Scandinavian mobile aaaaaand Pinterest

I've seen Pinterest emerging and growing...
I tried to hold off, because I feel I've reached my comfort level with thing that displays my innards on the intarweb.   However, when my coworker sent me the Pinterest invite twice, then followed up asking if I had joined, I had to.

I just had to!! 

For the sake of coworkerly love, I HAD TO.

As much as I've pinned a few interesting things for my own home in my "for le chateau de Holz", I've made right with the world by putting up a few things on there. 

Source: Uploaded by user via Blargh on Pinterest

Took two oranges and sliced them. about 1/4" thick.

Placed on the oven racks at 200 degrees. Turned the oven off every so often to keep them from truly cooking.

A few were scrapped... but the ones that worked, I tied fishing line to them, and threaded a leaf (poked a hole in leaf with toothpick).

Took a branch from outside (white pine), and tied them in a way that would make the branch horizontal. (weight/scale kind of thing)

I happened to have a teeny tiny orange from a box of Satsuma mandarins I bought, but if you don't have that I'm sure you could use a Cinnamon stick, or a bird, or anything to be the middle weight. Looks fine without a middle weight, too.

good luck!

December broccoli? That's ridic!

I walked outside to check on the side garden, aka the barren wasteland, and I saw the Atlantis Hybrid Broccoli that was still in the ground.  I had neglected to pull them out, because I knew they could handle cold weather.

However, nothing could have prepared me for...

BROCCOLIIIIIIIIIIIIIII LIVES?!?!?!!?!?!?!??!!

That's just crazy! December 23rd, in Zone 5a!

Anyway, I just had to share that madness... they were just sitting there chillin' (literally) but not frozen.

Still picked some of the small flowers, and sauteed them with oil and garlic.  They were sweeter because of the cold.   This made me contemplate a whole arsenal of cold weather possibilities for next year. Maybe kale, spinach, and more broccoli or brussel sprouts. However, I'm not sure I want so many brassicas. It'd be a caterpillar paradise in the summer.  



The Snow dragon of Snowmageddon

I don't know how I managed to forget to post this!

But there was a crazy blizzard a few weeks ago of biblical proportions!
I believe it was 3 or 4 feet of snow, and basically at 7pm my village gave up on plowing subdivisions, so if you weren't home by then you most likely weren't going to be home.

Well after my husband and I took 2 hours to shovel our very short driveway, the kids pretty much played in the snow all day.

I went out about an hour or two before sunset and told him I'll make him a snow dragon.
Especially since the next day was Chinese new year! Although a friend of mine did point out that it was the year of the rabbit... but NO MATTER! What's a chinese new year without a dragon!! So my husband was like "have fun, see ya".

About an hour into it, I asked him to come out and help color the dragon.
He had to pick his jaw up off the ground because I completely failed to mention that it might be scale 1:1 Hey it wouldn't be awesome unless you could sit on the back!

Forming it's body and spraying with a bottle of water and food coloring

From the back (standing in the street)

His eye was a small ball with a GE Logo on it but it worked perfectly!

One hand up in the air like the rodeo riders! YEEEE HAWWW

I'm the unassuming one in my pajamas

In hindsight, a fishing buddy pointed out that if I had sprayed KOOLAID or JELLO instead of water and food coloring, that this would truly be an edible landscaping project for the winter!!! :) Hrmmmmm Tempting. Very tempting, but it'd be hard to tell if you'd really want to eat that patch of snow or not. And whose to say the yellow snow was really the lemonade flavor and not dog pee!?

But I might definitely keep that in mind. It'd be cool to taste it on the first day.

Cold outside, and it's only November.

Whenever it starts getting cold outside, my feet start dragging to do anything outside.
The frost has been here for about a week now, and a part of me knows I am overdue to work on the front yard. Probably by now, I'm supposed to till over the front yard and add manure, paper, and dead leaves. Must also bag up the sod and put it into black trash bags, so it can "die" by the time summer comes, and it can be composted.
First, I need to snap photos and get measurements of the front yard to give to the landscape designers. From there, I'm guessing there'll be a mockup and I'll have some winter time to mull it over. I also need to observe the shady/sunny parts of the front yard.

Sorry for the rambling. That's my placeholder, and you all can hold me accountable :)

I read in the self-sufficient life by John Seymour that winter is a time for enjoying the stored foods/grains/meats etc from the summer/fall. While I don't have meat and a ton of stuff saved, I do have 5 bags of frozen apples taking up too much room in my freezer. This was the result of having more apples than we can eat from the fall. I imagined that I'd turn it into pie filling, but living the crazy life I have, I didn't have any time to do such a thing. So here I am trying to squeeze chicken leg quarters into my freezer, and taking out the 5 bags of frozen apples in a huff.

Can frozen apples me turned into "Canned apple pie filling"? Only one way to find out :\
I followed the recipe for making Apple pie filling and poured them into the canning jars.
This is where I admit I am not so good at canning. My blueberry preserves was too mushy, my crabapple jelly turned into crabapple sauce, I constantly have some jars that don't seal, and I need to put them in the fridge. However, I did well with peach preserves... :\

So I canned the pre-frozen apple, apple pie filling. And since I was doing this at 12am, I accidentally let it process for 2 hours. To my surprise there were still 2 jars that didn't seal. Ah well. Sometimes you lose some. I made 1 jar into pie, I put one jar into the fridge, and then the other 4 jars were sealed, and put into the pantry. Since I made 1 of the unsealed jars into a pie, I was able to taste and see whether pre-frozen apples were an issue in terms of texture and integrity. It was actually, delicious. Even the girls were going gaga over it :)

If any of you want to learn more about John Seymour, and his book about the self-sufficient life (which is a very "introduction to the urban homestead" kind of book) his website is:

I believe the author has since passed away, and the legacy lives on here through Will Sutherland:
http://www.self-sufficiency.net/

there are courses you can take in:
Making bread
Making sausages
Brewing beer and wine
Making Baskets
Making jams and jellies
Planning your smallholding/garden
Creating a clean seedbed from weeds and grass
Laying paths, blocks and cement
Building composting areas, making compost and use of compost in the garden
Pig and chicken husbandry
Management and improvement of soil
Scything, Haymaking and Grassland management
Tree planting and management for fruit, nuts and firewood
Growing soft fruits, pruning and manuring
Control of weeds and pests
Cutting and storing firewood, including the chainsaw, its use and maintenance
Harvesting and storing food from the garden, drying, picking, and freezing
Hedging
Use of the rotavator for controlling weeds and improving soil structure
Use of the greenhouse and transplanting
Tools for the garden
Knots and ropework