I’ve done some housekeeping on here.  I changed the comments settings, taking away word verification and moderation.  There was a stretch in which I was receiving some snarky and rather insulting comments, from someone who wanted to remain anonymous which seemed to have stopped.  I don’t mind snark, but own it, you know what I’m saying?  I’ve realized from commenting on other blogs what a pain the new word verification settings have gotten to be.   Some of you have thought blogger has been eating comments lately, but through the magic of the internet, they’ve shown up and been published.  Well, the ones I know about.

I’ve changed some things around on my side bar too.  I hadn’t updated my blogroll in quite some time, so I added a few new ones. My friends Ryanne, Julia, both of whom are new bloggers and quite entertaining.  I’ve also added Suzicate’s “The Water Witch’s Daughter”, which I find inspiring.   Suzicate, I’d love to go winery hopping with you next time you’re in Nelson.   There are a slew of other blogs I read, so I hope to be better about swapping them out a little more frequently on my sidebar. 

The conversation on Facebook that sprung out of the link I posted to my canning class yesterday led to it being restructured a bit.  Instead of tomatoes and peaches, I’m going to teach canning tomatoes and pickles.  I’m even more excited about this now.  If you’ve paid attention to my posts over the last couple of summers, you’ll know how much I love to pickle things and that I will pickle anything.  I plan on doing bread & butter pickles in the class and I will be sharing some of my other favorite pickle recipes.  There’s a link sign up for the class on the sidebar now too.

I’m pretty sure I’m the last person out there to discover First Aid Kit.  I can’t even take credit for discovering them, my dearest babydaddy heard them, realized I needed it and he made it the tunes I cooked to one day.  I do love that man.  Best Coast has a new album out, that I’ve heard great things about.  I haven’t listened to it thoroughly yet, but I do like what I’ve heard.  Anyone catch “Birth of an Album” on NPR this morning with Neko Case?  Totally made my morning. 

In a year of non-parties, the Oxford Road Block party was last weekend.  I was worried when I wasn’t hand delivered my invite and instead happened to catch a flyer on a telephone pole.  Turns out they didn’t invite anyone, it was all they could do to get the flyers up. At least they had the party though. There was a wonderful ‘mom circle’ that happened that refreshed my spirit that day in a much needed way.  I heard other women that were there say the same thing.  Maybe we need to do those things more often ladies.  D- I’m totally serious about Wine Thursdays, just hollar.  Also, I want that recipe please.

The best part of the evening though may have been watching Edie give the Fein boys a firehouse bath in the driveway.  All is always right with the world when there are boys who understand she holds the hose and stays dry while they get soaked.  I blame all older neighborhood boys who catered to her so much in her toddler years that she now expects all boys to do exactly what she tells them to do.  The male portion of humanity has no idea what they have wrought upon themselves.