Busy Hands Homestead

There are thirty minutes on the kitchen timer and a warm cup of coffee sitting on the table next to me.  I am allowing my self that much time, no more, no less to come up with the 10 best things that happened to me in 2012.  (Only ten things?  This might be hard.) 1. House .  We bought a house, (with a lot of help). That is pretty amazing right? 2. The Clay Studio of Missoula .  I finally talked my self into taking a ceramics class and leaving bedtime to Adam. 3. Joined the YMCA .  Why, oh why did I wait until September to finally get all the paper work together to join the Y?  It has been one of the most liberating, fun and affordable things I have done this year.  This morning on my way to yoga class Ivory gave me a hug and a kiss and Sylvan opened the gate into the drop off center by himself, turned to me and waved me good bye with a big smile on his face.  It made my heart melt. I had to take a moment to proudly observe just how big a...

Throughout the holiday season our oven is turned on, the house smells like cinnamon, and cooling racks line the little counter space we have. We baked and iced eight different kinds of cookies and piled up tins filled with dozens of holiday treats. Anyone lucky enough to stop by our house went home with a plate of goodies. We made cardamon braids and delivered them to friends and neighbors. We made a ginger bread house. Last year's gingerbread house was made from a recipe I found on the internet, but the final dough was disappointing at best, and this year I wanted to use the recipe that my mom used when I was a little girl.  I can picture the green clad, almost square cook book of German Christmas baking recipes sitting on her shelf in the living room, but that book is hundreds of miles away. I finally remembered to ask her for the recipe. My mom emailed me the recipe. Adam made the dough. I cut and baked the shapes. While Sylvan napped we glued it ...

Many, many months ago I ran across this image on Pinterest: Keepsake Hug Pillow "This is a great gift idea for grandparents", I thought to myself and I dutifully pinned it onto my craft ideas  board. Perfect, because it can involve our entire family, because I have a giant stash of fabric and perfect because the final gift folds in a small envelope I can ship across the country. I don't however have a fancy sewing machine that would make nice neat letters and numbers, and as time went by I kept coming up with new ways to design our hand print pillows.     We traced our hands onto a thick cardboard folder.  I cut them out and then traced them onto Wunder Under.  Ivory pealed he paper backing off of the fabric hand prints and I ironed them into place.  While I sewed one, Sylvan paraded the other two around the house.  Each of our hands a single petal of a flower. Red, orange and yellow thread added a little detail.  And...

Ivory has been asking for a pair of overalls.  My little girl, who I have to wrestle into anything but leggings, skirts and dresses, or dress up clothes, wants a pair of overalls.  Not just any overalls: She wants purple overalls. Sure, I could probably google purple overalls and buy a pair.  I could walk into a clothing store. But the truth is, I haven't even tried.  I try to avoid shopping as much as possible.  I try to avoid it so much that I just put the button holes and slip stitched the leg cuffs on the brightest, most purple overalls at one in the morning.  Here they are.  Done.

I finished knitting Adam's present yesterday morning, but didn't manage to tie up all the loose ends until just now.  In between icing the Almond Star Cookies and pulling tonight's pot pie out of the oven, I sat down for a few minutes and now the gift is completely done! FINALLY! I based the hat on a free pattern that I found online. I made a few changes.  The most obvious is that I added the curled edge to the hat to make it more hat like.  I also permanently attached this mustache rather than making a few different exchangeable staches. Well, dinner is ready and Adam just came inside. The pot pie smells fantastic!

There are moments when time morphs.   It takes on a different dimension for a minute, an hour, an entire morning.  We awoke Saturday to a bright white world of snow.  I pulled the red currant danishes out of the freezer.  I had been saving them, much to my husband's dismay, for a morning just like this.  They were sweet and tart and the summer sun warmed the back of neck as we gazed out of our dining room windows. We pulled on wool socks, snow pants, boots, coats, gloves and hats.  The kids and I stepped outside - Where was that sled again?  We stomped around the yard, poking the shovel into snow piles only to find a piece of wood or nothing again and again.  I had seen it not too long ago, when Sylvan was sitting in it, pretending to be in a boat.  I finally discovered it leaning up against a raised garden bed, hidden under the snow. Now we were finally ready to go. I ran down the street, dragging the sled behind, ...

