DAYS OF CHRISTMAS: WREATHS

"May Peace be your gift at Christmas and your blessing all year through!"

~Author Unknown

December 13,, Santa Lucia Day, is a big holiday around these parts. If you are interested in the history check out this site. We all woke before dawn, dressed in white with red ribbons, and awakened Violet's Grandparents with hot muffins and carols. This is always fun.

We decided our project for the day would be wreath making. After a little winters nap we embarked on a walk around our woods to gather evergreen, grapevine, berries and other items offered to us from nature.



It was a lovely time. We brought our finds inside and each constructed wreaths, all beautiful, but all so different.


Also, while we were out hunting for wreath accoutrement's Kalin, Noah, and Steven were setting beams into place on the house. Progress is good!!!!!!!!

Merry Christmas! Happy crafting!

FiRST SPRiNG PLANTiNG

"There can be no other occupation like gardening in which, if you were to creep up behind someone at their work, you would find them smiling. "

~Mirabel Osler

Well I have finally gotten some seeds in the ground. I worked in the garden all day on Wednesday, while Violet hung out with her Auntie Em (who has just arrived from Florida). It felt so good to be outside in the beautiful almost spring weather. I planted some romaine starts that Kalin's mother gave me and pansies and violas.

This year I am making a real effort to keep edible flowers in the garden for salads and cakes. There is something so lovely about eating flowers. Pansies, violas, violets, nastirtiums and marigolds are among the edibles. YUM! I also planted a mesclun mix, salad bowl lettuce, bunching onions, red onions...and quite by accident turnips. I thought that I was oversowing the romaine with purple globe radishes. Upon closer examination of my seed packet, I realized I had indeed planted turnips. Not my favorite but others will enjoy them. oops

I also harvested some spinach and carrots that were planted from seed back in the fall. Check out the mutant carrot. A little scary but oh so delicious.

On another note... we worked on our house today some. It rained all morning so that put a cramp in our building style. We got a few more columns poured. We also had our handy dany helper aka Violet who worked hard filling the buckets with sand and gravel.

She was such a big a willing little helper.

The House Building Saga Continues

Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration.

~Charles Dickens

While the wild violets push their way up through the leaves

the house building saga continues...

We worked all last weekend adding yet another layer to the basement,

and cutting and placing re-bar. We were finally able to start the cement portion of the project. (also thanks to some nights above freezing so that the cement will cure correctly)

On that note, I am delighted to introduce our new little friend...

the cement mixer...One of the finest pieces of machinery I have ever met. .

With the perfect ratio of mortar, sand, gravel, and water

Voila! We have cement!

Here is a video of the mixer in action. It is quite hypnotic

I am now officially a cement mixer attendant. My job is to pour the cement into the buckets and turn the mixer on and off in between each pour.

Here is a video of Noah (Kalins brother who has been a HUGE help--thank you Noah!) curring the cement to the scaffolding to Kalin who pours the cement into the walls. We are pouring a column every 4 feet. The cement mixer is such a time saver!!

I am so excited!!! It feels great to spend time down there dreaming and visualizing where everything is going to go.

DAYS OF CHRiSTMAS CATCHiNG UP

Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies! ~Frank Church

Well hello again. Things here have been a bit hectic, and I temporarily misplaced my camera. Castle was fun but exhausting. It took me a few days to recover and recharge. Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season.

I really love this time of year. I am trying to remind myself to slow down and have moments reminiscent of the spirit and excitement that I felt as a child. My parents always worked hard to make the holidays special and I want the same for Violet.

I know now, how hard that must of been because these moments, have to be carved out of our normal daily lives. Oh, but how those moments are enriching to the soul.

On that note, here is what we have been doing during our days of Christmas. They have not all been in the order that I planned, and some of the activities have stretched out of a course of a few days, but we have been having fun doing them.

