Is There Anybody Out There?

So I am sure a few of you have been wondering where I went, and I am sure for many of you, since I fell off your blog roll, have forgotten about things here entirely. It has been a very busy and tumultuous four months. I know that I usually disappear for the month of December and return in January with my holiday in review postings of the gifts I had made that year. I had hoped to do that again this year, but well life kind of got in the way. It has a way of doing that as we all know too well. However, there seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel, and end to the rush, a pot of gold under the rainbow? Nah, but it was a beautiful one out of the window of our apartment.

I am pretty sure I mentioned somewhere in the blog that we had to move. Our apartment in Oakland that we rented was bought by a new owner, and they wanted to live there. Sine we had no long term lease with the builder, we had to move. It was hectic trying to find a new apartment during the fall holidays. I was spending all my time working on gifts and apartment hunting. I am not sure if any of you have had to find a new place around the holidays, but if you have you know that it is not a pleasant experience. Most people move in the spring, so there were minimal places available to view. The ones that were available were not ones that would fit us very well. Then, a seemingly good thing happened. One building across the street from ours had an opening for February 1st. It was a great loft space, and we jumped at the chance to stay in our neighborhood. We contacted the new landowners and they graciously offered us an extension on our 60 terminate notice. All seemed to be heading in the right direction.

Then things got substantially more interesting. The TSA changed their security procedures, and Dan and I began to feel uncomfortable about flying. We decided to opt out of our plane tickets back to the Midwest and drive home instead of flying. It was an interesting time as the storms along I 80 were rather bad and very snowy. A three day drive turned quickly into a long four day trek. We had fun along the way and listened to a lot of holiday music as the blue Subaru and the two of us glided along the two lane interstates that had become one slow line of trucks and cars driving down the middle of the roadway. I had grand plans of getting the sewing done on my projects in the car as well as filling out our holiday cards. All lofty goals, none of which were completed. Some people had to receive store gifts this year and no cards were sent. It was a bit too nerve racking to sew when the roads were so slick.

The holidays went by quickly, and it was so great to see all my family all together in one place. It was especially nice to see the kids open their handmade gifts. They are finally at a fun age where presents are extremely exciting. After an all too short time at home, we packed up and headed out for the trek home, this time through the southern I 40 route in an attempt to avoid the snow. This winter it seemed impossible to beat it as we were held up for a four day drive again when the snow closed the roads through New Mexico and Arizona. We were never unlucky enough to have to sleep in the car, managing to literally wish on a falling star and get a hotel room late one night when the roads were closed. We wanted to spend some time in Las Vegas, and we did.... Las Vegas New Mexico. No casinos or floor shows, but a pretty nice hotel with a great staff that cut us a deal on the room due to the snow storm stranding us.

Overall, the road trip and holiday was a true Dan and Amy style adventure. The only setback, we had lost our apartment that we were going to rent. The person we were renting from was going to be transferred to work in Australia, but that fell through, and so did our apartment for the next year. We scrambled quickly to get our second choice place, and boy am I glad it worked out this way. We had to move from the old neighborhood, but the new one is much better for us in a lot of ways. There are grocery stores and fabric stores in walking distance from the house. There is a shuttle system to take us from our door to the BART, so I can do things on my own later into the evening without needing a ride from the station to our house anymore. There are lots of restaurants also with in walking distance and several community gardens that I am now on a waiting list for entry.

From there it has been the usual packing and moving... oh and unpacking that is still going on, yes since February. Having a completely different style of place from the last two has made this move more trying in the packing and unpacking department. We are now in a tri-level condo instead of a single floor and mostly open floor plan. This means lots of going up and down stairs, and unpacking is rather tiring. There were also setbacks with the movers being unable to bring our bed upstairs and some other minor issues with the washer and tub that our simply wonderful landlord worked out immediately. I have to say I really like him! Some of the hardest things of moving were leaving behind old routines to make new ones, downsizing my sewing space into a more cozy one, and losing the balcony for gardening. We kept the Meyer lemon tree, and I am working on killing the scale it has gotten infected with now that I am indoors with it all day. I did not give up gardening entirely. I have the Aerogarden started again, this time giving the thyme a month or now almost two head start before I plant anything else. The African violet seems happy enough since it is blooming again, and the chives are as nuts as usual. The rosemary is a bit harder to win over. I fed it today in the hopes of winning it over to the new place.

