hens & eggs

There's plenty of holiday to go around this weekend.  With Easter and Earth Day within a few days of each other, there's lots to celebrate.

Easter is a pretty quiet holiday around our house, for any number of reasons.  This year, one of those reasons will be that I'm at work.

I'm still trying to find ways to celebrate, though.  For instance, I was seriously thinking about dyeing some eggs today.  The thing is, the fun part about doing that is decorating lots of eggs, not just, say, half a dozen.  So who's going to eat the twenty-some eggs after I'm finished with them?

Maybe I'll give some eggs away.  Or maybe I won't indulge in the tradition this year.  Maybe I'll just sit around eating jelly beans and Cadbury eggs--my other favorite part of Easter...

If you're celebrating this Sunday, you still have time to finish a few good projects before Easter rolls around.  Here are some of my favorites for you:

dyeing eggs naturally

bunny pants!

tiny egg vase

confetti eggs

hot cross buns

As for Earth Day:  No lectures from me today on recycling or using people-friendly cleaning products--I do that every other day of the year.  Instead, here are a few fun things to enjoy while you're counting your planetary blessings:

rockin' chicken coop

seed "bombs" how-to

beautiful mason bee house

Whether you're observing Easter, Earth Day, or the end of Passover, for that matter, I hope your weekend is full of family and joy...

valentines

I'm one of those girls who used to go around telling boys that she didn't believe in Valentine's Day--and then would have her feelings terribly hurt when those boys didn't do anything special for her in honor of the occasion.  I'd like to think that I've gotten better about this in recent years.

Along with improving my communication skills, I've also started celebrating Valentine's Day as less of a romantic Hallmark moment and more of a general celebration of love and friendship.  As someone said to me the other day, "Don't we all need more love in our lives?"

Yes.  Yes, we do.

My man and I are planning a pretty low-key evening.  At the rate things are going, we'll probably be having this for dinner.  And in what is becoming an annual tradition at our house, there will be some of this for dessert.

I don't know that our celebration will include much handmade detail this year.  I certainly don't have anything like this up my sleeve.  I think that's okay, though.  I'm still getting the hang of this whole marriage thing, but if I'm understanding it right, you don't need lots of drama and fireworks to make something special.  You just need each other.

I am a sap.

If you're a sap, too--or just a sucker for a good holiday--here are some last-minute ways to make your Valentine smile:

a dirty love letter

see-through valentines

downloadable edible valentine

sweet sucker valentine

e-valentines from kate spade

Have a lovely weekend!

reset

2010 has been a big year for this household.  We've had lots of changes and exciting transitions--some bad, but mostly good.  And there was the matter of that little wedding back in June.  All in all, I'm content in calling it a good year.  At the same time, though, I'm ready--I think we're both ready--for a new year.

And just in time.

We'll be ringing in the New Year with a few family members in the coziness of our little apartment.  I predict that games will be played, mini-pizzas--homemade, of course--will be consumed, and if I can manage to actually stay awake until midnight, we'll even have a--slightly truncated--view of the big fireworks display at The Space Needle.

I'm all for celebrating New Year's Eve at home.  For one thing, it's a terrible night to be driving.  And for another, it isn't the New Year, in my book, until you've seen the ball drop in Times Square--even if you're watching it on television, with a three-hour delay because, for some reason, you find yourself living on the West Coast, where everything happens three hours later.

If you're still planning your party for tomorrow night, here are a few fun links to inspire you:

fancy glasses and pretty pictures

easy appetizer

last-minute etsy download

amy atlas on tv

the cinnamon rolls I might be making for New Year's Day

No matter how you celebrate, I hope you have a safe and happy New Year's Eve!  Here's to 2011!

christmas

A very Merry Christmas to you and yours!  I hope the day brings you joy, wonder, and maybe even a few moments of calm...

Thank you for counting down the days to Christmas with me.  I've enjoyed having you all along for the ride.  After twenty-five consecutive days of posting here (!), I'm planning to take a little time off from the Sparrow.  Check back next Thursday for a hello and some last-minute thoughts on New Year's parties.

Until then, enjoy every moment of your holiday!

two

So here we are.  Today, I am planning to:  finish a major knitting project (unlikely), bake a million cookies (more likely), find that last elusive gift for a special someone (50/50 odds), finish wrapping several things (entirely doable, assuming there's still time left at the end of the day) and generally put the finishing touches on Christmas preparations.

