cici at home

i'm moving. again

2009-10-02T23:11:39-04:00

I just can't justify paying for typepad, anymore. It seems I rarely get to post regularly. And I hate the blog name. Which means I post even less.

You can find me over here at wordpress - until i move again.

The new home is still rough around the edges.

fall inspiration: kids edition

2009-10-01T06:00:00-04:00

When this month's Martha Stewart magazine arrived in the mail, there were several of us drawn to the front cover. The snail, especially, was a favrorite among the younger set. Okay, the mushrooms too. Okay, all of it. We love the cover!

Alas, my garden didn't do so well this year - and even if it did I wouldn't have gourds like these around.

Meanwhile, my daughter has been nagging begging for the polymer clay.

So, we wound up with these. The jack o'lantern's face is made of glow-in-the-dark sculpey.

And the five year old boy edition. His jack o'lantern is glow in the dark, too. As is his mushroom. And that's all I'm going to say about glow in the dark mushrooms. Hopefully, ever.

The 2 1/2 year old boy edition was in play-doh, not polymer clay and did not survive the afternoon. What with most of it landing on the floor and a dog who seems to like to eat it.

the jelly tastes good

2009-09-30T10:20:49-04:00

and it doesn't look half bad either.

the caramel apple bars were never made.

pizza was made.

the sauce wasn't.

and the weather station was never made. after a month, all of those links and bookmarked pages of the real books on how to make a weather station just...sat. no time. haven't felt like driving into town for the supplies. husband was gone and so the chores were all mine. it didn't happen for oh so very many reasons.

so i went ahead and bought a weather station. and i'm coming to grips with the fact that its okay to sometimes buy things. that we - that I - don't have to make everything. sure making a weather station would have been fun. but it will be more fun to actually have a weather station so the great-list-of-bookmarked experiments can actually be tried. and experimented. and performed.

and mama needs to learn to let go.

i probably should have posted the other picture

2009-09-26T09:30:00-04:00

where my seams don't look so puckery. but i've already gone and deleted that one from my computer.

what's up with that anyway? i don't recall this quilt square looking like this in real life. there are puckers, to be sure. especially around the music notes where the base fabrics join. but not crazy puckers everywhere! or are there?

i just hope the sewer-together of these squares is a miracle-presser, too.

ooh. that looks really bad. i'm going to double check the real life square. i may need to take the border off and sew it back on, sans puckers.

do you like golden delicious?

2009-09-25T21:26:30-04:00

I didn't think I like Golden Delicious apples. Really, I thought they were soft and mushy with very little flavor and I never understood why people go gaga over them. My children have been begging me to go apple picking - doesn't matter if its the season or not - ask. ask. ask. Eventually it will be apple picking season. Eventually mom will have to say yes.

So, "eventually" came today and we were off to the orchard - even though it was Red Delicious season. And Jonagold. More apples I'm not terribly fond of - but the kids wore me down. The Orchard Guy gave us a bite of Red Delicious right off the tree and I realized I was wrong. Red Delicious apples are, well, delicious! But they aren't good for sauce or anything else (the Orchard Lady says she doesn't use them for anything) and I wasn't in the mood for a bushel of Red Delicious apples. Yes, a bushel. You can't take three kids to the orchard and expect to come home with much less. Especially when the trees are laden with ripe fruit.

Back to the Golden Delicious. We were a bit early, but the Orchard Guy gave us a sample of a Golden Delicous and wow! crisp! sweet! flavorful! Delicous! But a wee bit too early - only the south side of the trees were ripe enough to pick. And an elementary class came through yesterday - so everything "yea high" had already been picked (ripe or not). We came home from the orchard with 3/4 of a bushel of Golden Delicous apples. I'm still surprised, obviously. I blogging about it afterall. Anyway.

Applesauce has been made. I wanted to make more than this, my stockpot wasn't large enough for more than a peck of apples at once - finished it was only 6 pints, and 1 quart. Speaking of, I'm missing most of my pint size jars - applesauce isn't always a family favorite around here, so I like to put it in the smaller jars.

Apple jelly started from the "apple leavings."

Apple crisp made for desert and eaten before the camera ever had a chance of taking a picture.

