Silence

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It’s been a bit quiet around the blog as of late – for that I apologize. I blame the month of March. You see, we were patiently waiting out the cold gross winter that lingered and clung and refused to give way to anything resembling spring. We planned out house projects and told ourselves that we were saving up money for them and that it was fine that it was still too gross to dive in to any of them. But patience has never been my virtue, and by the middle of March it was wearing quite thin. So we comprised. We picked a *tiny* project – just replacing the clunky, dysfunctional closet doors in our bedroom with some nice bi-folds that would let in enough illumination to actually see what you were looking at when you opened them.  My handsome Prince also promised to build me some shoe cubbies on the side of my closet, which I was very happy about. Thus, on an innocuous Saturday morning, we headed to the Toy Store (aka Lowe’s). 

We came home with no closet doors but nine boxes of bamboo flooring, two gallons of paint, a giant box of flooring staples and a slab of sub-floor… we then proceeded to spend the rest of the weekend out the trim and (disgusting) carpet in our bedroom, cutting out and replacing a ruined section of the subfloor and taping the room for painting. We pretty much haven’t stopped moving since. Around work and my volunteer work at the museum, we’ve plowed from one project straight into the next.

• New flooring laid in the bedroom, complimented by new paint  
• Renting a ginormous dumpster (the second in a year) which we completely filled (again)
• Ripping every last shred of the remaining (gross) carpet out of our house
• Tearing down the mouse-skeleton infested insulation and water-damaged 2x4’s that lined the basement
• Building & planting a raised-bed garden and two window boxes (have to keep the basil out of border collie reach or they snack on it!)
• Chopping and stacking the first run of firewood for next year so it has time to season (including taking down several trees)
• Cutting back the overgrown apple trees
• Clearing brush that has entangled the edges of our yard like the thorny hedge surrounding Sleeping Beauty’s castle

On the side, of course, are the little things – trying to keep up with the mud our furry babies track through the house, keeping a menu written and meals made around skewed schedules, the first vegetable canning of the season. Oh, and sleep. We try to get a little sleep in here and there!

Somehow, amidst all our projects, the month of April evaporated and May is half gone. I’m not sure where it all went when I wasn’t looking, but a quick glance at this page tells me it didn’t go in to blogging! There’s been lots churning around my head as my hands were busy, though, and I hope to catch up at least a little on recording my thoughts here before June’s workload hits me over the head and I wake up again in August.

As a side note, Menu Idea Mondays are suspended for the summer. I do more canning than proper cooking in the summer, and menu planning largely goes out the window as I base meals on whatever came out of the garden or farmer’s market looking particularly spectacular. (Or, honestly, whatever I can throw together in ten minutes or less without turning on the oven as we work on and around the house until well past our usual meal times.) I’ll post recipes as time and opportunity allow, though, so keep an eye out!