Quilling
(Note: Very few of the quilling designs are original to me. I find pictures of things I like online and recreate them. Since I’m not making any money off of it, I don’t feel so bad about it, but if you want to know where a pattern is from originally, I can probably tell you.)
Cards
Anya got TWO packages in the mail today. TWO. One from each of her Grandmas. She thought it was her birthday. (She told me today that she wants 18 presents for her birthday. I’m not sure if that is total or per person.) I let her open the box from Grandma Cheryl, but I wanted to wait until Andy was home to open the box from Grandma Diane. Anya would have none of that. I went to get the phone to call Andy to see if he would be sad if we opened the box without him, and before I could make it back to Anya’s room, I hear crazy squealing. I open the door and she is pulling off the box’s packing tape. She is ripping that box apart. So, I let her open it.
Her is Anya posing with her Grandma Diane Easter Loot. I tried to get her to smile a normal-ish smile, and she did. A normal Anya smile.
And what was in the Grandma Cheryl box, you ask? Why this awesome new summer dress with fairy tale fabric (and some other clothes, but this was the big squeal generator).
Yes, I cut Anya’s bangs. Yes, they are incredibly crooked. Send me a kid-sized strait-jacket, and I’ll do a better job. Maybe.
This morning we woke up to snow and ice, so we decided to plant some seeds! Anya helped me mix up the peat moss and perlite and put the soil mixture into the seed trays. Luckily, Andy had mopped the floor yesterday, so it was nice and clean for us to put dirt all over.
I planted the seeds while Anya and Andy used the label maker to…make labels. I’ve tried all sorts of things in the past to keep track of which seeds are where (popsicle sticks, maps, bits of whatever set on top, my memory {hahaha}), but it seems like things always get mixed up. Maybe the labels will work? Andy spelled the words out, and Anya typed them into the machine. After the labels were printed, Anya trimmed them, peeled off the back, and stuck them on the trays where I pointed. She was a very good helper! She also got to plant some dill and cilantro because those seeds are big enough for her teeny fingers.
So, what did we plant?
Peppers: Alma Paprika, Sweet Bell Mix, Relleno, Espanola Improved, and Cap’n Leigh’s Dragon Peppers (developed by Andy’s father over several years)
Tomatoes: Mexico Midget, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, Speckled Roman, Black from Tula, Beam’s Yellow Pear, and Crnkovic Yugoslavian
Herbs: Black Cumin, Cilantro, Dill, Sweet Genovese Basil, and Opal Purple Variegated Basil
Other: Purple Tomatillo
The newest seeds we had were “Packed for 2008.” The oldest, 2004. I threw in three or four seeds in each cell and hope that at least one will grow. I should probably just toss most of the seeds, but I can’t. They are baby plants! I can’t toss them! I could give them to people, but they are up to 7 years old. I don’t think anyone would want seeds that old when they can get new ones for a dollar. I suppose I could toss the REALLY old ones in the compost, and then they would have a chance to grow, so it wouldn’t be like I was throwing them away? Decisions, decisions.
In the meantime, the plant room (aka scary bathroom) has its first occupants. I just need to write a big note, so that I don’t forget they are down there.
Anya’s school had a party to celebrate the start of spring. I was a bit concerned about going seeing as how last time there was a celebration, I ended up with a broken foot. The party started off with a Marshmallow Challenge where each class was given a few pieces of dry spaghetti, some dental floss and masking tape, and a big marshmallow. They had about 20 minutes or so to build a tower using the supplies and with the marshmallow on top. Anya wasn’t very interested in this, and decided to camp out in the Quiet Corner of her classroom.
After that was finished, we all went outside to sing and dance. First, though, we were sent out into the woods to find something special to put on the Spring altar. Anya found a large branch, and I found a piece of bark with a mossy thing growing on it.
The people leading the dancing and singing had starting playing drums, and we all gathered back, put our items on a large mat of felted wool, and sat in a big circle.
Most of the little kids weren’t very interested in the singing and dancing, and they ran off to the sandbox. I used Anya’s leaving the circle as my excuse to sit out the rest of the songs. It was just a little bit too much singing and dancing for me. I did enjoy watching the others, and I took a lot of pictures for the school to have. The afternoon ended for us when Anya was chasing a little dog someone had brought (we aren’t supposed to bring dogs to school, but inevitably someone does), and she tripped and fell and scraped up her knee.
Later in the week, Anya’s class went to visit Ed’s farm, one of the founding fathers of the school. We got to see baby goats, baby chickens, and baby frogs.
The kids had a great time, but I think Ed had the most fun.
Finally, back home, we had a few nice days when we got the berry bed mostly cleared out and mulched and some pea and carrot seeds planted. We need to improve our fencing around the berry / pea bed because right now all that we have is a two or three foot chicken wire fence. We put it up last year to discourage the rabbits from eating the strawberry plants. Other than that discouragement and keeping little Anyas and neighbor dogs out, the fence isn’t very useful. Deer scoff at it, birds think it is a nice place to land, and rabbits mostly like to stretch their legs jumping over it.
