Getting the weeds out!

This morning we motivated ourselves to get out in the yard to get the beds ready for some planting, and do some fruit tree pruning.  The weather wasn't as gorgeous as I had hoped, but it didn't really rain on us too much. 

The daffodils are popping up all over the garden, and lots of the tulip bulbs are poking their heads out!  The azalea and camellia are both blossoming with their sweet flowers, and everything has buds and greens growing about!  The last few days have been surprisingly nice, and the plants have definitely enjoyed it.  We have been very behind on the vegetable garden, so seeing so much growth has inspired me to get our butts in gear.

We let the chickens roam in the yard today while we worked.  We don't do that very often, because it gets chicken poop all over the place, but they are such excellent little bulldozers it was hard to resist!  They trampled some daffodil bulbs, but for the most part they did good work out there.

I love seeing all the beautiful flowers popping up in our yard.  Our apple trees have a ton of blossoms so we are hoping for a great crop this year.  We took out all the vinca at the base of the apple trees last year so we would have an easier time collecting apples this year.  Hopefully we won't lose as many to the wretched squirrels!

The garlic we planted last year is coming along nicely!  This is a variety that Adam and Erin gave us a couple of heads to plant, and we are very excited about having our very own store of garlic this year.  Now we need to get some lettuce and peas in the ground.  The rain has started pouring, so it probably won't happen today, but sometime in the next few days, we'll get cracking!

We also have plans to build a new raised bed this spring.  We have a great spot under Kevin's office window that should get a lot of sunshine, so I am excited to construct that and have more sunny space for some hot weather goodies!

I'm sure there will be an update on that soon, hopefully next weekend we'll get it done!

Long time, no blog

I seem to have lost my blogging motivation this winter. It's been a tough one, very wet, cold, and long. Taking photos in less than stellar lighting, feeling like the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is put together any sort of coherent thoughts, and also just being really busy has led to my completely ignoring the ol' blog!  But I'm back, and ready to get down to the business of telling you all what we've been up to around here.

 Ugly paint, BE GONE!

Since the day we moved into our sweet little house, I have hated the color of the paint in the bedroom, but we hadn't ever found the time or the motivation to actually pick a new color and get it done.  It'd been really irritating me lately because it was an ugly purple/brown and like I said, this winter has been really getting me down!  So last weekend, after a birthday lunch for Kevin with my parents, Matt, and Jackson, I suggested we just go to the paint store and pick a color.

I kind of already had it in my mind that I wanted the room to be a shade of blue, so it was just a matter of finding one we could both agree on!  It didn't take too long, and we got paint for the walls, plus white for the ceiling since the previous owners had painted it the awful purple as well!

 

Sometimes gray...

By this time, it was late afternoon on Sunday, but you know how these things go: I wanted to get started since we had the materials!  So we moved all the furniture out and started cleaning the walls and taping things off.  Unfortunately, in that process of washing the walls, I discovered we have a crack in the plaster wall under the window that needs to be fixed.  It looks like on the outside the window casement and the siding came separated and water was getting in there.  We decided to just go ahead and proceed with the painting and we would fix it later when it's not raining all the freaking time!  :)  So we got a coat of paint on the ceiling and called it a night.

 

  Sometimes purple...

Of course, for the next 3 days, we didn't come home after work because of various engagements, so the second coat on the ceiling didn't go up til Thursday, and the walls didn't get painted til Friday!  We've been sleeping on the futon in our tv room all week.  Oi!  My back is ready for my bed again!

 Presto, chango, BLUE!

 Today we moved all the furniture back in finally!

 I would like to change the curtains, they don't really go.  Any color suggestions?

Since we had all the furniture moved out anyway, we decided we should check out the floors underneath to see if they could be refinished easily, since hardwoods are always preferable.  We pulled up a corner, and they don't look too bad, though there was a sizable stain.  

The main thing is the floor boards move a lot.  You can see them move as you walk across them.  So we weren't really sure what to make of that, and since we have more pressing household projects to attend to, we put the carpet back to work on at a later date!  We have bathroom issues to get cracking on next!


