As nice as it is to toss everything into the bread machine every few days for a loaf of bread, it just can’t compare to something baked in the oven. Especially now that I’ve gotten the hang of making the mixer do all the hard kneading work…
This is from a recipe in the LA Times, which so far is the only successful rye bread recipe I’ve made. Without caraway seeds this time, though, so Cabol might actually eat some.
A few weeks ago, I decided to start a Relay For Life team at Anya’s school. If you aren’t familiar with it, Relay is a fundraising activity for the American Cancer Society. It is a pretty big event, and a really great cause, and something for me to do to feel like I am contributing now that I am retired.
Our team is still very small, but the Relay is in June and we have some time. I am not the best at fundraising, but I figured out a way to make my crazy new crafting passion help me out. I made a bunch of little quilled pieces, set them out with a donation can at my scrapbook group, and crossed my fingers.
The quill sale was a success, and I have started making more items for next month’s gathering. Here are some of the pieces I have ready to go so far.
If you would like to help me reach my fundraising goal and kick cancer’s butt, please consider making a donation. My Relay Web Page
If you do, I will send you a quilled piece of your choice. Just leave me a note and let me know you donated and what you would like (something you see here or in my previous quilling post or something else and I will try to make it).
Finally I can post Anya’s Valentine cards! She wanted to start making them when we got back from Christmas holiday. Somehow I managed to spread out the making of the cards over that following month, and we delivered the cards to her kids and teachers yesterday at her school party. (Ah, there’s another story there, which I will tell after I get back from the doctor this afternoon.)
To make Anya’s Valentine’s cards, we started with finger painting. When did finger paint start to look like Colgate gel? Anya and I were painting away and then we started sticking paper on top of our pictures, and the resulting prints were very cool. I cut up a bunch of little squares, and Anya bounced around making probably a hundred little prints.
A week or so later, she glue-stuck the squares to cards, and I made little frames for the squares and stamped “Be Mine” on the front of the cards. We sent a few out to friends and family, and then Sunday night before her party we wrote messages in the cards, Anya drew all over them with markers, and we put them in envelopes. All her kids and teachers thought the cards were super great, and one little girl even carried hers around the rest of the afternoon.
February is also my mother’s birthday month, and she got her present, so I can post about that, too! I made her a quilled picture, and framed it, and sent it, and it did not break in the mail!
I love quilling. I have been spending hours while Anya is at school working on quilling. I made about 25 pieces and took them to my scrapbook group this last weekend and offered them up for donations to Relay for Life (more on that…soon!), and my donation can had $26 in it at the end of the crop! Yay! I also made two custom pieces on site, a ladybug and an elephant. Too bad I didn’t take pictures.
And here is the last crafty fun for now…
It’s a Valentine’s jack-o-lantern! We made it from a pumpkin she got on a school field trip last fall. Better late than never! We cooked up the seeds, and I thought they were yummy…until a piece of one got stuck in my gums and plagued me for the next week.
My mother is on a sewing roll. Anya and I like this very much because it means packages in the mailbox full of fun new clothes. While the clothes are not for me, they kind of are because I get as much (if not more?) enjoyment out of them as Anya.
Here is Anya modeling her new jammies. You may recognize this fabric from my jammies (Mommy has a jammy dress, and I have jammy pants and shirt!) back around Christmas. This one was a surprise to me because I didn’t realize (or had forgotten) there was any more of this fabric hanging out in Mom’s sewing closet.
This vest I love. I want to wear this vest. I tried wearing it on my head because it fit on my head, but Anya got mad and stole it back. I don’t know if you can tell, but it is reversible. The other side is pink with an awesome and glittery star patch on the pocket. Oh, how I love this vest.
Anya posed for the camera in a yoga pose from school. At least she said it was a yoga pose, and it looks yoga-y to me. Perhaps it is called “Soaring Owl with New Vest?”
Another package came yesterday with a new jumper and pants, but I haven’t taken a picture yet. Soon!
Last week, I was staring out the window while doing dishes and I noticed a big owl staring back at me from a low branch of a tree. I got very excited because owls are awesome and wonderful, so I called to Anya to come see it. Anya wasn’t interested. I figured she just did not realize the fabulousness of these huge and fluffy birds, so I decided to try and take a picture of it for her later. It’s difficult to take a picture of a bird (even a big one) through the kitchen window. I could not let this owl go unobserved by Anya, it was my duty as her mother to make sure she saw the owl. I grabbed her and carried her outside and pointed and said LOOK! And she was all, ‘Okay, can I go play Dora now?’
Sigh.
So, I went back to washing my dishes, keeping an eye on the owl so I could catch it in flight if it flew away. When Andy came home, I figured the car would scare the bird, but the bird did not care. I ran out to show Andy, and he ran in to get his camera. Finally Anya was interested, and they both went out to take pictures. By this time the kitchen window was fogged up from the steamy dishwashing, and I missed the owl flying away. According to Andy, he and Anya got closer and closer to the owl, it pooed, and then it flew away. Being the cool photographer person that he is, he managed to get some pictures that made my pictures look like crayon scribbles of a llama done by a two-year-old.
Before Poo:
After Poo:
Andy learned later that our friend was a Barred Owl. I hope he visits often to eat the rodents now that Buddy is no longer here to eat them.