P has a blog. Or so she says. The other day she was running around the house saying,"
I have a blog, click, click."
She likes to go up to the computer and click. When she leaves the desk area she says, "offline. unload."
Recently we were folding clothes at the dining room table while dinner was in the oven. She looked out the window and said, "Mom, take a picture of the sky. It's pink!"
I guess this is her post.
In an attempt to get over the winter blues we have added our own little splash of color.
We are thinking ahead and planning out Valentines, colorful spring crafts and new treats to bake.
We should get busy with Valentines projects. I just heard P. say. "Where did it go?" and " I just had my pink fabric in my hand." Where do you think she heard that?
It has been gloomy, rainy, and foggy the last few days but yesterday we were seeing orange.
Yes, that is our Christmas tree. We have not taken it down yet. We will leave it up until it starts shedding lots of needles. It is still holding them fairly well. We do enjoy the tree lights at night.
Sometimes we have to take our children's lead in seeing things in a "new light." Yesterday, P found one of the balloons left from the Physics Demonstrations and asked me to fill it for her. She had such fun discovering with it. She looked at reflections in it and lots of things through it.
Everything was fine until she got a little too close to the tree.
She had a bit of a Piglet moment. There was a large bang and she stood for a moment and then said, "and I lost my balloon, too." She looked all around the tree for it. And could not believe that the "damp rag" on the floor could be her balloon
.Oh, but it was fun while it lasted.
This is an old family recipe from B's grandmother.
Raisin Filled Cookies
Dough:
1 1/2 cup sugar
1 cup butter
3 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
1/2 tsp baking soda
3 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4 cups flour
1 cup milk
Cream together the sugar and butter, add eggs, and vanilla.
Sift the dry ingredients together.
Add the dry ingredients and milk alternately to the bowl, beat only as needed.
Refrigerate 2 hours or over night.
Filling:
1 pound raisins or other dried fruit (we have tried apricots and currants)
1/2 cup sugar (1/4 cup is usually enough)
2 T cornstarch
Put the raisins in a pan and cover with water, bring to a boil and simmer at least 30 minutes, adding water as needed to produce plump raisins with sauce. Add sugar and cook 2-3 minutes. Add cornstarch and cook 2-3 minutes. cool
The filling can be made the day ahead also.
Cookies:
Roll out dough on a liberally floured surface and cut with a 2 3/4 inch cutter. Dough is sticky, keep it cold and move quickly. Place bottom pieces on an ungreased sheet. add spoonful of filling and cover with top layer.
Seal edges with a fork dipped in flour.
Bake at 350 degrees 15 to 20 minutes. Bake only 8 per sheet as they will spread.
We make this family favorite only once a year. Enjoy!
Back in the fall, when I was not so far behind, I joined a handmade swap: "aqua, red, and a button." With the due date approaching I still wondered what to make. Then, I got this lovely embroidery piece in the mail from my sister, M. She had started it years ago to give to our Grandmother.
I dug out some aqua and red embroidery floss and found some great vintage red buttons. Once I started working I decided to use only the aqua floss and have the red be the buttons.
These will be little envelope pouches with a button on the flap.
It started yesterday when the snowman lost his nose.
Today, it is official.
Winter break has come to an end.
Tomorrow, B goes back to work and the boys go back to school. P and I will have to find something fun to do on our own.
Today, I will think about taking down the tree.
You should have been at our house yesterday. D and some of his AP Physics classmates made a video to promote the Physics class. They filmed lots of experiments and demonstrations. I was most impressed by the imploded pop can. They put a little water in the can and then heated it in the wood stove. They quickly took it out of the fire and placed it upside down in a bucket of ice water. There was a large boom and the can imploded.
Bending a stream of water with a static charged balloon.
The high schoolers used a number of P's toys as props in their production. She kept a close eye on the activities. They launched tennis balls with a very large sling shot. They even tried to launch flaming and exploding tennis balls. Some of their experiments worked better than others. I hope I get to see the finished video.
