I am off to visit Mary for our yearly get together. Our dear hubbies go to Promise Keepers and we have a girly time. Lots of shopping, crafting, antiquing and wine tasting. Have a yummy weekend and I will see you in a week xoxoxoxo
One of my favorite things that make me think of fall is nuts: acorns, chestnuts, hazelnuts, ect. Here is a collection of autumn ideas all with the same theme. If anyone would like to contribute a post, a picture, an idea to autumn corners please let me know and I will post it. For example dear Joanne can I post your pictures of your autumn corners. Please, pretty please with caramel on top !!
I stitched up this acorn pincushon with a tag, needle holder last year. The one above is the one I made for my mother. The one at top is the one I made for me. It is from Crabapple Hill Studio. I want to make everything from Crabapple. I just love Meg's things and wish I could meet her becuase I know just looking at her patterns, I would love her.
I love the childrens book Miss Hickory by Carolyn Sherwin Bailey.
"Miss Hickory, a country woman whose body was an applewood twig and whose head was a hickory nut, must find a way to survive the fierce New Hampshire winter when her human caretaker leaves to spend the season in Boston"
1890 crochet acorn pincushion pattern
Wills cigarette card series: 1924 flowering
A chestnut coloring page
A fall corner of my home !!! I set tea lights in the glass turkey's and at night I take the tops off and light the candle. The colored glass looks so pretty.
Okay I am a sucker for anything from England. I love to look at picture and dream I am living there in my little thatch cottage. Just down the road from Beatrix Potter. I can just imagine as I am on the way to her home for tea I stop at Grasmere Gingerbread for some gingerbread crumbs to serve with my ginger parfait. For those saddly enough who can not get Grasmere gingerbread, check out their recipes and use your own gingerbread.
Here is some yummy blogs that have been inspiring me, thank you !!!
We had fun making tangrams and making cards. I printed up different pattern papers and 4"x 4" tangram of each pattern. We used this grid to make the tangrams. Then made a second set 2"x 2" for the cards.
Here is some history and patterns. Look at these beautiful carved ivory tamgrams. What a fun way to play with math.
Well it is time for Autumn Corners. For some fall inspirations I am going to start this week with my mother's living room. Which she just did up for the fall. It looks so inviting and wonderful. Well done Mother !!!!
I have been seeing all these wonderful garland around the net and decided to make one myself for my entryway. I am sharing it with you. Just click on the picture and it will be bigger. You can save it and print it up. I just cut out the ovals, then an an oval a bit bigger in pretty paper (on card stock) and glue the smaller one on top. One trick I did (and was glad), was to cut slits on the sides. Then I ran the ribbon thru it. I used a very long ribbon. Then I could slide the letters around. If I decided next year to use in in a different bigger place I can move the letters out. Enjoy
This dinner was a big hit, this weekend. Even the beets. And the pound cake, well it was perfect. I gave you info about making a pound cake. Just remember to make sure you have really creamed that butter and mixed it well with the egg. Becuase when you add the dry you want to just mix in it but not over mix it.
Grilled pork chops
Oven roasted potatoes in olive oil, sea salt, pepper and fresh chopped rosemary.
Dijon Balsamic Roasted Beets
Take roasted beets and carrots (you can roast the carrots whole with the beets) and cut in large cubes. Saute' for a minute over high heat with some butter and a TBL. of olive oil (to keep butter from burning). Then add a couple of TBL. of balsamic vinegar and cook another minute. Pull off heat and stir in some Dijon mustard, salt and pepper.
A wedge of gorgonzola cheese (or blue cheese) and sliced apples
For dessert Vanilla Bean Yogurt Pound Cake with Pear Sauce
You can make the cake with all white flour, but I am trying eliminate as much white as possible.
Vanilla Bean Yogurt Pound Cake
1 ½ stick of butter (¾ cup) room temp.
