55 Morels

Things are coming alive in Vermont, and we have been busy, busy, busy! The sewing has been pushed aside for other seasonal projects. Eric has been doing odd jobs to the house and yard. Last weekend he completed the floor and sides to his new trailer (Thanks, Dad and Pat). His next project is the basement. Our basement looks like it should be on a Clean House episode. First it will be cleaned up and uncluttered, and then there is a big remodel planned. He is figuring on completing it this summer, but I'll bet this project will last at least 3 years. I have been on a frenzy to rid the house of clutter myself. Eric, Corie, Zakary and I are all pack rats, and we have all reached our limit. I started with the kitchen. It took four days to clear out and wash all the cabinets, eliminate the excess stuff, reorganize and put all the keepers away, and bag up for donation or price for yardsale all the unwanted items. Within the first 30 minutes of the project this is what the kitchen looked like and stayed like until the fourth day. It was worth all the work though. I ended up with six garbage bags of things to get rid of! The next two weekends were spent in Zakary's and then Corie's bedroom. That ended with four bags for the yard sale and eight bags for the Salvation Army.

The kids have been doing great. Zakary just got his graduation certificate from preschool... it seems like just yesterday he was my baby. His teacher said that he was very intelligent, but entered the classroom with his own agenda (smart and stubborn, yep that's him). She also asked us if he took things apart at home to see how they worked. Eric and I just laughed. There is a reason why all the screw drivers in our house are kept hidden.

Corie keeps getting taller and taller, or to be more specific her legs keep getting longer and longer. Most of the time she is still my little girl, but I can see the teen starting to come out. The other day she said one sentence that contained the work "like" at least five times. Ugh! Another sign of what's to come: I had to ban the Nintendo ds at bedtime, because it had taken over the nightly reading time. I am officially taking the blame for the declining health of her cyber dogs, "Mom, if I don't feed my dogs every night they will die, and it will be your fault". It's not easy being a mom. Click here to see more: family pictures

Another sign of the warm weather is Whitneys annual lion cut. I tried to get a side shot to capture her full cuteness, but she kept swirling and twirling like a swarming shark. I ended up with 16 pictures of a grey blur. It's worth the $40 haircut to avoid the clumps of tumblehairs rolling across the floor and the splats of hair balls everywhere. As soon as we get her home she starts purring and rubbing on all the house corners. Happy cat = happy cat owners.

I suppose the last piece of info that I'm going to bore you with is my foraging story. I was walking down our driveway wondering what I was going to put into the quiches for dinner, and I was wishing that I had bought some mushrooms when I was at the grocery store. All of a sudden my eye caught sight of morels. Lots of morels. Over fifty-five morels right on the side of our driveway! So I went back to the house and hopped on the internet and visited several sites that taught me how to distinguish false morels from real ones, and then went back to the morels and ran them through the test. They passed with flying colors (pun intended), but then I decided that death by quiche was not how I wanted to go... but for a little while it was kind of exciting. Obviously, it doesn't take much to excite me. I did get a taste of native Vermont when my coworker brought in a bag of fresh fiddleheads for me. Thanks Maureen. If you are hot to see some more morel pictures just click on this: Morel link.

The summer line up ....

I know that summer is just around the corner when I see this view. Our neighbors own and run several stands (lemonade, smoothies, fried dough, pretzels...), and in early spring they bring all the stands out of storage and start prepping them for the upcoming season. This is not only the beginning of their season but of flea market, yard sale, picnicking and fun season. Yeah!
Our sprouts are doing great. This is where they start getting leggy on me, but I'm hoping for better luck this year. As usual there is no way that there is room in the garden for all the seeds that we started. I anticipated a high casualty rate among my sprouts, and so far we haven't lost any. After listening to a gardening show on NPR I'm going to try Celebrity tomatoes this year. Our season is so short that Big Boys, Early Girls and Beefsteak haven't worked out. Brandywine is very productive and it tastes pretty good, but it doesn't have that strong flavor that I'm looking for. Okay, now that I've bored you with tomato talk...
The great weather has pulled me out into the garden, so I haven't been doing much sewing lately. I have started embroidering again though. I want to add some embroidery to my designs, and since I haven't done it in 25 years a little practice was needed. I'm not very good, but it's so much fun.

