Category Archives: General

Little Man is 6 Months

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Today, my sweet little man turns 6 months old and I’m so in love with him!  I love to wake up at night and see him snuggled up next to me, his hands reaching for me.  And in the morning when he wakes up… how he plays in bed pulling the sheets over his head and quietly contemplates life.  I love the sweet smell of his head when I kiss him and the way he hugs me when I pick him up, his hands grabbing for me.  His dimples, his wonderful smile that brightens up my day, his stinky little feet, his big, round belly, the conversations we have, the way he looks at his sister and laughs at everything she does… He’s such an amazing little being!  I can’t wait to get to know him better!!

Here’s a sweet video of his contagious laughter:

Leif laughs!!

yum!

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Leif just ate his first food!!!
Drooly, chewed up envelope!!
He grabbed it while I was typing and when I took it from him a few minutes later he had already chewed some of it up…
Do you think tree is an OK first food? 🙂

Meet The Slugwings

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The Family Photo

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Mother, Father, Daughter, and Son Slugwing can often be found playing in the garden.  Mother and Father enjoy long slow strolls through the pumpkin patch, while Daughter and Son can often be found flittering about among the flowers.

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Mother and Father met among the greenery and it was love at first sight.  Mother will often say that there was no way she could have resisted father’s charms, his luscious lips and tight tail!

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Mother

Father

Father

Mother and Father, though both flying slugs, had the perfect mix of genes to produce a sweet and delicate butterfly Daughter, and a firey but laid back dragon Son.

Daughter

Daughter

Son

Son

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Soon the Slugwing family will be taking off to travel the world.  I can’t tell you any more than this.  Hopefully I can reveal more details in the month to come.

Kaia Camp – Day 3

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We started the day off with Zucchini Pancakes!!  Yum yum!!  Yep, gotta get the veggies in my girl any way I can.  She said she really liked them.  How do you make them?  Glad you asked.

  • 2 1/4 cups flour
  • 2 1/2 tsp baking powder
  • 1/2 tsp baking soda
  • 2 tsp cinnamon
  • 1/4 tsp nutmeg
  • pinch of salt
  • 1/3 cup sugar

Mix all of this in a large bowl.  In a separate bowl mix:

  • 2 cups coconut milk
  • 2 tsp vanilla
  • 1/4 oil (I used olive)
  • 2 cups zucchini or squash (I julienned them, but puree works fine too)

Pour wet into dry and mix.  Pour ~1/2 cup onto a med-high buttered pan and cook as you would any other pancake.

We enjoyed ours with a black raspberry drizzle!!

After breakfast, Kaia and I tried our hand at making our own lava lamp.  Here’s what  you do:

Gather an empty clear plastic bottle, cheap cooking oil, water, food coloring, and alka seltzer.

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Pour the cooking oil into the plastic bottle until ~5/6 full.  Then add water almost to the top.

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Add your food coloring.  You can do one color or a mix.  After a while, the colors will mix up.

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Break up a tablet of alka seltzer, put it in the bottle and close the top.  Watch your lava lamp bubble!  (the carbon dioxide created by the mix of alka seltzer and water carries the coloring in bubbles to the top.  When the bubbles pop, the color falls back down.

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Try putting it over a flash light in a dark room!

After this, we thought we’d start our Rubber Egg experiment.  We boiled an egg and put it in a jar of white vinegar.  The vinegar reacts with the calcium in the shell and dissolves it.  After 2 days, you change out the vinegar and let it sit for a week more.  After this time, the egg should be so rubbery that we can bounce it.  I’ll let you know how that goes :-)  (oh, if you use an egg that isn’t boiled, you will be able to slosh the insides around, but don’t try to bounce it!!)

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And the fun just kept on going!!

With our delicious ice cream from Monday, I really wanted a nice magic shell topping.  So, I decided we should make it ourselves.  So we mixed equal parts of cocoa powder, coconut oil, and agave syrup and heated it on the stove, just until melted.  Simple!!!  And it worked like a charm.  Then I found this link for Home Made Magic Shell.  I might try their recipes next time and jazz it up a bit.

