penny carnival

Back to reality

Good golly. I can't believe more than two weeks have passed since I last posted something here. I think that's a record. Not a Michael Phelps sort of record (as in, yea! good for him!). A Takeru Kobayashi sort of record (as in, UGH!).

We got back to town last night after two weeks of laughing and eating waaaaay too much food with the Italian side of the family across the state. It was a great trip, but we all were happy to sleep in our own beds last night. 

Before I had kids, I had a healthy case of wanderlust. I wasn't a frequent flier by any means, but I've been to Costa Rica and Italy and I tended to move every couple of years. If I wasn't hopping cities (Portland, Ore., Boston, Mass., Spokane), I was moving to a different apartment across town. I loved change.

I still do, but ever since the babies came along I've had little desire to travel far and wide. Now I crave routine and simplicity and it might be to a fault.

The kids do great when we travel. Even on the six-hour drive home yesterday, they were fantastic, with Bo making up stories about princesses and her dead dog Cronkite (r.i.p., sweet doggie) in my car and Magpie reciting every word she knows in J's car (J had to work so he couldn't stay as long as we did).

The first couple of nights in a new bed are always a bit rocky, but any battles at bedtime are usually more my fault than theirs (i.e., trying to get them down at our regular times rather than easing up a bit). 

Going away is always worth it, but our itinerary here at home today reinforced my love of our quiet little lifestyle in Spokane.

On our agenda today:

-Run through the sprinkler (I felt a bit guilty after just visiting a town with watering restrictions, but it's super hot here right now so it was either crank up the A/C and stay inside or hose off the kids on the lawn).

-Hang wet clothes on the clothesline. The girls can't get enough of this.

-Do "magic" tricks, i.e., put a wine cork under a cup, shuffle the cup around with two other cups, make the kids guess which cup holds the cork. More endless fun.

-Make edible play dough (1 part honey, two parts peanut butter, 3 parts powdered sugar), cut out cookie shapes, bake it at 200 for a long time. This last one is doing nothing for my attempts at weight loss (I'm eyeing the leftover "cookies" across the kitchen right now), but as you can see the girls were captivated:

I didn't get a good shot of this, but is there anything better than seeing your child wearing your Nana's old aprons?

The day wasn't perfect. At one point, I had to put Bo's toys in time out. ALL of her toys. Seriously. But setting boundaries is just part of our routine, too. Besides, it took her all of 30 seconds to turn a washcloth, a baby blanket and her little sister into toys that weren't off limits. I don't know what that says about my attempt at discipline, but by that point I sort of forgot why she was in trouble.

Lots of crafting is on the horizon. I've sold a couple more book slings, so I'll be putting those together this week. And more inquiries are coming in!

Meg McElwee over at Sew Liberated has approved me to make and sell her Emmeline aprons, so I'm going to fill my Etsy shop with those as soon as I get through some other deadlines. Thanks again for everyone's encouragement on that!

And later in August I'm running a "make-and-take" craft booth at a local county fair (it's part of my role with the newspaper's Down to Earth blog). I'll be sure to share the four projects I'm doing with folks here.

Busy, but fun. Simple, but fulfilling.

Hope you all are well, too.

Vintage toys, a country wedding and more farm charm

Is this the summer of the hoedown or what? I hope you guys aren't getting sick of my photos of country chic, but I can't seem to help myself. I keep going to these vintage barn bazaars and find myself leaving totally inspired.

This weekend was the Vintage Barn antique show in Rathdrum, Idaho. 51 vendors, home-baked goodness by women from a nearby Mennonite community, and live bluegrass music. This was the scene:

I thought this would make a great lemonade stand for the girls, but for $300+ I decided we'd stick with the card table for now:

Can you imagine the hours that went into this?

More tartan! This time plates:

Bo contemplates the "naughty chair." I'm not sure today's child psychologists would recommend this.

Wee! No buckles! No straps! A handle that can become dislodged and used as a weapon. 

Pretty paper flowers made from pages of vintage books, I assume:

I loved the sea of blues and greens in this booth by Wild Whimsy (photo above, too):

Given that my blog is named Penny Carnival, I couldn't resist bringing home this toy for $5:

Can you see the grumpy look on the Ferris Wheel operator's face? I love it. It's like me at the sewing machine when I need to use the seam ripper. Grrrr ... 

The girls each chose a vintage toy, too--a dog on wheels for Bo and a helicopter on a string for Magpie. Bo named her dog "Flower" and insisted we build her a dog house this morning.

