Friday, January 21, 2011

Snow, squirrel, soup, science

Another snow day home from school yesterday (yippee!), and now about 3 feet of accumulated snow on the ground (uh, not so yippee!). It's funny to me how winters are either brutal -- storm after storm after storm -- or relatively snow-less; never a happy medium. Part of that whole jet stream business and all.
Mr. Christmas Squirrel kind of looks as though he's thinking, "sure, you can make me go to the party and wear the hat, but I'm NOT going to have fun." Sorry there's nothing to show scale; he's about 7 inches to the top of his hat. I'm going to have to figure out how to go into production mode with these Christmas crafts, or I can see that I'm going to end up with a lot of little things that we have to keep and nothing for the homemade gift supply.

Meanwhile, an absolute up-side to wintery days stuck indoors is the time to make soup! Lentils, collard greens, tomatoes, carrots. Yum. I adapted this recipe and encourage you to experiment with it, too!
And speaking of experiments! Dean needs to make a model of a human gallbladder this weekend and decided papier mache applied over a balloon was the way to go. I figured it would go most quickly if we suspended it and therefore could coat all sides on each pass. I always struggle to find the right level of support on these projects -- paving the way to make it possible, but then stepping back and letting Dean do all the actual work. He's doing a terrific job.

2 comments:

shirley pickthorne-elliott said...

Hello Jennifer,

I've so missed having the time to drop in on your blog. Now I'm leaving for Spain in 5 days, going back with my sister to Madrid for 10 whole weeks. She does not have a computer, nor can I even persuade her to TRY one, so I'm going into withdrawal even as we speak. The word 'squirrel' in your title reminded me of a heart-breaking photo on the news of a gray squirrel whose whole body was quivering in -35 cold, trying desperately to HUG himself with his tail. I get choked up even writing about it.
I love reading about your life and your lovely family, Jennifer, and wish you all a healthy and safe new year, till I return.
Lynn and Bart leave for the Far East in 3 more days too!!
love - Shirley

Juddie said...

I so love the fact that "Dean needs to make a model of a human gall bladder" - school projects can be so weird and fun :-)