What better way to start the start of spring than with a new outfit or two? Why, with purple Elvis outfits, of course!
What the angel does with a stinkbug’s wings, I have no idea.
Here’s my theory. The stinkbugs that survived through the winter are the strongest and know the best hiding places. If they are allowed to reproduce, the offspring will be genetically designed for surviving in our house. They must not be allowed to survive. Problem: the darned things are hard to dispose of. You can’t squish them because the stink is horrible. If you toss them in the trash, they chortle and crawl out. They can be flushed, but I don’t think we have enough water in our well to flush that often, and you gotta flush right away or they will get out. Or..at the very least glare at you when you go back in to use the toilet. In the winter, we tossed them outside and the cold got them. Can’t do that now. Now they WANT to get outside. To spawn evil devil mutant baby bugs of doom.
The best solution I have come up with is a bowl of soapy water. I figured if it works for Japanese beetles, it would work for these critters, too. So far I am correct. There are problems. The stink still sometimes wafts up out of the bowl, and I am fairly sure if I leave too many corpses in there, the fresh bugs will just use them like little rafts. But these are easy problems to deal with by emptying the bowl occasionally. The picture above is about one day’s worth. Soup anyone? Yum!
My Mom sent these two outfits a while back, and I have been remiss about posting the photos. I think part of the remissness was because I did post a photo of Anya in one of them, and so my brain said everything was taken care of even though that was more a picture of Anya’s tummy than her outfit.
The pants are a bit big right now (because I asked my Mom to make them big so they would fit next winter), so Anya hasn’t worn the pants much yet. She has, however, been wearing the jumpers a lot. I think the springy plaidy sort of one is her favorite. Thanks, Mom/Gramma!
(NOTE: Mom just made the pants and the jumpers, not the shirts. Any weird shirt combos are all Andy’s fault. It doesn’t matter if he didn’t pick the shirts out, it is still his fault.)
The neighbors a few houses over have two dogs, and following the tradition of these parts, the dogs are left to run wherever they’d like. It seems they like our place. I was concerned in the beginning (strange dogs running wild and all that), but after Andy went out and played with them a few times and didn’t get eaten, I felt better about having them around. I think I’ve even gotten to like having them visit. After Buddy died, it got sort of lonely outside. Eventually, we’d like to get a dog of our own, but for now these neighbor dogs are good enough. They come and visit and we can enjoy their company, but we don’t have to feed them or pay for vet bills or give them baths or tuck them in at night. They are a bit stand-offish, which I like (strange dogs running wild and all that), but they will come within a few feet and sit with us and follow us around and jump up and down and chase each other in circles.
This afternoon, Anya and I were down by the berry bed working on Anya’s Sunflower Garden. Andy had dumped a load of mulch on the square that will be the garden, and I was raking the mulch out flat while Anya watched. The two dogs trotted down the hill behind us, stopped to say hello for a bit, and then moved on. Anya starts shouting, “NO NO DOGGIE”! I look up and one of the dogs has grabbed my sweatshirt off the ground and is running off with it! I like that sweatshirt! I started waving my rake in the air and yelling at the dog as I watched it run off towards the row of pine hedges backed by a barbed wire fence leading to neighbor’s field. I felt like Sandra Bullock’s character in “The Proposal” when the eagles grab the dog and she’s yelling at the bird to let the dog go, except I didn’t have a cell phone to throw. Thankfully, the dog dropped my sweatshirt a few feet before the hedges, and then the pair of them ran off. I still don’t get it. What did that dog want with my sweatshirt?? It wasn’t his size or color. Maybe he wanted to eat it?
A few days ago I was carrying the compost pail out to the compost pile. My eyes were on the ground because I am paranoid about snakes leaping up out of the earth to sink their pointy fangs into my ankles. I was pondering how the weather was getting warmer, and those jumping snakes were probably waking up, and they were probably hungry for ankles, and I should probably pay very close attention. Then I told myself I was being crazy to worry about ankle-biting snakes when it felt like I was being watched. I looked up, and there was one of the dogs…watching me. Or, more correctly, watching the compost pail. As I continued walking toward the compost pile, I kept my eye on that dog, and then the other one showed up, and then I recalled how I often see those two loitering around near the compost pile, and I got a sickening thought. They were waiting for me to dump the pail. No, no, that couldn’t possibly be true. What could these dogs find palatable in a pile of slimey, moldy vegetables and fruit bits? Oh wait, don’t dogs eat cat poo out of the litter box. Hrm. I dumped the pail and banged the bottom of it and tried to get all the slimey bits out, and sure enough, the moment I started back towards the house, those darned dogs were jamming their noses in the slop and chowing down.
I have hesitated to name these dogs because they aren’t ours and they will probably end up as road pancakes or go rabid and I’ll have to beat them to a pulp with my rake, but today I got really tired of calling them “The Dogs,” and “that dog,” and “the other dog.” Lately Anya has been asking me to read “Lady and the Tramp,” except she calls it “Pongo and the Tramp.” Since both of these dogs are boys, I figure Pongo and Tramp are good names for them for now.