There's something about painting 3-dimensional surfaces that thrills my children to no end:

That's why I rarely recycle cardboard boxes and I keep the hot-glue gun handy at all times.

Does anyone else buy their kids secondhand toys? The girls chose these vintage ones on their own, but on birthdays and at Christmastime, I always throw some garage sale finds into the mix. Just today, I heard a funny story about an old friend whose dad always bought his kids stuff from garage sales for gifts. So they'd be putting together a puzzle and get to the end only to discover that four pieces were missing. And one Christmas two of the brothers got bicycles--one bicycle worked and one didn't. That cracked me up, but it caused one of the brothers to vow to always buy new toys for his kids. You can probably guess which brother.

In other news from the weekend, we attended our nephew's absolutely gorgeous wedding in the, you guessed it, country.

I don't know if Bo was more thrilled by the bride and groom's kiss at the altar or the horse-and-carriage rides:

This draping was inside the barn where dinner was served:

Outside the barn looking in:

Inside the barn looking out:

At the risk of sounding completely unappreciative for the lovely wedding J and I had 7 years ago ... um, can I have a do over, please?

I did do some sewing this weekend, but it just involved adding straps to an otherwise revealing strapless dress. I'd show you the before and after, but the before shots would make this an x-rated blog. Not that I actually took before shots like that.

We did manage to hang my hammock in the backyard after it spent, oh, 15 years in storage. Literally. I bought this hammock while studying abroad in Costa Rica in 1994, lugged it all the way home on the plane, and then never hung it. Leave it to my task-master husband to get it swinging. That guy can plow through a to-do list like nobody I know.

It's dreamy to relax in there under the cherry trees, callused feet and all (don't zoom in. you'll regret it. I've been running a lot).

Speaking of cherries, I'm overdosing. I need an intervention. I just filled a small baby bottle with pits while writing this post. 

They're. Just. So. Frickin'. Good. And. Sweet. 

I mostly just eat them as nature intended, but we had J's cousin over for dinner last night so I made this dessert:

Bo took her job of making it snow on the clafouti very seriously.

OK, so she went a little overboard. What can I say? The kid is used to living under 4 feet of the white stuff every winter.

Burger tasting

My mom hit the nail on the head the other day when she said, "the only things I crave during the summer are hamburgers, hotdogs and fruit."

Amen, Mama.

J and I are currently obsessed with Bobby Flay's recipe for Cuban burgers. We'd seen him make them on the Food Network time and again, and finally tried it ourselves last week when friends from Seattle visited. To say the least, they were a hit.

A key step in making the Cuban burger involves wrapping it in tin foil and smooshing it with a brick. The marriage between weight and heat result in one juicy, melty, messy little baby.

So J and I got to wondering about what other ingredients we could smoosh together with beef between two buns. 

Feta, mint and roasted red bell pepper? Check! 

Salami, mozarella, pesto and garlic mayonaisse? Check!

Chipotle mustard, pepper jack cheese and carmelized onions? Check!

There were a few other combinations, but those were the best. We dined under the cherry tree this afternoon while the girls napped. Corn on the cob was our palate cleanser, not to mention beer and mojitos. 

Our view:

Now if we could just get our own nap in before the girls wake up.

Neighborly love

I don't care if you live next to Fred Friggin' Rogers, nobody has better neighbors than us. 

We were a little gun shy on the neighbor thing when we first moved to this house two years ago. Without going into detail--because who knows who's reading this blog--we didn't have much luck picking good neighbors in the past. (Picture a cuckoo clock. See the crazy little bird that jumps out every hour on the hour? Now imagine living in the clock next door.)

So when S & G, the retired couple who lives across the street from us now, rolled out the welcome wagon two years ago, we hesitated to get to know them too well. 

Bo, however, did not. Thanks to her effervescent (read: pushy) personality, we had no choice but to become friends with S & G. At age 2, she would stand in our front window and scream S's name when she saw her, waving madly until S came over to say hi. 

And we now thank Bo every day for building that relationship.

S & G have helped us countless times, from snow blowing our driveway to lending us a car when ours didn't work to jump starting our car on more than one occasion to looking after our pooch (rest in peace, sweet Cronkite) while we were away. They call to let us know when we've left our garage door open at night. They bring the girls gifts from the far away places they visit.

One time we pulled up to our house and this sheep, plus two similar friends, were sticking out of the grass greeting us:

S used to own a bed and breakfast, and these were left over from the little shop she ran out of the house.

