Wishin' and a-Hopin'.

 I was looking out across my backyard earlier, remember what it used to look like under these two feet of iced-over snow. Halfway through the yard is the flower garden I ripped out in September with hopes of building a goldfish pond. Fifty feet behind and to the right of that is the little "shrub" island that had been so overgrown, it took a chainsaw to bring it all down. Years ago, flowering shrubs and bushes grew here, which seems so hard to believe. I'm hoping some of it will grow back in May or June. Then there's the big garden. Once upon a time vegetables grew in this garden, but that was a long long time ago. Now it's wild and overgrown. Once this snow melts, the ground thaws and spring comes, Steve and I are pulling out the rototiller and turning that mess back into a garden. My own gardens! And maybe a goldfish pond...

More Arts and Crafts

It's still snowy and icy here, so Emmy and I have been trying to find fun things to do inside. It's still a little early, but we started working on some Valentines.

This is the outside...

And a little message on the inside!

Emily chose orange because that's the color of Nemo! She wasn't too happy about the mittens being attached, so she separated them!

I made this little purple blankie in about a week. I was experimenting with a new technique for the border - it's ruffly!

Best Oatmeal Cookies Ever!

 On this snowy winter not-quite-afternoon, Emily and I are baking oatmeal cookies! I usually make oatmeal-raisin cookies, but today we decided to make oatmeal-chocolate chip-peanut butter chip cookies!

http://smittenkitchen.com/2009/02/thick-chewy-oatmeal-raisin-cookies/

A Snowy Craft Day

I made this little scarf for Emily to go with her purple winter coat. I just love purple with sage green. Emily seems to like the scarf well enough. :-)

My little artist!

(I need to take a better picture for this.) One of our Valentine's day crafts/decorations! Emily wasn't as into painting heart as I hoped she would be so I ended up doing most of it.

This is one of my favorite hearts

This is another favorite!












Glitter handprint!

Emily!

I am a huge fan of Scrabble. My mom gave me the Scrabble Diamond Edition for Christmas, so my lowly "old-school" Scrabble was packed away. I was just about to throw it out, when I thought "Hey, these could make cool magnets!"

Winter Wonderland!

It all started the day after Christmas, and it hasn't slowed down! We've had one snow storm after another. Paired with frigid temperatures, this makes for deep snow frozen as hard as cement under layers of newer, fluffier snow. It looks like we might have finally gotten some snowman-snow, as it is snowing yet again, but this morning, Emily informed me "Mommy, I don't like snow."

These are a few snapshots of our last storm.

This was taken early in the morning, during the first "thundersnow" I'd ever seen. The sky light up is eerie flashes.

In other parts of the state, this isn't all too impressive. But for a small neighborhood so close to the beach, this an incredible amount of snow!

Emily trudged through the snow so lightly and gently she barely sank into it. Snow and cold temperatures weren't going to keep her from her swing!

This is Scooter, our neighbors' miniature horse. Poor little guy, he was waiting for carrots, but we forgot to bring them with us!

Christmas crafts

Finally! I am posting our Christmas craft pictures!

Christmas time is here...

 And we've been working on snowflakes! I'm trying to upload pics, but have some technical difficulties, so I'll have to come back to this.