What Ana Does

Here's one for the scrapbook. It's Sunday afternoon and Leah's at a sleepover and all is quiet in Alice's room. I'm puttering around the house and Dave is watching football. I love quiet afternoons like this. Alice has been down a few times for supplies, including a coach pillow she needed to have in her room "forever." Later, I'm getting her ready for bed and finally enter her room. Here's what I find: Three pillows set-up with blanket "chairs" and a swatch of doll hair taped to each pillow. There are hair brushes on each pillow. The Barbie is set up on a "desk" ready for the demonstration of how to correctly brush hair. Nearby, three dolls now have much shorter hair. Is it wrong that I just laughed and laughed? Anyway, she quickly enrolls me in her hair brushing class, which I pass with flying colors -- I'm happy to add. Alice is an excellent instructor and shows me a few times the right technique. ...

Tonight I went to a canning demonstration at my library by the author of Preserving by the Pint. It's small batch canning for folks like me with a CSA membership and just a bit too much fruit on my hands -- but not enough to put up a few dozen jars. Marisa, the author and writer on this blog , made a vanilla plum jam in the hour-long session. All that was left to do at the end was cool the two half-pint jars and eat them. That. Was. It. And I was so PUMPED after seeing how easy it is. I bought the book several months ago and still found the whole canning thing difficult to imagine. My Mom never canned/jarred, so I've never seen it done. Just reading about preserving food sounds exotic and risky. I don't want to give anyone food poisoning from a jar of my homemade jam, for pete's sake. But her step by step was so simple, and we got to interact and ping questions as she did each task. I'm a doer-learner, ya know? And watching a demo, I'm SO ready to ma...