penny carnival

Pumpkin cookies, just because

We had cookies for dinner tonight.

Sometimes the girls and I bake cookies just to have something to do. I wasn't even craving cookies (unusual for me) when we came across my friend Sarah's pumpkin cookie recipe today. Serendipitously, there was half a can of pumpkin puree in the fridge threatening to get moldy. And two sticks of butter, which is what this recipe calls for.  

The recipe did not disappoint, and despite the fact that I wasn't craving cookies before we made them, I've now eaten about five of them. Awesome. Glad I ran for all of 25 minutes this morning. That should have taken care of one of the five.

I can't tell you how many photos I have that are similar to this one:

It's a scene that will never bore me.

I promise that if you are my friend and I bake cookies for some event at your house or function at the girls' school, I do oversee the hygiene issues. But when I know we're just going to consume them here at home, I let a lot of this slide:

Magpie is wearing the apron I sewed for Bo when she was about this age. 

She doesn't know there'll be an apron sewn and wrapped up for her for her 2nd birthday in a few weeks.

Delicious. Thanks, Sarah. I didn't make the frosting, like you did. Figured I'd done enough damage already. 

By the way, that Italian Deruta-style saucer has traveled with me from Portland, Ore., to Boston to Spokane over the last 10 years. I rescued it from a dumpster in the late '90s when I lived in an apartment across the street from a Torrefazione coffee shop that used them. Torrefaz was my living room back then, and a box of chipped saucers and cups caught my eye as I walked past the dumpster one day. One of my better junk finds.

On to the garden ... Almost a year ago to the day, I posted a shot of one of our last trips through the garden and what it yielded. I took a similar picture the other day after the girls and I gathered up the last big basket of veggies. 

Some scenes from the garden as it gets put to bed:

 

 

Some things just didn't have enough time to mature in our short season:

Including these cute little cantaloupes:

We thought we'd find out how a mini cantaloupe tastes. Magpie's reaction here should give you an answer:

Could also be because she's eating the seeds, though.

Until next year, little garden. Have a restful winter.

Our Swedes and our ABCs

We just wrapped up a week with guests from Sweden in our house. I wanted to put the word "wonderful" in there before "week," but in classic Megan style I ended up catching some sort of cold/stomach bug by Day 3 and was out of commission for most of the visit. 

Ugh. It all had started so strong. We set off on a 2-hour drive to pick them up at a lake cabin in a remote part of northeast Washington Monday night. 

"It's time to go get our Swedes," I announced to the girls cheerfully. 

"Are we going to put them in the ground and watch them grow?" Bo asked.

"Swedes, honey. Not seeds."

When Bruno and Iris greeted us with warm hugs, I knew in an instant it would be a good week.

On Tuesday morning, I made quiche and pumpkin muffins and set out an array of teas and coffee for breakfast. That night, J and I cooked up a feast for 10 that included this butternut squash pasta, this bleu cheese dip and this apple cake for dessert, as well as some rosemary chicken, fennel sausage and other yum. We have failed miserably at dinner parties before, but we seriously hit it out of the park with that one.

The food was meant to be Northwest and autumnish, but the company was truly international: 2 Swedes, 1 Dutch woman, 1 Canadian and 5 gringos. It was a mix of neighbors and friends, and they hit it off beautifully.

But by Wednesday afternoon, my head was in the toilet. And, no, it wasn't food poisoning (thank goodness).

Our kind guests were completely understanding and they thankfully felt comfortable enough to help themselves to what they needed. But I couldn't help but think that they must have worried that they'd walked into Swine Flu Central. (Despite the fact that eastern Washington is ground zero for swine flu right now, I don't have it. Again, thank goodness.)

But during the times I was coherent this week, I witnessed moments of intercultural, intergenerational beauty.

