angry chicken

little bits.

The decorations are starting to go up. And look at that Tord. (Wow, blogging friends are so generous, I am spoiled rotten, thank you!) I realized after some monkeying around that these garlands don't really drape, so the shelf seemed the best place for them. The deer is new and I heart her so much. She is flocked and jaunty as heck.

The village is up-almost exactly the same as last year. We also have one less snow globe in the house now. I didn't see what happened, but I found glass and snow and a lot of water in the couch and the 2 year old won't stop talking about it.

I made that white feather tree on the left about 5 years ago. I blocked it out. I actually made it from floral wire, real goose feathers, and floral tape with what could have been the most vague directions I have every read. It took a long time. A really really long time. But if you have ever priced one of these things, the real ones, you'll know why I made it. I don't plan to ever do it again, but I love it, and I usually hang little balls on it but these photo were taken mid-process.

This shelf now has a Tord garland too. The snowmen are from here, they come in a 4-pack. With these new items, I'm done buying holiday decorations this year. (Except the sales after Christmas, can't help that.) And we hope to get the tree this weekend. Seems so early this year, it's not even December 1st yet, but that early snow fall got me all excited. And the banner has a new holiday look too, refresh if you can't see the snow.

continuing to not decorate.

I have been working on the design of this cross-stitch project/chart for mailorder #5 (coming out in January) and it's coming along, slowly but surely. I am really diggin this work right now, unlike my last cross stitch project, which I liked, but struggled with a bit. I couldn't really get in the groove. But this sampler and I are friends and I just can't get enough of this color on linen lately. I also picked up and amazing book from Mariko when digging through her superbuzzy stash with truly stellar cross-stitch inspiration. I will show it soon-it got me all crazy to finish this design.

The Tie One On recipes and apron photos are coming in, thank you!! I just can't wait to see all these recipes together in the gallery, It could be a formatting nightmare, so please excuse any dorky looking margins. I also might not have it up as quickly as previous months. And some of you are worried about file sizes, whether or not you are actually wearing an apron in the photos, sending the recipe in a word doc. Well, I am not a stickler for rules at all, nor do I read directions very well, so I don't even remember what I have said in most cases, so don't sweat any of it. It's all good and I will let you know if I can't figure it out.

This is all so self-serving because we actually stopped crafting homemade Christmas gifts a few years ago, and I am so glad. I still make a gift or two, but none of the handcrafted gifts for 15 people like we had done before. We make food gifts now, and that's pretty much it. Pete does this legendary mustard every year, which people get weird about, and I bake cookies, make candies, and that type of thing. I love cooking for an army and this satisfies that urge. And then there are no last minute trips to the craft store. I love online recipes. I love the major commercial sites of course, but it's so much better when the recipes are from actual people, you know?  Friday is the day. . .thanks again!

behind the curve? I think so.

I'm seeing some trees out in blog land and some holiday decorations up already. We are still looking at Lester the turkey and not a single Christmas decoration is up except these pillows, which I made a bit back. I don't feel behind, it's not even December first yet, but we need to get our tree this weekend, obviously. It snowed a bit here today, so I am in the mood. I'm always in the mood to get a tree, anyway. I am bummed because for 4 years we have been getting our tree down the street in a urban lot from some guys who I was secretly hoping were actually the Doobie Brothers. They were sure in a good mood every year. But there are gone this year-we are so sad. So, we need to come up with a plan B.

The holiday pillows are from this lovely fabric (sold out, but here's the info anyway) which I think will be just fine through march because they don't scream holidays. I saw the eggplant yesterday and got my super cool extra awesome superbuzzy order (love the walk-in shipping option) and she and her lovely friends and I had crepes at this great place on Alberta, so very good I can't stop thinking about them. I had the raspberry/nutella with lime juice on top. Yum, and yum. That Mariko is such a good time, but a bad influence. I'm not sure how, she just is. She's the type that makes you want to spend money and eat all the time. in the best way.

mish-mash

We made it thorough Thanksgiving. The pies were pretty good. I think I will substitute the fresh cranberries for dried next time in the Thanksgiving pie and make a graham cracker crust for the chocolate silk pie, because you serve it frozen or very chilled, and the regular pie crust was a bit too hard. But this has nothing to do with this beautiful jewelry I am showing. . .

