rain rain go away

beautiful and terrible.

I'm so outsided

Last night Derek was working on the fence and I was doing a final glaze and firing for my pottery class, so Luke had to be otherwise attended to. My friend Wendy said she'd take him along to her son's baseball game. I knew Luke would be just thrilled, so I kept it to myself all day and just before we got in the car I told him the wonderful news - You are going to a baseball game!! Then I was glad I hadn't told him earlier in the day because the full five minutes in the car were filled with:

I'm going to a baseball game and HIT the ball I'm outsided about baseball I like baseball I will play baseball Josh and Luke will play baseball and hit the ball and throw the ball and kick it? no, we will hit it and I like playing the baseball game and running and hitting the ball and I'm so outsided to go to a baseball game with Josh and Wendy we will HIT the ball I am so outsided Luke is outsided for baseball

Luckily for Luke the game was outside. He was so outsided.

don't look too closely at this fabric.

I thought by drawing your attention to the fabric I might draw your eye away from my poor seams. So it was fun, it was quick (one hour of sewing), it was cheap (30 cents for the pillowcase!!), and now it's ready to put on a little girl.

I don't really have time for this

but I'm having a hard time motivating myself to do anything else, and this project is exciting! A pillowcase dress. Total cost: less than a dollar.

Why don't more of my friends have girls? All these boys, and SO many cute little dresses to be made out of vintage pillowcases...ah well. This one goes to Cammy when it's done - which I think will be this afternoon!

Where's My John-Deere?

Is the first thing I hear in the morning, and the last thing I hear before bed.

We made a wonderful discovery today at the grocery store. Wait. I should go back first. Last week Luke and I went to Superstore and he screamed and wailed and cried in the cart, and wanted this and that and of course he couldn't have it all and was terribly unhappy. So finally I let him walk along beside the cart, holding onto the cart with one hand. Well, that got out of control in a blink of an eye and the shopping trip ended with me in tears, and Luke in the middle of a full scale tantrum until we sat in the car with the doors closed and I shouted, "We're never going to the grocery store again!!!"...and then we drove home in total silence.

So today we went to Co-op, which is a smaller store (not just in name), with three fire engine carts that children can sit in and pretend to steer, cashiers who bag your groceries for you, and shorter but wider aisles. The truth is I really like Co-op for these reasons, but sometimes they don't have everything I need (things like sheets, or rugs, or my favorite deodorant) and I don't want to make more than one stop so I go to Superstore. But today Co-op got the winning vote. I may never shop at Superstore again. As I pushed Luke along in his fire engine a woman from the bakery walked out and offered Luke a cookie. When Rob (Derek's cousin's husband - and who also works at Co-op) saw Luke with his cookie he said, "I bet he knows where to get those!".
I asked, "what do you mean?"
"Well I'm sure by now he runs right over to the bakery when you get here!"
"Huh?"
"They always give out cookies to the children."

Luke sat nicely in his fire engine the entire grocery shopping trip. When we got home he was covered in chocolate, but we made it home with no tears and no shouting. Co-op wins the day. I may have to find a new deodorant.

Master Recipe #1 Artisan Bread Dough

Before you jump right in I will give you my own baking notes.

• I used all purpose and whole wheat flour combined and had excellent results. Also, I used regular yeast and everything rose very well (not sure if it's exactly the same results, but it worked).
  
• The spooning the flour out may seem a little ridiculous, but if you dig a measuring cup into a bag of flour, you'll end up with lots more flour than if you spoon it in because you're compacting it while you scoop - so just try this one.
  
• To get the plastic wrap to stick, wet the edge of your bowl just a little.
• Your dough may rise faster if your kitchen is warmer than 72F, but beware putting your dough outside to rise - beasts like bread dough more than they like bread.
• Risen dough should look about twice the size of original mass, and will sink a bit when you begin to handle it. That's what the second rise is for.
  
• The boule is only one way to use this dough. I made pizza crust out of it Friday, following the Foccacia recipe (just shaping it differently), and it was fantastic. The book also lists baguettes, naan, pita bread, breadsticks and fougasse, rolls, and batard, all from this basic recipe.
  