To finish off a wonderful day of Kaia Camp, we sat down to watch a bit of Little House on the Praire.

Winds of Change

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We awoke this morning to a lovely rain.  The kind that keeps you in bed just a little longer.  The rain moved out and a lovely wind blew in.  I love the wind!  I love to hear it in the trees and feel it come through the windows, bringing fresh life into the house.  When the wind surrounds my body sometimes it feels like it is brushing away my complacency or my worries.  Often it feels as though it is bringing in change, fresh ideas, lifting my spirits.   Think of the times you have been on the shore, in the mountains, or just in your own yard and you’ve closed your eyes, lifted your arms and let the wind carress every bit of skin.  You instinctively take in a breath, moving the wind down into your body, to your cells, cleansing your spirit.  Ahhh, what an amazing peaceful feeling!  I love the wind!

Mother!!

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We’ve been making kombucha in a continuous brewing system for a while now, but it’s in a ceramic pot, so you can’t see it unless you look in the top.  Lately, it seems like I will add some fresh tea to the batch and it will be too strong to drink within days.  It’s fermenting way too fast.  So, I finally took the scoby out to see what was going on and this is what I found:

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That is the biggest, thickest hunk of scoby I’ve ever seen!!  I tried to separate a slice of it to put it back in the tea, but I couldn’t.  It had grown into one huge mass.  So, I took off a small chunk, put it back in the tea, and I’m going to put the rest in the blender and use it on the garden in my compost tea (I hope that doesn’t ruin my garden 🙂

Meet the new addition

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Well folks, we finally did it!

We’d been talking about getting a new car for years, we just couldn’t find what we wanted.  There are no environmentally friendly family cars.  To have room you have to get a mini van which get horrible gas milage (compared to our 45 mpg Jetta), and to get good mileage you have to get a small car.  Plus, we did have a vegetable oil kit in our jetta so that we could run our car off of straight vege oil, which was free from the right sources.  (But, we’d taken that kit out a while ago and now just run it on biodiesel.)  So, it was hard to think about going back to gas.  But, after much looking around and realizing that the jetta was just tooooo small and costing us toooo much in repairs, we decided on a Toyota Prius.  It is roomier than the Jetta, gets great gas mileage, cost less to repair, and seems like the best option out there for us right now.  So, meet the new car!  a 2010 Toyota Prius… arrived on the lot yesterday morning and we drove home in the afternoon.  Isn’t she a beauty!!  I’m going to have to get use to the fact that it is very, very quiet when it is running, especially compared to a diesel engine.  But, really, you can’t hear it at all.  It’s really nice, but you have to be extra careful when you are in parking lots, ’cause pedestrians might not hear you coming!

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Can’t shake the grin

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I can’t wipe the smile off of my face from watching Kaia at her first lesson today. She was SOOO FLIPPIN’ CUTE!!!
here’s her high block…
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We both started classes this week! It feels good to be back in it, but class kicked my butt!!

In the garden

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Things are really looking nice in the garden! The greens are growing strong, my cucumbers and summer squashes are peaking their heads up, the potatoes are up, and the new asparagus has just broke ground. Yesterday, in Virgo (a fruit sign), I planted a hops vine, put in 22 tomatoes seedlings, seeded 3 types of winter squash, 2 types of pole beans, and seeded 3 types of melons into soil blocks. With almost everything in the garden, I realized that I have nothing to feed the plants with. I can’t use anything fishy or seaweedy, ’cause Suki will dig to china trying to find the source of the smell. So, I’m going to try an herbal fertilizer. I filled a 3 gallon bucket half way with comfrey and yarrow leaves (they were slightly wet from the rain). Then I put a large rock on top of them to weigh them down, and covered the bucket. I’ll let it sit like this for 3-6 weeks. I should end up with a concentrated fluid vegetable food. I’ll water it down with 10 parts water to one part concentrate and then spray the veggies. I’ll let you know how it works. What do you use?

