Friday night blog meme

Farmgirl tagged me with the Versatile Blogger Award!

The trouble is, I don't qualify because I'm not going to do all the steps. For one thing, I don't think I even read 15 blogs.

Anyway, here goes the meme:

To accept the Versatile Blogger Award the rules are:

* Thank and link back to who gave you the award.
* Share 7 things about yourself.
* Pass it along to 15 blogs you've recently discovered and enjoy
* Leave your recipients a note, telling them about the award.

Things about Me:

1. I've written videogame fanfiction since I was about 14.

2. My favorite book genre to read right now is juvenile fantasy/science fiction, because you get all the cool worlds and creatures without all the sex.

3. Sometimes I wish I were a black person, because they get to wear really awesome clothes.

4. I am a World of Warcraft junkie.

5. Indie techno bands for the win.

6. I learned HTML and CSS as my foreign language requirement in high school. I can't talk to anyone who doesn't speak English, but man, we could code web pages.

7. My husband and I wrote stories together years before we even started dating.

Now for the blog thing: ....

....

...I'm too shy. The blogs I like are there in my blogroll. *points* So I don't win the versatile blogger award. Sorry Farmgirl, I tried.

Stormy Saturday

Our weird California heat has mixed with moisture from Mexico, along with some other weirdness about a closed low off the coast. Anyway, all this has conspired to spawn thunderstorms. They sprout over the mountains and then boil out over the valley in the mid afternoon.

Today we actually got some sprinkles of rain, along with some thunder and lightning. Being an urban Californian, I immediately took the kids outside in it, reasoning that if lightning wanted to strike somewhere near, it'd nail one of the trees around us that are much taller than our little juniper.

The thunder and lightning never did get very close, maybe within two or three miles. It sprinkled vigorously for about an hour, but it never stuck around long enough to even wet the pavement properly. Alex made an umbrella ...

...and Holly barely noticed it at all, except when she sat out in it and felt the raindrops falling on her head.

Hah! Name that song!

We also rearranged furniture all day, which turned into one of those long, drawn-out catastrophes that takes hours to clean up. It does look better now, though. But I don't think I'll be able to bend my knees tomorrow.

The storm broke up about sunset, and it smelled so fresh and good outside.

I love fall

I opened the front door this morning, and it was wonderfully cool and damp. It smelled like rain.

I stepped outside hopefully, because there was a smattering of clouds, but alas, I was only smelling the sprinklers. Still, at least I could imagine it had rained.

The munchkins escaped outside, screaming and yelling, as they do, and I cringed for our neighbors, all of ten feet away.

The kids immediately found a worm on the sidewalk ("Found a snake!") and then a large slug, and then a spider.

October's always been my favorite month, and it looks like the heatwave will break right as October hits. My Dad and I have birthdays in October, two days apart. Funny how Dad's cake never lasted until my birthday. I'm the oldest of six kids, and cakes never stood a chance.

I also like Halloween. Carving pumpkins, dressing up, all the fall decorations. It's the last holiday with no pressure. Dress up if you want, or don't. Go to a Harvest Festival at a church, or don't. Go Trick or Treating if you want, or don't. You don't have to entertain relatives or throw a party or cook a huge dinner if you don't want to.

My mom always makes the neatest Halloween decorations, and grows the coolest pumpkins. Once the munchkins are old enough, I'll totally do Trick or Treating and carving jack o' lanterns.

I feel like a bad Christian, admitting this. ("I love Halloween and I don't call it Harvest Festival!") Yeah, I know that Halloween is Samhain, the Celtic new year and the spirits of the dead were supposed to walk around at night and people put out gifts of food to appease them. But how does that affect little kids dressing up as Batman and getting candy from the neighbors? It's so much fun, and you get so much loot.

And then you spend the first few weeks of November sick, but we don't mention that. Hee.

But my sister made me the coolest gray cloak from Lord of the Rings, and I just love dressing up as an elf and getting to wear it. It's actually pretty heavy material, so it's too hot to wear otherwise. I can't wait to dress up the kids as cats or Batman or Spiderman or whatever else they fancy. Alex might be old enough this year to even enjoy it.

