Mission Accomplished?

You be the judge. I of course couldn't get them to stand still long enough to take good pictures. The other little boy in the jacket over a Spiderman costume is Dallan's friend, Lawrence.

The Aang collar does have the little pie-piece cut out of the front, but she kept turning it sideways.

I even made little webbed feet things to put over Dallan's shoes. You can't see them very well b/c of the bag, but they were velcroed (is that a word?) around his shoes.

The Quest for the Costumes

It's that time of year again. This year is proving to be stranger than any previous. Recently, we started watching Avatar: The Last Airbender with the kids. Since then, my little girl (yep, the girl) decided she wanted to be Aang for Halloween:

Then there's the boy. At first he said he wanted to be a Chomper. Thankfully, he changed his mind and decided he would rather be Perry the Platypus:

The helicopter is optional.

There's mushrooms in my army...

My zombie mushroom must have had a coffee bean to be out in the sun....

Building my plant army

This one looks better in person than in the pictures. It was actually a lot easier than I thought it would be. It was basically a sphere with a sleeve around it. Again, I used a skewer for the stalk. This time rather than wrapping an i-cord around, I made a little 3-row sleeve to stick the skewer in. I think it looks better.

At some point I'm going to get something to mount these things in.

Baking

It's been an age since I posted but that was partially because it takes us so long to upload photos from our camera. I know, Lame.

However, I've been trying to get back in the swing with baking and experimenting over the last year. Here are 2 successes. Bunny cupcakes for Easter and also for Easter, a different family party, a Honeycomb Pie (thank you, Pie and Pastry Bible).

Cupcakes were easy other than the fiddly bits of decorating. Ice cream cones should have ice cream, not cake. Oddly the reason for doing this was to use up cotton candy that had been purchased by mistake (my mother thought it was cotton puff balls for crafts, not seeing the dietary information on the back). I stuck bits of cotton candy on the bottoms of the cones to serve as tails, unfortunately they got squished and flattened into sweet but ugly discs. I had planned to make ganache ears, but they didn't harden and wouldn't stay where I put them, thus the decorative chocolate doodads I've been saving for a while.

The pie was a challenge but not really. Honey-Apricot chiffon, apricot glaze, crumb crust, chocolate ganache bees on top. It really was divine. The chiffon was great, the glaze a little lumpy as you can see but added a nice tough and the bees were great. I'd use the cookie crust instead of the crumb crust in future; I'm just not a big fan of crumb crusts.

Ready, Set, Plant!!

Adoxograph and I were chatting the other day, lamenting our shared abundance of yarn coupled with lack of inspiration. I suggested that we have a cooperative project in order to spur each other into action. The most animated of our conversations of late have been about the game Plants vs. Zombies, so she suggested that we crochet plants and zombies from the game.

What an idea! An army of crocheted plants! I love this. This is my first attempt. It is the Chomper, my son's favorite:

I made the head from a Pac-Man pattern that I found. The teeth are the points from the ghosts. My husband says that it looks like an angry Gobstopper.

As you can see, the craft wire proved problematic as a support system, so I resorted to kebob skewers. Ultimately, I would like to get some small pots with maybe some foam or other counter balance to support the plants. There are leaves around the base and in the back, as on the plants in the game. This little plant was much more detailed than it looked at first glance.

Next up, the peashooter:

holy cow!

The craft blog linked to a recipe of mine today.

Yes, I'm pretty much telling everyone.

also, hey, did anyone notice?

We've been doing this blog for two YEARS now.

Go us!

Where's that damn muse?

I have been told I need to revitalize my hobbying strategy. Lately my hobbies have included, in no particular order: advanced worrying, budgeting for the weak willed, feeling guilty for spending money, cooking after cooking, trying not to kill plants, and not finishing hats. Also I have been experimenting with frustration and playing zombie computer games.

Yeah, maybe he's right. But I'm sure you guys can sympathize. I have ideas for things I would like to do, but all of them require Bright Shiny Purchases; right now I can't justify spending for anything new. I have lots of great yarn, but don't feel like knitting or crocheting. I have a scanner, printer, camera, thread, modge podge, awesome aluminum tape, altoids tins, nature, a sewing machine that hates me, a needle punch doohicky, perler beads and the more stuff I put on this list the worse I feel for not doing anything with it and/or feeling like there is a need to buy anything ever. Gah! Rampant vicious consumer guilt cycle! I want little projects, not quite instant gratification but something that I can put down when the pastry cream boils over but still want to pick back up when the strawberry tart is done.

Really, though, I want something that is mine. Something that is more than just copying someone else's project. Something that is immune to the critique of others. I read on someone else's blog recently that cooking professionally is the equivalent of saying I love you to complete strangers every day knowing they will never, ever say it back. What I'm looking for right now is a project that lets me say I love you to MYSELF, because I know I will totally reciprocate.

