Apron Challenge

I love aprons. You can't have too many of them. The collection I have is special to me and I can tell you when I got each of them, who they came from and where I was in life when I got them.
Aprons are so symbolic. They are the official uniform of mothers. They represent our stand to serve and protect our families. I am afraid I do get a little emotional when I think about them. Most of my happiest childhood memories involve someone in an apron. My mother used to make aprons for each of her married daughters and daughters-in-law for Christmas. She quit the tradition before I got married but I did manage to get 2 of them and they are my favorites. I intend to copy them sometime.
In my rambling searching of the Internet I found Tie on and loved the idea. I don't know if I will follow her challenge but the thought of making a new apron for myself or for loved ones just thrilled me. SOOOOoooo. This year, 2007, I have set the goal to make a new apron every month and post the pattern or tutorial here so that others can make them if they like. I love finding patterns that only need directions and no pattern pieces so we will see what we can do. I don't want to have to go out and buy someones pattern and don't want to make anyone else do that either.
I was working on this when the power blinked out over a week ago with the Great Freeze of 2007 here in SW Missouri. I was just up loading my pictures when the power went out and we were thrust into the dark and sub freezing temperatures of the worst Ice Storm we have had for about 20 years. I will post about that next. :o)

We Survived

We survived the terrible ice storm of January 2007.
Friday the 12th it started to rain and then to sleet. I ran out and did my shopping and left Bryan with the babies, Hannah 4 and Jeddie 14 mos. and with the kids I was babysitting, (Ana 4, Gwenny 2, Tata 14 mos, Ryu 5, and Toshi 3). The stores were packed. It took me 2 hours to get my shopping done and get back home. Bryan was banging his head on the wall when I got back and said "NEVER AGAIN". I thought that it was funny that I function under conditions like that all the time and it isn't ever considered something special. Interesting. :o)
The ice storm hit hard and fast. The power started to flicker by 7 p.m. and went out. It was so bad the Bryan opted not to go into town to work and I am so glad that he didn't. We we woke up in the morning there was an inch of ice on everything.

It was so beautiful in the morning but got scary fast when the house started getting colder and colder.
All night we could hear creaking and groaning of all the trees in our woods. Every now and then you would hear a loud crack and then the crashing of the trees as they fell. That went on for days. I got hit in the shoulder by a small branch at my mom's house next door and it hurt pretty bad. The ice made that small branch pretty heavy. We lost 4 trees in our yard. My mom and dad lost several. We were all very lucky that none of them fell on our houses.
Here are some more pictures from our yard.

This is after the first morning. The second day it was twice as thick.

Do you know how long it takes to dry cloths by a fire?
24 hours. Jeddie wears cloth diapers and goes through about 5-6 per day. I had to hand wash them and hang them to dry at my mom's house by her wood stove. That got old fast. I love my cloth diapers but not that much. By day 3, Bryan was able to make it back into town to work and brought me back a package of disposable diapers. I was very thankful.
Day 1 we just sat around eating and expecting the power to come back on any time. By the second day it started to sink in that we might be in trouble. Bryan worked all day getting things going for me and getting the cars open. He drove down our dirt road and discovered how much trouble we and our neighbors were in. The transformer at the pole at the end of our road was sideways and there were 2 poles on the ground and our electric lines were in the road. The power wasn't coming on anytime soon. When he finally made it into town he said it looked like a bomb had gone off and flattened most of the countryside. There were hundreds of trees down and many poles. He came home so depressed. The reports first came that we wouldn't get power for 4-5 days, then a week, then weeks to a month. I felt like crying. It was SO cold. The day temps by Monday were in the high teens and at night it was almost down to Zero. I had to fight to keep my family safe and warm. Our home is all electric so we had no lights, no heat and no water. We needed a plan.
Bryan went right out and got started working on heat. He scavenged cinder blocks from around our place and build me a make shift fireplace on our front porch.

I put a grate in there and was able to heat water all day long. I put that hot water in the sinks in the kitchen for washing dishes and it helped heat the rooms up just a little. It also worked well to boiled soup on.
You can see wood all around the fire place. That is frozen wood from my yard that Bryan cut up for me that I am thawing by the fire so I can burn it the next day. That was an all day job.
I also got out or BBQ grill and used that too cook meals. It was slow but it worked. I never did get a boil off it but the pancakes were great! So was the bacon.

