O ~ Outdoors

  Finally, gorgeous weather and beautiful flowers are springing up everywhere outside and I can't help but feel perfectly happy. As much as I love Summer and Fall, I love Spring with an undying passion too.

  This evening I hurried outside to take some pictures, I am no photographer in the least, so while I would be completely prepared to blame everything on poor lighting and shakiness from my near frozen knuckles, I have come clean and simply have to admit, I'm not good at taking pictures.

  Anyways, I went ahead and took pictures despite my lack in skill, and tonight you get to see how it looks right now outdoors in my own yard.

   My brother Eldon matter-of-factly pointed out that I have a brick in the background of this picture, "Who cares, it looks artisan" I told him.

   This is a picture of our chicken-less chicken coop with grapevines that climbed over it.

   Here is a picture of that fateful hamster wheel that gave my sister and I such an adventure. I have to smile every time I see it.

     This is a picture of an old stump that resides underneath our lilac bush. When I was much younger I loved perching on it and pretending to be a princess during early summer when the lilacs were blooming.

  This is a picture of our dear cat who's official name is Pepper, but everyone calls her kitty. She's very pregnant again, though the picture doesn't really do justice to how large her tummy is.  

   Here is another picture of our little chicken coop. I love how mighty and impressively tall the pine trees look. I always feel like a little dwarf beside them.

  And lastly here is a picture of our pretty yellow, flowery bush which I used to pretend belonged to nature fairies who used the petals to make sunshine.

N ~ New Year's Goals

    A while back (as in way back in January) I had posted a list of all the things I wanted to  accomplish this year, and I am so happy I composed that list because it has served to be such a source of motivation for me. I have tried my very best so far and hope to complete them all yet before the end of the year.

   I am making this post because I want to show you all an update on all of my goals. And just in case you haven't seen my list before, fret not, for I am sharing it below.

          New Year's Goals

• learn to temper chocolate  ~ I still have not attempted this, I have read up a lot on it recently, but the thought of actually trying it scares me. Honestly I don't know why, no matter how it turns out, I'll end up with chocolate to eat!

• have a proper high tea party ~ My sister Diane and I actually did this a while back and it was such fun, in fact just looking back on it makes me want to have another one quite soon.

• complete my crochet afghan ~ I had been working on my afghan during scary movies, because obviously I'm genius when it comes to finding excuses for being too busy to watch a scary part. I had to stop crocheting though because I ended up running out of yarn, perhaps this week we have to pick up some more on our shopping trip.

• start my own kitchen notebook (like Rachel Khoo) ~ Yay! I actually did start my own kitchen notebook and I love it. Now if I could only sketch and paint as well as she can....

• blog much more frequently ~ If the A-Z challenge counts as it all, then I'd say I can check this off my list, if not, then I shall simply have to post a lot more frequently.

• have excessive berry-ings ~ Our berry bushes are obviously not anywhere near ready for the picking so to speak, so I can't really let you know how it all went till I'm actually in berry season.

• read 52 books ~ This is probably my favorite goal, so far I have only read fourteen books, I know I have a lot of reading to do, so I shall simply just have to hold my head high and charge into our book cupboards. Not literally though, that would be quite painful.

• finish writing my book ~ One word, Oy! My book is not going so well, my villain is terribly charming, and the good guy is terribly horrid, whatever shall I do?! I'm starting to understand why so many authors just kill off all their characters.

• make a proper pâte à choux ~ I have already accomplished this, I had so much fun with it too. I wanted to make it truly proper, so I beat at the dough with a wooden spoon till it was thick and glossy. I honestly have no idea why pastry chefs don't have huge biceps, my arms felt like they could fall off by the time I was done.

• make a proper pastry cream  ~ This was also accomplished, I had made the pâte à choux into eclairs and filled them with pastry cream, and it was delicious.

• broaden my french baking knowledge in general ~ Cough. I'm not doing so well in this area, but if reading a baking blog that's written strictly in all French counts, then by all means I'll take it. (Let's just ignore the fact I couldn't understand half of what was actually being said.)

• break my bad habits (wouldn't you just love to know what they are) ~ This is actually hilarious now that I look at it, because I have absolutely no idea what the bad habits were that I had wanted to break.  

• have a real picnic ~ I have not had a real picnic yet, but this upcoming week Diane and I are going to have a picnic romp on the cliff beside our waterfall to celebrate her Birthday.

• become fluent in French ~ If any word could accurately describe all the torture I have gone through in studying French, then no one would even need to ask how my studies are going. But since I have no such word you shall just have to understand that right now I'm listening to a French song and if I was asked to interpret it I would tell you these are the lyrics " You left me yesterday, the end of the season, blah blah blah blah, and now all is finished." I'm sure you get the picture.

M ~ Muesli

  My whole family knows I absolutely love all things British, in fact it is not uncommon for me to randomly speak with an English accent throughout the day. My love is so deep that I frequently try new foods that are known for being whole-heartedly English, like bangers and mash for example.

  I think it was a few months ago when I tried my first bowl of Bircher muesli and loved it so dearly that I ate it everyday for lunch for quite some time, and I relished every spoonful. Then a few days after I had discovered my passion for Bircher muesli, I came across a package of some healthy muesli in our local bulk food store. Surely you must be able to guess my excitement. I bought the package of muesli with the utmost confidence and prepared it to be enjoyed the next morning.

  That morning I woke up feeling excited and I hustled downstairs and pounced upon my bowl of muesli. I scooped up a spoonful of the surprisingly gelatinous gruel and moments later went shrieking in the other direction. I don't know if it was just the brand of muesli that I had purchased or what exactly it was, but the only way I can come even remotely close to describing the taste of the muesli is that it was reminiscent of walking out into a soggy cow pasture, picking up a rock, and scraping the underneath of the rock into a bowl, and sitting down to eat it.

