left-handed scissors

S en français

06Feb10

This kind of stuff just kills me:

Looks like her French is already better than mine!

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for Miss B

02Feb10

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family felting night

29Jan10

So wonderful.

AZ came-in a bit later. He got right into it, creating the beginnings of a beautiful chain bracelet. I hope it’s for me!

We all danced to new tunes sent by M,A, M and O. LOVE them.

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Niece N learned to knit at school about two years ago. Every time she sees me knitting, she sits beside me and asks all sorts of questions. What are you making? Who is it for? How long have you been working on it? On a couple of occasions, she has pulled out her knitting and worked beside me, telling me about her own project and comparing knitting styles. I love spending time this way.

The other day, Miss N delivered this to my door. A beautiful 14 foot-long long scarf, finger knit just for me! (modeled here by S’s Shirley)

She has promised to teach me (yes, we’ve forgotten already!). If you would like to learn how to finger knit, click here.

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homemade food wrap

24Jan10

My friend J has the best ideas. A couple of years ago she threw a giant folk-dancing potluck party. The entire neighbourhood came. Friends played their fiddles, J led folk dances and many took turns washing dishes in the kitchen and maintaining the food tables. J really has the best ethic when in comes to community. These days, she’s working on starting a klezmer band. I could go on and on about J’s ideas.

She sent me this link the other day: http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/blogs/goods/2010/01/08/make-your-own-reuseable-food-wrap

How to make your own reusable food wrap out of fabric and beeswax! Brilliant!!

Of course, I bought some beeswax that very day.

The instructions are fairly straightforward: Line a cookie sheet with parchment paper, then melt shredded beeswax into squares of fabric at 150 degrees Fahrenheit.

My only recommendation would be to use a patterned fabric to hide the beeswax splotches. My light pink fabric turned out like this:

Kind of gross-looking. Especially when wrapping food. This one turned out well:

At some point, we’ll cut pretty fabric shapes and experiment with snaps and ties (to make nice little Abeego envelopes). But this’ll solve my kids’ soggy cracker problem for now. Wash in warm water.

Filed under: Community love, Crafts, Food(ish) | 5 Comments

handmade by Oma

18Jan10

Our Oma spent many months making this gorgeous crocheted blanket for us:

It arrived in a Christmas box and has been used daily ever since. I cheekily ordered “Handmade by ….” labels for her off of Etsy to encourage more of this awesomeness. It’s so nice to have a talented Oma.

Moonstitches posted about this sort of blanket a year (or two?) ago. In this post, she mentioned the movie Nanny McPhee (she also talks about how to make this kind of blanket, if you are feeling up to it!). If you haven’t seen this movie, you should. It’s a great one for kids. The kids’ room is a mess of art projects, handmade blankets, cool toys and colour. They have a blanket like this. Inspiring.

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light and warmth

12Jan10

There are a few things I miss about our old house. The light is one. It was always bright and sunny inside, even on the grayest winter day. Now, I have already talked about taking a while to settle into a place. Don’t worry, I am not making plans to go back. The new house is awesome! I am just making plans to brighten it up as much as possible – so that I can take bright and sunny photographs for bright and sunny blog posts. Hmmm… and do bright and sunny crafts with my bright and sunny children.

Check out these blocks we got from Santa. Hours of entertainment for babes and grown-ups:

We are still waiting some things out. A plumber and a builder are downstairs, busily securing heating pipes to the ceiling and framing rooms into the large concrete space. After this work is complete, we will be able to move the boxes out of the living room and turn on some heat. Yes. You read that correctly. We have no heat. They took the old furnace out to make room for a bathroom. That wasn’t really part of the original plan, but it is for the best (anyone want to buy a hat?).

AZ has been like Pa Ingalls, building a fire every morning. We have moved our bed to the best possible spot. AZ and I switch sides each night, taking turns sleeping right next to the fire. Who needs sunlight when you have a warm fire?

Filed under: Nesting | 4 Comments

making together

11Jan10

You may have gathered from this blog that I like to make things with others. I have fond memories of dying Easter eggs with my aunts, uncles and cousins in my Grandmother’s kitchen. We feed off of each others’ ideas and share in each others’ creative successes and mistakes. I clearly remember the year my aunt left her egg in the blue dye for hours and hours to see what would happen. The whole family waited and speculated and treasured that little experiment on the windowsill.

