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...