mandalei

It really has been a long time, has it not?  In a nutshell:

• One set of parents, Ben’s sister and her fella visited in October
• The other parental unit came to visit for Thanksgiving
• I have been making Christmas presents for many people (tutus, a folding fabric dollhouse, and a crayon apron).  Some pictures to follow.  Yeah, I really promise!
• Finished Baby E’s quilt, sent it, and forgot to take pics of it.  Will see if I can get some to share.
• Jack has had a major growth spurt (grew over an inch, and put on some weight) and also has been cutting 5 teeth. Suck!
• Ben started a new job.
• Jack has a large vocabulary, and is using it to tell me all sorts of things.  Like we need to be dong stuff all the time because he is boooooored.  Of course, he doesn’t know the word for “bored” but he does know the signs and words for different activities, and he lets you know that he wants to do them RIGHT NOW.
• Jack hates it when I am on the computer because *obviously* I am not paying attention to him.  His demands on my time have increased dramatically over the last few months.  Sorry for those who are looking for new posts!
• The tree has been put up and decorated.  Some shopping has been completed.  ben bought his present a few months back, so he’s taken care of!
• We got a chest freezer so that I can have a place for all our extra food so I don’t have to cook all the time.

um…. what about y’all?  Gotta run.  Little boy is stomping on my feet and using his butt as a wedge to push me back from the computer (currently set up in the kitchen on the counter because he won’t let me sit down to use it!)

I’m not moving, but my parents are.  From a large house to a 2 br apartment in D.C.  JAck and I have been here since Saturday to help my mom out with the organizational stuff; the 3-day sale starts tomorrow.  It’s been a little heartwrenching to see so many things from when I was a kid going on long tables, but I think I have managed to save the things that meant the most, and I will be posting lots of pics of the antique linens and laces, the old-school toys I have never seen anywhere else, and the quilt my grandfather helped his mother and her friends make during the Depression (when he was 7–he carded the cotton for it, and said the ladies had no idea he was listening in on the gossip).  I can’t help but think of Silence of the Lambs as I go through the house: “what does he want?  He covets.”  And boy, have I coveted the quilt and those linens.  I grew up being very careful not to spill, and now I need to figrue out how to clean them after years of use.  Now I just need to figure out how to get the antique leaded stain glass bookcase to NY from TN…

Sorry I haven’t had a chance to check in lately–I see I have comments, but I will have to wait to respond once things calm down. 

I was checking out the Amazon one-day home sale, and came across a pretty good deal on a Weber Spirit gas grill.  Thought I’d pass it along.

Also, I’ve been seeing sunburst mirrors all over the design blogs lately.  If that floats your boat, this one is $99, down from *gulp* $499.

It’s 58 degrees, therefore, it’s grillin’ time.

Welcome to the family.

I had been planning to write at least a post a day, with more content than what Jack’s diapers are looking like these days.  Yesterday … yeah, that didn’t work so well.

In between being pinched by Mr. Pinchy and thwarting his efforts to eat cat vomit, I started looking into composters and raised garden beds.  And cheesemaking.  But mostly it was gardening stuff, even though we still have a foot of snow on the ground and it still gets below freezing at night.  In particular, I was looking at this lovely contraption, which also has slots for a cold frame.  Obviously living in the northeast, that cold frame seems like a mighty fine idea.

As for composters, the choices are legion.  Build ourselves?  Do I want to be a red worm wrangler?  How about the plug-in composter?

Does anyone have recommendations or suggestions as to what works for them?  Keep in mind we also have a chipmunk problem… as in dozens of chipmunks, everywhere.  We will have to chipmunk- and mole-proof our raised beds with wire mesh underneath, so nothing can get through the bottom and munch on the carrots.  Gah!

We have alot of windows in our house, which is good because we don’t really get great light unless it’s the winter and the trees are bare.  When we first looked at the house, it was during the winter, and I bet that if I had seen it in the summer (despite the siren song of the kitchen… oh, that kitchen!), it would have been a harder sell for me.

But, here we are, with lots of windows.  And blinds.  I hate blinds.  But trying to find decent curtains to hang that don’t block out the light yet aren’t sheer as nylon stockings is tough.  We don’t live close to an Ikea any more, and that would be my first choice.  Sadly, Ikea doesn’t sell most of their curtains online, and neither do they actually show good representations of their wares.  I can make them myself, but I need a good (and cheap) source of fabric.

Any ideas out there????

