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We're painting today! One side of the house, anyway.
The days have been packed with house-related activity - scraping old paint off the shingles and clapboard, replacing shingles, priming, and now, we get to do some painting. All that plus the other normal stuff - laundry, dishes, feed the family, pay a bit of attention to the kids, feed the pets, pick whatever's ripe in the gardens, and so on.
Continue reading "Posting Will Be (and, yes, has been) Light" »
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Here's just a list of stuff going on - my feeble attempt to explain why posting is light....
Continue reading "Joyful Chaos, and Jingling the Roof of our See-Crud Clubhouse. " »
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Earlier in the short Little League season, Alex had a game where he struck out every time he was at bat, a rarity for him. I think two things were at play that day - he was still getting used to the pitching machine, and he was learning to hold his arm, his "back" arm, up higher so he could get more power behind it, and this was still new to him and probably slowed down his response time a bit.
Anyway, he was, understandably, dejected after that game, and we told him that ALL batters strike out sometimes. Every one of them, no matter how great they are. They strike out. Sometimes it's just once in a game, sometimes it's the whole game, sometimes it's a whole bad streak where they're just not doing well at all. But it happens. To grown up men who are professional ball players getting played lots of money to play this beautiful game. And they usually always bounce back.
The main thing is, they keep swinging.
I bring this up not to launch into a poignant story about Alex today, but to share this with you:
Continue reading "Well, .333 is Considered a Great Average in Baseball" »
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My sister earned her second degree black belt recently (Yay, Mere!), and she asked me if I could make the cakes for their graduation. Of course, I said yes.
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It's so hectic this month - not just with Alex's birthday cake to create, but with all the end-of-the-school-year stuff going on for my kids AND my husband. Not to mention food-related activities that I haven't had time to write up...things like...we're brining pork bellies so we can make bacon...I need to make a goats milk cheddar soon...I made cheese curds (and french fries and gravy) for poutine recently...I also finally made my fresh and mesophilic starters...our garden is doing incredibly well (knock wood) - we've got zucchini ripening now, for example.
Julia's got another wiggly tooth...Alex hit two doubles in last night's baseball game...I'm making two big cakes for an event this week, which I'll tell you about after it's all finished...and soon we'll be starting on this year's house project - painting the outsides of the house and garage. I'm very excited about that - looking forward to a new color. Not 100% sure yet what that color will be, but I'll be deciding soon.
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So my son has turned eight. He had his actual birthday, and then, over the weekend, he had his birthday party, which included a bunch of his friends, ribs (smoked for 6 hours - oh, they were so good), other food, decent enough weather that they could play outside in the pool, and, of course, a cake.
Last year's theme was Star Wars - specifically, a battle between Yoda and the Emperor in the Senate Rotunda, from Revenge of the Sith. You can see it (and Julia's cake from last year) here.
This year we continued with the Star Wars theme, but skipped forward a generation to my favorite of the movies, The Empire Strikes Back.
Continue reading "Carnage on Hoth - Not for the Squeamish!" »
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There are five new Star Wars action figures lined up on the coffee table.
"I lined them up in order of episodes. And if there are two from the same episode, like Anakin and Obi-Wan, I just put them in alphabetical order."
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I know, I know - "More food posts!" Bear with me, they're on the way.
I wrote this post about a week ago and it seemed to resonate with some of you, and then a little something happened that got me thinking about other related things...so here you go, I'm pouring that out for you today.
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I just think this salad is so pretty.
We planted radishes this year. I remember being allowed to plant radishes when I was little - it was my crop - probably because they came up so quickly and, you know, relatively instant gratification is big to a child.
Anyway, we planted them this year, and when the first batch became harvestable, Bill started looking for radish recipes.
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We spent yesterday afternoon at a friend's house. He has a nearly-five-year-old daughter, and she and Julia played so well together that I didn't even get pictures of them - they were always somewhere else, busy with little girl things.
The house is near the water, and as soon as we arrived, Bill went out to dig some clams.
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I scribbled this down at the beginning of Alex's ballgame yesterday. Not sure why, other than the fact that sometimes I have to write stuff down.
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A few of them, actually. Just because I'm curious. I started wondering about things the other day, and thought it would be fun to put these wonderings out there for anyone to respond to.
Here are my questions. Answer any or all of them, whatever you choose. Oh, and you can either answer them here in the comments section or over on the Barefoot Kitchen Witch page on Facebook. Your choice.
Here are my questions, in bold. I've answered them myself, just to kick things off.
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Yes, I'll write about food again some time soon. And cheese. Which, of course, is food, but at the same time MORE than food around here.
A few things...
Guess what? If you eat less, you might lose weight. Especially if you eat less junk. Or stop that whole "fourth meal" nonsense. Do I NEED to eat another meal's worth of food at 8:30 or 9:00 at night? Um, no. Turns out I don't. Good to know.
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We'd been on the subject of children, large families, babies, etc....
Julia: "I wonder who I'll marry some day."
Me: "Guess we'll have to wait and see..."
Julia: "...some clown?"
Me: "I hope not!"
Julia: "Because then my babies would all look like clowns!"
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In the car on the ride home from the dentist. We were about halfway there. Julia was chattering away happily and started a game of "I Spy." She went first. Alex didn't want to play word games with her any more, but we weren't home yet.
Julia: (happily)"I spy with my little eye...something green!"
Alex: (grudgingly)"A tree."
Julia: "Nope!"
Alex: "A bush."
Julia: "Yes! Your turn!"
Alex: "I spy with my little eye...something annoying."
Julia: "Me?"
Alex: "Yep."
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