Happy Thanksgiving!

We’ve had a great Thanksgiving! My parents and one of my sisters joined us for the week. Every year my older sister who lives out east calls to hear the menu, someday I hope her family can join us. This year I thought I’d include you in the fun and up it to pictures an a recipe. There was plenty of baking and cooking as evidenced by my mother’s handiwork above making almond cakes. (Not sure if I’m allowed to share THAT family recipe.) The food was plentiful, but not over the top. Breakfast was Kristin’s Overnight Lemon Coffeecake. We skipped lunch in exchange for appetizers of Tuscany style salami, apples, fig spread, water crackers and a trio of cheeses: double cream brie, Mimolette & Manchego. Eleanor was a huge fan of the Mimolette and apple pairing. Totally forgot to take a picture, but trust me it was a very pretty plate.

Dinner itself consisted of a turkey breast roast, gravy, sweet potato and apple casserole, sauted green beans, cranberry sauce the kids made at school, rolls & stuffing (recipe below). Yes, I realize it’s a blurry picture but I was in a hurry to eat. If you look past that you can see some craftiness. The bread basket was made in Carlock, IL. Interspersed with the 1940s/50s Eva Zeisel dinnerware are some lovely handmade pottery pieces by a dear friend, Rebecca. Tying it all together is a fabulous fall themed quilt table topper by none other than my talented mother. Hmmm…. I really should take a better picture of it sometime. It’s hard to see under all that food.

What’s that bowl of rocks in the middle, you say? Well, on the trusty advice of Jean, everyone in the family wrote what they were thankful for this year on a stone, starting with a community stone for my dear sister Shannon.

I couldn’t find my gold paint pen but a black sharpie did the trick. When I asked Seth what he wanted to write on his he repeatedly said “myself”. Well, I made him pick something else and I’m happy to report that other than himself he’s grateful for his grandparents. I let him draw on the reverse side of the rock as well.

You’re reward for reading this post? Our version of this stuffing:

Sausage & Cranberry Stuffing

Ingredients:

• 3 Tbsp olive oil
• 1 Small red onion, sliced thinly
• 4 Garlic cloves, minced (or cheat like me and spoon it out of a jar)
• Salt & pepper
• 12 oz sweet Italian sausage
• 2/3 cup dried cranberries
• 2 tsp dried sage
• 1 tsp dried marjoram
• 2/3 cup water or stock
• 4 cups of plain stuffing/cubed dried bread
• 4 Tbsp chopped fresh Italian parsley
• A little butter or oil for the baking dish

Directions:

1. Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees (or whatever you’re baking other stuff at)
2. Heat oil over medium heat.
3. Saute onion until transluscent, about 3 minutes.
4. Add garlic, salt & pepper, saute another minute.
5. Add sausage, breaking up with spatula or spoon. Cook until no pink remains, about 4 minutes.
6. Add cranberries and dried herbs, saute another minute.
7. Stir in water.
8. Mix in bread until all moistened.
9. Stir in parsley.
10. Transfer to a buttered caserole.
11. Bake for about an hour. You may want to cover it midway through if you find it to be browning too much.
12. Enjoy!

How was your Thanksgiving?

the little red fish

Not much creating going on here. Between my day job, my husbands day job, keeping up with the kids and now family visiting for Turkey week there simply isn’t time left. And yes, it’s Turkey WEEK not day around here. My parents arrived today, one of my sisters tomorrow. I expect to have guests into the beginning of next week. That said, it hasn’t stopped me from reading to my son, including this fabulously illustrated, magical story. The little red fish is written and illustrated beautifully by Taeeun Yoo. It’s about a young boy in a library whose imagination takes him on a grand adventure with his pet fish. Our copy is from the library but I do believe we need to buy this one. It’s that good. Seriously.

I love the story, but the illustrations take it to another level. Taeeun’s imagery is wonderful and she hides clues in the pictures that Seth loves to look for. I adore that there are a few pages without words. It encourages my son and I to talk about what’s going on vs me just blabbing away at him.

Do you have or know a child ages 4-8? Buy this for them for Christmas. You won’t be dissapointed.

Stitch

Upon hearing that my friend Martha had a pattern and an article in the new magazine, Stitch, I ran out and bought one right away. I had just gotten my sewing machine back from being worked on and that seemed like a great way to celebrate. Unfortunately, before even reading it, I spilled my tea over the whole thing. See the wavy pages along the top?

How ironic is it that my tea had been in a mug Martha had given me once upon a time?

Grey or Gray

So do you spell it grey or gray? Just taking a survey. I alternate spellings, constantly thinking my first choice is wrong. Turns out they’re both right.

Etsy: Painted Fish Studio

A couple weeks ago I went shopping in Jen’s dent and scratch bin. She’s probably a little peeved at me for leaving money behind. But really, look at this goodness. Most of them have some tiny flaw making them unworthy for sale in her eyes. However, many of the supposed flaws I can’t find. Either way, I’m still willing to give them out as Christmas gifts. Ummm… or maybe selfishly keep a few for myself.

Looking for journals, photo albums or other paper goodies? Check out her shop.

(Yes, I completely ripped off the look of this post from Jen herself. But she can’t very well feature herself now can she?)

A Garden For the Birds

I was too presidentially obsess and tuckered out from work last week to post about this lovely day with family and friends back at the arboretum. Although I enjoy winter I don’t want fall to end as it’s my favorite season. It’s fleeting nature only adds to it’s charm.

