Deck the Halls

Secrets

This time of year, is hard for blogger-crafters. I can't show much of what we've been doing. Here's just a peak at what we did this weekend.
Abram's been working on a special chainmail project for Owen
while I have been doing a little of this and a little of that - including a bit of crocheting.
Owen likes to do some of whatever he sees - chainmail and crocheting simultaneously. The last I saw the crochet hook he borrowed, it was outside being used as a cat lure. I don't think they took the bait.

New Roof

This one's been in queue for a while. . .
On this rainy day, I am so very, very grateful for a sound roof over our heads, and so I present our new roof.

First the old one had to be removed. There were four layers of old roof - 1 of cedar shakes and 3 of asphalt shingles. As it turned out, all of it didn't fit into this huge dumpster.



The new roof is lifetime guaranteed metal. It arrived on a big truck, and they left it by the road. I was a bit worried about it sitting our there, but it was just so dang heavy, no one was likely to idly happen by and take it. They unpacked it all over the yard.

After waiting a couple of rainy days, they headed up - one last look at the old roof.It took days to get the old roof off. The foreman, Francisco, kept telling me what fine and extremely hard wood we had up there. We left the first morning when it was still a bit cloudy (but forecast to be sunny and no rain),


and returned at lunch time to one section nearly cleared under a beautiful sky.

After lunch, they began covering the cleared section,and as you can see from the shadows, putting it on was slow going too. Apparently, our 110 year old wood roof breaks metal screws like no other.
What had been projected as a 2 or 3 days took 7 work days to complete. Thankfully all those days and the Sunday of rest were all very dry ones.

We love our fine new roof and are ever so glad that they are done - because it's been rather rainy of late and because it was pretty noisy here that week. There were no decent naps for Caedmon, and Owen even asked one day during his rest and show time if I could go out and ask the guys to stop hammering. No, buddy, I couldn't.

Look!

First, I thought you'd all enjoy some gratuitous pictures of my kids eating yoghurt this weekend 'cause I think they're awfully cute:

Then I thought I'd share what we did this morning:


I've had this idea filed away for, well, four years. Thanks to my friend, Jessie for the inspiration. We have lots of Christmas ornaments. Some of them were just too old/chipped/wonky to keep, but lots of them have sentimental meaning to us and I was really excited to find a way to display some of the surplus and in some cases hide some of the imperfections of thirty-odd years of use.
We used tons of ornaments, a grapevine wreath from Christmases past, and loads of hot glue. Owen got the hot glue love, Caedmon napped and then rocked out to some Christmas music on my back, and nobody got burned!
So, what Christmas crafting have you been up to or planned? Anything that's been on your list for YEARS?

Jump!

Scat

Yes, this post will be about poop. Around here, we aren't afraid of it. In fact, we have more than one book dedicated solely to the subject of feces. So when we happened upon some odd looking crap (literally) on our walk through the wetland area of the Discovery Center, we just had to take a closer look - even needed to probe it a bit.
And do you know what those ducks have been eating?

Crawfish!
Lucky ducks

Farmers' Market

Around here, it's not quite so easy to come across local food as it was in Lancaster. That is to say every second house does not have a sign advertising some yummy home-grown thing to stop and buy. We do have an in with a fabulous dairy farmer whose cows are pastured and make yummy milk ;o), and Bessy from the freezer sure tastes good! So we haven't explored the other beef and raw milk suppliers much here.
We have joined an online farmers' market (Stones River Market) where we got lots of summer veggies, pastured chicken, pork, eggs, and a couple of gallons of milk (for the cats, of course). This week's order :
garlic, ground pork, pork fat for making lard, collard greens, lettuce, and

Arknsas black apples
We had enjoyed a similar market while in Sewanee and were thrilled to find such a convenient way to get great local foods.
Where do you get your local foods? Have you found an online farmers' market in your area?

