Fixin' Leaks and Leeks

Transform dessert into a whimsical crime scene! We’re definitely in the Halloween spirit at the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks Headquarters, though we haven’t gotten our pumpkins yet, and there’s nary a spider web in sight. But I did find a recipe for apple crumble, and with a flick of the pen, it now has a… Continue reading Eerie Apple Crumble with Ghost Foam

The plants have picked themselves up and moved into our bedroom because it’s too cold outside. Also, they’re probably possessed, which makes sense. The bedroom is the first place possessed things seem to want to go. Then, they wreak havoc all over the rest of the house, shaking their angry petals everywhere, knocking plates from… Continue reading Plants on the Move!

Spotting a wild bear that’s roaming the neighborhood is exciting, and the Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks Team can cross that adventure off their list. (We presume the bear that neighbors have seen is still wandering our neighborhood and several others in the vicinity.) However, we’ve never spotted one by boat, so we headed out to… Continue reading Bear Necessi-Seas: Bear Boat Tour, Tofino

Visiting hours have begun for our furnace, whose flame is about to be extinguished. To send it off in style, Nate has called a number of contractors to traipse through our house, rattle the walls, and tell us how much they’d charge to replace it. Two contractors showed up yesterday, and they both said the… Continue reading Another Hole in the Wall

The shopping cart and I went off the rails this morning when I rounded the corner and found the Jell-O Lemon Meringue snack. I wondered if a mass-produced gelatin product would taste like the real thing. Would I save myself the “mistake” of going through the trouble of making a lemon meringue pie, just to… Continue reading Deviating from the Shopping List: Lemon Meringue Snack

An evergreen bushy thing insists on draping its back end over our fence, but we’re cool with it because it’s pretty much covered in birds—now. I say “now” because when we first moved here six years ago, we thought it was strange that we weren’t awakened at three in the morning by tweets and chirps.… Continue reading Birding in the Backyard

Spikey little pineapple tops have moved into pots in our backyard, waving their little fronds in the air, like they just don’t care. Nate and Alex are obsessed with growing them, so when I asked what I should make for dessert, the answer was in front of us. Not one of those plants has produced… Continue reading Don’t Sweat it: Easy Pineapple Dessert

The craft alarm sounded like a soft tinkling of wind chimes when I passed by the value craft section at the store. For under $5, I could buy a clear plastic tropical bird-shaped suncatcher that included three plastic pots of paint and a brush. That sounded like the perfect project for me: just color the… Continue reading Craft Alert: Suncatcher in a Kit

Our laundry bag has seen things. It speaks of horrors of the tomato-lined entrails of jeans pockets, shaken loose just a little too late. Or that piece of chewed-up gum that fell out of someone’s mouth in the car—and no one found it—but somehow the laundry bag did. Now it appears that our laundry bag… Continue reading Scrub-A-Dub Those Scrubs

Bikini Bottom, hold tight! The Fixin’ Leaks and Leeks Team is coming at you with a pineapple cake for Alex’s 21st birthday! Why pineapple? Alex is into pineapple mocktails and cocktails—and he was a ginormous fan of SpongeBob SquarePants as a child. We used to watch lots of episodes together, so I couldn’t resist taking… Continue reading Pineapple Cake Under the Sea