A NaNoWriMo "Vacation"

If you consider cranking out a 50,000 word novel in 30 days a vacation, then, woohoo, break out the sunscreen and bring on the cabana boys! For those of us who like to bang our heads against the wall and suffer the pain of a taunting blank screen (or a piece of paper), National Novel Writing Month is, indeed, a "vacation" to remember. Care to join me? I'm "writer64" at NaNo, and would love for you to buddy me there. =)

Before I neglect my crops on Lil Farm Life (cursed FB and its time-sucking games), and my blog, and my bloggy friends' blogs for an entire month, I thought I'd share some chapters from my life...which is not quite an open book. I apologize for my writing-related jokes.

Chapter 1: My experimental life
...in which we extract DNA...bwahahahaha! Who says biology is boring? Incidentally, would you believe "bored" and "boring" are two words my kids have never uttered in their lives? Seriously. Dh and I must be doing something right.

So, the kids in the biology lab class got to extract DNA from split peas. If you'd like to follow along, and I know you do, see these directions.

Well, they're not quite the strands the directions make them sound like they'd be. Here's ds#1 trying to "pull" them out:Kind of a murky mess. But after letting the test tubes sit for about an hour, the DNA stuff separated themselves out. Here they are, the infamous DNA clouds! Heh. So, what do you think? Cumulo-nimbus? Alto-stratus?Chapter 2: We'll have fun, fun, fun 'til our daddy takes the clay away
I'd like to see him try to stop us from having fun. More ceramics joy from our previous workout...here's a beautiful sycamore leaf by ds#2. I love the glaze on this one:Ds#1 made a sassafras imprint trivet, which can also be used as a wall hanging:
And I made a set of 5 little condiment dishes:I'm trying to decide whether to list them on our Artfire site, or start an Etsy store..

Chapter 3: Nerds R Us.
...or "why I think my kids are space aliens in disguise". Then, again, maybe it's just indicative of our wacky homeschooling lifestyle.

This is what's under my 13 year old son's bed. I think he has half the library's collection there.
I'd think that pre-teen and teen boys would have posters of rock stars, athletes, or, gack!, pretty models on their walls, but here're the walls over ds#1's bed. There's a poster of Vancouver, Newberry (children's fiction) winners, an Escher print, a Magritte print, a Toko print, a little poster of The Story of the Stars and Stripes, a small poster of some eagle (not the rock band) festival, the cover of a Harry Potter LEGO set, and a small print of some ancient sea creature (elasmosaurus or something).
And over ds#2's bed, we have...well, you can probably see this one pretty well yourself. The Parts of a Cell poster really rocks!
A model of the solar system hangs from the ceiling in this photo, and a how-to art poster and Geologic Time Scale poster adorn the wall.
I've asked the kids if they want some different (read: non-educational) posters up, and they said, "mmm, no". Okay then.

Chapter 4: Food, glorious food
I made another couple of pie crust a la Mark Bittman, and this time, I used the acorn squash that friends gave us to make "pumpkin" pie. Pre-mixing:After pouring into the crust:I used the pumpkin pie recipe by Jackie Clay who writes a column for Backwoods Home magazine.

Because we have a carpet of cilantro in our greenhouse (no exaggeration), dh bought some haddock and trout yesterday and cooked them with a creamy cilantro sauce, accompanied by green beans with sun-dried tomato paste (yup, both homegrown). It was totally divine; I'm drooling again just thinking about it:I've been baking today, in between loads of laundry. My friend Jennifer is having a food drive for the winter homeless shelter here in town, and needed donations of food. (Neither the Shalom Center (which normally serves breakfast and lunch) nor the Community Kitchen (which normally serves dinner) is open on Sunday.) I made a dessert - chocolate chunk blondies (a King Arthur Flour recipe, and, yes, I will post the recipe some time this month):and a couple of loaves of the 5 minute artisan bread:If other townies are reading this and would like to help, Jennifer will still need food for December 6, January 3, February 7, and March 7. Contact me and I'll get you in touch with her.

Chapter 5: Odds 'n ends...a happy doggie end
I saw this book advertised somewhere and am intrigued by it. It hasn't come out yet, but if anyone reads it before I do, please let me know if it's worth buying!
I have one of the One Skein Wonders book and really like it. :)

And here is the doggie end, just as I promised. A bit stinky, but happy, nonetheless.I hope to be able to visit your blogs a few times during the month, but if I don't get around to that, I promise I will be back with a vengeance in December. ;) Wish me luck with NaNo, please!

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Another piled-up, jumbled mess of a blog post

...in other words, my usual. ;)

It was supposed to be a pretty busy week this week, with the Teen Book Club on Monday, playdate on Tuesday, Spanish class, ds#1's guitar lesson, and LEGO Club on Wednesday, biology labs on Thursday, and ceramics on Friday, but ds#1 inconveniently (or is it conveniently?) caught something and started showing symptoms on Sunday, so we had to cancel activities for Monday and Tuesday (in case he was infectious, and so that he could recuperate).

Since I have a 2 day reprieve, I'm going to get cracking on 1) blogging - reading and writing, 2) making paper for an order, and 3) reading the biology textbook because I'm waaay behind.