With the onset of gardening season and the new addiction to sewing & embroidery my poor family hasn't had a descent meal in ages. Last weekend I popped into the kitchen and cooked a Thai curry on Monday, and a stir fry with black bean and chili sauce on Tuesday. They were both tasty but a bit on the hot side. Eric took one bite of the stir fry and said, "Are you trying to kill me woman?!"... He did go back for seconds though, and he hasn't nagged me to cook ever since :)

We are slowly migrating from mud season to spring. Our seeds are sprouting and so is the itch to start gardening. This weekend will be spent doing yardwork (if the weather cooperates). This past weekend was sunny but cold. It was the first time in years that we didn't have to hide the Easter eggs in the snow. We had a great day with Eric's parents and my Mom. Zakary got a new motorized John Deere from Grandma & Grandpa Smith. He only drives it when he has a reason (no joyriding for Mr. Serious). When it's time to come in he drives it around the yard and loads all of his toys into the back. Needless to say there are no more arguments over cleaning up the yard.
The kids have Spring Break this upcoming week, and Corie is going to New York City with her dad. He is going to take her to the Empire State Building and possibly the Statue of Libery. If she is really lucky he will bring her to Chinatown. IBM is having a bring your kids to work day which will be Zakary's big event... I know it's sort of lame, but I think he's going to love the room full of vending machines. Zakary has priorities and junk food is one of them.

We went to Corie's school a few weeks ago to watch the puberty movie. I went to school in the south, so I had never actually seen one of these movies. The other mothers and I thought it was cute, but one look at the girls horrified faces told us that they viewed it differently. When we left the nurse gave all the girls a little gift bag that contained deodorant, panty liners, and mini pads. I asked her if she wanted to show Eric what she got, but she declined. We did have one break through. After our millionth argument over the lump of snarled hair that has taken up permanent residence on the back of her head, Corie has agreed to get her hair cut.

Last thing... here is a picture of my current (purse) project... marvel at the cuteness.

And here is a picture of my current husband being all... stop taking my picture.

Mud, Maple & Fabric

The Maple Open House weekend was as expected... lots of yummy maple and lots of sticky mud. Jed's had their line of tasty product out to sample. We had our sugar-on-snow, warmed up in the sugar house, made our purchases and walked back to Eric's folks house. We even got a little free entertainment by watching the flatlanders try to take a muddy dirt road at 50 mph. hee-hee.

Corie and Zakary trying to chew their sugar-on-snow

The Shop Hop was great. I have already started another project with some of my new fabric. I posted the pictures on a Picasa album in case anyone is interested. Our first stop was Knits and Bolts. We had initially scratched it from the list due to its out of the way location, but a previous promise of a pecan pie to be delivered to my cuz, Sandy, had us reroute our trip. We were rewarded with a wonderful shopping experience. The shop had an amazing selection of fabric (and yarn for you knitter/crocheters), and to top it off they had a long table full of goodies for the shop hoppers (which included hot coffee and Girl Scout cookies). We hit four more shops before the day was over. We arrived home exhausted, hungry and poor, but with our minds buzzing with all the great fabrics and amazing projects we had seen.

Eric & Zakary working on the driveway.... again

While on our shopping trip we listed to The Water Mirror on CD. The story was great but instead of ending it just sort of stopped. A quick check on the internet explained why. It turned out to be the first book of The Dark Reflections trilogy by Kai Meyer, and now we were both hooked. Since then I have read the last two books of the trilogy, and I highly recommend them. They are written for 9-12 year olds but so were the Harry Potter books, and I couldn't put those down either.

SpRinG FEveR

Spring fever has hit Vermont! We are in the middle of mud season and loving it. Corie and Zaky have been outside everyday in the mud and puddles. They come in exhausted and sleep like babies at bed time. It's worth the extra (muddy) laundry to be able to skip that eternal argument, "but I'm not sleepy...". Eric has been doing what he does every year at this time... draining the excess water from the driveway by making little channels everywhere. I caught Zaky doing the same thing with his florescent plastic hoe last Monday. Eric explained that he and Zaky are genetically programed to do that, and if I called his Mom and asked her what his Dad was doing at that exact moment she would say he is draining the driveway.Spring fever hits me a little differently. Usually I'd be planning my garden (even though nothing can go in until mid May), but this year I am celebrating the coming of Spring with my Mom via the Vermont Shop Hop. Nothing says Spring like buying a bunch of fabric! We started last Saturday and will finish up this Saturday. What fun!

This is at the Norton House in Wilmington, Vermont

This is at A Quilter's Garden in Montpelier, Vermont

So what am I doing with all this gorgeous fabric? I made an apron for Cheryl (I forgot to take a picture), some coasters for Pat, and I finally finished my first purse. I found a free tutorial on the blog, Ric-Rac. It gave great step by step instructions. The applique design is from the Piece o' Cake book Applique Delights.

