Homemade Holidays – Roundup November 12, 2009

Holidays are always a special time in my extended family. My mom’s side of the family takes special pride in picking JUST the right present for someone. It may not have been something you asked for. But it screamed your name just the same! I’ve never opened a present from my mom, sister or aunt and haven’t had the pleasant zing of anticipation for what I’m about to see. Because I know it’s going to be wonderful. It’ll be something I use and every time I pick it up, it’ll remind me that my family loves me.

Ingrid

To me, that’s a gift. Toys are nice when you are a kid. But the cup that my Aunt Carol made special for me, is SPECIAL. And though the mug might be tiny now, I used it for my milk as a child and now as an adult that hand thrown blue and white speckled mug sits in my bathroom as a q-tip holder and I feel loved every time I use it.

The flannel rainbow flame pjs I made for my then 5 year old son are still beloved by my now 8 year old son. Every time he wears them he feels mom’s love. He knows that I love him so much I made him something with my own two hands to cuddle him in his sleep and keep him safe. I keep having to add length to the legs LOL, but he still adores them!

So this year, like every year, I come up with things to make the kids and my extended family. Like my nephew Avery, he’s 5 but he ADORES scientific books. And add that to his dinosaur obsession and we’ve got a little boy who doesn’t want toys, but a whole bunch of our older homeschooling books on dinosaurs, the stars, Egypt, and deep sea fish. Plus some flannel dinosaur pj bottoms that he’ll hopefully wear until he’s outgrown them or my sister has to mail them to me to add some length on the bottom! LOL!!

Then there are the other benefits of a Homemade Holiday…

1. It’s Greener – especially if you have to buy very little and instead can use items around the house – easy for me with my massive craft supplies. You can even push at this a little and buy your supplies locally, plan your trip so that you use the least amount of gas, or even see what supplies you can pick up at your local thrift store. (I do this a lot; buying flat sheets and x-large clothing I can cut down) Plus making sure what you buy is either made in the USA or Europe.

2. Save money – no more multiples of 20 and 40 dollar toys that will soon be broken or forgotten. Instead, have them unwrap handmade one of a kind Yule stockings, pjs, primping items, decorative items and items to help them organize. All for much much cheaper than store-bought prices.

3. Lifetime memories. That’s something no money can buy. Looking at something from 30 years ago and still feeling loved.

So here’s a roundup of things I’m going to be trying to pump out this year. I usually WAY over plan and my serger is on the fritz this year (which makes my anal retentive self do french seams instead of serging *sigh* which adds to the time I’m hunched over a sewing desk) so I probably won’t get all of these done, but I’ll darn sure try!

Rice Therapy Bag – I have 2 sizes of these, a foot long one that is about 6 inches wide and one that is about as big as a Mommy’s hand. One can wrap around necks, or lay on sore tummies, the other can sit upon sore hands, eyes, cheekbones and knees. I really need 2 of each, one for the freezer and one for the microwave! They definitely need covers as they tend to get dirty! And the original bag needs to be made out of fairly tough material. No gauze!

Twirly Skirts or Tiered Skirts

Handmade Patchwork Stockings

Pj Pants – you can make kid pants or pj pants from this great tutorial. I usually do Pj’s for the older kids and reversible for the 2 year old, they keep her little legs warmer and in case of stains, I just flip them inside out! Plus if I make them about 4 inches longer, and fold the bottoms up, they work for 2 years worth of pants instead of just one! Kaia still fits her pants from last year!

Needle Case – really cute needle case idea. I loathe the plastic ones you get at the store and I always end up dumping out a bazillion needles trying to grab one. Or I stab myself or SOMETHING. They just annoy me. These are great because you can keep the sizes YOU want and even add a bit of extra felt to protect your fingers from stabs!

