February Photos from Cold Comfort Farm

February is usually the coldest month outdoors and hopefully the warmest month indoors!  Mark and I went to a local dining hall (like Columbia's "The Falls") for a WONDERFUL Valentine's meal, with great desserts!  Kev, you should try to make the white chocolate champagne glass below - for Mitch.

Our neighbors, who attended this meal with us, chose the edible white chocolate formed champagne glass with raspberry filling and Mark and I chose the lava cake with raspberries - YUM!!!

As you know the northeast U.S. was hit with a lot of snow this winter - more than the UP in a shorter time period.  We've had our share of snow, but not as fast - we had our second major blizzard last week.  Here are some photos of our windows - the first day and then the next day, at the height of the blizzard.

Here is a photo of our bedroom window - it kind of looks like my weaving - nature's weaving:

One the left side of Canal Rd, you will see a field where you can still see the grass tops, the snow is about 3" deep...on the other side you will see the wall of snow over 8ft tall.  The wind causes drifting and the township snowplows push the snow to the side of Canal Rd...where Mark is standing.

We have so much wind here we are considering putting up a wind mill for our power source. We have been told by a close neighbor that on Labor Day, nature flips the wind switch and we have strong winds all winter due to the fact that we live on a peninsula on a peninsula and are surrounded on three sides with the largest fresh water lake in the U.S.

Here are a few more photos of the snow amounts in Houghton (the photo on the left show totals that are two weeks old now). This sign hangs in the window of a local sports equipment store.  The other photo shows how the town has to keep the signs from becoming buried by the snow plow.  In some locations, there is no more place to pile the additional snowfall so the snow is shoveled into dump trucks and hauled away.

 I've been continuing on my projects; I've finished my first weaving project (left) and on the right is the next boarder of my quilt:

 As we drove today, I saw a typical log truck but couldn't get the best photo of it.  I just got one of the two trailers - this is a very typical sight here:

This photo below tells you all what it is like to live here.  I am out of my comfort zone quite often- so our adventure continues. May you all choose to live outside your comfort zone at times - and have your own adventures!

Old Projects - The Ones That Keep Haunting You

1980s project

Do you have old projects stashed in a closet, dresser, or cabinet?  Do they haunt you? You had good intentions to complete them, but work, obligations, or health got in the way.  I have many of those projects and they have haunted me for years and I'm determined to complete them - or at least most of them. 

Sewing has been a hobby of mine for years, or should I say years ago.  I've had fabric sitting in a trunk or a dresser so long that the fabric color/pattern has gone out of style - photo above. It was just one more thing that I had to put on hold.  From my other postings, do you see a pattern in my life? I even had started making a quilt out of the fabric (depicted above) above and now I have these in various stages...in an out-of-style color.  I'm still trying to figure out what to do with these quilt squares (if you have an idea, please call me).  I may just finish this as a lap quilt and hope the colors come back in style someday. 

Living here in the Great White North, winters are the perfect time to complete these projects.  In fact, our neighbors keep telling me that the winters here are not long enough these days to get all their winter projects completed. Since I don't know what their old days were like, I'll take what we are given and try to enjoy the snowy peace and quiet, before a summer of farm work sets in.  The first project I completed was a Christmas tree skirt, below, that was almost finished for years.

A few years ago, Keva grew interested in quilting.  She wanted to take a quilting class and I felt I needed a refresher (it had been YEARS since I had worked with fabric), so we took a class together. It was to complete a twin size quilt. It too, sat along with all the other good intention projects. I've pulled it out and have been working on it for the last  few weeks.

As you can see below, I'm not finished yet, but here is what I have completed to date.
I still have to add the three boarders, machine quilt, and bind it.  I'll post a photo of the finished quilt before the end or winter. It feels really good to FINISH something - finally! If I finish a quilt with the fabric from the top photo, it will be over 30 years from start to finish.

So have faith, you too will have a chance to finish some of your haunting projects...and in maybe less than 30 years!

Happy Valentine's Day to All I Love!

St. Valentine's Day is a weird day for most of us.  Personally, I think it is a great day for lovers - those just falling in love.  For the rest of us, it's just weird.  I like Lauren's blog page about today, she is spot on. Most of us tell our families, spouses, and friends that we love them much more often than once a year...at least I do.  And there are all types of love and just as many ways to show it.

I use this day to do some little thing for those I love, not extravagant or expensive, usually made my me.  I bake their favorite or purchase a trinket (small and inexpensive) just to show that I don't take them for granted.  This year it involved chocolate!  Dark Chocolate!

I added blueberries instead of raspberries

Now I don't have a Pintrest account and I don't need or want one.  Keva is always sending me great ideas, photos, and recipes from her Pintrest pages.  I save some, pitch some, and use some.  The other day she sent me a recipe for dark chocolate truffles.  I thought I'd try to make them for Mark and the girls' families - WOW, since they are not baked, they are quick and easy to prepare.  I will NEVER again pay the high price for them in a store.  Now, mine are not as pretty and perfect as store bought, but just as tasty! Here is the link to the recipe that Kev sent to me.  

http://www.superfoodsynergy.com/recipes/raspberry-nutella-truffles

 Mark and I have one custom, we always exchange cards on Valentine's Day and, as you can guess, his are usually funny cards.  I have to share the Hallmark card I received this year as I know you all will appreciate his humor:

 So, Valentine's Day is what you make of it - not all the hype and urging to go to the nearest jewelry store and spend a small fortune to show your love.  Just give them a little of you - that is more than enough!  Happy Valentine's Day - I love you!

