Fun Kitchen Projects

Work appears to keep us more than busy, we have been still having fun with projects of our own.  I will share our new pancake recipe, energy chunks dry aged sausages later or on our work blog, you can see the loveliness of making kombucha:

 My collection of SCOBY's hanging out.

 The Symbiotic Culture of Bacterial of Yeast is pretty cool in itself.

 Our porter, the second of our home brews, is in the fridge, with two other batches bottled and the newest stout fermenting.  I think we will become obsessive home breweres, it really is fun.

 The biggest excitement these days in the kitchen in my new egg maker.  He makes them to order, over easy, sunny side up and scrambled.  He couldn't be prouder of his new skill, and I couldn't be prouder of the fact that cooking eggs has made him rekindle his love of eating them.  You totally fell for it Asher!!

With his awesome new wink.

 And yes a non-stick pan.  They make for easy egg cooking success, a key to keeping kids doing it.

A Fall Retreat

We traveled north.  We caught fish.  We ate fish.  We explored magical woods.  We got cold.  We touched the shores of Lake Superior for the first time.  We witnessed Ben catching a brown trout.  We walked in sunny, muddy woods.  We saw some of the largest fish ever caught on display.  We ate giant marshmallows.  

And there was plenty of time for sitting by the wood stove and knitting.

It was amazing.  We are so lucky to have friends share their northwoods retreat with us.

The Winter Project

We love our house, the space is phenomenal, the way it seems to have found us is nothing short of unbelievable and our full life of living suits it well.  Except for the entry way.  Why oh why there was ever carpet put in this room and around a wood stove, I will never understand.  Luckily this disgusting situation has been remedied and the result is enjoyed by all of us.  

 The carpet in all of it's glory.  I am pretty sure I was most grossed out upon the discovery that it is the same carpet that is in another room, most certainly laid at the same time.  This entry room, about 5 shades darker in coloring, you can decide how that changed occurred  and while we are high impact, it wasn't too great a sight prior to our arrival.

 The boys are always involved!

 The basement stairwell where we cure meat and store beer was revealed and we problem solved how to deal with it.

 The wood stove pedestal was removed.  Seriously such a waste of space, it was too small to let anything sit upon uit and big enough to make all the space around it useless.

 Uncle Zak lent a hand.

 The first tiles layed on Christmas day.

 The rest, the next.

 Grouted before New Years.  And now, loved by everyone, except for the one who stubs their toe on the tiles we were warned about, but the basement door was a little tricky to navigate with it's wonkiness.

PLAY

Oh, we have been having fun.  These are a lot of pictures, just random days, when nothing too special was happening, but I happened to be motivated to grab the camera and capture just a glimpse (did I mention my camera has been not acting properly for the past 6 months and finally I got it cleaned, really. best. $50. spent.)

 Asher is active.  He plays outside for hours everyday, even when it is only 4 degrees, though that day may have only been an hour  I have him do silly things sometimes to remove his wiggles: like jumping, running upstairs to do 5 then 7 then 9 then 13 laps around while timing him... you know things that active boys need to do.  Here are a couple of his best jumps from one day, because who doesn't want to see that.  I am sorry I don't have pictures of him literally climbing the walls to make a bridge that River can run under, you just have to come and see that for yourself.

 We very rarely do crafts, I blame this on said energy and boyness, but ocassionally I can wow them with glitter and glue and a holiday.

 And the snow.  Thank you world for snow.  It is so wonderful, extremely exhausting and so much fun.  this is my boys first very snowy winter and we are in love.  The boys are finally both sleeping through the night and for those parents out there who don't have that luxury at this present time, it will happen, and it is as awesome as you imagine it will be.  The beach after the first snow, wasn't as snowy, we made drip castles the day before the biggest snowfall of the year.

 The fifteen inches that landed the day before the first day of winter, was really one of the greatest day.  Perfect packing snow and we had no where to go.

And then sometimes when it is negative something, we bring the snow inside because we love it that much!

Which brings me to the wonders of sledding.  Again, so much fun.  Asher is the proud new owner of a sled that he can easily carry and steer.  Oh how good sleep is when three hours on a sunny afternoon can be spent sledding.

A look back at Life

Life here in the Wisconsin Lubchansky household has been chugging along, while this here blog has been left abandoned.  The life offline is pretty awesome.  And while I am ready to be back in this space, I still have so much life with this family of mine that I want to enjoy to get bogged down in the online world. I am hoping I can be more deliberate with my online presence, keep all of my favorite people up to date on what we are doing living this one, beautiful life of ours and inspire some other to live the life they want.  Baby steps begin though with the biggest hurdle of all to resurrect a blog: BLOG CATCHUP.  So I am giving myself one week, to play catchup and then I need to move on to real, present day life, where my camera is clean and the focus works again... reason number one for blog failure, photography becoming no fun.  So one week, show your support and love.  Thank you for your patience.  

The boys and their Rosh Hashanah challah making.  Happy New Year back this fall.

 The Wisconsin River, if you have kids, take them to a sandy place with water, they will play without argument for hours, a total parenting win.  This was a fine October day, it was lovely.

 We carved pumpkins this year that we picked ourselves at the Tree Farm.  The boys each did their own, with their own serrated pumpkin carving knives, those knives are awesome, again if you have kids, buy those knives for pumpkin carving and carving of any other vegetable- or if you love carving yourself and still don't have one because you think you are too damn good with a paring knife, get over yourself and get one.

 If you can believe it, we had a piliated woodpecker in our backyard.  It was pecking a hole in our silver maple (which will hopefully have a treehouse by the fall) dropping chips all over.  It was exciting for everyone in this household.

 Cousin birthdays were celebrated with our oldest niece turning SIX!!

 And our house was re-arranged for some winter play so we can maximize our viatmin K intake.  Also, I scored that sweet crushed velvet, antique full of awesomeness chair on Craigslist.  Which reminds to find another picture:

that didn't even take me a minute: but this was my other fabulous find on Craigslist.  I wished for it for a week, then checked the listings and there it was as perfect as can be.  Oh and also the people who lived here before had this in the exact same spot:

Mine is thinner and fits the space perfectly, but when I was looking through old pictures, I had to do a double take when I saw a piece so similar in the photos from when we first looked at our house.

So there you have a brief update on our life.  My hope it to have one post each day catching you up on the rest of is, then next week back to reality.