Sprouts had a sale on a lot of different types of apples this week, so I indulged. And bought a LOT. With a thought toward applesauce, apple jams, apple pies....

Tomorrow being a (large!) family dinner at my parents' place, I decided to experiment for the latter. You see, my go-to recipe is Apple Pie I from The Joy of Cooking. But there's also an Apple Pie II recipe, which precooks the apples so they don't shrink as much during the baking and you don't end up with a crust hovering an inch above the filling. I've never tried it. As of today I have, making one of each type to do a contrast/compare tomorrow. And since I had a bit of crust left over, and a bit of frozen mixed berries just hanging out in the freezer, I freestyled a couple of small tarts for dinner tonight.

I also pulled out a bed's worth of weeds and dead tomato plants, while Wonderful Husband fixed our washer (which wasn't draining properly), and also repaired my car's dome light and replaced the Squiddle's nightlight bulb.

Ah, yes, the Squiddle. Who had gotten me up five times by five a.m. last night, and then Wonderful Husband stayed up with him for a few hours until I was awake, whereupon we tag-teamed out. Usually the baby's much better than that. We're working on the theory that maybe his bedroom needs to be a touch warmer. He has also, as of yesterday, figured out how to open doors. Maybe getting paddle handles instead of knobs was a bad idea.... :)

And the big thing that happened this week was that we threw my parents a bon voyage party, and managed to keep it, and the fact that my younger sister flew down for it, a surprise from my mother until she walked in the restaurant door. ^_^ Being my first foray into party planning, this wasn't exactly a stress-free event, but I think it came off rather well. And now I know what I'm going about for the next time.

Today was kind of a slow day. Wonderful Husband finally seems to be on the mend (*knocks on wood*), which, yay! Because he actually has to go in to the office tomorrow to conduct an interview. Which is sufficiently late in the day that I'll be taking Squiddle to my writing class with me and WH will be picking him up from there. Which works well since my classmates wanted me to bring him in again anyway.

My ten pages got re-edited today, as did the summary sheet. Tomorrow, photocopy shop! We made stirfry for dinner, and I baked lots of oatmeal raisin cookies, a good portion of which are to go into class with me tomorrow night. The kitchen is clean and set up for breakfast. Now to change Squiddle into a sleep'n'play, swaddle him, nurse him to sleep, tuck him into the bassinet, and sneak his undies into the washing machine before turning in myself.

Thus far today I:

made pumpkin buttermilk pancakes, which I loved and Wonderful Husband didn't, and bacon for breakfast
washed breakfast pots/pans/bowls, emptied dishwasher
registered for Costume College
bought tickets to go to the RenFaire twice this year - once with my husband, once with my mother
TRIED to sign up for my writing class only to find that the community college is having a website/Oracle database disagreement
made sourdough bread, currently in its second rise, which will actually get baked tomorrow morning
finished the week's laundry
went to JoAnns and made use of sales and coupons to buy stuff for Squiddle - including the beginnings of his Hiccup costume
reluctantly put the brace on my left wrist
transformed one of Wonderful Husband's long-sleeved button-ups, with a torn sleeve, into a short-sleeved button-up.

I overslept by forty-five minutes yesterday morning. And it was GLORIOUS. Saturday, of course, means that I can sleep as late as Squiddle will allow me, so I feel caught up on z's at the moment.

An odd thing he's started doing this last week: at his first nursing of the evening, he takes an initial moment of licking and mouthing the nipple, as if re-establishing its differences from the artificial nipple he's been feeding from all day.

We were going to hang the outdoor Christmas lights today... so of course it's raining. I won't complain; we need the rain. Badly. So I've put my patio plants under the dripline and am concentrating on indoor things today. One of which is the sourdough bread I have rising ATM. The most recent issue of Mother Earth News had an article about it, so I got starter going again and am giving it a try as a non-bread machine endeavor. As I don't have a good deal of practice with kneading and such, we'll see how it goes.

The linen napkin set I'm embroidering is pretty easy, all cross-stitch, and simple as I'm doing it in only two colors: black, and a yet-to-be-determined color for the final fleur-de-lis'ish motif in the last corner. Actually, I'm planning on doing that last motif in a different color (same value) on each napkin, so would that make it nine colors all told? Anyway, I've finished the black embroidery on two of the napkins, but as my elbow began to protest the motion a little on the home stretch of the second one, I'm taking a slight detour and spent this evening reading vintage/retro fashion blogs and working on my 1930s Butterfly Blouse. I'm quite pleased with the fabric I'm making it out of; it was horribly crumpled, but ironed out like a dream. Tonight I hemmed the sleeves, so all that's really left is cutting some 2" wide bias strips from the scraps I also ironed, sewing them together, sewing them along the neck and bottom edge of the blouse, and then turning them to the inside.

The sourdough starter I've been coddling through the week is getting its first test run in the breadmaker tonight, to go with soup from my mother for dinner tomorrow night. Here's to hoping it turns out nice!

Mrmphgl. Why is it that this week, despite starting with a holiday, has mostly consisted of me feeling like the living dead? I am getting very good at the zombie shuffle through life.

