Random Bits of the Last Week

Finn, modeling his new t-shirt pants

Elizabeth, with the new apron that has made her 

ever-so-eager to help in the kitchen

the Trapecolo design Philip made 

when home with pink eye

Philip, reading the Eric Carle/Kazuo Iwamura collaborative book

(gorgeous illustrations and fascinating combination of English and Japanese)

Welcome, Spring!

We decided to have a minor celebration this morning since the big kids will be with their other parents this evening.  I worked until late last night on this spring banner, my first.  There are a few changes I think I'll make with my next banner, but the kids thought it was wonderful.

I sent Paul and the boys to the fabric store yesterday for double sided bias tape and thread to make the spring banner.  According to Paul, the boys originally chose bio-hazard orange so I should feel fortunate that I ended up with slime green.  :)

The thread they picked was a varigated green.  I wasn't even aware of the existence of varigated thread!  Maybe I should always send the boys to the fabric store...


We also had spring smoothies for breakfast this morning.  With 8 strawberries, 1 banana, 1 cup frozen pineapple, 1 cup of orange juice, and a scoop of Amazing Grass greens, they were a spring breakfast hit.

Smoothies are Finn's favorite food so I had to include a picture of his thrilled face.

Our nature table also received a small addition of robin eggs in a felted nest from Natural Kids and Toys on etsy.  The kids also added a few dandelions, but as dandelions do, they wilted just a few hours later.

I hope everyone else is enjoying the beginning of spring as much as we are!

PS.  Our temperatures dipped back down last night and Elizabeth observed this morning, crossly, "I thought spring was supposed to be WARM.  Maybe spring should start another day."

Signs of Spring

buds on the maple tree

growth on the blackberry bramble

first picked dandelion

The warmth returned yesterday so we spent the evening with friends, out on the deck, watching the kids, in short sleeves with slightly chilly arms, racing around the yard.  I sometimes find it hard to be in the moment and also take pictures, so the greenery will have to suffice for today.  More pictures tomorrow!

Celebrating St. Patrick

In a stroke of good fortune, Elizabeth's order from Barnes and Noble (with a gift card she received for her birthday) arrived with the book, How to Find Flower Fairies.  Kind of fitting for St. Patrick's Day, I thought.  Elizabeth spent at least a half-hour as soon as she arrived home from school immersed in this wonderful pop-up book.  The beautiful script, Medieval-style art and many bits of ephemera were right up Elizabeth's alley.

See -- nose directly buried in book:

The scoop on green bread:

So here it is, the green bread.  Well, the best I could do anyway without food coloring.  I used this recipe, but substituted the regular flour for whole wheat pastry flour which probably lessened the green.  Alas...the trouble with using healthy ingredients.  I also blended the spinach with the water to try to distribute it better.  On the upside, what it lacked in green, it made up for with taste.  Quite delicious!

Before bed, in a continuation of the St. Paddy's Day spirit, we read Too Many Leprechauns, which stars an Irishman named Finn O' Finnegan who lives in the city of Dingle.  A little ironically, in late March of last year, we were in Ireland staying with dear friends and visited the city of Dingle one day.  The following photo is our Finn (who is really named Finnegan), and Paul, in the city of Dingle.  I realized when I was looking through my photos to post this that I had no good photos of Finn in Dingle.  Drat!  But he was there!

One last photo from Ireland:  Elizabeth at a beach just outside Dingle.

Dinner by Elizabeth, Crafting by Mom

Since Paul is out of town for a few days and the older boys are back at their moms, Elizabeth wanted to make dinner for herself and Finn last night.  All their favorite things, of course!  She was pleased with her dinner-making skills, and I enjoyed watching her become a little more self-sufficient.

For herself, she cubed cheese, sliced oranges and added crackers.

For Finn, she dished hummus, sectioned an orange, added crackers and heated left-over steamed zucchini.

I just realized, late obviously, that St. Patrick's Day is upon us, and with Paul gone and the added logistical challenges that brings, I'd neglected to prepare any St. Paddy's Day merriment for the kids.  Quickly, I felted up this pendant for Elizabeth, and I'll be dragging out a few books to read with the kids tonight, as well as trying to make green bread, like they have at the bakery, only without the green food coloring.  Is that even possible?!



I also took up practicing my knitting again, trying to rib this time.  I don't really like the edges of these sideways ribbed rows.  On my needles now is a vertical ribbing that I'm trying.  Someone special I know has requested a scarf so I wanted to try things out before I launched myself headlong into ribbed scarf making.  


Elizabeth's frog thinks the sideways ribbing is just fine, thank you.

Rainy Day Activities

Another entirely rainy weekend...welcome, March!  The kids spent much of the weekend playing board games.

And they examined their magic crystals for quite a while, then hung them in the window.  I'm wondering now why I didn't take a few of those crystals that broke loose to examine under the microscope.  Maybe we'll get to that in the next few days.

