looking this good. Hoorah! Thanks Janet. You are so talented. :)

Cute Dog Alert

Today I was walking out of my favorite graveyard in Bergmannstrasse where I was taking photographs for my Berlin Cemetery Series jewelry when I saw this little guy hanging out in the window of Klassikerfundus.

I’ve walked by Klassikerfundus many a time, but only through looking for the link to add to this post did I realize they rent design classics out to movie sets. The little pooch looked so cool and collected among all these mid-century masterpieces. He seemed a touch perturbed when I pulled out the camera, but not so much that he barked or ran away. In the photograph below he did become interested in an old lady’s Pekinese who was walking by, but again was oh-so nonchalant about his interest.

When I ask Miss Mia if she would rather have a dog or a cat she always answers “Mama, I want a dog AND a cat.” She and Little Li really seem to have inherited my love of animals. But Jasper isn’t really an animal person and I can’t stand litter boxes which rules out a cat. A dog in an apartment is also not ideal for several reasons; constant walks, scratched floors, and, well, the smell. Yes, I happen to know for a fact that dogs do kind of stink. It’s that yeasty, stale popcorn, dirty socks boy-like smell and you have to love them loads to put up with it. I have been told that some dogs don’t have this smell, but it’s usually those over-bred toy breeds. Sorry folks, but I find any dog that could easily be beat up by a (small) cat kind of embarrassing….Poor Miss Mia. To get that dog AND cat she really might just have to wait til college.