Know the feeling?

Song-a-Day May: Where the Road Disappears

I can't believe this is the last day!

To celebrate, we wrote a super emo tune about the lengths of the months.

I feel that it is reasonably likely that, after today's song, Schmitty will no longer need to ask me how many days there are in a given month. Good thing, too, as I always have to do the trick where I count across the tops of my knuckles in order to remember.

Well, except February. That one's pretty easy, other than the whole leap year bit.

The plan going forward is that, while we won't write a song a day every day this month, we'll probably write more songs, and perhaps we'll also revisit and improve some of the things we put together thus far.

It should be neat.

Also: The Schmitty has asked me to apologize to you, the internet, for his, as he puts it, "terrible singing." I don't think it's that bad, but then I might be biased, as I am rather fond of the fellow.

Song-a-Day May: Math is hard

Gretchen's still in open D tuning, this time piloted by the Schmitty. I played Josie, who remains in standard tuning.

We were trying to think of good fractions and the only one that came to mind was the length in miles of a marathon.

I have soy sauce on my glasses.

I can't believe tomorrow is the last day!

Song-a-Day May: Open D tuning!

When it comes down to it, as much fun as Song-a-Day has been, we really are trying to learn stuff about how to play and assemble music. Schmitty picked today to teach me about open D tuning. Basically, it's a different way of setting up the relative tones of the strings so that when you strum all the strings, it forms a D major chord. Likewise, holding down all of the strings on the same fret will produce a chord.

This is neat and useful and makes it super easy to play chords...unless you want to play something other than major chords. In that case, you still have to come up with the right finger positions, which is tricky in part because all of the things you learn about how to form minor chords in standard tuning no longer apply.

Serious stuff, people.

Song-a-Day May: The one where the cat helped

If you listen close, the cat meows twice near the beginning of the song, and then, at the very end, rubs his teeth on the microphone. He's special.

Other than that, the song is actually pretty simple.

(Warning: Schmoopy.)

Song-a-Day May: Self-referential

I'm starting to think that we've officially jumped the shark owing to the fact that we're all trying to be clever and make references to our own songs in the lyrics of our own songs.

It's kind of terrible.

That said, we had dinner at Endo Sushi in McLean, and it was delicious, and then I made s'mores using the flame of the gas stove to toast the marshmallows. That's not at all relevant to the whole song-a-day paradigm, but, hey, whatever works, right?

I like making music with this Schmitty fellow.

Dee-Ay-Gee. It's kinda been done.

Song-a-Day May: Dinner!

We had soup for dinner. It was delicious!

Song-a-Day May: Holiday Weekend Edition

I think we used up the entire quantity of internet available in West Virginia to post Friday's song. Or, in the very least, that is what is suggested by:

• the fact that Friday's song never even loaded correctly
• the bit where, for all intents and purposes, none of us were able to get even a little dribble of signal for the rest of the weekend

Granted, it's kind of okay, it probably prevented us (well, Jay and I in particular; Schmitty and Jackie tend, on balance, to be a lot more sensible about these sorts of things) from foolishly spending our vacation working. But it did mean a break in posting the songs...but not in recording them! Thus:

• On Saturday Schmitty dropped a pick into the body of his guitar while we contemplated the difficulties of making songs
• On Sunday, Schmitty was particularly entertaining by the time we got around to recording after a full day of white water rafting
• Today we're dehydrated and tired and couldn't keep the cat away from the microphone

I can't believe we have less than a week left!

Song-a-day May: in West Virginia

Keeping the text to a minimum owing to lack of tubes, but this is a great song, inspired by (and featuring!) Jay and Jackie, introducing you to our holiday weekend in the good ole West V.A.

We're terrible!

Song-a-Day May: Video killed the radio star

This is a song that the Schmitty and I wrote about the television show, Lost.

Yep!

We have problems!

Song-a-Day May: Anticipation will kill you

I think the Schmitty and I are both having one of those weeks where, come Tuesday, you're already tired enough to wonder why it isn't Friday. Compound this with a certain amount of work frustration on the part of the boy today, and you end up with today's song.

Secretly, I hope to one day manage at least a few of the interesting strumming patterns that Schmitty manages. I think I am at least getting decent at maneuvering my way around the chords, but, truth be told, I am still pretty terrible at strumming.

Ah well, practice makes perfect.

In other news: check it out, the doc said that Schmitty doesn't have to wear the boot all the time anymore!

Song-a-Day May: Scales

The scales I am currently pondering are rather different from the ones my sister works with on a day to day basis.