Crayon/Paintbrush/Colored Pencil/Inkpen Organizer Rollup – My 15 year old is seriously into Anime and Manga and draws every day. Often I hear ‘MOOoom, have you seen my xxxxxx?’ with that added huff at the end of it. She sits on her bed or the couch to draw and her things just tend to disappear into couch cushions or bedclothes. My 8 yo daughter draws ALL THE TIME. I hate grounding her from drawing but she’s SO awful about putting her things away. But she’s also really obsessive about purses. So if she had a cute little roll-up for her purse…. hmmmm

Nightgowns (aka pillowcase dresses)

Kaia in her 'pillowcase' style nightgown

Personalized Ornaments – When I was a new mom at 19, with my own apartment. Christmas came by that year and I had *nothing* for decorating. I had to buy all my ornaments at the 99cent store and think about 1 year old Morgan and what would be safe for her. I firmly decided that year that I would buy her at least one ornament a year, and put the year on the ornament somehow. That way when SHE moved out on her own she wouldn’t be faced with nothing to decorate her house with. I decided upon Angels or Fairies as her theme. Morgan at age 15 has about 20 angels and fairies. She’s going to have enough for a small tree by the time she has her own place. So as each child has come along they’ve gotten their own theme (it’s easier to remember whose is whose with a theme) and the kids get SO excited about unpacking their particular boxes of ornaments and the shouts of REMEMBER THIS! ring through the living room LOL!

• embroidered felt ornaments
• felt mittens
• button wreaths
• felt mitten tutorial – really pretty, lots of room for customization
• Patchwork star tutorial
• Beaded Snowflake Tutorial

Rag Rugs – I used to make rag rugs all the time from my scraps. But I have a VERY large hairy dog who has allergies which make her smell if she gets into wheat (and I have a toddler = food crumbs) plus the large hairy dog sheds a lot AND loves rugs to lay on. Washing rag rugs mean that they distress a lot faster and they were getting very worn, very fast. So I stopped until I could come up with a better idea (or steal one LOL!) One day at my friends house. We were cutting fo0d up for dinner together and she pointed down and asked how I liked her new rug. I LOVED it. It was very squishy under my bare feet, protecting my back and arches from the hard floor. She told me it was old t-shirts crocheted together. AH HA went my brain. At home I’d been given a whole bunch of t-shirt neck binding. Rolls and Rolls of it. PLUS some 8 yards of various t-shirt material I’d gotten for a project that I’d found it was ill-suited too. All in colors that would look great with my house. So now I’m crocheting rugs again after 5 years off. They stretch in the washer, then pop right back into shape. They don’t get distressed with lots of extra threads coming off and they are super comfy under your feet. Better than scrap fabric!

Scrap Fabric Magnetic Fridge Letters – Perfect for your toddler or college age kid!

Patchwork cloth napkins – perfect for those friends who want to go green and quit using paper towels, but pretty enough for dinners! I’d made a set in just the absorbent material for everyday yucky mess use and then a patchwork set to use for dinner.

Weekly Menu November 11, 2009

I’m late, yes, I know….

I think I’m going to try to do these Wed to Wed as that’s the day my local grocery has it’s super sales… and Wed is the day they have Super Meat Sales. So I need to let the idea’s percolate in my brain for a couple of days LOL….

So anyways.

Wed - Beef Broccoli with Rice (without the oyster sauce and add a little brown sugar and ginger)

Thurs – MeatLump and Baby Heads with butter and lemon pepper with GF noodles w/ Parmesan (this is a joke, it’s really meatloaf, and it’s really Brussels sprouts, but my kids are sick little jokers)

EDIT - I got sick, so easy dinner was in the cards!

Fri -(was) Spaghetti Tacos (actually) GF pasta alfredo with skinless boneless chicken breasts and broccoli mixed in

Sat – (still sick – was!) Italian Chicken with ‘fried’ garlic green beans and almond rice casserole

Actually! Honey’s Cookin so sausages with homefries in garlic all cooked together in a dutch oven

Sun – We decided to keep doing fighter practice over here for ease of putting small ones down to sleep, and the fact that we have the biggest yard and most varied kid age toys. So Italian chicken and almond rice has been moved to Sun night.

Mon - ‘Thai’ Chicken Soup

Tues - Oven Fried Cube Steak with gravy, homefries and salad

October Blog Party! October 3, 2009

To participate in this blog party, pledge to do is something holiday related everyday the month of October and blog about it. You do not have to blog everyday, just chronicle what you’ve been doing on each day when time permits. Deadline to join is October 1st.

October 1st

I put out the Halloween Decorations  – not the lights, but the various colored pumpkins and skulls, the hanging bats, the skeletons, and the house decorations, colored candles, stuffed witches, paper mache candy holders, signs (autopy room in the kitchen for one)

October 2nd

Made Fallish-Dinner, Beef Stew in the crockpot with homemade bread. Hot food! We haven’t had it much, it’s been toooo hot outside for using the oven!

