(Specials) Studio Sneak Peek #3!
It is so close I can almost taste it!! I’ve begun spending more and more time in my studio – just sitting, looking around, watching the kiddo fall asleep on the rug…
So far, all my files and boring stuff has been moved in – now just the final touches…like the monsterous piano that has been in my family for years. 
The hubby thinks he can move it himself. I am requiring the strength of at least four men. Looks like that will have to wait until next weekend…unless I have volunteers!! (Remember, I’m a great cook people!)
Here is what I did today though. Yes, even an 8 month pregnant female can put shelves together and hop on a ladder to hang some photographs. Hoooah!
Dirt Cake?!
Growin up, my little brother wanted nothing more than to have a generous helping of “Dirt Cake” on his Birthday.
I figured I would do something different for the Hubby’s Birthday this year, so I thought I’d give “Dirt Cake” a try!
Keep in mind, my hubby doesn’t do dessert. I have seen him eat maybe one slice of cake in the past year. I make mocha brownies – he doesn’t even touch them. Pumpkin Pie? Never. Give him a cookie though and he’s all over them…
So, here is my feeble attempt to get him to eat something different. It’s not pie. It’s not a cake. It’s not brownies, or a stack of cookies.
It’s “Dirt Cake”!
Ahhhh…A Day in The Life…
(Recipe Share) Menu Mondays!
Every single Monday I make up my menu for the week.
I bust out all my favorite cook books, find a pad of paper, and sit down in the afternoon sunshine to dream up some good cookin!
I have heard some people say that they don’t know how I do it.
“How do you plan an entire week’s menu?”
“How do you have time to cook like that?”
It is plain and simple. PLAN. PLAN. PLAN.
First of all, I am a stay at home Mom. Yes, that gives me extra time to make up more elaborate meals. BUT…I normally don’t start cooking until 5:00 or 5:30 on a normal evening. So for those of you that say that I can do it just because I stay at home with my kids…BAH. It takes the same steps and the same amount of time for a stay at home Mom to make a roast, as it does a full time working Mother to do the same. You CAN do it!
Second of all, I know in advance (becuase of planning, go figure!) that on Friday – I am going to be making a very elaborate meal. Therefore I know, that I can actually fry up the bacon and crumble it on Thursday and I can even make my twice baked potatoes when I wake up on Friday morning. That way, come Friday evening as things begin to get crazy, I actually just throw everything together in the last 45 minutes, and voila!
In all reality though, I can do it because I want to do it. I love to cook and I like to take the time to plan and make sure I’m feeding my family well. Don’t get me wrong, I love me some Pizza Hut every now and then – but I also want my children to grow up knowing that Zuchinni right off the plant is fabulous. And that brewing up your own homemade salsa makes friends and neighbors flock to your house like bees to honey.
My goal though? Raise my kids so that when they first come across a boxed and powdered potato – that they scoff and wonder how such a thing could even exist.
Branding!
Jacob was about two months old – and we were invited to go branding in Ismay, MT.
With a newborn in tow…I was nothing short of thrilled. I needed to get out of the house!
I took it as a great opportunity to bust out my camera after months of diaper changes and feedings, and I decided I would share some of my favorite images from that trip with you.
Ahhh…A Day in The Life…
(My Favorite!)
A few moments of silence…
Silence around this house is not golden.
It means there is something going on.
The other day last week, I was in my office twiddling away and I soon realized that I couldn’t hear the kiddo.
I turned on my super-hyper-sensitive-Mom-ears and heard a weird sound…like sand being dropped, or something. Puzzled…I came out of the office and…
The kiddo had climbed up onto the kitchen table, taken my candles out of the centerpiece ( though he neatly set them side by side as you can see) and proceeded to take all the fake sand he could muster and throw it everywhere!
I am not joking when I say that I am still finding sand on my wood floors. And the chairs. And the window sills.
Ahhhhh….A Day in The Life…
Wild Purls
I made the trek into town yesterday and finally caved in…I stopped at Wild Purls.