I have also planted some new containers indoors. Peas will now be on the old trellis system that held the jasmine. I have a special set of container cucumbers that I am trying out as well as some container strawberries that I am trying to grow from seed. Crazy? You bet! I also threw out the herbs I have had since we got here and am starting that all new as well. I added borage and tarragon to my usual sage, oregano, and marjoram. As soon as I get some more dirt and catch pans, I will also plant the parsley and cilantro pots. I am trying to grow some new container hybrids of bibb lettuce as well. We will see how that goes partnered with a container of spinach. I am not expecting much as the lighting conditions are not the best, but hey it is about the fun on experimentation right now. Figuring out how far I can push things so that when I have perfect conditions I feel extremely accomplished.

Bread baking experiments are still going on as well as several other cooking obsessions. I will share more on those items soon. For now there is a very late birthday present that needs to be made. Prepping for a dance show made that happen again, and I am sure there is a little girl that would really like her gift. More on that soon as well. It feels good to get back to writing, and I hope it feels just as good for you to catch up with me through your reading. Thanks for coming back, and I am glad to have you as readers. More homemaking hi-jinks and more frequent writing for consistent editions of the blog. I promise...

Scary Busy!

I am not dead, just scary busy right now. It seems like for the first time ever, I was ahead of the holiday game. I had all my plans for my holiday crafting picked out, and most of the people on my list had presents already assigned. I even was starting to cut out all the pieces and getting ahead at sewing on some of the projects. Then the plans had to fly out the window. Our current place that we live in was under a month to month lease as the owner did not want to enter into another year long lease term. This resulted in us now having to move as they have sold the place. It is really sad for me as I really enjoy living here. I love the unit we are in and have made some good acquaintances here as well. It seems like I was finally in the groove of exercise, and a daily routine as well as feeling fully comfortable in the neighborhood. Since this time of year is not the best to move, one option may have to be leaving the neighborhood. We hope to not have to, but we may. I will let you know as soon as I do when we have a new home for Fabulous Pants. Till then, most of my time is spent working on finding new digs for us as well as making moving plans. I hope to keep on schedule with the holiday crafting!

Until then, I have become rather obsessed with this new type of bread from the Artisan Breads Every Day by Peter Reinhart. The bread here is the second day, baking day, for the many seed bread in this book. I have been steadily loosing the weight I have been striving to shed, and I recently read some studies that people eating more whole grains and seeds are better able to lose and maintain a healthy weight. I decided to try to put aside the most wonderful white bread from this book and move onto this bread. I was worried at first that it would be too many seeds as it is many seed bread. The seeds were just the right amount and super tasty.

The seeds give the bread great texture. The best addition to this was the awesome nuttiness of the added pumpkin seeds. I love how these tasted in the bread, but the seeds are really expensive! I should really look for them in a Mexican grocery store to see if they are any cheaper. This year I saved my seeds from the pumpkin carving, and I hope to shell them once things calm down to use in the bread.

One of the best and yet worst things I found out about this bread is the awesomeness of it toasted with a smear of Nutella! It is so great! I have tried to resist the urge as Nutella has quite a few more calories than I would like to spend in the morning. It is also exceptional with blood orange marmalade. I have actually decided to stop making standard orange marmalade in favor of the blood orange variety. Thanks so much to my friend for introducing me to that tasty treat.

Well there is so much I need to get done in preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday. There is jogging to be done, vegetable stock to be made, chestnuts to be roasted, house to be cleaned, velvet wreaths to be finished (finally!), and a birthday present for my niece to be made in time for sending out. Look for more updates soon. I promise to not take a month off again if I can help it. Things just were so crazy and there was so little time. I promise to carve out more to show off what I am up to. Tune in soon for some more canning notes and a killer desert recipe in the next few days.

I'm Not Dead, and I'm Not Resting...