Michigan Technilogical University's Winter Carnival Photos

Yearly, during the first week in February, the engineering students use the most abundant and malleable resource - SNOW - to build statues, building facades, and even vehicles to address a university-provided theme and compete for some prizes.  This year's theme was, "While frozen in the ice and snow, we dream of vacations on which to go."  They also use this week to invite all the locals to walk the campus and view college events like swimming, broomball (a form of hockey played with small brooms instead of hockey sticks), lectures, curling, sledding, and much more.  You can check out their website at http://www.mtu.edu/carnival/#schedule.

Mark and I bundled up and, along with LOTS of others, toured the university taking photos and videos of the snow and ice carvings.  I thought you'd like to see the marvelous engineering students work in snow:

This is the first place winner. That is Mark at the end of the video in his bright yellow jacket.

This is the second place winner.  Mark and I were amazed by them both, especially things like the ice chains and the tiki lights (I've add a close up photo at the bottom of this posting).  It says, "Hawaiian lava flow out of Michigan arctic snow."

Here are some other photos for your enjoyment:

Rome

Chariot and Horses

Grand Hotel

Arch

Taj Mahal

Eiffel Tower

Space Shuttle

Ice Bear

Owl                                                                                                                  Eagle

Surfer and Dalphins

Tiki Light

Wolf

WallyWorld from National Lampoon's Vacation.  

I hope you enjoy the wonderful work that went into the creation of these pieces of art.

Life Lessons on Risk

Mark's snowshoe tracks

I have found that snow shoeing is good for the soul - even if you snowshoe with a  partner.  Mark and I went out shoeing yesterday.  We were out in temps of about 8 degrees, but we were dressed appropriately so we enjoyed our experience.

The tree to the right had lichen growing on it in the snow - the lichen was green and growing in the frigid cold - growing in adversity.

The tracks above were made from a small animal that drug its tail...the track looked like it was made from a mechanical device - perfect - naturally perfect.  The photo below shows a rock in the middle of the roots of a tree, the tree grew around its adversity!

As Mark and I walked through the woods, I realized that I was FOLLOWING him.  I was looking down at his tracks, not looking around enjoying the beauty of the snow, pines, and nature.  I realized that I was watching where I was walking because the woods are full of downed trees causing hazards and I didn't want to fall...without realizing it I was being very "risk-averse" and missing out on the importance of the experience.  I was a risk taker as a youth but on this trek I realized that I had become just like everyone else today.

This nation has gotten so risk-averse that I feel that we don't really LIVE any more.  Parents have become so scared, sometimes due to litigation and sometimes because the media instills fear in us all - fear to let their children be children and play, experience, and really enjoy life.  It's gotten so bad that now sledding has been banned in some northern cities, due to the amount of risk and litigation.  The news showed some videos of teens running their sleds into parked cars and on to sidewalks full of people; the sledders seemed to use poor judgement - maybe because they have spent so much time indoors from the time they were small that they don't make wise decisions outdoors.  I don't think that Houghton will ban sledding here.  I'll tell you why...

Saturday, Mark and I attended the Heikinpaiva (the "p" is pronounced "b").  Hancock, MI hosts an annual midwinter festival, celebrating the feast day of Saint Henrik, patron saint of Finland. Many of the locals are Fins so this is their winter Finnish Festival - photos below.  It was about 12 degrees outside - you would never know by the amount of people outdoors, enjoying the festival.  Check out the video below.

Sir Heikki Lunta, complete with his crown of snowflakes.

As we walked through the outdoor festival, there were three little boys (ages of about 8-12) climbing the trees around the town's children's game area so they could get a better view of the activities (they were having fun climbing too).  One of them went pretty high - no one thought a thing of these kids climbing city trees.  In St. Louis and most other cities, parents would have been pulling them down or at least hovering to make sure they were alright...these three were having fun and being kids!!

Mark and I have noticed that children here are much calmer than children in other cities we've experienced. We see lots of kids everywhere here - many families have 5,6,7, or more children because of their religious beliefs on birth control.  Instead of bunches of wild Indians, they are well behaved and calm.  We can only attribute it to the fact that they go outside, play, and climb trees - they run and play off all their bottled up energy. They and their parents take the risk of them playing outside.

Now to come back to our snow shoeing - as I noticed that I was just following in Mark's footprints, I purposely stopped looking at his tracks and started enjoying nature.  And, as I pulled my hands out of my mittens to take some of the photos, I tripped on a branch, and fell into the snow.  I had to laugh -  my recent thoughts on risk coming back to me.

Since I had my mittens off, my hands got wet and very cold - they were so cold they burned.  I dried them off the best I could, got my mittens back on quickly, and then kept moving my fingers inside my mittens (even though they stung) and a few minutes later they were fine again.  I took a risk, fell, and was fine and better for the experience as I enjoyed more of nature and took some pictures to share with you.

We all need to take risks in life in order to grow, learn, and be better people.  I'm glad I would rather take risks - and deal with the repercussions of those risks - than live a quiet, dull, and risk-averse life    I wish for all of my family and friends to have the strength to take the risks they need to make to have a happier, richer, and learned life. God bless you all.