Sucrose’s Big Adventure!

A few weeks ago, a small female sugar glider wandered into my little family’s chaos. Unlike on Imgur, we did not find her out in the rain, or on our doorstep. However, we did find her in great need of food, comfort, a clean environment, and love. We have temporarily adopted this sugar glider, which I have named Sucrose. She is a soft sweet thing!

Being from Australia, Sucrose is naturally accustomed to lots of sun, warm weather, giant spiders and being upside down. This is what I have read, heard, and seen on Imgur. These past couple of days have been very rainy and cloudy, even for Colorado. We are on day 3 or 4 of not much sun and I expect some grumpy drivers when I go out later. Due to this rain and cold, Sucrose has been grumpy, tired and cold. Very cold. Or at least she has been acting that way. We have been taking her out in the late evening and with her safe in her little pouch house, we carry her against our stomachs and snuggle, as it were. We do this often and usually after an hour or so she warms up and is ready for a good meal. We wouldn’t usually try to make a habit of cuddling, just in case we are gone, however given Sucrose lost her mate due to insufficient care, she has no one else to help keep warm and is starting to get lonely.

Anyway, Friday night, was again, rainy, cold, a night made for cuddling. That is what we did. I carried her around and Rob and I rested in the living room. Rob suggested going into the bedroom to relax. It is not what are you are thinking. This is not that kind of blog. We just don’t have a couch. Or a table. We do have two chairs though. Since we don’t have really any comfortable place to sit except for the bed, we went there. Big mistake!

I, exhausted from being a mom, wife, striving sustainable home maker, etc., started to fall asleep. Rob, exhausted from working overtime for the past two months and basically working non-stop for the past four years, started to fall asleep. After him making many promises to get up and me poking lazily, we both fell asleep.

Anyone want to guess what happened next??

Well eventually, about an hour and a half later we woke up. Only to find the sugar glider pouch empty and Sucrose gone! This should be of no surprise to anyone. However, my husband, through all the years of his experience was incredibly surprised.

The hunt began! Thankfully the bedroom door had been closed and thankfully the fan was in front of all the giant open vents.

First we started on the bed, gently prodding pillows and pulling sheets around. Next we went to Aimee’s bed and poked around. What a surprise that would have been for her! Lol.

Then we looked at each and looked at the closet. Haven’t you always thought that closets look like big trees, with lots of fun things to climb on.  I went out to get some grapes and the mealworms.

By the way, these are mealworms. You should keep them in the fridge, sealed, oh please keep them sealed! The warmer they are the more they move and when you pick one up it kind of twirls around until it finds your finger to crawl or latch on. Pleasant, right? I try to avoid picking these up always when I can.

We turned on the light in the closet and found this!!!

Not the grapes, I brought those in myself. See those two little brown lines. Sugar Glider poop. Sucrose had been here recently. We started slowly moving shoes, then the laundry basket, then the sock box. When suddenly!!!! A hat drops off from the top shelf in the closet.

I tell Rob to grab the stool, one of the two chairs, anything! He looks up at the top of the closet skeptically. Really, husband? How many mysteries have you listened to? (the answer is a ton). Don’t you know a clue when it hits you on the head? (The hat practically did).

He grabbed a chair and climbed up to look on the top of the closet. Was Sucrose there? Was the hunt over?

No.

So he started handing me down hats and sheets for inspection. That is when I came across the third clue! One of the sheets had a tiny patch of warmth. She had been there recently. This sheet has known Sucrose’s warmth, I told him. He looked at me like I was crazy. Accordingly.

After the top shelf was clear, it was evident she had elusively escaped, once again. Rob sighed turned to look at the shirts and who was almost face to face looking at him, wondering what in the world he was doing and where the mealworms were. Sucrose of course. Hooray!!!!

After finding her, we took her into the kitchen for lots of grapes and mealworms. Veges could come later.

By the way, it is incredibly difficult to get a clear picture of her. Their mouths move at a super speed rate and it makes their whole face a blur. Also there was no way I was using a flash on those big nocturnal eyes.