October 3rd

Seasoned 2 cast iron cornbread pans, one shaped like a fish and one like corn. Make gluten-free ‘corn’ bread with sausage, cheese and savory herbs to finish the seasonings. I say ‘corn’ because unbelievable, even though I’ve got 3 months worth of pretty much everything else we eat, we are amazingly out of cornmeal! So I used masa instead and they are really really yummy! Comment if you’d like the recipe!

American = Burger? July 3, 2009

For me, one of the things I miss the most since my diagnosis as having Celiac Disease is hamburgers.

Where I grew up in Northern California, there was this drive-in close to my Grandpa’s tire store that sold something called ‘King Olive Burger’.

My mouth waters even now thinking about it. Sometimes I physically almost cry, because I crave them so badly. But for me, unlike most other Americans, the normal comfort ‘fast foods’ aren’t.

I can’t just order pizza out, I can’t hit my local fast food joint and get a hoagie or burger.  All of the normal fast foods require me to spend hours making pizza crust, or hamburger buns, or sandwich buns. My fast foods are quesadilla’s made on corn tortilla’s. Or lettuce roll ups.

I found out yesterday that McDonalds in Sweden offers Gluten-Free burgers. Amy was actually able to walk into a McDonald’s in Stockholm and order a burger and NOT GET SICK! I’m darn near sick with jealousy though LOL!

So today, I wrote a note to McDonalds HQ. If we could get every Celiac and those with Gluten sensitivity to write a company who already DOES offer GF products, just not here in America…. Well, maybe we can make a difference. Want to contact McDonald’s?

Here’s what I had to say. (I’m surrounded by 4 chattering children, so I’m probably not that clear, but it’ll do the job)

I wanted to contact your office with a suggestion that you introduce gluten-free burgers in America as has been done in Sweden. 1 in 100 people in America have Celiac Disease or a gluten-allergy. That is a lot of people who can not eat at your establishment. I know my family and I (4 of us have Celiac disease) ate at McDonald s at least once a week while grocery shopping. But can no longer do so after our diagnosis. We’d love to start eating at McDonald’s again and miss the memories and the food. We hope that you will follow your European fellows, and other companies such as General Mills and Betty Crocker who have all realized just how big of an impact the gluten-free market can make. Thank you for your consideration.

New Chicks! April 2, 2009

We bought 10 chicks on Saturday from a lady about an hour away. I’ve been waiting 3 weeks for them to hatch and get old enough for their old mama to let them out of her nest and into ours LOL.

Old Mama asked me if I wanted all hens or if I wanted some roosters too. I said I’d be ok with 1-3 roosters. Well she did me one better. She gave me 8 Wheaten Silver Amerecauna’s, who are going to grow up to look similiar to this:

She also gave me 2 cute fuzzy little blonde chicks

(well

here’s one of them)

Which are going to grow up into White Amerecauna’s she says, looking similar to this:

What’s awesome, is ONE of the Silvers is a Roo, and ONE of the Whites is a ROO! pefect. So I’ve got one roo for each of the breeds I have.

Neato huh?

Right now, they are about 2 weeks old and SO cute. However, cute fluffy chicks grow up into really stupid hens and roosters. So we are enjoying it while we can LOL. Want to see some pictures of enjoyment? Oh SURE you do!

Ian, with his chick ‘Hedwig’ (who turned out to be a Rooster LOL) on their way down to meet their dad so he could have them for ‘Spring Break’ we picked up the chicks. I didn’t want to have them for over a week before the boys saw them for the first time. So they were really enjoying the small bit of time they had with them.

This chick REALLY enjoyed being held in the hat. In fact, she PEEPED quite loudly when taken out. The hat apparently made her feel safe.

and

No, it didn’t poop on his head, and yes, it was all his idea. Crazy guy.

