A Crafty Yarn

I LOVE the molcajete that is served at a local Mexican restaurant!  I have been wanting to try making it at home and finally bit the bullet...and I'm SO glad I did! Molcajete is actually the name of the bowl.  It's sold as a mortar and pestle and is made from volcanic rock.  I bought two of them and if I had known how much work it would be to clean them for their initial use I would have been tempted to just make fajitas!  :-) I'm really glad that I did it in the end though!  It was delicious and a real treat to have it in the comfort of our own home. There are hundreds of recipes that can be prepared in the molcajete.  The one that I tried turned out so much like the restaurant version!  I found it here!

I'm so excited about gardening this year!  My seed addiction has gotten slightly out of hand but it's all going to be worth it once I have these guys in the ground!   These are the seeds that I have planted for the Spring:   Bulgarian Giant Leek Red Freddy Genovese Basil Mary Washington Asparagus Bloomsdale Long Standing Spinach Precoce D'argenteuil Asparagus Candy Roaster Squash Devil's Ear Lettuce White Soul Alpine Strawberry Alexandria Alpine Strawberry Baron Von Solemacher Alpine Strawberry Cocozella Di Napoli Zucchini Chocolate Cherry Tomato Brandywine Tomato Black Magic Kale Lemon Cucumber Scarlet Sage Lemon Bergamot Pleurisy Root Greek Mullein Gobo Burdock Astragalus Calendula German Chamomile Holy Basil Valerian Wood Betony Yarrow Purple Coneflower Evening Primrose Brown Flax Lemon Balm Marshmallow Motherwort Stinging Nettle Cayenne Pepper Elecampane   Hyssop Viper's Buglos...

We've slowly been chipping away at our dining room to-do list.  Thankfully...it's finally done!  You can see that the wallpaper was all 80s!  What you can't tell from this picture is that the chair rail....was installed upside down!   We removed the chair rail and the wallpaper.  Painted the walls a much richer color and did the trim in an oatmeal color rather than leaving the original wood.  Plantation blinds were a real upgrade from the previous plastic miniblinds.       The change with the greatest impact, at least in my mind, is the light fixture!  The one that was here when we moved in was oh so dated as well as being broken.     We replaced it with a beautiful fixture that fits our style... and works!        Please excuse the glare in this picture...it is out of control.  Anyway, the interior wall is really large and after we got it painted it was in desperat...

A friend of mine is having a baby...I almost never go to baby showers and I've never thrown one... until yesterday!  It was so much fun getting everything ready! I didn't want there to be too much of a theme but I did want something really special for the invitations.  I made a booklet style invitation with a children's classic on each page and sewed the pages onto the back cardstock.     I never do "girly" things and I took this as an opportunity to use predominately feminine colors. There are white Christmas lights strung underneath the table and I LOVE how it turned out!         Mason jar glasses with a simple ribbon bow and a paper straw.       The curtain is white crepe paper streamers that I stuck fabric and paper flowers to. I had planned on getting a bit more elaborate with the food portion but wasn't able to because a minor injury caused a serious delay in my timeline! No one seemed to ...

I'm sad to see her go but it's time to say goodbye to my beloved Ford Taurus.  I've had this car for 11 years... It's been with me through one marriage and two divorces.  The Taurus has been with me through 9 moves and countless trips.  When I was a doula, it was this car that delivered me to so many delivering mommies.  It towed a Uhaul trailer full of everything I own from Minnesota to Arkansas.  It's been loaded down with compost, manure, and plants more times than I can count. It's been my refuge when I just couldn't deal with real life and just needed some time driving down back roads... It lived through thousands of tears, much laughter, and oh so many badly sung songs.     

A recent gift of home grown grapes has really lit the fire under me to make sure I plant grapes next year!   These were beautiful, delicious, and made one heck of a good grape jam!