back to the garden: window boxes

It is such a joy to plant my window boxes each spring.  A new combination of colors and textures, petals and leaves every year.  This year yellow violas, muscari and lilac-colored osteomums hopped very willingly into my boxes.  Come summer when the violas are growing leggy from the heat and the muscari have gone their merry way, I’ll leave the mums (which should be happy as little clams all summer long) and add some fresh new faces.  For now, I’m appreciating the springy-ness of everything and loving the heck out of these beautiful and bursting little boxes.

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baby sweaters past

The babies are on the way!  This summer will yield two little nieces or nephews as well as a new little boy babe of our own.  As my belly grows rounder by the day, my knitting fingers are itchy to get to work.  This little work-in-progress may or may not produce a masterpiece (I’ve already had to rip it twice and now it’s politely on hold while I work another sweater in the meantime).

I was recently browsing through some images of baby sweaters past and was tickled all over again by the sweetness of those sweaters and the babes they went to- some who are almost five now!  I do so love the felt applique, don’t I?  I’m excited to see what little felt delights await my current projects…

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{this moment}

…taking inspiration from SouleMama in celebrating {this moment}.    There are no words to this Friday ritual.  Just a sweet and simple moment from the week to remember, cherish and absorb just a little bit longer.

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radish pâté

My six-year-old has this word delishum.  It’s his little hybrid of delicious and yum that he reserves as the highest form of food praise.  He’d hardly touch radish pâté with a ten foot pole let alone use the holiest of words to describe it,  but this springy mix of fresh chives, carrots and radishes is where it’s at for me right now.My little garden is bursting forth with tender shoots of chives, so naturally they’ve been making their way into our springtime meals.  A simple dice of carrots and radishes mixed up with some chopped chives, a touch of mayo, Dijon mustard and salt and pepper and you’ve got an easy little pâté to put on anything your heart desires.  Or to eat right out of the bowl which I am so fond of doing.Radish pâté makes a great little filling for sandwiches and a tasty addition to quesadillas.  It’s spunky and fresh and way easier than pie.  It’s totally delishum.

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giraffe stuffies

I do so love Lotta Jansdotter’s Simple Sewing for Baby.  It’s so nice to sit down for an easy little sewing project (one that I am unlikely to botch) and be rewarded so quickly with cuteness.  These little giraffe rattles were the perfect project for me and a little helper (okay fine, Eli stuffed for about five minutes before getting bored with it.  But those five minutes were still really nice).

These are going to make the sweetest little baby gifts.  Our two-year-old  friend Sam already came and left exuberantly with one.  And there are plenty more babes on the way from both family and friends (and my own round belly, of course).  I’m ready with the rattles.  Bring on the babies!

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making new crayons (from the old broken bits)

It was Eli’s idea.  I confess that I had just thrown a bunch of old crayons and broken crayon bits into the trash when he said, “Mama, don’t throw these away!  We can make new crayons out of them!”  I really wasn’t trying to be wasteful.  It’s just that you can reach of saturation point of broken yellow crayon nibs.  And when those broken nibs are so plentiful that they prevent you from actually closing the lid to the crayons’ home, that’s when a Mama might be led to take such drastic measures.

But Eli saved the day (and a whole lot of crayon bits) with his suggestion and thus began a really happy  activity of recycling those old broken crayons into fabulous new colors.After the old crayons were peeled and chopped, we had the super fun job of mixing the little bits into their new color palettes. We lined a mini muffin pan with cupcake liners (lucky that I happened to have some on hand as I really didn’t want to devote an entire muffin tray to crayon making forever).   We baked them in the oven (175 degrees or so) until they were nice and melty (maybe about 25 minutes) and then took them out to cool.Then we naturally got right to work testing them out.  After doing a full color test of all our new crayons, Eli named every one with sweet little names like “green river” and “sunrise” and “cloudless sky.”

If you have a jar full of broken crayon bits and might be in need of a little cloudless sky yourself, here’s the speedy breakdown of the crayon-recycling process.

You need:   A knife, a  muffin pan and some cupcake liners (I recommend doubling up the liners to protect your pan from any wax that might seep through).

Then all you do is:  Peel off any crayon wrappers, chop up those crayons into smallish bits and layer them about an inch thick in the muffin cups.  Bake in the oven at 150-200 degrees until the bits have turned all melty.  Remove from oven and let cool.  Then bust out the paper and get to work!

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