Happy New Year
January 4, 2009 at 7:37 pm | In Basic Musings, Christmas, Sewing | 2 Comments
So it’s 2009. Think back to when you were a kid–how space agey did anything past 1999 sound? We had a lovely Christmas here, lots of presents and cozy family fun. It was just the four of us on Christmas Day and I barely cooked anything. We love our Christmas Day breakfast, so that’s what I focused on. I make sticky buns every year and we always have bacon, too. This year of course we had an omelet as well with fresh eggs.
I received several gifts that I hope will yield results to share here. [In fact one of the gift tags was To: Sue Buttons] In my stocking were several iron on embroidery patterns from Sublime Stitching. I’ve started this little gnome and house, which I think I”ll turn into a sachet. I’m eager to do a robot on a shirt for Clark, but he says no.
Mom got me A is for Apron, and I can’t wait to make one from the many adorable patterns included in the book.
Paul got me Seams to Me, which not only has 24 cool sewing projects in it, but also lots of good basic information that I think will be really useful to me as I embark on trying more clothing (and the aforementioned apron.)
Like millions of others we have vowed to eat more healthfully in the new year, but that starts tomorrow. So we’ve been indulging in holiday baking and treat, including these snowmen cupcakes. They were on the cover of the December Taste of Home and Clark has been asking to make them for a month. I finally did when I was having my book group over and they came out quite adorable. ( I did only fully decorate 6 of them, the rest I just frosted and dipped in the sugar. There was really no reason to have 20 snowmen cupcakes.)
A happy new year to all! My resolutions include more sewing, more crafts, more time enjoying these things.
Christmas Eve Eve Eve Eve
December 22, 2008 at 1:33 am | In Botanical Photos, Chickens, Christmas, Family | 1 Comment
Yesterday we had snow and then rain and then ice. Today was ice, sun, melting ice. All this amounted to a beautiful crystal wonderland. Every little branch and twig was encased in ice. I thought it was pretty yesterday, but seeing the sun shining brightly on everything today, turning the trees into a forest of twinkly glass was just incredible. I know my photos won’t do them justice, but here they are:
We also pulled out a sled and Clark went sledding down our tiny hill for the first time. Tabitha enjoyed being pulled around in it as well.
I mucked out our chicken coop today and took all the hay and chicken poop and put it on our garden beds, thinking it could do a little magical work over the winter. But then the dog stood there and delicately ate all the poop out of it. Ew.
We’ve been getting eggs pretty regularly now and today I made a big omelet with 6 of our hens eggs. It was delicious. No, I didn’t eat it myself. I had three girlfriends over for brunch and our annual Christmas present giving. We adore giving each other gifts and look forward to this so much every year. Everyone was very pleased with her gifts and wrappings and it was most fun. (One of the gifts I gave was a set of notecards made with one of the extreme peony close ups I took this summer. I just used Snapfish and the cards turned out gorgeously, if I say so myself.) So anyway this morning when I looked in the coop it appeared that the early morning layer had not gotten off the perch and into the nesting box in time as there was a big splat of a broken egg right in the middle of the coop under the perch. That’s what prompted the mucking out, but when I went back there were no longer any egg remains. C ould they have eaten it?!!??
We’re pretty excited here for Christmas, what with all our decorations, Clark’s performance in his first Christmas pageant, fires roaring merrily, lots of music playing. I’ve not done much menu planning, astonishingly. It will just be the four of us for Christmas Day dinner, so we are thinking of buying some lovely seafood already prepared. Speaking of music, check out Paul’s blog where he posted about his favorite and least favorite Christmas music and I added my own comments to it.
A Winter’s Day
December 17, 2008 at 5:16 pm | In Basic Musings, Botanical Photos, Christmas | 2 CommentsA few things to note today. It snowed last night and this morning looked a winter wonderland. A little deceptive, though, because it is basically slush. It’s cold and nasty out. But at first light the tree branches looked beautiful and I took a few pictures.
Our neighbors always hang a wreath on their barn, for which I am grateful as it makes our backyard view even more tranquil and beautiful.
I washed the dress I made for Tabitha and it held up splendidly!! I’m thinking of appliqueing something on the front of it.
The chickens are laying 1-2 eggs each day!
Every year when we decorate our Christmas tree we have a wonderful time looking at each ornament and remembering when we got it. Even before we got married we began a tradition of buying an ornament as a souvenir on our trips, so many of them bring back great memories. Also, we actually store them in boxes with labels and the date we got them.
We bought this one on our honeymoon on St. John. It always hung near the very tippy top of the tree.
This year when we returned for our vacation there we chose another ornament to mark our first time there as a family. It is by the same artist.
My mother surprised me by handing this down to me this year. It is a Santa from Germany, brought over by her great-grandfather. I am so touched to hang it on my own family tree from now on.
And these next ones are also from our honeymoon-a big flower and a parrotfish. We went snorkeling when we were there and saw many of them.
Last year we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary and the traditional gift for that is “glass.” I got Paul a set of lemon and lime ornaments, and a set of heirloom tomatoes as well, to remind us of gardening together.
