A Month of Love and Luck
February turned out to be quite the month. While the grays and browns all around attempted to steal our inspiration, the blogging world pull through, as usual. Giveaways, swaps, tutorials, guides, and links rescued me from going seriously house crazy. I even had a little luck this month, too. Until now, my only brush with [...]
Slop
A mid-winter storm featuring 5 days of rain is leaving us with a whole lotta slop to wade through. Luckily, this weather was not nearly as hard on the humans as it was for the snowman in our backyard.Happy Friday!
Block Printing Tutorial, Part II
The exciting part of block print making is…the printing! You’ve painstakingly cut away your design and now you’re ready to see what your design actually looks like. Start by covering your work surface with newspapers or plastic, for easy clean up. Put a little dollop of ink on a glass palate (a glass baking/casserole/pie dish [...]
Block Printing Tutorial: Part I
I decided to put together a block printing how-to, after getting lots of comments and emails from people expressing interest. It’s a cinch to get into, as it requires only a bit of equipment to begin with. Block printing is a fascinating technique that presents new artistic opportunities to explore. Getting to the final product [...]
This Week
School vacations are perfectly timed. Just as the daily process starts to get weary, a chance to change up the routine saves the day. And, though we did we did not escape to the mountains, or go anywhere for longer than a day, we took the opportunity to flip the days on end. There were [...]
Use It or Lose It: Anything Quesadilla
The second recipe in my Use It Or Lose It series is the Anything Quesadilla. It’s filled with whatever produce you have, or need to use up before it goes bad. I fished through my fridge and found spinach who’s days are numbered, the end of a red cabbage, some wilting green onions, and a [...]
One Small…Bag
I’m a little late with posting our February project for One Small Change, so here it is: Last month, our “change” was to waste less food. This month, we have challenged ourselves to fill only one “tall kitchen” size trash bag each week. Two bags every week for a family of four seems like too [...]
The Biga, The Better
I am from Boston, but I don’t mean “biggah,” I’m talking about biga, a bread starter. Cousin to the sourdough starter, the biga is the key ingredient used in Italian-style country breads like ciabatta and pagnotta. It adds flavor and gives a crisp crust and moist chewy inside that, until now, I had only enjoyed [...]
Mid-Winter Bits
Each February, just as the winter doldrums start to settle in, the kind folks at the seed companies throw us a bone and send out the seed catalogs. Those coveted booklets land in our mailbox reassuring us that spring is on its way. We pour over them, making unrealistic lists of what we’ll grow—giant watermelons, [...]
Notes from the Bench
chaos [key-os]–noun1. a state of utter confusion or disorder; a total lack of organization or order.2. any confused, disorderly mass: a chaos of meaningless phrases.(definition from dictionary.com)…and that pretty much sums up the news from my bench. I have been fabricating like mad the past few weeks, preparing for the Cabin Fever Indie Gift Show. [...]