So, this week: lots of rain (though it seems to be sunny again at the moment), which led to me lighting lots of tea candles, which led to me baking cookies on Wednesday after work. Which, amusingly, led to Wonderful Husband asking me when I'd had time to. Um, when I got home from work two and a quarter hours before he did? The bannister is back and shiny black now, so I've been feeling less likely to accidentally trip down the stairs and damage myself. Plus Wonderful Husband owes me a dinner since he didn't think it would be back in place before the end of the week. ^_^

I finished incorporating the edits for UM20 and submitted the revised script to the timer last night. Still working on putting all the books back in the moved bookcase. Despite filling a tub full of books to be given away, there are far more books than shelf space. I suspect this may be largely due to adding The Complete Calvin and Hobbes to the bookcase... it changed one shelf height requirement and thus threw everything out of whack. Thus far, incidentally, the trashy romance novels are on the bottom of the "space" heirarchy, and I'm getting the urge to go through the other three bookcases and purge/reorganize....

Chocolate chip cookies are done! So is packing, save for the toiletries we need tonight and in the morning. YAY~~! Due to time crunch, scones ain't happening for this Fanime, but this is a small imperfection in the face of things.

I... really like baking. I like cooking in general, and wish I had more time to devote to it. I also wish I had more people to inflict it upon. Cookies are a good case-in-point for this: I like making them, but I don't like the fact that I have to eat all of them. Taking them in to our offices only goes so far. I have all these wonderful cookbooks and magazines, and I don't feel I use them often enough. I can happily spend hours reading about the different effects different types of fats and flours have on baking, and how room and oven temperature variations affect starters and rising and such. Among my current covets (being in a baking mood at the moment) are Rose Levy Berenbaum's three "Bible" books. I really should've gotten The Bread Bible when I saw it a few years back used for fifteen dollars, but hindsight is ever perfect. And I have a deal with myself that I can't buy new cookbooks unless I get rid of some of the old. As soon as I copy my beloved Irish Soda Bread recipe out of one I never use for anything else, though, I think I can get rid of two.... *contemplates*

Well, downstairs is massively cleaner due to the efforts of Wonderful Husband, I have baked banana bread and a lemon meringue pie for dinner at my parents' tonight, taken the measurements of and started discussing options with Wonderful Husband's coworker whom I'm making a wedding dress for, and gotten most of my scrap muslin folded as opposed to shoved into crumpled heaps. Amazing how it's taking up about half the space this way. So I guess today counts as kind of productive.

Have received word that Costume College is sold out for next year, which means, alas, I'm going it alone again with none of my IRL friends. Ah well. I guess I should see about finding roommates among other attendees.

The neckline of my new surcoat has been pleated and sewn; I've decided to use self-fabric to bind the neck and armholes, and am taking advantage of the stripes in a straight cut. This also has the advantage of meaning the neck and armholes will stretch very little since I'm not using a bias cut for the binding. Go me! Now I just need to finish the two armholes and I can actually work on, like, the sides and hem and stuff. ^^;; And a dress to go under this since I only have the dark blue one and the Princess Ovelia dress. Ovelia would actually go nicely, but the collar's all wrong for 13th century. I suppose a t-tunic is next on my list, since that's what's under this surcoat in the image I'm basing it on. [John Peacock's Costume 1066-1990s, which I know is suspect, being redrawings, but I like the outfit.]

Okay, off to parents' for kottbullar (Swedish meatballs)!

So, today I finished sewing together and ironing blocks for the quilt. Just need to cut the white squares that go in between them....

Ripped out the sleeves in Wonderful Husband's embroidered Renfaire shirt, took out the pleats and refinished the hems. Just need to whipstitch the sleeves back on....

Sacrificed another Mammoth Zucchini[tm] to the high and noble cause of zucchini bread (and muffins). Just one more to go....

There goes the theory that I got stuff done today. Ah well. Back to finishing washing up (two more pots and a pan and two muffin tins and I might be something like finished, at least until tomorrow when I take the bread out of its bread pans) and then to bed. Where I can probably manage not to get enough sleep or something. ^_^

Today, thus far, I have

1) Found the kitchen. This involved washing a lot of pots, pans, whatnots, putting them and the clean dishes away, tossing dishtowels and rugs in the hamper to be washed, sweeping the floor, washing it by hand since we have no mop, pounding nails into the laundry room wall to hang brooms and whatnot on, clearing off the counters, and tossing a lot of junk mail away. And asking Wonderful Husband to take out the trash.

2) Made salsa. This involved minor cleaning out of the fridge, harvesting a few more jalepenos and habeneros from my bushes to toss into the blender, and lots of whirr. I think I quite like this batch.

3) Made a plan, with Wonderful Husband, for this week's dinners. If pre-planning like this works, we may start doing it regularly.

4) Made Sunny Zucchini Bread (two loaves and four muffins) because my manager at work has a rather prolific vegetable garden and brings in lots of vegetables just to get rid of them. I only used /one/ of the four squash I ended up with for this....

5) Talked with Important People and made sure they're doing okay.

6) Tidied the bedroom a little (I'll maybe tackle it tomorrow?) and tossed the clean, to-be-put-away laundry onto the bed, where hopefully sometime today it will indeed be put away.

7) Fed the kitty. We'll see how she likes wet food.

8) Refilled the fridge water (/after/ washing out the filter jug) and made sun tea.

With the rest of my day, I plan to finish cleaning the downstairs, iron fabric, and cut out three layers of a bodice. Hopefully sew them as well. And maybe, just maybe, dig through the fabric stash to find the prints which I intend to fussy-cut for accents.