Baby It's Cold Outside

Yes, I'm already listening to Christmas music folks.
My friend Tania asked about fun things to do with kids when you can't get out, and with all the Christmas music and crafting going on around here, naturally lots of these are Christmasy. Some days I feel like I'm just scraping by as a mama, but on my best days, I find that making an event out of pretty much any activity makes parenting lots more fun. Owen loves to help with things when I make them into activities. Cooking dinner or a treat, cleaning (spraying vinegar-water on stuff), and watering the plants are all activities if I remember to let them be more than just a list of things that I need to get done.

Here's some things we've done or hope to do:
1. paint brown paper bags (for gift bags)




2. paint rolls of brown paper or newsprint end rolls for wrapping paper
3. paint wooden cut-outs for ornaments and gifts (We did stars and snowflakes - about 25 cents each at Michaels)

• A few notes about painting - potato stamps (or turnips in our case - gotta use what ya got), sponge stamps, and stencils are all easy to make at home almost for free. Paint brushes, fingers, and toes are fun too! I try to limit the number of paint colors I put out when I am doing a project that will become a gift. With snowflakes and stars, I just put out white, silver, gold, blue, and yellow. We have also painted big wooden initials and picture frames as gifts.
  

4. make sugar plums

• We did this just this week. After Owen asked what sugar plums were, we looked them up. They sounded a lot like the faux Lara bars we've been making, so we just chose our ingredients from our pantry and made them up. This falls into the make an event out if whatever you're doing. This all came from reading "A Visit From St. Nicholas."
  

Dried cranberries, dates, almonds, nutmeg, and cinnamon (about 2 parts fruit to 1 part nuts) . . .
. . . chopped in a food processor and mixed together (because I have a little bitty one and had to do it in parts). . .
. . . and formed into balls like meatballs (oh so fun to stick your hands into!). . .
I must confess that I skipped over coating them in sugar. They were sugar plums all the same!

5. do an advent calendar or two

• There are a gazillion different ways to do these. One of the simplest I've seen is a stack of 24 envelopes each with something special (an activity or verse) in each one. I really love to plan an activity for each day so that celebrating Christmas and doing all those things I want to do doesn't become overwhelming. See the first link for a sampling of our kind of activities. I have also taken the liberty of changing those activities around to suit our needs. If we have a busy day coming up, I make sure to change the slip of paper in that pocket to a simple one like "sing Owen's favorite Christmas carol."
  

6. face painting

• because: What kid doesn't like to paint his face?

7. play in the bathtub

• Oh, yes, this is a bona fide activity in our house. Run that tub full of warm water and bubbles, and let 'em play. It's almost like playing in the kiddie pool in the summer.
  

8. DIY snowglobes
9. roast chesnuts
10. Silhouettes

• These are easy to do if you takes a picture of your child in front of a window, print it out, and glue the paper to the back of a pieces of construction paper. We have used these as gifts.

What are some indoor things you like to do with your kids?

Happy Belated Birthday, Baby!

With the anniversary of Caedmon's birth approaching, there was lots of knitting

and stuffing,
and crafting,
and packing,
and cooking,
and loving,
and roasting,

and singing,and help blowing
To get this boy properly turned one.
When the big day arrived we did a little outside working,
and nursing ('cause, you know, he's still nursing!),

and eating a little grass
since you know they grow up so fast - gotta get that grass-eating in before he gets too old.
Happy birthday, Baby!

Fall Bulb Planting

Thank you very much to Tracy for the wonderful daffodil and narcissus bulbs she sent us.




With Caedmon on my back and Owen in his PJs, we went out one morning to plant them. I decided on putting them right out in the yard in a few places. Soon after we moved in, we had our main water line break, and the dirt out by the water meter was easy to dig, in a nice sunny spot, and in a good location for viewing just as you enter our driveway. I headed on out there, and just as I started to dig, the roof guy pulled in, freaked out to see a woman wearing a baby digging at the water meter, and ran over to ask if he could do anything. I assured him I was only planting bulbs and taking advantage of the already loosened soil there. So he dropped off his things and went on his merry way, and I finished the bulbs.
Now we just have to wait 6 months for spring to come and the flowers to bloom.