1 cup vanilla sugar, plus 1 TBLS
3 eggs room temp
½ cup yogurt (or buttermilk)
1 TBL. vanilla ect.
¾ cup whole wheat pastry flour
½ cup all purpose white flour
1 tsp. baking powder
½ tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
Pre-heat over 325, cream butter and 1 cup sugar till light and fluffy. Add egg one at a time. Then yogurt and vanilla. Scrape bowl good and make sure egg and butter is well mixed. Sift dry ingredient together and add to egg and just mix. Pour in a prepared loaf pan (well buttered and floured) and sprinkle remaining TBL. of sugar on top. Then bake 45-60 minutes till center is just cooked. Let cool a minute or two then flip over on to plate.
painting by Janet Kruskamp
I am the most blessed girl in the world. A dear friend (who asked to remain anonymous) gave me free her kitchen queen. It is from 1910, has a flour sifter, a glass window so you can check the level of the flour. I took a dress of Chloe's when she was little girl, I lined the upper cabinet with it and made a little half curtain. It is this wonderful little red riding hood fabric, my good friend Christy made the dress for Chloe. I have saved it waiting to do something special with the fabric. The lower door, is in bad shape the veneer is peeling off. I did the red work piece (the first one I have ever done) but was not sure when to do with it. It is perfect inset on the door. I am so thrilled with the kitchen queen. It s so wonderful to have such a piece of history in my home. Thank you are such a dear friend (You know who you are) xoxoxoxox
I have to say this is one of my most favorite things I have made. I wanted some kind of folder for us to have as a keepsake for the year. I came up with this paper-bag PG folder. You could make this out of any thing. But pick paper that is not to fine or to thick. I like the paper bags, because I like reuse and it is free. I will try to walk you through what to do. I am not go at explaining things. So if my directions do not make sense please let me know.
1. You want to cut open you bag. Cut down one folded sided and around the bottom, so I lays flat like above. Now cut off that extra square and the handles (if it has one). You will need to iron the bag. I like doing it after I cut it out, but you could do it now. Just use a medium setting with no steam.
2. Now you want to cut your bag. You want a total length of 28 inches. But length of sides 19. Width 12 inches. Use the picture to see the measurement.
The best way to do the point is to find the center and run a ruler from side to center. I suggest you make a pattern to keep like I did. Then you always have that.
If you have a rotary cutter, that really helped to squared off the folders. But it does not have to be perfect and can be cut by hand. Now is when I would iron the folder.
3. To make a pocket, cut out a 10 x 5 " piece with leftover bag. Iron and glue down on center piece. Glue on sides and bottom.
4. The closer. We sewed on buttons. If you have heavy coat thread, that would be great. But regular thread is fine. Mark on the folder were you want the buttons. I used dental floss for the string on the closer. I tied one end of the floss to one button. Then just wrapped around one button then the next a couple of time.
Now just flip over and decorate. I will suggest if you are doing this with your kids, a couple days ahead you (mom) cut and iron the folders. When we did them we did the closure and pocket in the morning Then took a break and did the decorating in the afternoon. It is not a hard project to make. Just lots of little steps and this can be frustrating. So breaking it up helps. I plan on a making a bunch of these and decorating competition books as Christmas gifts this year. What I loved was seeing how our personality was so obvious. Chloe the horse lover, had her horse carry her books. Aubern’e the teen had a rock and roll skating rink. My French school, is were Mrs. Lovedove plans to retire to !!
Mrs. Lovedove is very tried after back-to-school week, so I am taking a couple of day off from the blog and will back. I keep feeling I am missing someone who was sharing in the back-to-school week. If I did please let me know. And sorry. Wait until you see my kitchen queen I was given !!!
I thought I would do back-to-school list of things I love. Well I love Lesley andSmall Meadow Press. In case someone did not get to see this, she has kindly made herhome-notes free for all. Even if you do not have children ther are some calendars that would be useful for all. Thank you Lesley !!