Eric has finished his third year of classes. He hasn't been notified of his final grade yet, but we are sure it is an A. The only question is whether it is the highest in the class. Just one more year of classes!

Another sign of Spring is sugaring season. We will probably head up to Eric's folks house next week to enjoy Jed's open house. I highly recommend his Maple Mudd, Maple Cotton Candy, Maple Apple Chutney and Maple Shakers. In fact, I recommend EVERYTHING that they make! Of course I may have a maple bias as I have been known to sip maple syrup from a shot glass, but that doesn't make me a bad person, does it?!

Post holiday blahs...

We are finally near the end of January, and I couldn't be happier about that. The subfreezing temperatures, gray skies and empty wallets contribute to my feeling of malaise. There is one nice thing about winter, and that is Calcifer, the flame in our new pellet stove. We named him after the character in Howl's Moving Castle, and we love him! We have been up to less than usual lately. Corie celebrated her 10th birthday and has been asserting her 'tweenhood through peace signs and pouting. Aunt Chris called it the beginning of the "payback stage". Zakary has been testing the boundaries lately, and he received his first bare bum spanking from me for his efforts. I can't say he is back to his angelic self, but he is now aware of how far he can push me. Eric has been working every weekend, and on the one weekend he had off one of our pipes froze. He worked his plumbing magic so it wouldn't happen again. He had to rip out part of the ceiling in Manland to get to the pipe, and now he wants to redo the whole basement this summer. I didn't share his enthusiasm for this new project, but he has bribed me with the promise of a laundry room and utility sink... So he has now received project approval. I have been spending most of my time on the computer (which is strategically place directly across from Calcifer). I'm at the tail end of a slides to jpegs project that was started years ago. I have also been on facebook lately catching up with old friends and acquaintances. After hearing about about every ones accomplishments I decided it was time to get my sewing room in order and get back to work. Here are a few of the Christmas presents that I made this year. I try to learn a new sewing technique with each project... mostly I learn what not to do. I should mention that the two guys on the ends were made from sketches from Molly Chicken's Flickr photos. Her blog is so inspiring.

I guess I've inflicted enough boring on you for one day.

What a great Christmas

It's hard to believe after weeks of preparation the holidays have come and gone. What a flurry of fun! We spent Christmas day with Eric's folks, Bob and Cheryl, and my Mom. Our neighbor, Cathy, and her son, Ryan came over for a bit also. Ryan is Zakary's best friend, and they are so cute together. The funnest (I don't care if that's a proper word) gift was the Wii. It is just as much fun to watch others play as it is to play it yourself. Corie got a digital video recorder and spent most of the day recording people and cat butts. The day went by way to fast, and around 5pm Corie's dad came to pick her up, Mom left for home, and Bob & Cheryl took Zakary with them for the weekend. Eric and I decided to take advantage of our child free weekend... He headed down to Manland to play on his Xbox, and I headed up my sewing room to finish making the gifts for my cousins. Every once in a while we would run into each other in the kitchen, and that suited us just fine. The next weekend we had Christmas' at my Mom's. It was hard to get Zakary away from her Christmas displays long enough to get him to open presents. Her place looked great... at least until Zaky started rearranging everything. If you want to see what it looked like prior to a Zak check out her facebook page. Mom spoiled us... especially me. I got lots of great vintage (and new) kitchen and sewing stuff. And just when we thought it couldn't get any better.... my Dad, Pat and Amber came up this last weekend. This was a dual purpose visit (install new pellet stove & rip open Christmas presents). While the boys were hard at work installing the new stove we girls did our part by getting out of their hair. We went to JoAnn's where I spent the gift card that Bob & Cheryl gave me for Christmas. We also hit a Hallmark that was going out of business. Dad and Eric finished the installation our new pellet stove. It's beautiful, and we love it! It almost makes winter bearable.Corie came home from Christmas with her dad's family on Sunday, and we opened our presents. We got spoiled all over again. I got two great new craft books that I can't wait to put to good use! It was a great visit but it went by way to fast. We are going to spend this weekend getting the house back together. It's been non-stop since Christmas and we still have ALL of the gifts in our living room and dining room. My guess is there will be more playing than cleaning, but that's okay. Oh, by the way Pat, you forgot your Bailey's in the 'fridge. Don't worry. We will save it for you. ha-ha.