1, 2, 3. By my Dad's office at work there is an old pear tree, so he brought me two big hauls (the first batch went bad before I got around to doing anything with it, woops!). They're sort of hard pears that don't exactly ripen quite right, awful for eating but great for cooking. I made pear sauce for the first time and it was downright luxurious. Just peeled and cored pear chunks, a splash of vanilla and a dash of cardamom. Cook down and puree. Delicious.

4, 5. Indy has plenty of toys, and in truth she plays with a lot of them very frequently, but sometimes when she's spent the whole morning in our hair and had a million time outs I realize that maybe she's more bored than naughty. Then it's pantry items to the rescue. Mixed dried beans (which she calls "coffee beans," very appropos I suppose since she loves to put them in her little coffee/tea cups) and quick homemade playdough.

6. This guy. He's reached that gnaw-on-every-thing-and-I-mean-everthing phase. Parents everywhere, you know what I'm talking about. I don't even necessarily think teeth are imminent, but you never know.

7. Toasting spices for homemade pho.

8, 9, 10. Wool. Pulled out a bunch of wool diaper covers a few days ago, and found some of those awful moth larvae and their holey evidence. Boo. Moved everything to the cedar chest in our room and threw a lavendar sachet on top of them. Washed and lanolized a few and (no! not blood!) dyed a few. Unsweetened kool-aid packets are basically an acid dye, so they work wonderfully on protein fibers like wool and silk. Some of Indy's wool wraps were stained with no hope of recovery, but now they're red and adorable and look good as new.