Busy Hands Homestead

We did it!  We printed our shirts! photo credit:  Willow Affleck photo credit:  Willow Affleck The summer is almost over, but at least we have some awesome t-shirts. (And one more Camp Deep Creek Friday to look forward to before everyone goes back to school.) For an up close view of the design, click here .

As a parent I am often confronted by humbling moments. I like to think that I am somewhat flexible, open minded and maintain healthy set expectations:  hair needs to be brushed.  so do teeth.  it is not okay to lie, but it is okay to keep surprises (Please don't tell Dad about the t-shirt we picked up for his birthday today... ) We navigate a foggy world of boundaries, social norms and appropriate behaviors.  I don't expect to always be right, even when arguing with a four year old.  Sometimes her arguments have a certain kind of logic and once I realize that logic I agree with her, just like I try to help her see my logic and hope she will do what I am asking of her.  But, sometimes, in spite of or maybe because of myself that there comes a moment when I so vastly underestimate what my child really is capable of. I had one of those moments this Monday. We were leaving a friend's house after hanging out for hours, and as I was setting Sylvan in his str...

"Look!  A Crawdad!"   I  was scrolling through the photographs taken last weekend and this is one of the only pictures that we took of the 30 Hour Birthday Feast.   The other photograph is of me kneading that evening's third batch of pizza dough to be shaped, topped and baked in the out door cob oven. These are the only photographs that commemorate the amazing weekend filled with friends and food, a float trip and pit roasted lamb that began my last year of my twenties.  And while I have a mental list of things I would like to do before I am thirty, I had a much more pressing issue to tackle this last week. Remember all of those capes I made last week for Camp Deep Creek? Well, I had an even larger pile of t-shirt scraps sitting in my living room that I just couldn't bear to throw away.  So puttering around in my living room alone, while my husband worked away in the wood shop out back, it occurred to me that I could use thes...

A new take on the California Roll.  Fake crab, cream cheese and roasted beet that bleeds a bright pink into the surrounding sushi rice. YUM!

 Thursday: I spent the afternoon turning T-shirts into capes.  A lot of capes. Capes to be turned into creatures real and imaginary.  Friday:  With bits of lace, felt and feathers the older kids turned their capes into a sloth, a mountain lion and a blue bird. The boys went off to patrol the borders of their animal kingdoms, while Ivory continued to add little bits and pieces to her cape, that started out as a blue bird.  Soon the blue bird was joined by a balloon and a multitude of flowers.  So, for all of the Deep Creek Campers that were not present this Friday and would like to make your own cape, this is what you need:  a T- shirt heat bonded Velcro an iron with a steam setting scissors and the instructions from this tutorial I left my sewing machine firmly in its case for this one, and I don't own a hot glue gun.  So for the Velcro closure around the neck I used heat bonded Velcro tabs...

I spent the evening sitting at the ceramics studio, teasing the clay into what will hopefully become a tall, free standing sculpture.  When I arrived home the dinner dishes were still stacked by the sink, the house mostly picked up and I found Adam, Ivory and Sylvan all cuddled up in the same bed.  I resisted the urge to wash the dishes and decided instead to put together this post that has been haunting me ever since I baked my Beet and Onion Tart a few days ago.   There is something so indescribably gratifying about being able to pull a plant from the ground, carry it to the kitchen table and share it with family and friends.  Being able to make an entire meal from ingredients almost entirely from the garden is even better.   I pulled yellow and red onions from the ground and beets with nice lush greens, and as most times when I walk back into the house with my harvest, my cookbooks lacked an option that utilized these plants in their e...

Images included: boat wildflower insect music I hope it includes some of this summer's highlights.. Let me know what you think.

The Beginning: Canvas 1: Canvas 2: Canvas 3:  Back to Canvas 2 with a broom for a paintbrush: The End!