Here I was making hot cocoa. We drank a lot of that during the week.
Here's the recipe:
Hot cocoa
1/2 cup sugar
1/4 cup cocoa powder
a pinch of salt
1/3 cup water
Boil this together and add:
4-5 cups milk
1 tsp. vanilla
What helped us survive this was Water. You don't realize just how much you depend on it until you can't get any. For Several years Bryan and I have been storing water in our food storage. We are told to have 72 hours water per family member and we had just that. We have been filling bleach bottles with water as we empty them and gallon juice bottles too. These are not drinkable but they will do for washing and flushing toilets. A MUST!

Good friends came to our aid with the water. My father -in-law let Bryan stop by and helped him re-fill jugs while the water supply lasted in Neosho. Their water mains burst and they were without water for a couple of days. Our friends Dan and Brenda showed up with BBQ, soup and water for us and our animals. We can't thank them enough! Another friend Diana invited us to come and refill during the week too as she had water but still no power. One friend had power through the whole thing and she, Jill, invited me and the kids to come and clean up and do a load of wash on Thursday. It was so wonderful to feel clean again. Good friends really came to our aid and touched me with their kindness. My best friend, Vea, called several times and kept my spirits up and got hold of her brother David and had him bring us a propane camp stove. This was so wonderful. I could cook indoors (for limited times due to carbon monoxide worries) and heat the house a little at the same time. That was wonderful.
On Day 5 we got hold of some extra batteries that just happened to fit the CD player. We were able to hook up the mp3 player to that and listen to some of our favorite books on CD. It was so wonderful to have some technology back. The kids were so happy to listen to their favorite stories at night.

My biggest worry was keeping Jeddie warm and safe. He started the whole ordeal with a cold. He is teething and getting in his molars and had a tough time with that. At night I could bundle him in close to me and hold him to keep him warm but during the day it was hard to keep him warm. I layered him in a turtleneck onsie, Sleeper PJ's, a fleece jacket and pants. I tried to keep a hat on him but he kept pulling it off and hiding it. I didn't give up but it was off more than it was on. He would sit with his sisters Sarah and Caroline while they read his favorite books. I wish I had taken a picture of that but missed it. Here he is reading with Sarah while eating some Fruit Loops that Dan and Brenda brought him. Notice the Fruit Loop book. That helped keep keep Sarah interested in what he was doing. :o)

To keep the kids warm at night I came up with a very clever idea. (or at least I thought so.) I remembered heating large round river rocks when I lived with my brother Joe and putting them in my bed at night during the cold Utah winter when I was going to college. I don't have nice round rocks here but I was able to find some old bricks in my mom's yard. I heated them each evening, wrapped them in old dish towels and placed them at the foot of the beds. I doubled kids up in the beds to try to conserve their body heat. I also found some old emergency reflector blankets and put them in their beds. This worked. The beds were warm when they got in and the bricks helped keep things warm from about 7:00 p.m. too 2:00 a.m. each night. By then their little bodies had generated enough heat to keep them warm till morning. I bundled them in as many quilts and wool blankets as I could get my hands on. I did the same on my bed. I was worried because Bryan works nights and I didn't know if I could keep Jeddie warm enough but with the bricks I did. I scorched my dishtowels though and will have to get some new ones. Oh well. We were warm and I didn't scorch the sheet or the kids. :o)
On Saturday Bryan met some line men in our road and talked to them and found out they were coming to fix our lines. He said if they did he would kiss them. They fixed our lines anyway. :o) I kissed Bryan instead. When the power finally came on again the kids all cheered and I just about cried. I felt so relieved. I realized just how strained I had been worrying all day and night that everyone was safe and warm. I feel sad though today, 3 days later as there are still many families in our area without power. It is still bitter cold outside and I wonder how they are making it. The ones that I know have access to heat and water. I am glad to hear that.
We learned several lessons this past week.
We are not prepared enough. You never know when it will be your turn to have trouble. When it hits, if you are prepared, you are much less scared.
The advice I would give to other is this:
1. Store water. You can't have too much of it. Others near you might need some too and it feels so wonderful to be together enough to actually help someone else in a crisis.
2. Have an alternate heat source and make sure it is safe. Make sure you have adequate blankets and clothing.
3. Store some quick fix food to take the stress off where easy.
I would recommend a 72 hour kit of food, clothing, water, and fuel.
4. Store extra candles, flashlights, and batteries. We found that candles do put out a few BTU's and that you can warm your hands by one. Also the highly scented container candle wax is great. We found that they burned much longer than the other candles and because they were in glass they gave better light. The glass amplified the light.
The list could go on and on. We are so thankful that we made it and that we have power now. We won't be taking that for granted again. Every flicker of the lights stops my heart. Bryan will also never complain about my storing water in odd jugs in weird places. It all came in handy. :O)

Pita Bread - Illustrated

I don't know if I have the patience or focus to do a real tutorial but I can illustrate some directions. :o) This is an adaptation of the Pita Bread recipe that my sister Mary gave me a while back. We love it and it is really good for you.

