la cocina

thank you for all the gardening tips. really looking forward to giving it a go this year, and having more fresh herbs in the kitchen. yum. i spent all afternoon cooking away. i had two recipes to test for a friend, so i thought i would make an occasion of it. a soup and a banana bread recipe. since david is of the opinion that soup is not a meal, i made a quiche as well. my kids eat quiche, do yours? they love eggs, and cheese. the spinach throws them off sometimes, but they didnt mind last night. i have decided that i really like cooking with leeks. they are so pretty when you slice them, and i liked to stir the pot looking at all those o's and zeros floating around. i would imagine the same goes for calamari.

i plan on running some freezer paper through the printer tonight. keeping the fingers crossed on that one, and have plenty of volunteer cutters. saturday should be the stenciling day. after KU plays UCLA of course. we have the madness at our house. funny huh? its true. so, good weekend to you all. wishing spring for those still stuck in the cold!

dishes and shin splints

yesterday i was in the kitchen enjoying the sunshine and all the colors when i thought of shari and grabbed the camera. it felt good to get some things done around the house, open up the windows and linger with the longer days. if you need any sort of encouragement about spring, read this. i am excited about spring, but in my heart of hearts i am a summer girl. warm concrete, drippy ice cream, buzzing bees. i love it all. even the humidity. and this i know ranks me as crazy among most. but i am ok with that. speaking of crazy, i have volunteered to "make" shirts for david and his friends who are playing in a basketball tournament in a few weeks. by make i mean freezer paper stencil numbers and logos (the shin splints) on six shirts. not too nutty, but still lots of cutting and painting on my part. i think i can run freezer paper through the printer right? anyone have any tips on this? while we are talking tips, i need some planting ones. every year i say that i am going to plant an potted herb garden for myself and every year i do not. my front porch gets pretty intense sun until about 10 or 11 am. i envision basil, rosemary, thyme, mint and maybe some flat leaf parsley. will that work? i have to tell you that i have no green in my thumb. not even a tint, but i really want to try!

i was so happy that so many of you also have secret crushes on ira. if we are revealing secret crushes, i think i need to add a new one to my list. mr. sidney poitier. so handsome. so dapper. so cool. we watched for love of ivy last night and mr. poitier was delightful to say the least.

back at friday again

i have to say it. where did the week go? i know i spent as much time as possible outside monday, tuesday and wednesday. lots of walking, reading and enjoying the porch with that little preview of nicer weather that kansas city gave us. things have settled back to a more normal springish level with grey skies and temps in the 40s and 50s. oh, didnt you know? this is my weather blog now. forget about crafts, lets talk air streams and depressions and cold fronts! seriously i am turning into an old lady obsessed with the weather. gah. i must admit that i have a hard time going to bed at night if i havent checked the next day's weather forecast on at least two separate web pages. sick.

anyway, i did get out of the house last night and did something fun. i went to see a free screening of the new television version of this american life at screenland.
i suppose i should admit to being mildly obsessed with ira glass as well. many, many, many a days stuck in my cube at work were made bearable only because i was able listen to t.a.l archives online. david and i even saw him speak when he came through town a few years ago. i was pregnant with some child, i cant remember which.

other things tickling my fancy these days (did i just say that?) are sew green sash's new collaborative blog. i would like to make my life more green, and i dont think using the same plastic swizzle stick in my coffee for weeks on end is really cutting it. time to step up. and habitat is getting in spring and summer goodness that is making me weak in the knees, like these... and of course much time being spent over at flickr as always. loving sam on the beach, silver & blue, orange, more orange, and green. have a good weekend friends!

....74

the thermometer reached 74 yesterday, making it absolutely ridiculous to stay inside, unless you are a sleeping girl under the age of three that is. so eliot and i commandeered the porch, had a snack, soaked up some rays and then got down to some serious stuff. for eliot this of course translates into hunting for worms. for me, it meant reading until my bum fell asleep and then reviving it with some yard work. once i convinced myself that i actually wanted to shovel up the soppy pile of rotten leaves lumped around the basketball goal (you know because i might shoot a few... yeah right...) it meant success for eliot's quest. after the worm massacre (because i still cant convince him to put them back into the ground) i came up with the most brilliant game ever. pick up as many sticks as you can as fast as you can! i get the feeling these kinds of kid cons are not going to last for much longer. dang. i did think about sewing yesterday. i thought about skirts, but couldnt bring myself to leave the sunshine for the dungeon that is my basement. i think once we settle into more typical springtime weather, i will get on that. that and shaving my legs on some sort of regular basis again. hmm.

rusty

i have not used my sewing machine since early january, so i felt a bit rusty sitting down in front of it on tuesday. i think the machine itself was literally rusty because it was making this strange whiny, squeaky noise. hmm. anyway my friend sarah asked me to make a bag out of this cool fabric she found at an estate sale. there is a sweet story behind this bag that i want to tell. sarah went to uganda last spring and made friends with a man named moses in goli. moses came to philadelphia to study and didnt know a single soul in the states except for sarah. she flew him to kansas city so he could spend time with her and meet her friends so he wouldnt feel lonely, having left his wife and five children in uganda for the duration of his studies. such a sweet and amazing man that moses is, i was lucky enough to have lunch with him while he was here. anyway, recently moses told sarah how his roommate's at school celebrated his birthday and that he was so touched and a little bewildered because he had never celebrated such an occasion before. sarah explained that here we enjoy celebrating birthdays, for the most part anyway. moses then decided that when he went home to uganda and the end of term in may, that he would surprise his wife miriam with a birthday party. of course she has never had such a thing, or ever received a birthday gift before. sarah is leaving tomorrow (already sarah???) for a three month trip to uganda where she will be working with an anglican church in kampala. wow. and lucky me, she asked me if i could make a bag for miriam's first birthday celebration!!! with a little bit of nerves and a whole lot of determination, i finished the bag up yesterday following this great tutorial, and it will be heading to miriam soon. i hope she likes it!

in memory

on sunday i noticed a squirrel with a hurt leg in the yard. on monday david found it dead under the lilac bush. so when i got home in the afternoon with eliot we had a little funeral for mr. squirrel. and yes, i dug the hole and inserted the squirrel myself. i do dig holes for a living you know. anyway it was a special fifteen minutes with eliot. we made a cross and found a heart shaped rock and leaf to put on mr. squirrel's grave, and then we said a few words.

eliot: is the squirrel ok?
me: well remember his leg was hurt yesterday?
eliot: yeah
me: well the good thing is that he isn't in any more pain.
eliot: oh.
eliot: but the bad thing is he's dead.
me: uh. yeah. that is very true.

that kid doesnt miss a thing.

i figured it out

i think kansas city is menopausal (no offense to anyone who might actually be dealing with menopause). hot flash yesterday, sun and 70 degrees. last night, hail, thunderstorms, tornadoes. today, snow (itty bit), winds and 30 degrees. what??? well regardless of what kind of crazy drugs kc is on, we practically fell all over ourselves yesterday in our rush to get out of the house. and it was glorious. bike riding, exploring, digging, running and surprisingly lots of screaming on collettes part. dont worry, i think it was screaming out of pure excitement. arlo woke up, and i got her outside and in on the action too.

and yes i had the camera right in her face pretty much the whole time we were out, but really can you blame me? i think not.

thank you so much everyone for all the garage sale love. i should be getting things off to the post office tomorrow, and because david might be reading, i should mention that i will be taking the rest to goodwill this weekend (i promise sweetie!). it would have been fun to actually be sitting at some rickety card table and meeting all you ladies in person.