Welcome to 2011

Sitting here and thinking about what to write about for my first post in 2011.  Do I reflect on 2010?  Do I write about my wishes for 2011?  Do I list out a bunch of resolutions for 2011?  So much pressure to write a thought provoking insightful post on the first day of the year.  This might be more pressure than I can handle as I've only had 4 hours of sleep.  

So I'm going to share what I've been thinking about all day.  The future.  My plans and hopes for the future. 

I'll start with family and friends.  I think my biggest hope for the coming year is to make more time for family and friends.  Although it's hard when I think of how busy we are with Nugget.  But, with every challenge there is a solution.  I also hope to work on myself as it relates to family and friends.  Try not to be as quick to judge and put up shields.  I had a reason and I had circumstances that brought me to this point.  Mainly it was a form of preventing hurt and protecting myself.  This has resulted in people not know who I am.  They know who I want them to know.  The parts of me I want to people to know.  It's not about lying, it's about keeping my shields up.  Aside from that I hope to be able to build loving, supportive, and compassionate relationships that I've avoided up to now. 

I've also thought a lot today about things I like to do.  Photography.  Mead making.  Cooking.  Reading.  Knitting.  How do I work these things into my life while not taking away from anything else.  For instance, how do I make it out to the Photography club meeting without taking about from Nugget's bedtime (which I've missed twice since he has been born).  This is when I have to ask myself, "is it really going to hurt Nuggy to miss 1, 2, even 3 bedtimes in a month"?  Really?  As much as it pains me to say...it's not going to hurt him.  It may hurt me, but not him.  And to knit, brew up some mead or cook doesn't take time away from Nuggy especially when he is playing within eyesight.  Now that he plays a lot more one his own.

I've also been thinking a lot about money today.  Who wants to think about these things on the first day of the year?  Nobody, but I did.  Without going too much into is personal subject, my hope is to have a sizable savings by this time next year.  

Okay enough with this retrospective introspective gobblely gook and on to the fun of 2010.  Making plans for 2 vacations this year.  1 for sure, 2nd is a possibility.  Really looking forward to these.  Also looking forward to finishing my family cookbook.  Also excited about Nuggy's first birthday and all that this year has to bring as it relates to him.   

And one final note.  I look forward to sharing the year to come here.  I hope we can start conversations.  I hope we can get to know each other through this meeting place. 

my future's so bright...

Happy 2011

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walk before you crawl

Turn back now if you think this is about Nuggy.  It's not.  It's about me.  Be forewarned. 

Bottles.  Labels.  Carboys.  Tastings.  Corks.  See how I walk before I crawl.  The first jug of mead hasn’t even finished its primary fermentation and I already have dreams of a brand of mead that I can take to tastings and competitions and even sell.  Oh and then I’ll start a meadery…see how I get.   I’m already designing a label and thinking of names and slogans.  It’s all laid out in my head.  Why? I’ve wanted to own my own company for a long long time.  I think I’m just predestined to be a small business owner.  My first grand plan was to open a gourmet dog cookie shop.  I know, you don’t have to say anything.  Next was to own a small yarn shop.  Then I did have a small business.  “1,000 Petals” is my yarn/fiber dying company.  This has fallen to the wayside since becoming pregnant and having a baby.  Although I did love the creative process of color combos it was so time consuming to produce such a small inventory.  I’ve also had numerous ideas along the way, too many to name or even remember.  

Now…Mead.  Out of all the different forms of wine I’ve tried mead is my favorite.  Well, this and Ice Wine.  Side note: Mead is a wine made primarily from honey, water, and yeast.  From my initial research I believe that the upstart $$ for this hobby is fairly inexpensive.  As a matter of fact what should be the first 4 bottles cost under $20 to produce.  Can’t beat that.  I’ve already found a local raw honey producer.  Now, a bit of practicality, this will probably never be anything more than a hobby which is perfectly satisfying to me.  I think some bottles of mead made by hand will make nice gifts.   But does it really hurt to dream and plan for something that might happen.  And to be honest, if I really want this to happen I will make it happen.  So here are some of my big business ideas. 

