Weekends

Heather's weekend started Friday when I let her stay home from school. She wasn't very sick, but she's been coughing and stuffy all week. In the afternoons after school, I could see that she was feeling pretty run down, so I figured a day off would do her good.

We made a "tie dye" cake. She also frosted and decorated it, but I forgot to take pictures before we ate some of it after dinner.

We also cleared off a bit of the pond for skating.

Then today, Saturday, Wayne and Cole wanted to skate too.

We've been happy to get outside for a change after what seemed like endless sub zero and single digit days.

We made some treats for birds.

Wayne joined a music composing club at school. He worked on his piece for a while. He has an online mentor who gave this feedback:

" You're off to a fine start. You have an interesting combination of instruments and some very driving music. This piece has the potential to be highly successful.
Let me deal mostly with the instrumentation. You have bassoon in your score but no music for it. Do you plan on actually using the bassoon? It would make a fine complement and pairing with the flute and give you two woodwinds to go with the strings. If you do, think of it as a bass instrument.
All the parts are fairly low. The flute isn't in its best range to sound against the strings. For some of the time you might want to put it up an octave. It will look really high, but it will be easy for flute to play and it will stand out more. You can do the same thing for violin some of the time. The viola part is also quite low and its final note is out of range by almost an octave. You could instead give the entire part to cello and it would work very well right where it is. It's up to you, but if you stick with viola, you'll need to move the last note and possibly other parts up an octave. The bass, on the other hand, is very high. It will sound better if it's dropped an octave (except for the final note, which will need to stay where it is). Since it sounds an octave lower than written, it will be nice and deep but not that hard to read."   Wayne has since made some or all of those changes.

If you would like to hear Wayne's piece, click on either the red arrow or the grey arrow in the box below. The grey one works for me, the red one doesn't, for some reason. Wayne has named  it "Resonance." Note flight is the name of the music writing program. He will be working on it and adding to it in the weeks to come.

Cole ate homemade ice cream and watched Nova.

That's about as exciting as it gets around here these days!

Old Fashioned Homemade Ice Cream

We like to make homemade ice cream every  once in a while. We've used an electric ice cream mixer, which works quite well, but it never really seems like an authentic process. I remember making ice cream with my Dad, as a kid, cranking the handle while he kept adding salt and ice to the bucket.  I've spent a couple of years perusing amazon and other internet sites, trying to find the best hand crank ice cream maker, without spending an arm and a leg. One thing became clear. They don't make them like they used to. I read many, many unhappy customer reviews of  today's hand crank mixers - mainly having to do with gears falling apart in the crank mechanism. 

So, in the end, I finally decided to go with a vintage 1950's Sears Coldspot ice cream maker I found on etsy.  It shows its age, but it's heavy and sturdy. The ice cream canister and dasher are spotless.

The ingredients for our vanilla ice cream were pretty basic, but very rich.

It doesn't look like much in the canister, but remember, it expands as it freezes. We add the salt and ice to the bucket and insert the dasher.

Then we begin cranking...

and cranking...

and cranking.

After about 30 minutes we had ice cream.

We scooped it into a container and put it in the freezer to harden up a littler more.

After dinner, we had a treat.

Store bought ice cream cannot compare.

Educational, fun, AND delicious.

More Winter Wonderland

Like I said, we're just trying to enjoy the winter despite the single digit temps. 

In the morning, before Peter and Jeanne's party, Wayne and I went for a snowshoe.

 On another day, Heather and I went up to "the fort." 

 We saw deer tracks.

 We decided that sometime soon we're going to make some sandwiches and hot cocoa and snowshoe up for a winter picnic in the fort.

 Today, the coldest day of all, Cole and I went out for a snowshoe stroll. It was beautiful, but bitter. Later, Wes, Wayne, and Heather shoveled off the pond for some bumpy skating. No pictures of that.

He had trouble with his snowshoes and kept falling down. Or maybe he just couldn't see.

 Beaver pond - Cole and I visited today, and later learned that Joanie also visited this spot not too long after us.

And  lastly, the news that after a long life of hard work, the truck is living out it's retirement at an auto parts place.  Bye-bye old chevy. Enjoy your retirement.

Sweets and Treats

One of Wayne"s favorite Christmas gifts is this (unofficial) Harry Potter Cookbook. He's got a lot of recipes he wants to try, including Chicken and Ham Pie, but his first recipe was Peppermint Humbugs. You cook all the ingredients, mainly sugar, to a certain temperature, let it cool a bit, and then you are supposed to pull and twist the warm sugar into ropes and snip off into 1 inch pieces.  Wayne's candy hardened up too quickly to do any pulling and twisting, but he did manage to cut it into small squares. They tasted very good and I love the color.

The other day, Wayne and Cole went over to Dante and Fintan's house to join a group of friends playing Dungeons and Dragons. Apparently, it's making a comeback!  Heather and I spent that afternoon outside, enjoying the snow before the bad weather came on.  We armed her snow fort with a stock pile of snowballs, so she can be ready to battle her brothers at a moments notice.  Then we decided to make a snowman treat for the chickens. We built this small snowman near the chicken coup and decked it out with stale crackers and cereal. The hat is a leftover pancake from Christmas morning breakfast. I don't know how healthy that is for chickens, but I do know they'll eat just about everything. We also sprinkled some leftover corn and beans on the ground to lead them over to the snow man. (Actually, it seems more like a snow lady)

They liked the corn and beans, but eyed the snow lady suspiciously. They didn't go over while Heather and I were watching, but maybe later they worked up some nerve. 

Christmas Music at P&J"s

A little Christmas music for your enjoyment.

Spike Walks in the Woods

I've been feeling a little cabin feverish after the ice storm and snowfalls we've had over vacation. I decided to go for a little snowshoe excursion to get some fresh air and exercise. Wayne and Heather were over at Joanie's house making a special holiday treat and Cole does not believe in doing any physical exercise before lunch, so Spike and I were on our own. Thought I'd share some pictures of our winter wonderland with you.

Last summer's wind and thunder storms destroyed this old maple.

In the woods Spike saw a rabbit run across our path.

Here are its tracks.

 Beaver pond.

 Many, many trees are still bowed under the weight of ice and snow.

 

 By the time we got over to Joanie's area of the woods, the sun shone a little.

 We stopped and said hello to Joanie, and the kids making their treat. Then headed back the way we came. I tried to capture the way the sun glittered on the branches.

 Sometimes it's hard to appreciate this time of year, so I'm glad I had a chance to get out and see how pretty life is right now.

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas

We hope everyone now has power and that you all had a very Merry Christmas!