White Christmas needed to stop, then it did

Well then, Mama N.

Snow started mid-day Christmas Eve... and only stopped for a couple hours here for two weeks. The neighbors were kind enough to push us a few times through the snow.. at one point I went out and measured the snow standing on the birdfeeders..... over 15 inches of snow, and that was before the last heavy couple days of snowfall.. We usually get this much snow over the winter, sometimes a lot at a time.. but this was the first year we have been hit for so long without any break with so much snow buildup. And the whole time we were in a deep cold spell- I'm really happy I got the bug to really cap all the windows inside this fall, I think it really made a difference heating-wise during this cold snowy spell.
Well then.. today we hit an almost record breaking high of 60. All the snow is melted off except for the big plough pileups here and there. Springtime warm with a lot of fog off the remaining snowdrifts. Fine day to finally get out south and hit the craft stores.
Tonight we are under a winter storm watch.. cold front moving in leaving us with an inch or two of white.

I'm glad I got out today while I did. I got some excellent deals at the craft stores today. A 45 dollar Lemax jeweler for only 8 bucks. And a stack of organizers on sale. Some at Michaels at 50% sale+25% off total purchase coupon. And a couple of 30% ones at Jo-anns- had a 5 bucks off total purchase too for there. I'm accumulating enough little bits to make minis and minis building up to need some more reasonable storage for it all, lol.
Been working on some projects- I got a set of large market boxes done, and drafted up and made a new small market box set. A four set of ploughmans boards. Working on a half dozen fish and chips, and a bunch of bits to pull together into brown paper bag lunches.

Making a jewelers display counter. Because while I was making that, was thinking about what to display naturally.. and started checking around online more for inspiration than anything else. Holy fuck. If I thought mini food and some other minis stupidly expensive and I got skill enough to suit myself... mini jewelry is just insane. Relearned how to use a regular wire jig to downscale to make tiny jewelry. And had the dickens of a time finding flocked paper today to make mini displays with. Found some small sheets of flat black only. Found a couple sheets of an odd pressed white stuff on clearance that might work nice too. Everything else is flats/matts and glitters right now.

I've been taking a bunch of pics and notes of stuff while making things recently. More to keep track of what I'm doing while building than anything else. Might post up some tutorials for future reference soon..

Time for some mini's

Been a while since I've posted anything. House has been quiet, not much going on. Winter is well and truly here. Amusingly enough, I still have yellow mums blooming in the solarium.

For weeks now most of my time has been in creating minis. My arm still isn't up to snuff for some of the more regular winter labors, but it's working well enough for this. And I've been feeling the creativity flowing, so I work it when I got it, right? 

Been collecting and watching tutorials, pinning a crapton of stuff on pintrest for a while now. Ebay and Etsy have been great sources of inspirations. But whew boy a lot of the little foods and detailings like that are frigging expensive!!! I mean seriously, I pay about 20 bucks max for large buildings that I can't make myself, and someone wants 15 bucks for a couple little pies? Nuh-uh. Some of these miniatures are absolutely breathtaking, but I just can't justify shelling out like that when I can make it myself. And I also have a lot of difficulty finding these on a small enough scale- most stops at 1:12, and I need more like 1:16. So a small dish in 1:12 is a serving dish to my scale. 

Anywho, been making stuff :) I'm going to post a couple posts about this, since they are going to be photo-heavy.

So some of my completed projects first....

 Cheeseboard, this is on a 1inch square board. A variety of cheeses, meats, and olives.

 Another pic of the same board, from a different angle to show all the goodies on it.

 Another 1 inch board, this one has roast beef and swiss with muststard sandwiches being made on it.

 A tasty platter of fish.

 A large bowl of salad with cold meats and eggs, and a Hawaiian bowl of meat and such.

 Fresh sliced lemons.

 A couple griddles of breakfast and lunch offerings with a bowl of broccoli crowns.

 Some various stew bowls and one pot eats.

 A variety of tortes.

 The new bakery stand full of sweets with some savory and "unfinished" pies in the foreground.

 A closeup of the bottom row. Boards of little sweets and toasts with fresh fruits and jellies. Pies of various sorts.

 Top of the bakery stand, with several more pies.