We'd never met Bruno and Iris before. They were part of a "Friendship Exchange" through one of the local Rotary Clubs, which J volunteers for. They probably assumed they'd be staying with a retired couple like themselves, perhaps not with two 35 year olds and their young, er, energetic daughters. 

But it didn't take long to see that Bruno and Iris love children--they have six grandchildren of their own--and my heart swelled when Iris put Bo on the kitchen counter on night 2 and sang a Swedish nursery rhyme to her. (Something about a mouse looking for a house. The mouse creeps up the child's leg and finally finds its house in her tummy. Giggles galore.)

We talked with them about history and war and the environment and immigration and health care and taxes and about the unbelievable polarization that's happening in this country right now. (Seriously. A day doesn't go by when my jaw doesn't drop open as I read the paper. And I'm a journalist, for Pete's sake! Nothing should surprise me by now, right?)

So, yeah, it was a bummer that I got sick. But besides going to a foreign country and staying with a family there, I don't think there's a better way to expose ourselves to another culture than inviting people into our home. It's important to me that the girls grow up knowing that their way of life isn't the only way of life.

We jokingly referred to Bruno and Iris as "our" Swedes all week. But, at the risk of sounding ridiculous, in some ways that's true. We now have a small connection to a country we've never visited, except vicariously while wandering the aisles of Ikea.

I've been thinking of making a table runner I would applique over the years with small symbols of our voyages and of folks who visit us (like a Swedish flag and a reindeer for Bruno and Iris). I mentioned this to my friend Klay and she suggested starting a signature tablecloth, like this one. I plan to get some hybrid of those ideas going soon.

We're back to normal life now, and here's a little activity I did with Bo this afternoon to 

help her recognize words and,

more importantly, to remind her where to put her clothes away. 

I cut out letters as she ran back and forth to her room to come up with things we needed to label, like her sock drawer, her pajama drawer, her zebra and her duck. Of course.

Then she glued them to the background paper.

As you can see I probably should have coached her a bit more on the order of the letters, but she'll figure it out one day.

And finally, a visual report from our garden. This was tonight's bounty. The white tomato is courtesy of our youngest and most eager gardener, Magpie.

Reusable sandwich baggies and garden pix

With it being back-to-school season, I thought I'd post a reminder of a tutorial I wrote for making reusable sandwich baggies last year.

A publisher came across my tutorial recently and wants to include it (plus a few of my others) in a 2011 calendar, which is pretty exciting for me. I wanted to spruce up my photos since the originals were taken on a dark December night in my basement, so here's a better shot for you of the finished product.

Yes, the snaps are from the remains of the girls' old baby clothes. I know it looks a little wonky, but the point of the project is that you can probably make these from old stuff you have lying around the house. And of course they're reusable, so that makes them double green. Or would that be "dark green"?Hmm ... a new phrase ... Go (dark) green! 

I'm such a geek.

These are quick and easy to make so I couldn't help but experiment with another design:

Yesterday I mentioned our garden but didn't include any photos, so here's a visual of where things stand (and sprawl) today:

The first of the butternut squash:

I might have gone overboard with those this year, but the squash ravioli will be enjoyed all winter long.

Corny:

Cucumber balls:

They're not supposed to be balls. They're just growing that way. Could this be an overcrowding issue? Anyone? Anyone?

A baby patty pan squash:

This poor little pumpkin is growing in between the slats of our fence. I was about to set it free but then I thought it might be interesting for the girls to see what happens.

Stick-bound book tutorial

I've got food on the brain (when do I not?).

Our garden is on the verge of exploding. So far, we've been able to eat what it grows but I think within the next week it'll start outpacing us and J's co-workers will mysteriously find zucchini and patty-pan squash sitting on their desks in the morning.

Enter this recipe for ratatouille from The Leftoverist (A.K.A. Sarah, a friend of mine from high school who I've mentioned here before). I've got it roasting in the oven right now. The smell of the basil is killing me (in a good way)--not to mention the smell of tomatoes that's lingering on my fingers. 