More than anything, though, they're just fantastic people. We tried once to thank one of their kind gestures with a gift certificate to a nearby restaurant. Instead of using it on themselves, they took us out to brunch with it and insisted on no thank-you gifts from then on.

Except cookies. G isn't afraid to hint that he has a sweet tooth, so if I'm making a batch, I double it whenever possible. 

Today, it was oatmeal M&M cookies. Peanut M&Ms, mind you. Try it. They're way better than when you use plain.

We had a few minutes, so I sewed an elasticized dish cover to go over the cookies. It's one of my favorite projects from the Farm Chicks' cooking and craft book. 

We've been spending more time in our front yard than our backyard lately. Not just because of S & G, although they're part of it. A family with two young boys just moved in next door, adding a lot of life to our street. It's sweet to see the four kids run back and forth between our two yards or cruise on their bikes and trikes around our circular driveway. The boys' mom keeps apologizing for her sons coming over so much, but I am honestly thrilled. The laughter. The shrieks. The conversations that start across the street or across a lawn until one neighbor or the other decides it'll be easier to talk in one driveway instead of from two.

It's how a neighborhood should sound.

Cookin' and bookin'

I'm almost four years into this parenting gig, and I still don't have a clue what I'm doing. Does anyone else feel this way sometimes? 

I guess I thought by now I'd kind of have things figured out. And, yes, there are days when I'm like, "Bring it on! Give me 10 more of these little muffins. I can take it." But a lot of the time I'm second guessing my decisions and thinking of better ways I could have handled a situation. In the meantime, another situation has presented itself, and I'm scrambling to do the right thing.

Don't get me wrong. Life is beautiful and all is well. I just never knew how much time would be dedicated to doing things that I hope will have a positive impact down the road without knowing for sure if they will. Parenting is the ultimate test of delayed gratification, I guess, especially when it comes to teaching values. How do I know if it's sinking in when we talk about kindness or taking care of the earth or each other? One minute, I think Bo is catching on. The next, she's bonking her sister over the head for taking a bite of her Cheerios. As if there aren't more Cheerios in the box. If there's one thing I've got, Kid, it's Cheerios.

At the same time, I'm bombarded with little moments of beauty and gratification all the time: Bo insisting on picking up litter and holding onto it until she finds a trash can (no matter how long that takes). Catching the girls giggling together without them knowing I'm there. The sweet touch of Magpie's hand when she strokes my shoulder from her perch in her backpack throughout an entire 3-mile walk.

One easy little thing we do--with an ulterior motive of instilling respect for nature--is to collect neat little bits from outside and display them on a "nature tray" on our dining room table. We go through phases where I'm more jazzed about doing this than the girls are. And then there are times when Bo is more than happy to rip a bunch of leaves off a tree and bring them inside for further inspection.

Right now, there's a pine cone, two sand dollars, and this in the tray:

What a great find over the weekend, huh? I admit I was a little scared a bee would coming crawling out of one of those hexagons, but it looks like the critters are long gone and now we're left behind with what I think is one of nature's really beautiful art installations. 

I once wrote an article about a man who brought all sorts of things from nature into his home. Mostly skulls, skeletons and big rocks. He had a display of about 15 different skulls of various animals, sitting from smallest (mouse) to biggest (I can't remember. A moose, maybe) in his entryway. In between there were things like raccoons and possums. That must sound really creepy, but believe me--it was lovely. And his four young children were very involved in finding treasures for the house--skulls and all.

FYI--Amanda Soule suggests creating a nature table in her book "The Creative Family." (By the way, can you hardly wait for this?)

Amanda is responsible for another project from our weekend--a photo memory book I made tonight for Bo. 

Bo's school is celebrating all the summer birthdays tomorrow and the parents usually bring in some sort of photo display of the kids' lives. I thought Bo would be excited to read a book about herself, so tomorrow's early birthday celebration was the perfect excuse to make one.

The photos are printed onto special fabric that runs through a regular computer printer. Packets of six sheets cost about $12 at JoAnn's--so use your 40 percent off coupon! I just used Word to arrange the pictures with some text about Bo's life. I wish I'd put more time into it. It truly was slopped together tonight. But I think Bo will like it just the same.

After printing on the special fabric, I cut around the photos and text and sewed them onto 8 x 12 pieces of fabric--all leftovers from dresses I've made Bo over the last four years--using a zigzag stitch. Then I sewed the 8 x 12 pieces to each other with a piece of flannel--taken from some of Bo's old receiving blankets--inside. I'm still trying to figure out how to bind the book since I've created quite a thick stack. For now, I just used three pieces of embroidery floss to connect all the "pages" by threading a needle and pushing the needle through all the thickness by hand, then tying it off. 

