jay display

Original Valentine's Day plan:  hiking at a national wildlife preserve...until the temperatures dropped and the cold rain set in.  Instead it was tex-mex, board games, and a relaxing evening of Everybody Loves Raymond.  Oh, and baking...a lot of baking.  

A friend's daughter was turning 21, so I made a surprise-inside cake.  First, I baked a halved vanilla cupcake recipe in a sheet pan and cut out lots of 2s and 1s...

After freezing them for a few hours, I stood them up inside a half-poured chocolate cake batter...

...and then spooned the rest of the batter on top.  Freezing the letters means that when the cake is baked, the letters/numbers will thaw instead of 'baking twice,' which would make them tough.  I don't have a photo of the inside of the cake, but each slice has a pink '21' inside!

I had a baby shower this weekend, and made a cake for that...

...and at the same time as the shower, Todd had a toy show on the north side.  I wanted to make plenty of treats for him and the friends that were helping out.  I made brownies...

(all photos taken on a rainy day in a dim kitchen, so are pretty terrible)

Blueberry bars....

...and Nutter Butters.

Oh, I also made another batch of peanut butter cookies for the baby shower.  It was a very busy couple of days!  

The cold weather was perfect for cats on laps.

It got colder, and...snow!!

The feeders drew a lot of birds...especially blue jays.

So...many...blue jays.

Even though they're 'bully birds,' I like to see them.  Besides...our other birds seem to stand up to them just fine!

Nice bit of color in a dull month, too!

Todd's made one trek out to check the trail cams in this cold weather, but we caught something interesting.  It's coyote mating season.  Are these two playing?  Fighting?  Courting?  They seem to be having fun, whatever it is!

(maximize screen to see better!)

This is my favorite part.  :)

Maybe there'll be PUPPIES in the spring!

Have a great week!  

hibernation tendon-cy

Photos that I've taken this week:  three.  

One, when we had a freakishly warm day and made Claudia come outside for some fresh air:

Two, when said warm day created beautiful ice cracks in the front pond:

And three, a really beautiful late-afternoon sky that I observed from INSIDE the house.

Late January is tough.  It's cold, and I don't like to be outside in the cold much.  It's grey and wet, and there's just not much to photograph.  Not much going on inside, either.  I've developed tendonitis in both Achilles tendons and both shoulders...so no repetitive-motion activities right now.  No sewing, no embroidery, no puzzles, and minimal lifting heavy camera lenses.  I've started physical therapy and am hoping to get back to normal activities - on a limited basis - within a week or so.  Meanwhile, I've looked at some old photos from the late fall that didn't make the blog cut.  Still, I think they're worth remembering.  When the flowers, the leaves, and the green grass has faded for the season, sometimes the fungus that remains can provide both color and interest.

crown-tipped coral fungus

pink-mottle woodwax

unknown fungus

slime puffball

cantharellus lateritius

mushrooms forcing up through a crack in the concrete

mushroom unknown

Now, this LOOKS like a fungus, but it's actually a wool-sower gall.

The wool sower is a type of wasp which lays eggs in white oak trees.  The larvae develop inside these woolly balls.  They don't hurt the oak trees, and I think the galls are quite pretty!  

I like seeing these interesting shapes and splotches of color during fall hikes.  Speaking of hikes, we've got a big one planned this week, so hopefully I'll have some photo diversity soon!

Until then, more cats...

...and trail cams.  This one is from early January...the date is incorrect on the video.  One, two, three raccoons!  We're also feeding a couple of raccoons on our front porch every night.  They're huge!!

Here's to more interesting times in the next week!  

plastic fantastic

 Major warm-up!  The clean lines on our frozen pond have melted...

...into a beautiful milky, pearlescent color.

It's been cold enough, though, for the nails on our porch ceiling to develop a thick coat of frost.  It always brings to mind Laura Ingalls Wilder's The Long Winter:  "The frosted nails in the roof above her were like white teeth."

Today, though, it will be nearly 70 (!!!) and all traces of our big snow will be gone!  

I've spent a lot of my spare time working on a puzzle this week.  Todd surprised me with a 2000 piece puzzle a month or so ago, and it was unusual in several ways...first, it was plastic.  Second, the puzzle was broken down into six sections.  I didn't even need my puzzle board.  I assembled it a section at a time...

...and finished the entire puzzle in a little over a week...a new record for me!

It's pretty big...29" x 24"...and the pieces are so sturdily locked together that not only is it easy to carry around, I think it might be difficult and time-consuming to disassemble.  To make it more challenging when I put it together again, I'm going to break it down into four sections, not six.

We have ventured out a little...to a Motown concert last night...

...but have mostly been at home. I've done a little knitting over the past few weeks.  I ordered some beautiful Malabrigo yarn...

...and have just finished a hat.  It's a pattern that I've knitted in the past for a gift, so I already knew that I'd like it!

I love the hexagons.

I'm working on matching mittens now.  I started a sweater at the end of 2024...

...but I quickly discovered that not only was I not fond of the color combination I'd chosen, the various differences in yarn thickness/hairiness was annoying as well.  I ended up frogging it back to the beginning of the blue pattern.  I'm going to start over when I feel more inspired.

I did buy some other beautiful Malabrigo yarn recently that might be a nice contrast to the gold...

Speaking of gold, Todd bought me a sweater-quantity of Malabrigo Rios for Christmas in the Frank Ochre colorway.  It is gorgeous!!!

I have THREE unfinished sweaters on hold right now...a white sweater that I decided to change the arm length on and got confused, so put it aside...a green sweater with a messed-up front panel...and now the sweater above, recently frogged nearly to the collar.  However, that isn't stopping me from starting a FOURTH sweater with the beautiful Frank Ochre.  ;)

We're continuing to have the most beautiful sunrises...

...and I'm really loving the slower pace of life right now.  For the first time in a long time, I'm reading after supper...always with a cat in my lap.  It seems to be the only time he's interested!

As nice as it is to be at home, I just got the okay from my podiatrist to resume walking again (as long as I complete a painful-sounding round of physical therapy to break up scar tissue), so I'm excited to actually get outside again! 

Have a great week!  

the best freezefest

Our cold weather continued until just a day or so ago.  The snow was so light and powdery that when the sun was on it, it looked like glitter.

Believe it or not, we are having mole activity!

The snow is still so beautiful, even though it's starting to melt.

front pond

another beautiful sunrise, set off by the white blanket of snow

ditto!  I call these "Lisa Frank sunrises" 

after the colorful junior high school supplies of my childhood

I'm determined not to be stuck inside no matter what the temperature - at least not all the time - so Todd and I went to FreezeFest this week.  It's a festival that our town throws that celebrates all things winter.  We missed the games and the chili cookoff, but we did see the ice sculptures.

It was about 15 degrees so we didn't hang around for too long, but it was really fun to see for a few minutes!

Like I said, we've mostly been staying inside.  Besides work, I finished two puzzles...

...and have gotten quite a bit of reading in.

always better with a friend!

Speaking of cats, they've been enjoying our piles of winter bedding.  It's pointless to make the bed, because there's usually a cat tangled up in it somewhere.  

Our BIG cat (the bobcat) is still showing up regularly on the trail cams, but I've gotten some really good coyote shots this week.  There's a pair and they're definitely denned up down by the back pond!  Here's one trying...and failing...to get some breakfast.  Whomp whomp!  

Maximize windows for better viewing

We had a short but thick snowfall earlier this week...

...but it's finally warmed back up to the 40s and it looks like it's going to stay that way for a while.  I'm hoping that we can start hiking again soon.  It's been almost two months!  

Have a great week!