And we made some tissue paper candle holders with some very spring-y colored tissue paper.  After seeing this project on Artful Parent last week, I thought it would be an easy, fun and seasonal addition to our rainy day project list.  (We just used watered down Elmer's glue instead of the mod podge.)

We left the window blinds down Sunday morning and ate breakfast by candlelight.

Oh, and now we have about 100 left over pipe cleaners from the magic crystals.  Anyone have any good projects to use them up?

Making Butter

We decided on this rainy, rainy weekend to make some homemade butter and homemade bread for lunch yesterday.  We started with a pint of organic cream that we poured into a quart jar for the kids to shake.  I assumed they'd quickly tire of shaking the jar, so we decided to shake the jar while watching an episode of Jeff Corwin in Denali National Park, Alaska. (Do your kids love that show as much as mine?  We don't have cable, but you can get the dvds on Netflix.)

Finn was eager to get in on the shaking.

When the cream was getting close to being butter, the buttermilk started separating from the butter.

After pouring off about a cup of buttermilk, the butter pulled away from the sides of the jar into a blob in the middle of the jar.

After rinsing and salting, this is the butter that remained.

We each had a generous serving of homemade bread with our home-shaken butter.  Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it!

Can you tell?

With the leftover buttermilk, we decided to make strawberry buttermilk cake, from Apples for Jam, and just have breakfast for dinner.  The kids were pretty thrilled that one project produced 2 special treats.

For more precise directions on shaking your own butter, you can look here.

Yesterday

While Finn's nanny went out of town for a long weekend, Finn stayed home with me while I attempted to get just a little bit of work done.  He did a marvelous job of entertaining himself in between my frequent breaks to spend time with him.

In addition to Finn being home, Elizabeth woke up with a fever, headache and chills.  She spent most of the day like the picture below, either in bed or on the couch.  Poor thing.  I'm hoping she perks up soon, but glad she doesn't seem to have any other miserable symptoms.

In the few minutes of the afternoon that both kids were napping, I squeezed in a quick sewing break and made these two spring trees following this pattern.  In a half-hour break, both were done, and they made Elizabeth smile in her fevered state.  Definitely worth it.

We also finally started the magic crystals project that I've been meaning to do for a while.  The older two did this project at art camp a couple of summers ago, but it's still fun.  I think we got a bit too much coloring in a couple of the jars so we'll see how THAT pans out.

You still have a few hours to get your name in for the drawing at noon.  Post a comment here.

Things That Make Me Smile...

...at least in the last 24 hours.

Little girls that like to read fairy tales and mark their place with wool roving:

Little boys that can entertain themselves for hours with a coffee can and pottery, and marbles, of course:

Frogs that play Sorry!:

Pretty things that come in the mail (even if they're not for me, but for Paulie and Elizabeth who want to crochet a chain garland à la this post):

Random school drawings (Elizabeth's) from a field trip to NC School of the Arts:

Little boys who think it's a treat to get a gluten-free pomegranate waffle and kefir for breakfast:



If you haven't commented on yesterday's post, there's still time to post for a chance at winning the giveaway!

eggs, eggs everywhere AND a giveaway!

I have grand plans for how I want to celebrate Easter, at least as far as the egg hunt goes, so I wanted to start plenty early to make sure I got everything done.  First off, Finn's getting old enough that I thought he might want an Easter basket, but the thought of buying another plastic basket makes me cringe.  So I got a grand notion into my head that I'd crochet him one, without a pattern, of course, and well...I guess it will at least hold eggs.  The basket, if you can call it that, has no shape and flops over at any chance it gets, but it's starting to grow on me.

The one thing I do love about Finn's new basket are the buttons I used to attach the handles.  They are handmade buttons that Paul found at a local craft guild shop and tucked into my Christmas stocking.  Now how can you dislike a basket with such fancy buttons?!

For a couple of weeks now, when I have a spare minute or two, I've been crocheting and needle-felting eggs of all colors.  I've tried to do as many as possible when the kids aren't around because they become little beggars when they see my cute little Easter eggs.  Hopefully, they will still be as fascinated come Easter.

And while I was needle-felting all those eggs, I noticed that my blog post count is climbing pretty high, and that in the next few days, I'll have 200 posts.  200!!  I thought I'd celebrate my blogging perseverance by doing a needle-felted egg giveaway.  That's right...all three of the eggs pictured below will be given away to one randomly drawn name from the comments of this post.  So de-lurk now and comment!

Speaking of eggs, I also made this cute little spotted egg for our nature table and thought he needed a story to accompany him.  My sweet husband wrote and illustrated a story card to sit with the egg on the nature table.  Didn't he do a fantastic job?

Have you commented yet?

I'll draw a name from the comments on Saturday noon EST.

The winner, as chosen by the random number generator is #14, Erin from Wild As Weeds. Congrats, Erin! If you'll email me your mailing address, I'll send these right out.