Crafts and food

 First off, thank you so much everyone for the support and kind words. It really did help and not only me. I have a close friend with a little one and she was going through a hard time too. I sent her here to read what you all had written and it brought her comfort.  So thank you.

New starts; we have flowers coming up under the birdfeeder. 

Things have improved the last couple of days. I took down the tree and the kids and I drug it out into the woods. There is a depression in the ground here that is always holding standing water and there are always tracks around it. I was thinking it could act as cover for something small using this drink station, a rabbit or birds maybe.

Here they are breaking ice off of the puddle. I found a raccoon mandible and pelvis which of course caused a fight, the 2 year old screaming "NO! is MINE PELVIS!" when his brother wanted to hold it. It's ridiculous the way Mr. A will fight over absolutely everything when he dearly loves his older brother. When I hand Mr. A. anything of high value, like a cookie, he 100% of the time will ask for a second one with the purpose of gifting it to Mr. H. "Bro have cookie too?" But show him a raccoon bone and he goes nuts, apparently 

The tree came down, things got cleaned up and organized.   

Here's a picture because it won't last

So the house is a bit cleaner, the kids have been going to sleep at a reasonable time which lets my husband and I have some time together.  The oldest is back at school. This weekend we had a much needed visit from some dear friends.

There has been some crafting over the last two weeks.

I made a postage stamp letter for baby P's wall, like the ones his brothers have.

I've been looking to buy a storage box for my postcrossing supplies that would allow the cards to stand upright.  The largest postcards are 5x7 and I could not find an inexpensive storage box that would fit them snugly and if I had $30 to blow on frivolous stuff it would not be an ugly plastic organizer.  So today I made this:

It's literally a ramen noodle box I covered with atlas pages. It's perfect.

A very economical way of buying cards is by getting postcard books, little 5x7 books with postcards as the pages. Thriftbooks is a good website for these. The pages are perforated to remove the cards from the binding. This book of illuminated manuscript pages featuring women was $5 for 30 postcards.  I'm not sure who to send the midwifery cards to but all the cards are gorgeous. Postcrossing is so much fun. I'm hoping to find a couple of penpals to write regular letters to as well.

There has been cooking too. Something I've been doing in odd moments is going through this blog and copying all of my recipes into a notebook. There is no organization to the thing at all; turtle soup is next to banana bread. 

I did make banana bread today. The oldest watched Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 this morning, a big part of the movie is the anthropomorphic food. So he wanted to make an octopus out of a banana peel which led into an entire aquatic scene

He did this for over an hour.

This week I made this jerk chicken sandwich from Jamie Oliver's 7 Ways cookbook. I'm really enjoying the format of the book. The ingredients for each recipe are shown in tiny photographs along the side of the directions and having this little visual seems to make the recipe so accessible.  This sandwich was really spicy but so delicious we had it two nights in a row.  It also came together quickly in about 15 minutes including making the coleslaw.  I will say (and I am SO SORRY Mr. Oliver) that sometimes in his bid to make things healthier it really backfires.  The coleslaw here was made with plain yogurt.  It was just so bland. We fixed it the second time around.

A friend shared a recipe for Vietnamese Scallion Oil. What a wonderful tasty sauce. We had it tonight with shrimp and broccoli.  Husband requested it again tomorrow. Tip: keeping ginger in the freezer allows you to grate it like hard cheese and not pulpy mush. I had not frozen my ginger and what a pain. It was worth it though. 

L gave me a wonderful birthday gift that is absolutely perfect. It's a tiny book called Food for Thought and each page shows a postage stamp with a corresponding food quote.

Here are a few favorites:

First, this story is wonderful.

  I thought it would be fun to try this dish until learning that the half mourning name comes from fresh truffles tucked under the breast skin giving the chicken a dark color. So this would probably be a damn expensive roast chicken.

Tomorrow we are going out to buy a dishwasher having been without one since about September. It's an exciting purchase.