Busy Hands Homestead

"I am sorry, I can't help", she says sliding my tax forms across the table. I don't remember if she wore glasses, but if she, did she would have been looking at me above the rims. "What is it that you do again?" I wince and opt to believe that the condescending tone was only in my imagination. Sylvan is sitting on my lap. "I am a mom", I say embarrassed.  Was I blushing?  I scrape a bit of dried clay off of my fleece, " I do lots of things." I am between day one and two of three days in the kindergarten classrooms at my daughter's elementary school.  I had spent the last two nights in the studio rolling out clay slabs until the wee hours of the morning. What do I do? I am a non-entity on a tax return.  I don't exist.  I am invisible. I do things. The thoughts run through my head. I am productive. I consider myself a valued member of my community.  Really. I smile. "Well.  Thanks for taking time out of your day t...

As I wrap blue yarn with hints of pink and green and purple around my knitting needle and pull one stitch through the other an ocean grows. The sky is dark and the water is reflecting the stars, the moon, the whole universe. There are shimmers of light on gentle ocean swells. The swells rising and falling and swirling. Cradled in the middle of it all is a baby. A tiny speck in the vastness of everything - gently rocked, safe and snug and warm. Materials: 3 Skeins Lion Brand Yarns Wool-Ease, Blue Mist    (the gauge listed on label is 18 stitches by 24 rows to make a 4" square on size 8 needles) size 10 needles short note on yarn choice: I chose this yarn because it is machine washable and dryable and contains 20% wool.  I prefer to work with yarns that are composed of natural fibers, but since this is a gift for a young mom and her first child I figured that utility, affordability and appearance was allowed to over ride my yarn snobbery. (And my favori...

Our house looks pretty much like it always has. A drab white exterior, peeling paint on the windows and trim. Over a year of home ownership has passed and we are the only ones that know that things are changing ever so slowly. It is a constant balance of doing those things that need to be done and doing projects that are temporary but increase the immediate functionality of our house . While Adam had in his possession a borrowed sawzall, which he was using to cut through the old steal sewer plumbing under the house, I casually suggested that this might be the perfect time to cut away the wall of our closet. The opening into our bedroom closet was less than twenty inches and those clothes that hung in a neat row in it's confines simply stayed hanging.  It was too much of a pain to retrieve anything. The ceiling panel was a mysterious few inches lower than the rest of the ceiling and I had long decided it all had to go. The wall went, the ceiling panel went, the old layer of f...

At this moment Adam is driving across town with a door strapped to the top of our tiny car. We bought this door at Home ReSource a while ago, but as my house plan has been developing, it turns out that the door handle is on the wrong side and opens out rather than in...  oh. the details. This is the wrong door..  the new door has identical carving except that the holes for the door handle and lock are on the opposite edge.   This door is intended to be our entry door someday.   But while were were digging through the stacks of doors, I found an identical door.  Well, it is almost identical - except for one important feature: It has an opposite swing and is therefore more ideal in the grand scheme of what our house will become. The new door as a few more dings and scratches so we are exchanging it for the door as well as handles and a dead bolt.  Great trade, right? Our stockpile is up to: 9 windows 4 doors (with some hardware pieced together...

All of my nap time creations are finished and will be available for sale this Sunday at the MADE fair.   See images of a few finished pieces here . Now to make dinner.  Label and price EVERYTHING!  Clean the house and pack 4 carry on bags. We are leaving Missoula and heading to Great Falls immediately after MADE fair, and flying to Oklahoma early the next morning. Where to start. Breathe. Lets go.

Ivory opened the door and beamed at me: "It is a beautiful day!" And it was.  After a wonderful Father's Day breakfast at the Riverside Cafe the remainder of our day was filled with: Random little chores around the yard.  Commencing the construction of a custom coffee table.  A few random chores around the clay studio.   A beautiful day indeed!

The kids and I walked through our garden this morning an snipped flowers for our first summer bouquet:  some roses, a sprig of lemon balm, parsley blossoms, bolting radishes and flowers off of what I am fairly certain are pretty, but invasive, weeds.   It sits in front of me as I trail shapes onto the cups that I threw during yesterday's nap time.  While the children sleep an apple tree moves through the seasons; carrots, beets and cabbages grow  in rows; and hens peck at scratch. Today's nap time creations. 

I etched my last tumbler.   This one has bunches of beets on a plaid table cloth. Tomorrow morning it is off to the clay studio to throw a few more cups.

My kitchen is turning into a studio...  again.  Twelve tumblers in progress. 

"Hugh.  That Heavy!" Sylvan sighs and steps out of my path. He follows me, barely a step behind, from the stack of cinder blocks to the freshly leveled earth underneath the maple tree. "Hugh.  That Heavy!" I grab a second block. "Hugh.  That Heavy!" With each block I lift, he sighs, and walks directly behind me, following my steps. "One More?" "Hugh.  That Heavy." Our house came with piles of stuff - not junk exactly - just stuff: bricks, cinder blocks, landscaping rock, pine boards, steel rods, 5 gallon buckets..... "Hugh.  That Heavy." Adam's birthday is on Friday. I finally thought of a birthday present. Sure, he has a long list of tools he wants/needs, but I don't dare pick those out for him...  not to mention that the tools remaining on his wish list are pricey.  Those purchases can not be clandestine operations. But, he also keeps mentioning that he wishes he had a place to burn his piec...

