Ivy Arts

Baby Ducks. A sure sign of spring. These little guys (or girls?) only a few days old now will be joining us when we move to our new home. The big boy is curious but he seems to have better things to do. The small boy loves them. He goes over to the box and points and shrieks. I take one out to show him and he continues pointing and shrieking. So I take out another. Maybe he has a favorite? This goes on and I conclude that he will only be happy when he is in the box with them. My husband grew up on farm chores and the tradition will continue. Duck egg omelette anyone?

And a thanks to readers for helping me get to my first big blog milestone. I appreciate all those who read and comment. I have enjoying writing this blog much as I have enjoyed reading the many, many fabulous blogs I’ve found out there. It’s a pleasure meeting you all. Say ‘hi’ if you haven’t already. I’m looking forward to the next 100 posts.

I always find these to be fun…. search engine terms people use to find your blog. I haven’t kept a really good record but here are a few recent ones.

Fat man on a couch

farmer in the dell…what is a dell

meaning of yeast

does sourdough starter change if moved

Lots of Easter preparation on Saturday. A morning jaunt to the farm where we picked up our Vermont maple sugar smoked ham for Easter dinner. The boys had a great time chasing chickens. This picture looks like the small boy is being chased but make no mistake, he was the dominant chaser. Poor chickens.

The afternoon was egg coloring time. My husband boiled the goose eggs for 10-15 minutes. We’ll know in a couple of days if that’s how long it takes to hard boil a goose egg.

The small boy kept trying to sip the egg coloring from the spoons. All that vinegar… blech. I had to restrain my perfectionist artistic tendencies and just let the boys color as they wanted to. Here are their beautiful eggs.

Lots of baking for me. These rolls were made in addition to the Oatmeal Sourdough rolls so that there was a vegan option at the table.

And last but not least… Easter sugar cookies. I wasn’t on top of my game and didn’t find Easter shaped cookie cutters so we just grabbed a glass out of the cupboard and went with the no-frills round cookie. As suggested by some reviewers, I added a bit more vanilla and some lemon zest as well as using half granulated and half powdered sugar. They’re really, really good. (Even better than Alton Brown’s. Sshhhh, pretend I didn’t say that. Sorry Alton, I still love you.) The boys did the decorating on these too.

Happy Easter!

I’m all for bright. I’m a fan of bold. Vivacious, even, is good.

But I find myself at a threshold I can’t cross. I have to draw the line on chaotic. I really don’t want to discount the great feedback from readers saying “Go for it!” Part of me wants to stay ‘all Chez Moi’ but a little more is saying… stop the madness. My feeling is that the top should really be the standout. If it has to compete with the backing then something is wrong. Soooo…. here’s the new choice. It’s a lovely soft green print in the economical 108″ width. I’m off to the machine quilter next week and by May it will be finished. I’m going to use the other fabric for some decorator accents – pillow or window treatments.

I picked up a few goose eggs from the pre-school/farm that the big boy goes to. They should be fun to decorate. Anyone know how long it takes to hard boil a goose egg?

(This gorgeous bowl was made by Melynn Allen of Breathing Easy.)

With my boys it is anyway. It has all the elements of great competitive drama. There’s physical contact – real mano-a-mano. There’s sweating, grunting, cursing (me anyway, at least not from the boys… yet), and screaming. I never thought I’d say this but the big boy is getting much better on outings. It’s the small boy that’s a train wreck.

At this stage, there are three modes of traveling with the small boy.

1.) Carry him = lots of wiggling, some shrieking and damn, he’s getting heavy

2.) Let him walk and try to hold his hand = often results in the limp body on the floor or at the very least, massive contortions that end up with me clutching scraps of coat

3.) Let him walk solo = a toddler with no sense of danger or appropriate behavior in public

Yup, good times.

I participated in a fabric swap via the Flickr group “Fabric Addicts Anonymous.” I got this groovy fabric from NotYetTheDodo in Denmark. Cool retro postcard too. What do you think I should make with this?

Should I or shouldn’t I? This is the backing fabric I bought for the quilt when I only had a few small blocks assembled. This may just take the whole WWYT thing to the n-th degree. Should I quit while I’m ahead and put a more subdued fabric on the back or go full steam ahead for Truely Crazy? Perhaps the Truely Crazy thing would be to put 9 yards of this fabric in my stash. Oh my.

I was tagged by Melynn at Breathing Easy for this one. She was tagged by one of her favorite bloggers, bookbabie, who just started a 6 word memoir meme fashioned after Not Quite What I was Planning: Six Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure Writers by Larry Smith and Rachel Fershleiser. In Melynn’s words, “If you’re thinking what I usually find myself thinking, “oh no, not another tagging game”, please reconsider playing this one. After all, it consists of only 6 words and an illustration if you’d like (how easy is that?). Plus, you’ll get to be in on the ground level and help bookbabie get her game off the ground.” I admit to the “Oh no” and after this one, will decree a moratorium on tags for at least six months. If you want to play say I tagged you, here are the rules:

1. Write a six word memoir

2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like

3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to the original post if possible so the meme can be tracked as it travels across the blogosphere

4. Tag five more blogs with links

5. Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

Here goes mine:

“Somewhere inside, this girl still lives.”