Winter

Okay, so I kind of dropped and then promptly forgot about the ball with the blogging.  There has been a nagging little voice telling me to do something about it, but I've been outstanding about ignoring it.  And, I read all these other blogs that are so clever and funny and filled with photos of projects and recipes and blah, blah, blah.  Alas, I'm not that blogger (or blogess).  So, when the mood strikes, I'm just going to write it, post it, and move on (and, if there are spelling or grammatical errors, it is because I'm not proofing my work).

Summer passed quickly.  With the farmers' market, the garden, the yard, the toddler, and laundry that never ends, it was over too soon.  The big projects I had planned didn't get done and I'm still doing laundry.  I have finally accepted (just in the past few weeks - in the dead of winter) that I'm going to have to re-landscape the backyard if I want Jasper to have any place to play.  We already took out the horseshoe pits, leaving one as a sandbox (and Ryan holding out hope that the other will someday be restored to its former location - the horseshoes hang hopefully inside the garage door).  I will be moving my raised beds and the 2 or so tons of gravel around them.  And, no, 2 tons is really not much of an exaggeration.  We had 7 delivered when I put them in - 5 for the driveway and the rest for my paths.  Clearly I'm a glutton for punishment.

Once that is done, we will put in some sod (no time for grass seed with a toddler!) and a swing set (thanks to some really, really nice neighbors who are letting us tear down and reassemble their unused swing set) in the open spot left behind.

The seed catalogs started arriving around the first of January, just in time to start dreaming about the smell of warm, damp Springtime dirt. (Insert my wistful sigh here...) 

I've been doing some sewing and spending too much money on fabric.  I am a junkie and sometimes I just need a fix of some crazy, bold print or something soft.  I have been much better about not buying things without some idea of what I will do with whatever lovely half yard or fat quarter I pick up, but I can't say that 100% of the time...

Jasper is a good sport most of the time and asks sweetly "are you sewing now mama?"  I say yes and more often than not, he says "okay" and toddles off to play in the next room after watching for a moment.  Sometimes, he asks me to make him something.  This has resulted in me making some little stuffed things for him (he *loves* the snake I made him in 15 minutes with mismatched button eyes) and pants - I'll stay away from florals for those I think.

Aside from that, we still do a lot of laundry around here and rearrange furniture (much to the dismay of the husband...).