Grateful

Grateful for Dr. W and health insurance. Grateful for all of the family and friends who keep my Zippy in their prayers. Grateful for a fabulous husband who is a big helpless teddy bear when it comes to our kiddo. Grateful for all of God's provisions for my little family.

Grateful for my Zippy and her take-it-all in-stride spirit as we've traveled this road. She made a brave decision, knowing from past experience, how she would feel for the next few days. Such a mature decision that took in the big picture considerations, the long-run perspective. She doesn't complain but accepts that this is how things are for her. She winced a tiny bit when we took the bandages off and then asked if we had any baked beans. Life moves on for her and she takes it all in stride. She's happy anyway.


I'm praying this is the last time we do this. But regardless of the outcome, I am grateful for the chance and grateful that it will all work out for His glory in the long run.


And I'm grateful for such a wonderful child. No, such a wonderful young lady.

Carrots- Not Just for Dippin' In Ranch



Photo by lillieinthecity via Flickr



Nope- no photo of the actual Curried Carrot Soup that I made the other night. We ate it way too fast to get pictures. So I'll use Lillian's photo of Carrot Soup, which has ginger. The recipe I'm going to share with you today doesn't have ginger. Sorry. But good news, it does have curry!

Before we get started today- I have chosen to "clean up" how I post. Tutorials are huge fun to work on and I love doing them but they are also time consuming. I don't have scads of spare time these days so I'll save the step-by-step photos for projects that would really benefit from such detail. That means unless it's something tricky, fun, or cool most recipes will be presented in a pretty straight-forward manner. Hope that's OK.

So-  let's get to the food!

I first got turned on to Carrot Soup after tasting my husband's at a favorite little bakery we like to visit. It was fabulous and right away I started researching and experimenting with Curried Carrot Soup. Most versions of carrot soup are fairly similar. My version of Curried Carrot soup is super easy and I hope you find it tasty as well.

You need:

3 tablespoons butter or olive oil- both are good
1 medium onion, chopped
2 pounds of whole carrots, cleaned, peeled, trimmed*
     You'll end up with about 1 1/2 pounds
2 cans of chicken broth- low sodium
1 cube of chicken bullion- I use the low sodium kind
1 - 2 tablespoons curry powder, depending on your tolerance for hot stuff
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
Sea salt- about a teaspoon
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt, optional but oh so yummy

*You can also use those cute little baby carrots but they will cost you a bit more. Just sayin'

Cut your carrots into about 3 inch pieces. Saute them with the butter and onions in a large Dutch oven until the carrots just begin to get tender. Add the remaining ingredients except for the yogurt. Simmer in the Dutch oven with the lid on for 15-20 minutes.

Puree small batches at a time in your blender or food processor. Careful- it will be hot! Once each batch is pureed, transfer it into a large bowl for safe keeping. See, you don't want to put too much in the blender at one time because when you hit the puree button, your ceiling will get a groovy orange tie-dye effect happening. Um, or so I've heard. Return the soup to the Dutch oven once everything has gone through the blender. Bring it back to a gentle simmer for a few minutes and then take it off the heat. Add the Greek yogurt and mix it in well. Once you ladle the soup into your bowls you can add a plop of yogurt. We have ours with a nice sturdy whole grain bread and a big honkin' glass of milk. Of course you can make this just fine without the yogurt but, again, of so yummy. And the yogurt helps cut the heat if you like a lot of curry.



Photo by roboppy via Flickr



I am not a big fan of cooked carrots but if you whirl them up with some curry powder, oh man! But I'm on a "curry bender" right now so even curry ice cream sounds good to me. No, I'm not pregnant.

Photo by tinatinatinatinatina via Flickr

I'm thinking that after all the years of gardening we've gotten enough of the rocks out of our garden patch to grow some nice straight carrots this summer. Mmmm- marinated carrots, hot pickled carrots, raw carrots freshly pulled from the soil.

Hey, thanks so much for visiting today. I hope you try the soup recipe and I'm always open to any suggestions for making it better. Have a great day and I'll see you again.



