making & listening

with the season of giving upon us, and a swap party (the fourth I've hosted since last October- I'm hooked!) coming up in just a few days, there has been a lot of making around here this past week.  add in a papa with a (very) part-time gig at a new butcher/local dairy shop started up by farmer friends of ours and therefore a surplus of past-date milk coming home with him, and there was some ricotta cheese making, as well.

my aloe plant was relieved of many babies in an effort to get together a take-home party favor for the swap- it looks pretty happy now, with lots more room to spread and gather the precious little sunlight streaming through the dining room windows.

there was some simultaneous herbal 'vapor rub' salve and elderberry syrup making, with the grinch keeping watch.  good grinch.  he just needs more love you know.

and then this morning, peppermint & lavender lip balm.  retro lady grater helps out for all my non-food grating needs.  neatly pouring the (quickly hardening) liquid oil and beeswax mixture from the pyrex container into the teeny tiny openings of the lip balm tubes is, apparently, something I need a little practice with.  

and for now, that's a wrap.  more granola coming up soon along with some more work on the felted play mat.

the listening has been, almost exclusively, Pandora holiday stations.  Phil Spector, She & Him, Ella Fitzgerald.  that's how I roll now that the tree is up and it's all cheer and sparkle around here.

*playing along with Dawn today.

make & listen (and read) along

Only once before have I joined in for the Make & Listen Along fun over at Simple Things Notebook, but this week has seen some making, so here I am.  Not quite a week into the world of needle and wet felting, and I've got a half dozen little balls (a long ways off from the garland I hope to make, but it's a start) under my belt, along with a repair job on a doll, a nearly finished wallet, a mini doll, and about 1/3 of a butterfly.  The possibilities are endless....  dolls! mobiles! ornaments! oh my!  And what fun it is for little hands as well.

the wallet still needs yarn stitched in from the bottom to create the ties, and I have to felt the bottom 2/3 together to form a pocket, but it's very nearly done~

My big felting goal for now is to make a playscape for Claire.  A large mat, maybe 2 x 3 feet, that is essentially grassy colored with a river/creek running through it and some flowers and patches of soil and sand.  Something she can roll out and use for playing with her dolls and animals.  Perhaps even some new felted dolls and animals.

In other making, there was french toast for breakfast, which lead to the making of a mental note regarding the status of our honey and maple syrup stash.

With a bit over a gallon still untouched, the syrup should last us until we make more in the late winter.  And the honey?  Still somewhere in the gallon and a half-ish range, but it's going fast.  And hot-tea-all-day-long season hasn't even really started yet.  Regardless, the satisfaction I feel every time I open the pantry and see the jars of maple syrup and honey lined up beside each other.... well, it's big time.

As for the listening~  in rotation as of late have been Etta James, Erin McKeown, and the Disney Pandora station (I know, it sounds awful, right? but if you whittle away at it until it's what you want, it's surprisingly good and includes lots of old stuff).

As for the reading, I just finished The Language of Flowers and loved it.  Now I'm moving on to two others that fall more into the memoir/creative nonfiction categories:  Growing a Farmer, and The Secret Life of Lobsters.

*for more making and listening along with others, check out Simple Things Notebook

making and listening

the making

::in the kitchen::

*strawberry jam
just two pints this time, but it brings our total so far up to about 16 cups of from-the-backyard strawberry jam
(mine always separates like this when I process it, I think because I leave it pretty chunky... we just stir it up before digging in.)

it would seem the best strawberry-jam-making helpers wear capes (nothing but capes),

and are more than glad to assist with the sticky clean up.

(raspberry jam is up soon, we're watching those bushes and while most branches still end in tight little clusters of greenish unripe berries, we have found two ripe ones.....)

speaking of unripe berries, I had to have a chat with C today about never ever picking unripe blueberries again...... sacrilegious, it is! (though they do look pretty against that bright 'radish' color of her newly painted picnic table, I must say

*granola, from this lovely cookbook (I've now made two things from her book, the other being baked oatmeal, seems I like what she does with oats).  I added a bit of cinnamon and some sesame seeds, and swapped coconut oil for the butter.  it has orange rind in it and I swear that smell takes me right back to christmas baked goods as a child (though I'm quite sure my mother didn't actually bake anything with orange rind?) and memories of my mom pulling those pillsbury cinnamon rolls out of the oven and glazing them with that orange-flavored icing.  can't say I've got a desire to eat one of those now, but oh my gosh the olfactory memory lane...

::for her::

*the newly painted picnic table
*number rods


inspired by this, I started the process of making her own set of montessori-esque number rods a while ago and have finally done it. (okay, some of the rods still need a bit of paint, but they are so close to being finished)  these are a bit different from the traditional montessori material, in color and size, but I am a-okay with that.

::for me::

I've been making changes in our furniture situation, shifting things around in her room, the office, and the dining room.  the wall above the mantle in the dining room is now a chalkboard wall where I plan to write my favorite quotes in chalk-marker.  some of my favorites are listed here.  there are many others that will be dueling for the available space. from winnie-the-pooh to wendell berry to julia child....  quite a mix it will be.

I keep telling myself they aren't just for christmas.  they are christmas lights from december to january, and otherwise they are just..... lights.  sparkly, lovely, cozy lights.  one day maybe I'll actually hang those pictures on the wall.  for now, the plate rail is an eventual-wall-decor catch all.

::outside::

I've been sneaking in *little mini garden beds in the form of cinder blocks and small rock-lined raised beds pouring out of the existing garden space. (I'll do another garden post soon, no doubt.  seems every other post is about the garden)

something else I've been making is *mistakes

mistakes in tadpole rearing, specifically
they were all, all eight of them, doing great for a couple weeks and then they started dropping off
I'm not sure why,
they seemed to be enjoying their chlorine-free water and their cat food and lettuce...
so we were down to three
until today
today when I left their lovely new habitat in the hot sun
(it wasn't in the sun at first, mind you, but I didn't check on them for a while and then, when I did....)


the two that were still completely water bound are no longer
the water was way too warm
ugh
bad tadpole-mama! (but oh, the things I've learned for next time)
but there's one sweet little froggy left, one little amphibian successfully reared and dangit we are letting him/her go in the creek tomorrow (where, yes, s/he may get eaten almost immediately or otherwise perish) and then I can picture him/her happily living out their little froggy life in creekside bliss.

the listening

it's been a big pandora week
who am I kidding, it's nearly always pandora around here
it's been:

natalie macmaster and sam bush&jerry douglas for inspiration
brett dennen
alabama shakes
regina spektor

over time so many of my pandora stations sound alike, surely I could whittle it down a bit
would love to hear others' favorites....


*I am playing along with dawn