 The new sausage display. I has already had most of the meats made from a few months back, and needed a display for them all :)

 A closeup of a couple of the roasts, buckets of olives, and bins of fish and sausage.

 A spice stall, with hanging scale and full of various real spices.

The other end of the stall. 

 

Detail of stall.

 Middle of the stall.

Counter end of the stall.

Apparently I didn't take pics of the fabric rolls and new cutting table I made. Ah well, that can be for another time. So these are some of the mini's I've been making to go into Fortunes Turning.

I'm going to make another post now, which gets into things like the scales of things, and the materials I've been using to make this stuff.

Spring is officially here

3/22: Well, it's official, spring has sprung!! We have had the first robins of the season hopping around, along with the return of the red-winged blackbird and starling. And this morning mom reported seeing a chippie on the ledge!! Of course that meant today I set up a couple kill buckets for the chippies to catch them as they come out of hibernation. We are still supposed to hit freezing temps tonight, but for the next 10 days plus it's looking like it shouldn't be hard freezing under 32- I still think we might get one, but we shall see.
The early flowers are starting to come up, crocus, lilies, daffodils, tulips, and hyacinths. The irises are starting to blade up too.

It looks like so far the stuff I put out to repel that racoon from our doors is being effective. I set up a few containers of dryer fluff and ammonia and put them out in strategic places, and blew through a whole jar of hot pepper flake scattering it all along that travel path area. We haven't seen it come back yet, but now I'm out of hot pepper and need to get more, lol. I'll expand out the area to surround the whole house. And start some kitty litter box dumping around some of the trees too- that helps repel the raccoons and is supposed to help attract ferals, and I would like to see a couple of those around here again.

I do finally have some pics of the greenhouse we kicked butt on. These are the originals, before we did the full sheet capover.
So a little tour...

The front porch. It's already been rather nice for a few sits so far. Right now the bench from Black Dragon is serving as a bit of a table to our milkcrate stools.

The doors and walkout to the garden. Last year we did a deep smother bed over that little walk area between the garden and garage. The two big buckets are dead pulled marigolds awaiting dumping elsewhere. But it looks nice enough for the pic :)

Another angle... most of the tubs in front are currently not in use, and likely will be filled with peppers and probably some herbs and flowers. the end bed has been weeded out, but I still need to get out there with some grid mesh and do a good gravel clean out next- I'd like to plant in some root crops there this year but it's rocky enough to need some good cleaning.

A pic from the back corner. in the middle of the staked in area is the giant Beer Garden Radish I grew last year.. I really hope that the thing comes back again this year so I have a chance at some seed off of it. I didn't really get any pods from it last year :(  The green fuzz behind and to the left of the radish is a healthy crop of softneck garlic sprouting up!! After losing all the hardneck, and thought it was too late on the softneck, and here we go. I'll let it go this year to get a good mother crop going, then dig the whole thing up in the fall to re-distribute elsewhere.

And last outside shot. To the far right you can just see some of last years brussels sprouts that I let overwinter in the hopes of seed for this year too. I've let kale overwinter before, but brussels sprouts is kind of a different challenge. The near end is pretty much clear.

The inside. We hadn't put anything in yet, wanted to see what the roof did and all that first. And I'm glad we did! We got in bad weather right after and it was way easier to fix it up while it was still empty. It comfortably holds one of the 12'x1' planks on the right side, and I started putting in cages on the left side.

And the doors. It was nice the way the plastic wrapped around for the walls, it left perfect overflaps to use.

Right now I have all the stuff that was overwintering in the box outside the kitchen window and a bunch of the big pots I was overwintering in the solarium moved into the bench side. And a couple flats of the little pots of spring bulbs- crocuses are already blooming :)
Since the weather is promising not to get all hardcore freezing again for at least a bit, tomorrow I will be moving in a bunch more stuff into the cage side- flats of herbs, lavender, landscaping plants, more spring bulbs, and strawberries. That will free up a huge amount of space in the solarium so I can move a bunch of stuff from the kitchen out to there.. we are quick hitting the time where seedlings and sproutlings are going to be needing more space, and it will be warm enough out in the solarium for a bunch of stuff.

