Seeding Our Souls

Taking a bit of a break from pressing some new fabric --
Cutting will just have to wait...

The weather here last week enabled me to pretend it was spring and paint and install my garden gate. Those warmish sunny day eventual turned more to the norm for this season wet and about 30 degrees cooler.

Looking out though from my sunroom and having the RED of the gate there brings a smile to my face. Color makes me happy. I thought I completed the gate project until spring by adding a holiday wreath to the door, but lo and behold a local friend brought me over a cutting of roses to plant.

This is a cutting from her Peggy Martin-Katrina roses --

I kinda grimaced at the thought of possibly killing it off but Chris said just plant it and cover it with a jar. OK?!?

Another wonderful color source popped up in my email this morning, and if you love color and haven't found Design-Seeds, then I encourage you to do so. This was part of today's posting.

Design Seeds ---  Color Palette

bing search different seeds and stand back....
what comes up for images would fill a hundred Pinterest Boards and one photo is better than the next - interesting, colorful...

Seeding our souls comes from all sorts of directions, especially this time of year. Enjoy them all - take an opportunity to soak them in.

Cinnamon Baked Ornaments

Whenever I am looking for a bit of inspiration I love to go wandering on Pinterest. When Pinterest was new I used to go off on Pinterest Hops... something I called finding a great Pin then using it as a jumping off point to find out about -- just about anything.

This week when we decided on making a tree that Ralphie could not destroy I went searching for ornaments. Today I found a fun Pin for,

Super Easy Homemade
Cinnamon Ornaments

It all sounded a bit ooey-gooey sticky, but how wonderful to have ornaments that smelled like cinnamon.

I decided to give it a try.
Early this evening I through all the ingredients in a bowl and dug in.
First slowly, but it all came together just how Cassie said it would on her blog. I would encourage anyone wanting to give it a try -- click over to Cassie's site for complete directions and  go for it.

Mine are baking away in the over, and I be decorating them tomorrow!

December? Really?

The weather here in Paducah has been very un-December like.

So much so that a purchase made last month, with the understanding that the whole thing might have to wait for spring came together.

The weather for Mon-Wed called for sunshine and temps in the 60s. Perfect for painting, and installing things in the yard.

I have spent most free time over the summer working to clear out flower beds and get rid of things that were just way too much to handle. The last of these was cleared out in October. In the plans is a make-over to the back yard, next spring.... and part of this was to put a new entryway into the are from the front of house. Having selected a large trellis, with a garden gate and side wings -- turned out the ordering in October was a good idea.

Long story short....
DH and I spent Mon/Tue painting the new stuff,
and it was installed today.

Now I just need to go buy a wreath for the gate and we're set!
Do you like the color?

 Ralphie watching from the sunroom.

Thank you weather gods.

Temptation...

thy name is dollar store,
especially when you're looking to make some not important to be permanent tree ornaments.

I stopped by the dollar store this morning to find some string to finish making the paper garland for Ralphie's tree.

You can see how one can be a bit tempted.
But, I held out picked up just the string and spent the evening gluing the pieces together.

 

One-by-one, laid out a previously glued pair-
added glue to this, then laid the string in place
and topped the whole thing with another pair.

Throughout the process Ralphie stayed close by playing with a few paper pieces he was able to swipe....

Then happy as a clam when all was done.

Ralphie's First Christmas

Ralphie is the new cutie in our lives, and at 5 months old he is a wild kitten. Naturally, as soon as the Christmas tree was up he was there crawling around -- sticking his nose into each branch... that is until he discovered the lights. At that point it became all about the lights.

David and I saw this and had a bit of a family pow-wow. Yes, a spray bottle of water is now close by the tree to catch Ralphie and try to teach him to stay away; but, we've been here before so we decided to dedicate this tree to Ralphie.

No fancy ornaments this year. This year we will purchase some plain ornaments and make a bunch of paper ornaments. Just in case.

So tonight we pulled out some fun papers, a couple of templates, scissors, gluesticks and the ornament making began.

As I write this this evening we have a bunch of stars ready to be made into two-sided ornaments. And, all those little circles are ready to be strung into a garland.... tomorrow.

With this I say goodnight -- and hope you join me back here for the continuing  saga of Ralphie's First Christmas Tree.

Letter Writing Continues

Well the letter to my older self is underway, but is turning out to be much longer than I thought.

So, I hope you all are having a wonderful Sunday and are filling it with all sorts of pleasurable activities...

A Mundle Bread Tradition

My mom has been making mundle bread --
A type of biscotti like cookie for as long as I can remember.

Traditionally, they were plain with just pecans added and sprinkled with powder sugar when served. Over the years, though my mom started to switch things up -- she added chocolate or butterscotch chips to the batter; then she started filling them with jam. Everyone in the family, and extended family has their favorites. Sherene likes plain, Rick likes his filled with blueberry jam, Maurene is the fan of butterscotch and Aragorn likes his apricot jam.

Last year, at 88, my mom really did not feel up to making any, so I thought it was time for me to give it a try. I made the favorites and shipped them off with all the other holiday treats, and a special batch was made for mom. This year when she visited for Thanksgiving there were batches made, and the recipe shared.

I also found out there were some MB lovers in David's family, too. Over brunch, as we planned our 2nd annual holiday baking day my niece Lauren and I chatted over the possibilities of making them with chocolate batter...hmmm; how to do this successfully.

I ran into a new product (to me) and gave it a try.
Here is the original recipe:
3 eggs
3/4 cup oil
1 cup sugar
1 TB baking powder
1 Ts vanilla
3-1/2 cups flour
1/2 cup chopped nuts

to this I added 4 TB of

This worked, but it isn't quite right yet.

Not chocolately enough -- a little on the sweet side--think next time I will add 2 TB of the sweet ground cocoa, then add 2 TB unsweetened ground cocoa.

To make the cookies after the dough is made --
Split dough into 4 parts -- roll each into a long log on a large cookie sheet.
To fill press a furrow into the dough log, fill with your favorite jam (my is Trader Joe's cranberry sauce) and pinch dough closed.

Bake at 350 for 25 minutes until slightly browned; then take cookies out slice logs and turn them over. Lastly, bake cookies again from between 8 -10 minutes. (8 for softer cookies -- 10 for dryer crunchier cookies.)

I like experimenting with recipes.
Do you?

The holidays are officially here. WOOHOO!!