The aftermath.
Hope the video works as well as the real action. I am pretty sure M will be taking two years of Physics now!
I have gotten a bit behind the last few weeks and am now trying to catch up. I was going to send out Christmas cards and then as the day got closer I decided I would do New Year's cards. Now, as we are already into January, I will take my time and just write some notes!
I had a few Holiday gifts that were not quite finished by Christmas either. B really likes hand knit socks and I had planned to give him a pair. Instead, I wrapped up the yarn and needles and gave him a "kit." I started the socks while we were up north.
So much for getting ahead over winter break.
We had a great time in Cadillac while it was snowing here. This was our road as we came home today.
The van is now stuck at the end of the drive but we did get to play a little in the snow. We made some snowballs
and a great snowman.
It even has "two eyes made out of coal!"
We usually stay home for New Years Eve and sit around working a puzzle or playing cards trying to stay awake until midnight. Not very exciting. This year we are doing something different. We are traveling to Cadillac, MI for the First Night festivities there. We will hear both boys play with the Chelsea House Orchestra. D will play violin and M will play djembe. P will dance in the audience.
Have a great New Year's celebration!
(cookie boy ornament made by my sister M)
This week I am the featured artist at The Art Of Craft. You can go read the interview and find out more about me. Check out some of the other artists featured at the site while you are there.
(Santa origami by my son M.)
The boys have been working in their "lab."
They have been taking apart old, broken electronic equipment.
I am not sure what they plan on making. M has grand ideas. There are lots of great parts here!
Also, they have done some fixing. We watched "Toy Story" with P last week. That was a favorite for M when he was little. He WAS Buzz Light Year for more than a year. He would wear Buzz pajamas and cardboard wings everywhere he went. After we watched the movie, he gave P his Toy Story toys. Both Buzz and Woody had to have their voice boxes fixed. P's favorite character in the movie, however, was Hannah's doll Janie. M, of course, didn't have one of those. I did notice that Janie looks a lot like the doll on the Island of Misfit Toys in Rudolf. I wonder about that...
While we were visiting family for Thanksgiving, my aunt H. asked if I would finish a quilt that my grandmother started years ago.
H. had given my grandmother the fabric and some transfers to embroider. She thought this might make a good winter project.
My grandmother had all twenty four blocks done in a week!
H. gave me some fabrics to go with the embroidered blocks. I substituted a brighter yellow and put the blocks together yesterday.
It is a twin size quilt. Now I need to get some batting and decide how to quilt it.
I know my cousin will enjoy having this quilt for her boys.
We have been doing a lot of baking in the last week. It is getting to be ridiculous. Yesterday we made gingerbread cookies. P loves the cookie boy story and recites the cookie boy's lines "Run, run, as fast as you can. You can't catch me; I'm the gingerbread man."
Even the boys joined in to decorate.
I love the different styles of decorating.
We also made chocolate chip cookies because, well, we always have to have some of those.
We still have some holiday cookies that we have not made! There are those raisin filled cookies that B makes every year. After two weeks of baking and eating, I think we will all be waddling back to our routines in the new year!
If only we had some snow, we could more easily burn off some of these cookies.
I finished M's hat in time for Christmas.
The tassel cords are knit I-cord with mathematically based stripe patterns. The one on the left is knit so that the rounds in each color stripes are the prime numbers in order. The one in the middle is based on the Fibonacci sequence. The one on the right is "random." D pointed out that it is not truly random as I changed colors when I wanted to. Next time I'll have him use his random number generator on his calculator.
I went out early this morning to attempt to get photos of the sun on the frost.
I discovered that it is not easy to get that "sparkle" in a photo.
We have an unusually clear blue sky for Michigan winter!
Thank goodness for digital cameras! Lots of photos for a few that are worth keeping. I am glad I didn't have to wait for developing, and pay for all those pictures that weren't any good!
