Catching Up: Craft Fair

Our small town holds an annual Fall Festival every first Saturday in October. The whole town is decked out with fabulous fall displays and there is music, food, hayrides, pony rides, and an ever growing arts & crafts fair. This year Dutch Girl Originals participated in the craft fair for the first time ever.

Of course, as soon as I signed up for the fair, I was offered a job. I briefly contemplated cancelling, but I really didn’t want to. I decided to go for a smaller booth instead. So I worked my butt off at night getting ready for the fair while working a regular job during the day. It was a little stressful but I am so glad I did.

The first sale of the day went to Lola. She had worked hard on making drawings and cuttings and sold them on the side. I did okay for a first timer. My big seller were the owl pillows. It quickly became obvious people were not yet ready to start thinking about Christmas. A glance at the ornaments was the best I got.

The wonderful garland display did not attract as much attention as I had hoped. Ryan built it by mounting two thin poplar trees cut from my parents-in-law’s yard, not for this purpose though, in Christmas tree stands. I strung the garlands in between the posts but they didn’t show up very well against the park back drop. A white wall would have been better.

It was cold though. So cold. We kept it dry for most of the day but did see a little bit of snow (!) come down, smudging every single one of my tags. I should have listened to Ryan who suggested laminating them. Every now and then my mother-in-law would walk down, my booth was just down the road, to allow me to warm up inside.

Despite the cold, I had a blast. I am already looking forward to next year. Now I need to get my Etsy shop ready for the holidays. After I finish Lola’s Halloween costume, that is. A crafter’s work is never done.

Domestic Diva And Saver Of The Planet

A while ago, probably over a year by now, I read a post on the blog Thy Hand Hath Provided on how to make your own liquid laundry soap. I very much liked that idea. It's easy, cheap, and chemical free. I love projects that are kind to the environment as well as my wallet.

I bought a bar of Fels-Naptha soap, a box of borax, and a box of washing soda and set out to make my first batch. Easy as pie. A little grating, a little stirring, and some patience was all it took to end up with five concentrated gallons of detergent. A lot of people seem to prefer powdered detergent but since my washer and dryer are located in a rather damp basement, that is not an option for us. I added about twenty drops of lavender essential oil to make it smell nice(r).

So far, I am really happy with my soap. It works great. I use the same amount of detergent per load as I always have. The only thing I changed in my laundry routine is that I have started to add about 1/3 of a cup of borax to every load. We have very hard water and borax is said to help with softer water, nicer smelling laundry and better stain removal. It seems to do the trick.

To complete my transition to chemical free washing, I made my own dryer balls, too. These balls of tightly wound and felted wool yarn (from local sheep!) replace the need for fabric softener and dryer sheets. They work by tumbling around in your dryer and fluffing up your laundry, cutting down on dryer time, taking care of static cling, and smoothing out most wrinkles. They too can be made to smell nice with a few drops of essential oil.

Depending on the size of your dryer and the load of laundry, you need about three to six balls. If you have an extra large capacity dryer like I do, you might want to throw in a few more. The dryer balls will last you for many, many years. And all that time you're saving money on fabric softener and/or dryer sheets. And the planet thanks you, too.

Woman At Work

So I have been a bit of a slacker lately but only on the blogs, I promise. In fact, I have been hard at work for the past two months. It started with various projects for my husband’s employer that I was usually able to do from home. Slowly it progressed to a near full time job. And since the first of this month I happily commute to the UP every day. I do a little marketing, a little project management, and whatever else comes my way. It’s fun. Lola is back in day care and lovin’ it.

Of course, something’s gotta give, and that’s the blogs. I participated in my very first craft fair and was reasonably successful at it. (It was cold that day, though. It even snowed a little bit.) I try to keep a clean house and am reasonably successful at that, too. We purchased a dishwasher to assist with household tasks. It sits in our garage, patiently waiting to be installed. We want to tile the kitchen floor first. Makes sense, doesn’t it? And so I wait patiently as well.

Summer is officially over. It is full on fall here. I have seen some gorgeous colors come by on my commute but the rain and wind of the last few days have blown most leaves off their branches. We spent a couple of lovely weekends camping up in the UP on the Keweenaw Peninsula. We putzed around looking for property to realize our B&B dream on. We tried one on for size and squatted on the land for a night. Nice spot with a perfect view of Mount Bohemia.

