2nd Day of Spring

Baby, it's cold outside....

But inside the hen house, Sir Galahad was getting acquainted with the new chicky ladies.  I went over to Jen's neighborhood, and picked them up from Mary last evening.  The girls were sort of disappointed to not have wee little chicks, and I always enjoy them too, but these were just toooo good to pass up.  A year old, already laying, for the price of chicklets.  Victoria was greatly appeased by the fact that pound cake was in the near future!  Tonight, made beef stroganoff and dumplings for dinner, and introduced the girlies to Anne of Green Gables. Now the house is quiet, everyone nestled into clean sheets, with quilts tucked under their chins. 

Spring has arrived...Take II

GUEST POST:  by Victoria

Abby came over after school,and we made chocolate chip cookies together! It was the  best day ever! We could not resist the astonishing taste of are own good cooking so we ate three instead of one!

This is the cookie dough we made and we could not help ourselves from making them fat.Nanny told us they would turn out to be a monster cookie if we didn't make 'em smaller!

This is me and Abby standing by the cookies before we gobbled them up!

If you want to make these here is our recipe:

*warning:  not eating these cookies can be hazardous to your health*

Spring Has Arrived.....

Dun duh da dah!  .... hmmm blech blewwwwey...are you as impressed as i am?  It's mid-day, and dark and wet out.  I am thankful for a warm dry home though.  I don't know if it's because I've been sick or what, but I just feel like I need a good physical, spiritual, and emotional spring cleaning.  Create in me a clean heart, O Lord, and renew a right spirit, within me. 

Irish Breakfast Blessing

May love and laughter light your days,
and warm your heart and home.
May good and faithful friends be yours,
wherever you may roam.
May peace and plenty bless your world
with joy that long endures.
May all of God's richest blessings
bring the best to you and yours!

Tuesday Morning

Cold outside. 

Tending Babygirl. 

 Enjoying a cuppa.... Yorkshire Gold Tea,

and watching Miss Marple knit.

Weekend

Saturday, Jim and I had breakfast at New Morning Bakery in Corvallis, and I got some linen for a cross-stitch project, at a nearby stitchery shop.  We stopped by the Christian School Auction, and got some barbequed chicken for dinner.  Waiting in line, I got to chat with a friend, Marti, for the first time in about 10 years.  It was so good to see her sweet smile again. 
Sunday, we took the girlies to church. Me, with fat black eye, swollen goitery neck, and all. After service, we had dinner at the home of the newlyweds.  They were so gracious, and spoiled the girls to pieces, with pizza, and special Mary Englebright dishes for their dessert.  They provided toys, games, videos, and attention.  Very sweet.
You know the saying; "my eyes were bigger than my stomach"? Well my left eye is working at it. Since the stings on Friday, each day, the swelling and discoloration has expanded. Just like a uni-brow...my double chin has swollen into a big uni-chin. Yesterday, Anna took pictures of it, and made me promise if it was worse this morning, that I would go to the Dr. Unfortunately, when I woke up today, it was a lot worse. The Dr. put me on prednisone, told me to continue taking the benadryl I was already taking, and prescribed an epi-pen to use in case of emergency.

Keeping Bees

It looks so innocent and romantic, doesn't it?

 It's turning warmer, the bees are out, but this is the only flower in the yard blooming yet.  The bees have wintered over on their honey, but could use some extra goodies, until the trees blossom out.

There are 5 cups of sugar and 1 cup water.  Boil to soft ball stage (238) on a candy thermometer.

Quickly, add 1 cup of sifted rye flour.  Beat in well.

Add 10 drops of lemongrass oil.  Quickly stir in.  Pour out onto a greased baking sheet.

Cut into pieces about the size of your hand.  Put a piece of fondant in on top of frames, put a spacer board over. and then either lid or another super if needed. (I stored the extra candy in a gallon baggy in the freezer.)

We don't have close neighbors.  I'm sure that since there's always "an incident" every time we work with our bees, when the neighbors we do have, see me go out to the hives, they probably call all of their family members to the window to watch the show! 

Feeding this candy, is supposed to be able to be done in regular clothes without gloves.

