Busy Hands Homestead

Before Christmas I purchased a bag of almond flour and a bag of hazelnut flour for a variety of German Christmas cookies.  In spite of having baked many ( too many ) batches of Christmas cookies, I still have a partial bag of hazelnut flour sitting on my pantry shelf.  This is a unique pancake recipe I have developed to use up the remainder.  The result is fluffy and moist and both Sylvan and Ivory are guaranteed to ask for seconds. Hazelnut Pancakes 1/2 cup white flour 1/2 cup whole wheat flour 1/2 cup hazelnut flour 2 teaspoons baking powder 2 tablespoons sugar 1 tablespoon oil 1 egg 1 1/3 cup milk 1 teaspoon vanilla combine the dry ingredients in a bowl and stir until mixed well add the wet ingredients and stir until well blended ladle onto a skillet or griddle that has been oiled and warmed over medium heat turn when the craters formed in the batter stay open after a minute or two remove from heat and pour on another pancake! These a...

I love mornings. I love my first cup of coffee. I love breathing the dark aroma and sipping the smoothness of cream as I sit and pretend that we have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day.  I breath in and pretend that everything is calm and peaceful while in reality the kids are running across the house from kitchen through dining room and into the living room. The pretense of a leisurely moment is furthered by the fact that I am not actively cooking breakfast. We cook breakfast every day, but I have discovered the joys of baked breakfast. We often eat Puff Pancakes , but recently I added baked oatmeal into the rotation of family breakfast.  Just like the Puff Pancakes, the baked oatmeal is a baked dish that allows me to just sit and sip and breath for twenty minutes. Baked Oatmeal 1 cup oatmeal  3 Tablespoons brown sugar 2 Tablespoons coconut flakes 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup walnut pie...

After many, many more hours of work and a treacherous fall that put me flat on my back with this thing on top of me the clay component of my sculpture is finally built.   It is slowly drying, covered in plastic and hopefully no cracks develop.  This sculpture will be my first attempt to combine the many hand crafts I enjoy.  I hope to incorporate fibers -  sewed, knitted and crocheted - in the final piece.  (I like this form so much it will be hard to make myself take that next step.)  

Sylvan is sitting at the dinner table.  His fork in his fist, the prongs sticking strait up.  "I thankful," he is not quite shouting. "I thankful. I thankful. I thankful." "Well, I am thankful... ", Ivory begins. "NO NO NO NO NO NO. I thankful", Sylvan shouts across the table at her. "I thankful." "Hold on Ivory.  I think Sylvan is trying to tell us what he is thankful for." Usually Ivory decides what Sylvan is thankful for.  It is most often the food we are eating or something exciting we did that day while Sylvan stands on his chair at the dinner table turning in circles singing: "Thankful, thankful, thankful."  I usually am poised at the edge of my seat, waiting for the moment that his thankful dance takes him over the edge of his chair.  (Thankfully, that has not happened yet.)  But today it seems he wants to speak for himself. I thankful is followed by a string of sounds, very serious sounds, and I take his...

6 Tablespoons melted butter 1 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 1/2 cups pumpkin (cooked and pureed) (I actually used an acorn squash.) 1/4 cup sour cream 1 cup whole wheat flour 1 cup white flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips 1/3 cup finely chopped crystallized ginger 1 teaspoon vanilla 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon (optional) 1/4 teaspoon cloves (optional) preheat the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit  combine melted butter, sugar, eggs, pumpkin and sour cream in a bowl and blend well add the whole wheat flour, white flour, baking powder blend well add the semi-sweet chocolate chips, crystallized ginger and vanilla mix in well pour the batter into a greased bread pan (9" x 5") bake 1 hour and 10 minutes up to 1 hour and 20 minutes.  If the top of your bread gets to brown you can set an aluminum foil tent over the bread pan.  cool for 10 minutes, remove from pan and allow to cool completely (about 3 hours).   I added the cinnamon a...

The past few days have been a little difficult for Ivory and I.  We have been butting heads over everything: putting on clothes, picking up toys, going outside, going inside....    So, I thought a few moments of quality one on one mom and daughter time might be just what she was needing.  During nap time (Sylvan's) we pulled out the colored paper, glue and scissors.   We cut the cards, flowers, hearts and leaves and glued these together.  By the time I finally went upstairs to wake my little man up we had twelve cards lined up on the table. (I did not expect her attention span to last through quite that many cards.) What you need: colored paper scissors (one for mom and one for the kiddo) glue pen What you do: cut each card to size.  I measured our envelopes and decided to make the folded size of the card 3.5" x 6" with the crease at the top.  cut a six petaled flower for the back ground (or a 5 petaled flower) cut...

