Slow Winter Days

 The side roads and driveways around the county remain blocked by chunks of snow or treacherous with thick ice. Schools were closed all last week and everything for this weekend was canceled again. The pause in social activity is welcome but only so because we know it is brief. Time at home stretches before us in a luxurious way. The routine may shift in order but the activities within it are the same every day. Steve works most of the day. In between tasks he ventures out to the wood shed and builds fires in the wood stove. In his spare time he downloads music, plays his saxophone, and researches tractors. I do light cleaning in bits and drabs, hand embroider or sew at the machine, read, and cook meals. We have given up looking for good movies to watch. 

It has been fun to spend more time on meal prep than usual. Yesterday I made dinner using King Arthur Flour's recipe for a deep dish Chicago Pizza. It was delicious! We have made deep dish pizzas before but this was the first time I made the dough from scratch. I enjoyed the process and I will definitely make it again.

 The crust is pre-baked a little bit and then layered with mozarella, sauteed Italian sausage, sauteed vegetables (I used red pepper, onion, mushrooms), seasoned tomatoes, and finally Parmesan cheese. The crust is big but it is light, airy, and crisp on the outside.

Since church was canceled today, we decided to make our own "coffee social hour" by brewing an extra pot of coffee after 10:00am. I reached way back into the recipe archives for the cinnamon buns I learned how to make in Junior High School Home Ec. class. These were the first thing I learned how to bake on my own. I felt so grown up baking these and I would make them on weekends for my parents and sisters. After Steve and I married and had children, I continued making them for all of us. It had been years since I last made them. Eating them today was a treat and it brought back happy memories from weekend breakfasts long ago. They are made with a basic biscuit dough, rolled into a rectangle, spread with melted butter and sprinkled with brown sugar and cinnamon. Then rolled up and cut. It was an indulgent treat for us today both in body and spirit. : )

 
 

Snowbound

I was able to focus an entire day on piecing this quilt. 

 We weathered the snow storm just fine here in the mountains of Virginia. If measuring by standards of beauty and playability, it was not a great snow. But, if measuring in terms of being snowbound, it was grand.

On Saturday, before it started snowing, Tess, Blake, Audrey, and Violet all came over to visit. I baked a New York Crumble coffee cake, Steve brewed coffee to order and we had a good visit. We were all excited for the change of routine that the snow would bring. Everyone was safely home before the snow began falling later that afternoon.

The snow was too fine and dry to stick to trees or anything. It fell for more than twenty-four hours and had it been large fluffy flakes, we would have measured it in feet. But this fine snow was dry and compact. At first it was powdery but it quickly turned into a solid mass the next day after being mixed with sleet. The snowblower could not cut into it and Steve spent hours just churning up chunks. I went out and tried to clear the front and back steps. I found the best strategy was get the shovel underneath it and lift it in huge pieces and toss it aside. It is forecast for temperatures to remain frigid for another week so nothing will change anytime soon. 

We are now on day five of staying at home. The roads are clear but our driveway is still covered. We can drive down the driveway with the all-wheel-drive vehicle if we need to so we are not concerned. Steve works from home and there are otherwise no pressing needs to go out.  I decided to take one more indulgent day to sew, read, and cook. It is so rare to have this many days in a row to be at home and I am not ready to let go of it yet. 

"Enclosed in a Tumultuous Privacy of Storm"

 

Announced by all the trumpets of the sky,
Arrives the snow, and, driving o'er the fields,
Seems nowhere to alight: the whited air
Hides hills and woods, the river, and the heaven,
And veils the farmhouse at the garden's end.
The sled and traveler stopped, the courier's feet
Delayed, all friends shut out, the housemates sit
Around the radiant fireplace, enclosed In a tumultuous privacy of storm.

Ralph Waldo Emerson 

I am getting very excited about the storm they have forecast for this weekend. There is nothing as exhilarating as a good snow storm. Steve and I will sit "around the radiant fireplace" (wood stove in the basement) while the snow is "driving o'er the fields". I just love this poem. Have you ever looked up into a heavily falling snow? It rushes at your face just as if "announced by all the trumpets of the sky". And the coziness of being inside the house looking out into the white, it is a wonderful feeling of privacy. I have been a little sad that we are not going to Vermont this winter. But now a little bit of Vermont is coming to us.

I already shopped for our weekend's food needs and Steve will fill the gas can tomorrow in case we need the generator. I have some projects in the works and a few books to read. I hope to capitalize on being shut in to use the time for crafting, sewing, and cooking comfort food. We will make some forays out into the white too, I am sure. 

 

I have one little rug to finish: "Birdies" by Maggie Bonanomi. This will be sewn into a pillow for Tess's office chair. I am also plugging along on a border for a largish cross stitch, "Newcastle Bouquet" by Teresa Kogut. I lost a great deal of time counting and double counting the brown border to get it to line up. What a beast that border was! I do love the saturation of color in this pattern and I have a feeling it will be one of my all time favorites. 

I also have three quilts and two pillows to get going on. I laid out a few rows of the "Cut the Mustard" quilt by Jo Morton on the floor last night to encourage myself. I also washed and ironed all the Tilda "Merry Little Christmas" fabric so it will be ready to cut.