The blog also celebrated its 3rd anniversary last month!  Thanks for reading everyone, and I hope to be more on top of the posts now that spring has arrived to thaw out my brain!  :)

Grandma's Shortbread

My grandmother was an amazing baker.  From pies to cookies to frozen treats, there was nothing she couldn't make and make better than anyone else.  (Though there was that one time she accidentally used salt instead of sugar for a lemon meringue pie!)  Whenever she came to visit us from Canada, she would always come with goodies, and always baked something while with us.  The best was at Christmas, when she would bring her shortbread cookies. 

Now, some people think they have had good shortbread, but I'm telling you, nothing compares to what my grandmother baked up.  All of us kids anticipated the arrival of the shortbread cookies, always in a special jar that I so wish I had now.  It was a clear glass jar with a lid that screwed off in this entirely satisfying smooshing way.  Her shortbread was so soft and melting, it was like a buttery-sugary dream dissolving on your tongue.

My grandma passed away a few years ago after battling valiantly to recover from a terrible car accident she and my mother were in the day after Christmas in 2000.  For a little while, it seemed like she was going to come back to us completely like she was before, but old age got the better of her, and she died at the age of 92.  I wish that I had taken more time to listen to her stories and learn more about her.  I miss her a lot.

What I do have is a cookbook that my mom found last year, really a folder of recipes not organized in any way.  There are clippings from magazines, hand written notes with incomplete recipes, newspaper bits.  We had hoped that somewhere in that book would be her recipe for shortbread, which no one in the family had ever gotten from her.  No such luck.  There are a few other special recipes in there that I will try out and pass on to my siblings, and I love looking at her handwriting.  She had beautiful penmanship, and even in her older age when her writing became more shaky, it is still a pleasure to look at and admire. 

I had given up hope of ever finding her recipe, when a few days before Christmas this year, I was looking through my mother's recipe folder she gave me a couple years ago, and out slipped a piece of paper.  I think my breath literally caught in my chest when I picked it up, and read across the top, "Melting Shortbread."  Here it was, in my mother's recipes all along!  How I missed it the number of times I've leafed through that book, I'll never know.  I guess it was just waiting for the right time to present itself.  I didn't have time as I'd hope to bake some and surprise my family for Christmas (of the woes of retail at the holidays!) but after receiving 5 new cookie sheets for Christmas, I decided that was sign enough to get started!

On Saturday I busted out the ingredients, and got to work.  I've never made shortbread before, but I knew that you shouldn't overwork the ingredients because it makes the shortbread crumbly.  I creamed the butter, mixed in the icing sugar, and was feeling pretty good.  Then the flour and corn starch went in.  That's a lot of dry ingredients.  Hmmmm, am I missing something?  No, double checked with other recipes on the Internet, it seems right.  So I start mixing, thinking it will become a dough.  But no, it stayed pretty coarse and well, dry.  Finally, Kevin suggests just trying to ball it up with my hands and see if it works.  By this time, it's almost kickoff for the Seahawks (HUZZAH!) game, so I ball it up, wrap it in saran wrap, and stick it in the fridge. 

After the game (BEAST MODE!!!!!) I pull it out.  Hard as a rock.  There is no rolling this puppy out!  So I decide, well, let's just make the most of this, even though I was pretty positive I had ruined the whole batch.  I cut the ball in half, then chop off pieces to bake up.  Ugliest shortbread, ever.  I had serious doubts this would be okay.  But then something wonderful happened.  I baked them for about 10 minutes, and after cooling for a few minutes, tried one out.  Oh, I know this taste, this wonderful texture, this is what love from my grandmother felt like!  They are even better today.  I've eaten 6 or 7.  Oops.  I don't care really, I'm just so happy that I found the recipe, and with a little practice, I think I'll be able to come pretty close to my grandma's perfection.

Grandma's Melting Shortbread:

3 cups flour
1/2 cup corn starch
1 cup icing sugar
1 pound butter, room temperature

Cream softened butter, add icing sugar and blend well.  Sift flour and corn starch, mix with butter sugar mixture.  Don't beat too much, as shortbread will break after baking.  Make into a ball or log, chill for an hour in refrigerator.  Use teaspoon or cut off rounds, place on cookie sheet.  Dip a fork in water and press down to flatten.  Bake for about 10 minutes at 350 degrees.  Enjoy!

Christmas Stocking!

I've been meaning to make Kevin and myself Christmas stockings for a couple of years now, since I sort of have the skills to do so!  This summer, I found 4 skeins of red and white yarn on sale for 50 cents apiece, and knew the opportunity was here and beckoning!  At first, I considered just making plain red stockings with white heels and toes, but then I stumbled upon a really beautiful pattern on Ravelry.com, and decided to suck it up and try for the challenging stockings.