I LOVE French word of the day. I get a mailing everyday from them. It is palatable, yummy way to learn French.
I find words very. I think I got that for my mother. When I was a child she was always using words that I never heard anyone else say. Like brew-ha-ha. Which I use all the time. I use to tease my mother but really I thought she was quite clever. I think it is interesting to know about words and the history of them. I enjoy looking up words in the dictionary and in the 1828 dictionary and compare the difference.
I also love (which is why I am doing this list) Karla Dornacher. She have free downloads for teacher. Enjoy
Meet Dumpling (her name use to be truffles, but I changed). She is all ready for school. She has her new dress (you know how important that is !!). In her lunch basket she has an apple for the teacher, her nature notebook, her favorite book Flower Girls and a hanky for any first day-of-school tears. Dumpling is not scared herself, but if any of the others children cry she will feel obliged to not let them cry alone. So she wants to be prepared.
Go check out Patchwork Pastiche. Mary has a great entry about not-back-to-school week. By the way Mary is a good friend of mine. She only live one block from me. Her daughter and mine are best friends. What I admire about Mary is she is so grounded in her choices and that she will be hating me writing this about her. She is much more modest then me !!!
Also check out In The Red House Renee has a great overnight crockpot oatmeal/rice hot cereal recipe. Thank you Renee!!!
Ikk curriculum. I guess I can not avoid the subject with back-to-school week. I will say that if I can I try to use something other than curriculum. Like living books, real life experience, ect. But there are times when you need more. At this years curriculum sale I found some interesting curriculum.
Math is not my strong suite and Aubern'e borders on math phobic. So I have been looking for something interesting, easy, not too dry for higher math. I found Teaching Texbooks. I was hoping to actually have this before I posted but it will not come for another week. But I feel pretty confident recommending it. There are several lessons to try on-line. Both Aubern'e and I liked. Did I say I will also being doing the pre-algebra too. I need to learn it as well as Aubern'e. We liked it because visually it is appealing without being over the top (it has a comic book looks). Also they explain why you do something. I know there is a lot in math that I can do but do I understand why?? No. It also had lots of word problems, which is good for Aubern'e. It seems clear and easy to understand
I was so excited when I saw Brimwood Press: Tools For The Young Historian. Marcia has some wonderful hands-on units for history. My favorite was the Calendar Quest and Color The Western World. Calendar Quest tells of the history of the calendar, which covers 12 different historical periods. The calendar is used as a way to connect different parts of history. Calendar Quest is a story of two children traveling through time with father time. My very favorite thing was the coloring book Color the Western World. The sample does not show what a beautiful and interesting coloring book this is. It is large 17x11" and beautifully illustrated. It has bits of history from that time to use as a jump of point for more study. I rarely see beautiful, interesting, hands-on curriculum. I am hoping to get "What every child should know about western civilization".
Julie shared her wonderful back-to-school ideas. I loved the back-to-school hunt !!!! Thank you Julie for sharing.
I so enjoy homeschooling our three sons (Ben - 12, Caleb - 10 and Eli - 8). Last week we had a back-to-school party with two other families, and I thought it would be fun to share my ideas. The party was held in a lovely little one-room schoolhouse
down the road from us. Here was our agenda:
- Notebook decorating - I provided each child with a notebook (bought
at a terrific back-to-school sale!), along with a pile of stickers,
foam pieces, rubber stamps/ink pads and markers. They really enjoyed
this and spent longer at it than I figured they would!
- Scavenger hunt - Several days before the party, I visited the
schoolhouse and made up questions based on items in the schoolroom.
Ex. Name the 2 presidents whose pictures are hanging on the walls.;
What page is "Silent Night" on? (they had to find it in the song book);
and so forth. It was great fun!
- Trivia game - My friend divided the kids into teams and asked them
various trivia questions from cards about different subjects. While
she did that, my other friend and I hid school supplies outside around
the property.
