Sunday, April 02, 2006
and another thing again

test post

Wednesday, February 15, 2006
Winter And What To Do About It

So it snowed. When we opened the door for Chloe to go outside, she looked at the wall of snow facing her, looked at me, and said, "nothing doing". While the snow continued to pile up, we couldn't disagree with her. Mark and Olivia found a great way to make the most of their day home (besides the roast in the oven, enjoying Alle making chocolate chip cookies, and watching the Olympics). They made sushi for the first time. This was not a spur of the moment thing. We've been talking about it since last summer. Mark and I, in anticipation of the storm, had done the shopping the day before so the fish was fresh. Even I'm impressed with the professional results.

Sunday, December 04, 2005
Bringing the Outdoors Inside

We went to Angevine's Tree Farm in Warren and hiked all over the mountain looking for the perfect tree. We thought we found it.





But once we began to cut the tree, it turned out to be much bigger than we thought. It was too big for the baler, and it took three strapping guys to get it on top of my car.






In the end, it took up half of our living room. Half. I mean all of the height and one half of the length and width!!!

Thursday, November 24, 2005
Greg House and Our House

Last weekend, Mark and I stayed up all night on Saturday so we could finish the first season of House on DVD. We were in the staying up all night groove after the midnight showing of Harry Potter IV on Thursday. I had seen the premiere of House last year and I deemed it to be a cross between ER and CSI. While I love Hugh Laurie, I wasn't that impressed. Luckily (and with some prodding from Jess), I came back for a second try sometime later that first season and concluded it deserves 'thumbs up'. We've agreed that the plot lines are fairly formulaic, and we've taken to high-fiving each other during the point of every episode when some member of Dr. House's team takes to breaking in to the patient's apartment, home, or purse to look for the one thing the patient has neglected to divulge. Just the same, the writing is amusing even if I can predict every pituitary tumor and parasite 20 minutes before it's discovered on the MRI/CAT/Body scan.

It is 4am and the turkey is in the oven. I awoke to discover our first real snowfall since we've moved to Pumpkin Hill. Quite amazing. I've been meaning to post some pictures of our house, and well, what else seems that important at 4am?

This was taken in our basement. It's very cool down there as the walls are made up of stones from the property and the only mortar is the (new) cement floor.










This is one small slice of our kitchen...get it? Slice??







This is a view of our dining room fireplace which has been referred to by some as 'a walk-in fireplace'.







In the front of the house is an interesting room that we've chosen to line with bookcases and use as our library. With all of the reading, research, homework, and projects, it gets a lot of use by all of us.







Three views of our family room. The murals incorporate some of the beams in the room and depict birds which are native to our part of the state. They were painted in 1994 by an artist commissioned by the previous owner.
















It will most likely be a while before I get around to photographing some of the other rooms. In the meantime, I hope everyone enjoys the way they've chose to celebrate Thanksgiving. I know I will.

Wednesday, November 23, 2005
onomatopoeia and then some

Wednesday, October 19, 2005
Moving On

It seems like most of my posts for the past 6 months have been, “sorry I’ve been such a delinquent blogger…” but the apologies stop here. I was busy having a life. And that’s a good thing. Just to bring the blog up-to-date, I’ve left the knitting store (in April), begun a new job managing a pediatricians’ office, moved out of the house I’d been living in for 8 years, and bought a house built in 1737 with my significant other. We went to Wisconsin, had friends visit from Wisconsin, sent my oldest daughter off to college, got my middle daughter settled in high school, and threw out most of my shoes. Mary says blogging seems terribly self-involved. I can’t disagree. And if you’re doing most things properly, they are self-involved. Even Mother Theresa’s work fulfilled some part of her.

Just as my mother said, it’s taken six months since leaving the store to reconnect with my knitting side in a happier way. I’ve knit furiously in the past few months, taken a class with Nicky Epstein, gone to the Wool & Sheep Festival in Rhinebeck, NY, and even designed a few things. Rather than try to bring my knitting blog up-to-date with all the finished objects, I’m going to just post (boast?) from this point forward. All that photographing takes too much time.



Also, because I do always do what my mother tells me*, I have registered yet another domain name: PumpkinHillFarm.net. I haven’t done much except set up email and put up a marker page, but I will get to it. I found that between knitting and the internet, I can resist the temptations of unpacking indefinitely.

*She could be reading this at any time so this is my story and I’m sticking to it. HI MOM!!!

Tuesday, August 16, 2005
What I did on my summer vacation

So far...


Mark cut his hair






Jessye graduated






And some of us went to Wisconsin





Of course, there's more to tell, but it will have to wait