Henry's First Chair

I finished a chair I've been working on for Henry. It's made from 1 and a half 2x4s so material cost is low. And it was fun to make. But as I was making it I was thinking of all the ways I could make it better. But that's ok since Henry will probably want more than one chair at some point. I've already started work on the second chair which will have no screws showing!

Here he is sitting at a darling little Ikea desk that my mum found on someone's curb for us.

Henry Slithers

Henry has been slithering for about a week now. He is still far from crawling and will mostly only attempt to move if he has a toy about a foot away from him that he wants to reach, no further. But we are all having fun with it and hope he learns to crawl too.

He is also teething right now, can feel the first tooth poking through. We've had a few cranky nights and days.




Here he is slithering after the camera

Blanket Bin Version 1.1

I finally got around to modifying the first blanket bin I made. It is still humungous but at least now you can reach into it! And I figure it will make a great toy bin. It can stay in the basement maybe and lots of big toys can just be thrown in for tidying up.

Thanksgiving and Oktoberfest

We had a very nice Thanksgiving weekend. Henry got to wear the lederhosen I made for him at our Oktoberfest Party on Saturday. We also enjoyed our homemade pretzels, beer nuts, saurkraut, and beer.



And we spent Sunday and Monday in Mississauga. Had a delicious turkey dinner on Sunday and went on lots of nice walks enjoying the fall colours. We went to 16 mile Creek in Oakville on Sunday and on Monday went to Forks of the Credit with a stop at the Cheltenham Badlands first to show Eliza ans Steve how cool they are.

16 mile Creek:
Cheltenham Badlands:

Forks of the Credit:

RIM Park

The weather was beautiful yesterday. Warm and Sunny. Henry and I went a walk in Hillside Park and Henry smiled at the ducks. Then he played in the backyard, ate a lot of dirt, while I did some knitting while wearing just a T-shirt. And after dinner I wanted to continue making the most of the nice weather so we went for a walk at RIM Park. But by then it was quite a bit less warm. And there were almost no fall colours there.

But the awesome part of going in the evening is we saw white tailed deer which we've never seen before. And I had no idea that white tailed deer were so different than other deer. Their white tails are huge! You couldn't see the tails much when they were just standing there but when they were leaping away they had these 1 foot long bushy white tails sticking straight up. It was really cool.

Quince Wine

We started some quince wine yesterday. We decided to try this this year instead of quince jelly and luckily there was a recipe in our First Steps in Winemaking book. First we picked the quince from the bush in our backyard. Before we started we were planning on having enough for one gallon, hoping we might have enough for 2 gallons. It turned out we had enough for more than 10 gallons! That's over 200 quince! Luckily we decided to do 5 gallons because it was tough dealing with just that many. The rest are still in our garage, maybe we'll do something with them later. But after processing 100 quince, I am a bit sick of them right now.

Henry likes food

Henry is slowly learning to like food. He loves my soy yogurt but I try not to give him too much because I don't think it's a very good first food. And he loves pear apple sauce that we get from our local food buying club. So I've been mixing other things with it to get him to eat them. He's been having oatmeal this week mixed with the pear apple sauce and sometimes alternating bites with pure pear apple sauce.

Soup and Sourdough

I made Sourdough bread according to the instructions in Wild Fermentation. The sour starter had this terrible cheesy smell and the bread kind of had the same smell/taste. So it didn't turn out well. It did rise by itself from the wild yeasts and taste sour so that was exciting. I guess the yeasts around here just aren't tasty?


We had it with a new soup recipe that I got off Soulemama's blog. Cream of Broccoli. It was really tasty except it had the problem that I have with all pureed soups, I just don't find them filling and I'm not willing to make something to go along with them.
http://www.soulemama.com/soulemama/2009/09/bits.html

Salsa

We made our 2010 batch of salsa this week with tomatoes from the garden. This time we made jalapeno salsa, a recipe from the Ball's Canning book. So it should be good and spicy, might even be Kevin only salsa. This year we only got 4 pints of it. Had lots of smallish tomatoes, no big ones at all.

Foot stool with Storage

I finished a foot stool yesterday. It is built like the blanket bins using 2x4s. And then I just wrapped it in some thrift store fabric that I liked. And bought some foam for the top too. I'm very happy with how it turned out. I thought at one point that it might be useful as a little stool that Henry can sit on at a kiddie table but I think I made it much too tall for that. But mostly I wanted to make it as a practice for a big bench sized one I might make for the living room, will need to find a big piece of fabric for that though.

A day out in Kitchener

We spent the day in downtown Kitchener today. Wandered through Victoria Park, checked out our favourite thrift stores downtown, looked in the market and stopped for lunch at a Vietnamese restaurant.

We took these photos at the park, and the last ones at the restaurant.

First Soup

We had the first soup of the season here yesterday. I made my standard soup with various veg including potatoes and carrots in veg stock with oregano but this time I at least added parsley from the garden. I am making a vow to try some different soups this year.


It is getting cold. Kevin also insisted on putting the heat on for part of the day yesterday. And Henry has been looking cute in his snuggly sweaters.