Maybe you are experiencing a last-minute crunch of your own.  If so, I wish you the best of holiday luck.  

I spent most of yesterday reminding myself that that I am only allowed to worry about the things that I can control.  It might sound like something out of a self-help book--and hey, it probably is--but if you're feeling stressed, try it out, just for fun.

And there comes a time--just like the time came during the last hours of our wedding planning last summer--that you simply need to stop doing and start enjoying the true purpose of the event.  Right?

Right.

and yet

I know, I know.  I was just going on about savoring these last days of November, not being ready for Christmas-related kookiness, etc.  But the truth is undeniable:

The holiday knitting must get done.

I'm being slightly less ambitious than in years past, but working against tighter deadlines, too.  For the First Time Ever--sniff!--I won't be traveling to the great state of Ohio to celebrate the holidays with my family.  Instead, we'll be staying put in the PacNW and enjoying Christmas with my husband's family.  Which I'm sure will be lovely.  I really mean that.

The end result of all this, though, is that I'll be shipping gifts to Ohio this year and won't be able to do any of my last-minute knitting on the plane, needle-felting while hidden in my little brother's bedroom, or just generally working up to the last minute, which tends to be my procrastinating modus operandi.

Instead, everything needs to be finished, wrapped, packed away and shipped by--when?--maybe the twenty-first of December.  At the absolute latest.  And as someone pre-programmed to worry about these things, let's say the nineteenth, just to be safe.

So, knitting.  Of course, I can't tell you what I'm working on, because one never knows who might be reading.  But here's a clue: Manos del Uruguay's Wool Clasica.  It's one of my all-time favorites...

I'm off to get some work done, but do check back on Wednesday.  I'll be posting the first of what I'm planning to be a twenty-four--or is it twenty-five?--part Christmas countdown series.  Sort of an on-line advent calendar?  Whatever you want to call it, I'm excited about it.  I hope you'll join the fun!

the day after

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving.  Ours was full of family and food, as the best holidays are.   Along with all the catching up and cooing over babies, there was also lots of talk about Christmas.  With the snow outside and the warmth inside, it was easy to imagine that Christmas was, as we said to one another, 'just around the corner.'

Which, I suppose it it.  With Thanksgiving behind us and November soon coming to an end, it's definitely time to start worrying about wreaths and Christmas presents.  Of course, I'm excited for it.  You know me, I love a good party.  In the next few weeks, I'm hoping to share the details of Christmas at our house and maybe hear, too, about the traditions at yours.  I'm also planning a special series of December posts, which you'll be able to read all about when December first comes around.

For now, though, I'm still enjoying the last days of November.  I'm going to try not to get too consumed, yet, by the holiday hoopla of Christmas, at least for a little while longer.

After the Thanksgiving excitement, I'll be laying low for the rest of the weekend, fighting off a cold and celebrating the completion of the month-long novel--hurray!  If you're looking for some quiet fun this weekend, here's a to-do list for you:

Bring a different sort of tree inside.

Make your pancakes special.

Find your favorites.
Sew your own shoes.

Think about trying out for a scholarship.

Start planning for the next big snow.


Happy weekend, everyone!

snow

The calendar can say whatever it wants to.  It is officially winter at our house now.  It's been snowing on and off all day today, and except for the part where I wasn't sure I was going to make it home from work, I've been enjoying every moment of it.

Maybe it's snowing where you are now.  Maybe it's not.  To my surprise, this is apparently what it looks like in Maine right now...

Hopefully, the weather won't make our Thanksgiving too complicated.  Or yours, either, for that matter.

If you're still looking for dinner ideas for Thursday, there's this and this and this.

And here's a sweet Thanksgiving tradition.  It's a little Christmasy, but still.  I like it.

Warmest wishes to you and yours this Thanksgiving, friends.  Enjoy the weather, wherever you are...

to bed

This will be my last season at our community garden.  While it's hard to give up the little plot that I've kept for the past five years, anyone who's grown food at a community garden knows that the experience comes with some unique challenges.  After plenty of ups and downs, I've decided to focus my attention on container gardening here at home, which will make my tiny allotment available for some other eager gardener next spring.