I plan to eat it this way tomorrow.

I'm convinced that Sarah needs to write a cookbook. Her photos alone are stunning, not to mention the artwork her sister Naomi has done for the blog.

Now, if I were to write a cookbook, it would be this big:

In other words, itty bitty. 

This little booklet is one of the make-and-take crafts I'll be teaching at the county fair I mentioned last week. I'm running a booth as part of my gig for the local newspaper as a blogger for its "Down to Earth" Web site.

Everything will be made from secondhand materials, so I've been hitting every thrift store and garage sale in town over the last few weeks collecting supplies. Even the hole puncher we'll be using to make these books was a 99-cent find from The Classy Rack (don't you love it when thrift shops get clever with their names?). 

I figure this little booklet, which is bound with a twig and some twine (or yarn or strong string--whatever you have handy), could be used for grocery-shopping or to-do lists. If I were really great at entertaining house guests, I would print out the recipes of the food I made for them while they were staying with me, bind the recipes together this way and then give the book to my friends as a departure gift. As it is, my last house guests were lucky to get clean sheets and take-out pizza.

If you can find a use for this little booklet, please enjoy this tutorial:

1. Choose a front and back cover for your booklet. The paper should be cardstock-like, so consider using cereal boxes, softback book covers, old calendar pages, etc. In the pictures here, I used the front and back cover of a small coloring book from 1967.

2. Choose some filler paper. I like to mix blank pages with pages from old books, dictionaries or graphing paper.

3. Find a twig, pencil, chopstick or other short stick and a piece of strong string or twine that's about 15 inches long. (The length of your string will depend on how tall the book is that you're making.) 

4. You will also need a hole puncher, scissors and either a clothespin or paper clip.

5. Arrange the papers in your hand like a book, sandwiching the lightweight paper inside the heavier cardstock. Tap the stack on the table so that the edges of the left side are even and hold everything together with your paper clip or clothespin. 

6. If the papers aren't already all the same size and shape, trim around everything so all the pages (including the front and back cover) are the same size.

7. Punch two holes on the left side of the stack, a few inches apart.

8. Lay the stick on the right side of the holes. 

9. Poke one end of the string through the top hole of the book, pulling it through so that about half the length of the string is sticking out the front of the book. Wrap the string around the stick once or twice, then poke the string back through the hole toward the back of the book. Pull so the loop around the stick is snug.

10. Repeat that step with the bottom hole.

11. Pull tightly and tie the ends of the string together in a double knot on the back side of the book. 

12. Trim the ends of the string. Or don't. Whatever.

You're done!

The stick binding isn't practical for, say, a journal or anything else you'd be opening often and writing in at length. But it's kind of a cute, earthy way to present something special, like maybe a wedding program (grrr ... there I go again re-doing my wedding seven years later). 

While I have your attention, I just have to put a plug in for some amazing Spokane talent. Last night, J and I attended a fundraiser for a food co-op that's opening soon here. For an extremely reasonable price, we were treated to some top-notch entertainment, including book readings by 2006 National Book Award finalist Jess Walter and columnist Cheryl-Anne Millsap, both of whom are fantastic people as well as talented writers.

And then pianists Brad Greene and Kaylee Cole took our breath away. You can hear some of Brad's music on his site and Kaylee's here. I know we're all busy people, but if you get a sec give them a listen. 

Hope all is well, my bloggy friends.

 

To grandmother's house we go

We’re wrapping up a simple weekend that included a couple of fun outings: a housewarming party for friends and a polo match. Spokane has one of the oldest polo clubs in the U.S. It’s great fun to pack a picnic and go watch a match, but hardly anyone around here does. Maybe I’ll start a new trend.

Anyone else have the book "10 Apples Up on Top"?

Mostly, though, we’ve been packing for our two-week trip to Bellingham, Wash.--my hometown—to see family.

