Here’s some photos from our hike around Cataract Lake yesterday.
Here’s hoping your weekend was filled with beauty, sunshine, and some good exlporing
today
I sat out on the deck in the perfect autumn weather and made something.
A lot of beach combing happened this summer in California. A little by me, during the weekend I visited Barry, and quite a lot by Barry. I came home from my trip with all the nooks and crannies of my suitcase filled with rocks and shells. We had even found a starfish washed up on the shore. I thought I could take it back with me and dry it, but boy was that a mistake! Even in two ziploc bags it spread the most horrific smell to everything near it– and turned to flattened mush. I put it on the roof at my parents house to dry, but it remained stinky and just not cool at all. Bummer.
But, I still have treasures to spare. I braved a trip to Michael’s yesterday with the kids in tow to find some shadow box frames, and I found some in the Martha Stewart crafty stuff– in my shade of green, even. I grabbed my box of shells and sticks and sand dollars, went outside with my glue and paintbrush, and it felt so good.
I stuck the finished arrangement in a cubby in my new art-room-in-leiu-of-a-dining-room. I’m making progress in there.
It’s in plain view of the front door, so if it’s going to be a mess, it’s got to be a cute mess. I finally got to the box of very gingerly wrapped bird nests, rocks, seedpods, eggs, and shells today. I wonder what the packers thought…
There was some other random junk in the box too. I had some help finding a place to put it.
I made something today
Have you heard of the book Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day?
Okay, so I know if you’re an Angry Chicken reader you most likely have. I just have to chime in my two cents that you simply must get your hands on a copy. I bought one while we were living in a little apartment in Alabama this summer– without a good mixer or bread maker. With the recipes in this book you need neither a heavy mixer or a bread maker, just a good sized bowl and a wooden spoon or (my preference) a sturdy rubber spatula. The dough doesn’t even need kneading! Just mix your ingredients, let it rise for a while, then pop the dough in the fridge. When you’re ready for some warm, crusty bread, some naan, or even some sinful cinnamon rolls, just break out your bowl of dough and you’re good to go. We had a long, busy day at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science today and the last thing my tired pregnant body wanted to do was make dinner. The dough in the fridge came to the rescue! In less than an hour we had spaghetti and 3 crusty loaves (I hurried and took a picture before they were all gone) filling our home with delicious smells.
I don’t use the recipes for our everyday bread. I haven’t been able to get the whole wheat varieties to turn out quite to our liking, but for dinner bread or for a sweet morning treat, the white bread recipes are amazing and super easy.
Anyway– it made me feel a teensy bit creative today.
math day
So, I’m not doing very good at posting every day. And here’s another schoolish post, because, well, that’s what I do lately.
Jonah figured out that he is exactly 2510 days old today. I made my Montessori math bead materials last summer. Traditionally they’re the “Golden Beads” but we opted for ruby. After I made the thousand cube (Can you see Logan holding it?) I was pretty much burnt out on stringing beads on wires, but we still needed more 10s, 100s, and 1000s to really do all the math we wanted, so I made some beads I could print out. If you’d like to print them yourselves, here they are in a PDF:
They’re totally no frills. You’ll have to figure out your own little fold-over tabs to hook the sides of your cubes together, but they do the job and get A LOT of use around here. To make your 100s, just cut the squares apart, obviously. The last page is 10s, in case you couldn’t tell. If you’re really going to use these and need some units, leave a comment and I’ll make a page of those too. I’m really just posting this on here to have something to post!!
I’m still hoping to get to some thing-making soon– like this weekend. My batteries need some recharging and I’m realizing (once again) that my sanity and ability to cope directly corelates to the amount of creating I do. What keeps you sane?