Carrot Moth photo by guppiecat via Flickr

It Is Well

Oh my----  it's odd how good it felt to log back in just now. The issues that led to my blog hiatus have not been resolved and it doesn't look as though they will be resolved for another four months or so. By that time I should at least know my options. No, I'm not really going to go into the details but I have begun to get over the initial shock of this forced life change. Not only am I eating again, I've gained back those twelve pounds that flew off of me back over the holidays. Darn. Mainly, however, I have decided to have faith. So we'll just go forward and see what happens.

I saw a plaque similar to the one above on Pinterest a few months ago and thought it would be fun to try to make one for my parlor. The one I saw on Pinterest had sweet birds on it but since I've already done birds elsewhere in the house I went with somethingdifferent. The hymn, "It Is Well", has always been one of my favorites and has come to have special meaning in the past years as my husband and I travelled over some bumpy roads together and I came to a commitment of faith. And now, here it is again, speaking perfectly to my state of mind. The canvas that I made (above) is not nearly as fancy or artsy or well done as the one I saw on Pinterest but I wanted it to be a calm, still reminder that in spite of it all, it is well and it will continue be well.

One of the things I worked on the past few weeks was to clean up my sewing room. I would love to be artistic enough to call it my studio but I'm not and since it started out as the sewing room, that's what we call it. Anyway, I came across some pre-stretched canvases that a friend had given me after she discovered them cleaning out a rental unit. Gotta love free crafty stuff. So I printed out my letters to check the size and then traced them onto an enlarged copy of the hymn.

Then of course I had to cut them all out. It just seemed so much easier to do the letters this way than to drag out the Cricut and fiddle around trying to get it right. My Cricut and I have a love-hate relationship. Anyway, I wanted the lettering to generally follow the hymn so if you read the music across the letters you get the hymn in its proper order.

So---  first I painted the canvas with a metallic gray paint for the base...

... and then a watercolor-y blue.

The I left it on the table for a couple of days. I would go in every so often and stare at it and wonder what to do next. I was off work that week so it was nice to have time to stroll, instead of race, through a project.

Once I arrived at a background that I thought would work...

... I added this leafy scroll thing. Turns out, I'm not at all crazy with how it came out (hate it, actually) but, whatever. It is well.

Next I coated the cut out letters with the paper flavored Modge Podge with just a dab of the silver Shimmer Modge Podge mixed in and let it dry before I glued the letters to the canvas.

The most difficult part of this project- the most technically challenging aspect- was hanging it. Because our old farmhouse has horse hair plaster walls, hammering nails into the walls usually involves a drill. But I wasn't in the drilling mood and after some muttering and sternly worded warnings to the wall, nails, picture, and furniture, the job was accomplished. No fingers smashed!

So now whether I come upstairs from the first floor or downstairs from the bedroom, I look into the parlor to see my canvas, not because it's such a huge tremendous piece of art but because it is a gentle reminder  to myself that in spite of the stress and turmoil, it is well. It is well because I have chosen to live out this bumpy stretch of uncertainty by trusting that God not only heard my prayers all those months ago and took me at my word but by continuing to rest my soul in Him and live as though I mean it. He will answer according to His will, and that is just fine with me.

Hey, I'll show you the parlor sometime. We started work on it many years ago and then it became first Zippy's bedroom and then her playroom. Once other projects in the house moved forward to completion, I was able to take back my parlor this past month from the Lego mayhem that was going on in there. Yea, I know, fake plants- but when you see the room, you'll understand my dilemma with the layout. I'll give you a hint on the big project in there---  grout.

I've genuinely missed my little jungle and all of you beautiful butterflies who visit me here. Though postings will most likely be sporadic for a while, I'm happy to be back.

Chrysalis of a Yellow Coster butterfly, indigenous to SE Asia.
Found mostly in the Himalayas.

To Pupate

pupate: Verb 1. pupate - develop into a pupa; "the insect larva pupate" -come to have or undergo a change
 
 

So that's where things stand right now. I am entering a season of change, a time of growth and transformation. I don't mean to be vague or mysterious but I find that it's simply too difficult to share.


I wonder if caterpillars know that someday they will be a butterfly?

I wonder if it hurts for a caterpillar to pupate?


I will miss the jungle and the butterflies who visit me here and I truly appreciate each of you. But for now, for an unknown length of time, I must withdraw to my chrysalis. Won't it be interesting to see what emerges?

