P&PS

I keep waiting for things to slow down but as they haven't in the past year and probably won't in the next I've decided to revive this blog despite all that.  For my first entry, because I'm in the middle of Little House in the Big Woods I bring you maple snow candy, or really just snow because there's lots of that around here this morning.  If you'd like to make some snow candy Quaker Hill Farm has a great set of instructions.  For those of you in warmer places, shaved ice and ice cream are great substitutes for snow.

These little guys grow fast...the leaves are now bigger than my hand and we've got the start of some blooms. Originally I was worried about them getting over watered with the heavy rain we'd been getting, but it turns out the more water you give them the faster they grow.

Trash Fashion by ~ stasha-pistachio on deviant ART Another day of record breaking heat and I'm ready to call it quits. It's just too hot to do much of anything. The weather service says it was 95 at the hottest point yesterday, but the temperature display across the street read 99 at about five last night. Thankfully it's a bit cooler inside, but I'm wondering how miserable this summer's going to be if this keeps up. I haven't gotten anything planted outside yet, I'm worried about the heat killing the seedlings off. It's hard enough to keep them watered when they're sitting inside on the window sill. On the etsy front things are going better. I've been having a lot of fun browsing through all the new summer stuff and I've been pumping out the paper. Who knew cold paper pulp would feel so good. I've gotten quite a bit behind on all my blog reading though. I've been keeping up with crunchy chicken and burbanmom , but no...

A couple of the little guys that have been poking up on a regular basis.

Time flies when you're having fun, that's for sure. I started an entry on Saturday, but I never got around to finishing. The nice weather was calling to me. I've been doing a lot of cleaning. I packed up and shipped out a lot of stuff to local charities and finally got around to recycling all the paper little old packrat me had saved. It's nice to have the space to store the stuff I've started collecting, especially the glass jars, wicker baskets, and ceramic bowls. I also helped clean out a couple of the flower beds outside, although we've still got a bunch of work to do. Hopefully we'll get most of it done by the time I've managed to coax my seedlings into plantable size. Which as of now is still quite plausible as nothing has actually sprouted yet. I keep hoping I'll wake up to little green shoots, but that might be a while off.

matted 4X12 orange creamsicle triptych by phoebec Well I'm long overdue for a post. I'd love to say I've been off crafting up a storm, but things have been pretty quite on that front. I did do up a couple of scarves, and a few more of the mini-notebooks, but other than that it's been a lot of cooking. I made up a bunch of crepes last week Monday and was pleasantly surprised with the results. The recipe was easy; flour, eggs, and water, and they went perfectly with the strawberries I had on hand. What was most exciting for me though is the fact that it's another recipe I can add to my local foods list. Now all I've got to do is wait for strawberries to come into season. Which is going to be hard. I'm all for local food and fully support the 100 mile diet but it's so hard to resist when you walk into the supermarket and see a whole display of California strawberries and prepackaged shortcake. The farmers' markets should be opening soo...

Shut Down Day is this Saturday May 3. There's still time to join in if you're interested. I know for me it doesn't seem like a big deal until I try and do it. What's a day without a computer? It's something about voluntarily giving it up that makes it so hard for me. Sure if I'm too busy or if I've got something better to do it's not an issue. Staying off the computer on an unplugged night isn't usually much of an issue either, but staying off for a whole day? It's going to be interesting. Especially since it's on a weekend this year. It'll be me, my camera, and my ipod for most of the time. Maybe I'll even get around to finishing Kitchen Literacy. And while we're on the subject of unplugging, there's a great article over at electrolicious (the home of 52 nights unplugged ) on etsy, the alchemy feature, and a jacket.