I want this to be fun.  Thus the name: Bad Ass Hive Mead.  Slogan: “My honey can kick your honey’s ass”.  I’m hoping a friend of mine can come up with some art for this idea.  He does some really cool robot type stuff and I think it would be interesting to see what he could do with this idea. 

Aside from the fun design and conceptual stuff, I have some experimenting to do.  Mead, like wine, can be dry or sweet depending on several variances.  One of these variances is the type of yeast.  First experiment will be with 4 different yeast.  I’m also going to experiment with fruits, making the mead a “Melomel”.  Melomel is defined as mead fermented with fruit added to the honey during primary fermentation. 

Now, most people know that I’m pretty impatient.  You didn’t really think I could wait a year before having the first glass of mead.  Thank god for short or quick meads.  These can be ready in a matter of a few weeks.  They are not going to be anything special or spectacular, I know this.  But they will be homemead.  Get it…homemead instead of homemade? 

daydreamin from a cubicle

Why can’t we survive on only 4 hrs a day sleep? If I only had to sleep for 4 hrs a night I would get lots and lots done. It was a long night with the Nugget last night and the sleep fairy was no where to be found. She can be such a bitchh sometimes. She was probably off sprinkling sleep dust onto some teenage boy who had been up for 32 hrs playing WOW (World of Warcraft) while neglecting all us sleep deprived parents. Is WOW even a cool game to play anymore? Doesn’t matter. Anyway, I was sitting at my desk at work yesterday and while doing a very boring part of my job I started daydreaming about things I would like to be doing. Side Note: Does it really make me a bad employee for daydreaming at work or an honest person for admitting to doing something that we all do on occasion? So, I got to thinking about cooking, knitting, playing, relaxing, etc, the list goes on and on. You ever notice sometimes how weird a train of thought can be? How one thing can lead to another? Well, today I was thinking about “The Next Food Network Star” finale. Congrats to Aarti Sequeira! who had/has her own online cooking show and blog called Aarti Paarti. We (Paul and I) were so happy when she won. I recently found her show and blog and I’ve been catching up with past episode. Anyway, in one of her episodes she mentioned something about a type of frozen dessert called Kulfi from India. I thought she said coffee, so I started thinking about coffee. Now hang on for this train of thought. Here we go. She said Kulfi, I thought she said coffee and thought about hanging out at the coffee shop and visiting with friends. I’m southern and we call it visiting. I then thought about how I used to do a lot of visiting while knitting but the knitting mojo has been lacking recently. Then I contemplated that maybe the reason for the lack of interest in knitting is due to the absurdly hot weather we’ve been having. This made me thankful that I cut my hair short so that I can still be slightly stylish with my hair down instead of in a twist or crappy ponytail. It was so long that I couldn’t even do a stylish ponytail or twist, it was just a “keep this mop out of my face” deally.

Then I started thinking that I could knit a cutesy little beret/slouchy hat type hat which by-the-way Aarti wore super cute one in one of her episodes. This gave me a little spark of interest in knitting, thinking that it would be good for when it does eventfully get cooler. While wondering what type of yarn to knit this conceptual beret out of I started going through my mental index of yarn choices that I have in my craft room. Which led back to an idea I had last week for doing an open house of sorts to get rid of some of my crafting accumulations and get all my crafting stuff into one closet instead of one room. This led me to thinking about what I would like to do with the extra room and thinking about how it would be nice to have a spare bedroom for overnight guest or moving Nugget into a bigger room and making the smaller room into a guest bedroom/playroom. Then I thought about how much fun it would be to have people over more often to hang out with and cook for, so now I’m planning (in my head of course) a really cute guest bedroom. Not that having someone over for dinner would mean they would need a bedroom…weird, right. This led me to think about recipes I would like to try. And so on and so on… this could go on for another hour. The point. Is there a point? I know I had a point when I started. Well, here is what I go out of it. I would like to entertain more. I want to knit a lacy beret. I would like to fix up a guest bedroom. I would like to try making fish tacos (Aarti made them which made me think of another fish taco recipe I saw and how good fish tacos look). Now, this is why I need to survive on only 4 hrs of sleep of day.




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