Sneak Peek

Just a few pictures to show what I've spent a lot of my time on recently.

Before:

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

There's no mulch yet, but at least the weeds are (mostly) pulled, saplings and prickly shrubs dug out and some new flowers planted.

City Kids

Sometimes I bemoan our small back yard. Other times, it's perfectly fine. We have some nice parks with in easy walking distance for when we need to get outside and the kids need to run and climb and be surrounded by trees and grass. But other times our little back yard is just fine. We have a small garden, wash lines for air drying laundry and flower pots for herbs and annuals.

So what do city kids do in a little city yard? Here's what my city kids did today:

Rock Smashing: 

Sandbox Playing 

(yes, we need new sand)

Dirt Digging

And "Rainbow Making"

And just so I can remember what our back yard looks like in its full summer glory...some pictures from 2012 and 2013 (looks like I didn't take any last year)

2012

2013

Projects

I've taken a little break from packing. There's only so much I can handle at a time, and thankfully, I have the time to take a breather. I don't actually have too much more to do. Elena's closet and a few things in the guest room are all that remain of items we don't use on a regular basis. I hauled some things to a thrift store this past weekend and returned a chair we'd borrowed. There is something in me that is satisfied when I get rid of stuff. We have a lot more we could get rid of, but some of that decision-making will happen once we actually move.

In the meantime, I've taken on a couple of projects. I bought some braided fabric at a thrift store months ago and finally started lacing it into a rug. It's some kind of synthetic velour-like knit fabric. It laces pretty easily, but still not as nicely as wool. However, the biggest surprise is that I think I'm actually going to like the finished product. I know it sounds silly - why would I buy braided fabric for a rug if I'm not even sure I'll like it? I figured if I didn't like it, I could always donate the rug back to the thrift store and let someone buy it who would like it. But how could I let perfectly good braids sit unlaced when I knew I could do it?!

The other project is sewing a swim suit cover up for a friend. I'll end up with a similar one since I want to practice it at least once before making the final product. You can see what it looks like at the following link.

http://www.merricksart.com/2015/02/diy-friday-pom-pom-trim-beach-coverup.html?m=1

Hope you're finding some hobbies to fill your evenings this winter (you know, something to distract you from the piles of laundry and dust bunnies under the couch.).

Moving: Somewhere, Someday.

We're moving. We don't know where yet, but we've started the house search since we're staying local. We've been renting for the past five plus years, and we're ready to own our own home again. We owned one (and rehabbed it!) during medical school, but since we didn't know what we'd want to do after residency, and the housing market still wasn't that great when Dan started residency, we decided to rent.

Now we know we'll be moving at some point within the next number of months, probably after the baby arrives. So I've started packing up what I can. I decided to start with the basement and work my way up to the 2nd floor. I had to organize our storage space to make room for more boxes, and I've been purging whatever items we don't need or want. (This is actually challenging for both of us. We tend to say "well, I might be able to use this sometime..." when we probably won't if we haven't used it much or at all during our time here.) I've gradually been taking the boxes to our upstairs storage space, so things don't look to cluttered.

I love to purge. I love to organize and clean things out. Since we haven't bought a house yet, and I feel the need to be nesting in some way, it feels very good to pack up what I can, knowing I'll be glad to have less to pack when I'm hugely pregnant or have a newborn.

I emptied our china cabinet and we plan to get rid of that piece of furniture. The china is all boxed up and ready for the next place. Anyone want the china cabinet? It's yours if you come and haul it away. We got it for free during med school, and it's an old piece that needs a face lift. Neither of us really want to put the effort into that, so we're hoping there is some one out there who would like to.

The Rumors are True

Might as well post a picture of our biggest news this year.

Wintry Tidbits

I've been baking a lot lately. Bread, mostly, but also some cookies, scones and sticky buns here and there. Something about winter (especially snowy days) makes me want to bake bread. When I was in high school, I remember snow days where I made bread. I also have cozy memories of my mom baking bread when I was a kid, so I suppose that's why I have a hankering for it now. Fresh, warm bread from the oven is wonderful.

I don't use a bread machine; I just do it the old-fashioned way. I mix the ingredients by hand (sometimes I use a mixer early on, but usually I just use a wooden spoon) and knead the dough by hand. Sometimes I use a thermometer to make sure the liquid is warm but not too hot, other times I just test it on my wrist. It's perhaps more time-consuming than if I had a bread machine, but I enjoy the process. I'm not making bread daily so it hasn't become tedious.

When Dan was in Swaziland years ago, another ex-pat used some great bread recipes from a cookbook written by Bernard Clayton. After moving to Delaware, and I was home full-time, I requested some new cookbooks for Christmas. Dan made sure to get me this one.

It's full of all kinds of bread recipes from all over the world, and I've been having fun making different ones. Being the lazy blogger that I am (and one without a smart phone), I don't have any pictures of the bread to wow you with. But if you come to my house, or if you baby-sit my kids, you might just get to have some of it.

I've found that my domestic interests go in spurts. For now, any creative juices are being used in the kitchen. For the most part, I haven't spent much time at my sewing machine or with crochet hooks or knitting needles.  My sewing machine is not running the best these days (I think it's on its way out), but more than anything, I just don't have the drive to sew things. I do have two items to finish making for the kids, but I have a feeling it's going to be quite a while until they're done. I recently put away most of the fabric I'd purchased this fall, because seeing all those unused bolts of fabric was beginning to stress me out.  When my body is growing a life, I feel less of a need for a creative outlet in general.

Dirty Aprons

Dan's Grandma Hess had 11 children. At her funeral service some one who used to work on the family farm spoke about his experience working for Jacob and Mary. He mentioned that he could always tell when another family member was on the way, because Mary's apron front began to get dirtier. For some reason, that is the only tidbit I remember from the funeral service.

Can you guess whose apron is getting dirtier in the front these days?