- School Supply Hunt - My friend decorated lovely little paper bags for
each child, and they used them to hunt for their designated number of
supplies (1 glue bottle, 1 glue stick, 4 pencils and 3 pens)
.
- Back-to-school BINGO - We played Bingo for prizes (fruit snacks and
cracker packs).
For lunch I served a lunchbag type lunch - halves of pb&j, various
bags of chips, applesauce cups, juice boxes, little bitty water bottles
and cupcakes with a letter of the alphabet on each. I decorated the
table with a lovely autumn-colored tablecloth scattered with tissue
paper leaves and leaf confetti. All the food was served in pails or
baskets. It was great fun - hope you enjoyed hearing about our party
I have a confession to make I hate cooking breakfast. I am too groggy in the morning and I not wanting to cook. But I do not want my family living on cereal, so I am always looking for shortcuts. Now my baked oatmeal is very different then the typical overnight baked oatmeal. The first time I made pan of the typical kind of baked oatmeal, my family hated it. It was too mushy. So I started playing with the recipe. First I baked it in a muffin tin, instead of a pan, that helped. Then I used regular rolled oats, instead of instant. This is more like a muffin, then oatmeal. On-time I forgot the butter and they were great. So now I make them without the butter and instead add a nice thick slice butter when I eat it ;-)
This is one of the recipes I make and everyone loves, plus it is very healthy. I love that I make it the night before and then bake it off the next morning. I mix it in a bowl and put it in the fridge. Grease my pan and then in the morning fill and bake. You can do anything with theses, add orange zest, dried fruits, streusel topping, nuts. I even sometimes make them for tea time and add chocolate chips.
Overnight Oat Cakes
3 cups rolled regular or thick oats, but never instant
2 egg
1/2 cup melted butter (optional, it is fine without it)
2 cups milk, you can also use soy or nut milk
1/2 cup sugar or evaported cain, honey, ect.
2 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg
Mix all in a bowl night before and refrigerate. Next morning fill to top pre-pared muffin tins. Bake 350 for 1/2 hour or till eggs mixture cooked. Let cool then lift muffin out of tin.
Susan sent me a lovely post about her back-to-school celebration. Thank you Susan for sharing. I am sure we will all be baking soon !!
Every fall we make chocolate chip pumpkin bread or pumpkin muffins off and on throughout the season. I guess you could say it's one of our fall traditions. Just last week, I made up a new recipe that is healthier than the ones I've made before, and we really like it! In fact, everyone keeps asking me to make it again.
Instead of having one or two cups of sugar in the batter, there's a bit less than 1/4 c., and it's still yummy (we think). This is not your overly sweet cupcake-style muffin they make in bakeries, but it's sweet enough, though, and made more sweet by the addition of chocolate chips. And the muffins are really moist! This is a good, homemade, tasty, healthy kind of recipe for those of us who care about this kind of thing occasionally! :-)
PUMPKIN-CHOCOLATE CHIP MUFFINS
Makes 8, but you can easily double this.
3/4 c. whole wheat *pastry* flour
1/4 c. unbleached flour
3 T. - 1/4 c. sugar
1 t. baking powder
1/2 t. salt
1/2 c. chocolate chips
1 c. pumpkin (I use canned pumpkin/no spices)
3 T. - 1/4 c. canola oil
1 large egg, beaten
1/2 t. vanilla
Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
Stir together dry ingredients and chocolate chips. Mix wet ingredients and stir into dry mixture. Bake in muffin/cupcake papers in muffin tin for 12-15 minutes.
I don't use spices in this because it's not overly sweet, but I suppose you could add them if you want. I like the plain pumpkin taste a lot and prefer to leave this as is.
Happy Back to School, Mrs. Lovedove!