In other news. We are under pretty severe flood warnings. Our house is built a couple of feet up off the ground, and I drive a pretty heavy duty truck. So we are safe. However, the girls are home today (and yesterday as well) due to closed schools because of flooding. And our Local Paper is calling for local residents to ‘pack a go-bag’ (ha, ours has been packed for years, and gets updated every 4 months or so as Kaia grows)

The pool is overflowing, the dog hates going pee in the rain. My potatoe plants LOVE the rain and have grown darn near a foot in 3 days and I’m going to have to go out in the rain to hill them up more (fun LOL) The chicks are living inside until I can be sure that their cord for the warm light isn’t going to get wet.  They are safe from the dog. But NOT safe from the cat, so they stay inside until they can be safe in their chick house. Stinky or not…

Oh and my daughter gave me THIS for my birthday Tues. It’s hanging on the wall next to my signed Clive Barker my sister got me for Christmas. Mo’s VERY proud  that she was given a space of honor LOL!

To busy to blog March 26, 2009

We’ve been getting up at the crack of dawn around here lately. Because of what happened to Ms. Jean (see previous posts) We’ve been super vigilant about making sure that not only is our garden, chicken coop, kid toys etc functional and easy to get to. But now they need to be attractive as well.

When you are working on a VERY small budget, well it becomes apparent it’s a good thing I have that artists brain. I have that knack of being able to take ugly scraps (pallets, paint and leftover wood) and make them into something attractive. It’s also good that when we were helping Ms. Jean, she gave us a LOT of building materials that she had planned to use for herself, but now, because she was .2 of an acre from being able to have chickens and a garden… Well they were worthless to her, they were things in her yard that were going to get her in trouble with the city since they were being so weird about her yard. They needed to go, and she wanted them to go someplace where they would be used and to people who had shown her kindness when she was in need and despairing.
So we have her chickens, her chicken coop and chick box, we have her chicken wire, her garden fence, her garden stakes, lots of scrap wood and aluminum roofing, cinder blocks, bricks etc.. We have a large trash can that holds the chicken food. (which she keeps buying even though she’s refusing to take eggs even though they are HER chickens)
Anyways, we followed honor and helped a worthy neighbor in her time of need. We did it because honor said too, not out of any idea that she was going to start showering us with gifts.
Then she started showering us with gifts, tents, building scraps, chickens, herbs, seeds, lots and lots of homeschooling items (I had to start getting seriously picky about what I took and I still ended up with 5 boxes worth that I have no place to put as of yet)

So with these gifts from Ms. Jean, we’ve built a chicken tractor with only buying 1 2×4 and 4 10ft pvc pipes (at cost from honeys old work).
Today, with those gifts, we are going to put up a garden fence, we are going to put up a partial yard fence (she gave us 25 metal fence posts as well). We are going to try to rototill more of her yard, because we can rototill ours as a thanks (instead of doing it by hand with the push tiller)

We are getting more chicks this weekend (Americauna’s) we have Ms. Jean’s Rhode Island Red’s and Dominques. Next time we go down to Gainesville to visit friends, one friends Uncle raises rabbits and they’ve gotten out of hand bad enough that he’s let them loose on his 100 acres (I know, I know) but he’s offered us a doe and buck, plus 3 hutches, so more meat for us.

(this is Sammi as a 45lb puppy) We are also starting more intensive training for our dog, who is part Belgian Malinois and part Great Dane. She’s bored, and thinking to much, which gets her into trouble, so she needs more to do. We are going to start training her in Search and Rescue techniques, and also some Guardian techniques since both will suit her personality and body type well (she’s a little over 100 lbs and looks like Scooby Doo.

Also on the list today (and cooking while I eat my breakfast after the morning chores – and while I type this) is to go spray our yard, and Ms. Jean’s yard for weeds. I use something my mom taught me. In many old books, they talk about ’salting the earth’ when they did salt it, it kept anything from growing for a couple of years. In Florida, we’d use it on base to spray in the cracks of the sidewalk so as not to get written up and kicked off base, but here we use it around the perimeter, around the bushes where the air potatoes, honeysuckles and grapevine all get out of control (and we have no weedeater) and around Ms. Jean’s fenceline and house because she can not weild a weedeater and her son’s do it VERY infrequently.

So todays chores:
Finish Chicken Tractor

Get as much fence up as possible

Mow Lawn

(all of these require going down the street and getting tools and mower back from a former friend who has gone Jehovah’s Witness and has decided we are all Devil Spawn, never mind all the help and friendship he’s received from our group over the last few years, and it’s also going to require quoting some bible at him, including ‘Judge Not, less ye be judged’ and ‘Though shalt not steal’)

Rototill some more – including our yard if possible

Clean Chick House and Chick Feeders very thouroughly

Spray salt water here and at Ms. Jean’s house

Get flower bed partition up and take 4×4’s to back yard that were former flower bed partition

Plant some flowers at Ms. Jean’s

Finish up built-in fire-pit

I’m going to be sun-burnt and exhausted by the end of the day, but it’s worth it to see so VERY much working.

