My Tribute to the Month of March, the New Chicks, and a Decidedly Non-Frumpy Apron

We are all breathing a collective sigh of relief in this family as we turn the calendar from February to March. For a variety of reasons, including but not limited to the fact that at least one person in this house has been sick for the past two months (!!) I am perfectly happy to kiss this winter goodbye and move on to the friendly warmth, potential for growth, and cheerful optimism of spring. I sometimes wonder if I misrepresent our lives on this blog. You got to see the baking and art projects and snow play and sewing and crafts and holidays of this winter. What I failed to document was the darkness of those impossibly short days when I rush off to work while my family sleeps, spend the day with other people's kids, and then come home to barely enough daylight to get dinner on the table before we all crash into our beds. Sometimes I wish my only job was the mothering one.

I've kind of always hated January and February, come to think of it. The worst was the year that I lived in France and during those two months the sky was so oppressively grey that I swear I could actually feel it pressing down upon me. I dutifully crossed a treacherous bridge every morning to get to school and my tears were inevitably frozen to my face by the icy, bitter wind. I thought spring would never come.

But it always does. And right now we are grasping at every little sign of it we can find. Nothing says spring like new baby chicks. Or a hedgehog apron. Or pirate shorts. We'll get to those in a minute.

Meet the new girls:

This one is Daisy*. She's a Wellsummer.

And this here is Petunia*, the Black Laced Wyandotte.

*these chicken names are subject to change. Since I write the blog, I am using my top choices. Brent is voting for Henny Penny and Jack wants the other one to be Sam. We'll see...

But what about the Silver Spangled Hamburgs? you say. Well, on the day we decided to get new chicks, we needed our new chicks right then and there. We could not be bothered with a special order- we required our chicks on the spot. Some of us were really needing that sign of spring. We could not be kept waiting.

And so this weekend the bigger boys embarked on a project to expand the chicken chalet to make room for the new sisters. Photos of the addition to follow. I am encouraging Brent to start building chicken houses for a living. Let's just say he seems to have a knack for agricultural architecture.

And I decided to sew something for myself! At Jack's birthday party I could be found donning a ratty old apron whilst tossing pizzas into the oven and chugging a brew. This is not how I want to greet my party guests! I needed a hip new apron that screams domestic goddess! Or at least something other than washed up, greasy, stained pizza maker.

What do you think? I am usually not a huge fan of bias tape, but with this pattern I think it totally works. In honor of my new, and very springlike, hedgehog apron, I baked up a mouth watering batch of the Cocoa Oatmeal Cookies that we love so much. Only this time I took a friend's advice and threw in a handful of chocolate chips. Holy hedgehogs, those were some seriously freaking delicious cookies.

I told you they were mouth watering.

And I even used some of those cookies to bribe Jack into posing in his new pirate shorts. Isn't this fabric cute? I so hesitate to tell you where I bought it because I'll be confessing a dark and dirty secret... it's from Wal-Mart. I know! Ewww! But I think I paid $4 for the yard! Still, totally NOT a place where I want to be dropping my dimes even if they do have super adorable pirate fabric at a steal of a deal. Then again, I'm not going to drive all the way across town for bias tape, so what the hell. I might as well peruse the fabrics while I'm there. DON'T JUDGE ME!

I'm really happy with the pockets. I actually managed to get them on straight this time. This is a first for me.

Happy spring!

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