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. sigh 

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.

Here we are then, a new year, eventually a new look to the blog and a lot of catching up to do. I’ve been sitting here trying to think of a word or words that would sum up our 2006 and the only word that comes to mind is bittersweet. It was a turbulent year, marked by many positive changes and a wonderful adventure to Australia but it was also a terribly sad year for us. Two very close relatives and the mother of a close friend passed away within months and a few weeks of each other. Thanksgiving through Christmas was the most difficult time and for a while I was teetering on the edge of a fairly deep depression but luckily that seems to have passed.

So far 2007 has been no less interesting; my cousin gave birth to a beautiful girl, my brother became a NYC Police Officer, my youngest brother and his wife announced they were pregnant, the dog swallowed an acorn that he couldn’t pass resulting in emergency surgery, freaking mice in the attic, we all came down with a heinous virus that almost wiped us out AND my daughter turned THREE!

I asked She Who Must Be Obeyed what kind of cake she would like for her birthday and she promply replied ” a ladybug!” I had no idea if I could pull this off and for a while I had this notion that I would be the sole person involved in making the cake. I took the whole task quite seriously and almost missed out on how much fun it was to make the cake as a family rather than try to pull it off myself and take all the glory. I chose a cake, buttercream and custard recipe out of “The Whimsical Bakehouse” cookbook by Kaye and Liv Hansen and made everything a day ahead so that on the day of the party all I had to do was assemble and decorate. Easy peasy, except the dog got sick and several nearby vets were out of town at a conference so he had to be rushed to a vetinary hospital in a suberb of ALBANY. Somehow I ran out of time. In the end Tom and Ellie were decorating the cake right there with me and it was fun. We were covered in food coloring and buttercream icing but we were having the time of our lives and my daughters excitement was genuine and sweet and contagious and for me the best part about her turning three.

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.