This, my friends, is how Lil occupies much of her time these days: cracking nuts in shells. The only downside is the pile of sharp fragments, some of which inevitably fly across the room and end up on the floor waiting for a bare foot to poke. Sweeping up is a small price to...
Read more →I recently mentioned on twitter that having the first meat of the season hanging in the basement made me feel like our house was a home again. Someone (who are you? I can’t find the tweet now!) replied “It’s modern mistletoe!” That got me to thinking about how meat curing is a tasty metaphor...
Read more →It is list making season, no? No matter your place on the HanuSolMas spectrum, there is some holiday that calls for presents. In my family, gifts are made of love and time. Much of what we give and receive is handmade. We flip the consumerism coin and come up with heads and hearts –...
Read more →Thanks to a generous friend who gave me a huge stash of canning supplies, I have a new favorite jar. (What? You don’t have favorite jars? Crazy!) This jar is blue, which is fun, and obviously old. It nearly matches four others I have of the same size and brand. This one is special...
Read more →Halloween decorations are still up when we celebrate our second favorite fall holiday – Election Day. Alex and I value voting and have taken Lil to the polls with us since she was a tiny babe. We always try to explain the issues to Lil. Defining the differences between politicians is difficult for her...
Read more →The season of Excessive Consumption is upon us, preceded by the month of Meaningful Worries and followed up with the weeks of Staggering Stuff. Usually my anxiety about winter holidays holds off until mid November but this year, Halloween candy is haunting me. Off the bat (Halloween pun?), let me be clear that I...
Read more →I realized when seaming Lil’s Halloween costume (she is Super Kitten, a hero of her own creation) that the way I approach sewing is much like I cook. Here’s how: 1) I eschew patterns and recipes. Patterns are expensive, I don’t like to be told what to do, and I rarely follow the rules...
Read more →One birthday tradition in our family is that the birthday girl selects the dessert for the day. My dad always has German chocolate cake; Alex and my sister Megan usually share a pie; Lil likes chocolate cake (homemade, of course). Now that my youngest sister Heather is a trained pastry chef and freelance cake...
Read more →When I saw this idea combining three of my favorite things (canning jars, pumpkins, and Halloween), I knew we had to make jar jack-o-lanterns. I dug out a stash of not-acceptable-for-canning jars (ones without a brand name) and our acrylic paints. Lil, her friend, and I each painted three jars in shades of orange....
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