Here is one of the lemons, along with a beautiful bluebird we got after we moved to our house and happily discovered how many bluebirds live here. (And, by the way, no matter how often we see them we still remark every time and think it’s something wonderful and special every time.)
And this little guy we call “Sombrero Claus”:
The tree is rather amusingly decorated this year–all the glass and fragile ornaments are crammed onto the top 1/3 of the tree to keep them safe from Tabitha’s reach. We have many more and I love it that each has a story to tell, something to share each year. Aside from having children together (obviously), creating Christmas traditions and stories has definitely been something that made us more than a married couple, but a family as well. Oh, how I love this time of year!!
The Annual Cookie Party
December 14, 2008 at 7:59 pm | In Christmas, Cookery, Entertaining | 5 Comments
Yesterday was our annual cookie party. I love entertaining at Christmastime–it’s wonderful to share the holiday spirit with friends and to have everyone over at a time when our house is looking its best and most festive and cozy, decorated with tons of stuff. We always make sure to have our tree up and it’s fun to have other folks see our ornaments. Of course, the cookies are the star of the show. This year everyone bought a batch and we put out little signs with the names of the cookies. Then, I put a chart on the wall with the names of all the cookies and gave everyone two stickers to vote with. They stuck the stickers as they wished on the chart and then whichever cookies had the most stickers won a prize. There was a first place winner and then a three way tie for second place. Prizes were given out.
My offerings were: orange date nut cookies
thumbprints (these were my favorite)
and cherry tassies.
The cherry tassies were a bit of a mess. I misread the recipe, which could be why they didn’t come out like I wanted them to. Or it could be that I didn’t really care for the peppermint-cherry combo. On the plus side, I got to say to Paul, “say….if you happened to get me mini muffin pans for Christmas could I receive them now so I can use them?” and I did!
Other entries:
Earl Grey tea cookies, which had real tea leaves in them!
Cornmeal Crunchies-had crumbled bacon in it!
Lion’s Paws-beautiful almond “claws”
Fudgy BonBons-not a one left!
Hello Dolly Bars-I think these go by lots of names and are a heavenly sugary concoction of chocolate chips, coconut, and sweetened condensed milk. Yummmm
Macaroons-lovely and coconutty and I think they might have had some orange peel in them.
And the winner was….Carrot cake cookies-no picture, but it was like a whoopie pie with cream cheese frosting in between two oatmeal raisin carrot cookies. These were delicious! Way to go, Melissa!
Oh, and to drink I made a punch of orange juice, pear nectar, club soda, and rum. It was quite yummy and I could have easily drunk many many cups.
Tabitha debuted the new dress (now shortened) and it was much admired:
And unrelated to Christmas, sewing, or entertaining, check out the sunrise this morning:
Happy Thanksgiving!
November 29, 2008 at 8:39 pm | In Basic Musings, Christmas, Sewing, holiday | 1 Comment
Thanksgiving was two days ago, but we’re still enjoying the holiday weekend. our Thanksgiving was a lovely day with family and good food. I made the turkey, mashed potatoes, cranberry sauce, stuffing, and brussels sprouts, and others brought the other sides and desserts. For an appetizer I made bacon wrapped dates, which were so heavenly I’ll definitely make them again. I just took about a 1/3 a slice of bacon and wrapped it around a date and secured it with a toothpick. I put them on a foil lined sheet and baked at 350 for about 17 minutes. The date became so soft and sweet and was a great contrast to the salty bacon.
Yesterday we began decorating for Christmas. Last year I had an idea for this year, which was to decorate our great big tree with shiny balls. We bought a whole bunch of giant decorations on sale after Christmas and yesterday got out the ladder and decorated the part you can see from the road. Of course we could only go about halfway up, not having a cherry picker. I think it looks wonderful, though. Here are the helpful decorators:
I’ve been hard at work on Tabitha’s dress, but reached a stalling point when I couldn’t figure out the yoke/zipper area. I’m determined to finish by tomorrow night though. It looks like a real little dress though with sleeves and everything.
Christmas Crafting
November 20, 2008 at 1:49 am | In Christmas, Crafty | 2 CommentsAs predicted, I did go ahead and make art clip strings (I just don’t know what to call these.) for Christmas cards. I made a few so I am giving some away and keeping one for us. I can’t wait to see how festive they look hanging over a doorway with Christmas cards hanging from them.
Getting my craft on + Something for Tabitha
November 18, 2008 at 4:10 am | In Christmas, Crafty, Sewing | 3 Comments
Exciting news-I finally ordered a copy of Ottobre so that I might try my hand at actually sewing a garment. I am sure my attempts will look nowhere near as beautiful as Astrid’s, but I’m ready to try. Imagine if you will, though, how utterly incomprehensible and overwhelming this looks:
It’s like some insane subway map. Apparently I need to trace the pattern pieces I will need off of this.
