Light sabers

"Oh Mom, if you need us we'll just be upstairs fighting bad guys. But if you need us you can just call us and we'll come back and help you. Ok? Ok, so good luck. Bye!"

A Berry Happy Birthday

I had intentions of a real party for Silas, but somehow it didn't plan itself. As the calender slowly inched towards the 16th, still no magical party plans appears. So a few days ago, I asked Silas what kind of birthday cake he'd like to have. He said strawberry. "And a strawberry party to go with it."
So that's what we had, kind of. We just had a few neighbors and friends over, and there were no organized games, or food, other than cake and ice cream. So it was very low key.
But Silas did want to decorate. So we found some red heart shaped balloons and glued crepe paper to them to turn them into strawberries. We made a big sign on paper left over from the movers. We strung red and green and yellow crepe paper around the dining room. And made a garland out of packing peanuts and foil wrapped strawberry candy.
The cake was a yellow layer cake, from a recipe I hadn't tried before where you beat the flour and butter together, a la Rose Levy Berenbaum's Cake Bible. It came out very much like pound cake. It wasn't bad. But not what I was hoping for. I made this frosting to go with it. (And as my mother said, it tinted just fine if you color the milk and flour before you mix in the butter and sugar.) I mixed a portion of the frosting with diced strawberries adn filled the layers with that. Silas added red sugar all over, and I "stenciled" a number four on teh top with yellow sanding sugar.
Silas must have liked it because when I asked him what he thought of his birthday, he said it was exciting 'because of cake and fancy.'
Of course that was before the light sabers had been opened. After that, cake, ice cream, balloons, and subsequent presents were chopped liver.

Why I love my kids, well one reason anyway

They found the old Schwan's ice cream tins that we've picked up from Goodwill for 79 cents over the years. Mom always used them for Christmas cookies, so I've built up a collection for the same purpose. So they dug them out of the cabinet and completely on their own started playing a rolling racing game up and down the kitchen. And they have been very cutely playing together for the past 20 minutes.

Success?

I had one major project this year for the Historic Society Home and Garden tour. No one on the tour even noticed it. I guess you can say that's a compliment because the front door now blended with the rest of the house instead of sticking out, but come on, I put over 60 hours blood, sweat, and tears into the thing! Technically, only Silas and Emmet contributed the tears, but close enough.

Our front door before:

And after:

Note 1) The door, new glass (had been broken out at one point and replaced with Plexiglas), and door hardware was all sourced by and from the best personal shopping services I've ever dealt with: Mom and Dad.

Note 2) Nathan was right, I could have built a door in the time it took to restore this one, considering just about every aspect of it had to be adjusted/added to/taken from, and some parts even built from raw lumber. And a whole lot of hand chiseling. But I don't have the skills to replicate the character of this old door. Added bonus: I feel 'green' recycling this one from the tough neighborhoods of South Bend and giving it new life.

Note 3) Not only did I get no comments from the tour goers, but I think Bridget and I are already overlooking the improvement. Ah well, success is hard to hold onto I guess.

Note 4) Who cares. Because I enjoyed this one. Nice to be figuring out problems of this nature and adding to these skills again. They were getting dusty in Ireland. By the end of this project I was a bit burnt out though, considering the rush of late nights and weekends to get this done. Will need to recharge with family time before tackling my next big project. Speaking of which, movie time!

-Orrin

Urban Wildlife

We had about 420 people come through the house today. It was fun and exciting to have people, strangers, compliment us and our decorating style and marvel over painting, woodwork, stained glass, and other home improvement projects around the house. Lots of people also complimented the quilts and the puppet theater. So many thanks to those of you that have given me your works of art.
I know people grow up exposed or not to all different things. But here are some ridiculous, to my mind, conversations that occurred in our backyard today. And not just once or twice, but over and over again.
"Is that a beehive?"
"Yes, they are honey bees."
"Oh, so do you make honey?" (Do I look like a bee?)
"Well, the bees make the honey, but yes we harvest it."

"Are your ducks pregnant? They look pregnant."
"Well, they are all hens, so no, they aren't pregnant. But they will probably lay an egg tomorrow."
"What do you do with the eggs?"
"We eat them."
"I didn't' know you could eat duck eggs."

Heigh-Ho Silver! Away!