A friend and I went on a walk today. A friend and I and our children, four in total. The snow glowed white overlaid with dark shadows.  We stepped from light to dark through the high contrast of a sunny winter day. Ivory is reading books on the sofa, Sylvan paging through his own stack of books on the dining room floor.  Just a few minutes ago both were red faced, with bands of tears streaking their cheeks.  Today we have journeyed through smiles and tears, happy and sad, light and dark as many times as we stepped through the shadows underneath the undulating trees. Dinner is baking in the oven. Colored pencils are being spread across the floor as coloring pages are filled in with rainbows.  I take a deep breath and enjoy the sunshine. I am trying to push the thoughts of just how many more shadows I will have to walk through before bed time out of my mind. Sunny winter days are starkly beautiful because, and not in spite of, the shadows. "Look M...

Sylvan asleep, the dishes washed, dinner started and I sit down to sew a few buttons onto a cute cardigan Ivory was handed down from a friend.  She impatient, waiting for a friend to arrive and share dinner with us, utters those three words that parents dread: " I am bored." I pour a rainbow of buttons into a cake pan: "Can you find five buttons that are the same and match your red and grey and black sweater?".  Much too soon she gathers a little cluster of grey buttons and stacks of large, medium and small buttons are marching across the table.  Mom: "I am bored."  I stare at the table for a moment, set down the needle and thread, put aside my hopes of quickly fixing this silly cardigan and instead dig through my craft supplies to find that roll of floral wire I know is hiding somewhere in one of my drawers. Success. For an hour she is concentrating, silently stringing her stacks of buttons onto the wires - small, medium and large.  She hands the thr...

Our world is winter white and cold. The high today is 13 degrees Fahrenheit. I am somewhere between washing the dishes, folding 4 loads of clean laundry, sorting all the things that have collected on the bathroom shelves back into their spots and sledding. Sylvan is napping.  Ivory has, not one or two, but four puzzles spread out on the dining room floor.  Two and a half puzzles are completed.  Adam is trouble shooting the waste oil furnace in the shop.  It shut down yesterday for no apparent reason. I spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning.  Moving furniture and mopping everything from wall to wall. (When I say mopping picture this: crawling on hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a rag.  I don't actually own a mop.) Adam sealed up house envelope gaps here and there that were pointed out to us during our Energy Audit last week. We winterized a few windows (in our unheated back room - our washer froze.  That was a first.) In the past few wee...

When I think about the day in 2003 on which I met my husband, I think guacamole. There are many moments in our lives that I remember by the meals we shared. The last meal he cooked for me before I drove to New York for my summer internship in 2006 was Veal Marsala.  The meal that was waiting, sitting on the table, when I returned was a Spaghetti Squash picked up at the Farmer's market that morning. Even rockiest days of our marriage (so far), I will always fondly remember with side by side concocted candied orange peals and chocolate fudge.  The morning after Ivory was born, we pulled apart monkey bread while we stared across the tiny hospital room at that sleeping bundle.  The day after we came home from the hospital with we walked all over Stillwater, Oklahoma in 90 degree weather.  When we walked out of the door that morning we were full of new parent adrenaline and the fact that I had had virtually no sleep the night before seemed to matter litt...

This afternoon, during nap time, I put together a small draw string bag complete with a super plush lining (which was a pain to work with).  The lining is perfect for muffling the clinks of it's content and maybe just fancy enough to be a bag of jewels in Ivory's princess filled world.  In it's aftermath however, I will be sweeping up purple fuzzies for days to come.  "Why", you might ask, "are you spending that sacred nap time sewing a silly little draw string bag?"  It wasn't just nap time, but double nap time.  That is right, both of the children are asleep. Well, because the kids got this for Christmas: A super awesome, positively amazing marble run crafted by my husband in his shop behind the house.  (Yes, I have better pictures of this.. but, just look at Sylvan's super excited face, and that is why I chose this one over all the others.) So now we have a marble problem.  There are somewhere - underneath furniture, in corner...

I make lists: to do lists, shopping lists, pro and con lists, why I love Adam list (I made it a few months after we met), I even have a what I will do and not do with my children list that I made the summer after my junior year of high school (and I know exactly where it is).  Maybe this is part of the reason I have always looked forward to making a list of New Years's Resolutions. I love the feeling of starting over, doing better, of the last year being past and a new one just beginning.  When I was younger my New Years's Resolutions were simpler:      I will make straight A's.      I will apply and be awarded enough scholarships to pay for the next school year.      I will do my crunches every morning.      and on and on.. I knew I could attain these.  It was all so much easier when I operated in world that consisted of - well - mainly me.  The only resolution I never managed to fullfill was to ...