Since Ben is gone, the thrill of blowing the snow off the driveway is mine.  We got about 7 or 8 inches yesterday, and the snow plows came through several times, so while I was more than up for the task of the driveway, I was a little daunted by the almost chest-high wave of snow at the base of the drive, courtesy of the snow plows.  That took some doing, and it doesn’t look awesome, but at least we can get out of the driveway now.  It took all of Jack’s precious nap to get it done, but thankfully he was able to hold off on needing to be picked up until after I was finished.  I wouldn’t have been able to do it had he been awake, because there is no way I could strap him onto my back and have him keep his hearing.  As it is, my ears are still ringing, but I don’t know where the earplugs are.

And yes, I did figure out how to turn on the machine despite having a bad feeling I wouldn’t know how.

Thankfully, I only had the actual “feeling crappy” stage of the bug for about 24 hours (hi everyone, thanks for the good wishes!), because we had a second round of weekend house guests who arrived on Saturday.  It was loads of fun to have them here, and we made some pretty good food (along with the eternal 2 layer chocolate cake, thanks to this recipe cheat sheet at angry chicken).  We had:

Butternut squash/apple/parmesan soup with homemade bread (white and wheat) for grilled cheese sammiches.  Wine (x2) No recipe to give, it’s made up from stuff on hand.
Biscuits (made with White Lily flour, imported from the South especially by my mom–recipe from back of bag)
Lunch from a local bakery (divine croissants!)
Mushroom risotto made with homemade turkey stock from our TG turkey inspired from this post by Michael Ruhlman, and angry chicken chocolate cake.  Beer (Fantome, Rare Vos, Hennepin) and wine
Breakfast today was chocolate cake and breads (King Arthur Flour cookbooks for general and whole grain baking).
Homemade pizzas using the pain a l’ancienne recipe from Bread Baker’s Apprentice

I know I have mentioned how much I have really been getting into cooking lately, but with the all the stomach issues I had the day before they arrived, I wasn’t sure if I would be able to do anything really yummy.  It was actually kind of nice to know that I have made enough things now to have a pretty good idea of when/how/why I need to be doing things so that they actually happen and turn out the way they’re supposed to.  As I was making Jack’s baby food (zucchini and sweet potato, to be frozen), it occurred to me that I didn’t mind because I really enjoyed even doing something so simple as chopping that sh!t up and steaming it, and then whirring it to pieces with the stick blender.

We have another set of house guests coming on Friday to stay the weekend, and I am wondering what’s going to be on the menu.  I think three weeks in a row of chocolate cake, no matter how easy, is probably pushing it.  Maybe.  The only food restrictions for this coming weekend will be a) no macadamia nuts and b) no red peppers.  I think that can be accomplished.

In other news, I am waiting on a new metal closed-toe darning foot and bobbin holder (with special tension setting! have your eyes glazed over yet?) for my sewing machine to finish up their quilt.  I finally finished up the acres of quilted grid, and now am waiting for the darning foot to do the free-motion design and the border.  I really hopeI finish this soon, because, um, I don’t think I can work on this another summer!  That would be 3, and you can tell the hiatuses have wreaked havoc on some of the things lining up that are supposed to.

But oh… I have other projects in my head right now, like fabric collages and “pictures”, put together with my stash.  And another quilt, this one for a gift for friends who just got married.  I need to make Jack a doll, and I found a great tutorial for a rocket ship that I want to make him, too.  I still need to bust out my new paints and easel, too.  So much to try and do!

We have about 10 inches of snow on the ground here, and more to come this afternoon and evening.  We’re taking advantage of being indoors for a bit to have a nice home kind of day.  To that end, we’ve made the following so far:

Homemade sour mix (which we have then used to make whiskey and amaretto sours, using lemons, limes, and simple syrup)

For breakfast, fresh biscuits with raw starthistle honey

Roasted lemon/rosemary/garlic chicken (later this afternoon)

We’re also going to try and finish up the last of our Christmas packing and wrapping, and perhaps finish up some of the gift purchasing we need to get done.  It’s tempting to go out and tromp around in the snow, but we don’t have a windproof suit for Jack yet.  We went to go get one yesterday at LL Bean, and OMG–the lines was over an hour long.  For some reason, we didn’t think that it would be quite so insane out there with holiday shopping, but then it has been a long time since we’ve actually gone out to *do* holiday shopping… Jack charmed everyone, though, and was especially flirty with the ladies.  Hello ladies!

Jack seems to be recovering well from his surgery, and thank you to everyone who has asked.  Tomorrow is his 6 month appointment for vaccines and such, and I will make sure his doctor takes a good look to make sure everything is healing as it should.  As much as I hate to admit it, the hiatus of cloth diaper washing has been so very very nice.   While I will be happy he’s healed enough to not need water-resistant healing salves anymore, I will be sad not to have such an easy excuse to use something so darn convenient (not to mention he fights us less to put them on).