Our neighbors recently gave us this sweet vintage horse on springs. I love the look on Emmet's face. Having fun pretending to be a jockey, yet terrified at the being behind him that may be trying to bite his ear off. Funny enough, Silas isn't yelling in this picture. Just making faces for teh camera.
Both boys really like the horse, though they haven't named it yet. It's really cute when they take turns riding and "leading" the horse with its rope reins.

Backfire

Part of the reason we planted the vegetable garden was to educate Silas and Emmet about where our food comes from, how plants grow, and how we take care of other living things. It was also to encourage them to eat the fruits and vegetables we weer growing. You know, give them a stake in what they put in their mouths, get them involved and excited.
For the most part it's worked. I often find Emmet picking buds off the broccoli heads, Silas demands freshly picked (by his hands) spinach in his grilled cheese sandwich. They both stuff their mouths with sugar snap peas as soon as they find them. An all you can eat vegetable buffet. And let's not even get started about with the raspberry bushes. It's a virtual magnet. I'm considering putting up netting, not for the birds but for the boys.
So all this fresh, homegrown, handpicked fruit and vegetable harvest had me feeling very self satisfied, until...
Last night I made a muttar paneer, a pea and fried cheese curry with rice. Silas was inspecting the frozen peas before I tossed them into cook. "Who grew these? Where did they grow? When were they picked?"
My little food snob. No bananas for you!

Tendrils

Sorry, this is the artsy garden picture you'll have to put up with for the time being. The pole beans are my favorite thing in the garden. I love the willow poles they are climbing up, I love how tall they are, I love the way they spiral around the cling so tightly, and I love eating the vegetables they produce. Not everything is doing well in the garden this year. In fact the beans are getting some brown spots on the leaves which may be rust/fungus or possibly spider mites.

The corn is starting to tassel, even though it is still very short. The zucchini are setting fruit, as are the tomatoes. Cucumbers, potatoes, and eggplant are flowering. The turnips, carrots, peppers, and cabbage, are all looking good. The basil is making a comeback. The peas, radishes and broccoli are all being harvested regularly. As are the chard, lettuce, and(measly) spinach. The mustard greens are prolific, and I'm not really sure what to do with them all. We ate some on our grilles brats over the weekend and they were delicious, but it didn't' really make a dent in the crop. They are pretty spicy so the kids won't eat them. Maybe a soup recipe? Same with the kale. They seems like cool weather food to me, so I'm reluctant to eat them when it's hot.

Safety First

Silas found a kids woodworking book that was a present from Aunt Rachel last Christmas and decided it was high time he got some use out of the scrap wood in the basement. He looked through the book and decided he wanted to make an airplane. Since I couldn't really take him down to work on it by myself with Emmet, I told him we first had to draw out what we wanted to build. So he drew some rather abstract pictures of an airplane and a boat.
He was so stinkin' adorable and excited when Orrin got home. "Dad, Dad! I drew a plan. A plan for the scrap wood. We can cut and drill and hammer and make it just to the design. I drew this design on the paper so we can make an airplane that really flies!"
Somewhat fortunately for Orrin, Silas became distracted with playing with all the different tools and practicing with the various drills, saws, levels, hammers, tape measures, etc. that he didn't really ask that the design be adhered to strictly. In fact I don't think they even started on any part of it.
But they did make this:
And I love that he's wearing safety glasses and barefoot.

Star Wars Questions

Silas watched the fourth Star Wars a few days ago. He had to go to bed half way into #3, and I didn't really want him watching the violence at the end of that one anyway. So this was the first time he saw Darth Vader. Cute little Anakin that raced his little pod is now this scary black clad guy? It's kind of blowing his mind.
"Mom, Why is Anakin bad now? Why did he want to go to the bad side? Where is good Anakin?"

"Ummm... well Anakin thought that bad side was more powerful. He wanted to be more powerful. But of course good is more powerful than evil."

"But why didn't Anakin know that good was more powerful?"

"Well, I think maybe Anakin's Mom forgot to tell him that before she died."
(Any chance I can get to reinforce that Mom is all-knowing, and to listen to what I say...)

"But Mom, why is good more powerful than evil?" (Doh!)

"I think part of being good means working together, and working together makes you stronger, right?"

"But can't the bad guys work together too?"

"Well, sometimes they do. And then one of them will want to be more powerful and tricks the others and then he's all alone. So then- not as strong. Not as strong as good."
(Ayn Rand rolls over in her grave)