Tomorrows list – getting 3 inch bean plants in the ground and on the garden fence that needs to finish getting up…

Bulleted Entry, for my braining pleasure April 3, 2008

..My 7 yo Owyn old brought me a daffodil and even put it in water in one of my pretty blue glass window bottles for me.

…My 8 yo Ian took out all the dirty clothes in 2 rooms to the laundry room without me asking!

…my 13 yo Morgan played with Kaia so I could get some chores done and actually seemed to be enjoying herself

…We got to hang out with other homeschoolers at a local park a couple of days ago, ok, well not really, but we went to the park, I think I saw them LOL, but I’m shy enough to not want to walk up to some strange women and ask if they are homescoolers. Next time we go it won’t be Spring Break, so the homeschoolers will be a bit more obvious.

…I found more gluten-free products at a local grocery, expensive, but mmmmm

…Brownies!

…I found out that if I take my medical diagnosis, receipts, and a list of what the foods would normally cost, then the difference I have to pay to eat gluten-free, is tax deductible!

…Holly and Jason drove an hour to come till my garden area for me, and it’s beautiful!

…I got to spend quality time with Holly and Kellan (their cutie son), not ENOUGH quality time, but still…

…They brought a TON of extra heirloom seeds that they’ve already started, etc and gave them to me!

…They brought me 5 of Holly’s homemade laundry bars!

…They brought me a brick of yeast!

…The potatoes are above the dirt now!

…Kaia only woke up 3 times last night AND the night before!

…We (all 6 kids and I whew!) are going to the park later today to play with homeschoolers (for real this time) since I know the lady who is sponsoring this one.

…I got a ton of seeds started yesterday while Kaia was sleeping and the sight of all those seeds covered in earth, even now invisibly growing sends little thrilled shivers through me.

…I found a zipper tutorial that really explained the WHY of things. whew!

I’ve got Wulf’s (my BF) 2 girls all day until Friday. Wulf’s got a an hour away and from 8-5 so I’ve got the girls from almost 7 to a little after 6.

I’m also going to try to get in the habit of just going outside as soon as it gets light enough and work my booty off until Kaia needs to come back in. Otherwise when it gets hotter I’m going to be screwed.

Ok, off to my yard chores!

Momma Pads! March 17, 2008

I have my first buyer!

I own a local for sale or barter list on Yahoo. Yesterday I finally got smart and created a database there and asked people to enter their names, email addresses, city,  what they had to offer and what they wanted. (like I’d love a handy-person around the house)

One of the things I put on there was ‘momma pads’. I was contacted, and she’s buying the start up set from me for 50 bucks on the 1st. I need to finish up the details with her today and then get sewing. But first I need to know if she just wants the flannel I have on hand (blue plaid, green plaid or blue flowered).

Gluten-Free Sourdough March 17, 2008

So I did it!!

I used the starter in my previous post (3/4 c brown rice flour, 1/4 cup ground flax seed and 1 cup kefir – though 1/2 water and 1/2 cup plain  yogurt with the probiotics in it ought to work)

So the bread, it was yellow, from the soy flour, had brown flecks in it, from the flax seed meal. It didn’t bake up as big as wheat bread, and the starter didn’t take 3 days to ferment like wheat starter does! It was ready the next day. (also keep in mind that these are all the gluten free flours I have on hand until my order comes in, what can I say, I got impatient and my boys wanted BREAD!)

So the next day (Saturday) I took out 1 cup of starter, then added back 1 cup of rice/flax seed meal-1 cup of kefir to the starter jar.

In a glass bowl I mixed together

2 cup soy flour

1 2/3 cup brown rice flour

1/3 cup flax seed meal

I mixed these together until it was uniform in color/texture

Then added:

2 cups warm water

1 TB honey

1 cup sourdough starter

I mixed throughly, and left it in the glass bowl covered in a kitchen towel to rise. Usually this takes about 9 hours, so I left it overnight. I try to time things so that when I get up in the morning I can finish the bread.