I started this a couple months ago, but had put it aside several times to work on other projects and avoid frogging an entire section that I did incorrectly!  But this week after finishing my socks, I really put myself to work, and tonight I finished the first one.

 I am mostly happy with how it turned out, but plan on working out some kinks for the second stocking.  For one thing, I did the color work of the leg upside down.  Not at huge deal, but I'd like Kevin's stocking to look perfect!

 I love the way the snowflakes turned out, though.  It was intimidating to try a pattern like this, I'd never done any sort of color work before, and this seemed like a pretty complicated one, but I worried for nothing.  It was a total breeze!  And actually a lot of fun, because it changed all the time so it stayed interesting.  Doing the same stitch and pattern for a long time can get pretty boring.

The main trouble, and the reason this took so darn long, was the pattern for the foot did not make any sense to me!  It is supposed to be striped, but I kept having trouble on every single round with it not matching up right.  So I decided to rip it back to the leg, and start over with a regular sock pattern.  Weeelllll, apparently, that wasn't great either, because the foot on this sock is enormous!  I don't like how it looks that much, but as Kevin said, "It can fit a ton of loot!"  So if he's happy, that's all that really matters.  :)  I don't know exactly how to make it smaller, so if any of you knitters out there have any tips, let me know!

I hope to finish the second one by next week, as we are decorating the house this weekend!  But for now, it's time to focus on Thanksgiving!  Excited to see the family and enjoy a lot of food, and now that the power is back on at the in-laws, we should have an excellent time!  :)  Hope it doesn't snow too much more tonight and tomorrow!

Off the needles!

I've been working on these socks off and on for months, and months, and months.  The trouble with socks is you finish one, feel proud of yourself, and then take a break.  Big mistake!  Always cast on the 2nd sock immediately!  Anyway, this is a lovely yarn I received from my mother-in-law for Christmas last year, Blue Moon Fiber Arts Socks that Rock, I don't remember what the colorway is other than AWESOME!  Such fun socks!  I'm pleased with how they turned out.  They are my third pair of socks, and I am getting better at making them.  Still have some issues with length, made these ones just a smidge too small, but I think if I block them out they will fit fine!  And I'm keeping 'em for myself!  :)

I am not good at taking pictures of my feet, though.

5 Little Chickens and How They Grew

Our girls are really all grown up now!  All 5 of them have been laying consistently for a few weeks now, and we are loving having so many eggs to enjoy and give to friends and family!  I even made a batch of deviled eggs for an early morning meeting with my fellow leads at the bookstore!  They were gone in a heart beat!

With all the rain we had been getting lately, coupled with the fact that it's been dark when we leave the house and dark soon after we arrive home, the girls' run was getting very muddy.  They'd been cooped up too much, and were getting poop everywhere!  It was getting pretty darn stinky.  So we decided we had best extend the roof out over the whole run with the hopes that it will keep things a bit drier down there.  Since we have to walk into the run to get at their food and water, this was pretty important to me since I don't "do" bad smells.  I just don't have the constitution.  Gonna be a problem if we have kids, I know.  Anyway, we loaded up the Subaru (!) with some metal roofing, and today Kevin has been busily working away at it while I get the house cleaned and raked the backyard free of all the hundreds of pounds of leaves that dropped this week!

Since he needed to get on both sides of the coop to work, the girls have been running around in the yard and I decided they needed a photo shoot!  The lighting wasn't great, but I think they are beautiful anyway.

 The light this morning was phenomenal!  Made it much easier to motivate myself to do some yard work!

 Scrambled still thinks she's hot stuff, and likes being Queen of the Yard!  She still flies into stuff though, so the name still suits her klutzy nature.

 He's pretty hot stuff.  :)  Oh, he also rigged up a water heating system til our real one arrives (hopefully very soon!).  He had to drill a hole in the garage since we don't have any outdoor outlets, and then ran it all the way through the yard up to the coop, very nicely hidden.  Then he attached the brooding lamp to the underside of the coop directly over their waterer.  Hopefully, that will keep things from freezing over the next few days!  It's supposed to be COLD!

