Snapshot Sunday

The reading corner
Vehicle table
Tomato starts...my Romas are sprouting!  Yay!

My cast iron crows.  I love these.  I love anything crow.

Geoff's Cake

 Dark chocolate cake and white chocolate cream cheese frosting.  Served with raspberry orange coulis.  

This one was pretty fun to make.

Fearghus Photo Post (image heavy)

These are Paddington Bear's boots.  They were unceremoniously stolen and placed on Fearg's feet.




Trying out a smile.
And again.
Chatty too!
And tired of wearing boots.  

Mothering's ETSY street team giveaway

A whole bunch of artists have compiled a gift pack for new mothers and babes.  I'm posting this here to snag an extra two votes ;P

Click here to enter! 

Garden!!

I am so excited to start my garden this year.  This will be the first year (since I lived in my childhood home) that I will actually have a sizable garden that I don't have to share with strangers. (That is not a slight to community gardens, which I think are wonderful opportunities to build a sustainable community and teach life skills.  All the other homes I have lived in have not had a yard or have had plots belonging to others.)

This is my garden plan.  You can't really see it at all (sadly.  I spent a lot of time drawing this to scale....lol).

I'm hoping to produce a significant quantity of our own food.  Next year we'll dig in a few more beds and another project on the horizon is to build a greenhouse out of reclaimed windows and doors.  

This year I dug in three new beds.  The little map is sideways; the three large beds are on the right side of our yard.  The beds on the top middle and bottom right were already here.  We've got lots more space.  When we're all done, there won't be any lawn left!

This week I'll be planting out:

- Carrots: 'Dragon' and a mixed variety of purple, white, and yellow carrots.

- Beets: 'Chioggia' (a red and white bullseye), and 'Detroit Red'.

- Lettuces:  An asian mesclun mix and a mild mesclun mix.

- Onions:  'Walla Walla' for storage, and 'Evergreen Bunching'.

- Chard:  'Bright Lights', which have five color stems.

- Spinach:  'Space' for summer and fall harvest.

- Peas: 'Karina Snap'

- Grains:  'Multi-hue Quinoa' and a red variety of Amaranth.  Both are gluten free.

- Strawberries: 'Mignionette', starting from seed for next year.

- Herbs

Baby Spaceman

I thought I'd make a post about our new babe.  He is nine weeks old today.

An easy and uneventful pregnancy.

Fearghus Sterling Dra was born on February 8th, at 9:20am, in my bathroom.  His birth was unassisted by any medical professional.  In fact, Papa was at hot yoga that morning and missed the whole show.  My good friend Lindsay was the only person present, staying with Kiddo (asleep in the bedroom).  Labour was just over two hours; Fearghus was born into my own hands.

Just thirty minutes old.  First nurse.

Empowering.

He is a very different baby from his big brother.  He seems to be more sensitive to changes in his environment, and tends to be a bit melancholy.  He doesn't sleep nearly as much.  Even though I knew I would have different children, I think subconsciously I expected them to be the same.

When he is awake, he is very alert and curious.  Chatty and excitable.

He's been struggling with systemic yeast and has been appropriately fussy.  He would qualify as "colicky", according to the AAP criteria.  It's tough to have a baby who always seems unhappy.

I'll post a birth story as soon as I get around to writing one.

Welcome, little Spaceman.

Snapshot Sunday

Easter chocolates

Some tomato transplants and Papa's BONSAIS!!

Plastic egg aftermath

Papa brought me an Easter Lily  <3

Muffin Tin Wednesday #2 and a Very Late Snapshot Sunday

Today we had (left to right): Snap peas, apples, broccoli, almonds, cantaloupe, hazelnuts, carrots, grapes, more broccoli, cucumbers, pecans, and mango.  Abhy thoughtfully prepared the two cups of marble tea that you  can see in the background.

Here is our late Snapshot Sunday:

My diaper basket

The school bus has been to Abhy's Tire Change.

Tea time!

Butterfly

Here is a better picture of Kiddo's face paint, taken by Lindsay.

Two cake orders on the same day

One of my 'hobbies' is cake decorating. I would like to make a career out of it, but everyone and their dog does these days. I have a decent client base however, and no shortage of jobs this year (even during the economic downturn, people still eat cake).

While I did go to school to become a baker, I didn't learn much about cakes that I didn't already know. Most of what I learned was how to produce commercial goods in large quantities at pace (ie: 200 croissants in 30 minutes). And I learned how to make bread, which was worth the ridiculous tuition I paid.

These two jobs were both for birthday parties.

The first was 30 cupcakes with stars and moons. The cake was a fabulous vegan vanilla (for all you non-believers I was vegan for years, and now I eat a whole-foods diet that includes meat and dairy, but this is a recipe I'll make over and over because it is SO GOOD) with Italian meringue buttercream. The buttercream, obviously, wasn't vegan. They knew that. Weird, huh? Oh well. I make what they order.

Anyways, the cupcakes have a fondant cap painted in a style reminiscent of Van Gogh's 'Starry Night'. The clouds are buttercream and the cutout stars and moons are dusted with a little petal glitter. Now if only I wasn't such a pathetic photographer:


What they looked like without cutouts


What they looked like inside

You can sort of see the glitter in this one:







The second job was for a small circus themed cake and 20 matching cupcakes. The cake was lemon with raspberry preserve and the same Italian meringue buttercream (it's popular). I have no pictures of the cupcakes.







We went to a party with face painting. I didn't expect the kiddo to allow a stranger to touch his face, but she was slow and gentle and painted my hand first, then his hand, and then his face. She had a neat poster with pictures of popular designs. Kiddo looked it over, then decisively pointed at the butterfly. 'Dat fly'. He was mistaken for a girl by several party attendees.