Ah! Update! It's 12:45 a.m. and Bo just woke up for a glass of water. She saw the book on the table and giggled her way through it. It's a hit.

Besides those two things, I wanted to share a new blog in my life. In Praise of Leftovers is written by Sarah Murphy-Kangas, a friend of mine from high school. I haven't seen Sarah in almost 20 years, but our moms bumped into each other recently and got to talking about their bloggin' daughters. 

Sarah's is a food blog, but--of course--it's a life blog, too. I think you'll enjoy her beautiful words and photography--not to mention the recipes. Tonight, I followed her instructions for a savory galette and it did not disappoint. What's a galette? Here's Sarah's definition:

A free-form tart. Roll out one disc of this easy dough, dump whatever you want in the middle (sweet or savory), fold the crust up around it, cook it for 30 minutes, be a goddess.

Here's my attempt at deification:

The clam-cakes diet

Somewhere in the description of this blog is something about food. Apparently when I started Penny Carnival I thought I was going to talk about food more often than I do.

I think what has happened along the way is that when I finally have a chance to make something good, we're all so hungry by the time it is ready that I consume it without taking a picture. The rest of the time, I'm eating not-so-good food. Like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. And the chocolate bunnies that my daughters sort of forgot about the day after Easter. Dipped in peanut butter.

Which leads me to my recent Googling for the word "diet." Maybe it was the finale of The Biggest Loser that inspired me. (Did anyone else watch it? I admit it--I teared up a few times.) I just feel really ready to get rid of the last 10 pounds of baby weight. My youngest is 19 months now. I think that means I no longer have an excuse to wear a skirted swimsuit this summer. 

So I was talking to my sister on the phone yesterday about the different options out there--Weight Watchers, Body for Life, etc.--everything that sort of sounds like torture when you're not all fired up to do it. 

And the little stinker goes and mentions that she's craving clam cakes. 

Clam cakes. Clam cakes. Suddenly all I can think about are clam cakes and Del's lemonade, two staples in the summertime diet of any respectable Rhode Islander (or honorary Rhode Islander, as my sister and I are).

New plan, I decide. Instead of Weight Watchers, I'm just going to eat whatever I want--just less of it.

Right. So today I made clam cakes. And proceeded to eat four of them. Big ones. Looks like I'm going to have to order a swimsuit from this company this year.

I thought I'd share the recipe in case anyone else is as psychologically weak as I am. And while I'm at it, I'm going to share my family's recipe for whoopie pies (we call them devil dogs) to really seal the deal. (Plus, Penny Carnival reader Robyn e-mailed wondering if I had a whoopie pie recipe the other day. I found it, Robyn!)

Clam Cakes

This is an abbreviated version of Emeril Lagasse's, based on the ingredients I had in the house and other tinkering. They turned out quite good!

2 1/4 cups fresh clams (I left mine whole, unlike Emeril, and I'd steamed them the night before with white wine, garlic and olive oil. They were leftovers from last night's dinner)

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

A smidge each of the following: paprika, garlic powder, black pepper, onion powder, cayenne pepper, oregano and thyme

1 egg, beaten

1/2 cup milk

1/2 cup clam juice (I used the juice from the leftover steamed clams)

1 clove minced garlic

Canola oil, for frying 

-Wash and steam the clams if you haven't already.

-In a large bowl, sift the flour, baking powder, salt and spices.

-Add the egg, milk, clam juice and garlic. Stir until you have a thick batter.

-Stir in the clams. 

-Heat oil in a frying pan.

-Drop the batter into the hot oil, about 2 tablespoons per clam cake. Leave plenty of room between the cakes and don't skimp on the oil. 

-Cooking, turning once, until golden brown (about four minutes per side).

-Remove with a slotted spoon and drain on paper towels.

-Emeril suggests serving the clam cakes with tartar sauce, but a squeeze of lemon juice is all I need.

Serve with something cold and summery, like beer or a mojito. I've been making virgin mojitos lately (lime juice, sugar, mint leaves, club soda). Nothing against rum. It's that I mostly just like the freshness of mojitos and at the rate I've been drinking them, I'd be an unfit mother if I included the alcohol. 

 

And now for the Whoopie Pies, a.k.a. Aunt Theresa's Devil Dogs

We make ours cute and small, so you can have, like, 10 of them, right? Right???!! I need help.