These pieces are made by a good friend Kelly Johnston, who now has a lovely shop and website. I worked with Kelly up in Seattle when we lived there and she has a special place in my heart-the way people do when you go to work everyday and someone there gets you and makes you laugh and is just someone who want to hang out with, that can be so uncommon at work, but I got lucky. Kelly is a wonderful artist and has this zany ballsy sense of color, which is so fresh and nice to look at.

Her jewelry has always reminded me of candy. Candy from outer space. I love it. So, check out her new digs here.

And we got the Sufjan Stevens songs for Christmas album yesterday that I have read so much about and the box set, with 5 Cd's and the book, stickers, poster, all that, is pretty dang cool. It's getting hard to find I guess. We tried 2 shops but finally found it here in town at music millennium on Burnside. The music is for the most part really good. A bit hit and miss, but the misses aren't annoying or anything, just some of it is stronger then the rest, which makes sense since it spans 5 years of recordings. It's all mellow and very sweet,  a really nice addition to our Christmas music collection and the girls love it. I still love the Low Christmas album too and we need to dig that one out now that Christmas music is fair game in the house.

happy eatin' day!

Tomorrow is the day. Grammie's is where we are headed, with 2 pies in tow, a chocolate silk (her request) and a Thanksgiving pie, which is an apple and fresh cranberry filling in a single crust with a crumb topping. Both of these I have never tried before. I was assigned the Real Simple Chocolate Silk pie (link broken, but it is there on the Real Simple site), but after looking at the recipe, I skipped it. I have no problem eating high calorie foods, trust me, but at over 800 calories a slice, 6 eggs, and a pack of purchased shortbread cookies in the crust. . .hello? That's just dumb. So I found a classic 3 egg homemade pudding version with a normal crust that will work just fine. And I am still covering the top with whipped cream, of course.

I have been surfing way too much. There is a great art gift guide over at port2port and for random news items, I can't get enough of digg this week, courtesy of my husband. This is a cool news-feed type site slanted towards tech stuff, and has some really great articles and links. For instance, who knew megapixels don't matter (how can this be?) or that flickr has a Camera Finder? As someone who always feel like the last to know, I love these kind of sites. Also, it gives me something to talk to other adults about 'cause I usually just talk about poop, snot, and play dough.

Tie One On-recipe and apron

The theme for Tie One On for November is to share a holiday recipe and show an apron. Any apron. That's it. I wanted to make it easy on us all. . so find your favorite apron, take a photo, and dig though your recipe cards. And while you are at it, please check out Hannah's cool new food/recipe blog, the recipe box. She has some great recipes already up and even a pdf of a super cool blank recipe card to print out, all ready for your box. I think we should all e-mail her our Tie One On recipes as well for this awesome project, can't have too much of good thing.

This is one of my all time favorite family recipes. It comes from our family cookbook that my mom and aunts put together in 1981, which deserves it's own post. The apron is one of my all time favorites that I thought would kind of go with the recipe. I got it for Christmas last year and love it to bits. Best pockets ever.

Christmas Braid

2 3/4 cup flour
1 package yeast
1 teaspoon ground cardamom
3/4 cup milk
1/3 cup sugar
1/4 cup butter
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 egg

In a mixing bowl combine the yeast, 3/4 cup flour, and cardamom. In a small sauce pan (or the microwave) heat the milk, butter, and sugar until warm. (not hot) Add the milk mixture to the dry and mix on low for 30 seconds, scrape. Add egg. Beat for 3 min on a high speed. Slowly add the remaining flour to make a soft dough (you may us a little less or a little more flour than the 2 remaining cups.) Mix until the dough is smooth, (use a dough hook here) Put in a greased bowl to rise until doubled (depends on the yeast you use, 30-50 minutes) Punch down dough. Turn onto a floured surface and make 3 balls. Let rest for 10 min. Roll balls into 3 ropes (16" long) and braid loosely. Start in the middle and work out to each end, tucking/pinching ends under. Cover with a towel and let rise again until double in size.**  Brush braid with a little milk and sprinkle with sugar. Bake at 375 for 18-20 minutes.

**I always pre-heat the oven during the second rise and put the dough nearby or even on top of the oven. It makes it rise faster.

The smell of this braid baking is 100% Christmas to me. It's wonderful with butter and jam and even better as French toast the next morning. Thanks grammie!! Send me your favorite family recipe and apron photo. . share the love, man!

kits n' stuff

More kids b-day parties coming up and then more in January and so I am still working on ideas. I was thinking of giving a kit for something like this. This funky house (love shack?) is an unpainted wooden CD holder from a chain craft store (don't even know which one) and was $5. Everything else we had on hand to make it look like this. Trims, paint decorative paper, etc.