• I don't know what kind of midget volleyball the author has been playing, but 1/2 recipe of bread dough is not the size of a volleyball. Just divide it about in half and you're good. Artisan dough is supposed to result in every loaf being unique. Go with the flow.
• It's important your cookie sheet does not have sides, if you intend to slide your dough onto the stone after rising on the cookie sheet. However, when I made pizza crust I set the dough to rise on a cookie sheet with sides(grease it first!), put on my toppings and then just put the cookie sheet on the stone in the oven to bake (Does the stone give off a different kind of heat than an oven element? I assumed so, and still included the stone, even though my pizza was on a cookie sheet too.)
• I do not own a broiler pan. I know, how can I get through the day? I used two metal pie pans instead. I worried that glass might break when you put the water into it hot, so metal it was, and it seemed to work.
• I never measured the internal temperature of the loaf. I just left it in for a solid half hour (turning it half-way because my oven bakes unevenly) and it was good. The pizza took a little less time with very little toppings, and a little more time with heavy sauce and cheese.
• Lastly, I found I could form the boule without flouring a work surface, just holding the dough in my hands and sprinkling flour. This was easy, I ended up handling the dough less, and my favorite - less clean-up.
  

So here goes.


Artisan Bread Dough #1

6 1/2 C unbleached all-purpose or bread flour
1 1/2 T instant or bread machine yeast
1 1/2 T fine table or kosher salt
3 C lukewarm water

1. Measure. Spoon the flour into a measuring cup, level with a knife or your finger, then dump the flour into the mixing bowl.

2. Mix. Add the yeast and salt to the flour. Stir together with a wooden spoon or Danish dough whisk. Pour in the water and stir together until just moistened. Beat 40 strokes, scraping the bottom and sides of the bowl, until the dough forms a lumpy, stick mass.

3. Rise. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and let rise at room temperature (72 F, 22 C) in a draft-free place for 2 hours or until the dough has risen nearly to the top of the bowl and has a sponge-like appearance.

4. Use right away or refrigerate. Use that day or place the dough, covered with plastic wrap, in the fridge for up to 9 days before baking.

Boule
(photographed)

1/2 recipe prepared Easy Artisan Dough, about the size of a volleyball
1/2 C cornmeal
2 C hot water

1. Form. Place dough portion on a floured surface and dust very lightly with flour. Flour your hands. Working the dough as little as possible and adding flour as necessary, form the dough into a 12 inch round. Smooth the dough with your hands to form a soft, non-sticky skin. Pinch any seams together. Lightly flour any sticky places on the dough. The dough should feel soft and smooth all over, like a baby's skin, but not at all sticky.

2. Rest. Sprinkle the cornmeal on the cookie sheet and place the dough round on the cornmeal. Cover with a tea towel and let rest at room temp for 40 minutes.

3. Prepare oven for artisan baking. About 30 minutes before baking, place a broiler pan on the lower shelf and a baking stone on the middle shelf of the oven. Preheat to 450 degrees.

4. Slash boule with serrated knife. Using a serrated knife, make three evenly spaced slashes, about 1/2 inch deep, across the boule, exposing the moist dough under the surface.

5. Slide boule onto baking stone and add water to broiler pan. With a quick forward jerk of your arms, slide the dough round from the cookie sheet to the stone. Then pour the hot water into the broiler pan and close the oven door.

6. Bake. Bake for 27-30 minutes or until the crust is a medium dark brown and an instant-read thermometer inserted in the center of the loaf registers at least 190 degreesF. Remove the loaf with oven mitts and cool on a wire rack.

recipe from 200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads by Judith Fertig

I am considering

taking some time off from blogging. I'm looking at a few busy weeks here getting ready for the Back 40 Festival (where I'll have a booth featuring my photography), trying to get my business name solidified, trying to pick up a few photography jobs for the summer, and then all the usual business of gardening, doing dishes, etc. I would still occasionally post pictures, I think. I haven't decided how long this hiatus might last, or when it might begin exactly, but I'll let you know.

this is not a perfect splice, but you get the picture right?

Today is a holiday here in Canada so Derek and his Dad are out working on our very own fence! It's exciting to watch it coming up. I can hardly wait for the privacy and stress-relief it will be to have my son contained! It's raining lots this long weekend, and that's slowed us down a bit, but with a few evenings and another Saturday of work we should be able to polish it off.
This weekend was also Derek and my 6th anniversary. I picked this bouquet from our yard and put it in one of the champagne flutes from our wedding (which we never actually drank out of! but they're still special, and lovely -thanks to my sister Sarah for thinking of details like this).