I’m feeling the Christmas spirit a bit early this year and eager to get started making things. This was the sight of my dining room table tonight:
I’ve been working on these wall clips (like the ones I made for Clark and Tabitha’s rooms) to hang Christmas cards from. I figure I’ll give a couple to friends and keep one or two for myself. Then I finally put Tabitha’s name on her chair (only a whole year after her arrival.) Finally, Paul and I spent the evening making the cleverest party invitations ever. Unfortunately, they are not going to look so great after they go through the mail. The invites are for a cookie party so we made fortune cookies out of papers that I’d stamped with Christmas stamps and silver ink. The party details I printed on a strip of paper to look like the fortune. I looked up online how to fold them and voila! Look how great they look here:
They will hopefully be able to expand once they are pulled from the envelope.
And, last but not least, we have finally finished Tabitha’s first birthday video. It’s 10 minutes long and features the songs “Shine” by Dolly Parton and “That’s My Daughter” by Loudon Wainwright. We’re pretty pleased with the result which shows her wonderful first yeart.
Wall Art Clips
May 29, 2008 at 1:21 am | In Basic Musings, Christmas, Crafty | 4 Comments
One of my very favorite catalogs is Land of Nod. I love most everything in it and love the artwork and lamps especially. I saw this in the catalog the other day and thought, “I could make that.” So I did. It was ridiculously easy. I bought plain shapes at Michaels and just painted them. [The thing about Michaels and the surge in interest in crafts is that on the one hand it's so easy now to get things to help you make stuff on your own. But the flip side of that is, it's so easy and anyone can do it and they do half the work for you. I could have bought these little wooden shapes already painted. And what's the point in that??] I hot glued clothespins to the back and then strung them on some acrylic craft cord. A dab of hot glue (or I could have melted the cord with a match) kept each one in place so that it wouldn’t slide along the cord. Thumbtack it to the wall and voila! A nifty place to hang pictures or your kids works of art. I made two, one for Tabitha and one for Clark.
Here are some close-ups of Clark’s critters:
And here is Tabitha’s moon and stars:
Not only was this fun to make (and now I want to make them for everyone I know), consider this: the Land of Nod one was $9.95, whereas each of these shapes cost 25 cents! I had paint and hot glue and clothespins at home. I did buy colored cord ($3), but it wasn’t necessary as I did have yarn and twine and string and stuff at home which I could have used. oooh! Here’s an idea I just had!! Why not make one using the stars and little birdie shapes and make it be for Christmas? It could be a nice thing to display your Christmas cards on? Well there you go. I know what I’m doing in December.
Christmas Cleanup: What to do with your cards
January 6, 2008 at 4:36 pm | In Basic Musings, Christmas, Crafty, holiday | 2 Comments
We’re finally taking down all of our decorations today and I’m taking a few minutes during the cleanup to do something nice for Next December Sarah. It’s also a very “green” thing to do as it resuses materials. I go through all the Christmas cards and sort them into ones I want to keep (intact-usually photocards) and ones that I like the pictures on. Then I cut them up so that next year I can turn them into gift tags. So many cards are so pretty or funky that I’d like to see the image again, and this is a good way to do so. Plus, then you have really creative and nice tags. So don’t just toss those cards-repurpose them!
Merry Christmas!
December 27, 2007 at 2:24 am | In Basic Musings, Christmas, Cookery, Crafty, Sewing, holiday | Leave a CommentWell, technically it is Boxing Day as I write this, but this is my Christmas post. I’m sure everyone will be relieved to know that I managed to make a stocking for Tabitha in time for Christmas. True, I was making it on Christmas Eve but it was hanging there in time for Santa Claus. 
Her name is on it, but not a decoration yet. My grandmother taught me how to make these Christmas stockings a few years ago and while they are basically simple, it was astonishing how maddening it was to try to figure out how to assemble everything for the sewing machine. I must have puzzled and pinned and tried to figure it out for like 25 minutes. And of course my Christmas tree print cuff ended up upside down. But I still think it looks pretty.
Christmas is a time for cooking and here was our menu: for Christmas Eve I made a “snowflake cake”–basically a pound cake in a snowflake embossed Nordicware pan (annoyingly part of the cake remained in the pan when I flipped it out, but that’s what confectioner sugar’s for, right?), Christmas breakfast–the braided coffeecake was delicious!!, Christmas dinner–simple roast pork, roasted brussels sprouts and baby carrots, and my darling husband made us homemade french fries in the Fry Daddy (something we felt the need to have after having French Fries in Belgium). For dessert I made a cranberry-walnut tart, which was delicious and the recipe came from Taste of Home, so now I can’t even mock that fine publication any more.
Santa brought me some very lovely things that I can’t wait to use in the kitchen and the house: decorative edge scissors, a ribbon holder, a King Arthur logo square pan, parchment rounds for cake pans, the nifty little loaf pans that you can bake and give away, and a case of stroopwaffels! (a delicious taste experience from the Netherlands-a round waffley cookie with a caramel filling. You make a cup of tea and sit the cookie on top, after a minute or two the steam of the tea makes the cookie all warm and melty. It’s superb.)
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