sheppard girls

The letter P

Just recently Decor8 wrote about the importance of front entryway decorations.  I had always been okay with ours until then, but ever since, I've been a little dissatisfied and thought I should do something new.  For some reason, I found myself bidding on and winning a lot of vintage wooden "P"s (for Pearson, which is our last name).  I hadn't known exactly what to do with them, so I put them in the vintage colbalt blue Fiestaware bowl my parents gave me for my birthday, and forgot them on a shelf.  Then today, I thought to do this.

A few more sun loving flowers from our garden and a little creamer that another Ebay seller included in a lot of vintage green fiestaware plates I bought recently.  I am convinced that eventually all the really great "lots" of vintage fiestaware plates will be gone, so I am building my collection while there is still time.  Then someday, the big one and the little one can find them terribly dated and sell them to someone else.  Kind of like the circle of life - the circle of vintage dishware.

Passive aggressive crafting

As I may have mentioned, I am co-chairing the carnival at the girls school this fall.  So far it has been a lot of fun.  Each year we have a school t-shirt that is sold in conjunction with the carnival.  We came up with a tie-dye t-shirt with a peace sign and the name of our town.  It was super cute and a shirt I might actually buy.  I really don't care for screen printed t-shirts or any clothing (other than undies) with characters.  This is really embarrassing when one of my kids says VERY loudly, to a parent whose child is wearing character clothing, "oh, our mom doesn't like character clothes".  Then I have to explain how I would rather pay for quality than licensing, blah, blah, blah. 

Back to the t-shirts.  It was brought to our attention that some people might find the peace sign "controversial".  Um, okay.  We were pretty bummed, and didn't really agree, but whatever, there are bigger things to work on.  So we dropped our super cute idea in exchange for others of the less cool variety.

Over at sheppard girls, however, I am all about the peace sign suddenly.

Available in my Etsy shop and a couple of local shops if you are in the Twin Cities.

Yikes!

There is a shirtless man practicing fire sword juggling in the yard behind us.  Please please tell me you can tell that from this picture.

 

Pink and Brown

Last weekend right after we got home from the cabin, I needed to run over to one of my favorite fabric stores, 1 - because they were having a sale, 2- they had ordered additional bolts of my favorite gingham in new colors I hadn't had before, and 3 - because I was out of my beloved Midori seam binding and sometimes they carry it and I needed Caribbean blue for a wholesale order I was working on.  They did not have my seam binding, but they did have all of these lovely fabrics in addition to the gingham. 

Look how pretty they all look together!  The top fabrics are the new Denyse Schmidt in the home dec weight, which is heavier than I usually use, but not as heavy as I thought it would be.  Perfect.  Do you think that the new Anna Maria Horner fabric might be the same weight?  Because I REALLY love some of those prints but thought I probably couldn't use much of it since it was heavier.  But if it isn't that heavy, think of the possibilies.

I also picked a few small bouquets of flowers from our gardens.  We don't get much for summer bouquets, around here so I am going to share them here. Plus they kind of matched the fabric.

CSAs

To answer my sweet friend Suzanne's question.  CSAs are community supported agriculture.  We found ours through the Land Stewardship Project and we have been getting our vegetables from Featherstone Farms.

Carried away

It started out innocently enough.  We are in the process of redecorating the big one's room.  Apparently pink scallops are so six and half years old.  As I wrote earlier, I bravely removed the between the screen shades and had wooden blind installed.  I finally gave up my quest for a bamboo curtain rod and just purchased one at Bed Bath and Beyond, so we were able to put the new curtains up.  (Beautiful sunny days make for really poor pictures!)

She has an old bulletin board with a really thin layer of cork that she ripped with tape, but it was such a cute frame, I could stand to throw it away, and it occured to me that we could cover it in leftover curtain fabric and make matching pushpins.

In the meatime, a local yoga shop that carries my headbands, wondered if I had any other hair accessories for their clients.  I mentioned the ponytail holders I've made for the girls and their friends, but I wasn't sure they were "zen"enough for the yoga crowd.  But the shop liked them and it is the perfect little task to do while watching TV, or watching the little one play Zoo Tycoon on the computer, or struggling to keep my sanity during the piano practicing of the big on.  I may have gotten a little carried away.