This morning, I went to do the last of my gardening, tucking the plot in for the winter.   I didn't want to leave a big, weedy mess for the lucky soul that inherits my little chunk of real estate.  And honestly, I haven't been a very active gardener this summer, so I definitely had some work to do.

In the course of an hour and a half, the plot went from this:

To this:

I know, I know.  It just looks--sad.

Usually, this time of year, I clear out what's left of all the summer crops, put in my garlic, and scatter cover crop seed everywhere else.  I decided not to plant cover crop this year, partially because I didn't want to make a bunch of work for some new gardener next season.

Instead, I did some lazy "sheet mulching"--layering greens and browns and then covering it all with cardboard.  The organic material will break down over the winter, feeding the soil a bit.  The cardboard helps keep everything in place and will also, hopefully, keep the weeds down during this "off" season.  Again, it's lazy, but it should do the trick.

I had a good time in the garden.  I collected seeds from the calendula and nigella, so I'll have some souvenirs to sow in the spring.

And I spent some quality time with the last of the summer's pollinators.  A male Rufous Hummingbird came and went all morning, zipping past me to get to the tangerine sage.  Of course, I couldn't snap a photo; hummingbirds are much faster than I am, especially now that I've cut my coffee consumption to half a cup a day.

This little lady, though, wasn't in any hurry to move on.

I left the garden with a little bag of seeds and a clump of wild onions descended from some that my cousin smuggled off a Canadian campsite a few years ago.  I'll take a few months off from gardening, but at the tail end of winter, when the seed catalogs show up in the mailbox, I'll start scheming again, building a little garden--this time a container garden--in my imagination.

I'm trying to spend this weekend getting things done.  I've got some plans for November that might take up quite a bit of my time--I'll let you in on the excitement next week, I promise.

We're also planning on attending the annual neighborhood pumpkin carving party tomorrow night.  And of course, the trick-or-treaters will be here on Sunday.  Which means that I might have to buy some more candy for them.  I'm not sure what happened to the last two bags I picked up...

Maybe Halloween chaos is enough to fill your weekend.  If not, here's a to-do list for you:

Design your own alphabet.

Put vanilla in your soup.

Make a Halloween mess.

Download some wrapping paper.

Make a last-minute costume.

Order customized cards.

Have a lovely--and spooky--weekend!

labor day

As predicted, the Labor Day holiday here in Seattle has proven to be cold and damp.  Instead of basking in an end-of-summer barbeque with food and friends, I've mostly been making tea and nursing a case of the sniffles.  

Lest you feel too sorry for me, though, I will mention that I enjoyed a lovely neighborhood pancake breakfast this morning which, though a bit chilly, was full of the laughter and fun we've come to expect from our lovely neighbors.  And I took a pan of that tasty peach shortbread, which promptly disappeared.  

{I know I mentioned this recipe in my list of links last Friday, but now that I've actually made it, I can really recommend it.  Fast, easy, and guaranteed to please a crowd.  Potluck recipes don't get any better than that.}

With today's excitement behind us, I don't have much more planned.  More baby blanket knitting, more tea, more staring out the window daydreaming.  

I hope you're all having fantastic, colorful holidays today.  Soak up some rays and light some fireworks for me, would you?

holiday

We're busy today with the annual neighborhood pancake breakfast in the morning and a good old-fashioned American cookout this afternoon.  I'll have a proper post on Wednesday, but in the meantime, I wanted to share one of our favorite wedding-related gifts yet, some beautiful handiwork from my sister-in-law-to-be, Melody.

Isn't she a clever one?  (If you're someone who likes a good sock monkey now and then, you should visit her little Etsy shop.)

Emily Post says that wedding gifts must never, never be used before the wedding, but we couldn't resist taking this straight home and hanging it on the wall...

the fifth of may

Happy Cinco de Mayo!  I'll be honest; it's not really a holiday I've ever celebrated, but for some reason, I've been thinking about margaritas and flip flops all day, and when I wandered over to Green Wedding Shoes this afternoon, I was thrilled to find this sweet Inspiration Board dedicated to the day.

Martha has some cute CdM crafts today, too.  Anything that involves tissue paper and scissors works for me...

Enjoy the holiday, everyone.  I'm off to find the Hornitos...