Spring Break fun

We had a good week, a break from school and hubby had the week off too!

We did go to the .50 movie and had cousins over to play.

The snow melted by Wednesday.

We got a tiny egg.

(sorry ladies, no weight taken)

We went to the UMMA.

This is the model of the museum.

It was great.

We saw Tiffany glass,

and Picasso,

I love Picasso, but according to the literature, he was quite the perv.

The UMMA had a great mix of old and new.

But the best part of our Museum visit was...

WHERE I LUCKED OUT PARKING!!!

Ann Arbor is not the easiest town to find a place to park, so imagine how thrilled I was to find an open meter right out front! And I was driving the Neon! Parallel parking was a breeze!

Here is my car from the front door.

I'm a cheap thrills kind of gal.

We colored eggs.

Some think you cant dye brown eggs, not true.

We went to 2 Easter Parties, one was a bonfire/egg hunt.

The other was a egg hunt/kite flying day.


Just enough breeze.






Kites and cousins in a corn field.


I didn't get any quilting done but I did pull tons of nails from some slightly used free lumber.
We have a couple of building projects in the near future and this is going to save us $$$.

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I am STILL SICK! I was hoping to be better by now, at least I'm not bed ridden and I'm hoping the end is near. I'm longing for the day that i can breath properly from my nostrils and not have the cough that brings up things from the deep. At least it has been a few days without a fever.

Other than that it was a great week.

How was yours?

We now are starting tennis (the girl) and Drivers Ed (the boy). Yikes!

Spring Break

View from my front door this morning.

It's how we do spring in Michigan.

Same as last year.

We are on Spring Break now so I wont be around much. We plan on...

1. hitting the dollar movies on .50 day

2. having friends over

3. quilting

4. fixing the furnace (we did cut some wood)

5. visiting at least 1 museum

6. getting rid of this lingering bug

7. celebrating Easter with family

8. having some lazy moments

Oh we watched this great movie I borrowed from the library

called "Lars and the Real Girl". Its a good one.

See ya next week!

Happy St. Pattys Day!

I just finished a tasty meal of Corned Beef and Cabbage.

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Our last 5 days weather wise couldn't have been nicer. I sure hope the Arctic blasts of winter are gone for good. The fact that it is Michigan I know we aren't done but a girl can dream, right?

Over the weekend we raked leaves and...

...demolished the old crate coop.

You served us well for 3 years but it was time to go.

We couldn't justify keeping you and your leaky roof when I have this "new" beauty.

Nothing left but the foundation.

Our yard looks less trashy now. We still have a bit of trashy left but that's how we roll.

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I collected sap until I almost got tired of it.

All of this 8 gallon container.

Plus all these.

About 22 gallons worth, and the sap is still flowing.

I had to get our propane tank refilled so I could do this again.

Melissa asked for a close up of our hook system. Our taps had built in hooks so it made hanging the jugs easy.

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Not all good news though.

The winter was a hard one for us but it was even harder on our pond. The inhabitants of our pond actually.

It looks like all of our large fish have been wiped out. Bass, large mouth and small, and our stripes. All of the big Bluegill and Sunfish.

Both of our carp too.

The ice hasn't melted all the way yet so I'm not sure if any small ones are left.

We were stocking up as a future meat source and had only eaten a few last summer.

We were hoping to have a fish fry with our camping guests this summer. Sorry ladies.

I'm bummed, I had caught and brought home most of these fish myself.

Of all the years we have been here we have never lost fish over the winter.

Looks like I need to renew my fishing licence.

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The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain. Dolly Parton

A tale of two syrups.

I usually make my own syrup.

Boil 2 cups of water, add 4 cups of sugar, stir till clear, add a splash of maple flavor.

Its usually cheaper than store bought and I don't care for the butter flavor most syrups add.

It's easy and I always have those ingredients on hand.

Hubby has been wanting to tap our maple trees for quite some time. Last year he bought some old syrup taps on ebay. Don't you love a guy who does stuff like that?

You tap trees right before the temps get in the 40's, so last Sunday he drilled and tapped 7 of our maples and rigged some milk jugs to collect the sap.

And we waited.

The chickens scratched.

I took a self portrait.

It got warmer and the daffodils peeked out.

We didn't have to wait long.

In a day and a half we collected about 12 gallons of sap. (it's really like water)



You have to boil it down outside unless you like your walls and ceiling to be sticky in your home.



I manned the pot.

The guys worked on the dock.

It boiled into the night.


Our first batch was thin, but tasted amazing. Our next batch, we boiled down more and was thicker.
I filtered it through t-shirt material to get out the bits and bugs.
In total we got about a quart of syrup.




Words can't describe how good this is, all I can say it was well worth the effort.
It turned cold again and the trees have stopped producing, we hope the next warm up brings more sap but since this is our first year we don't know what to expect.
We've read that some trees like silver maples don't work well for flavor, apparently we have the good sugar maples. <3>

beautiful days

We are having a stretch of beautiful weather. My crocus (crocuses) are blooming.

The quilt show was wonderful. It was at the Henry Ford Museum, which is an amazing place on its own.

But this Quilt show featured a woman named Susanna Allen Hunter who was poor and made these everyday quilts from old clothing and seed sacks. Even though she had limited access to fabric, she made quilts paying attention to color and placement and had their own rustic charm and beauty.

Throughout the show they had quotes from her family, mostly a grandson, telling about her. I'm sure this hard working creative woman would never have guessed her quilts she made for the purpose of keeping her family warm, would ever be in a museum.

You can see a bit more here.

http://www.thehenryford.org/museum/quiltinggenius2/default.asp.

Today is the first day of hanging my laundry. Yep, there's my bloomers. Being outside makes a mundane task enjoyable. Feeling the breeze and listening to the birds is quite nice.

I wore shorts! Where did I put my lotion?

When we lived in town, every spring on the first week or month wearing shorts, my interesting neighbor (interesting is better than other words I could choose) would always open her window and shout out " Hello Mrs. White Legs!". For some reason I don't miss living in town.

I spent some time transplanting my tomato seedlings.

Back to the window for you little ones.

Soccer practice for the boy is tonight. I hope you all have beautiful weather where you are.

Spring Break???

Give me a break!

Wouldn't this be lovely if it were January.

Last year at this time I was starting to get my garden ready.

I guess I'll just have to daydream of warmer times.

When you see wild fires, tornados, and floods that others have been dealing with, I guess this isn't that bad.

I did start some tomatoes. When a family member has a party with these plastic containers, I "recycle them" into little atriums.

I wrapped the table because it's over a heat vent giving the little seeds a warm tushie.

The deer have been visiting again.

The kids have spring break starting tomorrow.

I'm hoping to get some projects done since

there wont be much computer time in my future.

Like finishing my quilt that I started last June. Yep, It's a fish. Yesterday I duct taped the 2 bottom layers to the floor and pinned it all together. Quilting and binding are next. I plan on spending a lot of time in the basement this week, its the kids hang out, so I may as well be productive. I'll have a quilt that I made from the scraps of the curtains I made two years ago. Do you think I put projects for me last?

Maybe it will warm up enough for me to clean out the coop.

Browine is testing out the porch pot for egg laying.

Here's to a nice spring break in spite of the weather you're dealt.

Our power went out right as i was finishing this. Good thing I didn't lose this post. All the things I need to do today require power. So I unplugged the critical stuff, built a fire and wandered around aimlessly looking for active things to do. Luckily it was only out about a half hour.

Never dull here.