Thanksgiving Cactus...

She's in bloom again!  She's actually called a Christmas Cactus, but the past two or three years, she has bloomed at Thanksgiving and Easter and sometimes in between times, so I'm really not sure what to call her.   How about Beautiful?  When the trees are all bare and the the majority of the birds have all flown south and the grasses and flowers are all spent, I am blessed and grateful for my little indoor flower garden.  There is no place of honor where she grows.  She prefers the inconspicuous basement corner near the window in my laundry room to any other place in the house.  It's rather cool and very bright there and I guess she likes the climate.  I'd sometimes like to move her out to the main hub of the house, the dining room , but I know she would not be  happy with so much warmth and attention, so the laundry room remains her happy home.  Since I find myself in the laundry room often, I observe and appreciate her ebb and flow of loveliness.  Now and then I will invite a family member or visitor into the laundry room for a peek at her, but mostly, she lives in seclusion. 

I think of her as a gift from God, given especially to me.  He knows how much I love beautiful, growing things, and He knows that the rough and rustic country where I live does not produce blooms like this, but instead, grasses and forbes, with a beauty of their own, but meant mostly for grazing livestock.  I'm not frustrated by that, but I am grateful when I get the treat of such beauty right where I live -- even in the humble place where it prefers to grow -- the laundry room.  In  remote and obscure places, God brings beauty.  He does it in our lives too.

Be still and know that I am God.
~Psalm 46:10

Sunday dinner.....

Well, here it is. Sunday.  My favorite day of the week.  One of the reasons it's my favorite day is because God gave it to us as a day of rest.  I am always ready for a good rest by the end of the week, aren't you?  I think God was brilliant to come up with the idea and I appreciate that He geve us this sweet gift every single week!  It's up to us to make it a restful, refreshing time.

I have always been big on Sunday Dinner.  We usually have a rather large meal around noon or thereafter, and it comes complete with a nice table setting (nothing fancy, just table cloth and napkins and perhaps candles) and dessert.  I love having the family around the table, relaxing and enjoying the Meal of the Day.  It's THE meal of the day because it's the only one I cook on Sunday.  Why?  Because I need a break from my regular grind too.  I like to prepare Sunday meals that I can do ahead or meals that can be tossed into a crock pot or into the oven to slow cook while we are away at church.  Even if we don't make church, I still like to make Sunday meals this way.

Today we had a most scrumptious meal that is over-the-top simple to make and it tastes like you really fussed.  I am not a gourmet type of cook, but instead I would call myself a home-style cookin' cook.  That doesn't mean I won't try something fancy or gourmet-ish, but generally, my meals are very basic and hearty.  The menu today looked like this:

Apple Tossed Salad

Country Barbecued Ribs

Baked Potatoes and Baked Acorn Squash

Cranberry-Apple Crisp & Ice Cream

Remember all those apples I was telling you about a week or so ago?  The ones I have labored over and peeled and processed until I was ready to throw them to the chickens?  Well, they're back!!!  I'm using what's left in the garage, and since they are still nice and crisp I'll use them as needed, not committing myself to them nor completely releasing myself from them either.  Today I peeled and sliced apples and put them into a buttered casserole dish along with some fresh cranberries.  The recipe for Cranberry Apple Crisp is one of my all-time favorites from Susan Branch.  If you've never had the pleasure of perusing her book Autumn From the Heart of the Home, you really must borrow it or buy it for yourself.  It's packed with fabulous recipes, ideas for making home more homey, sweet quotations and more.  Plus, every single page is hand-drawn and hand-written (and reprinted, of course) by Susan, herself..  I love taking the book out every autumn, and the recipes are so good that I use it all year long.  For a sampling of her recipes, click here.

Cranberry Apple Crisp

4 large green apples, peeled & sliced

1 c. fresh cranberries (I've used frozen and craisins)

3/4 c. brown sugar, packed

1/2 c. flour

1/2 c. oats

3/4 t. cinnamon

3/4 t. nutmeg

1/3 c. butter, softened

Preheat the oven to 375*.  Butter a square baking dish.  Place apple slices and cranberries in the pan.  Mix remaining ingredients well and sprinkle over fruit.  Bake 30-40 minutes or until golden.  Serve warm with ice cream or whipped cream.

