Sand Box

Louisa's first birthday present came a week early... A.J. built her a deluxe sand box!

Natural Easter Eggs

This year, instead of using an old PAAS kit from the dollar store, we tied flowers, leaves, grass and weeds onto the eggs tightly with string and then boiled them in water with lots of onion skins. The trick is to use a lot of thread, wrapped around and around. There are more instructions here.

They turned out very pretty and 100% non-toxic, especially when the eggs come from the organically-fed chickens in my parent's backyard.

Lou's Brew

AJ got to work this weekend brewing a special beer for Louisa's first birthday. It's an orange summer ale and smells delicious already!

Bottling the Beer

Moving the beer from its second-stage fermentation carboy into the bottling bucket where it mixes with more sugar, which will carbonate the beer once it's in the bottles.


AJ getting set up to fill the bottles, after spending a long time sterilizing them all and all the equipment. Note his homemade bottle drying rack to his right.


Filling the bottles.


Capping the bottles.


Capping was fun.


Now we wait three weeks for it to carbonate, then we enjoy! We ended up filling 29 12oz, 4 16oz, 4 22oz, and 1 500ml bottles... assuming none of them explode during carbonation...