Creativity Stew

Been thinking about ways to get creative, getting a jump on Christmas presents and the idea of making things again together with the boys as a part of our school time this fall. All that to say...I have a bunch of fabulosity to unload out of my brain tonight before I go to sleep.

Image by The Library of Congress via Flickr

Drink it in, Friends..."The world is so full of a number of things..."

These might be a good way to deal with our burgeoning feather collection, and my own insatiable desire to pick up and haul home any pretty feathers we find. Feathers as useful gift. Genius. And how much fun would the boys have, color dipping them?
Oodles.

Image via Wikipedia

Fresh Ricotta. I think it has my number. I have been listening to a lot of The Splendid Table. I hear all the past shows as podcasts while I drive Aaron to work and he does math with Ru in the backseat and the little boys listen or look at books. So inspiring! Seriously, I wish all of you could start every day with a huge infusion of culinary brilliance like that. I drive back to the house salivating and full of ideas, fresh ricotta is my latest yen. I especially like the list on the right hand side of that link with ideas for how to use ricotta. I feel like lasagna and cannoli is it for my own personal exposure to the cheese. And then, when I have made my own fresh ricotta...I will make this with it. *slobber slobber slobber*

Image by Rooey202 via Flickr

Maybe I had too much Tasha Tudor in my life but I always kind of fancy the romance of animal versions of our human holidays. (Tasha always talks about The Animals Christmas for example) I have this fluttery fantasy of making these little ornaments on a Valentine's Day afternoon with the boys to hang outside our windows for the birds, so that they feel their own little bit of love. I had no idea Knox gelatin was the key to those bird seed cluster thingies, by the way.

Am looking around this old house at the dated bits and wondering what hardware I could update in an hour like these clever diy bloggers did. Oil rubbed bronze spray paint, here I come!

Image by alsokaizen via Flickr

I was recently given a little wooden, windowseat style storage bench (Yay!!!) which I put in the boys room but turns out they don't use it...I thought they'd plop there with story books  but no such luck. They want cozy seating for storytime...so they head to the office loveseat or even their beds and leave the bench all bare. I have new plans to paint the bench a grown-up color (its all bright primary colors right now) and move it downstairs to the entryway (Convenient shoe donning spot and secret mitten storage location all-in-one? Yes please!) but moving the bench means I again have no home for the out of season or back-up blankets, quilts and flannel sheets. I have been plotting some rolling underbed storage beneath the boys bunks, imagining high glamour in the form of plastic Rubbermaid products but check this out, Holmes! Is that not hot? Am now keeping my eyes peeled for loner dresser drawers.

Image by adwriter via Flickr

And finally, in closing. I can't think of a single, blessed reason why it would be useful or appropriate or helpful for me to make these cookies. Oh, but I want to! Aren't they beautiful? Indian dinner party anyone?

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How to Blow Easter Eggs

Everyone I know hard boils their Easter eggs, but I like to blow them. To be perfectly plain we usually split our bounty in half and hard boil some and blow some because who doesn't like a good hardboiled egg, right? When I was a girl my mom taught us all how to blow an egg and it was part of our roster of special family traditions. Growing up I didn't know anyone who decorated hollow eggs and now, as an adult I have still, fantastically enough, never have knowingly met a single person who knew how to blow eggs much less anyone who really does it. Kind of fun to have a corner on something small.

I love the delicacy of the finished product:  such a feather light form of natural sculpture. I also love that you can keep the eggs out at room temperature. You can use them to decorate, keep them around for keepsakes or even give them as gifts because they are really art, not food; nature brought inside for appreciation....every bit as beautiful as driftwood sculpture or framed pressed flowers.

A finished, hollow egg.

I also love the niggly work of spearing the tiny blowing holes with our pearl-headed sewing pin (the pearl is key!). I think of how it must feel to be the tiny baby chick inside one of these shells, digging at it for your very life. Kind of a daunting task. It must be a major boost to see that first pin-prick of light shafting through the walls.

Here is how to blow your own hollow Easter eggs:

1. Stab a single tiny hole in one end of a raw egg.
2. Stab repeatedly at the other end in a circle about the size of the head of your pearl-headed pin.
3. Put the tiny hole to your lips and sealing tightly to the egg like a trumpet player, blow! (Be careful to hold your egg firmly but gently it is easy to get carried away with the exertion of blowing and crush the shell in your hands.)
4. The white will stream out first which is the hardest part to expell (Perservere! And occasionally shake the egg!) and then the yolk will come in golden rivulets, it's the easy part at the end.
5. Then rinse the eggs to remove all traces of yolk and white and leave to dry....then decorate away!

 

Ru was big enough to do one himself this year for the first time.

The "scrambled egg" leftovers we'll cook and eat on Easter morning.

Slightly over half a dozen, transluscent, hollow eggs. :)