Busy Hands Homestead

I have been wanting to make homemade pop-tarts for what seems like an eternity. There is nothing like being confined by freezing wind and driving snow to bring out the baker in me.  "Lets warm up the kitchen and make pop-tarts." To this Ivory promptly responded: "What are pop-tarts?" To this moment it had never occurred to me that she has not experienced a pop-tart, which means that I have no pressure to meet the expectations set by the pop-tarts sold on grocery store shelves. So we started mixing, rolling and cutting. We spread filling into the center of the hears: strawberry butter I canned last summer, slowly caramelized apples that were a bit mealy for eating out of hand and finally a dark purple plum butter that is a reminder of the last warm sunny days of fall.    While snow piled up outside, we ate warm pop-tarts with a side of scrambled eggs and a good strong cup of coffee for breakfast.  It was delicious. To be honest, I don't ...

The raindrops are hanging from the flower buds on the maple tree. The snow is still collected in patches on the mountains that are disappearing into the clouds. Suddenly the chill of winter is gone and the promise of a new season is everywhere. Remember when our entire world covered in snow? When we spent the after school afternoons sledding? Was it really just last weekend that temperatures dipped low?  That schools shut down and traffic was suspended? That wind made our floors creak and blew snow into the cracks of our home? A winter storm, fierce and quick, that moved mountains, changed lives and made us hold our loved ones just a little tighter.  A feat of weather that magnified fears as well as joys. A winter storm that changed the parameters of our yard into a winter wonderland, leaving in its wake giant drifts needing to be dug, explored and conquered  We dug trails and a snow cave, shaped slides and benche...

Our snowman is buried in a fresh layer of snow.  The view from our neighborhood sledding hill.  Adam and Sylvan heading down the hill.  Going, going... ... gone.  Snow ice cream in front of the furnace.  After our fingers and toes warmed up, we got an early start on valentines for Ivory's class mates.  Heart shaped bird seed cakes, ready to be hung in branches, on porches or in front of windows. Our Sunday in Snapshots. 

Last Friday afternoon we piled into our car, yes even the dogs, for a spontaneous trip with a friend and her family to Polebridge, Montana.  Well, we never quite reached Polebridge.  Just two miles shy of the town, we pulled our chain clad tiny car between to giant banks of snow and waded through fluffy white to the front door of a cabin.   For a time that seemed to stretch longer than the day and a half we actually were there, we stared out of windows catching glimpses of the impressive, towering peaks of Glacier National Park.  We tucked our toes in warm downy slippers, sipped coffee and hot chocolate and spent just enough time sledding, snowshoeing, tobogganing, and riding through the snow on a snowmobile to warrant early bedtimes for everyone underneath layers of blankets.   It was solidly winter; full of winter fun.   Not until breakfast with four bright eyed children did we discover we had forgotten milk.  Between the...

Sylvan is sitting at the dinner table.  His fork in his fist, the prongs sticking strait up.  "I thankful," he is not quite shouting. "I thankful. I thankful. I thankful." "Well, I am thankful... ", Ivory begins. "NO NO NO NO NO NO. I thankful", Sylvan shouts across the table at her. "I thankful." "Hold on Ivory.  I think Sylvan is trying to tell us what he is thankful for." Usually Ivory decides what Sylvan is thankful for.  It is most often the food we are eating or something exciting we did that day while Sylvan stands on his chair at the dinner table turning in circles singing: "Thankful, thankful, thankful."  I usually am poised at the edge of my seat, waiting for the moment that his thankful dance takes him over the edge of his chair.  (Thankfully, that has not happened yet.)  But today it seems he wants to speak for himself. I thankful is followed by a string of sounds, very serious sounds, and I take his...

Sylvan asleep, the dishes washed, dinner started and I sit down to sew a few buttons onto a cute cardigan Ivory was handed down from a friend.  She impatient, waiting for a friend to arrive and share dinner with us, utters those three words that parents dread: " I am bored." I pour a rainbow of buttons into a cake pan: "Can you find five buttons that are the same and match your red and grey and black sweater?".  Much too soon she gathers a little cluster of grey buttons and stacks of large, medium and small buttons are marching across the table.  Mom: "I am bored."  I stare at the table for a moment, set down the needle and thread, put aside my hopes of quickly fixing this silly cardigan and instead dig through my craft supplies to find that roll of floral wire I know is hiding somewhere in one of my drawers. Success. For an hour she is concentrating, silently stringing her stacks of buttons onto the wires - small, medium and large.  She hands the thr...

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...

There are moments when time morphs.   It takes on a different dimension for a minute, an hour, an entire morning.  We awoke Saturday to a bright white world of snow.  I pulled the red currant danishes out of the freezer.  I had been saving them, much to my husband's dismay, for a morning just like this.  They were sweet and tart and the summer sun warmed the back of neck as we gazed out of our dining room windows. We pulled on wool socks, snow pants, boots, coats, gloves and hats.  The kids and I stepped outside - Where was that sled again?  We stomped around the yard, poking the shovel into snow piles only to find a piece of wood or nothing again and again.  I had seen it not too long ago, when Sylvan was sitting in it, pretending to be in a boat.  I finally discovered it leaning up against a raised garden bed, hidden under the snow. Now we were finally ready to go. I ran down the street, dragging the sled behind, ...