The only pests I’ve noticed so far are flea beetles and white flies. I’ve sprayed a little neem oil to see if that will do the trick. May have to get some diotomacious earth for the beetles. What are your preferred methods of pest control?

this is a bloom from the “pavement rose” (a rugosa type) that I picked up at the herb festival this past weekend. Isn’t she lovely? The fragrance fills the garden!!
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Birdies at the feeder! There is one I’ve seen lately that is an iridescent midnight blue! I don’t know what it is, but it’s beautiful!
birdfeeder

Following through – A Challenge

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Every year, as Spring comes around, I find myself reflecting on things that I’ve done in my life that I really enjoyed, but are no longer a part of my life. For one reason or another, I’ve given up on them and I wish I hadn’t. So, this year, I’m making a list of those things I’d like to follow through on. Join me if you like. Make a list of those things you have done in your life that you really enjoyed and wish you still did. Then pick one (or more if you like) that you commit to add back into your life this year. Be sure it is something that brings you joy! Then leave me a comment and let me know what you are committing to!

Things I’d like to follow through on: (not in any particular order)
1* Learning a foreign language – I use to be fairly fluent in Spanish, but lost it after college. I’ve also studied a little Italian… I’d love to speak both again!
2* Latin Dancing – I took classes at one time and absolutely loved dancing!!! It made me feel so sexy… I loved the flow of the steps, but I felt weird dancing with other men… I didn’t feel like I could be as sensual as I wanted… Toby doesn’t really like dancing… So, I stopped.
3* Tae Kwon Do – years ago, I was a green belt, and I was good at it too! I really enjoyed the spinning kicks!!! But the Dojang moved, and I quit.
4* Hooping – haven’t hooped in months because of pregnancy and now, not begin able to find the time. I really want to get better. It’s like a form of meditation for me
5* Travel – not so easy with kids and a homestead, but I love to visit foreign places and learn about other cultures!
6* Singing – I used to sing in high school and college… mostly opera! But, somewhere along the line I lost my nerve and became more of an introvert. It makes me feel so powerful, though.
7* Piano/Fiddle – I played piano and guitar when I was younger but didn’t appreciate it as much as I do now… I’d love to become more fluid with my playing!

So, to start with this year, I’m going to make a commitment to hooping again. At least once a week, but hopefully more! Heidi, who lives on the land, said she will hoop with me. I’m going to make a little sandy spot somewhere on our land for a hooping pad.

I’m also headed to the local dojang on Monday to check into Tae Kwon Do classes!

What about you?

Story Dice

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I saw the fantastic idea of story dice here and had to make some! So, I ordered a bunch of blocks and Kaia and I spent a few days last week painting. She made a winter set and a spring set, and I made 4 sets of 4 blocks (extra sets for Kaia’s school K-2 class rooms). It was so fun thinking of things to put on them. We did a boy, girl, turtle, dragon, rabbit, house, beach ball, candle, egg, tree, car, bike, book, cupcake, flowers, boat, hat, balloons, ring, cup of tea, rain, butterfly, and a question mark (to make up your own). You can play many different ways, but the way we use them is to throw them out and create a story with the pictures that are on top. One person will start with a picture and then the next person adds on to the story with the next picture. It’s a really fun way to encourage creativity and imagination.

storyblock

Roots and wood

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I put out some roots yesterday while the moon was in Virgo… potatoes of all colors (red, blue, white, yellow fingerling, new potatoes). I did intensive planting of 50 potatoes in a small raised bed, each potato was placed 9 inches apart in all directions. We’ll see how it goes. I also planted beets (Lutz’s salad beets, which make good greens as well as large beet roots, and Chioggia, which are the red and white bull’s eye beets). And since the onions I grew from seed are still looking puny, I put in a pound of onion starts, too.