Besides, I was afraid, after the night we had, the flash would have an effect similar on Sucrose as it did on Gizmo.

We couldn’t have a ton of gremlin sugar gliders going around. Look at their size!

Unlike Gizmo though, these guys are nocturnal, so you can feed them after midnight.

I am not sure about getting wet though. She does a good job cleaning herself. Oh look at that belly!

That’s the end of that hunt for now. Though today is another rainy, cold day.

I need to make her more pouches that zip.

Happy hunting!

 

From the Heartland to the Heart of the Rift (my new favorite cookbook)!

While in Michigan I met and made friends with many wonderful people. I love Michigan. One of the wonderful families I met is building a school in Kenya, while here and over there. They are all over. Anyway. It is going to be a beautiful school.

Here is their description or their premise and current project.

“Simbolei Community Assistance Association (SCAA) is a charitable 501 (c)(3) organization, originally organized by Richard and Andrea Kaitany, supporting the education and empowerment of young women and their families in Rift Valley Province, Kenya.”

“Our current project is the planning, construction and development of an innovative, non-profit, self-supporting high school for 320 girls in Rift Valley Province, Kenya. Simbolei Girls’ Preparatory Academy will be located near Iten, at the edge of the Great Rift Valley. In addition to a rigorous academic curriculum, our school will provide community literacy programs, a community library, and community development activities to foster leadership and community activism within our student body.”

The above is from the Simbolei Academy facebook page.

When Andrea told me (through Facebook, since I had already moved) they were putting together a cookbook to help fund the school I literally jumped at the chance to get one! So exciting, I have never had Kenyan food, nor do I have the slightest idea what there is to eat in Kenya.

The cookbook was ready to go early this spring. I ordered two copies, one for myself and one for my mother in law.

It is beautiful! The cover is bright and bold with a contrasting back. The inside is full, so full, of recipes I literally did not where to start.

Not only is it brimming with recipes, it is chock filled with full color pictures. That’s right, full color! I have never ever seen a fundraising cookbook with so many pictures and so many descriptions. Usually they are hastily thrown together with only the recipe and the recipe giver name. Maybe a couple black and white pictures. This one though, amazing.

There are elephants! There is lots of coconut milk!

I haven’t even gotten to look at every picture and read every recipe. The recipe book is 101 pages long. Behind the recipes  is a miscellaneous section full of helpful things like substitutions, equivalents, measurements, herbs and my favorite. Recipes for household cleaners. A couple of versions for every kind of cleaner you could ever use in your home from all-purpose to getting rid of odors, to cleaning walls, candles and even telephones.

Along with the cookbook, I also received a business card for each book and a thank you note!

Prettiest business cards I have ever seen.

This is a very exciting point for everyone working for this school. The foundation is dug, the stones are ready and with the help of sponsors, donors and now this cookbook more things are able to happen! The cook book is $18.95 with shipping and is available on their website. Simbolei Academy.org. There are also many other ways to donate and help, they are all listed on the website.

Here is the first recipe we made from the book.

Since none of us have ever had Kenyan food, we thought we would start simple. Also, it was a ‘no-drive’ day. Which means, Aimee and I do not drive anywhere that day. If we need something or have to go somewhere we walk. It saves gas, money, the environment and for our lives it just isn’t necessary to make errands 7 days a week.

Due to the no-drive day plan, we used what we had to make the recipe, which ended up being less Kenyan than the actual recipe intends. It still turned out delicious.

These were the only dry beans we had in the house. They are in the common bean family though and worked just fine.

Anasazi beans are beautiful, I am not sure if they are the same as painted beans.

Just in case you didn’t see how nice they are in the first picture, here is another one.

Here are the rest of the ingredients we used. The only things we had to change around were the butter and rice. We used olive oil instead of butter (we were all out) and we used extra fancy rice instead of basmati.

