Friday, August 9, 2013

7 Quick Takes


 1.

Happy Birthday Me!!! Well, tomorrow anyway. I'm turning 30 and feeling, not exactly old, but out of place, in my mind, I'm just out of high-school..My parents sent a card (they've been great about leaving me all alone in my Solitary Time - the retreat month) and a book to fill the reflective hours. My husband is taking me even deeper into the woods - a camping trip for the weekend! Well, half the weekend. It's hard sometimes to figure out exactly how to celebrate birthdays - I don't tend to go in for big parties (especially in retreat months!), and besides, we're on a spending fast..but I knew I'd regret it if I'd tried to celebrate by spending the evening quietly at home.


2.

We've seen three disgustingly huge, wood-beetle type bugs in the house! The most recent invader was on the bed where I was nursing Yarrow. He terrified her, and me! Ugh..I have a feeling I'll find more in the little wood-box beside the stove. It's a project I don't want to tackle on a dark and stormy morning..maybe Sunday. I hope they aren't termites..how big are termites, and how do you kill a bunch of them at once?

3.

Kendra at Catholic All Year shared excellent advice about the way different readers respond to blogging style. I guess I'm not exactly inspirational, but I'm definitely not the 'doomsday' sort !  I can't read chaos blogs, especially Catholic chaos blogs, generally they frustrate me, sometimes they depress me, and they always leave me wondering why so many people chose to spread around their unhappiness..but Kendra's post was a great reminder that some people do come away feeling over-burdened with other blogger's misery, they feel better about themselves, and comfortably friendly with the chaos blogger. It made me think a lot about my own tone and direction, as well as the tone I look for in other blogs..not that I've come up with any answers, but thinking is a good start!

4.

Blackberry Season has officially begun! With the first 1/2 pint, I made blackberry-creme crepes for Wednesday's tea. The crepe recipe is easy:

1/2 cup whole wheat (only because of the detox, and for a bit of nuttiness)
1/2 cup white flour (you can use 1 cup white..and, I'm sure you could do all whole wheat, but I feel like the white flour helps keep them light and fleixble)
 2 eggs
Zest of one lime
1 cup milk (add more if your batter feels too thick. It should be runny enough to just coat a spoon when dipped in it)

Beat the eggs and milk together add the flour and zest and stir until smooth. Set the batter aside for at least a half hour (though, if your in a rush, it won't kill anything to use it right away). Have your crepe pan hot and buttered (I use a six" cast iron pan). scoop out about a 1/4 cup batter and pour in only enough to coat the bottom of the pan. You do this by holding the pan and twisting it around as you pour, so the batter spreads all along the bottom of the pan. when the bottom is coated, put the pan back on the stove (a medium-ish flame, or medium on an electric stove should be good).  After a minute or two, flip the crepe and cook the second side for just half a minute (unless your flame is lower, just keep an eye on it). The first crepe will take longer than the others. Stack them up like pancakes and when they're all done, I spread them with creme fraiche, dotted them with berries and rolled them up. They tasted just like woodland summer should!

5.

Actually, I've been thrilled to discover Catholic All Year. It's a pretty fantastic blog, and there's a lot there for me to mull over as I'm mulling things over this month! Check it out. This whole 'off Facebook thing' is giving me a lot more time to discover new places to go online, and often, they prove to be better places to spend my time.

6. 

The Harry Potter Book Club I'm doing with Jenna and Christie has slowed down for a while as everyone gets their end-of-summer business done, which has given me some time to re-examine some of my thoughts and feelings toward the series (I'm the 'not a fan' in our group). I'm doing come comparative re-reading of Tolkien and Lloyd Alexander..it's been a fun way to spend the evenings, Seth and I chatting about books while he draws, I write, and Yarrow reads aloud to us all.

Seth's Baba Yaga


7.

For those of you who use a variety of essential oils often, how much does it cost to start out? I'd like broaden my selection of essential oils (right now I only have tea tree, eucalyptus, rose, and empty lavender & citronella bottles). I'd like to replenish what I have, and add Neroli, sandalwood, cedar, verbena and three or four others. Are there good places to buy online? How should I go about this? I want to do this because I'd like to go entirely home-made when it comes to my cleaning, bathing, and laundering soaps and lotions and powders. I have plenty of herbs, both dried and fresh, but I really want to expand my oil selection. Thanks!

Read more at Conversion Diary!

8 comments:

  1. I think I know what you mean by the giant beetles: we had some around the trailer. Unless these are a DIFFERENT type of hideously giant Maine-beetle, in which case...yikes.

    Hm, Seth, love the picture, but I always pictured Baba Yaga as being very thin and boney.

    Happy early birthday, Em!

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    1. Who says she isn't? Any number of shape-altering bundles can be concealed under a cloak, and considering Baba Yaga's preferences I'd rather not think about what they might be...
      -The Neglected Husband

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  2. Happy birthday tomorrow!
    I like what you've got going here, glad I followed your link from Conversion Diary!

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  3. Wait, your birthday is tomorrow? So is our wedding anniversary! That's memorable. ;) Happy Birthday!!! And I know exactly how you feel... I'm thirty-five-and-a-half, and I still kind of feel that way. Might be partly because I sit to the right of two adorable young college students in choir, and chat with them whenever I can, and I don't feel one whit older than them till they pull out their phones and start texting when they're not having to pay immediate attention... :P In my mind, I'm about twelve going on twenty-three going on eighty, and I'll probably be that age till the day I die.... Anyway, welcome to the thirties! ;) And happy camping!

    I loved Kendra's post! And consider myself a keeping-life-pretty blogger as opposed to a chaos one, for many of the same reasons she does. De-emphasizing the stressful sides of life is healthy for me. And I read more of the life-is-beautiful ones, too.

    Your crepes look fantastic!! I don't have any blackberries yet--will have to get some from my mom's place next week--but I'm tempted to walk up to the grocery and get some of whatever berries are in season and make those for breakfast tomorrow.

    I love the Baba Yaga, Seth!!

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  4. The Crepe's do look Fantastic! A perfect breakfast! I wonder if you could make them savory and add eggplant and bell peppers and Tomatoes? Or would that be too weird?

    Happy Happy Birthday! Welcome to the Thirties. It's so funny looking back on my twenty self impression of thirty. I used to think it was Soooo Old. Ha! Not the slightest.

    Baba Yaga is awesome Seth. I have a book suggestion. You might have already read it-- Enchantment by Orson Scott Card. It's a modern day retelling of Sleeping Beauty in Russia and Baba Yaga is featured in it! She's a pretty AWESOME VILLAN! They don't make Villan's like that any more! Voldermort looks like a pansy compared to Baba Yaga!

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    Replies
    1. That book sounds awesome! (If wikipedia can be trusted). Seems similar in a way to The Hounds of the Morrigan, by Pat O'Shea. And yeah, it's hard for Voldy to compete with sheer baby-eating, mortar-and-pestle-riding, living-in-a-house-on-a-chicken-leg evil.
      -The Neglected Husband

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  5. happy birthday, dear Masha. I loved turning thirty... I think that it is going to be a wonderful decade of our lives-- the pinnacle of youth, the time we are finally sure of who we are in this world.... no matter what our thoughts, sorrows, joys, trials and life paths bring to us. Have a beautiful, glorious, blessed day and year!

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  6. love the glamorous picture, by the way! so YOU.

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