Clean-up also never feels overwhelming when there are a bunch of adults to share the task. During a particularly lengthy clean-up after one Thanksgiving dinner, my cousins dared me to finish the gravy in the gravy boat. They even took-up a collection of $20. I did make a heroic attempt to drink the gravy, but heaved at the last second. One year, I will have to try again.

Do you remember the surfing trip I took in the fall? Well! I went with two old friends and two new friends. We hit it off amazingly and agreed to see each other regularly, ideally to either learn something or make something (is this a girl thing? Do women ever just get together to drink beer and play cards?).

For our first meeting, we met at B’s house to make meals. Lots of meals. Each woman went home with two steak meals (for 4-6 people each), two chicken meals (for 4-6 people), and two apple pies – all to stick in the freezer (yay food loot bags!). We chopped, peeled, simmered, mixed, chatted and drank wine. B did the shopping and planning. We all split the bill. It was great fun.

(Thank you for the pictures M!)

B got the recipes from this book. We used Zip-lock bags to store the food, but would likely attempt to bring our own containers next time. We would also try to have one person doing dishes throughout the night, rather than trying to do them all at the end with one sink (that part kept us up past bedtime!).

Making together: crafting, cooking, cleaning-up… is pretty fun. And, now that we are grown-ups, we get to drink wine at the same time!

Filed under: Community love, Food(ish), People and places | 1 Comment

Banana Oat Walnut Pancakes – by AZ

09Jan10

What is so special about a pancake recipe? This is less of a recipe and more of an activity. It is designed to maximize taste and possibility of child involvement, and to minimize mess. It is also composed in the magic of “threes” – which helps for recollection.

You will need two bowls and some butter for frying. Ideally, put two cast iron pans on medium low heat when you get things started, so they’ll be nice and warm by the time the batter is ready.

You should only need this recipe for the first few times you make these cakes. After that, you can free-roll in the kitchen. Eventually you won’t even need measuring cups – who needs to wash measuring cups?

BOW* Cakes

In a big bowl, mix together:

1 Unit white flour

1 Unit wheat flour

1 Unit oats

1 Spoon salt

1 Spoon baking powder

1 Spoon baking soda

Once mixed together, add to the same bowl:

1 or 2 mashed bananas

1 or 2 handfuls of well-crushed walnuts

3 egg yokes (you can add 2, but I like protein) – save the whites

Put the egg whites into the second bowl and beat to a fluff.

Add milk to the big bowl of ingredients and mix as little as possible to get all the flour and stuff combined. You are aiming for a slightly thicker than normal batter.

Finally, fold the egg whites into the batter until just combined.

Add butter to your pans and cook the cakes. We always make more than we need and have a freezer bag of leftovers to pick at during the week.

* BOW = Banana Oat Walnut cakes. You can also make ACO cakes where you replace the bananas and walnuts with one grated Apple (don’t bother removing the skin – remember this is supposed to be easy) and Cinnamon.

* the raspberries were harvested in the summer and frozen – such a yummy treat mid-winter. We are loving that deep-freeze!

Filed under: Food(ish) | 1 Comment

rub-a-dub-dub

06Jan10

My 8-year-old scrubbed the toilet… with enthusiasm! It was awesome. I still can’t quite believe it. The Tea Tree Toilet Cleaner helped.

Miss Angry Chicken, one of my favourite bloggers, mentioned this book a few months back.

Of course, I do just about whatever the Chicken tells me to do, so I ordered a copy. Over the holidays, me and my little ones made some cleaning supplies.

For you local readers, I would recommend the Voyager Soap and Candle Company for the basic ingredients. Their prices are reasonable and they delivered to my door within 24 hours. They even have little spritzer bottles and jars (if you don’t have those kinds of containers lying around).

W scrubbed the sink with “Sink Volcano! Sink Cleaner”, singing “rub-a-dub-dub” the entire time.

S washed the bathroom sink with some “Peppermint All-Purpose Scrub”. This was not homemade by us, but purchased at a craft sale last year. Here is the recipe:

Stir together: