Gingerbread houses

Just a short post to say that I finally did it: I made my first solo gingerbread houses.

I've helped make them before, while studying under my gingerbread sensei Amy. When I got married she gave me her recipe, pattern and instructions. Every Advent for seven Advents I've looked at the recipe and thought "Now is not the time." This year, it was time.

This is the one I decorated.

I haven't gotten around to adding "snow" yet.

The kids helped with this one.

Advent update

Sorry for the dead air there on this blog: my posts are most often inspired by pictures I've taken, and for whatever reason I took almost no pictures of note over the past month. I anticipate taking quite a few pictures as Advent wears on and Christmastime loometh, so hopefully my next post will be along fairly soon. In the meantime, here's proof of life:

Our Advent wreath. New this year: a seasonally appropriate tablecloth.

Baklava! I've wanted to make this for 15 years but never got around to it until now. I'd say it was worth the wait, but what I really mean is, why didn't I make this sooner?? Drool.

Last year our front birch was quite drab. It's making up for lost time.

I'm so glad to be living in a place that gets frost in December!

Below is an impromptu photo shoot with St. Nicholas at our church. This is perfectly typical of each of the kids' photographic styles. Eve: hamming it up and trying to direct everyone else. Isaiah: trying to be simultaneously solemn and goofy. Samuel: slightly apprehensive and wondering what's going on.

St. Nick Wants You!

Halloween 2011, subtitled: Oh My Gourds!

Another Halloween successfully in the bag! Now that our kids are getting a bit older, Halloween has taken on an increased significance. There are expectations.

But first, I want to take a moment to acknowledge a milestone. For the first time ever, Eve actually helped with a baking project. I can honestly say that the process of decorating the cookies would have taken twice as long had she not been helping me. She was industrious, focused, and took pride in her work. I was holding my breath waiting for the other shoe to drop, but it didn't. She got a little tired toward the end (of decorating 60+ cookies) and I offered her the opportunity to bow out, but she shook her head and persevered. I actually teared up at one point, I was so proud of her and so grateful this day had come.

We were taking the cookies to her kindergarten costume party, which may have added to her motivation.

On to Halloween proper. Eve wanted to be a lion, citing a picture and set of instructions she'd seen in a National Geographic Kids magazine.


Isaiah wanted to wear the same dinosaur costume he'd worn last year, which mercifully still fit.


Samuel was garbed in the same toddler costume his older siblings wore their first times out: a long black hoodie and a rope belt. We told people he was a Jawa trader, from Star Wars.


Our two pumpkin plants produced a total of eight pumpkins, varying in size and ripeness, but all suitable for carving.




Brian was the one who suggested that we take advantage of his spiffy assortment of shop tools and try out a fancy stencil or two.

Brian's handiwork!

(Of course, when came the time to do mine, did I take advantage of his spiffy tools? No, because I am scared of pretty much any form of technology that is unfamiliar to me. I struggled along with an X-acto blade like the closet Luddite that I am.)

Don't. Blink.
(If you have no idea what this is, look here: link.)
The stencil art came from here: link

End-of-summer photographic roundup

I thought about trying to make several separate, thematically cohesive posts around these pictures, but the effort involved was holding me back from posting the photos. Highly self-defeating. Here, then, are a smorgasbord of pictures from September and October, saluting the last days of warmth and sun.

Sweet peas? In October? Yes, if you get them planted as late as I did. *blush*

Eve wanted to go to the beach. This lakeshore was the best we could do on short notice.

The light shining through the interior of this golden raspberry makes me think of geodes.

A different kind of bouquet from the garden.

I planted this pineapple sage for the scent of its leaves. I had no idea it would produce such glorious blossoms!

Samuel and his little bear.

Eve in her poodle skirt, ready for her school's Sock Hop.

Morning dew on a pansy.

Today's vocabulary word: Irony

Kindergarten has been going well. Very well, actually. Eve is generally excited to get there in the mornings, and then pleasantly ready to go home again in the afternoons. She's learning all kinds of things that it wouldn't have occurred to me to teach her. She comes home talking about Creation and the attributes of God. She has friends, she has a good relationship with her teacher, she eagerly tackles her minimal "homework" on weekends and self-corrects it. Her teachers report that she is doing well and behaving well.

The only blot on this lovely scene is the epic fit that she throws in the car five minutes after I pick her up from school. Usually she picks a fight with Isaiah in some way, and nothing I say or do (either pre-emptively or after the fact) seems to be able to divert it. Screaming, thrashing, kicking the back of my seat, punching her brother, completely out-of-control behavior for a few minutes, followed by a few minutes of sulking, and then... she's fine, as if none of it ever happened. My feeling is that it's a transition issue combined with having to be on good behavior for 8 hours followed by the release of being around "safe" people, but regardless of how excusable it is, it's horrible!

Her worst fit yet was yesterday afternoon, shortly after she received this small award at school:

The irony, it just slays me.

Family time

This is a belated post dedicated to the time we spent with our families-of-origin in August.

Mid-August we packed up and drove to Fort Benton, MT, for a family reunion/belated 80th birthday party for Brian's Mom, Bernadine Dostal.

Grandma Bernadine

Isaiah is trying not to smile

Grandma Bernadine and 10 of her 12 children

This is as nice a picture as we've had of us in years

Samuel playing in the church hall room divider (dang, that is one cute kid if I do say so myself)

Then at the end of August we paid a visit to my parents (and brother) in Oregon:

Look Ma, I'm flying!

Uncle Daniel leading the kids on a wheatfield safari

Samuel putting a brave face on it

A teasel. I've always thought these were fascinating.

Garden of Eden, blackberry-style. If you walked into that little cavern there, the blackberries hung down over your head just begging you to pick them. The smell of warm wheat stubble mixed with the perfume of ripe blackberries is a foretaste of heaven, in my opinion.

I had truly forgotten how good a real wild blackberry tastes

Samuel, having a "most interesting man in the world" moment.

Gardens gone wild

This post is going to be a selection of garden pictures. Don't say I didn't warn you.

It took a while to get going, but I'm pretty happy with the way the front flowerbed turned out.

As for this carrot, Brian put it best: "Hm, little genetic challenge there?"

One of the epic battles: Pumpkins vs Tomatoes!

"The corn is as high as an elephant's eye...."

Close-up of the foliage of my Japanese Maple. Note to Brian: no, it is not diseased. It is supposed to look like that.

Hardy Gladiolus

Delphinium in front of more hardy gladiolus

FREEEDOOOMMMMM! (This picture was taken a few weeks ago -- that pumpkin is the size of a volleyball now.)

Look who's back! Apparently, pansies can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

Eve's first day of school

Today was Eve's first real day of kindergarten.






The whole experience is still too new for either of us to have formed an opinion about it yet. "Further bulletins as events warrant." -Calvin & Hobbes