Needless to say, the moth of July is always a busy one for me. This year was more busy than usual. The month started off with some frantic crafting. One of my nephew's has a birthday on the 4th of July. You would think that this would be easy to remember, and it is, but somehow the day always creeps up on me. I think I have all the time in the world to work on stuff for him, and then bam, it is time to send out the gift. His was a bit late this year, but I think the utter coolness of the present more than made up for it. I made him a set of felt toy trucks. Each has moving parts, and they are just so cool I almost wanted to save them for myself.



The back roller on the steam roller moves around an axle. The dump truck bed on that truck lifts up to dump the large rock out of the bed. Apparently the rock must be very heavy as it looks like the back axle on the dump truck is now "bent" under the weight.



The cement mixer on the cement truck rolls around just like the real truck would. The front of the bulldozer moves up and down. It is also a fun thing to use with the rock in the back of the dump truck. I suppose you could bulldoze the rock into the bed of the truck.



The excavator was my personal favorite in the bunch. The basket rotates on two different points, so it is the most mobile of the toys. While the rock would not fit in the basket, I am sure that Craig will find something to scoop up with this toy. I am will to bet some Lego people will be taking that basket for a ride up in the air high above the construction site they are working on.


For our wedding anniversary the next weekend, Dan and I went camping around Yosemite. It was a pretty spot and very relaxing. Aside from our neighbors running a generator with really bright lights for a large portion of each night, it was a beautiful place to set up camp. The lights luckily did not drown out the stars. We sat around our campfire and made dinner, smores, and fruit pies with our pie iron. It was a great junk food filled first day. We even kept the rain fly off the tent so that we could fall asleep looking at the stars. It was really pretty and just as nice as camping out by the fire minus the mosquitoes.



The next morning, we pulled out our "new" camp stove. I had gotten it off of freecycle, and while we were told it needed a new hose, what it really needed was a lot more. Something had gotten disconnected in the main part of the stove, so only one of the burners was operational. We warmed up the cast iron for a while to get it hot, so Dan could work on the unlit burner and the tea pot could warm on the functional one. Once we had hot tea, we moved the cast iron back onto the stove and began cooking the egg portion of the omelet. Just as the eggs went into the now newly warmed pan, we realized that there was a serious problem with the stove. The flame under the pan kept getting big, then small, then big, then small even though we were not touching the knobs. I looked down at the regulator cap to see it totally frozen over. Then, as if planned, the propane started shooting out of the regulator and out of the canister. Dan quickly cut the flame, and then we disconnected the canister. Thinking all was lost we started to make contingency plans for breakfast. Dan put the lid on the pan, and we hoped for the best. We were in luck as the remaining heat from the cast iron carried the eggs through to fully cooked awesomeness!



After the breakfast excitement, we were off for our day hike. I knew that Yosemite in the summer is full of people, but I had no idea it would be that crowded. It took us a long while to wind our way down to the valley floor in the bumper to bumper traffic. We then went to hike our "less popular" trail to Nevada Falls. It was a beautiful hike, but still had many people on the trail. Moments alone were just not possible. The falls were beautiful though, and it was nice to get some pictures of the two of us hiking where we are both in the frame. (This is not one of them though) The hike lead us along the water most of the way, and just when I was so hot I wanted to stop, we came to the misty part of the hike along the main falls. It was quite refreshing. We picnicked along side of the busy trail and people watched. Once we were off the trail, we went to Camp Curry to swab off a bit before our Anniversary dinner at The Ahwahnee. On the way there, I got to see a bear along the road. My trip was now complete as I was bear paranoid the whole time we camped. This did not stop me from taking any food, wrappers, and water bottles out of the car an into the restaurant with us.

The next weeks were filled with preparing for my trip out to Idaho for Chaos Wars. Last year I determined that I would not make any new costumes. This year, I took it as a challenge to make all sorts of new costumes. I took many old costumes that I made incorrectly the first time apart and resewed them into a corrected garment. I also made many new things from scratch. In the year of the stash bust, I did some major damage getting ready for the event. I made myself four new cholis out of fabric that I had longed to make them out of for some time. I also made myself a new feast outfit. In keeping with my want to make costumes I can use in multiple venues, I made a Ghawazee coat that cut under the bust line. I wore it with my newly remade coin bra and two skirts I had made for the event. I also made a new tassel belt to finish off the outfit. My hard work paid off as I won best feast garb this year. It was a total thrill, and there were lots of great costumes I competed against. Niobe being chief among them, and I was flattered to beat her. She is by far one of the best costumers in Belegarth. The event was fun filled and packed with things to do and friends old and new to hang out with. It all went way too fast.