How I make Vanilla Sugar

So since I have vanilla beans on hand, and just picked up a few 4 pound bags of sugar on sale recently... And since I'm down to a half jar of Vanilla Sugar... I decided it was time to set up some more. Good vanilla sugar takes a while to really cure nicely. For me, it's a goodly couple months before I consider a jar steeped enough to use.
What is vanilla sugar? Why, simply white sugar infused with vanilla beans. What is it good for? All sorts of sweet applications that use vanilla. Like if you make pound cake, cookies, or meringues- use vanilla sugar and vanilla to kick up the vanilla. Works great for homemade ice cream, and is excellent in jellies. Makes a tasty addition to your coffee and several hot teas :)

Onto making it...

This is your whole list of everything you need.
Vanilla Beans and a 4 pound bag of sugar
jars to put the sugar into
a bowl, whisk, and spatula to stir your sugar up
a knife and cutting board to slice your beans on

 Mmmmm, I use five beans for this. One bean per pound of sugar, plus one bean for the batch.  These are lovely and fresh, very flexable and easy to cut.

 After you slice down the bean, use the back of your knife to scrape your bean. Yes, the back of your knife. Works easier this way, trust me.

 Mmmmm, lot of beanie goodness just piling up on that blade.

 5 beans yield of guts, yum. this gets stirred into the sugar. Yes, the pods and all their remaining clinging goodness are getting used later on.

 Now to start the sugar. Use about a third of the bag to start off with, and use all the bean guts.

 Before the first whisking. You are going to whisk it it because it will break up the vanilla blobs easier. You use less sugar because it's easier that way too. Once the vanilla is well distributed, add another third of the bag of sugar and whisk that in. Once that is well distributed, use the spatula to stir in the last third of a bag of sugar.

This is the whole bowl of sugar, after stirring. Now to fill the jars :)

 The stripped pods, with much goodness clinging to them, yum.

 Cut them up into 5-6 segments, you will be distributing them equally among your jars.

 Two quart jars, filled about a third of the way full of sugar, ready for the first batch of beans.

 Here's about a quarter of the beans in one of the jars. After tossing in your beans, close up the jar and shake well. Open jar up, add another third of sugar and another quarter of the beans, close up the jar and shake well. Add the final third of the sugar to the jar and shake well again.
Keep in mind that you are doing this to two quart jars.

This is what a full jar looks like. Nice distribution of little black flakes, and you can see some of the beans. There will be about a cup of sugar left over. If you really want to pack it into the jars, you can make it fit. I don't bother, I just use a pint jar for the leftover sugar. That sugar will receive my leftover beans from the last batch of vanilla sugar, sort of start a mother. But you want to make sure you use all 5 fresh bean pods between the two quart jars.

Now all you have to do is seal the jars, set them aside in a cool, dark, and dry place.. and in a few months when summer baking and sweet preserving comes in, you will have some sugar ready for use.

And that's how I make vanilla sugar.

It's been rather nice..

The weather has been rather nice for the last several days. We might be getting in a bit of snow over the next couple days, but I'm fine with that.

Been busy organizing seed, and doing up WS containers. Mixed columbine, showy milkweed, redring milkweed, cesars brother Iris, red with purple center poppy, black peony poppy, rose campion, New York ironweed, butterfly weed, bleeding hearts, thimbleberry. A container or two of each, cept the columbine which I did up a half dozen mushroom tubs.

So what does that look like?

Kitty litter jugs that have been cut to have a hinge, holes drilled in the bottom, and a few inches of dirt to grow in.

Closeup of what the dirt looks like in the container.

Container after seeds are finely sown and tag put in to mark it- I used a cut up sour cream container for this set of markers.

Jugs after they have been filled, sowed and marked, and taped shut. Caps get taken off so water can get into the jugs.

This is what the outdoor setup looks like- the litter jugs are too tall for the lower shelves, but once I'm getting sprouting and it's time to open up the jugs, they will start filling the next shelf down. Hopefully I will be timing myself right to be able to start clearing off the racks for when I start bringing out seedlings from the solarium.

