kim through
   the looking glass

As I’m making dinner, my daughter toddles into the kitchen and comes to me, holding up her little arms.

“Up?” I ask.

“Up!” She says emphatically in her perfect baby girl voice.

I pick her up and snuggle her to me. She pulls back, grinning, and signs “milk” enthusiastically with both hands. I look at the stove - not yet preheated.

“Okay. Let’s go have milk,” I agree.

I settle into a dining room chair and hold her close to me. She nurses, looking up at me. I gaze back at her. She pokes my nose, my eyes, my mouth. I look out the back door to the green trees that lies beyond. Love flows between us.

Such a simple act.

And yet the most powerful act of mothering I know.

If you’re like me and love risotto but think that cooking it is ridiculous, I’ve solved your problem.

Crockpot.

Check out the crockpot risotto recipe HERE. It was ridiculously yummy and I added a bunch of chopped swiss chard to add a veggie. My goodness. I’ll definitely be making it again.

It was my turn to bring a snack to my La Leche League meeting on Thursday morning, and I’d just found a great recipe from my local health food store - Goodness Me - so I thought I’d try it out. These were a big hit and SUPER easy to make - kinda like making rice krispie squares but easier. They’re nut-free and gluten free!

No-Nut Cereal Bars

No-Nut Cereal Bars

1 cup sunflower butter
1 cup agave nectar or honey
5 cups crispy brown rice
1/2 cup dried cranberries
1/2 cup dark chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped dried apricots
1/2 cup pumpkin seeds
1/4 cup flaxseed

In saucepan, bring sunflower butter and agave nectar to a boil. Remove from heat and stir in remaining ingredients. Pour mixture into a buttered 9 x 13 pan. Let sit a coupl eof hours in the refrigerator before cutting into pieces.

I didn’t have any apricot OR cranberry, so I chopped up dried mango and pineapple. Still very delicious!

Just not as often.

And for for long periods of time.

And not generally during the daytime hours.

Vintage Handtowel

I knit this up quite a while ago and I’m absolutely in love with it! It’s the pattern Mitered Hanging Towel from CanadianLiving.com. It’s a 100% cotton towel (you can even tell from this photo that someone has just used it to try their hands!) and it’s the best hand towel I have. I find that normally hand towels in the kitchen smell after a few days’ use. This thing’s been hanging on the oven for weeks (months? I’m not sure …) and nary a smell wafts from it nor your hands after using it. I just need to fix one little thing on it - the buttonhole is a titch too big and the button, although large, keeps sliding out, so I need to sew the hole closed a bit - nothing too big!

I’m working on another one - my idea was originally to have a matching hand towel and dishcloth for every day of the week - but it’s coming slowly. It doesn’t help that I just screwed up the pattern … that generally tends to immobilize me in my knitting - I truly hate fixing knitting mistakes … especially ones that take up an entire row. I think I might just go with the mistake and keep going. It’ll just be a little different in the striping pattern … and maybe that’s fun?

Did I tell you that Brad and I got Battlestar Galactica season 4.5? And polished it off in a matter of two weeks? And that the night we finished the series I layed awake for 2+ hours thinking about the characters.

Yeah. I know.

Brad sent me a link to this article: John Scalzi’s Guide to the Most Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design. If you’re a science fiction fan, or even if you enjoy a good FAIL, take a look. It’s hilarious!

… in the blogosphere. Or at least it seems that way to me.

My poor Gwen is sick After her bath this afternoon, around 4:00, she began shivering. I assumed it was because she was cold and wet, so I dried her off and dressed her. She cried while I dressed her - which is very abnormal for her - and was clingy and nursing frequently. Her toes hit me and they were like ice as were her little hands. I felt her forehead and her abdomen - burning hot. Her axillary temperature was 101.5. Read the rest of this entry »

A blog I frequent, Sarahthedoula, wrote about the language of worship and was asking for suggestions for decent worship music … this quote was really what intrigued me:

For years I have heard people like Michael Frost express the idea that most of the Christian music on the market today is more like a love song than a worship or faith song. I disagreed. I felt that the songs I was singing accurately expressed how I felt about my relationship to God. And then I got married. I suddenly realized that if I substituted N’s name at every mention of God/Jesus/Holy Spirit, the song would still make sense. In fact, it felt like it made more sense.

Brad and I have been in a bit of a funk lately - angry at God, disappointed in The Church (as a whole … not specifically mine). It’s been a long time since I’ve talked to God or sat through a church service or listened to any uplifting worship music, so when I first read her post, I didn’t think I had anything to contribute. Read the rest of this entry »

What with the 15% tax credit by the government this year, the coming birth of our second child, and a vastly useless kitchen, we’ve decided to go ahead and renovate this fall.

Our current dining room will become the kitchen, our current kitchen will become the dining room. The current wall between the two will be mostly torn down, allowing for a beautiful flooding of light from a massive south-facing window into the new kitchen space. Then, we will be tearing out a portion of wall between our living room and the soon-to-be dining room - a portion that, if looked at in the right light, you can tell was drywalled in and used to be a double door opening.

I’m so darn excited!

We have chosen oak inset face frame, raised panel cabinets like those below (with concealed hinges) in a stain that is a similar shade to our beautiful hardwood floors.

We aren’t yet sure what we’re doing for our countertop and/or backsplash, as we would like to go with either a natural stone or solid surface - neither of which we can really afford right now. We were thinking of using Paperstone, but the colours are just too dark for our small space and dark cabinetry. We may just put down plywood for a year or two. Either way, we’ll likely stick with a neutral light colour similar to our flooring. My favourite colour of Corian solid surface countertop is Granola (pictured left) … I think you all know why! We may, though, go with a more solid colour so as not to take away from the effect of the wood and to bring the room in (as per Brad’s brother Dave’s advice).

For our flooring, we’re likely going with Torly’s Cork Flooring, likely in the colour Burl Sand Stone (pictured right), which in the Torly’s catalog looks fantastic next to white trim.

So that’s my current update! We’re not yet sure exactly what things are going to happen when, but we’re in the process of thinking about it!

Dada, hi, bye-bye, and apple to our list of words.

MISSING:

Infant. Named Gwen. All I have is this toddler …

And I’m not sure where she came from …

I know, I know. It’s been a LOOOOOONG time since I’ve gotten to update you all on Gwen via pictures. Since the beginning of July, actually! I totally lost my camera cord and couldn’t even find the memory card/USB reader we bought a couple of years ago so I could NOT get my pictures off my camera! But, thankfully, I found both the card reader AND the camera cord and now we’re up and running again. I figured I’d shoot some pics up here and show you how much she’s grown in the past month! Read the rest of this entry »