 Frittata, Scrambled, Florentine, and Deviled.  Hollandaise just wasn't ready to have her photo taken.

 All 5 of the girls!

 What's up, Chicken Butt?  :)

 Hello there!  She really wanted to peck the camera, but wasn't fast enough for me!  Ha!

  She'll get me next time, I know...

 We are getting about 4 to 5 eggs a day, though with the weather getting colder we're assuming that will dropped off a bit.  They are getting nice and big, and are so delicious!  I'm never going to be able to have store bought eggs on a regular basis again!

There's even one who lays speckled eggs!  

I didn't think I would enjoy having hens around so much, but every day it's fun to go up and say hi to them and give them little treats.  When I went up earlier to take photos, they all ran over to me!  It's like having a pet who gives you yummy breakfast!  :) 

On another note, I made a delicious carrot cake last night for Kevin's birthday.  His birthday was in March, but I don't think he's holding it against me, at least not now that there is actual cake in his belly!  Next year, I'm shooting to get it in the same month at least! 

In which I yammer about cars

On Halloween evening, we parked at a Park and Ride near our house to go to the Sounders match.  Sadly, they lost the game, and when we got back to the P and R, our car sounded very strange when we started it up.  I thought maybe since it was Halloween, someone had played a prank and stuck something in our exhaust pipe.  Checked it out, and didn't see anything amiss. 

It's a 1990 Corolla, so we'd been thinking it going to die pretty soon here, and had sort of been planning on buying a new car for awhile, but didn't have the motivation to go car shopping.  We kind of just thought, "Well, she finally died, guess it was the car's time to go."  We got it home, though it was moving very sluggishly and making a ton of noise.  Sort of like those cars that have the suped up engines and no mufflers. 

The next day, Kevin went to see what there was to see, and got underneath the car.  He called up to me that it looked like someone had sawed off part of the exhaust pipe under the car.  I thought that was really random, but thought it was just some jackass playing a prank.  After consulting the owner's manual thought, Kevin found that it actually our catalytic converter that was gone, and after a very brief search of the Internet, found out that they are a popular thing to steal these days.  I guess they have some amount of platinum in them, so precious metals and all that.  Bleh!!!  We felt so violated!  We never really thought twice about leaving our car places, since it's old and kind of junky looking.  I guess it's true what they say: It's what's on the inside that counts!  Since the car isn't worth very much, and converters are kind of expensive to replace, we decided to bite the bullet and get a new car!

So for the last week and a half, we have been doing nonstop car shopping and research.  Kevin did an amazing job figuring out all kinds of useful info, and finding good places for us to go car shopping.  Luckily, my dad loaned us his Miata so we could still get around!  We did a lot of test drives, and went back and forth about whether we wanted something that gets good gas mileage but maybe wouldn't be as great for things like road trips and going to the moutains (like a Prius),  and something that had a lot of room and could get us anywhere but we would have to eat a lot more money in gas.  After driving a few different cars, we kept coming back to getting a Forester, which we have both loved for a long time.  We don't like the newest model, so we knew we would be getting a used car, so it just came down to finding a good one at the right price!  Fortunately, it didn't take too long.  Long enough for our house to completely fall apart without any chores getting done and no food being cooked, but not as bad as it could have been!

We ended up buying one in Renton from the Subaru dealer there, but only after a lot of apprehension about them.  It was a really weird experience!  It's run by a bunch of hyperactive Eastern European men in leather jackets who clearly want their cars sold fast and furious.  Kevin and I are anything but fast and furious (read: 8 years to get married!)  :)  But they had a great looking 2006 Forester with really low mileage that had just been traded in earlier that day.  It hadn't been through it's complete inspection and detailing, so we wanted to wait to take it for a real test drive when it was completely ready to be sold.  The guys really wanted us to buy it that day, but we held firm that we wanted to see it in the light of day and take it for a test drive.

Fortunately, Kevin had Thursday off for Veteran's Day, so first thing in the morning he headed to Renton to check it out again and take it for a drive.  It seemed great still, and the price was much better than most of the other Foresters out there.  So he went ahead and bought it, then took it for a buyer's inspection up here in Shoreline.    The guys there are totally awesome, very thorough and super patient explaining everything to me in terms I could relay to Kevin.  Luckily, there was nothing actually wrong with the car, and they gave it a flawless bill of health!  Hooray!  So here's our new car!