As you can see by this picture of a blank canvas laying on my table, there hasn't been any painting going on!
It seems in the last few weeks there really has been a shift around here. Fischer's last week of school is next week, but I already feel like summer has started. My days have been filled with lots of gardening, yard work and lots of time outside. The days are longer which means our normal routine has shifted. Supper used to be at 5pm and has now been happening at 6 and a few times even later. Bedtime for the kids used to be 7:30, no later than 8:00, but now we are lucky if we can get the kids in bed by 8:00. It rarely seems to happen lately. This shift in bedtime has effected MY time. I would usually paint after the kids are in bed, but I have found that by the time the kids are all tucked in and my chores are finished that it is 9:00 or 9:30 already. Most evenings I find myself too tired to paint.
My inspiration has been side-lined during all of this. I know that it will take a few more weeks to settle into our new routine and then the inspiration will be back.
In the meantime though, my garden is all planted. We had our first large harvest of strawberries today which means many more days of picking are ahead, along with jam making, ice cream making, freezing and dehydrating.
Amelia and Fischer tasted their first raspberry of the season today so raspberry picking will soon follow. My raspberries are loaded this year and can't wait to make raspberry ice cream for the first time.
A few days ago I rendered lard for the first time using this recipe which I found on SouleMama. I'm not sure if it worked. It isn't as white as I'd like and it also has a bit of the "piggy" smell. I'm going to try it with some chocolate cookies to see how it tastes. I have 6 1/2 pints and another 1/2 of a bag to render so hopefully it works! I had no clue going into it what I was doing, so the next time I'll have a better idea of what I'm looking for. And those cracklings, they are the crisp bits you get at the end after rendering, wow, they are yummy!
Tonight I would have loved to have painted, but I opted for a bonfire with the family and some warm strawberry rhubarb cobbler with ice cream instead.
Who knew you could swing and eat cobbler at the same time!
With all that has been going on lately, I've been neglecting my blog. I really dislike writing so it is pretty easy to do, but at the same time I'd really like to connect more with the online community. One of my favorite new blogs that I've been following is Nature's Nurture which is written by Sarah and is "a blog about everything simple, natural, and homemade." All of which is right up my alley. While looking at her blog today I saw that she is doing the Summer Blog Challenge
with Going Green With the Grizls, and it starts today,
and I thought why not? I'm always up for a good little challenge. I know I would never initiate this on my own, and my blogging needs some improvement and help.
Hmmm, now will I really be able to post for 90 days straight? We will see! (to be honest, I'll be surprised if I can do it for a week straight!) Luckily there is a list of prompts to give us some directions. Some of them are kind of personal which I am a very private person and this will help me share more.
Hope everyone has a wonderful weekend.
2 comments:
I also stated the challenge after seeing it on Nature's Nurture. I hope you stick with it, we seem to have a lot on common.
Alecia @ Chickenscratchny.com
Well... rendering lard doesn't seem that hard with this method. Since I happen to have some lard, I guess I'll give it a try! Thanks for the motivation.
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