I posted images of the soda fire results here: at my new Sticks&Stones Workshop site. In addition to getting ready for the Holiday MADE fair (Dec. 9th from 11am - 6pm), I have been cooking dinner, keeping the house (some what) clean and trying to mark a few of those other nagging projects off of my list. I finally sewed two fabric baskets that I have been intending to sew for eons.  My sewing machine has been stashed away for months now because Sylvan can not resist climbing onto my lab and turning all the dials and pushing the few buttons while it is in use.   That dilapidated little cardboard box held Ivory's shoes and then Sylvan's as well and moved with us not, one, but two times and it is finally being recycled.  In it's place there are now two fabric baskets: one for Ivory's shoes and one for Sylvan's.  They took me only a few hours to make and were absolutely free.  I inherited the fabric when we bought  our house .  Adam has...

Ivory is four.   She is somewhere in the nebulous realm of  needing an afternoon nap and stubbornly staying awake.  By four thirty or five in the afternoon, she acts like a monster.  She is a block throwing, screaming, crying, supper tired child which no reasonable speaking, pleading, bargaining, or threatening seams curtail.  And then I act like a monster.  Night time books are taken away, toys are confiscated and, yes, I find myself screaming.  We both hit a wall and the only place to go is to bed, but we still have to make it through dinner and picking up toys and getting ready for bed before that can be realized. So in the footsteps of my mother (who made beautiful water color and pen and ink chore charts for my siblings and I)  and many other mothers I have created my version of a chore chart.  Here is my attempt at a solution:   Chores: The Game Please excuse the slightly bl...

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.   It is even better than Christmas.  Why?  Well, it has all those things I love about Christmas (good food and family) and none of the things that makes Christmas stressful (the shopping and gift giving).  Thanksgiving has always been this big family event where we bustled around in the kitchen for days rolling and stirring and baking and then all this food is brought fourth and set onto a beautifully decorated table (or two).  People could be counted on for certain dishes.  I would make sweet potato casserole, my mom cardamon bread, Linda and Gigi would bring this cranberry salad I yearn for, my grandmother her Swedish fruit compote , etc...   and then we would all sit together and eat and laugh and go on a walk through the neighborhood and start all over again.   The last few years, we have spent Thanksgiving with friends and neighbors , sharing food and laughs and listening to a few folks jam whil...

In the wake of the great sickness , I frantically glazed all of my plates, cups, and bowls.  Each item was then carefully wadded onto it's spot on the kiln shelf. Each shelf carefully balanced on the one before.  By the time we lined up the rows up bricks to close up the door and spackled shut all of the cracks our hands were freezing and it was close to one in the morning. Many hours later we noted with pride no flames escaping from the top of the arch.  Our firing was consistent and even.   Firing Shedule 12:45 am mudded door and started candling, with peeps and damper open 8:00 am  closed peeps, shut damper half way and turned up gas a bump (1/8th of an inch or so) and adjusted the blowers 11:00 am checked on kiln 11:35 am turned up gas slightly and closed damper to 2" 1:00 pm cone 012 down, strong reduction, turned up W burner slightly  2:45 pm turned up gas a bump, damper mostly open, cone 012 com...

Time has been getting away from me.  The days jam packed with little happenings that it seems like I have hardly had a moment to collect my thoughts, much less, to put them into writing. So I will back track a few weeks. HUNTING - a success.  Adam brought home a deer. and then THE SICKNESS - we ALL got sick. Almost two weeks ago, Sylvan climbed into bed next to me, whimpered tucked his hands into my shirt, fell asleep and then proceeded to puke all over me... changed sheets..  and again..  changed sheets...  and -  then he and I got up.  We only have three sets of sheets for our bed.  So, at four in the morning, he and I started a load of laundry and curled up on the sofa to wait for the rest of the family to get up.  I wrapped my body around his, frustrated by my inability to make him feel better.  The one thing that I can always count on to make him feel better, nursing, made him violently ill and my refusal to do so made h...

