Finally, the snow is all melted and the temps are rising! The ducks are getting back in the water again, but into the small water tub I have for them and NOT their wading pool.  Don’t you think this would make for some nasty drinking water?  Why don’t they care?? 

Pretty soon I’m gonna need to clean the poop off the patio and get them focused on the back of the yard.  I also got my first egg again since November, woo hoo!!

More snow last weekend.  This means the ducks still aren’t laying eggs.  Seems to me they have their days and nights mixed up.  They stay under the deck all day when it’s bright and beautiful.  When it gets dark or starts to snow, they go to the middle of the yard and they sleep there all night.  Isn’t that backwards?

Kacey doesn’t particularly like the snow.  The neighbor dogs always want to play, but she won’t have much of that!

The only great thing about this white stuff is that it keeps me inside and addicted to my sewing machine.  I finished my second baby quilt for the month, which in itself is incredible!   That big word, FINISH, isn’t usually in my vocabulary.  So here’s one of my favorite boys, Arvo, with his new blankie.  I used the abundant scraps I had from the fabulous freecycle giveaway to make a pretty cute bug blanket. 

Big brother, Nico, pointed out all the bugs for Arvo.

I’m pretty sure that Nico has much more fun when the boys come over than Arvo does at this stage of the game.  Arvo just wants his mama.  Understandable!

I am a thrifty kinda girl!  So much so that I can’t even bring myself to throw away scraps like this….

leftover from the multiple string quilts I’ve been working on.  Really now, what can be done with pieces so darn small?

I’ve got a new quilt, thanks to ideas from a few different quilters, Crazy Mom Quilts and I Love Baby Quilts.  Crazy Mom did this fabulous Ticker Tape quilt.  What a great scrap using idea!  And the mini size baby quilts are a super idea over at I Love Baby Quilts.  Why does an infant in a carrier need much more blanket than this? 

The finished size is approximately 24″ x 24″.  I started it last week during the Super Bowl and finished it mid week, which for me is an accomplishment just to finish something!  Does anyone else sew at times on their coffee table like this?

Absolutely enjoyable!  And if you want to make this little blankey, just follow my brief show and tell….

Start by making a quilt sandwich.  White cotton, batting and a soft flannel for the flip side. 

Pin together and now you’re ready to put your scraps on AND quilt at the same time. 

There really is no rhyme or reason to it.  Start putting pieces all over the top side until you’ve covered the whole thing.

Keep going and going and going.

I used a satin binding so when this little baby gets a little older, he’ll love to rub that satin right up to his cheek (or suck on it!)  and take it with him everywhere he goes ;-)  He’ll be addicted, just like my oldest daughter was to her first blanket!

Of course, the ultimate product is after it has been washed and has that great crinkle and softness.  The edges frayed really nice too! 

 Nope, I didn’t forget about you duck followers.  They’re hangin’ around the back porch during these cold days.  I’m such a nice girl, I put some straw under the deck for them. 

I guess I’m just ASKING them to poop all over my patio!

If you don’t freecycle, then I’m gonna show you how! First, go to www.freecycle.org  and look for your city.  FREECYCLE is a nonprofit group of people (you and me) who are giving (and getting) stuff for free in their own towns.  The whole purpose is to reuse and keep stuff out of landfills.  Membership is free!  I like free and I’m guessing you do too! 

The best thing about freecycle is you can get it right to your inbox.  Therefore, you won’t miss much if you’re around a computer.  I jumped on an email a few weeks ago that said “QUILTING, FABRICS, NOTIONS… cleaning out my sewing room”.  I replied quickly and was the lucky recipient of things I knew not what they would be, that’s the most fun! 

I decided the next morning, on my way to “Eula’s” house, that I better scoop the snow from my truck bed, not knowing how much stuff I would be collecting.  She did mention that her husband would LOAD it for me if I pulled up to the garage!  Let me show you my treasures….

You talk about a good time dumping all this stuff out on my living room floor!  Even the dog had to check it out.

There were bags and bags of fabric, quilt books, quilt magazines, thread, ribbon, etc.  Oh my gosh, did I have a good time!

I found lots of “quilts in progress” as I like to call them.  Squares, triangles, pieces, ready to be sewn!

Lots and lots of random squares.

And then there were multiple bags of plaids, perfect for a man quilt!  Unless someone can give me any other ideas??

But maybe the most fun for me was all the bright fish and bug prints.  OMG!!  Let’s just say these will keep me busy for weeks.  I’ve already started at least 6 quilts with just these prints.  I’ll be showing them off real soon!

SO, what are you waiting for?  Get yourself freecycling, NOW!

Seeing that this is my first winter with ducks, I have determined that snow eggs may be  harder to find than even hidden eggs.  Really now, can you see an egg in this mess of white?

Luckily, or not, the girls quit laying eggs after our last crazy snowstorm.   This was the last egg and we haven’t seen one since.  I guess I can understand their confusion and frustration.  No grass, no worms, no mud, no large masses of water.  What IS there to do around here?

They hunker down in snow drifts.

Use one trail to go back and forth down the yard which looks to me something like a cha-cha.

Peek through the kitchen door to see what leftovers might be coming their way.

Continously poop all over my deck!  I try to chase them off, but they don’t seem too scared.

And then they give me this look and cock their neck, “Who, ME?”

Right now my obsession really has nothing to do with ducks, except that I do worry about them a little too much. They spend most days sitting in snow drifts and tonight we’ll see how they do in the minus temps. So far they don’t seem to be fazed by any of our nasty midwest storms, except that I can’t find any eggs.