A open letter to our household appliances

Dear appliance (small and large) in our house.  I realize that when you left your big factory birthing spot and set out to find your place in the world, this may not have been what you had in mind.  It is messy and dusty, it is not very fancy, we yell, and I keep you very very busy.  But basically we are nice people.  We appreciate the work you do and are glad to have you here.  When you break, AT NEARLY THE SAME TIME, it makes me sad. 

First it was our friends the oven and dishwasher.  They have chronic issues and we all know it, so we cut them a little slack.  Then it was the electric toothbrush, the cordless telephone, the coffemaker, and the satelite dish.  Small luxuries each of you.  But a bright spot in our day.

Then the drier began to "dry" less and less.  More like a big shiny box of damp tumbling air.  One of the nice men from Centerpoint Energy Service Plus, who really at this point should set up an outpost in our yard, so when I make my weekly call for service I could just holler out the front door, pointed out the evidence of many small fires in our little drier over the last bit of time and how all the lint that should be venting outside is actually venting into the drier.  Funny.  I never thought the drier would be the one to take us down.

CSA beets and a few other things

When we began getting our CSA box last year, we unofficially agreed that we would try to eat everything that came in the box.  And so far so good, except for kale, which is gross. 

Eat week, we get beets.  I am not a huge fan of beets and until last year, the dad hadn't eaten one in years.  Most of my childhood memories of beets, were HUGE vegetables, boiled in water and then peeled and sliced with butter and salt.  Ish.  There had to be a better way.  The ones we get from the CSA box are small and there are several different colored kinds.  On Saturday on The Splendid Table, Sally Schneider, gave at least a dozen ways she loves to serve beets, although unfortunately the only recipe listed on the website is for a beet viniagrette.  (if you clicked on the Sally Schneider link, how lovely is the picture on her home page?).  I've loved the Splendid Table cookbook, so maybe Sally's should be next on my list.  Then I came across a recent article by Mark Bittman for summer meal suggestions and #1 on his list contains beets!

Also on that episode of Splendid Table was a piece about what Mario Batali is reading this summer.  I just finshied reading Heat, which is loosely about Mario, also working in a restaurant kitchen, Italian food and the lost art of hand-made cooking. 

Speaking of hand-made cooking.  I think that is what one of the guys on The Next Food Network Star finally decided was his point of view.  I am so bummed out watching both that show and Design Star.  I want to like them, but the contestants are soooo dull.  I was curious about last year's Food Network Star winner and I think her show only lasted three episodes.  Poor thing. 

Thank goodness Project Runway begins in two day!

Making jam

As you could see earlier, we picked an obscene amount of strawberries. 

They were very ripe when we picked them Tuesday.  By Friday, they were very, very ripe, so we set out to make jam.  I remember canning as a miserable, multi-day activity that made our house smell of stewed tomatoes for days.  Back when I hated tomatoes.  I realize now that I was crazy, but I was 9. 

My mother-in-law and my sister-in-law insisted that making jam was easy.  Cook them up, put them in jars, turn the jars over, wait until things pop up.  Or something like that.  I wasn't sure exactly.  And the widespread severe storms yesterday made me hesitant to call back up to the cabin and get them out of their storm shelter just to double check the jam instructions.  I did find Sure-Jell at one grocery store and canning jars at another.  However the dad mashed up nearly twice as many berries as I was counting on, so he tried to run out to another grocery store just about the time the storms were getting to our house and he ended up abandoning the canning supplies and the potato starch that he had been looking for, for some time (after reading about it in this book) at the check-out counter and hurrying back home. 

Once it became clear that nothing much was going to happen, storm-wise, we continued on.  The University of MN extension website, the Ball jar site and All-recipes made it pretty clear that unless I was going to be using actual canning supplies, I had better stick to freezer jam.  But after that it was pretty hard to find a recipe or much direction.  Our final efforts needed a calculator.

But it seems like so far things have turned out okay.

The girls licked the bowl clean last night,

and we had some on our pancakes this morning.  I've since found, via Alicia Paulson, that all the cool bloggers are making strawberry freeze jam.  If only I had known!

Priorities

Maybe we should have waited until after the Tornado Warnings to begin canning the strawberry jam.