I took a more-is-more approach to packing this time, sort of throwing everything but the garden hose into the suitcase. I’m sure I’ll regret it in a few days.

Bo caught on and decided to remove every single pair of shoes I own from the closet and attempt to cram them into my already-stuff suitcase. Thankfully, I’m not a shoe whore, but there were still some ridiculously inappropriate ones on display tonight (can someone please slap me for buying a pair of platform shoes covered in sequins?).

Speaking of gardens, I'm going to miss our little patch while I'm gone. The sungold tomatoes are just starting to ripen and they are delish. Bo likes them enough to just suck out the juice (and then leave the flesh on the ground), sort of like a vampire. 

Check out the scarecrow she made a few weeks ago (the garden has grown considerably since then):

I managed to sew an Emmeline apron for my sister, who’s letting us crash at her house for one of the two weeks we’ll be there (my parents’ house will be occupied by our Rhode Island relatives, making my headline here somewhat deceptive; we got a smokin’ deal on a nice hotel for the other week).

I think this is the fourth Emmeline I’ve made now, and every time I do there’s always such a strong response to it, as in “I will pay you whatever you want to make me one of those!!!” Kudos to Meg over at Sew Liberated for designing such a successful pattern.

Because of that, I’m thinking of taking part in her cottage license program, which allows you to pay for the right to sell the items you make from her patterns. The cost is $75/year, which seems reasonable to me, and you have to be approved by Meg (understandably, she wants to make sure you know how to sew). What do you guys think? Is it worth pursuing and applying for? I'm always trying to reinvent the wheel, but maybe I should just do this since it's already such a hit with people.

Other thoughts …

Can someone please tell me how I can run 30-40 miles a week and not lose a single pound? I’m trying to burn off these last 10 baby pounds, but apparently my body is on strike. I know you’re not supposed to get on the scale every day, but I swear to you I stepped on yesterday morning, ran seven miles and ate healthfully all day (minus one smallish cupcake), got on the scale today and had gained two pounds. Seriously. 7 miles. Gained 2 pounds. And no, I'm not pregnant. 

I had hoped this was going to be the summer I didn’t have to wear a skirted swimsuit but it’s mid-July and I’m losing hope. Grrr …

A few things I’m loving right now …

-This house tour.

-Amy Butler organic bedding now available here. (Scratch one more project off my sewing to-do list, I guess.)

-The before-and-after gallery on Design Sponge. If I only had 1,392,022 hours to kill:

-Daydreaming of building a modern playhouse for the girls in the backyard. This one is awesome, but it’d pretty much be nicer than our actual house.

This one is adorable, in a different way.

I’m thinking we’ll start collecting supplies from the secondhand building-supply store, come up with a plan over the winter, and attempt carpentry next summer. Stay tuned.

 

Since we’ll be out of town, I’ll probably have a craft hiatus for a couple of weeks (God help me). You never know, though. My sister and I grew up in the same house. She must have a glue gun stashed away somewhere. If nothing else, I’ll have to share photos of her always-incredible cooking. 

Emmeline apron with a twist

My apologies for my chronic absenteeism lately. In between the regular rigamarole, we've been spending every extra minute in the yard--getting the garden ready, raking up the leaves we were too lazy to pick up last fall, you know the routine.

The garden is ready for our over abundance of seeds and starts now, but Mother Nature isn't. We've been dipping below freezing a bit this week so I'm holding off until this weekend's expected heat wave. We're expanding our growing space a little this year and adding a few new crops, like raspberries and corn. Growing corn breaks my gardening rule No. 1: only grow things that cost way too much at the store. But I'm hoping it will look pretty cool. You know, all "if you build it, they will come."

Speaking of saving money, I've recently become one of those crazy ladies who clips coupons. Is anyone else part of that sisterhood? Fred Meyer had to pay me $0.81 yesterday to buy a package of lasagna noodles.

