Confessions of a lazy wannabe homesteader
AFI on Pandora. Practicing my embroidery on some scrap fabric (not that I need a new hobby or anything). Spinning ever so slowly through the fiber on my wheel (just some generic merino/silk blend I ordered ages ago). There is plenty to do around here, but I’m putting it off until tomorrow. One day of relaxing and playing with projects around the house won’t hurt anything.
I loathe this time of year. It’s dark, dreary, and no amount of daylight ever feels like enough.
I picked up some fat quarters the other day. I fell in love with this fabric – the colors, the pattern, the flowers. It seemed like it would be a good remedy for days like this. We need some new cloth napkins, or at least that’s what I told my husband when I came home with these. (Though at this point I think he knows me enough to see through that and know what’s really going on!)
I haven’t decided, yet, if I want to edge them with a contrasting color bias tape (or maybe just a plain plum that matches them?) or if I just want to leave them with a plain hem. What do you think?
Readying? That doesn’t look like a word to me, but whatever.
I picked this little journal up at a local store on clearance last year. It started with an idea from SouleMama’s blog post about having a farm journal in her home to record everything from seed orders to garden plans and such. I thought it was a fantastic idea and a perfect excuse to find a journal (I think I paid $3 for this one?) to write in. As much as I love the internet and blogging, I really enjoy writing in journals.
I placed my big seed order for the garden this morning. Which wasn’t a big seed order after all – just $20 or so. We have a small area, though – not the big farm like I want to own eventually. I’m trying some new veggies this year – our garden has normally been a ‘salsa’ and ‘pickle’ garden, raising tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and onions. This year I’m trying some multi-color corn (for use as decorations and for tortillas, since the description says it can be ground up and used as so) as well as pole green beans and some black beans for soups and stews.
I needed something to keep myself busy this afternoon. I attempted sewing myself some new pajama pants, only to fail miserably. It takes a special kind of stupid to end up making the top waist area into legs, effectively reversing the entire pant. The project was thrown into a wad in the corner of the closet – I couldn’t bear to look at it any more.
Because I’m a glutton for punishment, I went to the kitchen to console myself by baking a cake. With a recipe I’ve never made before. With the hope (and maybe a prayer) that I could make something work today. The big challenge: I really need to make a grocery run. So a lot of recipes were out. Too many of them needed a lot of butter, or heavy cream, or whole milk. I had a stick of butter, about a dozen or so eggs, and cream cheese.
So I made do. I used this recipe for the cake. I had powdered sugar, cream cheese, and oranges in my possession, so I attempted a half-assed citrus cream cheese frosting. 1 package of low fat cream cheese, some orange zest, about a 1/4 of an orange’s juice, and probably way too much powdered sugar (maybe 2.5-3 cups?). Seriously, it tastes a little too much like the powdered sugar and has lost its ‘cream cheese’ goodness. With a mild orange flavoring. Icing the cake was, well, cake. It was smooth/supple and spread nicely, and has that pretty drippyness to it over the edges that I like.
I haven’t cut a slice yet, so I can’t vouch for how the cake itself turned out (though it got a lot of great comments/reviews). But at this point I don’t think I give a damn what it tastes like – I just needed something to turn out today and, at least as far as the pictures show, I think I accomplished that.
We’re having a ‘partly cloudy’ evening, and it made for a very pretty view of the moon on my drive home from shopping today. I really dislike how dark it gets so early, but Mother Nature does make up for it with some spectacular views sometimes. Laying on the grass in the middle of the summer to look at stars is usually pretty disappointing for me – it always seems like the best views are when I least want to be outdoors – in the middle of winter in the bitter cold.
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