Sadie and I painted the outside during 2 nap-times of Miss Delia's and then we got smart and used paper for the inside. Much more forgiving. Sadie was really big on making rugs out of small pieces of paper. The ball fringe, pom-pom balls, and little mirrors were added later under Grammie's supervision, who is the ultimate craft guru, obviously.

Sadie is so into this house. We finished it months ago and she still talks about making it. She really got to paint it, you know? We just did one color, and then the trim later, and she really went for it. She is really comfortable with the glue sticks and white glue, glue in general. It's all about the glue. I really like this kind of thing that actually involves parents or grandparents, etc. and it was great for Grammie during babysitting. It would be a great gift for Grandparents come to think of it. You could cover the outside of the house with paper too, if the paint thing is a turn-off.

So, as a gift, I am thinking the unpainted house (cd holder) and then maybe a clear baggy of trims, paper, fabrics, doo-dads, and possibly 3 paints in primary colors and brushes, maybe some stickers. and glue stick. Easily all for under 10 bucks (well, maybe if I don't include paint) and this would lighten my craftroom stash too. I think it's a winner as a gift. I don't know if little boys will dig it, but why not, huh? It could be a fire station house, right? You could put a hole in the floor between levels and add a pole to slide down. Sweet.

Hey, thanks for the sales too! Now I can buy a bunch of handmade stuff from everyone else to give as gifts. Love that paypal account and handmade is where it's at, right? Yup. 

sale tomorrow-

Thanks so much for all the Tord help. I think I am good to go, a few generous souls are sending me garlands to help counteract the train/fiber optic situation. . .thank you, really.

Tomorrow at 12:00 (noon pacific time) I will be selling the holiday ornaments and small quilt notecards. Now the ornaments will be sort of a pain, sorry, but I only have made ten sets, so you will have to e-mail me at 12:00 and it will be a first-come first-served type thing. I am apologizing in advance for this and whatever confusion is sure to ensue. The cards however, will have a handy paypal button. I will also have this free download up of a gingerbread guy and a poinsettia thingy to make a holiday garland. All over at kingpod tomorrow. . .

no Tord for us.

I knew we were too late for Tord. So, I held off going to Target, why drive myself crazy? But last week we got the urge. The long evening was ahead of us with girls bouncing off the walls, so we bundled up in the rain and went out to the nearest Target, which is pretty far out, really, so I still had some hope.

Well, the dishes were there and the candelabra, but no garlands, which is what I had hoped for. They don't even have them online. But you know, I am totally okay with all of it. I got some wrapping paper and some tins of smores and peppermint Oreos (warning, the packaging is way better than the taste) and I thought, "Well good, we didn't spend money on stuff we don't need. .blah, blah." If they had the Tord I wanted, I would have gotten all hordey and weird and stressed about how much to buy, etc.

So, I figure we were all good to go and I round the corner to see Pete stuffing a god awful moving train figurine into our cart. The kind that lights up with fiber optics and goes around. Seriously. There is not one cute/kitsch thing about this, um, decoration. It's just bad on every level. "What are you doing?" He freezes. I think if he thought he could fit it in, I wouldn't really notice. He quickly explains that the girls loved seeing it last year (they did) and that they sold out so fast and. . . . .so we got it. It's so flippin ugly, I can't believe it. The girls stare at it mesmerized and the fiber optics are so over the top. I thought we'd put it in th play room downstairs, but no, it's right in the living room on top of the modern Danish sideboard that would have been so perfect for Tord-type holiday decor. Oh the aesthetic pain here is very real, but somehow, in a fabulous way, it seems perfect. And I love Pete for wanting it for them so badly. And, the music turns off, which is a good thing.

party season

We know a lot of kids with birthdays between now and Christmas and I am always trying to come up with a homemade gift that is easy to do in mass quantities, that the girls can help with, and is fast and easy. . .

These girls are sleep in a pouch and come tied to a book.. They are a gang, but a non-violent one. That doesn't mean you should mess with them, however, you shouldn't.

I need to get more clothes pins. Sadie and I make these often, usually while Delia is napping, so we are running low. And how much am I diggin' that flower stitch on the Bernina? A whole lot.

Lester the turkey.