The carrot cake turned out so tasty I thought I would share the recipe.
Carrot Cake
2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
2 teaspoons cinnamon
2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2 cups finely grated peeled carrot
8 oz can crushed pineapple, drained
3 1/2 oz can (1 cup) sweetened flaked coconut (optional)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)
frosting:
12 oz cream cheese, softened
3/4 cup unsalted butter, softened
1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla
2 cups powdered sugar
Into a large bowl, sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and cinnamon. Stir in the granulated sugar, oil, eggs, carrots, pineapple, coconut, and the walnuts.
Divide the batter between two buttered and floured round 9" cake pans (or one 9" by 13" pan) and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes, or until a tester comes out clean.
Let the cake cool in the pan on a rack for five minutes, then run an thin knife around the edge of each pan and invert the layers onto a rack to cool completely.
In a bowl with an electric mixer, beat together the cream cheese, butter, and the vanilla until the mixture is fluffy, then add the powdered sugar gradually, beating until the frosting is smooth. Frost cake as desired.
P. helped bake and frost the cake. Just as we finished the frosting, I had to leave the room for one minute to help someone else. As I left, I said, "don't touch the cake. If there are fingerprints in the frosting I'll know they are yours."She just couldn't help herself. This is what I found when I returned.
Here's wishing you that "dig right in" excitement.
One of P's "knitting aunties" gave her this book when she was born, "Shall I Knit You a Hat? a Christmas Yarn" by Kate Klise, illustrated by M. Sarah Klise.
This year it is a favorite. P requests it every day. It is a sweet story about a rabbit and his mother who design and make hats to give their animal friends for Christmas. The little rabbit thinks about each friend and they make a hat that is just right. I enjoy reading the story because it is about thinking of others, giving, knitting, handmade.... all of the things I like wrapped up into one story. I wondered what P liked about it. Last night I asked her what her favorite part of the story was." Carrot Cake!"
The rabbit and mother eat carrot cake while they design the hats. And, at the end of the story after they have delivered the hats they stay up late on Christmas Eve and have three pieces each!
Today we shall make carrot cake.
We saw this great drift tree on a trip to Florida before P was born. I was very interested in the soft looking wrinkles and folds in the tree that show after the bark is gone.
Very soft texture.
I made this soft little sweater set for P before she was born. I wish she could have worn it longer. She has tried the hat on today. It is a little beanie on the top of her head.
The pattern for this set is in an old issue of Interweave Knits. If anyone is interested I'll look and find which one.
P. and I had a tea party yesterday. A REAL tea party. We invited her "knitting aunties."
Although we live far from family, we are lucky to have great friends here. P is surrounded by wonderful people as I was growing up. I love that she is so comfortable with these very special women, my friends, her "knitting aunties." We missed you yesterday, "Deller."
We had strawberry rhubarb pie and got to use the pretty china and had tea in the fancy cups.
P used her Peter Rabbit china and had milk in her cup. She told her brothers all about it when they got home from school.
Here is the recipe I use for the pie:
Strawberry Rhubarb Pie
1 cup sugar
3T quick cook tapioca
3 cups rhubarb cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 cups sliced fresh strawberries
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
Stir together the ingredients for the filling. Let mixture stand while you prepare a crust. Fill the pastry lined 9" pie pan with filling and add top crust. (I am generous with the measurements and use a 10" pan.)
Bake at 375 for about 50 minutes until the crust is golden brown.
When strawberries are in season, I assembly line mix the fillings and freeze them one gallon freezer bags. I measure the fruits and add them to the bags. Then I mix the sugar, tapioca, and nutmeg in a little bowl and pour into each bag. I shake the bag a little to stir it together and then roll the bag. I stack them in the freezer like fire wood. When I want to make a pie, I pull out a bag of filling and let it thaw until it comes apart but not until it is mushy. I then make the crust and pour the filling from the bag and bake as usual.Good food and good friends, not much better than that.
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