Monday "Menu"

First off, here's the munchkins enjoying some pumpkin muffins I whipped up the other day.

They made a good snack, and were gone by the end of the day.

Anyway, here's my "menu" for two weeks, meaning it's more of guidelines than actual rules. :-)

Wednesday - Baked chicken
Thursday - Chili
Friday - Burritos
Saturday - Mac
Sunday - Breakfast
Monday - Chicken Caesar pasta
Tueday - Fajitas
Wednesday - Taco soup
Thursday - potato soup
Friday - quesadillas
Saturday - Chicken Parmesan potatoes
Sunday - Eat out
Monday - Chili?
Tusday - Chicken Parmesan potatoes

I was running out of ideas there at the end. Most of the recipes are out of the 30 Minute Cookbook, which I love because not only are the recipes fast, they're usually pretty cheap, too.

I shuffle meals around according to what sounds good and what the weather's like. This week it's about 100, so I've had to push back a lot of my soups and cook more pastas and tortilla-related things. Last week it was in the 70s, and so glorious and fall-like.

I hear down in LA, they hit 113 and broke their 80 year record. Phoenix, AZ was only 104. How is that for ironic, that LA is hotter than Phoenix?

More baskets

Want to see what I did all weekend?

On Saturday, I began this:

It's about eight inches long at the moment. It's my first non-circular basket, and I'm excited to be trying an oval shaped one. I had to quit Saturday because my fingers were so sore.

Sunday, I made this over the course of the kids watching a movie:

There's a quarter beside it for size comparison.

Alex had kept asking me for a basket, so I made him this tiny little one. Naturally it has since vanished. I'll probably find it in the toy box or under the bed. Holly likes the way it smells and walks around with it over her nose.

Then today I finally processed those pumpkins. I started taking pictures and then got distracted halfway through. It took all dang day. First you chop your pumpkins in half, clean out the guts, cut them into small pieces, then bake them on a cookie sheet at 350 for about an hour. Then you peel the meat off the skin.

I unfortunately let mine get cold, and the skin-peeling part was more like Let's Gouge It Off With a Spoon.

Ever stab yourself with a spoon?

It hurts.

Then you put all the pumpkin sans skin into a blender, along with enough water to help it blend. Then you pour the resulting puree into a bag or container and freeze it.

Two containers, all day of work. Then I turned around and made pizza for dinner from scratch.

I'm exhausted.

Pine needle baskets

Pondering getting into making baskets again. It's kind of a unique craft, and the baskets turn out so pretty afterwards.

This is a pine needle basket I started and stopped a couple times over several years. You can see where I ran out of certain colors of raffia and had to switch.

I'd like to try using waxed linen as the stitching, because a lot of people use that and it seems to work well. And it comes in lots of colors. I wonder if I could find it at a craft store? I even saw one where the lady had used copper wire to make a really tough basket for daily use.

My problem with raffia is that it eventually dries out and cracks, so the baskets don't seem to last as long. I made my mom one for Christmas a few years ago, and I've noticed that it's started to unravel a little. I think I should have made sure to tie all my new strands in knots, rather than just try to weave it in. (Raffia is actually the fiber from a certain kind of palm tree.)

Here's instructions on how to use a gourd as a base: http://www.americangourdsociety.org/slideshow/pineneedles/print.html

This appeals because my mom has a whole trash bin full of cured gourds, just begging to be used.

And here's a neat blog with nifty baskets and designs. I'm getting ideas from them.
http://catchingthemoon.blogspot.com/

Kids love heavy machinery

You know how the munchkins' latest fixation has been dirt?

Well, there's great, sandy dirt everywhere at Grandma's.

And also Grandpa's tractor.

I look at the tractor and go, "Oh, it's so small."

They look at the tractor and go, "Oh, it's so huge!"

I'm sure my Dad will get on his tractor and wonder why all the gears are totally out of whack.

I'll have to let the munchkins onto the side yard more often, just for the dirt. At one point Alex was tossing handfuls of dirt in the air and watching the clouds of dust go drifting away. Alas, I didn't get a picture.