For Valentine’s Day Tom finally finished making my long-awaited shelves for the linen closet. Finally, I can move all the linens out of our bedroom closet, alleviating the daily avalanche that occurs whenever I attempt to retrieve a sweater.
I can think of few things much more romantic.
While the rest of us were busy watching the Super Bowl, Shep was over by the Lego.
He was there for quite a long time.
When I walked by to get a drink, I realized he had been hard at work. He had carefully been constructing letters out of Lego. It spells “Pac Man gets gold.” Below the sentence is Pac Man, with several gold bricks on his head.
I love this kid.
So we’ve had a lot of snow days. A LOT of snow days. We’ve been at home more this winter than I’d ever imagined possible.
Snow isn’t so bad, as you can still boot restless kids outside.
But this ice? It’s going to send us over the edge.
Yesterday I walked onto our porch, took one step, and then found myself at the bottom of the flight with a really ouchy wrist. Then Neko wiped out and did a number her knee. That sealed the deal—no one was going outside.
Neko had the idea that we’d set up our tent in the living room. Which was a great idea until we realized that we’d upgraded to a larger tent this summer, one that no longer fits in our living room. So Tom cracked out blankets and ropes and super-strong clips and made this jumbo-sized tent. After I took this photo, the kids took the all the pillows off the couch and put them on the floor and moved in sleeping bags. I crawled in there to read a book to someone and nearly dozed off, as it’s just that cozy.
Our entire loft is filled with these silent auction baskets. It’s a sea of fund-raising madness. I cannot wait for them to get out of our space, which is supposed to happen this Friday.
Of course, the Ice-pocalypse is due this week, so I should probably just start arranging furniture around them, as I suspect they’re here to stay for a while.
While Xmas shopping, we discovered these Mini Lunch Notes.
My mother, who has been a teacher for a gazillion years, recommends that parents write notes to their kids to encourage them to read. Kids are super-motivated to read when it’s a message from their parents. I tend to write things like “Please bring home your water bottle. I love you!” Tom writes notes like, “Please don’t eat your socks today.”
I know, I know. I could just use a plain piece of paper, but Tom and I pack lunches in the wee hours, a time of day where finding paper and a pen a getting them to the same spot seems like a near impossible task. So I will happily give Chronicle Books $10 to save us from nearly three months of searching for paper at 6:30am.
Shep is now able to follow the directions in the Lego manuals. Moments after he assembled this creation, he tore it apart to begin on the airplane.
I rounded the corner to the coop the other day and was greeted by a terrifying sight. James had virtually no feathers on her head.
Did you know that chickens molt? Apparently, some worse than others. Some can lose a bunch of feathers, and simply look a bit scraggly. But others can molt so badly that they’re one step away from looking ready for the rotisserie. So far, James’ molting is only really apparent on her head, but, sheesh, she looks a little scary.
I suspected this was coming. I had noticed recently a whole lot of feathers in the coop, all black and white ones. I fear that streak of 50° days made James think it was spring. Time to lose feathers! Little did she know, we’d still have single digit weather ahead.
I brought her inside today to give her a thorough once-over. I wanted to make sure we didn’t have a dire disease on our hands. She ate and drank, but not ravenously. (She only did that later when I served up some mac & cheese leftovers after lunch.) Although her comb and waddle looked a bit pale, I suspect she is just molting. That pile of feathers Ellery has in her hands in the third photo are what she left behind after being in our house for just 20 minutes. Yikes.
Of course, this is all happening just in time for me to leave town, dumping it all into Tom’s hands.
Bonus photo of Princess Ariel, chicken feather hand model.
A few weeks back I was doing some shopping. I walked by the window of Anthropologie, and squealed. In full disclosure, since the moment I walked in their doors for the first time, I have loved their store staging. So many amazing ideas out of everyday things. (I wonder if someone has catalogued them all on the web somewhere? Wouldn’t that be exciting!)
Anyway, with fairy houses being rather popular in our house, I especially adored this concept. I chatted up one of the salespeople and discovered that they are constructed out of cardboard boxes—cut, painted and rolled into tree trunks, and then painted again. Simple x-acto cuts create spaces for windows and doors, and snipped and glued balsa wood to craft ladders and frames. Voila! A veritable fairy village.
As I was taking pictures, someone demanded to run back in the store and have her picture taken through the window. (Hint: it was not the salesperson.)
I just spent much of the last 24 hours tackling a 1,000 piece jigsaw puzzle, my first puzzle above 30 pieces in about a decade. I’m not sure why, but I needed an analog diversion for a bit. And then it became a bit of an obsession, staying up far too late trying to piece together those toothy plants that sat right below the yellow submarine.
At around 2:30pm today, I snapped the last piece into place.
