Boreal Witch

It's been a long time since I went to a Renaissance Faire. (High school, in fact - and sadly, that one was disappointing.)

This Faire, however, was pretty amazing, boasting that it was one of the largest and best in the country. We attended was Steampunk weekend, so I dusted off my old Halloween costume, added gears to my boots, and reinvented my hat and goggles.

The boys, possibly driven by my enthusiasm, also wanted to dress up. I balk at paying ridiculous prices for things I can make myself, even if I am crunched for time. I figured knight tunics made from old pillowcases would be simple enough to make and (if the boys liked them enough) reusable for Halloween.

They accessorized with belts and PVP swords and...their costumes turned out surprisingly well!

The Bristol Faire is open during the summers only because there is no electricity - which means no path lights. Even the rides are human powered. The boys were pushed on a pirate ship by two surly pirates. They rode ponies. Arthur was even tall enough to jump up and down on a gigantic trampoline.

Once the boys discovered the kid's area (complete with wooden pirate ship), they refused to leave. Nothing in the whole place could compete.

Until the sandbox.

If there's one thing these boys love more than a playground, it's something to dig in.

They had such a good time at the Faire that the next day they built their own Renaissance Faire out of Legos, with a little help from me. It took us the whole day to get it just right. We even included rides (human powered!), games, bridge with ducks, an ice cream cart, a pretzel guy, and an R2-D2.

You know something makes an impression on them when they replicate it in Lego form.

Blessed be.

Normally I don't quilt much in the summer. My time is dedicated to other things: gardening, hiking, traveling, canning, food preservation.

It gets unbearably humid here in Wisconsin (some of you may laugh but where I come from, I don't wake up in the mornings feeling sticky) - so much so that it's tempting to stay inside and sew. It doesn't help when you peruse through quilt books in your spare time. Or when your Aunt Joyce sends up some quilt blocks that she picked up at a sock hop but she'll never finish. Or when your sister tells you she wants to make a quilt this year. Or when a friend announces she's due in November. Nope, nope, nope. None of these things help.

My Aunt Gloria has always been one classy lady.

When I was a kid, I admired her spick-and-span house. Everything was tidy, nothing ever out of place. She was always well-dressed and a careful speaker. (I had never heard her swear until this trip!)

In contrast, my parent's residence was always a disaster. Throw into the mix that my dad doesn't dress up for any occasion that he doesn't have to and is a little rough around the edges...well, you can see why Gloria fascinated me. (Not to mention that we share the same birthday...but that's another story.)

Whenever Gloria is around, there's work to be done, but there's also almost-hair-catching-on-fire and hat-wearing silliness.

As an adult, I still love Gloria very much. It's rumored that she'll be returning to the farmhouse sometime this fall. It's going to be interesting having family so close - we've never lived anywhere where family was less than a 6 hour drive or flight.


Arthur - for reasons unknown to us - continuously called Gloria "Joyce" while she was here. "Joyce" became the "evil Gloria": Joyce wanted to steal the boys' toys or ice cream, Joyce wanted to drink their milk, Joyce wanted to give them chores. Whenever something bad happened, Joyce was behind it.

Her visit was much too short, however. We already miss her (though I think Dad was happy to see her go: she gave him a list of chores before she left, as is customary. It is also customary for him to ignore any such list for an indeterminate amount of time.)

Who visited you this summer? What adventures did you have with them?

Blessed be.

Ah, strawberries. You sweet, heavenly fruit. My boys can't get enough of you. So much so that this year we picked an extra flat,  canned 34 half-pints of jam, and froze 4 gallon bags of berries.

Our timing couldn't have been more perfect. This was the very last weekend for picking at many of the farms in the area, so we were fortunate that we finally found an opportunity to go. Arthur worked hard to fill his flat. Balin preferred to pick a strawberry and show it off before wandering the field aimlessly. Perhaps next year he'll be more interested in actually picking. 

Of course, after the picking comes the processing. (The boys love strawberries, but even they can't eat 35 pounds of berries before they rot.) 

Robinson and I started canning about two or three years into our marriage. We starting canning raspberry jam and rhubarb. We moved up to pumpkin and potatoes. Now we can apple butter, asparagus, pickles, tomato sauce, salsa, and pickled green beans, too. It's hot, sticky, and time consuming, but I love it. I love that I can feed my family fairly cheaply because of what we preserve. I feel good knowing that what I pull from the pantry is something I grew fresh, without pesticides or preservatives. Things I can myself taste better, too. I consider it a win-win (though my over-flowing pantry may say otherwise...I remind myself almost daily during canning season that I will not store food in my bathroom closet because that is just plain weird. It becomes a personal challenge to see how much food I can store in my tiny closet pantry without breaking something when I open the door.)

Do you can? If so, what?

Blessed be.

In our household, July fourth is synonymous with "Summer Snowmen". We've made one dutifully every year and come midsummer, we pull it out of the freezer, peel back the foil wrapper, read the story, and then eat him.

We've been in Beloit for almost a year and have yet to explore everything in the area. There are so many options here - more than Fairbanks - but they all involve at least a half hour drive to get there. City driving, too, which I'm still trying to get used to because city driving in Fairbanks is like country driving everywhere else.

It's fun revisiting places of my childhood. I loved traveling back to Barrow many, many years ago to see how much it had changed. I love weekending at the farm.