I bake this bread in very hot oven, 450* F. on a baking stone. I got mine when I was a Pampered Chef dealer. I highly recomend theirs. I love mine!

Pita Bread
2 3/4 cup warm water
1/3 cup olive oil
1/3 cup honey
2 tsp salt
2 Tbsp yeast
1/4 cup ground flaxseed
1/4 cup toasted wheat germ
6 to 8 cups whole wheat flour
Preheat the oven to 450 degres F. with your baking stone in there.

Mix the water, oil, honey, salt, yeast flaxseed, wheat germ and 3 cups whole wheat flour. This will be very soupy. Let it rise about 10 minutes. Add 3 cups of four and mix in well. If the dough seems really sicky then add more flour about 1/2 cup at a time. The dough is done when it starts to pull away from the sides of the bowl. You do want it a little sticky. Let the dough rise for about 1 hour or until doubled in size.
Quick lesson about wheat while you let that rise. The bran and germ of the wheat kernal take a long time to absorb water but when they do they really hold onto it. That is why they are so good for you. When making bread with them, they can play tricks on the begginer. If you kneed your flour until you have a nice tight dough and then let it rise, your beautiful dough will become stiff and hard and will make a very dense and dry loaf of bread. This isn't just what you are looking for. However, if you leave your dough just lightly sticky, as the dough rises the bran will contuinue to absorb water and your sticky dough will end up to be a very wonderful, elastic dough, making a beautiful loaf of bread. I have read somewehre that some people soak their wheat flour in their liquid the night before and add their yeast in the morning and a little extra flour to tighten the dough up. I haven't tried that yet but may try it. I think they skoaked their wheat in milk. Well back to the recipe.
Now that your dough has risen you need to divide it into 4 pieces to work with. Divide each of the 4 pieces into 8 balls of dough (one ball at a time).

Now take and work the balls of dough one at a time in plenty of flour. Like this.

Then roll out the dough into your pita shape. The thickness of your dough is up to you. I shoot for 1/4". Here is Hannah the Chief Pita roller at work. She is also explaining the process.

Next you want to put them in the oven on the baking stone. If you don't have one, you can use a cookie sheet but your results may varry.
Bake the pitas for 3 minutes on one side then flip them over and bake for 2 minutes on the other side. (I actually skip that and just do 5-6 minutes on one side only because I like having eyebrows).

When you take them out of the oven, wrap them in a dishtowel to keep the moisture in. This will help them keep soft while cooling off.

Hannah likes her's with fresh strawberry jam. I like mine with butter and honey.
For dinner on Monday, we had fresh pitas right from the oven with Garbonzo Bean Dip. Even Bryan likes this one and that is amazing.

Here is the recipe for that too.
Curried Garbonzo Bean Dip
2 - cans garbonzo beans - drained and rinsed
1/4 cup olive oil
2 Tbsp lemon juice
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp curry powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 cup chopped cilantro
In a food processor, blend everything except the cilantro until smooth. Add the chopped cilantro and blend until it is pretty unifor in texture.
Serve with Pita bread, pretzels, veggie sticks, crackers ..... etc.... . I love this in a veggie sandwitch with sliced cucumbers, peppers, lettuce, and avacado and if I have it I add a slice for fresh parmasean cheese.
Also, if you don't have cilantro or if you are like me and think it tastes like dish soap, you can use parsley. Bryan in now a cilantro nut so I add it and hide the fact that it has curry because he HATES curry in all forms. It has enough other flavor (namely curry) which hide the cilantro enough for me that it doesn't bother me in this recipe.

A New Friend

I had to make another one! I can't get enough of monkeys right now. I want to play and play and play with them. All my kids want me to make them one. I love the idea of playing with different materials. I even have other animals popping into my head.

This big red guy is made out of polar fleece and is so soft and cuddly. He was so much easier to sew up because the fleece gives so much better when you sew it than the heavy cotton I made the purple one out of.

I do love them both. So do JEB and Hannah. Hannah had them talking to each other and played so many grand games with them today. She says they need baby monkeys though. I will have to see what I can do. :o)

Not So Sock Monkey

I made a monkey. A "Not So" Sock Monkey.