 



Photo by Luke Esprey via Flickr



 

 

And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose.    Romans 8:28

 

 

With my love- jani

Thankful

Source

This saying has been popping up on Pinterest lately and I've been trying to keep it in mind on a daily basis. We get so busy at our house trying to get through one thing in order to get to the next that I often whip through many of my daily tasks by rote without thinking much. Unfortunately, that sometimes includes my daily prayers. It's not that I don't recognize the ways I've been blessed but rather it's so easy to acknowledge those blessing cerebrally without giving myself time to feel them in my heart.

There have been a couple situations the past few weeks that have me all stirred up and feeling uncertain about what the future holds. And since I'm what I call a Pathological Worrier, I let these areas of uncertainty latch on to my thinking and take over my mind and heart. I don't sleep or eat and I feel constant stress. And, even worse, my worry becomes like a giant rolling snowball that gets away from me, careening down the hill of life picking up other petty worries, growing larger and more out of control as I go along.



Source



I remember talking with my Zippy once when she was younger and mentioned in passing how I was worrying about something. She was silent for a few minutes and then she said, bless her heart, in a quiet timid voice, not wanting to call-out her mom, "Mrs. M (her first grade teacher) says that worrying is a sin." Ouch! As a Christian, my deep pathological worrying (and mine is pathological in the sense that it almost becomes a disease state) is not just bad for my health. It's an indication that I don't think God is in control or that He won't take care of me and mine. It's a failure of faith. Ouch again.

Source



So this Thanksgiving I'm trying to remind myself of and express gratitude for the ways that I have been blessed and the ways in which I have been provided for. And honestly, I may not always have some of those same blessings but that doesn't mean there won't be others, perhaps even better. I believe in the providence of God and so in addition to being thankful, I'm trying to be more "trustful". The two go hand-in-hand for me at this time in my life and while the process makes me want to cry at times, I am thankful to my core for the lessons in trust and gratitude that I have been learning.



Source



I encourage you this Thanksgiving to count your blessings and then spend time thinking about them. Dwell on them, mull them over, consider where they come from and what their impact has been on your life. Move from the intellectual acknowledgment that you have been granted good things in your life to a deep, heartfelt humility of how richly you have been blessed. Then open your heart to the idea that you can be blessed in other unforseen ways as well. There's always something to be thankful for.

And yes, I am genuinely thankful for each of you butterflies who come flittering through my jungle. Wishing you a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Pipe-Cleaner Christmas Trees

I never planned on such an early Christmas post but like it or not, Christmas is barreling down on us. I hate that I think of it that way sometimes but I not only have a personal Christmas, I also have Christmas at work- more trees and decorations, more food and festivities, more hustle and bustle. Any time I can cut the work load without sacrificing the holiday spirit- I'm all for it.


Cute and cheap and quick! That's the ticket! I found myself wanting "something more" for a centerpiece on the tables at work last year and came up with these little guys. They go together fairly quickly and I got plenty of compliments, particularly on the ones made with the white sparkly pipecleaner.

Important Bit- I honestly don't remember if I came up with this on my own or if I had seen it somewhere else and just didn't remember. All I know is that I was doing a centerpiece for a meal with the patients and it had to be super-duper inexpensive. If you've done this or have seen it some place, please let me know so I can give proper credit.

The bare minimum items that you need for each tree are:

Styro cones

Pipe cleaners

I used 6 inch cones for these trees and that size took 17 pipe cleaners. Of course I went with the sparkly ones.

Insert one end of the first pipe cleaner into the top of the cone about 1/2 an inch.

Bend the pipe cleaner over at a 90 degree angle,

 

and start curling it in a circle around in a circle on the flat top of the cone.

 

The stem will spring loose if you don't hold on to it so you'll need to "keep a holt of it" as they say out on the farm.

The first stem should make it over the edge of the flat top on the cone. The nice thing about the sparkly pipe cleaner is that it sort of sticks into the styro a bit to hold on. We'll talk in a minute about the softer pipe cleaner.

When you run out of stem, make an elbow about 1/4 inch long ...

and stick it into the cone.

 

Insert the next stem right beside the first one and continue to wrap the cone.

