Fence me in

It's springtime. The TMI household has two small children, one of which is extremely mobile and moderately disobedient.  Our property backs up to the wetlands area and we are near a busy train rail.  Naturally, our thoughts are turning towards getting a fence. 

To see what was available, the Little Guy, BabyGirl and I did some recon in the subdivision to see what fencing styles are out there.  Here's what we saw:

I think the last fence (last two pictures shown) is the winner.  The simple, straight lines are attractive, and I like the cap on top.  Now, the Big Guy and I have to decide on things like height of the fence (I think 4' is fine, he would like 10' topped with barbed wire) and placement.  I'll be getting some quotes from various companies over the coming week to see if this is financially possible for this year, or if we could do it cheaper ourselves. 

Martha Monday--Carrot cake

I tackled Martha's carrot cake for Easter.  And in true TMI fashion, things went awry while I was trying to emulate Martha. 

This is Martha's finished cake:

You can't see it from the picture, and I didn't know it until I was pulling out ingredients and mixing bowls late one night to bake it, that it is a THREE layer cake.  As in, you either need to own THREE 9" round cake pans, or you need to spend hours baking the cake layer by layer.   

As you can see, I only have TWO 9" round cake pans at my disposal.  And since I have ZERO spare time, I decided to make my version of Martha's cake with only two layers. 

One day I will get this Martha thing right, I swear.

Of course, with only two cake pans, I had to decrease the recipe by 1/3.  Which I thought would be easy since it called for three sticks of butter and three eggs, but got a little more complicated when it came to the shredded carrots.  What is 2/3 of 2 3/4 cups of carrots?  The TMI answer is "almost 2 cups." 

Hey, that's how we roll around here, okay?

The batter was very thick, and by the time I was putting it in the pan, I had developed some very serious doubts about the success of this cake experiment:  what if it's too dense?  What if everyone hates it?  What if I'm forced to eat this disaster all by myself? 

These doubts remained after the cake was baked, as it looked dense and tough in the pan.

However, it turned out in the end...

The cake was acceptably moist and quite delicious.  The cake was a hit. 

If I tackle this cake again, I'll be sure to take the time to make that third layer, or at least invest in a third 9" round cake pan by then.  Of course, now that I know how good it is, I might end up eating it all by myself anyways.  Give this carrot cake a try!

Barley in the sun

Sometimes, Barley is a little cat-like.  Observe:

I think he looks a bit like a lion, don't you? 

Wildfire

Our house backs up to a county wetlands preserve.  This is what it normally looks like this time of year:

Sadly, the area recently burned.  Even worse, we missed all the excitement...the Little Guy just loves fire trucks.  He's two, obviously.

It's somewhat difficult to tell from the pictures, but a large section of the preserve was burned.  Apparently, the fire department from Aurora and Sugar Grove both responded--it was that out of control. 

As you can see from the above picture, the fire even jumped the creek and headed towards the other half of our subdivision on the other side of the preserve.  One word on the street is that this was a controlled burn, that quickly got out of control due to higher-than-expected winds.  Other neighbors are saying it was an accident, or maybe someone tossed a cigarette into the brush.  Who knows?

A few fences were even cinged.  Yikes!  Truthfully, this is too much excitement for my taste.  Fortunately, no people or homes were hurt in the blaze, and the fences will live.

Already, ten days after the blaze, things are starting to grow back.  Below, you can see tiny patches of green in the burned area. 

I'm hoping the wetland brush grows back even greener and lusher than before. 

Martha Monday--Win the book, courtesy of Singer Sewing Company!

Last Monday, I wrote about Martha's new book, The Encyclopedia of Sewing and Fabric Crafts.  As it turns out, you can win your very own copy of this book courtesy of the Singer Sewing Company.  They're giving away a copy of the Encyclopedia each day in April.

Here's how to enter:  become a Fan of Singer on facebook here, and/or become a follower of Singer on Twitter here.  On each odd-numbered day, a winner will be chosen from the fans on facebook.  On even-numbered days, they'll choose a name from their Twitter followers.  You can find the official rules here. 

While you're signing up to follow Singer on Twitter, go ahead and follow Martha, and me.  Yeah, I'm listed as "miniMartha" on Twitter--that's how I roll.  Happy Monday!