Everyday Life for Four Seasons

Got my purse, got my knitting bag... as long as I've got those two with me, I'm ready for anything! Today they sit ready for action, but we're not going anywhere until this ice storm passes.
Scott, who lives a few houses down the street, cleared our driveway today and he did such a great job. You are the best, Scott!

Gossipers are inhabiting our space:

We (me and my two daughters) hung out today. By that, I mean that we were up early, did the dishes, several loads of laundry, planned menus for a week, picked through coupons, went grocery shopping, and then ate an early lunch. Then we hung out some more. All afternoon. It was fabulous.





Here is the "scarflette" that I knitted over the weekend. It's called a neck warmer. I modeled it on these neck-warmers: this, and this, but of course, mine doesn't come close. It's not that I can't do it, it's that I don't want to follow anyone else's pattern. I like to do my own stuff :)



You can wear it with the buttons showing or without:



I wanted a scarf that would look like a scarf but wouldn't dangle and fall down when I bent over to: a) unbuckle a car seat; b) wipe someone's nose; or c) put shoes on a young child's feet. Any of you ever feel that your scarf gets in your way when you do those things?

I am lukewarm about this scarf. It looks OK but I can *feel* the flaws. You know what I mean? I can just hear Julia, the woman who taught me how to knit 10 years ago, sighing over this project for several reasons. The big reason is that I didn't use wool, and that is a mistake that I recognized within minutes of putting it on. It's all stretched out. I used the $1 skein that I found at Ocean State Job Lot. It's forgiving because you can't see any mistake or slack in your tension, but hard to knit with and it doesn't bounce back like good 'ole wool.



I used some of the fabulous buttons that Uncle Alan sent last fall and I have to say, they might be the prettiest part of the neck-warmer!

I cast on about 15 stitches and knit a bit, then decreased to about 10 (too much decrease), then increased after about 6 inches to 13 stitches or so. I made it all up. I just knitted, straight knitting, nothing fancy.





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'H' has been in her crib for almost a month now. We've all come to like it. She's comfortable there and sleeps well. I've overcome my loneliness without her in our bed and I'm sleeping better, too. Grace, our cat, has reclaimed her special sleeping spot. She is back to nestling in my shoulder all night.

Today was a typical Saturday for us - swimming lessons for both girls in the morning, followed by a birthday party for a special 3-year old at noon, and we rounded out the day with some cleaning and house projects and good ole family time. 'A' did a great job in the pool this morning - she swam (with the bubble attached) all by herself! Quite an accomplishment, considering a few months ago she didn't even want to get into the pool.



It snowed again today and as usual, it is just beautiful outside. I know that some people get sick of looking at snow, but it just hasn't hit me yet. Snow is one of Mother Nature's miracles. Just don't ask me to go out and play in it every day - then you will hear another story!



This matryoshka (and the one behind her) was brought home to 'A' by Grandma Shelly and Grandpa Neal last year after they visited Russia. If any of you are looking for the perfect gift for a 2 or 3 year old, the matryoshka is it. She loves to nest them, play with them, line them up smallest to largest...
Check out these wonderful matryoshka dolls that Ella made. You can see some lovely photos of them on her blog.

This is what you would see if you were to snowshoe up the hill through the woods in the back of our house...



Edited to add...
No, you won't be seeing any photos of the travel neck pillow I made yesterday. I made and stuffed the form, and was on my way to pick out some groovy-masculine fabric and zipper to make a cover for it, when I realized that it was pretty bulky. I suspected that Jeff wasn't going to want to lug it around with him, so I called to double-check, and sure enough, the project was put on hold indefinitely. I could make it for myself, but I don't see where I would use it, considering I have severe motion sickness and I don't rest or close my eyes anyplace except my own bed.

Instead, I'll give you this neat bag to check out:


I call it my "Priceless Grocery Bag." I made it out of old plastic grocery bags using the Etsy tutorial I found a few weeks ago. It's priceless because on one hand, it's "free" when I buy groceries, but on the other hand, if you consider the environmental cost of making, shipping and disposing of the bags, it's really not free at all. But, when you take twelve of them and make them into a sturdy, reusable totebag, they become Priceless.

I forgot to give you the recipe for the sugar cookies we made yesterday - scroll down to see it, along with some notes I made. Finding recipes for favorites such as frosted sugar cookies has been tough... tough, but not impossible! Although we eat meat, we use a lot of vegan recipes because they don't have any dairy or eggs in them.

These cookies are fabulous. I didn't make the recipe up. I found it on this blog. I can't tell you how many people have told me that they just love them -- and these people don't have any dietary restrictions! When I tell Jeff that they love them, he says, "Of course they do, they're frosted. Who doesn't love frosting?" But it's more than that... they are really, really good. And here's something for all of you bakers that is good to know: the dough doesn't get tough when you roll and re-roll. That is a bonus!

A few notes about the recipe:
1. You can debate whether or not these are vegan. There was a series of comments on the blog posting where I found them about whether or not the sugar was vegan. Did you know that some white sugar is processed with something called bone char, which is a fancy phrase for cow bones? It's used in the whitening process. I mentioned it to my father-in-law when we were in Florida a few weeks ago and, in true Neal form, he got to the bottom of the mystery in no time. Some sugar refineries use bone char, some do not. There is really no way to tell by looking at the package. If you are vegan, this would mean that you wouldn't trust white sugar. Our next question was whether or not this is kosher. It seems that it is kosher.

That should clear up any questions you had about white sugar and vegan and kosher dishes.