This store is like my own personal haven. I could have spent my entire day in there; walking around and dreaming up all sorts of projects…maybe sitting on one of their cute and comfy chairs with a crochet hook and a cup of coffee.
To my own surprise, I only purchased enough yarn to spend the cash I had on hand. Normally I could have brought out that trusty plastic card and went crazy! But I refrained…I didn’t want the hubby banning me from any further purchases. 
So here is just a snapshot of the beautiful yarns I was able to take home with me. I already have all of them dreamed up into projects…so I think I’ll spend the rest of my day making one of them come true!
Ahhhh….A Day in The Life…
(Specials) Studio Sneak Peek #2
I had been waiting…and waiting…and waiting for my floors to arrive via UPS – via HomeDepot.com. When they say 3-5 Business days, they must *really* mean, at least two weeks. Go figure!
Anyways, my kind and amazing UPS man brought me Thirteen 40lb. boxes on Monday, filled with these glorious floors I have been waiting to see in the studio. You know, it’s one thing to look at them online and ponder if they will look good or not. Its an entirely different thing to wait for 520lbs of flooring to arrive at your house, and then hope that it looks good!
Well, the hubby spent only three hours installing them last night, and the studio is almost finished! (He’s a freeking work horse…) I woke up this morning, went out to the studio with my cup of coffee and my camera for the big reveal…
All I could say was “WOW!”
It looks exactly as I hoped.
(Nature) It all started with barbed wire fence…
Living in Montana can still facinate me.
We began our mini adventure with a trip to the Park City dump. (Always a real treat let me tell ya…) As the hubby unloaded cardboard boxes and who-knows-what-else, the kiddo and I were playing what I call, the “Hi!” game. I say, “Hi!”…he says “High-eee” back to me. Kind of like this…
As we left, the hubby asked me “Which way?”
I smiled and replied, “You pick.”
We drove North on Valley Creek Road (which is pronouced Valley CRICK Road for all you out of towners…) for a loooooong time before we realized we were going to be in Ryegate soon if we didn’t start heading West. We followed winding and barren County roads, and didn’t see ONE vehicle the entire time. Absolute bliss if you ask me!
What some people might see as a vast landscape of nothing…nothing…and maybe a cow or two…
I see as so much more.
There is unspoken history. Miles and miles, and sections and sections of fences that were built at some point in time. By families. By friends. By neighbors. By Homesteaders back in the late 1800′s. Maybe by a man who wanted change for his family, just as far back as 30 years ago.
Most of the land I drove by today probably hasn’t ever felt a human foot walk across it. That is how awe inspiring this area still is to me. The wind blown prairie around me still sees more tumbleweeds and field mice than it does a human hand.
That is AMAZING.
While the cities of New York and L.A. are being beaten deeper into the Earth by sheer population and loads of tourist buses…there is some of my Montana that still remains as it did almost a hundred years ago.
This is how I view my state. My Montana.
I hope that these images portray what I was blessed enough to experience today. For photographs can merely touch the beauty that lies in these windswept hills and bluffs…
This calf was having the time of it’s life!! The way it was frolicking about made me laugh out loud…
Had to get a photograph of the train for my kiddo…since they are his FAVORITE things in the entire world!
Someone has to be able to explain to me why there are crosses up on the bluffs out here in Stillwater County. It is absolutely facinating to me…some of them are even lit up at certain times of the year.
My favorite image from today…
Have you EVER seen so many tumbleweeds?!!
This abandoned home (seriously a very large home too) is perched up at the top of a hill in the middle of nowhere. Makes you really wonder…
The kiddo’s first haircut!
Well…I should say, it was his first professional cut. (I had taken the kitchen shears to his locks twice before – it gets so unruly at times, something had to be done!)
Off to Cost Cutters we went! He did sooooooo well…I’m so proud of my little man!
Ahhhh…A Day in The Life…
