This blog has a new home

Hey all! I can't seem to maintain one blog, let alone two. Check out my posts at:
http://www.jerkefamily.blogspot.com

What have we been up to?

I can't seem to keep up two blogs. Maybe I should combine them! We have been busy, busy here with birthdays, crafting, gardening, and trying new recipes.

I made a birthday banner for the kids' birthdays and some felted bug decorations for Tea's party. You can see a picture above! I also made screen printed pictures for their birthdays and for Kai's friend Grant using the computer and some special paper. Then there was the birthday cake baking, which needs some tweaking, but the candles stole the show, thank goodness. I also folded a bunch of tiny paper airplanes for birthday garland on Kai's birthday.

We broke ground on the garden and Jev hauled a ton (literally) of really nice dirt into our circular garden. The garden was planned completely through the use of muscle testing so it will be very interesting to see how it turns out. I've got my seedlings starting inside. The garden itself will have flowers and veggies: 'giant white' moonflower, 'covent garden' baby's breath, 'firewitch' dianthus, 'mahogany midget' coreopsis, 'rozanne' geranium, 'moonlight' nasturtium, 'autumn' fern, 'peaches' impatiens, 'early golden' squash, shallots, 'sweet banana' peppers, 'mammoth melting sugar' peas, 'ez serve romaine' lettuce, broccoli raab, 'scarlet runner' beans, 'globe' artichokes, and 'moon and stars' watermelon. In some ways, using the muscle testing was easier because I didn't have to pour over the catalog and try to narrow down what I wanted. This always stopped me before--the sheer overwhelming amount of choices! Exciting news (for me anyway), I just checked my seedlings and many have sprouted. It has only been 3 days! I used a product called ETS Plus for Plants from Perelandra and it's supposed to help them sprout faster.

Finally, since Spring keeps battling with Jack Frost and it's making us all a little depressed, as we really want some fresh local produce from the farmer's market, I did a week of cooking from Bon Apetit--no easy feat! The food was delicious but the prep and mess about put me over the edge. I made asian chicken salad with snow peas, cucumbers, spinach, bok choi, and a ginger lemon soy dressing; cilantro pancakes with raita, souffle, and the grande finale for supper tonight was coconut ricotta pancakes with ginger syrup and pineapple banana garnish. That was fun because we had the whole process of opening the coconut and drinking the juice and then removing the flesh, cleaning the shell so Kai could play with it, then grating/blending the coconut. It was a family affair to make the pancakes since there were so many steps. Jevon made the syrup, Kai and I mixed the batter and he helped me beat the egg white and then Jevon sliced the pineapple. It was delicious! I don't have those photos loaded yet, and yes, I know--I won't be asked to be a food photographer anytime soon. I clearly have a few things to learn. The food tasted divine, even if it doesn't look that way.

More posts soon. The next one will include some of Kai's three-dimensional paper art, which is phenomenal!

The Easter Bunny Gets Into My Craft Closet

Not much time or energy to write but had to share these little Easter goodies. My friend Chris gave me the caterpillar idea. They tuck nicely into their little leaves. The chicks were a last minute inspiration and took just a few minutes to make. How cute are they in the eggshell? And the flowers... The Easter Bunny just couldn't say no to such striking flowers. Both children got their basket filled with these beauties. Kai thinks the Easter Bunny got into my craft closet and made the gifts. And the Easter Bunny even remember to take pictures of his creations!

Spring Crafts

We updated our nature table last week with this lovely little scene that the kids helped me with. I got the idea from a new magazine called Living Crafts. It's all natural crafts and I love it. There's a little story in the magazine to accompany the figures, so after we wet felted the tulips and made the grandmother, fairy mother, and little fairy babies, we read the story together. It helped a lot to have the story to go with it to motivate us, and it was incredibly easy to make. I let the kids play with a bowl of soapy water and bits of wool while I did the wet felting because they weren't really interested in making something specific.The wool butterfly idea came from the same magazine. Kai is, of course, holding a jet he folded. That's the only craft he really loves to do. I think I may get him an origami book for his birthday. I think he's folded every type of airplane there is. He says a fairy comes to him at night and shows him her book of designs and then he wakes up and makes them. He does know exactly what he's doing as he folds them and makes some remarkable designs. He says he was a jet airplane engineer in his past life and had paper airplanes and model airplanes hanging all over his office (he also says he took all 10 of his children to work with him). I believe him!

Tomorrow we are going to plant wheatgrass in eggshells, blow eggs and decorate them, and go out and buy a few seeds and take a walk in Shelter Garden to see if we can spot any new plants and flowers coming up.

Food's a craft, right?

These caramel rolls were made from the dough for my all time favorite bread recipe (from Feeding the Whole Family by Cynthia Lair). The actual caramel sauce came from The Joy of Cooking. Anyway, when I took these out of the oven, they looked like a work of art! And they tasted amazing!!

Frankenbaby

I cranked this sweet little baby out in two weeks but got stuck on sewing the hair on. So, since August, this has been little Frankenbaby. I've made several hats for the baby and Tea just tears them off! I even got some hair taped up and ready to sew on but we both hated it. It was too long and turned the baby into a little girl. So little baby remained bald with lots of seams on her head, which are currently hidden by the hat. I love this baby because she's made from cotton and stuffed with wool--much better than a hard plastic baby. The irony? I made this baby to replace my old Cabbage Patch Preemie that Tea absolutely loves. That thing is dirty and gross and bonks her in the head a lot, but Tea must know it was mine at one time and still prefers it!!

Crazy for Knitting

I never thought I'd have the patience or brain power to learn to knit! However, once I discovered that first graders in a Waldorf school learn how to knit, I figured I should be able to learn how. Plus, I have been reading lots of books lately on somewhat complicated subjects and I thought the knitting might help me integrate the information.

The middle two hats were knitted on a loom, so I didn't really "knit" them. I've made several other baby hats on a loom but they are on the heads of various friends' babies and I never took a picture. I found bamboo yarn at Michael's and it is divine--the perfect ultra soft yarn for babies.

The washcloth, kitty, and the hat and scarf were done with knitting needles. All of these things are quite imperfect but I love them anyway. It's so neat to think I did it myself.

My next goals are to learn to knit a moebius basket and possibly take a weaving class. That all depends on whether I get my garden in the ground in a reasonable time frame. Planning it is taking up all of my free time right now!

Crafty Mama

I have recently become a bit more crafty! We had been involved in a group of Waldorf homeschoolers and that got me started. I had never worked with wool before, but now that I've tried it, I'm hooked. I love needle felting and am still learning more about how to wet felt. Here's two of my needle felted projects. The first is a Christmas card. I looked at a picture in a catalog for this so the idea was not mine. The second is a card I made for a friend after she miscarried. I wanted to her to know she was still connected to the Earth and her baby and that all hope was not gone. The quote on the card is something my friend Joy said to me after our friend has lost her baby, "She waited so long and sacrificed so much."