And still two more pecks of apples - or maybe just 1 1/2 pecks. We've got caramel apple bars on the agenda tomorrow. And I'm thinking about attempting to slice and freeze some, too. For baked goods during the winter.

I guess this is another tally mark in the column of "the miracle of fresh tasting food" - it's amazing really, how tasty things are when they are fresh and, I suppose, local. Last year, we did an apple taste test - I guess the results aren't valid anymore. We can't taste all the apples at once for another test either, if we want to test the apples grown locally, as they all ripen at different times over the course of two months.

So there you have it. A long, drawn out post about Golden Delicous apples, canning, and local food. And nothing. I'm good at blogging about nothing.

it was a sad cake

2009-09-23T11:05:54-04:00

but not a sad day. not. at. all.

Little P is now 5. On Monday, at exactly 9:45 am he turned 5. And on Monday, exactly every 5 minutes from the minute he woke up until 9:45 he asked, "Am I five yet?" And then it was 9:45 and there erupted lots of familial fanfare and whooping and hollering and a very off-key rendtion of the happy birthday song.

At first I told him he wasn't allowed to be 5. He's supposed to stop growing up. He's supposed to stay "wittle" - but I finally caved in. What's a momma to do? They all insist on growing up. And they insist on doing it so fast!

The preferred birthday meal of choice around here is fondue. Knock on wood, we haven't had any accidents around here - even the rambunctious 2 1/2 year old seems to handle it just fine (with a close eye from mom & dad, of course). Well, there was the once accident when my husband burned my least favorite potholder as he was trying to light the sterno...But I call that good fortune.

he's home

2009-09-14T22:17:22-04:00

i was afraid to say it before - because you just never know how the schedule is going to change. but he's home. and, thanks to a bit of a shortened stay here and there and a good strong tailwind, he made it on time.

you'll excuse us, won't you? we'll be pouring over the several hundred watercolor paintings made for daddy. also on the agenda: paper airplane making (ad nauseum), wood glider flying, foam plane flying, more painting, {squeeze in a bit of schoolwork here}, daddy pushing on the swings, mommy escaping the home for just a few hours (by herself!!!).

actually, i'll be chopped liver for the next few days - i might have time to squeeze in some sewing or knitting or maybe just a bit of lying on the couch and doing nothing (just a bit of that). or do you think i should try to get caught up on the housework before he has to leave again? i don't think so either.

canning tools...they're not just for canning anymore

2009-09-10T06:00:00-04:00

As I suspect is the case with lots of us, the canner is going full steam these days. Salsa, pear sauce, pear pie mix...Of course, when mama plays with her toys, the kids need to play too.

It turns out, we have a new doll bed.

i'm a pc

2009-09-08T05:00:00-04:00

another project. remember back when i couldn't post pictures (yes, way back when 4 posts ago)? i received a new camera for my birthday back in june, but adobe elements wouldn't recognize the RAW format of the new camera, my version of elements was too old to get a plug in, my computer too old to update adobe?

after suffering for 2 months, i built a computer.

yep! i built one. i had help from a computer forum, but it sure was fun.

it reminded me of the old days at the 9 to 5 job. i was a computer geek. i didn't build computers, but sometimes i had to work on little handheld jobs for our technicians. otherwise, i was a software/network/database geek.

i hope you're not going to ask why. why i didn't just go to dell...why i didn't just go to best buy. i didn't save any money doing it this way.

the why is because.

it was just...fun.

got it - a wheel bug

2009-09-07T14:54:44-04:00

After spending the better part of too much time looking through bugguide.net and all the grasshopper/katydid/cricket pictures - 378 pages to be exact - we still can't find what we're looking for (cue U2 playing in my head for the rest of the day). Maybe he's some sort of mantid?

My kids found this guy (gal?) on our giant sunflower outside.

Do bugs creep anybody else out as much as me?

I try to put on the brave face, for my kids, to encourage them in their explorations. However, during the unidentified bug photoshoot I kept repeating to myself, "...just don't jump...just don't jump...in my direction." Just typing this gives me the shivers.

Update: We posted the bug to bugguide.net and someone was kind enough to identify it for us: a Wheel Bug.