54 stitches

Glittering fairies

Hettie is participating in the Crafty Crow's Kid's Ornaments Swap this year. 

"Mama, this is my second swap of my whole life!" 

"Why do you like swapping so much?"

"Because you usually get to use glue and glitter and you get mail."

A girl after my own heart.

Here are the fairies she made and how we did them:

You'll need wood people and a clutch of silk daisy flowers (as many flowers as you have people).  When you pull the flowers apart you'll be left with a green base (this will be the hat) the petals (they will be the wings) and then centers which we saved for some other future project.

We started out by making a tracing piece that fit the fairy bodies as their skirts.  I hadn't traced with Hettie in a while and was surprised to see how good she has gotten at it.

Cut the dresses out.

Add the faces with a fine point Sharpie.  I knew my perfectionist child would likely struggle with this so we did some dry runs on paper first by tracing the bodies and adding faces.  When it was time to draw directly on the bodies, I held the green flower bases that were going to be their hats while Hettie drew so she put the faces in the right place.

Spread glue over the fairies' bodies and wrap dresses around them.  We secured them with binder clips and rubber bands while they dried.

Glue on the hats and let everything dry.

Paint watered down white glue all over the fairies' dresses and sprinkle them with glitter. 

Let them set a bit.

Cut the petal pieces in half.  We tried to glue these on with white glue, but in the end a glue gun was in order.  We cut a length of embroidery floss and glued it and the petals to the back of each fairy. 

The weight of the fairy heads made the ornaments tip forward when they hang.  This was remedied by hot gluing the thread to the back of the fairy's head which adjusted the center of gravity perfectly. 

A half dozen fairies ready to glitter on trees across the country.

Homemade butter

Good bread is the most fundamentally satisfying of all foods;

good bread with fresh butter, the greatest of feasts! 

~James Beard

Do you know how easy (and addictive) it is to make your own butter?  It is the prefect pre-meal activity, bringing kids and adults, strangers and friends together and focused on something productive while you flit ever so gracefully about the kitchen putting the finishing touches on the meal.  (As an aside, I was propped on the couch in the wee hours of the morning today with a feverish babe asleep on top of me and discovered a Donna Reed Christmas rerun on hulu.  Hence the reference to graceful flitting above... don't be fooled that I ever gracefully flit.)

Like any culinary pursuit worth its weight, we begin with

Let your cream come to room temperature and if you can plan ahead, the older the cream the better.   I'm not talking way past due, but nicely aged helps thing along a bit.

Fill a clean glass jar or two somewhere between a third and a half full with cream.  

Screw on the tops, pass them off to your crew and tell them to SHAKE IT, PASS IT, SHAKE IT, PASS IT!

The cream will slosh about for a while until  it suddenly becomes silent. 

Take a peek.

 Whipped cream!

Screw the tops back on and keep up the shaking.

Soon you'll begin to see little windows form on the sides of the jar.

 

You're almost there.

Suddenly, the jar will begin sloshing again, but with more of a thuddy slosh (surely a technical butter making term).  You now have a lump of yellow butter floating in buttermilk.

 

Shake it another minute or two to continue to coax more buttermilk out of the butter.  Pour off the buttermilk.  This is not buttermilk like the cultured stuff you'd buy in the store, it is essentially skimmed milk.  The buttermakers should feel free to drink it right up. 

Wash the butter lump in cold water to get rid of more buttermilk.  Using a wood board and wood spoon work the butter like you are kneading it.  The longer you do this, the more buttermilk you'll get from the butter.  The less buttermilk in the butter, the thicker it will be and the longer it will last.  You can also salt the butter at the point or add chopped fresh herbs, garlic, or citrus zest.

Spoon your butter into ramekins or another small dish.  Your butter will last for several days to a week in the fridge but, let's be honest, it will be gone by the end of the meal. 

It is that good.

A gift

I dragged the girls (and myself, let's be honest) to the mall today.  I had a return that was hanging over my head, and my best intentions to head out in the evening (alone!) once they are asleep have failed me for a week running.  So we went.  Begrudgingly.  But, much to my surprise, whatever exceedingly small slice of the karma pie malls are allotted, fell to us today.  Outside Crate and Barrel was a young woman breaking down an enormous box.  It came home with us. 

Words fail me when I think about how to explain to you the new reality this has brought to our house.  In fact, "our" house may as well now be referred to as "Colin and Liv's house" as the girls now live within four cardboard walls.  And, did you know that is rains at their house every single day, except in the morning when it snows?!  Amazing.

 

The truth is that this spectacular item could not have come at a worse time for our house.  Between the endless holiday projects and all that is needed to create them, the seasonal decor, the tree and the reintroduction of cold weather gear, our little house is pulling at the seams.  In fact, we had to completely rearrange the dining room to accommodate the box.

Luckily, we know better than to let that stop us.

I've just been invited to a tea, cookie and veggie party. 

I'll leave you with this...

An adventure is only an inconvenience rightly considered.

An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered.