It was also a weekend filled with bread-making success. I got a book from the library called "200 Fast and Easy Artisan Breads" and I am really truly thrilled with the results. The boys ate fresh bread and jam for coffee break this morning! What a treat. You use the same easy recipe (easy! easy!) and you can make several different breads using just a little different baking technique. They have quite a long list of tools you need, but I've been having luck with improvisational tools. And the really wonderful thing is that you can make this dough, let it rise once, then keep it in the fridge for up to nine days! I have only tried it in the fridge for two days, but I'm thinking this bread will be in the fridge almost all the time from now on. All you have to do is take it out, shape it, let it rise for 40 minutes, then bake it for half an hour. It's so simple that we will be having fresh bread a LOT more often.

Care Group BBQ

You heard right. We attended a care group BBQ. When these lovely people heard what a hard time we were having getting involved at church they invited us to their group! So Derek has been teaching on Colossians the first and third Tuesdays of the month (for three sessions), and we have greatly enjoyed visiting with the members of this care group - in church and out. We like the group for many reasons, including the fact that it is multi-generational. Luke has a lot of new aunties and grandmas. Last night was the wrap-up, end of the year shindig. We had it in one of the member's back yard, and it was just gorgeous! The food was delicious, the flowers were blooming, the sun was shining, and Luke was getting all the attention he could ever hope for. He even managed to wrangle his way into this all ladies photo...such a charmer.

I wanna fim!

translation: I want to swim!

Our first real blossoms -
Johnny-jump-ups don't count,
even though I adore them.

I love the fuzzy caterpillar deal-ios on the iris. Makes me want to pet them.

Mis-speak

"Repeat after me: God is great and God is good."
Luke: Got is gate and Got is gut
"Let us thank Him for our food."
Luke: Tank 'im for food.
"By His hands we all are fed."
Luke: Hands are fed.
"Thank-you Lord for daily bread."
Luke: Bread, yeah. Amen!

.............................................................................

Luke: I'm playing ass-kicking game, Mama!
What?!
Luke: I'm playing ass-kicking.
What?!
Luke: I'm playing hockey and ass-kicking!
...
...
Ice-skating!!! Oh you're ice skating! That's good.

..............................................................................

Laura: Do you know what time it is, Derek?
Luke: Derk, I wake up at seven-thirty. Is it seven-thirty?
Derek: Hey, that's Daddy to you, pipsqueak.
Luke: I'm Nook. You're Derk, Daddy.

..............................................................................

Luke: I want a hamba-igg-ater.
...
and a french fry!
...
no, I really want kep-chup.

If you keep a kid

your flowerbeds will be full of strange holes and sticks coming up in weird places.
your garden may be more attractive to Tonkas than the sand box.
your clothes may be covered in dirt, snot, food and spit up.
your hair may not have been washed in ten days? no eight? um, a while.
your pantry may be filled with baggies of half eaten fish crackers.
your car may be covered in hard little raisins and reek from splashes of old milk.
diapers may be the only laundry that gets washed semi-regularly.
eating dinner while facing your plate and not getting up 18 times for different things seems like a half-remembered dream.
dusty furniture is the new black.
your biggest surprise of the day is finding cheese in a sippy cup behind the couch which you were certain contained milk once upon a time.
you find dirty dishes mixed in with the clean ones because somebody was trying to help.
but you have a kid.
now isn't that something?

Sometimes I get well down the path to insanity before I realize that this is what it's all about. I get wrapped up in these frustrations and my own sadness over not being pregnant yet, or the debt we have to pay off yet, or how hard it is to be away from my family, and sometimes I even cry before something or somebody smacks me over the head and says, "Dude." (I grew up in Southern California - my conscience often sounds like a surfer). "Dude. Look at your son."
And then I just sit down, on the insanity path, and look like a crazy person just sitting, and am in awe that I get to watch this person growing right before my eyes.
Put dinner on hold, put the broom down, stop cleaning up behind the little tarzanian devil, and just watch ...and play.

sometimes it seems to me

that you can only keep one or the other:

house
or
kids.

greenhouses galore

We went to Carman and Morden to visit greenhouses with Helene today and Luke was quite a tired guy after all the heat and sun and exercise! He's already in bed (8:30pm), and I'm tired enough to be on my way shortly. We had a very good day, and you can expect pictures of our purchases in the next few days. The weather is supposed to be perfect for yard work - it has been the last three days and you can bet we've taken advantage of it. See our vegetable garden? Derek got me wood chips and made me a proper compost bin. What a guy.

piano repair

Conversation:

Luke: I hear birdies singin' Mama.
Mama: They sing so pretty don't they?
Luke: They're singin' happy birthday to YOU, Mama!
Mama: To me?
Luke: No, to me, Mama.
Mama: But it's not your birthday for another month and a half!
Luke: It's my birthday now Mama. I hear birdies singin'.