I returned home on the first of August to a house that looked like it had been neglected for a month.... because it had. It took a week to transition from event life back to real life, but the making of a cake helped ease me back. I attempted sponge cake for the first time with our mini tube pan. A half recipe worked out perfectly. I have since been cleaning and taking stock of costume repairs that need to be made. I am also starting my canning this week, and it has been going smashingly. I will update you on all that tomorrow.

The last update is on the balcony garden. It was the hardest hit item on my neglected list from July. The aphids really got the upper hand on things while I was busy and took out several of the bean plants. They then moved onto my tomatoes and all other plants on the porch. My lettuces that would be ready on my return from Idaho were mush. The beets were being attacked. The tomatoes had yellowed and been attacked over half of their leaves. The green peppers were doing no better. They had moved to every plant they could, including eating the heads off of several of my now blooming violets. The aphids had also called in their friends the spider mites to the Meyer lemon, and scale to the jasmine plant. Needless to say I was unhappy. I finally gave in and got myself a commercial insecticide and went to town yesterday. I sprayed everything in sight. I also did the painful cleanup of the plants. I pulled off dead and yellowing leaves. The plants look much greener, but also much leaner. I hope the extra fertilizer, water, and pruning helps them bounce back. I noticed that the tomatoes have sent up some new flowers, so here is to hoping for something productive from things. Between the bugs and the unusual cold we are having here (sorry to the rest of the States that appear to be sweltering), I am not sure I will get one tomato. Keep your fingers crossed for some sort of yield for all the work.

Well I guess this has been a pretty good catch up of the last month. I will be back tomorrow with a canning update as it is a canning week around here. Jam session is now in progress!

Finally Back to Normal

It has been a really busy and fun filled month of December. Now that I have reached the Epiphany though, the tree has been put away, and new places have been found for the last of the gifts that arrived today. I made quite a few gifts this year and will be showing them off in the next postings on the blog. Some things were different this year, like my swag over the hutches went from colored lights to white since I broke the colored strands when unpacking them.



I also went on a trip for Christmas with Dan's family. We went to Colonial Williamsburg for the holiday. It was quite delightful and full of fun. The historic houses were all decorated, and we went to see many traditional concerts and ate a ton of traditional meals. I of course was so wrapped up in having fun that I did not remember to take many pictures. I did however, snap a picture of one of my favorite houses on the way down Duke of Gloucester Street.



The weather was actually quite pleasant for the majority of the time we were there. The only day we were rained on was Christmas proper, and most of that day was spent inside of buildings and not walking around outside.

Dan and I then came home for two short days, and then we were off to Las Vegas for a week to celebrate the New Year. Here again I did not remember to take pictures as there is just too many other things to keep your attention. I did snap this picture of the conservatory in the Belliago hotel of their Christmas display.



This year is already off to a quick start. I have been invited to dance with a group at the Rakkasah bellydance festival, so I will be spending a lot of time in the studio over the next few days. I also have a custom order I am working on along with some more personal goals for this new year. I have decided to try to work on some of my own projects this year. Along with working on some new plans for both Fabulous Pants and the yet to be revealed second project, I am determined to learn the harp more this year and to also finish a long lingering embroidery project. Needless to say, I am going to be busy. I am hoping to eliminate some of the unnecessary television and internet surfing to try to get things done. Here is to hoping it works!

I am however, glad to be back to the quiet house and settling back into a normalized routine. I am planning the patio garden for next year, and thanks to Annie's book, I am learning quite a bit about container versus ground gardening. I am also ready to tackle cheese making with her in the next few weeks and months. There is so much to learn! I cannot wait. Well I am ready to get down to the sewing machines again. I am going to follow through with my focus on self plans a bit here and finally sew up the machine covers I keep promising myself. Pictures when they are done! Tune in Tomorrow for day one of the Holiday Wrap Up 2009!