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!  

vole toes and coyote woes

It's been a beautiful September.

We're still getting used to living in the country.  Last night, around 2 a.m....

...we were jerked from sleep by the sounds of a howling, snarling pack of coyotes, right beside our open bedroom window!  Cats and quilts went flying as I groped for my glasses and stumbled to the front door, just in time to see the last pair of hind legs disappearing into the dark.  We'll definitely need to shore up the animal barn this spring to prevent predator incursion, but one place they're definitely not getting into is the former horse barn.

After gutting, trenching, leveling, graveling, concreting, wiring, insulating, and office-building, we've gone from this...

...to this!

Okay, it's still a jumble.  We've moved one storage unit here, and we have 5 more.  Shelves must go up and everything has to be sorted.  But our little office is up and running.  Huge victory! 

Claudia had a victory this week, too.  Not only did she win over Todd, who is oddly unwilling to fawn over her every time he crosses the porch...

...but she's kept up her streak of providing one short-tailed vole every week.  She drops it on the doorstep, meowing loudly to let us know of her generosity...

...moves it around a few times so that we really, truly understand the enormity of what she's done...

...and finally, when we're properly grateful, she gulps it down in a few quick bites.

Between the voles and her regular cat food, she's becoming quite sleek!

I'm having a lot of trouble with my cheapo sewing machine and am actually in negotiations with someone to buy a super fancy (used) model, so I'm not working on any quilts right now.  I did decide that the chair cover I made last week looked too sloppy...

...so I decided to remake it into quilted cushions with tied sashes.  Simple design...

The end result is still a bit sloppy...

...but it's incredibly comfortable...and has the cat "paw of approval." :)

I also made a teeny tiny quilted pincushion.  I'd felt like a bit of a hoarder, saving tiny 1" - 3" scraps just because because they were too cute to toss...

...but this pincushion incorporates 1" scraps, finishing out at about 3.5".  It was a very satisfying project! 

Other fun projects this week:  making pesto out of basil and tomato, gifted by a friend...

...and a slow start to shoring up the garden for winter by cutting back dead or old growth.

We'll have a dump truck full of a compost/soil mixture delivered in the next 2 weeks, and I'll be amending the clay soil in the 2 new beds, as well as laying out a new fire pit/garden area at the side of the house.  It's going to look so much better!  Right now, my view is a lot of bare dirt:  the french drain that we put in recently, plus the electrical cord trench out to the barn.  Oh, and this:

I guess I don't mind that last view too much.  Have a great week!