(Insert cooking the recipe here. Since I don’t want to ruin the surprise for you, I didn’t include the recipe or the steps, just the ingredients. However, it is very easy and very quick).

TA-DA! It turned out wonderful! However, since this was going to be our dinner and not a side dish as I think it is intended, I added twice the amount of rice called for in the recipe.

Delicious and simple. You know who loved it the most? Aimee. She ate two bowels that night and ate more for lunch the next day. We found it is just as good cold as it is hot. What a great thing to take camping or on picnics.

Again to buy a cookbook of your own, or to donate or just find more information please visit;

www.simboleiacademy.org

Question, concerns, etc? You can email; info@simboleiacademy.org

Happy cooking!

CHECK YOUR GAUGE and other hard lessons learned.

Yesterday I learned a hard lesson, a very hard lesson. Learned it so well, in fact, that unless due to circumstances beyond my control, I will never, ever be forgetting it.

I mean, I know that the words CHECK YOUR GAUGE, are important, they are almost always all capitalized. However, I never found them necessary due to the project. Mittens, hats, scarfs, small bunnies, even a most complex scarf with a specific pattern. Never have I had to check my gauge. Then a couple of months ago I started a sweater. I thought it would be a wonderful sweater for spring. I used the same exact factory made yarn the pattern suggested. I used the same exact needles it wanted. So I didn’t think to check my gauge, given it was the exact tools needed.

Fast forward through the knitting holidays and a post knitting holiday break and a move and I am back to knitting the sweater. Making extremely good progress. I am about to finish the whole body of the sweater, a Raglan cardigan by the way, when for curiosities sake I decide to measure it. I lay it flat and measure and squint to read the poorly written picture measurements the pattern has and find that I am almost 3 inches short on width. I measure height and I am a little over 2 inches short. Fantastic. I sent an email to the pattern helpers from the site the pattern was from and they emailed me back telling me to check the gauge. Nothing about my mostly made sweater. After many tears, a crafting break down, thinking how I can live sustainably when I can’t create anything, and a long talk with my husband. I felt better. Only slightly though.

Hours later I did go back to the, now so hated, sweater and grabbed the yarn and the needles and sat down to check my gauge. The gauge is supposed to be  18 sts + 25 rows = 4 inches. Using the recommended yarn and needle I finally accomplished the gauge at 22 1/2 sts + 35 rows.

So my question, that I will be asking them, is why have that gauge when it doesn’t even work for the yarn or needles that are suggested for the project. Why not just change the gauge and alter the math or change the required needles. That is what the correspondent told me yesterday, that she checked the math and if I had done the gauge correctly, it would have worked out.

In the end I took a good hard look at the picture of the sweater, decided I absolutely hated the collar, which I really had never noticed before, and unwound the whole project. Done.

I am going to just knit rugs for a couple of weeks now and then maybe I will try again. After first checking my gauge on probably everything from now on.

Other hard lessons learned recently;

I can’t do 5 billion things a day, I am down to 3 billion and quite disappointed.

The movie I have had overdue from the library for a week only had a 30 second snippet about a moldy orange.

The only good story books on mold are ones I can find only on amazon.

That making things for animals need to take priority or else the dog uses the laundry basket for a bed and the sugar glider has a panic attack. (still need to make the dog a bed).

A sewing machine on a light craft table feels like an earthquake to a set of aquatic turtles. Hard lessons handed round that day.

That Thursday is trash day and the trash has to be out early! (husband read this one in particular)

Geckos are not machine washable. (more on that later though).

Geckos are also not capable of going through the dryer. (cringe).

I’ve been setting up for friends to come over for dinner recently, only to realize we have no table and two chairs in our entire house. (This is a preview of a hard lesson I will be learning soon).

That I really don’t like whole wheat flour, if only for the reason that it makes me less hungry than I need to be.

And the hardest lesson learned of all, is that I can’t have 12+ homemade peanut butter and chocolate chip cookies, with said whole wheat flour and expect to eat well or sleep well for that day. However, given I am eating a cookie right now, I think this lesson still needs some work.

