Cupcakes, Tillers and Monkey Pants...oh my!

This afternoon I am hanging out in the living room floor with Bryan and Daisy, a cup of hot tea (flavored with my Aunt Brenda's yummy Passionfruit-Guava flavoring) in my hand, looking out the window every 3 seconds to see if Jessica has arrived with my CSA box.  We've made some interesting strides in our handmade endeavors this week.  First of all, Tiller Day has been rescheduled for Wednesday, April 27th.  This is, of course, weather permitting AND provided Bryan and the pager will let me get some sleep Tuesday night.  Bobby has made great strides knocking down the wall in the backyard.  As you can see from the pictures the kids and the dogs are quite enjoying their new, bigger yard.  They are also enjoying a new black lab friend from the yard behind us.  The squirrel population is NOT enjoying the partnership of these three dogs, however.  We've already found 2 dead ones and pried another out of Daisy's mouth...YUCK!  

So my homemade cooking goal this week was to try to make things that I am used to buying.  First let's say that I did draw the line at mayonnaise (the bacterial growth issue freaks me out) and Easter egg dye.  I had beets to use for the pink dye but when it came to yellow I couldn't figure out what in the world I would do with the yellow onions after I had skinned enough of them to get 2 cups of skins.  And blue, well, why would I want to do anything with frozen blueberries besides eat them?  What I did discover is that homemade Caesar dressing is fabulous, even without a coddled (a.k.a. raw) egg and that homemade croutons are totally worth it.  Croutons = bread cut up into squares, sprinkled with olive oil and roasted in the toaster oven for 5 minutes...what could be easier?  So yummy on the lettuce from our garden.  We're also continuing to make bread instead of buy it.  I've always loved to make bread.  I love the way it looks when it is a giant ball of dough rising on top of the stove and I love the smell of it when it is baking.  The bread machine is less delightful, but certainly makes it easy.  Then, yesterday, Ruthie and I made cupcakes for her school.  I started to buy frosting and cake mix but one look at the ingredients made me stop and stick to my homemade goal.  Thanks to The Joy of Cooking, yellow cupcakes with buttercream frosting turned out quite yummy and really, weren't that much more work in the end. 

Sewing has been quite the challenge too.  The monkey pants are from a pattern for "Big Butt Baby Pants" at one of my favorite sewing blogs www.made-by-rae.com.  They turned out cute but there is a definite learning curve there.   Either that or I'm just not that sewing savvy.  First of all, I made a 6-12 month size but my nine month old son is definitely more of a 12-18 monther.  Then I had trouble matching parts up and the edges ended up all wonky.  Fortunately the hems hide a multitude of sins.  Then if you look right at the crotch, the front and back seams are off by about a mile.  I ended up tearing out a lot of seams and redoing them.  Then at one point my sewing machine decided it had had enough and just couldn't go on until I cleaned it.  It was a mess.  Monkey Pants 2, the sequel, is well underway, however, and going much better.  Stay tuned. 

Please ignore Ruthie's just-woke-up-from-nap-pull-up-clad butt in the above photo.  Focus on the cute cloth diaper clad butt just below it! 

Today has been focused on Ruthie's school party.  I had such a blast hiding eggs and sugaring all the kids up with cupcakes!  Our CSA box has finally arrived and we have been blessed with more strawberries.  I think I feel some freezer jam coming on!   I wonder if the hospital would object if I mixed that up in my call room tomorrow :)   Happy Holy Thursday, everybody!