My dear husband was kind enough to upgrade my blog software early yesterday morning, so of course I now have a case of blogger’s block. I wanted to try out the new software though, so I thought I would put together a little post with some projects and links I’ve been contemplating.

First off, isn’t this toad house cute? I want to make a couple of these with Emma and Gregory soon. We saw some sort of amphibian yesterday afternoon out at the property, but I can’t figure out for certain if it was a toad or a frog. I’m leaning towards toad, given that we saw it nowhere near water and the skin appeared fairly dry.

My little garden is going well, and my radishes are coming up nicely. The lettuce is nowhere to be seen though, so I’m thinking about reseeding if I don’t see any spouts by the weekend. I turned over a new area yesterday to plant potatoes (and yes, my 33 week pregnant body is protesting today) and we cut the potatoes up this afternoon in order to plant them tomorrow. I’m hoping they will grow well, because I’m sure it will be a lot of fun for the kids to dig potatoes when they are ready. Matt and I sure thought it was fun when we grew them a few years ago at our old house! I’d love to put in some tomatoes and some squash, but I need to do some tractor work before I can use more of my garden. My main garden goal for this year is to get the area cleared and somewhat leveled enough that I can put up garden fencing next year. If I wasn’t having a baby in early June it would be a reasonable goal… but given circumstances I’m not entirely expecting to make it by fall.

Spring is definitely here in force at my elevation, and I’m enjoying watching the trees blossom and the wildflowers bloom. Spring and summer always make me want to try my hand at sketching, but I’m generally too timid to put pencil to paper and do it. I was always the non-artistic one in a family with two artistically gifted siblings, and for the longest time I thought art was just not going to be my cup of tea. I’ve since read several accounts of people who have learned how to draw from books or classes, and I’ve come to realize that it can be an acquired skill. Granted, I won’t ever be a genius at it, but I can hope to achieve competence, which is far more than I ever thought possible before. Still, even though I know this intellectually, it hard to make myself sit down and do it. Drew had a nice post today about his first art class and it has inspired me to pick up the pencil and give it a go. I have a really neat nature journal book that I’ve been too timid to do anything more with than browse, and today I’m going to spend some time with it. I’m setting a goal for myself to draw something by the end of the week, and I’ll even, following Drew’s example, post it online (*gulp*).

Let’s see, what else. Jennifer at Et Tu had a great post today that showed me yet again how similar our paths into Christianity and our upbringings were. This paragraph in particular felt like something I very well could have wrote, if I could bring my thoughts together as well as she does.

Ironically, it was this very idea of fearlessly pursuing truth that led me to Christianity. As I’ve said before, I didn’t have a “personal encounter” with Jesus or a thunder-and-lightning conversion experience. I just did some research and thought it was true. And yet, that left me in a strange position. I had no idea how one gets to “know” God — how can you know someone you can’t see? I didn’t understand what it meant to “have faith” — did that mean setting all reason aside and believing all sorts of dogmas without question?

And on a completely different subject - I can’t decide. Would this be yummy or gross?