I will shuffle the squares around to get a good placement before I sew them.

 

I was enamored by this whimsical line of Tilda "Merry Little Christmas" fabric. This will all become two quilts and two pillows.

Cold, Blustery Day

 

The weather has been flip flopping all winter around here. Last week it was mild and today it is cold and blustery. The gusting wind slams the house and the water in the birdbath is frozen solid. I was grateful to have a stay-at-home day today. 

I spent most of the day playing in the kitchen. It all began with the purchase of a roasted chicken from San's Club yesterday. Sam's Club roasted chickens are very large and flavorful. I intended to make a chicken pot pie to take as a meal to someone. There was more chicken than I needed for one pie so I considered other ways to use it. I decided to make more pot pies in little pans this time. Steve and I would eat two for dinner and I would freeze the other two. After building these, I found that I had too much pie crust leftover! I considered again, how not to waste the pie dough scraps? I saw an apple in the fruit bowl that had been sitting there, untouched for two weeks. I chopped it up, added some cinnamon sugar, a dash of flour, dotted it with butter, and built two apple turnovers. 

By mid afternoon I had the kitchen cleaned up and sat down to do some stitching. A phone call from Claire and texts from Audrey and Tess filled out our weekend plans. Claire's family is visiting this weekend (bedrooms were prepped this morning), we have dinner with friends Friday evening, breakfast for Claire's family, Tess and Blake on Saturday, and dinner for Audrey's family and Tess on Sunday. That will be three largish meals to make this weekend...I came up with buttermilk waffles for Saturday morning (fruit, eggs, bacon on the side), chicken and rice casserole and a fruited JELL-O salad on Saturday, and beef stew on Sunday. I will need to get another rotisserie chicken for the chicken casserole...and here we go again.  

By the way, I had this JELL-O salad at our rug hooking potluck last week and it was delicious. I never had this JELL-O salad version with cranberry sauce and crushed pineapple in it. Everyone else was familiar with it and Kay gave me the recipe. 

 

A Daughter Was Born, 1987

 

One year old, day of Christening, January 1988

January 14th, 1987 on the coast of Maine was as cold a day as I can remember. The sky looked like thin, blue ice. I remember looking out of the hospital window at that sky and thinking if I touched it, it might shatter. 

Our second daughter had just been born and nineteen month-old Claire had a sister! We now have thirty-nine years on earth with Chelsea. How can time be so rich and full of life and yet so fleeting? The energy and accomplishments of this child take my breath away. We may have birthed her but she is her own beautiful person and a force in this world. May God hugely bless her and keep her close. 

Even this photo is old now. 2014 on the Appalachian Trail

 

Sucked Back In Time

 

I was going about my day today, sitting at the computer and listing some wool for sale when a text popped up from my college friend, Karen M. We have not had occasion to talk in quite some time so I was surprised to receive a text from her. She explained that she was cleaning out some things and ran across several photos from our college days and would I like to have them. Seeing these old photos pop up so suddenly and unexpectedly was downright startling. I was jarred right into a time vortex. I sat and stared and stared at this one photo in disbelief that this was really me and Steve. In one sense, it is so very far removed from where we are today. But in another sense, it felt like this scene happened only a few days ago. 

I think this was around 1980. We were at a dance put on by our college at the Crooked Lake Hotel in Averill Park, New York. Someone was trying to take our picture in front of some large cabinets that were filled with elegant silver. There was a whole wall of silver filled cabinets and it was enchanting. I wish I could remember who I was smiling at while we were getting into position for the photo. Steve remembers that we were stopped by police on the way home. It would have been on back, country roads. The policeman did not give us a ticket but he made me drive and had Steve get in the passenger seat. I think I was a little alarmed because even though I may have had only one or two drinks, I did not feel at all comfortable driving either. Oh well. We made it home just fine because he we are forty-six years later! Gosh! We didn't have a care in the world.

A Family Christmas

 The last time Chelsea and her family were able to visit for Christmas was eight years ago. So, not only were we anticipating Christmas, we were anticipating a week-long visit from our children and grandchildren! We sorely missed Claire and her family because they celebrated Christmas in Kentucky with Daniel's family. But, we did have three of the four daughters here and it was a blessing.We were treated with such mild weather that it was hard to tell if it was Christmas or Easter we were experiencing. I was willing to sacrifice my preference for snow so that our northern based children could have a break from winter and enjoy the Virginia sunshine and outdoors.

It was a fun-filled, busy week with lots of food, a couple of hikes for the kids, Christmas Eve Mass, the magic of Christmas morning gifts, craft making, bonfires, game nights, late night talks, the hunt for a missing remote control plane (which was never found), Christmas cookies galore, the potato cannon, wood chopping and graveyard clearing, and video chats with those who couldn't be here. It was a good Christmas.

Cousins enjoying T-shirt weather

 

Sounds of the chainsaw and wood chopping

Fire in the hole! Or should we say, "Potato in the hole!"

Hot dog roast

 

Someone is hungry.

The moment before the remote control plane got away.

The last day before everyone left.The weather had cooled down by then.

One small hooked item I worked on in December