 

Natural Easter Egg Dye 2012

Last year, 2011, we dyed our eggs from scratch. Vinegar, water and either veges or herbs were used (see end of post for pictures)! I loved it! While I took a few pictures I kept records of the dyeing process. Then last May we moved. Everything got packed up, including my records. Jump to this April, 2012. It is almost Easter and we are moving again and I am not very willing to go on a hunt for my records or spend a ton or any time dyeing eggs, especially when my daughter no longer likes to eat eggs in any form. Enter my mom who loves holidays.

By the way, I forgot to mention, my mom crocheted Aimee the cutest Easter basket. The pattern is from Country Woman and is pretty easily done with scrap fabric.

Anyway, on with the story…..

She definitely wants to dye eggs with Aimee because this is basically their first Easter together. Enter me, again, who is against all artificial Easter Egg dyes. Enter Build-A-Bear who was handing out Easter egg dye kits, for free, the day we went to get our bear replaced. What a mess.

So while at whole foods one day with my mom, looking for things for Easter dinner, she brings up getting a dye set from there. Genius. I go and ask, after some hunting all around the store, the super helpful workers find one, ONE, last dye kit. Thank goodness!!! Whole Foods saves the day!!!!

Here is the dye kit we used this year.

Any idea what it might be called?? I believe it is nawara. Though I am not entirely sure. However it had directions in at least eight languages. Which is awesome.

There are five different colors. Red, orange, yellow, green and purple. Each color pack dyes 5-7 eggs. That is a lot of eggs, so we just decided to use two packets.

Aimee decided on green and purple. So 10 eggs in total.

Take three cups of water. There is water in the measuring cup.

Pour the color granules in and stir.

By the way, here is what the color granules look like. Those small dots on the counter.

Once you are done stirring the granules in, drop in the eggs (uncooked), or place them. Placing is preferable. Aimee did a big drop for a couple of them and broke one. No worries though.

Put the pot on the stove and let the water mixture boil and reduce.The directions say the exact time.

Do the same with the green.

This is how the purple looks after it is all done on the stove.

The green.

Here they are all done. One of our purple eggs broke and one of the meant to be purple eggs didn’t take the dye.

Green inside.

Green outside.

Purple inside.

Purple outside.

Here is the purple egg that didn’t take the dye. It did end up a little speckled though and the eggland’s best symbol boiled off. I never knew that happened.

This egg dye kit was okay. The colors aren’t too bad. Pretty dark in fact. It is a very easy kit and definitely a good option. Though, I do prefer the way we did it last year.

You boiled the eggs separately and the dye separately and then left them to soak together for a while. Here are some pictures from last year.

We used, vinegar, beets, Welch’s grape juice, cabbage and turmeric.

The cabbage, beets and grape juice all looked the same. (Did you notice the glasses in the background, Crystal week was taking place!!)

However, once they were all done they looked completely different. From left to right we have red cabbage (the eggs turned blue!), grape juice, turmeric and beets at the end on the right. Aimee enjoyed the 2011 version of egg dying better than this year.

I think next year we will just do it our old way, it gives you more control over how much dye you want and how many eggs you want to dye and it is easier to do a nice variety and without having to use tons of eggs.

More experimenting is necessary though. I don’ think I will ever be able to find a natural dye that is as potent and quick as the artificial ones, but we will keep playing around and our eggs will get prettier every year!

Happy dyeing!

Homemade Spring Wardrobe.

I haven’t been sewing as much as I want to, lately. However I have created more new items in the past two months then I have in the past year really. Perspective.

I just hope I can keep this up. I am determined not to but any clothes this summer unless it is something we really need and I cannot make. For example, if my one pair of jeans gets a ton of rips. Or if my husband’s one pair of jeans keeping ripping. Which reminds me, I need to fix the current rips.

Anyway, in the mean time, I made some fun pieces. All from patterns.

The first was a McCall’s pattern, M6167.

