Pumpkin Pie

One of Thomas and Josiah's favorite things to do with me in the mornings is baking. Muffins, or waffles, or bread, or cookies...they love to help measure and crack eggs and mix things together. Yesterday we made pumpkin pie!



We even made the crust (usually I skip that part and just make pumpkin pudding.) :)

Sue Baumann's Pie Crust (I adapted and used whole wheat flour and sucanat)

1 and 1/2 cup flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 T. sugar
1/2 c. cold butter
3 T. ice water

Place flour, salt, and sugar into a food processor and whirl. Cut butter into chunks, add, and process till pea size. Do NOT over process. Add ice water gradually and touch process. When dough balls, stop immediately. Put dough ball in plastic bag. Refrigerate 15 minutes. Roll out between waxed paper. Makes one single pie crust.



Almost ready...!

And this is what happens when I bring out the camera these days:







I guess they learned it from their Dad.

a Reasonably Clean welcome!

Rosie (daughter of the wonderful Auntie Leila) is hosting a link-up for the Reasonably Clean welcome areas of our homes. If you've read much of Auntie Leila, I'm sure you know that "Reasonably Clean" is one of her themes. (after all, if you aim for perfectly clean, you don't have time to read that novel...)

Last time the challenge was to make our kitchen sink pretty. This time, to make our entry welcoming. Not only for friends, but also for ourselves!

Anyway, Rosie's post inspired me to get up off my duff and DO something about the mess that has been depressing me all day. I took "before" pictures for contrast and motivation:


The front garden, completely ignored. Daisies gone to seed in the back, mint gone to seed in the front. Ugh.


The toys...well, there's not a lot I can do about those. I hope that they say "children live here, and yours are welcome too!" :)


The entryway, full of random stuff. I've been tripping over it for two days - time to move it out!


This counter is my nemesis. Somehow everything collects on it! I think it has magnetic powers.


The table top has magnetic powers, too. This is remarkably clean, actually.


Amazingly, there is no laundry on the couches!


The general mess on the floor needs to go, though!

So those are the "before" pictures. And now...the "after"!


That looks welcoming!


The garden has been entirely fixed up. Dead plants cut back, dead leaves raked and deposited in the worm bin, daisy seeds and sweet peas planted in hopes of a secondary summer growth (we can do that in sunny socal!) And everything covered with beautiful rich dark worm dirt.


We took a break to eat cherries and finish up a couple of fun projects (which had been sitting on the counter!)


Hey, we can walk without tripping now! All the way through!




And my counter is gloriously clean. A mug of pens, a basket of fruit, and a plate of cookies are the only things on it!

Frankly, I feel fantastic now. :) I hope this post and all the others have inspired you to go make your entry a welcoming place!

Pretty over the kitchen sink!

Auntie Leila is hosting a little kitchen party today. Want to participate? You can link up here.

A few days ago she asked us to take a few minutes and make our kitchen windowsill beautiful. I don't know about you, but it is really easy for me to let mine become a collector of "stuff". Soap and scrubbies that I'm not using, maybe a rag that I left up there...not appealing! And Leila is right - we spend so much time in our kitchen, we really ought to make an effort to keep it pretty. So, here's my newly beautiful windowsill:



Sorry about the lighting - I was having troubles with my camera. It may not look like much in the picture, but in real life it is a lovely vase of white roses, and a little pink tea candle beside it. Also, I finally have my white curtains back up, which makes a nice frame for the flowers.

Leila's second request was for a discussion about kitchen "flow". This is something I feel competent to discuss, having thought about it thoroughly and recently changed how I was doing things.

In my first three kitchens, my sink area movement went from left to right. Dirty dishes on the left, clean dishes on the right. This is how it was in the kitchen where I grew up and it was habit! But you know what? It didn't actually work very well in my current kitchen.

So when we remodeled, I switched things up. Now we move from right to left! :)

To the right of my sink, the two appliances that I use the most: bread machine and blender. Lots of food prep happens here, even though it is a smallish bit of counter. I like having the towel/dishrag rod right there to wipe my hands!



The sink itself: garbage disposal on the right, soapy water goes into the left. And isn't my little windowsill pretty?



Dish rack for drying clean dishes on the left. Directly above (and to the left) are cabinets where clean dishes are stored.



I like the change a lot. Dirty dishes can be placed in the right hand sink or directly into the dishwasher. Clean dishes move from the sink to the drying rack to the cabinet with nary one wasted step!

How about you? Have you put thought into your kitchen's flow? Do you take the time for the little touches that make it pretty?

There's no such thing as momentum.

Not in my life, anyway. And I think that this is (at least part of) the reason I have such a hard time feel like I'm getting anything accomplished around here.

I don't like cleaning the bathroom. I particularly don't like cleaning the bathroom when the floor needs to be mopped because a child left a four foot arc of pee across it. Doing chores that I dislike requires a certain amount of "gearing up" for me to actually get started. And when I get started in the bathroom, what I'd like to do is use the "already started" momentum to clean the counters, the sink, the tub, the toilet, and the floor. All of it, all at once, beautiful and shining and DONE at the end.

But I can't do it like that, because when I'm wiping the counters Josiah needs to be held. (That's ok, I can wipe counters with one hand.) When I'm cleaning the sink, Jonathan and Thomas have a fight and I have to break that up, discipline both boys, and then hold Siah again because he's been upset by all the chaos. Back to the not-at-all-clean bathroom, it has been at least 30 minutes since I started and now I'm feeling like I'll never be done. And I can't clean the toilet because a child is sitting on it. Momentum, gone.

I keep telling myself to just "do the next thing" but it can be so discouraging when the "next thing" never actually seems to get finished. Right now I'm looking at my (conservative, reasonable!) list for the day, and there are three fairly minor chores that can't be crossed off because they aren't entirely finished, but I've been trying to get them done since 8am this morning.

If I could just clean, without the myriad of interruptions that are the daily fabric of my life, I could get the entire house reasonably clean in under 90 minutes. Sometimes I miss the days when I could do that. Sometimes I dream of a house cleaner. Sometimes I long for a babysitter.

But sometimes, often in the quiet of naptime when I have a chance to breath and pray and think, I remember that I have three beautiful children, whom I love so very much, and they beat out momentum every time.

So in the midst of this life that God has given me, with interruptions and giggles and shrieking and train tracks strewn across my wish-it-was-vacuumed floor, I guess I'll just work on learning to use momentum in smaller pieces.

Home-making

I'm currently in search of good books pertaining to homemaking. Not just housekeeping, but books on making the house a home. I guess I'm looking for more wholistic ideas that include keeping a house, raising children, being a good wife, being a good steward of finances, living a holy life. I've noticed that Catholics often have a good understanding of these things, but as an Evangelical-turned-Anglican, I don't have very good resources for finding such books. Anyway, if you know of anything like this, (whether Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox) please comment!