A dog with no name

Okay, I won't even begin to make excuses for our history with dogs.
I will just ask you to look at these pictures and tell me
this little boy doesn't need a puppy.
Luke and the dog have an arrangement.
Weiner dog will eat his vegetables for him,
and dig in the dirt with him,
and let Luke dress him up like a cowboy.
And Luke loves him back.
Cat on the other hand,
hasn't shown her face in 18 hours.

I have a soft spot for dachshunds.
I will give my Mom credit (blame?) for that one.
How could we say no to this hairy little man?
He came home to live with us yesterday.
At his previous home he was called Puddles.
"Puddles", like "Prince" or "Peaches"
just won't cut it around here,
so at lunch we discussed names and these
two are at the top of the list so far:
Inigo
and
Linus

A Tree to Call Home

So, some of you are wondering why I'm changing my business name and how I came up with this new name and logo. And I will tell you.

I felt like Laura Ann Thiessen Photography was not only bulky, but didn't quite shape what I want to do with my at-home business. I wanted a name that could cover my multitude of interests/skills including photography, sewing, pottery (potentially?), design and anything else I come across that I want to pursue in the future. Rachel Regier suggested I use the term "mixed media" instead of photography and finally I had the phrase I was looking for...now for a name.

Last Summer Katie Elias and I sold homemade goods at the farmer's market here in Winkler. We called ourselves Farrago (far-rey-go), meaning "a confused mixture", which I thought was cool and definitive, if somewhat foggy for people with very small vocabularies (truthfully, I'd never heard the word until I looked up 'diverse' in a thesaurus). However, this name wasn't working for me personally. I felt a little stunted by it. It just wasn't open enough to spark any creative imaginings for me. So I continued to look.

I was reading "The Runaway Bunny" to Luke over and over and over and over again (he gets stuck on particular books), and suddenly this childish prose seemed to hit me over the head like a bell clapper in full swing. The baby bunny says, "I am going to run away" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will follow you!", and the baby bunny proposes several different ways to get away from his mother all of which the mother has a clever answer to. The bunny finally says, "I will become a bird and fly away from you" and the mother bunny says, "Then I will become a tree that you come home to". As you can see, this phrase, while being such a beautiful spark for creativity, leaves me once again with the problem of length. So with some help and suggestions from friends I managed to maintain the image and trim the wording down to "A Tree to Call Home", which I am very pleased with.

Along with a group of my fifth-grade peers, I memorized The Runaway Bunny for an oral language competition. We didn't win any awards, but I always liked the pictures, and was very pleased when Derek bought me the book to add to my children's literature collection for my birthday several years ago. I love the quirky pictures (a rabbit-shaped topiary and a bunny in the sky with wings), and now that I have moved far from my own mother I connect with the story on a more personal level.

"Have a carrot" says mother bunny, and they do. I want to have lots more carrots with my own little bunny before he flies away, which is why business stuff is sort of moving in slow motion. It's really worth it, and in the meantime I get to develop neat ideas like this new business name, which I think feels less stiff and since it has a story (or several) behind it, invites conversation.

The logo of the tree is sort of a combination of many trees that I've been attracted to over the years. The Visalia tree, the Buttonwillow tree, a random wooden tree that I found in a thrift shop, and the elm tree in my parent's back yard that Derek and I were married under. I am very fond of these trees, and when I imagined a tree for my logo I couldn't pick just one, so I tried to work in elements of each.

A few of my favorite things

This weekend I loved:
french fries and ice cream with my boys (my mother's day treat)
new plants in the ground
a finished porch railing
2 dollar perennials from a plant sale
weeds in the compost pile
freshly mown grass
tea and bagels on the back porch in the sun
a not-quite two year old who wore gitch all weekend with no accidents!
BBQ'd hot dogs
sleeping in
waking up to a clean house
fresh baked chocolate chip cookies
Luke licking the cookie dough off the scraper
steak dinner with family
purple and yellow johnny jump-ups
warm sun