Monkey Lobster

welcoming spring

Spring Crafts

When three pairs of adoring eyes ask for help decorating eggs how can I resist? Soon they are not gonna want to spend the afternoon with me, so I'll take it where I can get it. Here are some links to instructions if you want to play along:

Ukranian Eggs.   Moss Baskets.   Chocolate Nest.   Fun Molds on a Stick

springing

Spring is coming, and suddenly I remember how much I love to grow things. Easter is April 8th, leaving me just enough time to grow some grass and clover in baskets and other containers.

The baskets are lined with plastic bags and wood chips (because they are light weight) and then filled with potting soil, covered with seeds and then covered again with potting soil. The Vases are filled with pebbles, sphagnum moss, potting soil, seeds and then covered with more moss (just because I think it looks nicer on my counters).

If kept moist they should start to sprout in a few days, but it will take a good two weeks for form a nice sod to fill in. I used grass seed and clover, but I have also used radish, wheat, lentil, and unidentified seeds from the bottom of my seed box in past years.

Living greens make such a wonderful backdrop to just about any treat and wonderful bedding for children to collect eggs into. Sure beats shredded plastic. So get started, you still have time.

Valentines Past

celebration

This was our first Christmas in our new home. And in our family since Christmas is all about cooking, we settled more into our new kitchen, and had our first meals in our new dining room.

As wonderful as this was, it was very bittersweet for me. The last time I shared a meal with my father was two Christmas ago, we sat crammed into the middle of my kitchen, shuffling up and down as things went in and out of the oven. My father tied a ribbon on the door and said he hoped that one day he would be able to give us a dining room for our growing family. With his passing came the wonderful gift of this beautiful home.

I am learning to embrace the sadness along with the joy. The sadness helps me to remember how dearly I loved my father, and how much of my soul he is still a part of.

Hope your holiday was full of people you love.

goose is getting fat

Christmas is now 9 days away and at this point I have made peace with not having a hand-made Christmas. Actually its been kind of (or even really) fun shopping, and I have been putting the pain brush down more and more lately to make room for some Christmas treats. It's nice not having all that pressure to complete big projects with a December 25th deadline, and the house has been the biggest project I've ever taken on. I am not generally easily overwhelmed but this past six months has been CRAZY,in a good kind of way (most of the time).

Just so you know I'm not trying to hide my new house. I'm just waiting for it to be complete for the big reveal. It's just killing my poor mother who lives on the other side of the world, but I'd like to wait for the finishing touches, like light fixtures, switch plates, little bits of trim and paint.

I hope that you are enjoying this time of year as much as I am.

let the december wind bellow and blow, I'm as warm as a july tomato

Days of wondering through the garden to choose what to make for dinner are long gone, and what is left out there is certainly not growing. But it is fresh and waiting to be picked before the snow covers it for winter. 

Carrots, turnips, daikon, watermelon and beers friend radishes, kohlrabi, cabbage, kale, collards, bok choy, leeks, onions, spinach and one last cutting of mixed salad greens are waiting for that special moment.

Inside there's squash and pumpkin poking out of all corners, potatoes tucked into buckets of saw dust (I managed to sweep up as the carpenters work around my insanity), and dry beans and dry corn for cornmeal, although I have yet to buy a grain mill. Endless jars of fruity jams are waiting to be displayed in my almost done (really almost done this time) NEW KITCHEN, and a few special collections of summers best chillin' in the freezer.

Can't help but think of Greg Brown............who makes me weak in the knees.

 

 

easter

Sometimes my own expectations wear me out.  We will be having egg salad for dinner tonight.

getting ready

Elsa and I have been cooking up a storm...................

three happy valentines

So my two little valentines loved their two little valentines.

And Ben loved his chocolates. He is hard to impress, easy to please, but hard to impress. Elsa said to him "Suna made those ya know", and then Ben replied "no...", and then I jumped up and down (awkwardly bracing my arm) because I had impressed Ben with my chocolate making abilities. For whatever reason the "you made this?" comment is just about the highest honors for me.