This was our breakfast this morning. Apple ginger muffins and home made ricotta cheese. Yum.

The muffins have chopped up candied ginger in them so every once in a while you get a little zing of ginger next to the sweetness of the apple. I got twelve large muffins from the recipe but you could probably squeeze out fifteen smaller ones.

My sister and I made this cheese yesterday as an experiment. It's quite creamy tasting and a bit tangy. Jane thought it would be good with a bit of salt but I wasn't sure how that would go with my muffin so I left it plain. The recipe made quite a lot of cheese (roughly two cups tightly packed) which we divided in half. We also made a paneer but were a little unsure about the flavour (ie. none). Neither of us have ever had paneer so we weren't really sure what it should taste like or how it's supposed to be eaten. It seems like the sort of thing that might absorb flavours if it's cooked in something strong like a curry.

I got right into playing with plants yesterday. My parents had been over and we'd showed them around our yard and talked about some of our ideas for it. After they left I'd watered and deadheaded my outside pots and remembered that a couple of my indoor plants needed deadheading too (they also needed a lot of water). I decided to tidy up the violets a bit after getting rid of the old flowers and while I was cutting off some of the larger leaves I wondered if I could propagate new plants from the cuttings. (My sister recently gave me a couple of plants that she'd propagated herself and I think it's a pretty cool thing to do.) I looked it up and sure enough you can.

So I got my bag of potting soil and some spare little pots and a few other things from my houseplants bin and set to it. I've got three cuttings each of pink and white African Violets and one of a Christmas cactus (no idea if it will work; I didn't actually look that one up). While I was playing with dirt I figured I should repot a few of my plants that were showing too many roots. Two plants are in big new pots and one is in the same size pot but with a bunch of new soil (when I tipped it out to check on it I discovered that it had no soil - the entire pot was full of old roots).

Now I'm just trying to come up with places for all my plants (bigger pots require bigger spots) and continuing to scrub dirt from under my fingernails.

Oh, and as far as my list goes...
- My toe nails are now pink.
- My coffee every morning has gone cold before I finished it.
- I have some fun new ideas for our garden.
- I made zucchini bread (for breakfast) with a zucchini from my sister's garden.
- I haven't sewn anything yet but I have cut out a bunch of stuff and can't wait to get going.
- I bought needles and thread and oiled my machine (for the first time ever).
- I tidied the family room just enough to get the table set up and will start moving my computer and printer out there as soon as I've posted this (or tomorrow if I'm lazy).

It's been a good weekend - full but not busy. Lots of lazy time. It was raining when we got up this morning - pelting down - making it the perfect day for not going to work. We ate zucchini bread, drank coffee and watch The Labyrinth. And the special bonus of a long weekend - a short week. Yay!

This is our first breakfast in our new house. It was also the morning of the solstice which we think is kind of cool. It was part celebratory and part fortification for a busy day of moving. I think there were also pancakes.

We're now completely moved out of our apartment. It was so strange to see it all empty and then hand over the keys and walk away. All our stuff has been moved to the house, most of it has been unpacked and some of it has been put away. Figuring out where everything should go is a much bigger job than I'd guessed . We've got a lot of boxes cluttering up our space too. We'll be making a run to the recycling depot soon to regain more of our floor and shed (temporary box storage) space.

We have pretty much no landscaping on our lot (this is a new area of town) except for a little strip of grass in front of the house. It means that for the time being it looks a little sad (especially next to houses that have already got their landscaping done) but also means that we can do whatever we feel like without being constrained by anything done by the previous owner. So far we've started a compost, bought a few containers of flowers and a strawberry plant and decided that we really need to get a lawn mower and something to cut down all the weeds.

We've got a few pretty volunteers right now. This little white one is part of the pack of weeds at the curb end of our lawn. I've no idea what it is but it looked kind of sweet when we moved in (its grown about a foot and a half since then).

There are a few very small wild roses around the house, mostly on the edge of the little bit of wilderness (read: mosquito swamp) between our house and our rear neighbours lot. I'll probably keep a few of them (most of the swamp will have to go); they are a favourite of mine (and almost impossible to completely remove anyway). They always smell so nice and are a lovely shade of pink. I might even have another try at making rosehip jam.

Zeke has been alternately terrified and curious about his new living space. He spent most of the first three days in the house hiding under our duvet, completely invisible to anyone else who tried to find him (we knew the secret). He's getting more comfortable and seems to especially enjoy watching the neighbours.

I think today will be spent getting some random garden things into our shed and trying to make sense of the piles of stuff in my studio. Yep, I have a studio. It's really strange to be in a different room than Rob (though my computer will migrate back to the family room once we've got a desk set up in there) but it will be very handy around Christmas and birthdays when I usually end up doing some rather creative time management to keep things secret (What ... you don't do all your sewing while your husband is in the shower?). I have some ideas for this space but right now my goal is to find a nice cutting table.