Happy Birthday, Blog!

Happy one month birthday, dear blog. I was so surprised one month ago when Mara asked me if I would like to have a blog. Then before I knew it, you came into my life. Even though it was rather surprising at the time, I have had a lot of fun with you, composing posts, improving my writing, and of course, receiving comments. I am looking forward to having lots more fun together.

Rainbows and Rice Pudding

We saw this really pretty rainbow last Thursday. It was so big Mom couldn't take a picture of the whole thing, but we still got a really nice picture.

I also made rice pudding all by myself yesterday. It was so good that this is what it looked like 10 minutes after it came out of the oven.

Crazy Eights: My first tag!

My dear friend Johanna from An Old-Fashioned Girl said I should do this tag, so here it is—

8 Books I've read recently or am reading:

Currently:
The Deadliest Monster
Ivanhoe
Men of Iron
The Genesis Record

Recently:
Vinegar Boy
At Agincourt
Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World
Black Beauty

8 Songs I Listen to all the Time:

Handel's Messiah
"The Walls of Kazan" (Helena is a Boris Godunov nut, and this is her favorite selection from that piece.)
The Mikado
The Scarlet Pimpernel (Mara really likes this musical, so I've heard it a lot.)
Christmas songs (year-round)
Various Christian music and piano CD's
That's about all I can think of.

8 things I Love:

My Savior
My family
My friends
The birds that come to our feeder
Reading
Crafting
Horseback riding (when I can, not very often)
Playing the piano

8 Things I Learned This Year:

Card-making
How to play Für Elise on the piano
How to start a blog
How to knit cables
Frozen yogurt is a good motivator to do math quickly
I've learned that we have two juncos living near our house
How to crochet granny square baby blankets
I've learned that Revelation is a very interesting book of the Bible

8 New Recipes I want to try and Make by the End of the Year:

Pumpkin pie from scratch
Sourdough bread
Scones
Bread pudding
Noodles from scratch
Chicken Kiev
Baklava
Matzo ball soup

8 Favorite Online Hangouts (places I go pretty much everyday):

Gmail
A few different blogs
My blog
Project Gutenberg
Google (for civil war research)
Wikipedia
That's all I can think of

8 Things I Need to Work on:

Bible memory
Cooking more meals
Practicing knitting
Typing (I want to type faster)
Posting more on my blog
Practicing sewing
New card designs
Making cookies

8 people I think should do this:

Everyone I can think of has already done this, so I guess I would like the first 8 commenters to do this, if I get any.

Beautiful Moon

Tonight I was looking out the window, and there was such a pretty moon that I thought I should post it. Mom took a picture of it for me, so here it is.

  
  Praise ye him, sun and moon: praise him, all ye stars of light.  Psalm 148:3                                                        

Onion Pie

We made this yummy onion pie recipe (from Joy of Cooking) with meatloaf for dinner yesterday. Here is the recipe and a bunch of pictures.

Onion Pie Recipe
Preheat oven to 450. Line a 9-inch pie pan with pie crust dough (my sister has a favorite pie crust recipe that I will post sometime), prick and chill it. Skin and slice thinly 2 1/2 lb. onions or leeks. Melt 3 tablespoons butter in a heavy saucepan, add the onions. Stir and cook them over low heat until they are translucent. Cool them well. Combine and heat slowly until blended: 3 eggs, 1 cup cultured sour cream, 1 tsp. salt, 1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper, optional add herbs and/or spices as desired. Stir this mixture into the onions. Brush the bottom of the chilled pie shell with 1 slightly beaten egg white. Fill it with the slightly cooled onion mixture. (The recipe says you can put bacon or sausage on top, but we didn't do that because we were having it with meatloaf.) Bake the pie in a 450 oven 10 min. Then reduce heat to 300 and bake until the crust is light brown, about 1/2 hour.

Mara patting out the pie crust.

Pie crust dough is delicious!

Katarina sautéing onions

A very yummy dinner.

Fun with Lorikeets

This post is basically an excuse to put up this picture of me and Helena feeding the lorikeets at the Wild Animal Park. I thought I should say a little bit about lorikeets' life in the wild. Lorikeets are from the Australasian region. They have a specially created brush-tipped tongue for feeding on soft fruits and nectar, and the majority have brightly colored feathers. Now we progress to the fun part of this post! During the summer Dad took Helena, Benedick and me to the Wild Animal Park. Helena and I fed the lorikeets. We had never done that before and it was so much fun. I loved being in the aviary with the birds and having them land on me, and feeding them! I hope I can do it again sometime.

Piano Lessons Have Started!

I'm so glad that piano lessons started up again yesterday! I've been looking forward to them ever since we took a break for summer! Helena has stopped taking lessons, so it was just me and Benedick. I think we have the best piano teacher in the whole world! It was great seeing her and her two cute little fluffy white Teacup Malteses again! Their names are Maki and Roni. Roni loves it when you rub her tummy and sometimes she scratches you if she thinks you haven't petted her long enough. When you take Maki for a walk he always runs and drags you by the leash.

I've been assigned some new pieces that are really fun.  Arietta by Reinhold Gliere, Fur Elise by Beethoven, Suite No. 8 in G Major by Handel, Study in C Major by Giuseppe Concone and Etude in A Minor by Dmitri Kabalevsky. Right now I think my favorite is Fur Elise.