I do have a pair of sock monkey socks BUT I am chicken to cut into them. I saw a cloth sock monkey somewhere and loved it. Please be kind when you see her original compared to my poor little monkey.
I made him with Hannah in mind but Jeddie was the only one awake when I finished it. He was crying most broken heartedly and was very taken by the purple monkey. You can still see little tears in his eyes. He needed a snuggle with his mum and his monkey.

Here are some more of JEB's "Love a Monkey" If we say that to him he will grab it and hug it.


All the kids love the monkey and want me to make them each one. They like the possibilities for tie-dye color combos. I dyed the fabric to make him.

Homeschooling Jump

My husband and I took the homeschooling jump this week and took our oldest son out of the public school system. Our two oldest daughters are still in public school. Our son just needed some time at home were there are less distractions. He is very bright and rather ADD and works very well one on one.
We had fun today working out our schedule and starting in on our "class work".
I have searched the Internet for months, trying to find information on homeschooling and curriculum and have been very frustrated. I have a degree in early childhood and elementary education (don't ever look at my spelling though) so I have never doubted my teaching ability. I just don't trust my self discipline to keep up with a program.
In searching the web I found it frustrating that I couldn't find what I wanted. The curriculum's were either incredibly expensive or so far off the deep end that there wasn't much usable info in them. I know there must be good programs out there but they really are hard to find and you have to take their word for it. I also found that the religious based curriculum, while doing a pretty good job of teaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ to the children, they were very soft on other subject matter. I already work on teaching my children the Gospel, I want help in teaching math, reading, social studies, and science.
I got some good advice from my mom. She told me to go talk to the principal so I did. I am so glad that I did. I called her in advance and let her know what my plan was and that I wanted to come in and talk to her. That gave her time to collect her ideas and be prepared to give me ideas. When I got there, she had gathered all of my son's text books together and and gone into her own resources and found some others that are really fantastic. She let me check these out for the remainder of the year. She also let me know that he is welcome to come back to the school for special classes if we want to, such as art, PE, music, library and computers. He can also attend the after school program which is a lot of fun.
I felt so much better about things after talking to her. I am a little ADD myself and get overwhelmed when faced with too many things to think about and decide all at once. Now I have a plan that we can follow and can deviate from without upsetting the apple cart. He can work on special projects as the mood strikes which is something you need to be able to do with and ADD child. They have an incredible ability to hyper-focus on things that interest them which is to your advantage if you can direct it and help them harness that drive.
We are so excited. He has already found a pet project. I will have to post more about that as it develops. I might have to let him create his own Homeschooling Blog about his adventures and his conservationist projects.
I hope I am not just typing this to fill space out there in cyberspace and that someone can actually get some ideas from this. I started the week feeling good about this decision but very stressed. Now I feel good about the decision and very excited about the plan that we have to accomplish it. I think the whole having a plan thing is what is going to help me.
This homeschooling thing is forcing me to organize a few pockets of my chaos that I call a life and home.
One of my son's great comments today was that now he gets an afternoon recess EVERY day. The poor kid has been missing them for several years because he had detention for behavior (talks way too much) or because he hadn't finished is work (couldn't stand another worksheet).
Well that was long but it has been an eternity of a week here at our house.
I am excited to be looking at the start of a new week soon with so many new projects to get into.

Baby Shoes

I did it! I did it!
I have loved the leather baby shoes I have seen all over the interenet but they are so expensive.
Alisa told me about stardust shoes and I love them. I downloaded her insteructions and made my baby some really great shoes.
I used the very last scraps of his big brother's dinosaur fabric. This is a great way to showcase your favorite novelty prints.

Here is the link to the blog with directions to make your own.
http://stardustshoes.blogspot.com/2006/10/cloth-shoe-pattern.html

Here is a pair I made for my niece Claire.

I love the sock monkey fabric out there. Bryan just found some in Yellow. I am going to have to get some of that!

Uh-Oh

Jeddie said his first recognizable word this week Uh-Oh. He pulled the lid off a babyfood container and looked up at me and said Uh-Oh with a very surprised look on his face. He talks a lot and is the Jabber King. It was fun to recognize something he was saying. He is such a cute little bug.

Grandma Wood's Brownies

These are a classic. This is the quick dessert my mom always makes when a crowd is coming. It is comfort food for all of us adults when we get together and remember good times with mom. It is a simple recipe and requires no frosting. That was the rule as children. NO FROSTING. Now we can't think of putting the stuff on it now. They are perfect the way they are.
Here is a photo of one that Hannah did frost :o) after doing her self portrait. It looks like mustard on top.