A little over a month ago I spent hours staring at Joanne's fabric selection.  I had a difficult color pallet to match.  Our bedroom floors are sage.  Adam and I have a two toned yellow bedroom, and Ivory and Sylvan's walls are orange and lilac.  We purchased all paint as partially used cans from Home ReSource .  The result is colorful and fun...  but oh so difficult to match.  I found a great orange fabric that happens to have a very similar pattern to our dining room drapes, and I was searching for a purple based fabric to hang against the orange walls.  The patters were just so full of bright purple butterflies, flowers and birds... not what I had in mind.  After a while I grabbed an unbleached muslin off of the rack and purchased 5 yards of it with the plan on stamping my own lilac pattern.   Every window in our house finally has curtains. I finally marked that project off of my list today.  How to make your own stamped...

I love mornings. I love my first cup of coffee. I love breathing the dark aroma and sipping the smoothness of cream as I sit and pretend that we have absolutely nothing to do for the rest of the day.  I breath in and pretend that everything is calm and peaceful while in reality the kids are running across the house from kitchen through dining room and into the living room. The pretense of a leisurely moment is furthered by the fact that I am not actively cooking breakfast. We cook breakfast every day, but I have discovered the joys of baked breakfast. We often eat Puff Pancakes , but recently I added baked oatmeal into the rotation of family breakfast.  Just like the Puff Pancakes, the baked oatmeal is a baked dish that allows me to just sit and sip and breath for twenty minutes. Baked Oatmeal 1 cup oatmeal  3 Tablespoons brown sugar 2 Tablespoons coconut flakes 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/2 teaspoon cinnamon 1/4 teaspoon salt 1/2 cup walnut pie...

Our world is winter white and cold. The high today is 13 degrees Fahrenheit. I am somewhere between washing the dishes, folding 4 loads of clean laundry, sorting all the things that have collected on the bathroom shelves back into their spots and sledding. Sylvan is napping.  Ivory has, not one or two, but four puzzles spread out on the dining room floor.  Two and a half puzzles are completed.  Adam is trouble shooting the waste oil furnace in the shop.  It shut down yesterday for no apparent reason. I spent Saturday and Sunday cleaning.  Moving furniture and mopping everything from wall to wall. (When I say mopping picture this: crawling on hands and knees scrubbing the floor with a rag.  I don't actually own a mop.) Adam sealed up house envelope gaps here and there that were pointed out to us during our Energy Audit last week. We winterized a few windows (in our unheated back room - our washer froze.  That was a first.) In the past few wee...

When I think about the day in 2003 on which I met my husband, I think guacamole. There are many moments in our lives that I remember by the meals we shared. The last meal he cooked for me before I drove to New York for my summer internship in 2006 was Veal Marsala.  The meal that was waiting, sitting on the table, when I returned was a Spaghetti Squash picked up at the Farmer's market that morning. Even rockiest days of our marriage (so far), I will always fondly remember with side by side concocted candied orange peals and chocolate fudge.  The morning after Ivory was born, we pulled apart monkey bread while we stared across the tiny hospital room at that sleeping bundle.  The day after we came home from the hospital with we walked all over Stillwater, Oklahoma in 90 degree weather.  When we walked out of the door that morning we were full of new parent adrenaline and the fact that I had had virtually no sleep the night before seemed to matter litt...

There are thirty minutes on the kitchen timer and a warm cup of coffee sitting on the table next to me.  I am allowing my self that much time, no more, no less to come up with the 10 best things that happened to me in 2012.  (Only ten things?  This might be hard.) 1. House .  We bought a house, (with a lot of help). That is pretty amazing right? 2. The Clay Studio of Missoula .  I finally talked my self into taking a ceramics class and leaving bedtime to Adam. 3. Joined the YMCA .  Why, oh why did I wait until September to finally get all the paper work together to join the Y?  It has been one of the most liberating, fun and affordable things I have done this year.  This morning on my way to yoga class Ivory gave me a hug and a kiss and Sylvan opened the gate into the drop off center by himself, turned to me and waved me good bye with a big smile on his face.  It made my heart melt. I had to take a moment to proudly observe just how big a...

Many, many months ago I ran across this image on Pinterest: Keepsake Hug Pillow "This is a great gift idea for grandparents", I thought to myself and I dutifully pinned it onto my craft ideas  board. Perfect, because it can involve our entire family, because I have a giant stash of fabric and perfect because the final gift folds in a small envelope I can ship across the country. I don't however have a fancy sewing machine that would make nice neat letters and numbers, and as time went by I kept coming up with new ways to design our hand print pillows.     We traced our hands onto a thick cardboard folder.  I cut them out and then traced them onto Wunder Under.  Ivory pealed he paper backing off of the fabric hand prints and I ironed them into place.  While I sewed one, Sylvan paraded the other two around the house.  Each of our hands a single petal of a flower. Red, orange and yellow thread added a little detail.  And...