THIS has become my indoor addiction…

I found it on a fabulous quilter’s website, Film In The Fridge .  I dreamed about it so much that I HAD to make it!   I’m hoping to make it king sized if I can stick with it long enough.  Of course, Kacey makes sure all blankets in the house are up to code (her code….COMFY!).

But then I decided I needed something to work on while I watched TV, so I struggled for a day and knitted my first sock!

“WOW!” you say?  Yep, I’m pretty proud of this one only because it was my first attempt.  Let’s just say after hours of youtube instruction and another hour on the phone with my superb knitter friend, Lauren, I finished sometime around midnight.  Mind you I started at 8 in the morning with very few breaks! 

Hubby says the per hour cost of my single sock may not be cost effective. 

What? I have to duplicate it!!??  AHHHHHHH!!!

And that means the holidays are over and we can move on to new things! I get a little Scroogey this time of year, maybe because I’ve worked in retail for so long and that puts a whole different spin on Christmas. Speaking of Christmas, boy did we get a doozey of a snowstorm! 

I was concerned and curious to where the girls might be during this 10 inch dump of snow.  Through the wind, the snow, the ice….they were out in the middle of the yard! 

Yes, they have a house, heat, water, grain, straw, all the comforts of a duck home, and yet they choose to sit right out in the middle of everything……

Then I thought, maybe they just can’t get to their home, so I made a path from the patio all the way down to their house, thinking this might make them stay inside that cozy little house of theirs.

No matter what I do, they really like staying up by MY house and pooping on MY patio and yesterday I saw them in short flight to get up on the deck!  Then they sunned themselves there all day and at least I ended up with frozen duck poop all over the place.

This is what I learned this week, once again, not to worry too much about duck housing.  They are just as happy under a patio table or under a deck or sitting smack dab in the middle of the yard.  And temperatures, you ask?  Well, we’ve had some 1 degree evenings that don’t seem to phase them a bit! 

Now, snow eggs?  That’s a post for next time.

I received the nicest email today from my friend, Tim Byrd (of course), who this fall “adopted” my original three ducks.  Sounds like Sonny, Cher and Ringo are doing well in his wonderful pond and as the picture shows, are still sticking together.

This last month the falling leaves in the backyard have created a real game in my life.  It really is an egg hunt now!

When the leaves are really deep I have to follow the swishing sounds of the ducks running across the yard just to find them.  But the eggs, let’s talk about the difficulty of finding THEM in this mess!

These are crazy hard to find!  At least I do know that the most I can gather is three. 

The nest they’ve made under the tree is an easy spot.

Also easy to find in the yard IF we’ve raked the day before.  Can you see 2 eggs out there?

Another easy nest to spot.

My favorite are the eggs they lay on the patio and then I only have to walk a couple of feet for my breakfast, dodging duck poop all the way!

Then came Thanksgiving.  We were out of town so my mom was on egg watch.  Day after day she would tell me they weren’t laying.  We all decided it might have been the weather change and they weren’t fond of the cold.  I came home and still couldn’t find any eggs.  I had come to the conclusion that they just weren’t going to lay much through the winter, until just a few days ago I discovered an amazing sight…….

In a small space between my compost can and the fence I spied a very large pile of eggs!!  OMG!

28 eggs to be exact!  The downside of all these nests is that they hardly lay in the same place more than once or twice.  And as of this morning I’m already missing 5.  It’s makin’ me crazy!

I was combing the farmers market a few weeks ago and spied some of the most beautiful pumpkins. One of the vendors commented on how much her husband loved a pie made out of these particular blue pumpkins, Jarrahadale (I just call them BLUE pumpkins :-).  So I bought a blue pumpkin and then a small regular pie pumpkin. 

The inside of the blue is a gorgeous orange.  After I cut open the pumpkin I just put it on a cookie sheet and baked about 30 min. in the oven to soften the meat.  I did the pie pumpkin the same way and then ran each “brand” of pumpkin through the food processor to make the mash.  I bagged them in 2 cup increments, which is usually what a pie calls for, and froze them for later. 

Then I had a FABULOUS idea!  How ’bout a PUMPKIN PIE PARTY where the guests each bring a pie made with different types of pumpkin.  This is what we did…..same crust, same pie plate, same recipe (oops, we used duck eggs and I bet no one else did!), DIFFERENT pumpkin. 

We had the blue pumpkin (the darkest brown in color), the regular orange pie pumpkin (light orange), the Libby’s canned pumpkin (far back) and then we threw in a frozen pie for real taste comparison (FYI-Marie Calendar’s).

We did some very serious tasting :-)  Whipped cream was NOT allowed until we had tasted the raw pumpkin pie.  We tagged each pie with a color tab and then put that same color tab on each plate on each piece.

Lots of discussion went into each taste……

And after all the tasting, cussing and discussing, we arrived at a majority answer to our question….

What IS the best pumpkin for the ultimate Pumpkin Pie??

Canned Libby’s won!  We all decided it might be because our generation is used to the canned product.  We thought that the Libby’s had the best texture and flavor of them all.  We did agree that if you didn’t taste them side by side, there might not be much difference.  Sadly, the frozen pie lacked flavor next to the others.  I secretly was hoping frozen might be a contender!

So, next time you’re looking to go all out homemade, save yourself some time and use the can AND the Libby’s recipe!

PS… NO, Libby’s has no idea who I am or where I live and did not pay me for this adventure  ;-)