I am making lots of secret present things, but a bunch of other stuff too. This year's deliberate plan not to wait until the last minute has paid off, because I am having fun! I'm even together enough to do random accessory projects with my kid. Check it—on Sunday Eva and I melted crayon shaving between layers of tissue paper to make our own wrapping paper. Definitely fun in the mindlessly relaxing preschool sense. We read about the project in December's Country Living on a page that features several "pro" wrappers (link to projects). We did Adrienne Wong's project, but not the flowers (yet). After we had ironed all our papers, we held them up to the window to see the afternoon light shine through all the colors. Pretty. Would melted-wax muslin curtains be at all nice? Or would they just be weird and would the cat hair stick to them an extra lot? Maybe I'll try it in my future 2nd bathroom someday.

We came home from vacation to an exploding garden. This year's garden being so much bigger than last's, it a little crazy, but we're tackling it with gusto. Now, I love a garden tomato—who doesn't? But aside from these juicy red beauties, my favorite things in the garden this year have been the beets and the potatoes. The potatoes were fun to dig and so creamy when boiled, and the beets are just so pretty in all their states, and they're delicious. We mostly eat our beets roasted with onions. Elie and I know that we've succeeded in making our child weird because before she left for a week with her grandparents, she begged us not to "eat all the beets and onions without her". Ha!

More than anything else, we have cucumbers. How many cucumbers can a plant produce? Sheesh! So tonight, right now even, and am taking my first stab at pickling. How exciting is that? Actually, I just heard a lid pop in, so I know I have at least one vacuum packed jar. I used The Government's Guide to Canning (actually just the very helpful website of the National Center for Home Food Preparation), because when you've never done something before and it could potentially give you botulism, you should check your facts. I will let you know how the pickles turn out.

Speaking of things taking place in the kitchen, can you catch a glimpse of what's under those beets? Elie is just about done with out new counter tops and sink. I can hardly wait.

My little girl had a little birthday. I won't get too sentimental (at least not now), but I will say that she is now halfway to 18. If the second half goes anywhere near as quickly as the first, I am in big trouble.

Nine is a funny age for parties. You still need some structure, but little kid party games aren't going to cut it. I asked Eva if she wanted to play Hot Potato at her party, and she almost died of embarrassment at the thought. I can't say I blame her. I mean, really? Hot Potato? And yet, Simon Says is still OK. Where is a parent to draw the line?

We did a craft—gluing eyes and beaks on to pom pom chicks and putting them in eggshells. We may have mostly done them because I wanted to make the pom poms. It's not entirely on me though, because this was supposed to be a Nature and Chicken themed party, and I did not invent the theme.

I used the party as a good opportunity to use the Martha Stewart test tube containers I got on sale post-Halloween two years ago. They are way cute filled with "magic" jelly beans. However, I did get chided by the resident scientist for buying plastic test tubes when real glass ones could have been had from the lab. Hmmm, don't know about that one.

Buying the jelly beans was even more fun that I thought it would be. I went to the mall on my lunch hour and filled a bag with all the light green and light blue Jelly Bellys that come in flavors we like. It was like a mini version of picking quilt fabrics—a little happy for the middle of the day. I also stopped at Gap kids and picked up a few summery sale things for Eva (two tops and some leggings). The jellybeans cost as much as the clothes. What does that mean?

These are Eva's contributions to the Kids ATC Swap. She really enjoyed participating--making her own art and then receiving envelopes from around the world. I'm so glad that Blair and Erin put it together. Thanks guys--900 swappers is a lot of work!

I totally expected Eva to choose collage for her medium, as she had been doing a lot of that around Christmas. Instead, she went with pencil drawing of presidents and American-ish stuff, I think highly influenced by recent subjects at school. Parents, we never know, but we are always tickled. So there you have it: Abe Lincoln, George Washington, Barak Obama, the American flag, and the Statue of Liberty.

Also related to famous historic figures, Elie and Eva made some kick-butt Hamentaschen this weekend. Mmmm-mmm. Purim is on Tuesday, and this is how we're marking the occasion. In case you're not familiar with them, Hamentaschen are cookies that are shaped like Hamen's (a wicked, wicked man) hat. The centers are filled with something tasty and sweet. Elie's favorite filling is poppyseed, so we have a lot of that, and our Hamentashen are made with bread dough and not cookie dough. You could do it either way.

Beebs and I decided to give stop motion animation a try. It was more than a little fun. I pushed the button and Eva moved the stuff.

May we present, Valentine's Day Noms, a meditation on Valentine's Day candy.

I knew all the college film courses would come in handy sometime.

Our hive is making really good progress—the bees have already filled up the brood boxes ("their part" of the hive) and now they're starting to make honey for us in the honey super (shorter frames on the top of the hive). They have been slow to move up to the super though, so Elie did some reconfiguring that included removing one of the filled frames. Yum, honey for us!

We cut the comb off, which we mostly likely won't do when we make a big harvest—we'll just spin it out of the frames then. That way, the bees won't have to rebuild the comb. But, it was just too interesting not to cut it up this time! It feels too cool to hold big pieces of honeycomb. It is surprisingly heavy, though out honey is very light in color. I'm not sure exactly where our bees are going to get their nectar. They mostly go North where there are abandoned train tracks that are overgrown with scrubby wildflowers, so that's a guess. Or maybe they're just making soybean honey :-). No matter, soon we'll have a minor field of buckwheat for them to munch on

Anyway, we saved some pieces of comb whole, but most of it we squeezed out through a mesh strainer. Then I rendered the beeswax. That's right! I minded my own beeswax! Oh, it smelled so good and feels so soft. Now I know why all the natural kids catalogs sell it like a play dough. I see some nice candles in my future...