  If you happen to know of a terrific muesli that you personally love, please let me know, anything is appreciated as long as it doesn't taste like cow pasture.

L ~ Life on the Farm

  Whenever we had gone to my Grandma's surprise birthday party/reunion, I got to play one of my favorite board games again, Life on the Farm.

  Now we do have the same game at home but I had not played it in a very long time because either I had forgotten how fun it was to play, or perhaps it was just fun playing it with cousins I didn't even know existed.

  Anyways, it was after the whole reunion that my Mum brought to light a very hilarious bit of information about my Grandpa concerning that good old fashioned game. It so seems that my Grandpa very dearly abhorred the expense cards that made you kill a cow, or have one run over or shot, etc. So much in fact that one day he took all of those cards out of the deck and stuck them in his pants pockets before playing the game. Then a few days later my Grandma had washed his pants, oblivious to the hidden nightmares inside, and those cards were destroyed never to plague anyone ever again.
 
 Maybe that is why it much more fun playing Life on the Farm at my grandparent's place.

K ~ Keen (As in the Old-Fashioned Saying for Awesome)

    Now, the word keen is not by any means a word in my daily vocabulary, yet for some reason when it came time for me to go about making a blog post I panicked because I had no ideas jotted down for K. In my great distress I tacked on  the first word I could think of.

  Something I think that is very "keen" is the fact that my landlord dropped in today with a terrific treasure that he had brought for me, you might as well hurry and fetch a cup of tea because I'm ready to launch into a little story.

  For some reason all of my tales (or at least the last one I told) begin when I walk past our windows and note some form of suspicious activity on our premises, this one begins just like that.

  Several months ago our landlord promised me a vintage sewing machine and little chest of drawers that his mother used to own, I was ecstatic of course and couldn't wait till he delivered them. Well it turns out that I did indeed have to wait, and wait I did, for a good long time.

  This afternoon I walked past our window and saw his truck parked in front of our porch. I was curious and went outdoors to investigate, I relished the feel of my bare feet pattering against the wooden slats on our porch in the fresh spring air. I ducked my head a bit as I hurried under the rhododendron bush that curled over the stairs in a lovely little arch that is honestly better suited for hobbits. The cool squish of soft ground met my feet as I flew to the truck in sheer delight upon seeing how in the back of his truck he had tied my little vintage sewing machine and chest of drawers.

  In moments he had helped me carry various things into my house (he had brought a big tin of buttons, a bag of bows, and various other items including numerous good quality spools of thread. I was beaming with delight and thanked him profusely. He said he was happy to have made my day and then he left to work with Eldon up in the fields.

  Diane and I hurried and in about twenty minutes we had completely rearranged our room and now we both have our own desks because my little machine cabinet makes a perfect desk that I love. I must say that topped with one of my Grandma's crocheted doilies, my little desk looks as if it could fit perfectly into an Amish girl's room. I love my room even more now, and can't wait to go write in my diary tonight. Usually I would share a picture with you of whatever I yapped about but it's late tonight and I don't quite feel up to doing that task, perhaps on a later date you will all become acquainted with my desk, but till tomorrow, adieu.

J ~ Jen Turano

  Pretty much everyone I know, absolutely loves to read and I understand it completely because I myself absolutely love to read, it sparks the imagination and serves as such a delightful past time, and is definitely the hobby I indulge in on my schedule.

  I'm sure a few of you know that my Mum is an author, and back when she was just releasing her books, her publishing company let her choose ten free books for every book that she published as an added perk to being part of their publishing house. Along with several other really good books, my Mum landed upon some absolutely terrific books, several of them which happened to be my very favorites, those books are written by Jen Turano and are apparently part of a series which I'm missing a book or two from.

  I absolutely love Jen Turano's writing style, I fell in love with her books from the second Arabella glared at Theodore ( I hadn't read them in order, whoops!) I don't know why but I found it so refreshing that finally a romance book was a comedy, that it was light and relatable (because truly I think we all have several people we'd love to throw onions at and give a good prod with our parasols.)

  I took several pictures of the books I have of hers so you can see what they are, I had issues with the camera so I'm sharing more than one picture so you can better see the one book that had been glaring at me in the light.

I so dearly want the next book which has kind of been working up throughout each of the first three books.

 

I ~ Inside My Craft Bag

I have no idea how, but a lot of my posts lately have mentioned how Diane and I have been spring cleaning our room and today has yet another one of those posts. But do not worry that I shall bore you with trivial jibber-jabber over how to most efficiently spring clean a room, because goodness knows I have yet to learn it myself.

  Every month (which seems to be when we spring clean our room, don't judge us, Diane and I are very messy, creatively...) when Diane and I spring clean our room, the first thing we do after walking into our room with huge grins on our faces, and twirling around, is that we march over to our tidy drawers and pull out all of our craft supplies and sit down to craft.

  These past few days I have devoted my spare time to crafting and what fun it is! I have recently begun dabbling in the art of book binding and book cover making, it has been a bit interesting to say the least, and with my profusion of craft supplies that I always seemed to need nearby, I came to the most wonderful idea ever, I grabbed one of my biggest (but not the least ugliest) traveling bag, and gathered all of my most used craft supplies, and a few minutes later I had created the most delightfully filled bag I have ever owned in my entire life.

  In fact, I love it so well that it now has a dominant residence beside my desk, Sean loves my crafty bag too, and he spent a good few hours today rummaging around in it, pulling out treasures and exclaiming over them, he then busily helped me paint today, his favorite part was mixing different paints on my palette to invent colors before he painted a picture in his idea book.

  With all of this yapping about my craft bag, I decided it would be completely unfair to have made you go through all of that verbige without even getting to see a picture of it. So here it is.