Gather near to us once more

We had a wonderful Christmas here - full of family, 

delicious food,

Steve's grandmother's pinapple cheesecake - delicious!

sweet gifts,

Silas's stocking from Auntie E

my mom actually made this for Silas, but he's not big enough to hug it yet

and festive fashions.

We're so grateful to our family members for coming out to us this year and for all of their help and hard work (cooking, washing dishes, etc.) while they were here. We hope all of you reading had wonderful holidays and wish you a very happy 2012!

hope your recoveries from the craziness of this time of year are swift!

It's beginning to look a lot like. . .

I just managed to delete this entire post, after nearly completing it. Below is my best attempt at replication, but I will readily admit that it's not as good - for one thing, it has far too many parentheses, but what can you do. . .

Tres and Silas discuss our options

The weekend before last, we took Silas out to the farm (the same place we picked blueberries) to buy a Christmas tree. No one seems to grow them out here (Maybe it's too hot on this side of the mountains? Or they need too much water?), but they brought some over from the west side and set up a variety of wintry activities, including tasty treats - warm doughnuts (delicious!), hot chocolate, and cider - a fire pit (complete with fixings for s'mores),visiting alpacas from a nearby farm, and winter hay rides. We had a good time and ended up (appropriately) with a beautiful, 8 foot Fraser fir. It's a considerable improvement over the tree we had the last time we hosted Christmas, although decidedly not quite as inventive.

Our cardboard tree, complete with bodybuilder

angel and packing peanut snow

I've been hard at work on Christmas presents, but a post on them will have to wait until after they're been distributed. Here are some other things I've been up to these past few weeks:

I found a few designs/color schemes that I liked for our Christmas cards this year, but wanted to translate them into something that was my own. I bought pre-cut cardstock and covered each card with a random design of gold polka dots, using acrylic paint and a pencil eraser. Then, I added words on the front and a personal message on the back in gold Sharpie. They're obviously not as polished as either of the above examples, but I got the gold on black contrast I was shooting for and I really like how the dots almost look like phases of the moon, depending on how much paint was on the eraser. Next step: getting them in the mail. . .

cards drying

my supervisor, sleeping on the job

This is actually a collaboration between my mother and me, over the course of about 20 years. She originally painstakingly traced and cut these fabric circles to be part of a wreath; they came into my possession last year and I didn't give them much thought, until I saw a bunting covered with semi-circles a few months ago. I ironed each circle in half, zig-zagged it onto a pre-made bias strip, and presto: the wall feels a bit more Christmas-y!

I made this ball garland a couple of years ago, but wasn't quite happy with it. So, I restrung it on some beautiful yarn (this is where knowing knitters with leftovers comes in handy) and now we have a place to display our Christmas cards. I used the stocking method from this tutorial to make the felted balls. I highly recommend measuring the roving as she suggests, even if it is a bit tedious, if you want them to be uniform in size. To make the garland, I threaded the yarn on a large needle, poked it through each ball, and then pulled it out with needle nose pliers, knotting the yarn before and after each ball (an improvement over my original design) to keep them from slipping up and down the string. It can be a bit irritating dealing with such a long piece of yarn, but it's manageable. If you're like me and can't be bothered to measure, therefore running out of yarn before you've finished, it's easy enough just to tie on another piece, incorporating that knot into the garland.

In case you haven't picked it up from the above, I'm a total nerd and LOVE the onset of winter and Christmas (not so much the way it lingers on, see: February), mostly, I think, due to my own childhood memories. I hope that we can make this time of year as fun and magical for Silas too, once he's old enough of course.

Thanks for the reindeer outfit,
Great Auntie Sharon!

Who lives in Drury Lane

As I mentioned in the last post, soup is a favorite evening meal around here in the winter. To round out the meal, we usually make some kind of bread item. Of course, the obvious (and my favorite) accompaniment to most soups is a delicious slice of crusty bread and butter. For that, I refer you back to Tres's bread making tutorial (please excuse the non-working video - I am in the process of attempting to fix it). Alas, there is not always enough time (or in my case, forethought) for homemade bread, so here are a few of our other favorite options.