~ G.K. Chesterton

Soup's on

Friends I have known since I was nine came over for dinner last night.  I made soup.  The girls refer to these soups by color always.  Both are equally delicious and so easy.  Both are full of veggies.  Both take advantage of a favorite kitchen appliance of mine, the stick blender.  They are so handy as long as you remember not to turn them on when your finger is in the blade area seeing if the blade is being funny.  Don't ask me how I know.

Orange Soup :: Roasted Squash Soup

(adapted from Vegetarian Planet by Didi Emmons)

small butternut squash (1.5 lb-ish)

an acorn squash

1/2 spaghetti squash (1.5 lb-ish)

3 Tbsp of butter, olive oil or combo

1 large onion, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 Tbsp fresh ginger

1 tsp curry powder

2 large Granny Smith apples, peeled and chopped

2/3 cup sherry

5 cups stock

salt and pepper

The hardest part about this soup is halving the squash, but the best part is that you don't have to peel it or scoop out the seeds.  Just cut the squash in half and lay them, cut side down on a cookie sheet.  Roast in a 400 degree oven for 45 minutes or so, until they are soft when pierced by a knife.  No worries on letting the smaller ones cook a bit longer to accommodate larger pieces.  Let them cool and when you can pick them up scoop out the seeds.

Saute the onions in the butter/oil until soft then add the garlic, ginger and curry powder for a minute or so.  Dump in the apples and the sherry and let it all cook down.  Try not to faint from the killer smell.

Now, depending on if you are using a stick blender or a regular blender, your order of what to do will differ here.  Basically we want everything pureed now.  So if you use a regular blender, scoop the squash into the blender and blend it (adding stock as necessary) and then do the apple mix in another batch and then mix them together.  If you have a stick blender, just scoop the squash right into the pot, add the stock and blend away.  Season with salt and pepper.

Green Soup :: Cream of Spinach

(adapted from a recipe handout from Wilson Farms)

5 Yukon Gold potatoes, peeled and chopped

2 lbs of spinach, stemmed

1 large onion, chopped

3 cloves garlic

1 cup light cream

1/4-1/2 cup grated Romano cheese

2 Tbsp butter

salt and pepper

pinch of nutmeg

Saute the onions and garlic in butter until lightly browned.  Add the potatoes and the nutmeg and cover with just enough water to cover the potatoes.  Really, the water level can be right at the potatoes, just enough so they will cook in the water, you don't want more or your soup can get too runny.  Cook until the potatoes are very soft.  Turn your burner all the way to low. 

Begin adding your spinach.  Depending on the size of your pot you can toss it all in, put the cover on and let it wilt or you may need to help it along a bit.  What I do is add a huge bunch, put the top on and let it sit for a couple minutes, then open the top and try to fold the hot potatoes over the spinach.  The spinach will have shrunk enough to allow you to mix in and really shrink down that batch, now add the next bunch and repeat.  You don't want to leave the pot sitting there covered for a long time at this point as the spinach will gray and then you won't have green soup, but gray soup which isn't so pretty.

Once all the spinach is incorporated blend the soup using a stick blender or in batches in a regular blender.  Add the cream, cheese and salt and pepper to taste.

WIP Wednesday : Back on the wagon

Holiday knitting slightly derailed by a curious two year old.

But we are back in the saddle.

I sure caught a good one

It's up!

(And I must say, we found an excellent tree this year.)

We spent the evening trimming the tree.  It was, of course, great fun to watch the girls so excited about discovering ornaments, considering placement, etc.  Ada kept repeating, "This breakable one, this one good for me."  Hettie decided that themed cluster hanging was really the way to go.

But, it is funny, as much as I anticipate trimming the tree with my little ones, each year I am always a bit blindsided by what it is like to trim the tree with my big one.  My husband and I met when we were just twenty.  Our first tree was all of three feet tall in a little third floor apartment in Portland, Oregon.  As we unwrapped the ornaments from their boxes last night, I was right back there and so powerfully reminded of how much I love this man.

That's him.  Carrying the tree (the one we picked from the back of the very last field at the tree farm) because his crazy wife I have an irrational fear that dragging the tree is going to make all the needles come flying off.  So he carried it, sap sticking to his hair, all the way back to the car. 

But back to Portland.  We could not afford that tiny tree I am quite sure, but none the less, scraped together something with which to buy it.  We decorated it with popcorn and cranberry strings and ornaments Colin made out of the recycling bin.  He is a genius with "junk" and glue.  A decade later I am still unwrapping them for our Christmas tree.

Tin stars made from tea light holders

Our star made from a paper towel tube, card stock, metal scraps, electrical wire and glitter.

Not too many years later we bought our very first ornament together.

But he didn't stop making ornaments.  Last year I got this one.  Our family, hand sewn together.  It is the most rag tag little ornament, stuffing exploding out the seams, Sharpie letters, threads dangling, but could it be any more wonderful?

I'm just feeling pretty thankful this guy chose to spend his Christmases with me.

 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

Part of our weekend was spent bringing my mother in law's snow village to life.  Pure magic.

I've helped her put this up for Christmas a handful of times now,

and this will be my twelfth year admiring it.

I'm hoping to move in this year.

Despite some apparently raucous neighbors.