 

Be careful about leaving too much space between each stem or the cone will show through. If you're using white pipe cleaner that's not such an issue. I try to coil the stems so that the ends of the little bristles overlap just a tiny bit.  That seems to be a fairly economical way of doing it but of course you can wrap the pipe cleaner more densely if you prefer. Just remember that you will need more than 17 stems of pipe cleaner if you do.

 

Wrap the pipe cleaner all the way down to the base of the cone.

Turn about an inch or so of the last stem under the base and insert the end into the styro.

You can make toppers for your trees if you would like using whatever you have on hand. I had these small ornaments and just ran a pearl pin through each one and stuck it onto the top of the tree. 

You could decorate your tree with sequins or beads if you wanted to but I didn't do that so don't have any pics to show you how cute I'm sure it would be. 

The white tree you see above (in the middle) is made with the sparkly white pipecleaner and got lots of compliments. People had no idea what it was made from. Then we have a fun little Santa's Hat tree made from the softer pipe cleaner. There was a pom pom on top but it apparently went on back to the North Pole, never to be seen again. The white at the top of the Santa Hat tree gave me an ornery time- it didn't want to stay put.

Cut a piece of stem about half an inch, fold it into a "V" and use it to anchor your cantankerous section of stem into place.

For last year's patient Christmas Dinner table, I was working with a lime green and red theme but green Christmas trees are so expected so I made mine red.

We set up one long banquet table so I generally use a long centerpiece that stretches most of the length of the table. I ended up with about half a dozen more trees after I took this photo.

I bought the silver sparkle stars at Michael's. They're foam and a little hot glue gun action was all it took to get them to stay.

The Intern made this centerpiece for our overflow table. So simple but so festive. Maybe it would look nice if the entire thing were set on a silver or glass platter.

So there you go- easy little trees for your Christmas decorating needs. My mind is already churning for this year- maybe an entire Christmas tree forest with trees of different sizes, some fuzzy, some sparkly, maybe some wrapped with ribbon. Oh boy, the possibilities.

And even though this is a Christmas post, don't forget to have a beautiful Thanksgiving.

Chrysalis- and I Don't Mean Me

I just finished reading Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis by Kim Todd. Maria Merian was born in Frankfurt, Germany and grew up in the family publishing business. Her artistic talents were encouraged and nurtured almost from the day she could hold a paint brush. Ms. Merian was also fascinated by butterflies, moths, caterpillars, and metamorphosis. As a young girl, Maria spent countless hours searching out caterpillars and cocoons to bring home, sketch, and observe, trying to unravel the mystery of insects.



Image via Ursus Books & Prints



Merian began working in her family's publishing business, learning the delicate task of engraving plates for printing and at the age of 28 published her first book, New Book of Flowers, a collection of her sketches, drawings, and paintings. Merian married early, began a family, moved to Nuremberg, divorced her husband, moved to a secluded cult compound, fled from there to Amsterdam, and finally, at the age of 52, travelled to Suriname in South America for the sole purpose of studying, painting, and exploring as many of the Amazonian butterflies, moths, and caterpillars as she could discover. She had metamorphosis fever.



Public domain image from German Wikipedia



Oh, did I mention that she left for Suriname in the year 1699? Yes, that's right, 1699.



Photo by Terry Dunn via Flickr



Now, there are two things in life for which I have a special passion. One is obviously butterflies. The other is the Amazonian River Basin. It's been a fantasy of mine since childhood to travel up the Amazon River to it's source, or as close as I can get. I read whatever I can about the early exploration and history of the Amazon River Basin and I know from my readings that the Amazon jungle, even now, is no place for the weak of body or faint of heart. Though it is still a wild and dangerous place (sometimes in ways that have nothing to do with geography), the Amazon jungle defeated more early European explorers than can be counted. It is a beautiful yet brutal place. In those early years of exploration,  the animals of the jungle such as leopards and snakes might get you but it was more likely that if the indigenous tribes didn't do away with you the insects and plant life would surely do the job. Savage, that's just all you can say about some of the ways the tiny fauna of the Amazon can dispense with you. And some of the fauna ain't so tiny.

 Note- After a photo search, I have decided to skip over inserting a visual aid at this point as even I was getting a bit freaked out. No need to illustrate giant insects  of the Amazon Jungle because I would like for y'all to come back to the Butterfly Jungle (where there are no giant insects).

