MUD!

I cringed but I let the kids run amok in the muck today.  In the words of my almost 5-year old "MUD, Glorious MUD!!!"

Motivation

....has been seriously lacking for me this winter.  I just cannot seem to get much accomplished, besides putting my feet up to read when I have a spare moment.  But with the impending spring (it really will have to arrive someday), I am starting to feel some motivation return.  I need to harness that to do a MAJOR spring cleaning in my house.  We still have many boxes from our move almost 4 years ago.  What's in those boxes?  Some of them I know, some of them I don't.  But of course I won't allow myself just to take an unopened box to Goodwill; I will have to open it, go through it, save what I want and try to steel myself to get rid of some of the stuff in there that I haven't needed or cared about for 4 years.

So boxes is one major thing to tackle.  Then some closets (which also have a fair number of boxes), and then painting some rooms.  I already managed to repaint our entry way and hallway, a much lighter, brighter shade of beige than the institutional, unwashable, crappy grey that it was.  I need to decide next upon the upstairs bathroom or the master bedroom.  The bathroom I almost have paint and the theme picked out (rain forest frogs and monkeys if I can pull it off), but our bedroom is still up in the air.  I think we need to pick our bedding and then base our paint selection on that.  Trouble is I cannot find bedding that I like.  Or I find some but I am not paying $400 for a bedspread!  Maybe I'll have to find material I like and find someone to sew me a duvet cover, curtains, shams, etc.  I look forward to creating a nice, relaxing haven in our bedroom, and ridding it of the deep forest green walls of which neither of us are fond.

It will be nice to get some of these cleaning and redecorating projects done in the next month or two before the beautiful summer weather is upon us and my motivation will be outside playing with my kids!

 

Sap is flowing!

And we have seven of our taps in the trees as of 1 PM today - yay, that means spring really isn't far off!  We really enjoy having the maple syruping season to look forward to, that somewhat inbetween winter and spring, snow and mud, cold and cool.  We'll get the rest of the taps (I think we only have 25 total) in tomorrow and hope for cold nights and warm days this week to get the sap really going.  Perhaps by this next weekend we'll start up the fire and begin boiling it down.  And not a moment too soon; I think we only have a pint left from last year's syrup and we sure wouldn't want to have to go buy any from a store!



Do we have sap???





Mmmmm...spring tonic!

Here's to a great 2011 season!!!

Domestic Spurt

Tonight I made a wonderful Chicken and Wild Rice soup from scratch, put the chicken carcass on the back burner to brew up some more chicken stock for the freezer, and cooked some Italian sausage to store in the freezer for future pizza or addition to some venison meal.  All while the kids managed to give me the necessary 45 minutes to get most of this done without too many interruptions - I felt like I was on a roll!  Yesterday it was Italian bread in the bread machine (okay, not exactly "handmade" but close) and Pumpkin Chocolate Chip cupcakes with cream cheese frosting.  I love to make things from scratch when I have the time, which is most of the time but not always.  I think these last two days though just about uses up my domestic quota for the week!