2. The recipe calls for margarine. This is a big stress point for me. BIG! As a mother of a child with an allergy to dairy products, I have found that there is great confusion about margarine. Most margarines have dairy (whey) in them. We buy Smart Balance because it *doesn't*. Mostly. The small 8 oz. tubs don't have dairy, but the big 16 oz. tub with the exact same label does have dairy in it. ??? It drives me crazy. I want to recommend Smart Balance to people but I am afraid to without giving a really long explanation (like the one I'm giving to you), because you can't count on it.

3. The recipe calls for a few ingredients that you may need to get at your local health food store or in your supermarket -- EnerG egg replacer and Tofutti cream cheese.

4. There is a frosting recipe on the original blog posting. I used it once and wasn't crazy about it. For the Valentine cookies, I got lazy and used a tub of Duncan Hines white frosting. A lot of the Duncan Hines mixes and frostings are dairy- and egg-free.

The best non-dairy, non-egg sugar cookies ever
This makes about 36 cookies.

1 cup margarine
3 3/4 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup white sugar ]
2 teaspoons baking powder
2 whole egg replacements (Ener-G)
1/4 cup tofu cream cheese (Tofutti)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:
1. In a large bowl, cream together the margarine and sugar. Stir in the egg replacements and vanilla. Gradually add the flour, baking powder and tofu cream cheese. You may have to use your hands at this point to finish the mixing. Form the dough into a long loaf and wrap in cellophane. Refrigerate for a couple hours.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease the cookie sheets or use a non-stick foil.
3. On a lightly floured surface (we taped down a sheet of non-stick foil to our countertop instead), roll out the dough to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place about 1 inch apart cookie on sheets.
4. Bake for 12 to 14 minutes in the preheated oven, until bottoms and edges just start to get light brown. Remove from baking sheet and cool on wire racks. Store in an airtight container.

Today was the Valentine's Day party for 'A's' preschool class. We made cookies and homemade valentine cards for all of the kids. She came home with a bag of Valentine cards and it was like Halloween, there was so much loot. Lollipops and glitter are all over the house now. Her teacher was the one who put glitter on her cards and my first thought was that she hates me and this is how she's telling me. But I don't think that's true - I think she just thought it would be a neat idea to fancy-up her cards and didn't think about our floors (and tables and furniture) while she did it.



No, your sharp eyes are not deceiving you.... that is my cutting mat in the background of that photo. I have it out today because I'm making a travel neck pillow for Jeff. He has to take a long cross-country flight and unfortunately, he has a middle seat. He asked me to make him something that will keep him as comfortable as possible. I'll post some photos when I finish it tomorrow.

The icy branches were pretty yesterday, but they are really scary looking today - everything is weighted down and very heavy. Nothing is melting and I'm starting to get worried about all of our trees and shrubs and their ability to stand up to it.

I'm finally taking some time to sit down and add to my blogroll. There are so many wonderful blogs out there and I love to steal a few moments every week to check in on them. Some of them are craft-oriented, and some are cooking sites. I draw so much inspiration from them and also some much-needed momentum to keep pouring my creative energy into my daily life. Check them on the right side of my blog. I hope you will like them too!

A special note to Grandma Shelly - you should check out the adorable knitted animals on Little Cotton Rabbits' blog. The idea of knitting animals has never crossed my mind, but now that I see them, they are really very cute!

Big smiles here - I got my camera back from the Canon factory. I sent it in because the information bar in the viewfinder wasn't working and my warranty was about to expire. They fixed it in a jiffy and it's good as new!

We have been hard at work packing up Valentine treats for grandparents. Spoiler alert, grandmas and grandpas! I'm posting some photos of the packages we are mailing tomorrow. A was super-excited about it, and as you can see from the artwork, she was quite involved in this process. The mobile is made from salt dough. We baked it and painted it. Stringing it up was a pain in the neck - nylon thread tangles very easily!

We also had some photo pads made up - one is for me and the rest are for A's and H's grandparents. They were made by a local company called Saratoga Scribbles. Each page has the same watermarked photo of the girls. They are pretty cute! I was very happy with the result and very happy with the service I received from Tracy of Saratoga Scribbles. She had them made up quickly and packaged them up so nicely and sent them right out to me. Wow, looks like I am actually going to be on-time for a holiday!

We had some wacky weather last night - rain, followed by freezing rain, then finally snow. Everything is covered with ice today and it is really very beautiful. Enjoy these photos from our backyard.

Remember summertime? This shish kabob pit was dug by our friends Kurt and Tracy at their house in the Catskills last summer. It was a great way to cook food for a crowd. Not particularly childproof if you have a lot of kids running around, but it was definitely festive and colorful. They had a "bring your own stuff to skewer" party and we all loaded up the pit.

We watched the Superbowl last night and had a lot to eat and drink. Chris and Sue came over with their boys and we rooted for our teams (they're all from New York, can you guess who they wanted to win?). This morning we're going to a little Spanish lesson for children. Have a great day, and I hope you had a good time watching the football game last night, even if your team didn't win!

My pinecone wreath is almost done. I need a few more pinecones to round out the top part. I scoured the yard before the snow hit and got all I could find. I'm going to have to go poking through my neighbor's yard if I want to finish it this year.

Here are two animals that don't make much noise. What does a giraffe say?

We saw these two in Florida a few weeks ago. I know, I know, these photos aren't from today. My camera is with the good folks at Canon right now for service. It's a digital Rebel XT and the information bar in the viewfinder isn't working right. I'm already going through withdrawl. It was painful today when A and I were making Valentine gifts for our loved ones and I couldn't photograph her in action. I'm told that I'll have it back in a week.

Here's one of Jeff and A discovering a water pump. Actually, it's of the water I discovered coming out of the pump.