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I usually mix my crisp up and set it aside to bake later just as I'm pulling the dinner out of the oven.  By the time we are done eating, the crisp will be done and we can have it for dessert hot-out-of-the-oven or wait awhile and eat it warm later on.

The Country Barbecued Ribs are a snap to make when you plan ahead.  I just put my ribs into a cake pan or roaster  and sprinkle them well with salt and pepper, Cover them tightly with foil and bake them at 300* for 3-4 hours.  Drain off all the liquid and fat and either continue cooking in the oven with your barbecue sauce or you may refrigerate them or freeze them for another time.  I refrigerated mine last night, knowing that I would finish cooking them today.  I baked my already-cooked ribs for another 2 hours (covered with foil) on low heat (300*) with the barbecue sauce so the sauce would caramelize onto the ribs and infuse them with flavor.  Here's the sauce I used, but you can use any barbecue sauce you like.

Delicious Barbecue Sauce

1 c. ketchup

1/4 c. lemon juice (fresh is best)

2 T. brown sugar

1 T. soy sauce

1 T. horse radish & mustard (half of each)

1 T. grated onion (or dried minced)

1 1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. pepper

1/4 t. Tabasco sauce or cayenne pepper

1 clove garlic, minced

Simmer this over low heat for about 10 minutes.  It improves with age so store some for later use.

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I pour this entire recipe over a 9x13" pan of ribs and cover with foil. Check ribs as they bake to make sure they don't go dry.  If dry, add a little water.  I haven't done it yet, but I think you could finish off the ribs in the crock pot too!

Tip:  When pork ribs are on sale, buy as many as you can and cook them all in large roasters or foil pans.  Drain off the fat and then freeze in portion sizes you want to make when you need a quick meal or for a meal to take.  This method is also nice when cooking for large crowds.

While the ribs are baking for 2 hours, be sure scrub and prick your potatoes, rub them with olive oil and sprinkle with course salt.  Cut your acorn squash in half, remove seeds and place them cut-side down on an oiled baking dish.  Put the veggies in together with the ribs and everything will be ready to eat when the ribs are done.  Adjust the oven temperature and slide the cranberry-apple crisp into the oven whilst you eat dinner and in a half hour, dessert is served!

Enjoy your Sunday Dinner and your Sunday Rest.

And remember.....

It's not what's on the plates that matters,

It's what's on the chairs.

Handmade Holidays...

It's time to start thinking about the holidays, especially if you are making anything by hand.  If you need some excellent ideas for holiday handcrafting, click the 3rd Annual Handmade Holidays link and you'll be thrilled at the choices. 

Check out this cute lunch bag!  A free tutorial is available for you.  This is just one sample of many wonderful and thoughtful projects at Sew Mama Sew.

Happy Crafting!

Organized chaos....

I am so thrilled with the new stacking storage boxes that I acquired yesterday from the UPS man.  I love that man.  He brings me everything I want!

I searched the world over for the perfect thing to store my embroidery floss in and never could come up with it until one day as I was visiting around the blogs, I came upon an embroiderer's site where she was showing off her stacked  threads and I knew I had finally found the solution to my mismanaged embroidery floss.  I ordered the Snap'n' Stack by Snapware from Amazon and I am in love with these nifty boxes.  I had been storing my embroidery floss in  sandwich sized ziplock bags and tossed them willy-nilly into a larger box.  And now, with my new purchase,  I have beautiful see-through organized chaos.  That's my style.  I don't want too much fiddling around or too much organizing, just a bit of corralling works perfect for me.   

I'm so happy!

Organizing is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it is not all mixed up. 
~Florynce Kennedy

Hope...

The Milkmaid, Jan Vermeer 

 

Everything that is done in the world
is done by hope.
~Martin Luther

A favorite family hymn:

A Mighty Fortress is Our God

By Martin Luther

Click to enlarge music

Scary Mary....

Hide your children.
She's coming......

Tedium in homemaking....

Tedium is the granddaughter of despondency, and the daughter of slothfulness. In order to drive it away, labor at your work, and do not be slothful in prayer. The tedium will pass, and zeal will come. And if to this you add patience and humility, then you will be rid of all misfortunes and evils.

