A Second Look--January 28, 2014

We continue to have cold winter weather (and yes, I do need the "cold" modifier for "winter". It's colder than normal this year.) but the critters are still out and about. The juncos provided entertainment around the bird feeder with large numbers of them hopping and flitting around on the ground and in the air. For variety, a few other birds like cardinals, titmouses, wrens, and nuthatches frequented the feeders also. And to break things up, a squirrel dashed by then and again.

I hadn't been to the "lower forty" for a couple of weeks, so I bundled up and took a walk around to see what I could see. The ground was covered with crunchy snow that wasn't too deep anymore. The crunch of the snow was almost as satisfying as the crunch of the fall leaves. And to be honest, I didn't see too much because I didn't spend much time looking. I spent more time paying attention to the cold and the wind than I did other things. However, there was a standout among everything else--deer tracks. They were everywhere. I know we have deer in the area, but I didn't realize how much they traverse every part of the yard until I saw their tracks.

Some things I saw this week during my Second Look.

Although we haven't had much snow this last week, we haven't had much sunshine either.

The deer tracks pretty much crisscrossed the entire backyard.

The cows were closer together than normal. I assume to keep warm.

Dark-eyed Junco

Female Cardinal and Junco

Tufted Titmouse

Female Downy Woodpecker

Visionary Arts

Do you ever have one of those times when you just want to get out of the house and do something different? Ward and I had one of those days this weekend. We needed a change of scenery, so on a whim, we visited the American Visionary Arts Museum in Baltimore, MD. We had visited this museum a couple of times before and it is a favorite of ours.

Before my first visit, I didn't really understand what visionary art was. At first glance, it looked a little like folk art. But on second glance, was it something far different. Folk art is passed down from person to person, but visionary art comes totally from within the artist. It is more about the process of making the piece than about the finished product, and it comes from an emotional level. The artist usually has no formal training and often comes to creating their art later in life. At this point they have lived enough that they are less concerned about what people think and more concerned about their creation.

Whatever it is, I like it. The artists ranged from people who spent their life in mental institutions to a plantation child. There were paintings, sculptures, and mechanical pieces. Much of it was whimsical and some of it was disturbing.  As you can tell, it is really hard to categorize.

 The interesting thing for me on this trip was how I came alive in the OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder) room. The artists in this room worked with very small detailed pieces (large match stick sculptures or lots of tiny dots). There was also a lot of symmetry in their pieces. I knew that I liked detail and symmetry, but I didn't realize how much. Ward's favorite part were the wooden moving toys. And much as we don't want to admit it, we both enjoy the section on flatulence.

A visit to the Visionary Arts Museum always gives me a new outlook on life. I look at things with a new found appreciation for their creation. And I always think that I want to create a visionary art room in my house. Everything has a story, I want to tell some of mine. Who knows? Maybe someday I will do just that.

Unfortunately, as with most museums, we couldn't take any pictures inside. I did snap a few on the outside while bracing against the cold wind. You can see a few of them below.

Thankful Sunday--January 26, 2014

I am thankful for warmer temperatures.

After several days of single digit temperatures along with snow and ice, we warmed up to freezing yesterday.  With the record breaking cold temperatures we have been having along with most of the rest of the US, this was a welcome change. For this I am thankful.

It's time for Food Waste Friday, when the Frugalgirl encourages us to post pictures from the previous week of wasted food from our household. This accountability hopefully will help us to be more careful with our food and maybe save some money. Also, I am using this public forum to encourage us to eat out less which includes better meal planning. You can follow how we are doing in this endeavor by reading True Food Confessions. (Thanks to Jo from Simply Being Mum for sponsoring FWF this week.)

This Week's Food Waste

Hamburger, carrots, bread

Between being called out of town unexpectedly and then being sick, I gave the refrigerator a good clean out. Unfortunately, several things went bad in my absence. After this clean out, so far, we've been able to keep up. I hope this continues, but things are still a little crazy here.

This Week's True Food Confessions

The True Food Confession this week is that cooking at home hasn't been a priority. When push comes to shove, which it has around here recently, cooking goes far down on the list of what's important. However, even with that, we did manage to fix a few things that provided us with good leftovers to have other times. We fixed a spinach pie, pasta salad, and sloppy joes. These were supplemented with green salads, cottage cheese, and frozen bean burritos. We also had sandwiches from Subway and a family meal out at a deli. We have good ingredients in the house for more cooking and ideas that I want to try. Maybe this next week I will get to some of them. I hope so.

Winter Fun--Do try this at home.

Here in the East, we have had a day of snow with more falling. Many businesses have been closed as well as all of the schools. While I was looking for gloves to wear for the shoveling, I remembered a science project Theo did when he was ten.

It was one he thought up on his own and it was just right for a boy his age. His question was, "Which gloves will stay dry for the longest time while playing in the snow?" He conducted his experiment by gathering up all of the gloves in the house and making snowballs with them until his hands got wet. He used gloves made from seven different materials. The worst pair got wet after 16 snowballs and the best pair got wet after 90+ snowballs. (He stopped counting after 90.) See if you can guess which pair performed the best and which pair performed the worst.

He had gloves made from:

Deerskin
Deerskin with knit lining
Polar fleece with no lining
Polar fleece with polyester lining
Acrylic gray knit
Acrylic brown knit
Acrylic knit with leather grip

He thought the leather gloves would perform the best, but they turned out to get wet the fastest. The acrylic knit gloves did the best even though they were thinner than the polar fleece. The polar fleece were about half-way in-between the leather and acrylic knit gloves.

Now while this experiment and its results were interesting, that was not the best part according to Theo. The best part was the snowball fight he had at the end with his brother. I do encourage you to try this at home.