Oatmeal Muffins (adapted from Betty Crocker's Cookbook, circa 1972)

1 egg
1 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup  packed brown sugar
1/3 cup butter, melted and cooled
1 cup rolled oats
1 cup flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla


Preheat oven to 400. Grease muffin tin. Beat the egg, then stir in milk (I don't tend to have buttermilk around, so I just add a little lemon juice to the milk and let it curdle - white vinegar also works), brown sugar, and melted butter. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix until just combined (it will be lumpy). Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 20 - 25 minutes (you can check to see if they're ready by lightly pushing on them in the center with your finger - if you make a depression, they need more time; if they spring back up, they're ready).


This is the cookbook from which I learned to bake and I still use several of the recipes (as you'll see below). As I've gotten more confident in the kitchen, I've make my own tweaks and changes, to make them more to our tastes. In this one, I've added some more flavorings and switched to rolled oats, which gives them a heartier, chewier texture. If you prefer something softer, you can use quick-cooking oats (which are what the original recipe calls for). The nice thing about recipes like this is that they're very forgiving and adaptable, so it's easy to make them your own.

Pumpkin Muffins (adapted from Betty Crocker's Cookbook, circa 1972)

1 1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup sugar
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon ground ginger
1/2 cup milk
1/2 cup pureed pumpkin
1/4 cup butter, melted
1 egg


Preheat oven to 400. Grease muffin tin. Mix all ingredients until just combined (there will be lumps). Fill muffin cups 2/3 full. Bake 18 - 20 minutes (see above for how to check their readiness).


These are much lighter than pumpkin bread or most other baked pumpkin products; it's also a nice recipe for using up leftover pumpkin, as it only needs a little.

Cornbread (adapted from Alton Brown's I'm Just Here for More Food)
1 1/2 cups stone ground cornmeal*
1 1/4 cups milk
1 cup flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, melted and cooled
2 eggs
1 tablespon butter (for the skillet)
4 tablespoons sugar (optional)


Put a large (the recipe calls for a 10 inch, but I imagine 9 would work too) cast iron skillet in the oven and preheat it to 450. Soak the cornmeal in the milk for 15 minutes in a medium bowl. Mix the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Beat eggs and melted butter into the cornmeal mixture, then pour into dry mixture and stir until just combined. Pull the skillet out of the oven (do NOT forget a potholder - it's hot!) and grease it with the tablespoon of butter (I use a wooden spoon to move it around inside the skillet). Pour in the batter. Sprinkle the top with the sugar (I really like my cornbread sweet and this makes a delicious, sweet crust on the top - if sweet isn't your thing, or you'd rather just put honey on it later, omit this step). Bake for 20 minutes, or until it's golden brown. To get it out of the pan (and keep the crust on top), flip it from the pan onto a plate and then immediately flip it from there onto a second plate. I know it's a bit silly, but otherwise the crust gets stuck to the bottom of the plate, rather than staying on the bread and making it into your mouth.


* So you'll think I'm a nut or, more likely, a ridiculous food snob, but I feel like stone ground cornmeal has changed my life. Ok, so perhaps I'm being a bit overly dramatic, but it's certainly changed my cornbread and for the better. You can make this recipe with half regular cornmeal and half polenta (which I did for quite some time) and get a pretty nice crunchy texture, but man, the stone ground really makes it just perfect. We found ours by chance in the bulk bins at our local health food store. . . if you can find it, try it, and decide for yourself. It just might change your life too.


Whew, I can't believe it's December already. I've been getting started on some holiday projects around here (gifts and decorations) and will try to post about some of that soon. Silas is growing by leaps and bounds too - he's 8 weeks old today.