It sewed up pretty nicely. There are a ton of steps in making these shirts. Unfortunately, I really do not have the body type for these kinds of shirts. I have tried over and over. It looks fair, but I won’t be making myself one of these again anytime soon. Also the buttons and button holes. There are too many. My machine couldn’t handle it, but my mom was there to help.

I made a size 8. It was a good size, I didn’t need to take the sleeves in at all. The shirt is supposed to be a little baggy. It works best with leggings, but probably not with boots. Too Robin Hood, as my mother in law put it.

Next up for St. Patrick’s Day I decided Aimee and I should both have a new green piece. Neither of us really having any green at all in our current wardrobe. I made her a skirt from a Simplicity pattern 2356.

It turned out cute, cute, cute!!! The pattern has four different kinds of skirts, we made skirt A in a size 6. Aimee is not a true size 6, though because she is so tall we needed the length. The skirt was a little big around the waist, but it is a very easy fix.

The print is very cute, cats wearing pink and yellow shirts sitting on clouds. Doesn’t make any sense, but very cute. The trim is a little too dark for the fabric, but we were trying to use up what we already had.

The instructions were very easy to follow and only a handful of steps. A very simple skirt we made in an afternoon.

Next was my Saint Patrick’s green item, a dress from a McCall’s pattern I had made once before, M5577.

It is a cute dress, but slightly odd. Definitely a jumper. I also, am realizing now, that I forgot to let of the rest of the pleats.

It isn’t that bad. I won’t be making another one of these though. I will be taking out those pleats as soon as possible and getting my hair done.

The last thing we made was Aimee’s skating dress. Kwik Sew pattern K2732. Dress B.

We shortened the sleeves and added a layer on them to look like the skirt. We had to take in the sleeves and leotard a little though. Which I am sure will eventually have to be let out. Otherwise it was a very fast and simple pattern.

Practice makes perfect. I obviously need loads more practice and hopefully I can make Aimee and I some key pieces this summer.

Happy sewing!

P.S. Almost all the fabric you see here we already had. The exception is the first shirt and the buttons on the skating dress.

Greening up Easter / Minimizing Easter.

Easter was a couple of weeks ago but I wanted to get this post up before the subject of Easter grew icy cold.

When I was a kid, my Easter basket was filled to the brim, usually overflowing with presents, toys, but mainly candy, candy, candy. It has to be one of the bigger candy holidays, next to Halloween. My mom loves holidays and going all out on them, so it never surprised me that my basket was filled and I was always thrilled that it was, until I was about 13.

Around 13, all the stuff started to lose its flare. While it was still fun to get new clothes for Easter, and while the candy was still delicious, it was a little bit much. After high school and into college Easter wasn’t given much thought. We didn’t think much of it for Aimee’s first couple of years.

Then there was the year Aimee was three, last year,  we gave in to all the bunnies and baskets at Meijer. There was the giant purple rabbit, the hello kitty basket, already full of tons of surprises and candy. All the different fun egg-shaped candy! While it may not have seemed completely overboard to the general public, we went overboard to ourselves and promised that after the over stimulation of over processed candy and plastic wrap around cheap baskets that was that Easter, we would do it differently from now on.

This year was our first year to keep that promise. It worked out nicely. For the most part.

While we didn’t get to dye our eggs from natural scratch ingredients, such as, turmeric, beets, cabbage, etc, we did find an easy mix at whole foods.

However for the Easter basket and the gifts we dumbed things down, greatly.

Here it is! That is it. We borrowed one of Aimee’s baskets that she already had (this particular basket is a fair trade one that I picked up at a fall craft sale), a giant pencil from Target’s dollar section (eco-friendly – no, really fun – definitely!), some plastic eggs we had from previous Easters filled with chewy bunny candy from whole foods (2-3 bunnies to each egg and only 4-5ish eggs) and a homemade knitted stuffed bunny.

Why buy a new basket every year, when there are usually so many lying around the house. Or if you don’t have any baskets handy, why not make one with the kiddo bear or use a makeshift basket. Or for a joke you could always decorate the laundry basket. Tiskit-taskit.