One task item I already have for the long winter months is to work on a good garden plan for my small front yard. I want to turn a rather big chunk of it into a haven for birds inspired by a small garden at the arboretum that reminded me of the white pines we already planted in my front yard. How’s that? Inspiration based on a reminder of what I’ve already done. Anyway, I want to add some fruit bearing bushes to the mix.

I’m also going to be dreaming up ways to get the kids more involved with my birding passion, like making tons of birdseed ornaments. I was planing on making a colored rice sensory box but I like this one even better with sunflower seeds.

They really enjoyed uncovering little plastic bugs in the box. The best part is that when we’re tired of it or it gets too dirty we can feed it to the birds – zero waste!

Photo Meet-up

On Saturday I got together with some Flickr friends for an afternoon break of cupcakes and photography.  It was dreamy. I was going to resist the cupcake portion but one can only look at a table full of cupcakes for so long, no?

Pick out one of your own here. The conversation was just as nice as the treats. How could it not be with Martha, Sarah, Dana, and Julia? I’m sure we looked pretty comical; five women all taking pictures of cupcakes. I felt the silliest of all sitting there with my Olympus Stylus 1030 dinky point and shoot, surrounded by REAL photographers with REAL cameras. There were digital SLRs galore, rented ginormous lenses and vintage Polaroids. Although I had plenty of jealous moments, the session did make me realize that I still have some learning to do with my point and shoot. I should focus, pun intended, on mastering the point and shoot before whipping out the credit card for the SLR.

After the yummy cupcakes at Cupcake, we headed to Art + Architecture next door. It’s a nice little architectural salvage place. A little pricey but most such places are. We’re pretty sure the people who work there thought we were nuts. I guess I would wonder too if five women seemingly randomly walked in to my place of business and started photographing everything in site. At any rate, you can see a few of my shots on flickr, but here’s my favorite shot of the night.

I hope that we get together again so I can polish my point and shoot skills. Maybe by next time I’ll figure out how to use my Rolleicord. Even if neither of those items pan out I’d still enjoy the company.

New Do for the Future President

No, I don’t mean that one silly! This one:

Warning – this post is fraught with poor photography.  Seriously. I’ve been trying to get a good picture of Eleanor’s new hair style for days, but she just won’t sit still and the light has just been horrible so these will have to do. There are several people waiting to see shots of this new do so I’ve decided to foist them on all of you.

Anyhow, little Miss E has been twirling her hair until it break off/pulls out and has essentially made herself bald on one side. I say this nonchalantly as this has been going on for a couple months and I’ve learned to cope. Here’s the before shot:

Yes, just the one side as she only does it when she’s tired and the other hand is busy, what with two fingers jammed in her mouth like so:

Other than a quick trim to the bangs once in a fit of frustration, Eleanor has never had her hair cut. Fortunately, I have a really good hairstylist (Melissa at Kids Hair in Highland, for you locals), who used to be my stylist and now just does kids hair. Personally I think she did a great job blending in the bald side while still keeping a girlish style. But my photos really don’t do it justice.

Hopefully having less hair back there will break the habit. I sure hope so anyway, as from what I’ve read the next step is to completely shave her head. Yes, I can see how that would break the habit, but I’m really struggling with the idea of doing that just before the holidays. And yes, we’ll be talking to the doctor about it at her next check up in a couple weeks to see if there’s anything else we can do. Wish us luck!

Halloween Recap

Halloween has now come and gone and all that’s left is sugar. I’m a big Halloween fan and use to make tons of themed food for the occasion. This year all I managed was decorating a bowl of dip with carrot peelings.

Costumes were easy this year however. I wore a bat costume I had made last year and Eleanor wore a bat costume I had made for Seth 3 years ago. To make the wings I layed the shirt out on top of the fabric as if the arm was raised and drew an outline of a bat wing to cut out. Baby bats wings are made from a nylon so I singed the edges with a match to prevent fraying and then I hand sewed them on. It’s hard to see but the baby wings have little velvet bats on them and mine have silvery moons and stars. For mine, I sewed the wings onto a black turtleneck and for the baby a zipper hoodie. The ears were easy peasy as fabric glue was again my friend.They’re simply craft foam stuck on the hood for her and a headband for me. Walla! Mama bat, baby bat and eh-hem an astronaut.

She didn’t like it one little bit. She wanted to wear the blue flowered hoodie. Argh! Fortunately, she got into the whole trick-or-treating thing and forgot about her outfit. In fact she wanted to keep going when her big brother tuckered out. Granted, I did carry her between most houses. But only so we could keep up with the big kids. Hence her pants riding up in this shot. Hopefully you can see the cute mary janes i bought her just for this occasion in the shot above because by the time we hit the streets she was in her old hand me down brown shoes.  Double argh!

Interestingly she has no idea that she brought home candy. Which, of course, rocks for me. And yet doesn’t at the same time.

Are you wondering about that astronaut? Well, it’s Seth of course. But it’s not just any astronaut, it’s a skeleton astronaut! Puzzled? Well, here’s the run down of Seth’s costume choices the week leading up to Halloween:

• Saturday – astronaut
• Sunday – prince
• Monday – garbage man
• Tuesday – skeleton
• Wednesday – construction worker
• Thursday – final decision – a skeleton astronaut

I mean, two costumes are certainly better than one, right? So he wore his skeleton pajamas under his astronaut costume. Can you see the shin bones on his knees? The pjs are two sizes too small.

Finally, I leave you with my favorite jack-o-lanterns I saw on our short trick-or-treating walk. Yes, those are carrots in the one’s ears.