6: Make Bird Feeders

We read Counting to Christmas which came from Mimi and Grand Daddy last Christmas. It sort of mirrors what we are doing and is a really sweet book. The bird feeders were constructed with orange and apple slices, pine cones, orange bowls (we cut them in half, scoop out and eat the fruit, and smear crunchy peanut butter in them), thistle seeds, and dried fruit. We had a lot of fun and they turned out cute.


7: Decorate a tree for the birds



8: Make Cinnamon Ornaments



9: Hang Stockings

The stockings were hung on the bookcase with care (we don't have a chimney...yet)

10: Eat Cinnamon rolls for breakfast

11: Donate food to a food bank

12: Pick out Christmas tree

Kalin found the perfect tree in the woods, and brought it home to us.

13: Make a Gingerbread house


14: Make orange coconut balls

My sister and I used to make these no bake cookies every year. They are so easy and delicious. I will try to post the recipe on another post

15: Do a Christmas project



I got this idea from the Kids Craft Weekly book. We used colored card stock, glitter glue, buttons, beads, and sequins. Oh yeah, and some felt balls.

16: Make Snowflakes

I was totally geeking out on this one. Violet was kind of in to it. Her snowflake (on the bottom) turned out cute.

17: Decorate the Christmas tree.

This one has not quite happened yet. Hopefully we will be able to do it later tonight.

18: Take Violet Christmas shopping at Dollar Tree

This will be the third year that we have done this. We always find cool presents. She gets to pick them out herself and everything is $1...so it is easy for her to count how much she is spending.

19: Bundle up and watch Christmas lights with a thermos of cocoa

We had a plan change and are going to do this activity tomorrow night. I thought that it would be fun to use this thermos. I picked up it up at a thrift store for 2 bucks. I love it!! I did a test run and tried out some chai for my on the go sword boxing, shipping, fabric and Christmas shopping extravaganza day. Whew. It works so good and kept my chai hot all day long. Wahoo!!!!




In addition to these activities we have squeezed a parents night at ballet:


my nieces band recital, two icy days,


Santa Lucia Day (Kalin's family has Swedish roots), a ton of sword shipments,

and a bunch of work done on our house. Yippee!


Our friends Chris and Irish stuck around after Castle to help us. They are the true angels this Christmas.


Oh yeah, we can't forget the prerequisite viewing of White Christmas. It is one of my all time favs. Violet loves it too. Especially the sisters number. Good stuff.


Happy Holidays everyone! I hope that it won't be so long until my next post. I have really missed it.

HAPPY NOVEMBER

"Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns."

- George Eliot

Well fall is definitely here in the Ozark mountains. The leaves are changing. Despite all of the rain that we had this year, the leaves were not as brilliant as years past. Even so, this time of year is my favorite and there are a lot of beautiful colors out there.














We have been gathering hickory nuts and persimmons. Kalin and Violet had a fun cracking the nuts open on the porch.




I made persimmon bread and it was great. I used Mama's famous (it really is around these parts, quite a requested item) pumpkin bread recipe, and substituted persimmon puree for the pumpkin. I also added walnuts to the batter. Yummy delicious. I am going to try to crank some out tonight to take home to the fam in Texas.



We leave in tomorrow afternoon for Houston, where we will work the TRF booth and then head to Fort Worth, after the weekend.



We have been harvesting the last of the tender veggies from the garden. It has frosted a few nights. We managed to cover the pepper bed and eek out that harvest a little longer. After much anticipation the multi-color sweet bell peppers that I planted finally started to change color. Wahoo! Unfortunately they will not all have a chance to all turn before the weather turns too cold and that bed is put to sleep. I can't tell you how much joy it brings me to pick and cook with these jewels. I will definitely grow them next year.



I also picked all of the basil and wizzed up some pesto.

We have also been pecking away at our house. We worked all day on Sunday and got a ton of blocks moved on our handy dandy pulley.





You can watch a video of the contraption in action here. It is exciting and really starting to shape up.




Well gotta go, I have a ton to pack. I will see some of you soon. Lots of Love to all!!!!!