Princess Chatterina and her father have gone out for the day and I am sitting here on the back deck relishing the quiet. It has been a looong time since I had a day all to myself, the possibilities are endless. I should really hunker down and do some chores (boo), but since it has been a while since I posted I think I’ll do this instead, my poor blog has been pitifully neglected for too long.
We have been busy. I started doing some freelancing with my old company again and because Manhattan is a 2 hour commute for me now I have been staying with friends and/or relatives whenever I’m booked to work. A great way to catch up with everyone but rather tiring after awhile because I do miss my little family and my home. Going back to work has been good for me though, in recent times I have been feeling a little overwhelmed by the amount of work it takes to care for and raise my daughter, her energy is incredible. How one little 30 lb child manages to fully exhaust two full grown adults is a mystery I can not solve.
I had a birthday last month. I turned 21+3+1+5+7+2+1. Whew! I can’t believe it, and while I’m totally cool with that because really, it IS the new 20, I do get a bit of a shock when I hear the number. Still not used to it. With the start of a new decade also comes all the good intentions of doing things differently, like getting more organized, reading more books, managing my time better, blah, blah blah, I have yet to get that started.
What I HAVE managed to do is start a little garden here. Nothing major this year, the girl and I are experimenting with just a few plants in containers. Some we started from seedlings, (English peas, Chinese lantern, string beans) and others we bought and are nurturing (Lavender, basil, a cherry tomato plant, a strawberry plant and a few hydrangea). I LOVE Hydrangeas, as well as being beautiful to look at they remind me of my grandfather and since I’m all about remembering loved ones and having daily reminders of them I hope that these survive. It has been fun and a little frustrating. The birds wont leave the strawberry plant alone even with netting on it. The funny thing is, way back on an unused portion of our property we have heaps of wild strawberries growing like crazy and yet there are never any birds hanging around there! The peas may not make it, there seems to be some little critter intent on making holes in the dirt and I suspect eating the roots, and the Chinese lantern doesn’t look like it’s going to come up at all. We’ll have to wait and see.
Right now though, chores are waiting so I better go and tend to them. sighÂ
WooHoo, I think I may have found THE template! A little tweaking here and there, yes, but I think this one will do…at least for now.
Now I must get back to mothering the girl, who still has an ear infection and is like the exorcist when the children’s pain reliever/fever reducer wears off. Lucky me.
The switch to
WordPress is moving along, albeit slowly, but at least it’s moving along. I’m taking my time and am quite satisfied with the results so far. I found this template and I really like it though it’s a bit plain, but it looks clean and feels less cluttered than the old site did so I’ll keep it for now. Until I understand the code well enough to tweak things to fit my personality better I think it will suit me fine. Some nice new touches; I now have an “About Deb” page in the sidebar and a page dedicated to my cookbook collection…wee! I’ve been meaning to list my collection for ages but like so many things I just never got around to it. I’m glad I’ve started it though, after all, it
IS from the pages of all those books that I get the inspiration to experiment and putter around my kitchen so they do deserve some spotlight. If you take a look at the list just note that it isn’t complete, it is a definite work in progress. I have to still unpack and then catalogue most of my books and that is going very sloooowly. I’m a little overwhelmed actually, I really do have a LOT of books, luckily I found
this neat little piece of software that turns the camera on my laptop into a barcode reader so that I can scan the isbn numbers on the books into a database so (thank you powers that be) I don’t have to type each one in manually.
Anyway, I don’t mean to bore you with the minutiae of the website, I’ll just say one more thing…the archives from the old blog still haven’t been imported, I ran into a little problem and need to figure out how to troubleshoot that so if you can bear with me a bit longer I’ll be your best friend forever.
Winter has finally arrived. It is mutha-furfin bitter cold out there, 8 degrees F. when I checked the temp this morning. I guess it’s all relative though, I was in Fairbanks, Alaska about 10 years ago and remember our host telling us that the elementary school lets the children outside for recess up until 20 below zero. Minus twenty is buh-buh-bitter COLD people! So yeah, it’s 8 degrees F. here but I’m not complaining. We finally got a little bit of snow, maybe 2 inches at the most but it was enough to make me happy. The whole trip to Australia brought to light that fact that I need seasons like we have here in the Northeast. We basically had 18 months of continuous nice weather. We left while it was still fall here in NY and were in Australia for their spring and summer then came back at the beginning of our summer, so when it was starting to look like we would not have a cold snowy winter I was getting a bit bummed out. The whole family bundled up and went out to play in the snow on Saturday, the girl made snow angels and I shoveled the driveway. Nothing like shoveling the driveway to bring out the obsessive compulsive tendencies. I had to get every…last…bit…of snow on the shovel before I started a new section of driveway and if it wasn’t right…I spread it all back and started again! HA! j/k
The little girl that lives in my house has been sick with a very bad ear infection. Since she hasn’t been outside since Saturday I’ve been trying to find things to do around the house that are fun and that will help take her mind off of “the bugs and crickets” in her head. We’ve done a lot of crafty projects; coloring, painting, gluing, paper cutting, using glitter (omg the glitter) and when that became boring, we started baking.
Eight Animals Bake a Cake by
Susan Middleton Elya is a cleverly written and charmingly illustrated book about eight animal friends who gather together to bake a cake. Each animal is responsible for contributing an ingredient to the pot and it’s fun to see who is going to bring what as well as try to guess what kind of cake it will be.
Horse gallops over, swinging the salt. “Sal” neighs Caballo as he comes to a halt.
After working in harmony to assemble the ingredients and make the batter, their enthusiasm gets the better of them when the time comes to pull the cake out of the oven.
“I’ll take the cake out,” says Rana. “No, me!” “I will!” No, I will!” They just can’t agree. “We need the best paws,” argues Perro, “like mine.” “My patas, says Gato, “will work out just fine.”
As with all situations where there are just too many cooks, disaster strikes and the cake is dropped to the floor. It is up to the animals to come up with a solution that allows them to salvage their efforts and still enjoy the cake.
Clever Vaca steps in “Well neighs Caballo, “we’ve all eaten worse.” “He’s right” Vaca moos. “But bring me my purse…”
Written in rhyme in both English and Spanish with a glossary at the beginning of the book, the colorful illustrations by Lee Chapman together with the charming story make this a fun book to read to a 3 year old (although I’m sure it holds well for kids a bit older too, heck I was charmed by the story)! The cake recipe at the back of the book (I won’t spoil the surprise by telling you what kind of cake) is veerrry easy to follow and yields a delicious cake that your child may or may not eat because it’s more fun to lick the spoon than eat the actual cake-results may very.
I’ve decided to go ahead and just start posting rather than wait until I had figured out the new software, what with the learning curve and my limited free time it would be 2012 before you started seeing new content from me. So please forgive the growing pains; the lack of archives or links to other blogs, and the sometimes inconsistant look around here, hopefully this won’t take too long. Read More »
WAIT!
If you’re looking for Deb’s “In My Kitchen” blog, you’ve come to the right place. Please bear with me as I’m in the process of switching blogging software and am learning as I go. I hope to be functional and running soon, with a new layout and design, new content and access to all my old Movable Type archives.