The bees were calm, and everything was going well until I accidentally dropped a piece of fondant on some bees.  The alarm was sounded, and they were on me like crazy.  I went running across the garden trying to get out of the line of fire.  They were already in my hair and down my shirt.  I didn't scream, but i was holding my head upside down, running my fingers through, trying to get them out of my hair.  I flapped my shirt, to no avail. I was getting stung.  I didn't want to take bees in the house with me, to sting the baby.  When I was almost to the yard......off the shirt came.  Potential audience? ....i was beyond caring at that point.  I came in and suited up, went back out and finished putting the hive back together.   Amazingly, I didn't get as many stings as it felt like, or could've been.  There's one sting next to my eye that makes me see a swollen ledge when I try to look out.  There's one on my neck that's swollen up.  I took a shower, washed my hair,  and put on clean clothes.  Hours later, in the late evening, I was sitting on the couch and ran my hand through my hair.  Something stuck my hand.  Anna investigated, and found a stinger still stuck in my head. Jim thinks they're vicious assassins, but I love and admire them.  When I had gone back out to put the hive back together, they were valiantly fending off marauder bees that had come to rob them.  My little knights in striped armor.  Romantic, huh?

Swedish Pancakes

We had breakfast at the Eugene Original House of Pancakes weekend before last.  Jim had an Irish omelette and buttermilk cakes, and I had Swedish pancakes.  The service was outstanding there, but we prefer the old atmosphere at the original, Original.  My pancakes just whetted my appetite to have them again.  We were home this morning, with Jim battling a bad earache and headache, so I made us a bacon and Swedish Pancake breakfast.   I can't ever decide on a favorite way to have my little feather-lite pancakes.  I love them plain, .... or buttered, ......or buttered and sprinkled very lightly with sugar,....... or with lingonberries.  decisions, decisions. There were lingonberries (from Dot for Christmas-Thanks Dot!) 

If you make them, ..... Enjoy!



Time with Kate

Kate made pretty smoothies for the kids before we headed out to:

We took Addie and the twins with us.  We had a great time.  The twins were so good, and they always draw a crowd of admirers in their double stroller.  Jim and the boys stayed home and played monopoly, and computer games.   Kate bought them home some Korean biscuits, for a treat.  The Korean writing reminded her of her school friend, Yoon.  When Kate was in 8th grade, Yoon was a new student at our school and didn't speak English.  Kate was selected to mentor her and they enjoyed a sweet friendship, for several years.

 Addie's picture of the "Grumpy Grizzly Bear"

When she wasn't kicking up her heels, she was pulling herself up to standing with the toy basket.

Joe Cool

Ethan looking "pretty in pink".

Addie found some gum somewhere in the house and was offering a "smidge" to everyone.

I had lots of help taking pictures....sorry I can't give each mini-photographer proper credits, but I lost track of who took what.

   My Fubonn haul:

"Largest Asian Mall in Oregon." ...... love that place.

Thursday in the Kitchen

Yesterday, I was in a baking mood.  I made some healthy blueberry yogurt oatmeat muffins. There were leftover potatoes and potato water in the fridge, so I made some cinnamon raisin bread for morning toast, and 2 loaves of italian bread to go with lasagne. When I was a girl, Mom made spaghetti fairly often, but we never had lasagne.  There was a picture of lasagne in the BH&G cookbook, that looked so perfect, I always wanted it.  The first time I finally had it, was in highschool, at a friend's house.  It was really good, but what I (and my family) remember about that meal, was that my friend's dad made some rude comment, and her mom sternly said "we've gone this many years without bringing sex to the dinner table, we/re not starting now."   When I was first married, I started making lasagne, for us.  When I came home from the hospital, after having Anna-Lisa, our upstairs neighbor brought a wonderful lasagne dinner to us.  They had lived in Italy for several years, and she had gotten the recipe from her landlady....Mama Brunella.  It was the first time I had a spinach with bechamel lasagne with bolognes sauce.  Love love love.  I got the recipe from her.  I couldn't find it yesterday, so just winged it from memory.  Yum, Mama Mia!  Bellisimo!

(We'll just blame my sprained arms from lifting it out of the oven, on the cast iron Le Creuset lasagne pan and not on the weight of the contents..... right?)

Pancake Supper



In honor of National Pancake Day, (love em, love em, love em ), it was a dilemma...what kind of pancakes?  Buttermilk?  Swedish?  Going through my recipes lately, I found this recipe from Jen, and thought..."we haven't had that in a long time"  so we decided on a pancake supper of Jen's German Puff Pancake......



No Regrets!

Crochet

Thrifting the other day, I found this granny square lap afghan.  Someone did a really nice job on it. The last few years, grannies have made a come-back....one of those; what goes around...comes around things.  I first learned how to crochet grannies when we lived in Monterey, back in the 70's.  Lately, I just finished Dot's scarf, and have started back on the grannies Sunshine Day baby afghan for Violet (and another plain crocheted squares one for Ethan). Sometimes I get just way too many Works In Progress...things get way-laid.  If I want to get their baby blankets to them before they leave for college; I better get with it..