I did manage to sew an impromptu Emmeline apron this week for one of Bo's teachers, who is leaving the school to take a new job. 

Sometimes I worry that I feel my girls' pain too deeply, as if it were my own. I'm concerned about what this will mean when they're teenagers and they come home sobbing about some boy who's gone and broken their hearts. Ugh. I can remember that ache like it was yesterday, and now that I'm a mom I think of how my poor parents must have felt.

But Bo is still only 3, so her biggest heartbreak right now is me only letting her have two marshmallows instead of three today.

Except for the pending departure of Miss Kathleen, or so I thought.

I love this woman. She's like our very own ray of sunshine every morning when she greets the kids (doesn't hurt that her hair is a flamingly beautiful shade of red). 

Miss Kathleen is taking a job in which she will help homeless women and their children transition to permanent housing. OK, OK. I will hand her over for that extremely worthy cause. But still, I think I will miss her as much as Bo will.

When I explained the situation to Bo, I expected her to lose it. We'd just seen a homeless man earlier in the day, though, so the thought of not having a place to sleep or enough to eat was fresh in her mind. So instead of crying over the loss of her teacher, she literally jumped out from under her bed covers, and then jumped on her bed cheering, "Yea! She's going to help the man!"

So much for wallowing in self pity. I could learn a thing or two from this kid.

I wanted to make Miss Kathleen a goodbye gift, and an apron seemed appropriate.

She can use this side when she's feeling more serious ...

Or this side when she's missing the kids at school ...

And just so she won't forget Bo, I added a pocket Bo helped make to the playful side. I asked Bo to draw a picture of Miss Kathleen and then I traced and embroidered what she came up with, like we've done before.

Here's Joe Cool herself, taking it all in:

Does anyone else think she kind of looks like the little boy in the movie "Love Actually"? Don't tell her I said that.

Seeds, kiddie art, fabric hoarding and a purse

I'm fried.

I can't even come up with a clever title for this post (see above). The last two weeks have been a blur--slammed with work deadlines, a fun-but-all-too-fast trip to Portland (Oregon), and these two adorable children who keep calling me Mommy and insist that I feed, clothe and clean them.

In the meantime, I'm longing to sew. And send stuff off that I've already sewn (JennaZ--your book sling is done and lovely, I'm just having a dickens of a time finding a mailing tube that's long enough for it. It's my No. 1 priority for tomorrow. Er, today. It's tomorrow already.).

One thing I have managed to find time for is buying fabric. What is my deal? I should probably not write another post encouraging underconsumption until I rein in this habit. Our trip to Portland last week included an important stop: Ikea. Without sales tax. Weeeee! Plus, fabric was on sale. (Justification alert. Justification alert.)

Then, when I got back home, I stopped at the Quilting Bee in Spokane Valley because they're having a sale. I bought some adorable circus fabric that I'm going to use with this pattern--Feliz party dress from Studio Tantrum. So girly and fun.

Somewhere along the way I did manage to sew this purse, roughly following this pattern from Favorite Things.

I fully intended to follow it exactly, but--I have to be honest here--I couldn't understand half of what they were telling me in the directions. Has anyone else used Favorite Things before? I'm not trying to badmouth them--I'm sure it's more my problem than theirs--but at one point I felt like turning the instructions upside down to see if that helped. The purse turned out fine, but making it hurt my head.

Then we've been doing a little bit of this:

And a little bit of that:

And following these fantastic directions for making masterpieces out of children's art:

You basically trace a silhouette onto a child's painting, cut it out, then paste it on a white background. Simple. Brilliant. Beautiful. 

I first saw the idea on Ohdeedoh and there was some conversation there about how damaging it would be to a child's self-esteem to repurpose their art. Hmmm ... I just told the girls from the beginning that this was what we were going to do. Bo helped me trace and paste. Viola! She loved the finished product and so do I.