A quick look at the weeks past...this is one of the pretty leaf dishes that we made last month. This one is made by ds#2, my 11 year old. I love the color and used it for our Artfire store banner.I made a butter tart square a couple of weeks ago, and it was so tasty, I made it again when Meg (Get In, Hang On) visited on Saturday:
Last, last Friday, I finally had a free day with no obligations and could lounge around in my hand-knit chitin socks and read:
We finally got around to making bath fizzies that Anne-Marie (Soap and the Finer Things in Life) showed how to do last year. Here's ds#1 spritzing with rubbing alcohol while I mixed:
The mixture crammed into the molds:
We waited too long to pop them out so some of the fizzies broke while we were getting them out. These ones managed to survive, and are kind of cute!
We had the last watermelon from our garden a couple of weeks ago. It was surprisingly tasty for a late season melon.
I made pie crusts for quiche last, last weekend using the recipe in How to Cook Everything by Mark Bittman. It was really delish!
I do love my decorative edges. Alas, this is the only one I know how to do:
We've been harvesting beet greens for our salads. Is this not a beauty?
And also beeeeyoootiful is our broccoli - and sweet and tasty too:
Some cool nights have forced us to cover some crops with row covers. See the frost on the cabbage plants?
Sunrise over the covered crops...another day on the homestead begins:
As you may have noticed, the trees are in their lovely colors now (and rapidly fading). How are the colors where you are?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Mid-(ahem)-week post - in which Pooh loses his mind and wants to hibernate

...because he has too many things to do, and too little time to do them.

Dang - I'm projecting again. It's actually me, and not Pooh.

Got a whole bunch of random photos to share anyway, but not a whole lot of writing (mercifully for all of you).

Ds#1's gardening pick this year was a purple carrot. They turned out pretty well (see below with a "normal" carrot on the right for color comparison), but I'd advise against growing them as they tend to stain everything, much like beets do. The thing is, there is no good substitute for beets, but there are fine substitutes for purple carrots.
Here are the carrots, roasted up with potatoes, and served with fried chicken:
Dh has always wanted a good hammock so we finally bought one from Gaiam.com. The boys tested it out and pronounced it a great fit.
Lorie (Be Different Act Normal) posted about bandana aprons and I got inspired (because our bandanas had secretly procreated like rabbits in the drawer and we now have a hundred of them). This is my attempt. I wore it today to brown the pot roast. The pot roast was pleased, I could tell.
Have any of you ever tasted paw paw? It's native to Indiana. The animals have always gotten to them before we did, even though we have a good bit of paw paw trees on our property. This year, dh and the boys managed to snag a couple. So, we tried it, and I think it is incredibly foul. Andrew Zimmern (on Bizarre Foods) could not stomach durian. Obviously, he had never eaten paw paw because that would have prepared him for the durian experience. Yes, it is that foul.
On the other end of the gastronomic spectrum has to be this tofu curry that dh makes. It is the current love of my life!
Tofu curry in my bowl...and in my dreams!
These next couple of photos are specially for Sara (Schooling From the Heart). This is the potter's wheel I bought from her before they left for Europe (*sniffle*). Ds#1 has been working on it regularly for a month now. It takes a long time to master, but I'm glad he seems to be enjoying it.
Sara gave us this table that her dh made; it is sturdy and excellent for wedging clay (which is what ds#1 is doing here, before he threw it on the wheel; my photos are out of order).
Ds#2 is taking a short break from ceramics right now, but will start back next week. He's been practicing sketching while ds#1 works on ceramics. I love art days!
And last, but not least, here are the goodies from Amber (Amber's Ambry) that I got for swapping the hat I knitted. Is the package adorable, or what?
Here are the soaps she sent me. I've started using the Blueberry one, and it smells soooo nice! Thanks much for bartering/swapping with me, Amber!
"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams

Reconsidered...

The idea seemed good, but in practice, it wasn't as much so.  So, we won't be on Artfire or Etsy afterall.  I'll continue to post our creations here.  It's good for our homeschool records, if nothing else. :)

A birthday wish, and a bevy of goodies

Firstly, it's dh's birthday today...47 and every bit as adorable as when I married him 20 years ago. And he's such a hard working dude too. It may be his birthday, but instead of sitting around wanting to be treated like a king, he spent the morning weeding and harvesting with the kids, and, now, after lunch, he went to the office to work for a couple of hours even though he didn't have to teach today.

We'll probably go out for his birthday dinner tomorrow, but tonight, I'm making him one of his favorite desserts: creme caramel (recipe courtesy of our wonderful neighbors...have I mentioned yet how glad I am the previous owners moved to the East Coast?).

We've been having lots of fun with ceramics lately. We made some new and different things that we're quite happy with. I created a tree shaped container:You lift the leaf lid and the trunk of the tree is a cavity in which you can store jewelry or whatever treasure you want!

Ds#2 made, with his teacher's help, a pen/pencil holder; the Old Brick glaze is quite attractive:
Ds#1 decided to make a stylized earth star bowl. For those of you not mycologically-inclined, earth stars are a type of fungus (puff balls, in fact).
Not to be out-done by us, dh cooked up some wild Alaskan salmon for dinner on Saturday. He made his own charmoula sauce, and whipped up his usual yummy Greek salad:
I know you never get tired of looking at our tomato photos...hah!And from these tomatoes, we canned another 14 quarts of sauce.What else have I been working on? Well, after seeing the cutest post at Lorie's Be Different Act Normal blog, I decided to whip up a bandana apron myself. Haven't gotten too far yet. I put some pleats in the black bandana for the bodice and attached it to bottom half. I am a messy person in the kitchen, and if I didn't have a bodice on my apron, I may as well not wear one at all.
And speaking of aprons, go check out and enter Amber's Ambry's 200th post giveaway!

All right, last but not least, and then I have to get back to reading the biology textbook and lab manual (for the lab class that I'm leading for some homeschool teens, including ds#1...again, many thanks to Meg!!)...we made and froze another 9 pints of pesto. Here the boys are, "de-foliating" the basil that dh picked and I washed:
I hope those of you who have Labor Day off today are having a wonderful holiday weekend! Are you doing something fun and out-of-the-ordinary?

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." ~ Douglas Adams