Translation: Please leave me some candy. (heart) Ivory Ivory, Thank you for the candy and I hope you like what I left for you and your brother.  I got your note and I left you some extra pieces for when you're extra good. See you next year,                          (pumpkin head) In our house there is no Santa Clause, no Easter Bunny, and as of now, no Tooth Fairy visits...  I have a general dislike of lying to children, but in spite of our attempt at honesty there is the Great Pumpkin that comes around once a year. Never heard of the Great Pumpkin?  Well, I borrowed the idea of him from a friend who enlightened me to the existence of such a being last year.  The Great Pumpkin visits children's houses after Halloween and trades all (or most of) that candy for a useful item or a toy.   When the children get older, I hope that we can simply give them th...

Ivory practically jumped into bed last night.  Gone were the tears that had been running down her face, and the numbing ear drops I carefully dripped into her ears after dinner must have been working.  Slipping smoothly under the covers of my bed she grinned at me singing: "Sleep over, Sleep over, it's like a sleep over.  But it's not a sleep over.  It is just laying down in Mama's bed." Adam had driven off just a few minutes earlier to spend the night with his rifle, in spite the icy Montana air, on the side of a mountain alone in a wall tent. I had moved two giant pots filled with forty pounds of halved and cooked apples into our unheated back room to become apple sauce in the morning and decided to cuddle up with Sylvan and Ivory and call it a night.  When Sylvan nudged me awake to nurse I glanced at the clock - almost six in the morning - I don't remember a time that I have slept for that long with out interruption   "Seven thirty ...

Our noses and whiskers are washed off. The kids are in bed, and I am going to give myself a pat on the back.  Not that I was a stellar mom today.  I was not. Not that I put any sort of fantastic effort into our Halloween festivities.  I did not.  But, we survived the day and that is good enough for me. Today was one of those unbelievably difficult days combined with a long list of things to do.  I got up extra early so I could sneak in a shower before the kids woke up, but before I had managed to shave my legs, my little man pushed open the bathroom door and climbed on in splashing happily in the water.  By the time we ate breakfast my ballot was filled out, all of the month's bills payed, our bank account balanced (oh, and what a balance remains) and the corporate office of Suzuki had successfully been called. By eleven the recycling was sorted, our bank errand completed and we piled out of the car to wander around the interweaving paths a...

This morning I rolled over in my bed and stared at the clock. Guiltily I calculated that Adam had left almost two hours ago, and that I wouldn't be seeing him again until Sunday evening. This weekend went by too fast.  I attended a lecture by Julia Galloway Friday night and her workshop most of Saturday.  Sunday was spent cooking for Adam's week away, and if I had not curled up next to his warm body for two nights, I might not have realized he had been home at all.  I continued staring at the clock, willing my self to get out of bed.   Since I haven't been able to spend late nights at the Clay Studio my dining room has become, not only the play room, but also a make shift studio.  During nap time and after Ivory and Sylvan finally fall asleep I attempt to wrap up the list of things I am trying to finish for the upcoming MADE fair .   Today, during nap time, I attached the handles to bier-steins and trimmed a few plates.  I p...

I remember staring at my daughter, when she was still tiny, red and wrinkled, thinking about this marvelous miracle of life.  Holding her, it dawned on me that, I was also cradling my grand children in my arms as her infant body already contains fully formed egg cells. While I have always made an effort to eat healthy and exercise, this realization has sent me on the additional mission to try and avoid products that contain potential endocrine disruptors and mutagens. Our house hold isn't completely devoid of plastic, all organic or full of eco-cleaning products.  The lists of complex ingredients on the back of bottles gave me headaches.  Trying to remember what was good, all right and bad while actually examining a product in the store was beyond me.  Many of the products I felt confident purchasing were beyond or financial ability, so I took a different approach.  There is simply a long list of products I don't buy.  I don't buy commercial s...

Especially during nap time, the golden sunlight beckons me out side.   I desperately want to get my feet in this: But rather than frolicking in the fall leaves I have been doing this: Sorting through the many boxes and bags of fabric and other art supplies and giving them accessible homes for the first time in years.  My husband set up the craft armoire his mother sent me for my birthday, and I am finally moved in.  It was a three day undertaking. This morning I just couldn't face another day inside.  I know that for my own sanity and the well being of my children (so they don't have to deal with a super crabby mom) I just had  to get outside.  We got dressed, ate breakfast, I packed a back pack and we piled into the car to drive down the highway to the Valley of the Moon Nature Trail on Rock Creek.  We walked along the trail through waves of grasses, wound our way beneath the towering cotton woods, found a picnic tab...