Last year, we participated in a card exchange. Our card looked something like this:

Of course, it took many, many attempts to get those two pictures, but it was fun (mostly) and we got several comments on how cute it was. Which, of course, meant that I felt a little pressure for this year’s card exchange. And this year I also had to wrangle a baby.

A few outtakes:

Finally, with a little more practice and the help of Photoshop, we had a card!

It didn’t quite turn out as I had envisoned, but I’m still pretty happy with it. And I know the cats aren’t in it – this is what I get when I try to include them.

We decided to try an organic foodshare this year (we’ve actually be meaning to do it for years, but never quite hooked up with the right people) and tonight was our first pickup. Since we had never tried it out, we thought we’d start with the small bag for a month and see how it went.

This is what it looked like spread out on our counter.

Many of the items were easy to identify, but I did have to take to the web to identify a few (and after an hour, I still had not identified one). We were pleasantly surprised by the variety in the bag (although you will note that there are three different kinds of salad greens. Good thing that we like salads. There may be four if Pak choi is considered a salad green, but so far I have only gone as far as identifying it, not figuring out how to use it).

In case you are curious, they are: 1. Green onions and chives – 2. Lettuce (green leaf) – 3. Shiitake Mushrooms – 4. Rhubarb – 5. Bananas – 6. Pak choi – 7. Bag of greens (which once unpacked also yielded mint and another item that I can recognize but not name) – 8. Raddishes – 9. Asparagus – 10. Lettuce (butterhead, I think) – 11. Lemon – 12. Potatoes – 13. Carrot – 14. Parsnip – 15. Mystery item

The mystery item has me a bit stumped. I thought I recognized the smell of it, but the look of it was a bit off-putting.

Kind of creepy looking, no? In the end I decided to try to taste it and while it still seems familiar, I just can’t place it. I may just cook it and see what happens!

In the past year I have:

• switched jobs
• renovated a house
• moved
• purchased a new car
• adopted a puppy

And if I didn’t count the job switch, everything else was done in the last six months.

This from the woman who doesn’t like change.

Previously (green jolly ranchers taste like soap)

I think somehow one of my posts got combined with someone else’s post when Blogger went to save it. This text was appended to the end of my post from December 23 (which I’ve now fixed):

“a fico completamente feliz, ou mesmo, não tão feliz, mas em paz.
Tenho muitos fantasmas. Fantasmas demais para uma única cabeça.
Hoje r”

Translated (from Portugese to English, using Babelfish):

“it I am completely happy, or same, not so happy, but in peace. I have many ghosts. Ghosts excessively for an only head. Today r”