crystals

merry xmas from minnie the santa chicken

yaycation! + photos a glow-glow

 
today is my first day of holiday vacation. eleven days off in a row! getting paid while not working is a totally foreign concept, having only ever had part-time jobs where paid vacation and holidays do not exist whatsoever.

 
my new camera arrived thursday and immediately erased any doubts i might've had about the purchase. the light sensitivity is absolutely amazing, it's almost like it creates light where there is none. that's my favorite thing about it so far.

 
last night i went with cam and her boyfriend to winter garden aglow at the idaho botanical gardens.

exposure

 
tonight i'm buying the camera of my dreams, the canon 5d mark ii. i'm excited because i've wanted one for so long, but also freaking out because i'm a tightwad and it's a lot of money.

 
i keep reminding myself that this is normal. lots of people drop large sums of money on their hobbies, or other nonessential, extravagant things. (like, check out this super classy bruce lee pen set, a steal at $290k. it's literally one of the things that come up when you google "expensive.")

in the scheme of things this splurge is not that big of a deal...like getting a haircut, it will grow back eventually (hopefully).

 
can you tell i'm still working on justifying this?

 it's going to be my first full-frame sensor, professional-grade camera. luckily i have two very nice lenses that will still work with it, including the 100mm f/2.8 macro i used for many of the shots in this post. my speedlite flash unit will still work, too, and a few other accessories. all in all about $1k worth of equipment that i won't have to replace. my old walking-around lens is an EF-S that won't fit, but it wouldn't perform very well on this camera anyway. the new multipurpose lens, which alone costs over $1k (*faint*), is L-series glass, another thing i've never had a taste of before.

 
are you treating yourself to anything special for xmas this year? and if so, how do you justify it--by googling bruce lee pens, or...?

 

season

 a whole month since i last posted. time speeds by this time of year. especially this stretch between thanksgiving and xmas.

 i xmas-ified my house just in time for this strangely warm, non-xmasy weather. it's 10 at night right now and almost 60 degrees, i even have the windows open, with a nice cool breeze blowing through.

 i thrifted a pair of hand-knit stockings for the boys, and three mini stockings for the ladies (anyone have chicken stocking-stuffer ideas? i can't think of anything they'd want besides food.)

 i put up my tree last weekend. all the ornaments are handmade--i still need to figure out a tree topper.

 jason and cam came over for "white friday" craft night. jason spun dog fur into yarn while cam and i made xmas tree ornaments. i found a couple neat dough recipes on pinterest--a porcelain-looking one made out of corn starch, baking soda and water, and a gingerbread-colored one made out of apple sauce and cinnamon.

 i collected random objects to press into the dough, and cam brought a set of letter presses.

 the pups made paw print ornaments. i was going to attempt chicken footprint ones, but these were enough of a struggle.

 i made an egg-shaped ornament with their initials instead:

 the applesauce/cinnamon ornaments smell so damn good...

 ...and so do these clementine pomander balls.

 roasted brussels sprouts with homemade garlic aioli for white friday snack. i've made this twice in the last week, it's so yummy.

 a living xmas tree for my kitchen. it's an italian stone pine, supposed to produce edible pine nuts when it gets bigger.

 on thanksgiving the chickens enjoyed their own feast before the dogs and i headed over to my parents' for dinner. they scarfed down a bowl of warm oatmeal with homegrown tomatoes and a side of sprouted wheat berries. they contributed eggs to our thanksgiving dessert, bread pudding.

 i thrifted another ceramic egg crate like the one cam gave me, only this one holds a full dozen.

 this is the reason i can't leave chairs pushed in next to tables anywhere around the house. i worked from home last week, writing about TV tuner software. one afternoon i returned from the bathroom to find potato working in xmetal.

 my cute boys cuddling on the couch, fast asleep.

 potato wearing his warm sweater, shortly before i trimmed his hair. he was so shaggy.

 a flattering picture of scout, from election night. he was so excited about obama he almost passed out.

 potato kept stealing andy's bed, so i got him one of his own. at first he just wanted to play with it and carry it around the house. andy immediately recognized its comfyness potential, and totally disregarded the size limitations. he kept trying to scrunch his big snausage-dog body into this tiny cat bed, diving in and squirming until his front half was mostly in. eventually he quit trying. now potato understands what to do with it, but he still steals andy's bed sometimes.

 mid-november tomato harvest, can you believe it? i still have some left. these ripened indoors, but at my parents' house a few miles away they didn't get a frost until sometime in november. my mom was harvesting vine-ripened tomatoes up until about three weeks ago. boise's micro-climates are crazy.

 in september i made gallons of delicious end-of-the-garden salsa. lots of tomatillos, at least a dozen varieties of tomato and half a dozen varieties of pepper. very complex flavor. all fresh, nothing cooked, all homegrown (except for the fresh-squeezed lime juice and some seasonings).

 i gave away most of it and it was all gone in just a couple of weeks. i brought a 32oz jar and tortilla chips to my mom for her birthday, and she nommed half the jar in one sitting. she's a very light eater, i don't think i've ever seen her eat that much all at once.

 the first seed catalogue, from seed savers exchange, arrived in the mail a few days ago. that means it's officially garden-porn-swooning season, when everything's all excitement and fantasy and potential. it seems like summer just barely ended.