~St. Ambrose of Optina

Thanks to Gladsome Lights for the quote. 

Normally,  I'm not easily bored at home.  I love being at home and I would rather be home than a thousand different places, but today was one of those days when Tedium and Sloth Sisters showed up.  I have a list of things that I need to do all written out and stuck to the frig with a magnet, but today all I could do was to look at it, grab a cookie, and walk on by.  I didn't feel like cleaning, but since when do we only have to do what we feel like doing?  Did my Lord command me to love others if I feel like it or show hospitality only when I feel like being nice?  

I decided to ignore my feelings of tedium and tackle the living room.  I set 4:00 as my quitting time and then I would reward myself with coffee and cookies.  I washed walls, shined the picture glass, pulled out the furniture and vacuumed.  I washed the windows inside and out,  and let me tell you it was a chilly 30 degree day standing outside on the step stool with wet rags in my hands!  The more I did, the more I wanted to do.  I accomplished everything except shampooing the carpets which I intended to finish tomorrow anyway.  My afternoon  coffee was extra-delicious and I felt so much better having knocked off another thing from that To Do List.  Old St. Ambrose was right.  Labor at your work and zeal will come!

While sitting with my cuppa Joe, I began reading a book that my daughter-in-love brought by called Country Living Simple Country Wisdom.  Now this book does not really have anything "new" in it that we haven't heard about before in the realms of homemaking, but still, I enjoyed paging through it and gathering a few new-to-me tips.  And you know what?  I was further inspired to do a couple more things in my home that had been neglected.  I descaled the coffee pot and the tea kettle and dumped the boiled water down my kitchen sink along with some baking soda to freshen it.  I took the screens off the window over my kitchen sink and washed the glass.  It's that time of year when I won't put the screens back up since the cold temperatures keep the bugs down and I can enjoy looking through clear glass with no screen obstruction.  There is something wonderful about looking out through clear, clean glass that makes me feel more connected to the outdoors and less confined.

I really appreciated this quote from the book on cleanliness:

The world makes a lot of demands on us.  There's always something that needs to be done, someone we need to make time for, an item to pick up here and another to drop off there....and often, at the end of the day, any number of to-dos and should-dos are already casting their shadow over tomorrow.

Your home should be a refuge from all that.  The "shelter" in the food, clothing and shelter equation means more than mere protection from wind and rain or a place to stow one's belongings.  It also means shelter from the stresses of the greater world, a little oasis where we can relax, pursue our own interests, and share time with those we love.

 I don't know about you, but it is really difficult for me to pursue my interests or start a new project when my home is really out of order or if I'm not tending to the main business that I need to be doing .  I'm not talking about simple "signs of life" messes, but rather things that really need to be done like sweeping a filthy mud room floor, unloading and reloading the dishwasher, picking up the accumulation of stuff that seems to pile up on the counter by the phone or putting away the last load of folded laundry. Just a wee bit of tidying up can set my mind at ease to focus on other things or the people in my life.  Does that mean I can't do anything unless my house is spotless?  Absolutely not.  I'd never sew a stitch if I had to live that way.  But for me, if there is a reasonable orderliness in the home, it sets my mind at ease to enjoy things like embroidery, doing handicrafts, baking, or reading a book.

Today as I was looking at two boxes of apples that a hunter brought to me as a "thank you gift," I began to wonder what my homemaking responsibility was concerning them -- the apples, I mean.  They were nice apples, but the majority of them were the size of a golf ball.   I was truly delighted to receive the apples and I have cooked with them and shared them and frozen them, but now I am ready to throw them to the chickens and be done with it all.  I did peel and slice a lot more apples for the freezer this afternoon, but I began to wonder:   when is enough enough?  I hated to waste.  I hate to throw away, and I wished for  a Bible verse that said, "Once you've peeled and sliced and made all the apple sauce and apple butter you can possibly want for an entire winter, it's just fine to toss the remaining apples to the chickens."  I know it's not in there because I've read The Book, but while I was pondering the dilemma of too many apples, I was reminded of this particular verse from Ecclesiastes 3.