So yesterday morning (Sunday) I turned the glass bowl of risen dough over into a larger bowl, mixed in

2 cup soy flour

1 2/3 cup brown rice flour

1/3 cup flax seed meal

2 tsp salt

1 TB honey

and kneaded these altogether until the bread had a good elastic texture. BUT it NEVER got as ‘thick’ feeling OR as ‘elastic’ feeling as wheat bread. Something in my little baker heart just told me to stop, so I did LOL.

Anyways, I put the now shaped like a loaf bread dough into my loaf pan (greased with coconut oil on the bottom and the bottom 1.5 inches of the sides) and covered it with a towel to rise. By about 1pm it was ready to go. Like I said, it hadn’t risen as much as wheat flour does. Which was disappointing considering the sourdough starter was practically out of it’s jar it rose to high so fast (not my experience with wheat sourdough starter). But it smelled right and it hadn’t risen any higher for about an hour.

So I filled a pyrex baking dish with water, put it in the oven and pre-heated the oven to 350. I’ve found that if I DON’T put water in the oven with the bread I get a very hard crust, that my kids don’t much like. So I use the water. You don’t have to.

When it was preheated, I placed the dough in the oven and the ‘oh please, oh please!’ praying commenced.

About 45 min later I took it out. It’d split a little on the top, but it was a good uniform brown, not spotty (my oven is old, and cheap to begin with) and not overdone. Yay!

Crowded about with children and boyfriend all clamouring for a bite, since it smelled really good. We broke out the butter, slathered it on a few pieces, and all bit in.

I got two thumbs up from the 7 and 8 year old boys, and the picky boyfriend liked it too (though I’m not sure that’s a good thing, he’s a weird picky, liking bland food)

The boys are excited because they get sandwiches for lunch today!

I’ll post pictures of them later (I hope, if life doest swallow me)

Sourdough Gluten-Free Bread experiments March 14, 2008

 First, I’ve got to talk about sourdough starter. It’s NOT difficult to start. For *me* it’s hard to remember to feed it everyday after I’ve got it going, and/or remember to stir it. But that’s me and my memory problems. One of the reasons I like sourdough so much is that if you are doing it properly, it’s WILD yeast. NOT yeast from a package. Since I’m allergic to the packaged and brewers stuff, utilizing wild yeast is pretty important to me!

THIS is the best article that I’ve seen on making/using sourdough, it covers all the fine points and though his process was more complicated than mine  the first time I tried sourdough. I’ve used sourdough before, so I’d recommend following HIS process!

So! This morning I’ve started my experiments with gluten-free bread.

For Sourdough starter I’ve got:
3/4ths cup brown rice flour
1/4th cup flax seed meal
1 cup organic whole milk kefir
I’m going to let this sit for a maximum of 3 days, or until it smells all yeasty and bubbly.

When the starter is ready to go, I usually add 2 cups of warm water, a TB of honey, and then 4 more cups of flour, the only flour I have on hand at the moment until my order comes in from Barry Farm, are soy, brown rice and flax seed meal, which is what they had at my local health food store, Another Way. So unless my order shows up in the next few days we’ll be trying a mix of those 3 flours.

My boys are missing bread something fierce, I found a mix for waffles and pancakes at my local Big Lots, for only a 1.70. I need to go back today and buy the rest of them LOL, since they WERE such a hit. Really, the kids said they tasted better than Waffle House waffles hehehe. Not as good as my regular ones (I didn’t add any sugar, vanilla or spices like I normally do, wanting to see what they tasted like) but still good. I also used the mix to make a short cake as I’d bought 3 boxes of strawberries on sale. The shortcake wasn’t as good the next day cold, but it was still decent. The mix is white rice flour with soy flour.

Anyways, the plan today is to get to the grocery store (we are going to try Winn-Dixie, since I hear they have a GF section), sew some more mama pads, finish putting together my new cultivator . Then put my new brown quilt on my bed. Oh and get the cloth diapers off the line. Hopefully this small amount of things to do isn’t overwhelming. I don’t do well grocery shopping, to much smell/noise/people/lights/chemicals and I usually come home exhausted. Wal-marts the worst. So I’m going to try and avoid them like the plague unless I absolutely HAVE to shop there.

So I’m out..