I also planted a rose bush. I know that’s not a root, but I’d just received it in the mail and it needed to get in the ground. It’s a Rosa canina rose. I’ve been looking all over for it and found only one supplier, and it was going to cost $70 to get it shipped to me. Even though these aren’t the showiest of roses, the hips they produce are huge and I use them a lot in cooking and medicine. Many other roses produce nice rose hips, but this is the kind you will get when you order them from an herb supplier. So, I thought I would have to be without…then Lizzy Lane found one on Ebay for me… in Italy! I contacted the seller and they were the nicest people! They said they would send me a small start for $11, including shipping. It arrived in beautiful condition on Wed. so I plopped it in the ground yesterday. Yay!

Here’s a rose hip recipe for you:
Rose Hip Jam
Fill jar 2/3 full of cut, sifted & deseeded rose hips.
Cover with apple juice.
Let sit 4 hours to overnight. May be blended for smoother texture. Refrigerate.
Slather it on toast, use instead of jelly, or just eat it with a spoon!! Mmmm

Toby’s started work on a wood shed. It seems to rain every time we need to bring wood in for a fire, so we thought it would be nice to have a dry place to stack it for next winter 🙂
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And, I don’t think I ever put up pictures of the guest house once we finished it… well, almost finished it. Heidi’s been living in it since late last year, but it still needs water, electricity and finish work. It’s cute though, eh?
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Ashley asked about the little potty Leif was sitting on… We are trying something called elimination communication. It’s where we watch the signs that Leif makes when he is about to go potty and make a noise when he pees or poops (like a tssssss, or a little grunt). At certain times of the day, or when we see those signs, we sit him on the potty and make that noise and he goes into the potty! That way, he spends less time in messy diapers. It’s really simple, I just haven’t taken the time to do it enough with him. I should be putting him on the potty when he wakes up and after he eats. Problem is that when he wakes up he is usually starving to eat, so he ends up going while he is eating. And after eating he usually falls back to sleep, so I don’t want to wake him up to go potty 😉 Still, it’s really cool when I do sit him on his little throne and he goes into it!

Elimination Communication

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Hello out there! Leif here!
Check out this cool chair my mommy got me (well she calls it my ‘throne’… does that mean I’m a prince??) Every so often, but not often enough if you ask me, mommy lets me sit on it. She even takes off my clothes and lets me sit nudey! She makes faces at me and funny noises. She’s such a silly lady. I think we are supposed to be having ‘fun time’ together or something. But I have to admit, I’m just in it for the chair. It’s really cool and very comfortable. And, don’t tell mommy, but when she takes my diaper off and puts me on the chair…
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I pee in it!!! 🙂

Gardening 2009-5

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Yesterday, The moon was in Cancer… a water sign, good for planting grafting and pruning. So, I went out and pruned the fruit trees that needed a little trim. And many of the trees that I planted last fall also needed to have their limbs weighed down. The limbs that are growing at too close of an angle to the main tree will not be strong enough to support a full load of fruit. So, the limbs are weighed down or pushed down to at least a 45 degree angle from the main trunk to encourage a stronger crotch angle/structure. I chose to weigh down the limbs since I have lots of twine and rocks; I don’t have any limb spreaders/spacers. So, for those limbs that were too close to the main trunk, I tied some twine to the limb and weighed it down with a rock. The sap is rising in the trees right now, so they are more pliable and hopefully, after a few weeks, I can remove the weights and the limbs will stay in their new positions.

I had also hoped to start more seedlings yesterday, but that didn’t happen. So, I starting them today. The moon is in Leo today, which is generally thought of as a very hot and dry fire sign, not good for doing anything but killing weeds and pruning, but, I’m hoping that if I plant the seedlings in the garden in a good fertile sign, that they will grow well. (According to my biodynamic planting book, today was still a good sign for planting fruiting things… must be because of other aspects of the stars and planets that I don’t understand). So, I made 4 more trays of soil blocks and started broccoli, kale, spring lettuces, greens mix, celery, and parsley.

The onions and leeks are doing great since I started watering them from below and added the peat. So, I think they will go out in the garden on Thursday… the moon will be in Virgo… an earth sign good for planting root crops.

I love this comparison!

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this is from a newsletter that I receive from Susan Rubin:

If you had purchased $1000 of shares in Delta Airlines one year ago, you will have $49.00 today.
If you had purchased $1000 of shares in AIG one year ago, you will have $33.00 today.
But—- if you had purchased $1000 worth of beer one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the aluminum cans for recycling refund, you will have received $214.00.
Based on the above, the best current investment plan is to drink heavily & recycle.
I’m not a big beer drinker, so this investment plan wouldn’t work well for me. Here’s a strategy that I like better than the beer. For example, if you purchased just $2 worth of tomato plants, your yield would be over $100 worth of fresh organically grown food that has no carbon footprint. While tending to your tomatoes, you’ll also benefit from additional Vitamin D in the form of sunshine, thereby reducing your risk of both cancer and osteoporosis. Saving you costly medical bills.
Want to make an investment that pays higher return than any Wall Street stock? Invest in seeds and grow some food. It’s easier than you think. Community gardens are springing up everywhere. Containers like the Earth Box can easily work on a deck. Teich Garden Systems can help you to create a state of the art animal resistant garden for your yard or school.

The most Amazing night

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We’ve had the most amazing 48 hours! Thursday night, our friend Julie came over to paint henna on my belly. She was hired as a birth gift from another friend. Julie is an amazing henna artist and actually did henna on our hands before Toby and I got married. So it was very fitting that she do our birth henna.

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Here’s my view from above 🙂
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And the finished product (with the lemon/sugar mix on it)
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Kaia chose a peacock design for her right hand.
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Isn’t it beautiful? She also had part of my belly design done on her left hand.
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Toby got a part of my design on his left hand too
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Then, last night we were given a beautiful Blessingway to welcome the baby into the world. It was absolutely wonderful! We had an amazing group of friends come out… they brought food, set up a lovely birth alter with candles and art work, photographs, herbs, and more and gave us blessings. Then after eating I was given a salt foot rub and herb foot bath while we all watched a belly dancer honor us with a dance of birth and family. It was all so amazing!!
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Do I look relaxed??? 🙂
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The beginning of her dance was done with a basket balanced on her head… she also used scarves and candles. the pictures were taken with a flash, so it looks bright in there, but the lights were actually off, so she danced by candle light. (Kaia was enthralled!)
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Then, today in the mail, I got a wonderful gift box from Kristine that had some wonderful treats along with a beautiful birth goddess statue and a hand crafted tin filled with birth art and positive affirmations! Thank you so much Kristine! These have a special place on the birth alter!

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Wild life

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In the past 2.5 years that we’ve been on the land, we’ve seen surprisingly little wild life. A raccoon and a possum here and there and maybe 2 coyote when we first moved here, but that’s it. But, I do believe this is a bear print. I know bears have 5 toes, but it was the size of my palm and I don’t know what else it could be… it just doesn’t look like wolf, coyote, or anything else. There are two muddy prints on each side of the barrel that holds the chicken food, too. Luckily no damage to anything… it didn’t touch the bee hives. I think Suki needs to sleep outside tonight. She’s been lazing around in the house too much and isn’t doing her ‘farm protector’ duties.

Manly Mitts

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Toby heads out to the little cabin every morning to start a fire and begin working. It doesn’t warm up out there for a few hours, and it’s hard for him to keep his hands warm while he’s typing. So, I made him some fingerless gloves, AKA Manly Mitts. Aren’t they cute? It was a really easy project for a beginning knitter. I got the idea from here and then made them a little larger to fit his hands.

Dinner was wonderful

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Our first Thanksgiving in the new home was fabulous! I cooked my first turkey, too. In fact, we noticed once we sat down to eat that not a single thing being served was from a can or box… it was all made from scratch! How wonderful! Kaia requested that we all dress up fancy so that we could celebrate in style. She wore a princess outfit, Toby put on a suit and I wore a sparkly opera dress. We had turkey, stuffing, gravy, garlic mashed potatoes, green beans, cranberries, cheesy-herb biscuits, and for dessert apple crisp with home made cinnamon whipped cream! Mmmmmmmmmm!
I hope you all had a wonderful and amazing holiday!

Week in Picture Review

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Here’s all the lard after it was canned. Looks like creamy milk, doesn’t it! I’m really enjoying using it to cook up eggs, veggies, etc…

Kaia and I spent some time making some holiday soaps. This was a batch of Wintergreen/Sweet Orange soap, and she’s mixing in a little cinnamon powder ‘to make swirlies!’, while enjoying a piece of Halloween candy.

The next day, we cut it up into pieces and will let it sit 3 weeks before using it (so it cures and isn’t so caustic). The first batch made 20 pieces of soap (~3 oz each)

The second batch we doubled and ended up with another 44 bars! This one is Clarysage/Ylang Ylang with swirlies of cardamom.

We’ve been getting the garden beds ready. Made 8 raised bed frames with scrap wood. Hopefully that will be enough to get us started this spring. Toby tilled the soil and mixed in lots of leaves and some roof dirt (which will help break up the clay and add some compost). I need to add more compost, manure and soil and will plant some rye for the winter.

We gave Kaia a mini-sling to practice carrying doll babies… But she found a fuzzy, wiggly doll baby she likes better… Snuggle or torture? It depends on who you ask.

She’s also decided she wants to learn how to knit. So she plopped down in the rocker by the fire (an appropriate place for knitting, I think) and pretended for a while. We are going to start a kids knitting group with some other moms when we get back from Disney.

And, what post would be complete without snuggling kitties… Isabella, Daisy, and Chub Chub Max.

First Snow

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It snowed here today!! This is very early for our first snow! Usually it doesn’t happen until late November. But, we had a beautiful white day today. It probably snowed ~1 inch, but melted by the afternoon. Now that we have a cozy house and we are both working on the land (and don’t leave too much, except to drive Kaia to school), I’m kind of hoping for a nice cold snowy winter.

Does anyone know what the prediction is for the winter?

Here are some shots of the roof this morning as the snow started:



more carving

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Tonight Toby and I got to carve our pumpkins. We picked some designs from a kit that Kaia has and tried our hands at them. It was so much easier to carve the details with the little carving tools that were a part of the kit!

Here are all of them:

I made a goblin… that’s a trick or treating bag he’s holding (I think I need a brighter candle):

Toby did a pirate ship… Arrrrr!

Too bad we live way out in the boonies and no one comes by for Halloween! 🙂

Pumpkins

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Kaia had a pumpkin carving party tonight with 3 of her girlfriends. It was a lot of fun and a little chaotic 🙂 Once they got all the goop out from inside, they drew all kinds on pictures on the pumpkins. It took a minute to realize that detailed pictures couldn’t be cut out like they wanted. So, Kaia settled on a heart and some random shapes. And she cut everything out herself!

After the party, I cleaned up all the seeds and roasted them. I have always just added a little salt, but this year I decided to get a little decadent. I found a recipe on the web and tweaked it a bit:
Sweet and Salty Pumpkin Seeds:
–2 cups cleaned pumpkin seeds
–2 Tbsp. butter or coconut oil, melted
–2 Tbsp. Soy sauce/tamari
–1 Tbsp. sugar/sweetener
–1/2 tsp. Chinese 5-Spice powder

Preheat the oven to 300 degrees. Mix all ingredients in a bowl. Spread the seeds on a cookie sheet. Bake for 45 minutes, stirring every ten minutes. They turn out crispy and very yummy!

Try my recipes, please

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I can’t remember if I’ve mentioned that I’m writing a book??? I can’t say exactly what it’s about yet, but I do need some guinea pigs, if you are interested? I have some recipes that I would like feedback on. If you want to try them and let me know what you think, leave a comment (and make sure I have your email address) and I’ll send you them (I’ve got 5 that need taste-testing, but I will have more shortly)
Thanks!