So much more to say, but my battery is low and it's, um, 1:32 a.m. Nighty nigh

Wee love to garden

Some of you might remember the "Wee garden" we gave Bo for her birthday last year. If you think your little one might want a miniature garden of his/her own, like this one from Wee Garden,

then you might want to check out this post I just wrote for my other blog. It has links to some miniature-garden companies, blog discussions, photos and articles.

Babies and birthdays

Birthdays and babies have caught up with me in the last week or so. I'm about a month behind on gifts for two babies that were born to friends in September, my niece's sixth birthday was yesterday and all she got so far was a phone call, and then there's the planning for Magpie's first birthday (which will be celebrated next Sunday) that has hardly begun. 

I made a dent in my to-do list over the last couple of days with these bibs for the babies.

I followed the amazingly talented Amy Karol's instructions in her "Bend the Rules Sewing" book, which I highly recommend. The first time I picked it up I wasn't blown away by the projects, but upon closer inspection I am pretty much in love with everything she has in there. I don't know why I didn't click with it right away, but I'm already scheming to do more, including making the elf hats as favors for Magpie's woodland-themed birthday party (which I mentioned is a week away, right?).

The bibs still need snaps, but they're otherwise done. They're cotton on the front and flannel on the back and I love how they turned out. Thanks, Amy Karol. You're a magician.

I'm also still toying with the whole Etsy shop thing. I ended putting the rainbow dress I made recently up for sale--my first product! Bo rejected it because every time I suggested she wear her "rainbow dress" she thought I meant the hoochie-mama dress she wore on her birthday this year (which has mysteriously vanished ... hmmmm ... bad mom). 

I'm working on dress #2 for the shop. You can see my progress here:

It's made from a super-soft, somewhat thick grey flannel (I'd call it "mouse grey" if I worked for J. Crew) and a sweet little orange and silver polka dot cotton fabric. The opolka dot fabric was a find in the remnant section. It inspired the dress. I should have lined the inside with it, though, so I might make a different version before I list it. I also will use white thread on the trim (see below) instead of grey next time. I thought it would look cool but, well, it doesn't.

And I need some buttons for the top--should I go with grey or orange?

My plan for the shop definitely includes clothes for babies and kids, but I'm working on developing a more "signature" item that will be the main offering. Stay tuned ...

Oop. Almost forgot the pumpkins. The garden is done. Here are some shots of the last crop to be harvested:

Freshy fresh

I dream about the day when I can one day shower by myself again. Instead, I share a standard-size tub/ shower with my two daughters every day and trade in my privacy for the convenience of bathing everyone at one time.

Bo almost made me forget my troubles when she said this as I was stepping out of the shower today (yes, naked):

"Mommy, you're hot. You're sooooo hot."

If I'm being honest with myself, I know she was referring to the steam that was circulating around me. But instead I'm opting to take it as a major compliment after several months of running my arse off.

What's not hot is the forecast. They're calling for a low of 31 degrees later this week, so Bo and I scrambled to harvest as much as we could from the garden tonight. Here's the result after much rinsing and scrubbing:

The patty pan squash are going straight to preschool with her tomorrow for other families to enjoy. We still have a bunch in the fridge and I'm desperately trying to come up with new ways to prepare it. 

Here is one of my favorite autumn-ish recipes for vegetables, courtesy of the lovely Nigella Lawson. Enjoy! 

1 large sweet potato

1-2 large red potatoes

1 onion

1 yellow bell pepper

1 red bell pepper

1/2 head of garlic

1/4 cup olive oil

black pepper

125 g halloumi cheese (I use slices of fresh mozarella because what in the world is halloumi?)

Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

Cut the vegetables into 1-2 inch pieces. 

Separate the cloves of garlic.

Throw everything into a pyrex dish, toss it around with your hands. 

Cook for 45 minutes until vegetables are fork tender.

Top with the cheese and broil until brown.

Serve it right out of the pan at the table. I like to make a sandwich out of it with a whole wheat roll.