For the chocolate cake part:

1/2 cup shortening

1 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

2 cups flour

1/2 cup cocoa

pinch of salt

-Heat oven to 425 degrees.

-Beat sugar and shortening until creamy. Add egg and vanilla. 

-Sift dry ingredients in a separate bowl.

-Alternately add dry ingredients and milk, mixing until you achieve a thick batter.

-Drop by the teaspoonful onto an ungreased cookie sheet.

-Bake for five minutes. Let cool for a few minutes on the cookie sheet, then remove from sheet and let cool completely.

For the filling, I have two versions.

The real filling recipe:

In a saucepan, heat 2 1/2 tablespoons of flour and 1/2 cup of milk, stirring constantly until a thick paste forms. Turn off heat.

In a mixing bowl, cream 1/4 cup of shortening and 1/4 cup of butter.

Add 1/2 cup of sugar, a dash of salt, 1/2 teaspoon of vanilla and the flour/milk paste. Whip until fluffy.

The cheater's filling (still very tasty):

Beat 3/4 cup shortening, 1/2 cup butter, 3/4 cup powdered sugar and 1/2 cup marshmallow fluff until fluffy.

Once the chocolate cakes are completely (COMPLETELY!) cooled, sandwich a generous helping of the filling in between pairs. 

Eat. Die. Go to heaven.

Choosing fun

I wasn't going to write a post tonight. There wasn't anything particularly interesting about our day today. I sewed up a book sling for a new friend. (It was in exchange for a one-hour massage by her. How lucky am I??? Those of you who keep saying, "I wish I knew how to sew ..." Take a class! It pays off!). I did some meal planning (more on that topic one day soon). And I made pumpkin muffins with Magpie in the morning.

So who cares, right?

Well, I just came from Emily Chadwick's blog and she made me think today might be more significant than I thought. 

Instead of letting her two little ones get the best of her today, Emily turned a frustrating car ride into an adventure in rhubarb. Instead of just getting everyone home and making it through the day, she stopped at a farm stand near her house and let her kids see her go bonkers for the red veg. They brought some home, found a recipe to follow, and made something yummy together. You can read all about it here.

I try not to write much here about the tough days in parenting. We've all been there (right? please say I'm not the only one who loses my mind now and then). You don't need me rehashing a bad day and bringing everyone down. Unless, of course, it leads to a Penny Carnival group vacation to Canyon Ranch. Oh my--doesn't that sound nice right about now?

For whatever reason, I've had my fair share of rough patches in the last couple of weeks. I was kind of spiraling down into grumpy mommyhood until I snapped myself out of it the other day. I had to remind myself of something I fundamentally believe: with any relationship, the answer to challenges is more love, not less. (At least, that's what the Dixie Chicks tell me.) More kisses. More hugs. More compliments.

And more fun.

It's not fool proof, but so far this is what it has meant for us this week:

Fewer errands, more stops at the playground. Less cleaning, more dancing to ABBA songs. Later bedtimes (within reason). And more spontaneous tea parties at the fanciest hotel in town (the wait staff at our local landmark was more than happy to serve Shirley Temples in teacups the other day, and they didn't bat an eye at the eye shadow and blush smeared all over my daughters' faces). 

Today's fun? Bo and I decided to bake a cake, and baking a cake turned into throwing a small birthday party. But whose birthday was it today? I told her I'd look online. Jerry Seinfeld. She gave me a blank stare. So I suggested throwing a birthday for a thing instead of a person, like how about for our house? She had never heard anything so ridiculous. 

We looked around her room and settled on a character from a book. Little Red Riding Hood was the first thing she grabbed.

Is today really Little Red's birthday? I guess that depends. If one person in the universe believes it is, doesn't that make it so?

Here's to choosing fun. Here's to rhubarb!

Easter craft roundup

We are a bit behind on the Easter crafting this year, but here's a roundup of links I wrote for my other blog if you're looking for some great ideas. These fabric eggs from Retro Mama are one of my favorites:

Not that we're not crafting at all. Bo's latest obsession is mail. Letters. Envelopes. Stamps. Mailboxes. So today we followed these instructions to make a mailbox for Magpie while she napped.

Ours doesn't look quite as polished as the one pictured there, but Bo was thrilled to "write" her sister a letter and leave it in the box for her. A long time ago I thought of buying both girls a secondhand mailbox, letting them paint them and then attaching them to their bedroom walls somehow for sisterly correspondence. But our Quaker Oats mailbox will do just fine for now.