Lola is back in school, a true kindergartner. She is learning to read and write. It’s fun hearing her sound out letters and watching her write them. She can almost count to a hundred now. No more skipping the number seventeen, and getting confused at twenty. Just like that, it clicked. She has been getting into a little bit of trouble every now and then, mostly for talking too much. But she genuinely seems to be enjoying school. She had enrolled in dance again and goes to girl scouts every other Monday.

That’s pretty much it, I think. You’re all caught up. I will try to upload some pictures this weekend to accompany the aforementioned events. But I am also working on Lola’s Halloween costume (she will be a mermaid this year), sewing a custom order for a client, and getting my Etsy shop ready for the upcoming holidays. So I can’t make any promises.

My Heart’s Desire And Homemade Bread

If you look deep into my heart, you’ll find a longing for simplicity. A desire to be part of the rhythm of the seasons. To grow my own food. Have chickens. Make my own clothes. Spend more time in nature. Teach my daughter about the birds and the bees in the literal sense of the word.

Some day I want to be free of worry. Worry about money, worry about bills, worry about a job, worry about the future, worry about my daughter watching too much Scooby Doo. My heart knows I should “Let go, and let God” but my brain puts up a powerful fight every time.

But until we have our own piece of land with our self built dream home that doubles as a Bed & Breakfast, I shall satisfy myself with little snippets of what’s to come. And so I grow corn, tomatoes, strawberries, and assorted peppers, make homemade toys, and occasionally bake my own bread.

I own a bread maker and love it. It’s so simple to throw in the ingredients and wait for the wonderful scent of fresh baked bread to fill the kitchen. The only thing I miss is a nice crust. And I don’t like the bulky machine on my kitchen counter so I put it away in the basement and then it’ll be months before I use it again.

But then I found the perfect recipe for crusty bread. It’s even simpler than using a bread maker. It does, however, require patience. This bread must rise for 12 to 18 hours. Plan ahead! Aside from patience, all you need is flour, salt, yeast, and water, and a Dutch oven or cast iron cooking pot with a lid that you can put in the oven.



Ingredients:

• 3 cups of unbleached all purpose flour
• 1 3/4 teaspoons of salt
• 1/2 teaspoon of yeast
• 1 1/2 cups of water

Recipe:
Pour flour, salt, and yeast into a large mixing bowl and whisk together. Add the water and mix it in until you have a nice sticky mess. Cover the bowl and let it sit on the counter for 12 to 18 hours. Do not refrigerate. The amount of dough should double in size.

Preheat your oven to 450 degrees. Once it’s hot enough, put your cooking pot in to preheat as well. Leave it in for about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, take you sticky dough out of the bowl and shape into a ball on a heavily floured surface. Cover and let it set until your pot has reached the right temperature.

Take your cooking pot out of the oven, it is now HOT!!!, and dump your loaf into it. No need to grease the pot. Put the lid back on and set it in the oven. After 30 minutes, take off the lid and let it brown for 15 minutes more. Take the pot out and let your loaf cool on a wire rack before slicing it up.



It is very tasty bread, and the crust is just right. If it weren’t such a pain to slice fresh baked bread, I would be in heaven. (I’ll just add a food slicer to my wish list.) I have yet to try making rye bread (replace 1 cup of all purpose flour with rye flour) or mixing in chopped rosemary, olives, cheese, cranberries, and other tasty additives. But I will, rest assured.



I am linking my loaf up with:
All Spunk No Junk at Twig and Toadstool
Creative Friday at Natural Suburbia
Friday's Nature Table at The Magic Onions

Mother's Day Surprise

When I was in grade school, we memorized poems for Mother's and Father's Day. And I also remember doing special crafts like making a hyacinth by taking a toilet paper tube, painting it, and gluing scrunched up pieces of tissue paper onto it. Come Sunday morning my sister and I would run into my parents' bedroom and recite our poetry and give our gifts.

When Lola returned from school this afternoon, she gave me my Mother's Day gift right away. It was a baby zinnia which she planted herself a few weeks ago at school. Naturally, we could not let the little plant sit in a brown paper bag for three days. While she was at it, she also gave me this:

Happy Mother's Day! I'll be relaxing with my blanket and some tea.

