The Storm

So, this is what it looked like out my back door on Saturday morning. The official Leesburg totals I heard ranged from 32.5"- 34" but there were drifts even higher. Friday morning, Daphne and I took one last walk to get craft supplies and last minute grocery items. When we left Safeway, the snow was just starting to fall, and it didn't stop until about 6:00 Saturday. My parents got about the same amount of snow, but they unfortunately lost power for several hours. Luckily, they got their fireplace going, and power was back on by the time they went to bed.

We were housebound all weekend, but we kept very busy. Kev did a lot of shoveling. I helped a little and it was not fun. The snow was very heavy this time.

Daphne tried to play in the snow, but it was really too deep to be much fun. She enjoyed eating this icicle, though. She's standing on our sidewalk out front in the picture...you can see Kev's awesome shoveling work. Our next door neighbor has a snowblower which pretty much immediately broke, but our little Ben Franklin shovel was up to the job.

While we've been stuck in the house, we've done a lot. Daphne and I made this shirt (using a sponge stamp and fabric paint) for her Valentine's Day party at school, which is supposed to be Thursday IF they don't cancel school (a few more inches of snow are predicted for tomorrow).

I also took advantage of the time by cleaning the house, playing a little Rock Band, and FINALLY baking bread with the method from my Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day book.
You should have smelled my house on Friday when I had bread baking and a big pot of sauce going on the stove for chicken parmesan. The loaf in the picture is the second one I made...it turned out much better than the first, probably due to the dough being easier to work with after a couple days in the fridge, and the fact that I used an egg wash to make the crust prettier. I HIGHLY recommend this book/method if you like fresh-baked bread but you are baking-impaired, too busy for such things, or just lazy. It's really easy and fast and you get a lot of bang for your buck. I can't wait to make some of the fancier breads in the book. Cheddar bread is probably next, or maybe herb bread or pumpernickle. Yum.

What I did NOT do was knit. But that's on the agenda for today. No ballet today and no school tomorrow, and with more snow coming, who knows when we'll get back to normal. At some point, I'm gonna need more groceries. Maybe I'll venture out tomorrow morning. For now, I'm off to play with Daphne. She is going a little stir crazy. She keeps calling me "Mickey Mouse" and making me talk with a high-pitched cartoon mouse voice. Please oh PLEASE let there be school Thursday.