This is from the porch view- nice and accessible viewing :)

I've gotten enough sown in now that I had to start up my 2015 grow spreadsheet. Which is kind of nice. I seriously need to be better about keeping up my spreadsheets instead of just relying on my paper copies.

While I was fussing about with seeds, I decided to start up some indoor growing too.

From left to right is one mixed lettuce, one garden cress, then three lavewa spinach. Time to get some greens going on darn it, lol. Time to get anything growing going on- sheesh, I'm dead ass tired of slushy cold dead grey crap. And on a bright note, my patio tomatoes have started their true leaves- I lost one, but got three of them going good right now, knock on wood.

Today was just one of those days where I really felt the need to do something positive- like outdoors positive. It's still gloomy out, but it's nice out. So early this morning I ran into town to get some birdseed for the birdies that are starting to show up at the feeder. Good deal, a 20 pound bag of wild seed mix was 5 bucks, and I picked up a pound of lard from Hardings for two bucks.
Then when I got home, I set about making up some wild bird treats.

First I made up a couple big suet cakes- each one of these will be split in half to fill the big suet feeder.
On the left is..
3 c birdseed
1 c instant oats
1/2 c buggy wheat flour
1/2 c masa flour
1/2 c or so of diced up prunes
1 c chunky peanut butter
1/2 c vegetable shortening
1/2 c lard
goodly dollop of darkberry jam, maybe a bit over quarter cup or so.
Melt the peanut butter, shortening, lard, and jam together, stir into the rest, and mold- I lined the pan with plastic wrap first, then was able to turn the wrapped thing out onto the sheet pan, neat as can be.

On the right is...
3 c birdseed
1 c instant oats
1/2 c buggy wheat flour
1/2 c masa flour
1/2 c or so of torn up dehydrated melon and cantaloupe fruit leather
1 c chunky peanut butter
1/2 c vegetable shortening
1/2 c lard
goodly dollop of caviar jam, a bit less than a quarter cup.
Same procedure as above.

I realized the smaller mushroom tubs were the perfect size for a small suet cake, so hey!
4 c birdseed
1 c instant oats
1/2 c corn meal
1/2 c buggy wheat flour
1 c peanut butter
the rest of the lard, a bit over a cup I think
1/4 cup of honey.
melt the fat and sugar, stir into the rest, and mold up.

Did two batches of these- one between the big sheet and mushroom tub suets, and the second right at the end- wanted to give the first batch time to really set up before I decided to do a second one. I have a puck hanger, and these will get strung onto it.
3/4 c buggy wheat flour
4 c bird seed
1/2 c hot water
3 T or so white corn syrup
2 packets unflavored gelatin.
Stir the corn syrup and gelatin into the hot water till fully dissolved, then stir it into the rest. I used sandwich bags with the flap split open to line a pair of 16 oz tubs, then packed the mix equally into them. Then I stuck the sticks down through the center to create the threading hole I will need to put these onto the puck hanger. This is the first time I'm trying this, so we shall see how the birds like it or not.

Mmmm, birdie bread- not sure, but I think I will cut this into small suet cage size once it's fully cool. All those little white flecks are eggshell, ick. But hey, if the birds like it, great. The original recipe called for 3-6 oz jars of baby food fruits and veggies, and since I didn't have that, I used some rehydrated veggies instead.

1/4 c dehydrated shredded sweet potato
1/4 c dehydrated shredded carrot
1/4 c squash flour
1 cup hot water, to rehydrate the above, let sit for 10-15 minutes
4 eggs, with shell
2 c bisquick
2 c cornmeal
1 c buggy wheat flour
1/2 c or so diced up prunes- the last of the bag
1/2 c birdseed
Set the oven to 400. In the processor, whip up those whole eggs, then add the rehydrated veggies and whip it up some more. Add to the rest and stir in. Add in a bit of water, maybe 1/2 cup or so to moisten the dough to a really stiff almost putty like dough. Oil up a 9x13 pan, and smooth the dough out into it. Bake about 40 minutes, till the dough pulls off the sides a bit. Cool completely before cutting up.


In good work news... I got the job at Cracker Barrel, I go in next Wed for orientation :) The pay starts out pretty low, but if I do well, I'll get my first raise in 30 days- and right now any pennies are good ones.