With 90% of the animal species in the Amazon being insects, Merian was in her glory. A single square mile of rain forest has on average more than 50,000 insect species, with an estimated 4,000 of those being butterflies. Emphasis on "estimated". Merian had originally intended to stay in Suriname for five years and quickly established herself in the coastal capital of Paramaribo, developing relationships with the indigenous tribes along the rivers she travelled to the interior. Fearless, Merian hired guides to cut paths into the jungle. Merian sketched, painted, collected, observed, and interviewed. After only two years and weak from what was most likely malaria, Merian was forced to return home.

I picked up this book because the idea of a woman in her early 50's packing up and heading out into the Amazon Jungle in 1699 AD to study metamorphosis intrigued me- naturally. But this book is not just a biography of an acclaimed artist and self-taught entomology pioneer. It is also an exploration of the study of metamorphosis. At the time, the prevailing belief about where insects came from was that they arose from "spontaneous generation". In this context, "spontaneous generation" did not refer to the origin of life (life oozing up out of the primordial soup) but to the origin of the mice in your cupboard, for example. If you wrapped cheese and bread in rags and stashed them in a dark corner you would soon have mice in the rags and so- spontaneous generation of mice. Insects arose from rotting mud or fruit, old books, and dew. Old wool turned to moths, frogs arose from raindrops, flies were generated from old snow. Leave a woman's hair in the sunlight and it turned to snakes. Basil between two tiles held together with horse dung and placed in the cellar for a month gave you scorpions. To get a bee? Well, first you beat to death a three year old bull..... not kidding, there's a poem to help you remember the lurid details. These theories come from a casual observation of the natural world without a systematic investigation. Yes, if you leave trash in a heap you will get maggots but in the 17th century the curious-minded were only just beginning to say, "Wait a minute...." Bolstered by a growing contingency of theologians who reminded that all life was created by God, the debate and investigation were just getting under way. These early entomologists developed ingenious experiments to test their theories but Merian went a step further by seeking the association of caterpillar with its environment, the food it ate, the pupae they formed, the life that emerged from the cocoon. She sought to solve such mysteries as why, when she observed a caterpillar spin a cocoon, flies would on occasion emerge instead of a moth or butterfly. The depiction of these real life contexts are what made her paintings so revolutionary. Merian sought to depict all life stages from larva through the imago with the host plants in one painting. Merian's constant experimentation with pigments and style paved the way for her to soon be a much sought after and well-respected illustrator, in addition to her contributions to the understanding metamorphosis. During this period in history, insects were associated with witchcraft and the Devil, so Merian had to tread lightly to avoid being ostracized, particularly while she lived in Germany, where witch burnings were still taking place.

Stages of an Emperor Moth: Metamorphosis Insectorum Surinamensis, Plate XI
Image via UH.edu

The book concludes with a very interesting discussion on just what does happen during metamorphosis. Ms. Todd points out that it is the caterpillar, not the butterfly, that is the engine of metamorphosis. Please, I can't even start talking about metamorphosis because it is so cool and I'll just never shut up. HOWEVER- did you know that a caterpillar is not just a goo-filled eating machine but that there are components of the imago, the finished butterfly, in the caterpillar before it winds itself into a cocoon? Oh please, it's all so fascinating! It's the caterpillar that does all the metamorphing- the butterfly just steps out and gets all the glory!

Image via The British Museum

The one disappointment about this book is that Merian's actual time in Suriname takes up only a small portion of the book. That disappointment most likely comes from my wanting to be there, to live vicariously through the descriptions of Merian's adventures and misadventures in the Amazon Jungle.

Image via Powell's Books

You can do an image search to explore more of Merian's paintings but I came across ArtCyclopedia that links to online museum collections which contain her prints.

 

For the kids, there's Summer Birds, Merian's story, by Margarita Engle.

Dover Publications also has a book and CD of Merian's prints.

Note- the books in this post link to Amazon but I am not an Amazon Associate and am not trying to sell you something so I can get one of those huge cuts of the pie from Amazon. The links take you to Amazon simply for your convenience should you be interested.

So OK, that's it. Go get a good book to read. See ya next time.