Susan
Painting by Valorie Snyder
For Mrs. Lovedove's first day back we made Schultüten and of course had show and tell. Schultüten are brightly decorated cardboard cone filled with sweets, school supplies and small gifts. This blog Just call me Mausi has a great entry talking about Schultüten. You can purches them at Giftcones and German Corners
We made our own. We made paper cones decorated them with cut tissue paper. Here it tells you how to make a paper cone. My tip on making the paper cones I learned was to use a glue gun. Otherwise while you are waiting for the glue to dry the cone slips around. Then I surprised the girls with treats to fill them.
Make sure you go see Mrs. Pivec at Golighly Place. Her post about her back to school celebration and Recitation Club is just charming !! Thank you for sharing.
History of Schultüten (school cones)
By Sue Grant
If you have never seen one before, you might feel a trifle bewildered. What is this large cone-shaped object in front of you? An artistic version of a traffic beacon perhaps? A particularly decorative dunce’s cap? Now you are getting closer. Turn the funnel around so the pointed end faces downwards and there you have the solution: you are looking at a traditional German Schultüte or school cone.
All over the country at this time of the year, six-year-olds exchange the carefree childhood of kindergarten for the serious side of life – “der Ernst des Lebens” – when they spend their first day at school. For nearly 200 years, parents have attempted to publicly mark this transition and sweeten the blow by providing their offspring with the candy-filled cones to clutch during the opening ceremony.
The origins of the tradition can be traced back to Saxony, Thuringia, Silesia, and Bohemia. As early as 1817 in Jena and 1820 in Dresden, children starting school were being presented with simple, conical paper bags, such as you can still find at a greengrocer’s or outdoor market, containing pastries or candy.
Other children looked forward to picking their bags from the Zuckertütenbaum or sugar-bag tree. This magical tree, so the story went, grew in the cellar or the attic of the schoolhouse and all good diligent first-graders could pluck one of the delectable cones from its branches. In some areas, real trees on the school grounds were decorated with the filled cones. In 1928, Albert Sixtus and Richard Heinrich produced a popular illustrated children’s book called Der Zuckertütenbaum. It is still in print today.
By the turn of the century, it had become fashionable in Saxony and Thuringia to send children color postcards on their first school day, invariably depicting a child hugging a giant Schultüte or standing on a ladder and plucking one from the candy tree. The sender would wish the schoolchild good luck and an enormous cone.
From German Life
Even thought it does not feel very fall like, I wanted to make a fall feeling dinner.
I made a pork dish very similar to this but I added pumpkin. Last year I cubed, peeled uncooked sugar pie pumpkins. I frozen on cookies trays and then put them in freezer bags to keep unhand to throw in stews, ect. So add frozen pumpkin to pan when you add meat before braising.
For dessert I took Martha's recipe for Buttermilk pie and only made the filling. I took a large pan and laid a layer of sliced fresh peaches and pour the filling over the peaches. I baked at 300 with a Bain-Marie(remember low and slow) for an hour or 2 till center was cooked. If you really want to make it special add this caramel sauce!!
tuscan painting by Ruth Baderian
I always have a table cloth on my dining room table. I have so many pretty vintage cloths I like to show them off. But sometimes a girl like to change things up a bit. So I thought I would go with bare wood for a while. Well my practical hubby says you can not put hot plates on wood, it will ruin it. Doesn’t he know it adds patina. I tried to enlighten him, but he did not get it. So for martial bliss, I said I would get place-mats. I have looked and looked. I can not find anything I like or can not afford what I love. That beer budget thing again. Well I was in T J Max (I love that store) and saw these runners. I loved the fabric and they were $6.00. So I bought two. At first I was going to run them the other way but there were times when there was 3 of us on one side. Or we were crafting and needed the protection. So I ran them lengthwise and love it. Now I am looking at table runners in a whole new light and practical dear hubby is happy.
Also see my new tussy-mussy. Rosehips from my mothers garden and these amazing carnations. You know I have hated carnations for years (along with mums) but they have sooo many new kinds now. They are dirt cheap and last a good two weeks. So I am treating myself a bunch twice a month. Thank you Jody for the inspiration xoxoxo