There is an appointed time for everything.  And there is a time for every event under heaven......(v.6)  A time to keep, and a time to throw away.

THANK YOU GOD!  There IS a time to throw away!  Well, today is not the time to throw the apples away, but instead, it is the time to put them in the garage until they rot  to eat fresh while they last or to use in an apple centerpiece or to throw at the deer when they come traipsing through my yard.  Surely those little apples have more uses before they are thrown away, but at least I have given myself permission to do so at the appointed time.  

Homemaking is not all about cleaning or making the bed with hospital corners (although I know of no other way to make the bed) nor is it about how many jars of applesauce is needed before the lady of the house decides to throw out the apples.  But I have found that homemaking is about learning to balance life realistically between clean and dirty, between making do and doing without, between good and good enough, and mostly it is about making Home a peaceful refuge for the weary soul and the place where somebody is waiting for you and will be glad you've come.

Just try to be angry with someone who fed you something delicious.

~Judge Dunwoody 

From Mrs. Dunwoody's Excellent Instructions for Homekeeping

Pun'kin...

It's fall.  I love how the light comes in the big window like this when the sun is low in the sky.  It's so warm and cheery to me.  While the darker days of fall and winter months are upon us the sun is tipped just right to shine into the corners of our home.  The kitchen table served as my workshop today.

Daughter-in-Love grows the pumpkins.  This year they didn't ripen orange so I splashed a coat of white paint on mine and lettered them instead of carving.  I'm happy because they'll carry my decorating into Thanksgiving.  The kids and I made the jar-o-lanterns many years ago and they make me smile and "remember when" as I haul them out for Halloween.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

~Henry D. Thoreau

Ric-rac flowers embroidery tutorial....

I was asked nicely if I would make a tutorial of the ric-rac flowers so I just couldn't say no.  Plus, I know how much I appreciate tutorials that others do.  Here goes!  I hope you try it. 

You may click all photos to enlarge them.

You will need:

One tea towel

Various colors of cotton ric rac

Pins

Fabric glue (washable)

Water soluble fabric marker

Embroidery floss

Method:

1.  I determined that it takes 12 points on one side of the ric-rac to make a circle that lays down flat.  So count twelve points and add a little bit extra so you can tuck it under neatly.

2.  Lay out ric rac on your tea towel and make a circle that lays flat.  Tuck under one edge and use a little fabric glue to secure it.  You may also like to use some on each cut end of the ric rac so it won't fray.  The brand I have is Aleen's OK to Wash It glue -- especially for fabrics.

3.  Next you will pin the ric rac down.  Lay out in a pleasing pattern.

4.  After pinning, you will secure the points of the ric rac with French knots and a small hidden stitch.  In all the embroidery in this project, I used 3 strands of  the floss.  I made  French knots on the outer points and secured the inner points with a tiny stitch that was hardly noticeable.

5.  With a water soluble fabric marker, mark the middle of each flower and then take a ruler and draw straight lines across to each inner point.  Draw stems and leaves and add any other extras you'd like.

6.  Stitch along lines within the flowers, catching in the points of the ric rac as you go.  I used the outline stitch for all my lines in this project.   For the center of each flower, add 3 or more French knots.

7.  Now finish up with embroidering the stems, leaves and additional flowers as desired.  Again, I used the outline stitch, but you might also like the stem stitch for this.  They are very similar.

8.  Spray finished work with a water bottle to dissolve the blue marker lines.  Launder as usual and press.

Tada!  You're done!

Thanks to Sharon B's Stitch Dictionary

A little old-fashioned embroidery....

It all started when I was out and about Blogland when I came across a new-to-me blog called Giggleface Studios.  I loved Tracey's embroidery things and especially her tinted embroideries.  You must go take a look-see at the embroidered and tinted state blocks she's doing.  Wonderful!   Anyway, I saw something tucked away in her little green suitcase that I just had to try!  Ric-rac flowers with embroidery. Well, I did it.  And here they are.....

This was so much fun that I'm going to try it again.  I have a few packets of Aunt Betty's old ric-rac -- probably from 1940 or so -- and I'm just going to use it.  Wouldn't she love these?

Thanks for the inspiration Tracey!