Thanksgiving is a hard one fro me to decorate for. I always run out of time. I wanted to make an acorn garland, but I don't think it will happen. I always have notion of a woodland animal/pinecone/forest type thing, but I seem to lose steam. Lester came to us recently and is proudly on display. The little sheep are meant for Christmas, but they were found by the girls so they came out early and they have to go right there, on the very edge, and you can't move them, ever. Lester is a bit fancy with a very small amount of glitter is on him, which I think he finds embarrassing, actually.

And my minimal display. It'd pretty much empty, I realize. This shelf has such potential but is perilously close to the sofa "jumping zone". In all this rain the girls need to run and jump and they do this on the couch. Feet are supposed to stay down, but when Sadie is flying, she says, they need to go up, and then the shelf gets in the way sometimes. . .

This is a vintage postcard I just printed super big and mounted on board. I love the turkey images on these old cards, and have always thought the whole turkey thing was sad and funny because, you know, that kid is going to eat him.

doll clothes and the rain

Kirsten got some new clothes yesterday. I made the dress and sweater using the excellent patterns in this book, which was recommended to me (I think in the comments somewhere?) and it is so very good. The cover looks scary, but the patterns are great. My mom has the other one and we are sewing doll clothes up a storm. The idea was to save these for Christmas, but it's hard to hide this stuff. And the blurriness there is not a lens baby I'm afraid, but I think possibly cheese grease on the lens of the camera. Gross.

Studio craft was a blast and such a scene! Wow, it was overwhelming to see so much lovely stuff and so many Portland crafters in one stop, very cool indeed. I had to go by Melissa's today to pay her back (I came to the event with no cash or a checkbook, brilliant.) and got the eat some of the pastry leftovers, yummy.

Biblical style rain here; floods, and I expect locusts soon. And it's warm. Icky. Big stuff tomorrow. Miss Delia turns 2. I have the cake made (it's in the freezer) and I will frost it tomorrow. Yellow cake with chocolate frosting. Both my girls don't like cake, just ice cream, so we know who the cake is really for. Delia has asked for a "blue birthday candle" for her birthday, I think I have it covered. Birthday candles are her favorite thing. She carries them around the house and is known to nap with them.

monkey bread, art, & craft

I debated for a long time whether or not to post this photo of the monkey bread we made. (Thanks to all of you who confirmed the recipe was a winner) It turned out great, don't get me wrong, but certain foods just look gross. And gross food photos, well I try to avoid them if I can. I hate showing something and then feeling like I have to say "oh, but it was really good although this photo makes it look so gross, like brains." Which is what I think I should say here. But, the thing is, monkey bread just looks like this, there is no way to show is in a better light, so I feel like it's okay. And it was really really good. I followed the recipe, the only thing I did different was leave out the nuts and replace one cup white flour with whole wheat. I did get really sick eating this all day. There is something so pleasing about pulling the bread hunks (brain hunks) off that I couldn't stop.

Tonight I did not go out and stalk Jen Corace as I should have. She had her opening at motel and is showing some amazing work there. You might remember the freak out I had there last year seeing Jen's work. I need to see this show in person, and I will, but it was so dark, rainy, and cold today. Everything seemed hard. Like getting dressed, which I didn't really do. I did go to the grocery store with the girls (in sweat pants) earlier in the day and that was not too much fun. I couldn't face going out again. So, I feel lame about missing the opening. Very lame.

But, I will not be missing studio craft this Saturday (I will leave the sweat pants home) and there is also another craft event happening, a trunk show by Cat in an Apron, which will feature a slew of handmade wares for babies and mamas by some local talents. It's also on Saturday from 10-4 at the Stamp Society Building at 4828 NE 33rd Ave, PDX, 97211.

And the October gallery for Tie One On is up. And wow. I know I always say this, but really, the aprons and the photos are too good. And the new theme is set too. Easy as pie. Easier, actually.

that dog was scary.

We had a lovely time trick-or-treating at Grammie's. It was cold and clear and there was only one dog that spooked the girls, a sweet but lively golden retriever about 10 times bigger than Delia, who for the rest of the night, wouldn't stop talking about. Sadie was bummed papa wasn't wearing his wig which she has grown quite attached too, unlike her mama. Lord help me.

I discovered the Take 5 candy bar tonight. What? pretzels and chocolate? What are they trying to do to me? Almost as tasty as the chocolate dipped mini pretzels from Trader Joe's that are crazy good straight from the freezer. I haven't indulged in that badness in awhile and the Take 5 brought it all back.

The Halloween aprons will be up soon-as will the new theme! And I think this new theme will be perfect for the busy holiday because it requires very little work and yet there is such a big reward. Excellent.