Busy Hands Homestead

     I pulled my nice set of prismacolor pencils out of their hiding place, stuck a few pieces of paper in a book and put it all into my purse waiting for an opportunity to sit alone and finish Adam's batch of home brew.      Every beer needs a label.      I was hoping for the magical double nap that would allow me to finish the sketch I had started a few days ago.  I loaded the kids into the stroller and set off.  The double nap remained illusive.  After walking for a hour and detouring to the Children's Museum for a few more hours, I finally called Adam to come get the two of them and give me the chance to, well, do what I needed to do.      I almost forgot that I like to draw.        After much deliberation and a few starts I decided to call the beer Break of Day IPA.  The morning star is still bright in the sky, but the dark of night is fading away and a track of hoof prints ...

      Before we had children, we managed to fit both of our families into our Christmas routine: Christmas eve with his folks, Christmas morning with mine. The first Christmas we had Ivory, I refused to drive anywhere, and everyone came to us. The second Christmas we lived thousands of miles away from any family and for the very fist time we were on our own Christmas morning. We are about to celebrate our third Christmas away from our families and there are a few traditions that we have brought with us and some that we are cultivating on our own.      Adam plays a Christmas eve morning game of phone tag with parents, siblings, aunts and cousins that I simply roll my eyes at, and I bake a giant wreath of cardamon bread that was a staple during my childhood holidays. Every Christmas since Ivory was born, we have woken to the smell of cinnamon and apples and then have opened presents with steaming cup of coffee and a bowls of Christ...

Last year, we woke to a winter wonderland on Thanksgiving morning, bundled up and followed converging sled tracks to the site of what will hopefully become a longstanding neighborhood tradition: pie breakfast.  Slices of sweet and savory pies, mimosas and fresh espressos disappeared as quickly as the time and we all had to rush home to cook for dinner. This year, we woke with equal excitement and trotted across the still bare ground to the second pie breakfast and our second thanksgiving far from home. Cradled in my arms was a pie baked on the inspiration of a faint child hood memory. Shortly after we moved to the United States, my grandmother took me to the Philbrook Museum of Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I sat across from her scanning the menu for a compilation of words that I recognized, trying desperately not to let her know that most of what was written was almost illegible to me. There, I spotted something I knew:  Brie. And that was the dish...

Five years ago I purchased two giant boxes, one silver the other red, of those glass globe tree decorations during an after Christmas sale. They are ridiculously bulky boxes that I have lunged around move after move all the way across the country. This obvious reminder of my pre-baby days, combined with an array of ribbons, fronds of beads (for a lack of a better description) and bouquets of paper poinsettia flowers adorned a tree the next Christmas that Martha Stewart herself would have been proud of. Even though it was the first time I used those decorations I was already aware of the folly of my choice as my baby bump was steadily growing underneath my clothing. “Next year”, I thought, “ I will have a six month old.” This year I will have a three year old and ten month old at Christmas time. A ten month old that is much more into everything than his older sister was. This year, I am leaving those silly red and silver globes in their bulky boxes and making my own out of p...

Yesterday afternoon Ivory and I rolled up our sleeves to scoop whole wheat flour and yeast. It seems like forever since the two of us have tackled a project together. She is now going to school in the mornings and on her days off, I have been sending her and Adam out to play together so that I can spend a few hours behind the sewing machine without distraction. The ground is covered with snow, Adam has taken the car to go hunting for the weekend and Sylvan was asleep, so rather than Ivory's usual lunch and nap routine, I decided that she and I needed to bake ourselves a treat: Pretzels. She has been begging for pretzels, and while I know she means the small crunchy kind that comes out of a puffed up bag, I thought that this might just do the trick. I dug through my cook books, surprised that my giant bread book lacked the word pretzel in the index and finally stumbled on a super simple recipe tucked in the pages of the information packed book Super Baby Food by Ruth Y...