Teachers Gifts

I like to read craft blogs, I'm sure most of you know that by now. They inspire me, entertain me, wow me, and comfort me. What I did not realize is that they also shape me. As in influence the way I think things are.

Take for example teachers gifts. This time of year, and even more so at the end of the school year, it's all about teachers gifts. I thought, based on my reading of craft blogs, they were the norm. Everybody gives their children's teachers a gift. Today I found out that is not the case.

Perhaps it's the place where we live, but when Lola and I handed out the gifts we made for her teachers today, we were given genuine looks of happy surprise.

Lola had given me quite a list of teachers to make gifts for: her Jr. Kindergarten teacher, the teacher's assistant, her music, art, and gym teachers, her ballet instructor, the principal ("He's like the cops."), and her bus driver. Some of them may have thought I was the driving force behind their gift but that is not true. It was all Lola. She's thoughtful like that. I like that about her.

We made birdseed ornaments for all of them. Lola designed and made the gift tags all by herself.

Countryside Snapshots: Harvest

There is a small apple tree on the border of our backyard and our neighbor's. We think it's ours, but we're not sure. It is filled with apples and they are almost ready to be picked. The apple tree at Lola's new daycare is already there. Yesterday I sent Lola off with an empty basket and when I picked her up, it was filled with freshly picked apples.

We set out to make apple sauce as soon as we came home. Lola was very excited about the process. She made certain that Ryan knew this wasn't just any apple sauce, it was home made. I have now added a food mill to my appliance wish list and I can see canning in my future. Very clearly.

Santa's Workshop

Earlier this year, in the summer to be precise, I made Christmas ornaments for all of my staff at the casino. In the spirit of Christmas, I whipped up another batch this weekend for the entire Marketing department. And made my own gift wrap, too. It's my new thing.

While the snowstorm was raging outside, I was sewing up a storm of my own inside, making little red felt gift bags. It's like Santa's workshop in here! Now I know what elves feel like...

Sweet Surprises

The lovely ladies at Twig and Toadstool picked me as the winner of the beautiful handmade gnome home and gnome give away last week. It is so much fun to open a post in your google reader and see your name in great big letters. Thank you, Maureen and Shanti!

Sinterklaas surprised Lola with an overflowing stocking yesterday. He surprised me too, but I didn't get anything...

Grandma's Briefs is sending me a parking target, another blog give away. Perfect timing because we have just started parking the cars in the garage and it's a very tight fit, I tell you. Thank you, Lisa!

It took me more than a week and several trips to Home Depot, but we finally have a lighted Christmas tree. I have strung up 900 lights over the past few days. The tree is bigger than I thought. I wonder if we have enough ornaments?

The itty bitty snowflakes softly falling all day long covered Rhinelander in a blanket of snow.

Green Girl in Wisconsin surprised me with my third give away win in one week. I can pick out any gift I want from Anne Marie's NaDa Farm Shop. That bank bag has my name on it. Thank you, Green Girl and Anne Marie!

At yesterday’s Christmas get-together organized by the YMCA's Children's Learning Center Lola would not sing. She has been practicing Christmas songs for weeks with her friends and teachers, but at the sight of all those moms and dads in the audience she was overcome with shyness.

I just spit out seventeen seeds from my supposedly seedless clementine. It was very sweet though.

Any sweet surprises for you this week?

Nicole's Brown Paper Package

Today all the participants in Craftaholics Anonymous' Handmade Holiday Gift Exchange reveal their gifts. Here's a peek inside my brown paper package.


Wrapping the presents I made for my handmade holiday gift exchange partner Nicole was just as much fun as making them. I sewed two white felt bags to hold the goodies, which I did tie with string, and made a gift tag with some odds and ends found in the great big bin marked "X-MAS" that inconveniently sits in the middle of my craft room.

Inside the bags are a necklace, earrings, and a crystal ornament. I did not have red in mind when I set out to make the necklace, but as so often happens, the piece made itself. All I did was find the right order for the beads. I took Nicole's gifts outside to make some pictures. I love the vibrant red on the grapevine wreath in the snow.



Silver and Holly



Chandelier Crystal Ornament

I hope Nicole likes her gifts. And I cannot wait to see what she made for me!