(yes I let her break our hard fast rule)
Grandma Wood's Brownies
In a Mixer beat well:
3 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/2 cup melted butter
1/2 tsp vanilla

Sift, add, and mix well:
3/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tap baking powder
1/3 cup cocoa powder
(you can use 2 squares baker's chocolate instead of the cocoa powder - if you do, melt it with the butter)
1 cup chopped walnuts (in really big pieces)

Pour into a buttered 9x13 cake pan. Bake at 350*F for 20 minutes or until done. (you can tell they are done if you touch the center and it springs back)

These are great served warm with vanilla ice cream. They are best after they are cooled off served with a glass of cold milk.

Hannah in Frosting

Today is my niece Rebecca's Birthday. To celebrate, I helped her children make a birthday cake for her. Of course my daughter Hannah helped. After they left with their cake, Hannah was very dissapointed that the whole cake left with them. She took herself to the kitchen where she found the leftover yellow frosting and as she didn't have a cake of her own to frost, she frosted herslef on a plate.
Here is her "sweet" self portrait and her first atempt at cake frosting.

I think I will have her frost all the cakes from now on. Her humble creations are always better than my grand attempts.

Hot Rolls

My sister-in-law, Holly, visited this week from California and she brought the most wonderful rolls ever! She was kind enough to share the recipe with me.

Here is the recipe:

Mix 1/2 cup warm water with 2 tbsp. yeast and 2 tbsp. sugar. Let this sit for 15 min.

Mix and beat well:

1 cup hot water

1/2 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp salt

1/2 cup melted butter

3 large eggs

1/4 cup toasted wheat germ (optional)

Add the yeast mixture and blend well.

Add 1-2 cups whole wheat flour and 3-4 cups unbleached white flour. (you want a total of 5-6 cups of flour). The dough will be a little sticky and soft.

Cover and let rise in a warm place for 40 min. Punch down the dough and divide into four sections. Take each section and roll it out on a floured surface to about 1/4 inch thickness in a nice circle shape. Brush the surface with melted butter. (you will need a whole stick of butter to finish the recipe.)

Cut the dough circles into 8 pie pieces with a pizza cutter or a knife. Roll up the wedges starting at the fat end and roll them up like a cresant roll. Cover the rolls and let rise in a warm place for 40 minutes.

Bake the rolls at 375 deg. F. for 15 minutes, or until light brown.

Brush the rolls with melted butter when they come out of the oven.

These are SO good. You will love them.

My Post Card

I finally tried it! I made a fabric post card! It was so much fun. Our quilt guild had a color challenge. We each drew a color out of a pot and then drew a color scheme out of another pot. I picked out Yellow Green and my color scheme was analogous, so my colors were yellow green, green, blue green, and blue. I was so lucky. That was no challenge. I had fun just playing with fabric for weeks. The challenge was choosing something to make. The rules were that we had to use our colors and we could add black, white or gray (neutrals). We had 3 months to do the challenge and of course I waited till the last week to do it! We could make anything we wanted. It didn't have to be a quilt. I did find a quilt called onion rings that I wanted to make in those colors but due to the time crunch I came up with something better. I sat down at 10:00 p.m. and by 11:00 p.m. I had a quilt pieced, quilted and bound. I was so proud. It was only 4"x6" though. :o) My son Joe is into drawing fish so I had him draw me some fish and I chose one I could do and made this post card. I love it! I won't put my bad instructions here but follow the like I put in there and get her instructions. They are awesome. Very well put together.

Here is the back of the post card.

Red Shoe Ramblings: How To Make A Fabric Postcard DebR Style

Red Shoe Ramblings: How To Make A Fabric Postcard DebR Style

Halloween Early

We live out in the country so trick-or-treating isn't really very do-able. As a result, I am afraid that we tend to over do it for the kids for Halloween. The school has a party day, the PTO has a festival, the High School provides a safe spot, the church group get together and have a dinner and a trunk-or-treat, and the communities near by have several Halloween parties going on. I used to feel bad that the kids didn't get to do the whole trick-or-treating thing like I did as a kid but have found that they make off with a bigger haul than my husband or I ever did. LOL! I do try to limit what they get and usually end of thowing away a lot of it. I also funnel a lot of it into the treat box for good behavior and special jobs.
I do try to make the kids fun costumes each year. This year, with the help of my friend Michelle, I made some really beautiful costumes for my girls. They are all Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit fans. My oldest wanted to be Aowen from Rohan and the other two wanted to be Hobbits. The costumes were really fun to make and I saved us big bucks. Each costume would have cost me $125 if I hadn't made them myself. They were really fun to do. They are very excited about wearing them to their class parties.


I am glad I won't have to be sewing anyone into their costumes right before the party.