If being earth friendly isn’t your top priority, this Easter basket only cost us $5.23. All but $1 of that was for the chewy bunnies. Which were delicious and free of artificial colorings.

So what was Aimee’s reaction to this somewhat “measly” looking Easter lot?

She was thrilled. She loved the bunny and the pencil and thought the chewy bunnies were delicious. She ate a couple bunnies and choose to save the rest, played with the pencil, was fascinated by the sharpener, and slept with the bunny for nights on end.

No over-stimulation, no over processed candy, no over-whelming abundance of candy options or toys. Simple, easy, done.

Not that the bunny was easy and fast. Well, it was easy and a simple pattern, published by Lion Brand. Bunny Pattern Link. The bunny is called the “Knit Little Bunny.”  Fair warning when you click the link, you will have to register with them to access the free patterns. All the registering does is sign you up for the weekly emails, that usually come very late on a Friday night.

Free and Easy and only slightly time-consuming. If you have a free afternoon you could whip one up.

Adorable and measures up around 8 inches from head to bottom, with a 3 1/2 inch ear length and a 7 inch arm span.

The little bunny tail is my favorite!!

The face you do in embroidery floss. My nose is a little silly and the whiskers took forever to match up, but otherwise I am very happy with the way it turned out.

As am I happy with how our plans for Easter turned out.

As for that “for the most part” part of the story. My mom did a great job not getting too exciting or getting too much for Easter. She crocheted an Easter Basket for Aimee and bought a cloth doll from the Pottery Barns and threw in a lot of extra things. Also instead of candy hidden in her Easter eggs, she hid change. She did get pretty excited about this and put in a lot of change. So it goes though. She still loves holidays and isn’t thrilled that I am ‘taking the fun out of them.’ I like to think of it as bringing more meaning back into them. We will see in about 5 years when Aimee has closer peers to compare holiday stories/gift brags with.

 

 

Those pyrex geniuses.

I hope Pyrex is eco-friendly. I mean beyond the plastic lid, the glass is incredible. It refrigerates, it freezes, it can hold scalding hot items well, it can microwave. It is one of the best alternatives to plastic Tupperware.

Recently I went on a hunt for some flour and sugar containers. I came up with nothing, unfortunately and my search will have to continue, rather quickly though, since I have started making homemade bread every other week, I go through flour a little quicker now and those bags just aren’t cutting it.

Anyway, I didn’t find any big food storage containers, but what I did find were these.

Oh my goodness!!! Look at the birds!! Look at the folk design! I love folk everything, folk music, folk-lore, folk design.

Design circa 1975.

There were two sizes in the ones I got. A large 8 inch one and a small 6 inch one. Those are estimates on size. They are a little interesting in their sealing though. This one pictured above is the large one, with a shallowed in lid to allow an easy closure for small hands. If you see on the glass jar there is an indented lip where the lid fits on. Also it is a screw latch system. Though I don’t know if that is the actual name, but instead of a full screw type system, with rivets going all around, this has four glass juts, which as you turn the lid will catch on the lids inside indents.

Definitely not an air tight seal, but I am impressed.

So what to store in this cuties??

For now apple dog treats (the ones we made for our Vet Theme). I will probably stick with fruits and more solid leftovers for a while. These are probably not ideal for soups and other liquids I might store. Who knows what liquids I will have to end up saving in this house.

I found these ultra-fun vintage Pyrex containers on etsy! At a shop called, Happenstance N Whimsy . Though I cleared them out of this type of Pyrex, they have tons of other great finds!

If you want to see more of this Pyrex, just make the mistake of searching, 1975 Country Festival Corning and find a ton of adorable items!

By the way, happy earth day!!! Aimee and I have tons of gardening planned for this week and we are going to learn about mold and fungi in honor of earth day. Her idea, I wanted to do trees since Arbor day is next week. Guess we will have to do a mini-theme for trees this year.

Happy Pyrexing!!!