branch homestead

hunkered down

we have been hunkered down since thursday night. lots of snow and no real reason to leave the house.

yesterday morning we made maya's yummy popover's. we made them today too. i have a feeling there is going to be a request tomorrow too.

helen decided that she didn't want maple syrup on her snow today. she thought that she would make chocolate ice cream instead.

we spent most of the weekend reading harry potter and the half blood prince. we finished tonight. movie tomorrow.

tonight as we finished harry potter my sweet girl and i worked on completing some beads that we started for our martin luther king day in event. we actually were able to get so many done in a short time, we are getting really fast at them. we have had so much practice now. i wish that i had kept track of how many bracelets that we have made and sold to raise funds for making strides against breast cancer. i think that it has been 2 or 3 years now. hoping to get some out on etsy soon.

here are some photos from our snowstorm earlier in the weekend.

oh npr how i love you...

another great find thanks to npr.

doing my thing this morning i heard this story about singer-songwriter Joanna Chapman-Smith love her sound. very similar to norah jones.

enjoy.

Valentines for friends

my sweeetpea typing up valentines for her classmates.

Sent from my iPhone

gifts from long ago, far away and real close

my mother sent me this beautiful apron yesterday that belonged to her great aunt.

 

isn't it beautiful?

 

she also sent our favorite cutout cookies...yummmmmmmmmmm
 

she made these scrumptious coconut cookies with chocolate buttercream frosting. that is real "butter"cream this is a new recipe. we are really enjoying it!

we had plenty of sugar in the house then my mother-in-law stopped by with a box of chocolate for us. what to do? have a piece, plenty of dark chocolate in here for me. don't you love their chocolatier?

hope that you are enjoying the holiday as much as i am.

sun bread

well we finally made the sun bread from the sunbread book by elisa kleven. this was our first venture in homemade bread. we had some challenges but it was fun and it tasted pretty good.

before it went in the oven

beautiful when it came out

the picture speaks for how delicious it was. it reminded me of butter rolls that my family always had for the holidays. yummy all warm with more butter and some jam.

sometimes you just need to take a break

so this is not working how i had planned...looks like i will need to start over. tomorrow is another day. keep reminding myself this is how we learn sometimes, not exactly my favorite method.

looking forward to the morning.

we fit

we are very excite to have found a new car that "fits" our needs. we were considering getting a prius but decided that we it might be better for us and the environment to get the new honda fit.

the gas mileage is really great and the repairs on this car will be more affordable than on the prius also there is the concern about the battery on the prius.

we are a family that would prefer not to have a car but where we have chosen to live really requires that we have one. we are unusual in our area in that we only have one car for our household and we are still maintaining that after being back here for over 8 years.

many blogs have been talking about making one small change for the environment this year. i first found it on shivaya naturals blog, i love to visit there, it is like taking a deep breath and letting it out slowly. hip mountain mama is sponsoring the challenge. go check it out, great ideas if you aren't already doing many of them.

the new car is one way that we are trying. we took our 7 year old wagon off the road and we went with this car which is much smaller and better on gas mileage. can you tell we are feeling pretty excited about this?

npr love

most everyday i have npr on all day in the kitchen. it makes me stop and listen or become overwhelmed with emotion and either joy, fire, inspiration, so many emotions. i just have a hard time understanding how everyone is not listening to this everyday!!!

i feel like i need to tell people about it, they must not know if they are not listening, how could they be depriving themselves of such inspiration and knowledge.

so everyday that i am listening i hear at least one story on npr and think "wow i would love to share that, that would be great to post on a blog".

so i just went to the npr site to find a few stories from today to link to and i found this picture of fred astaire and ginger rogers. i have to tell you every since i can remember i have had a huge crush on fred astaire. not much to look at you think. well i don't know, i just did and still do. ginger rogers was great too.

so i went to npr and came across this nice story about irving berlin and the song "cheek to cheek" that he wrote for "top hat". it just made me smile and brought me back to all those late nights watching fred and ginger on pbs. just makes me feel all warm and happy inside. hope it works for you too. here is a link to cheek to cheek.

here are a few links to my favorite npr shows. i will be giving you suggestions every so often of stories to listen to. hopefully you will take them wisely.

i of course listen to morning edition and all things considered in the morning and afternoon respectively, but there are so many jems in between.

diane rheem she always has the most current topics and incredible guests and she does not let people get away with alot of what you would hear on some other talk shows, she is the queen.

fresh air with terry gross i don't hear fresh air much any more because it is on at bed/reading time. she has great guests and asks the questions that you would ask. 

this american life how can you not love ira glass. i am sorry but he is brilliant. someone shared a link the other day with ira glass talking about creativity vs reality. this is perfect.

wait wait...don't tell me is always required listening. it makes me laugh out loud every time. 

this will be the last one for now.

the splendid table we found this on late one night when we were painting the kitchen over the summer. so many wonderful little things to learn on this show.

so many of these shows if not all are available on for podcast. hope that you will try some out. warning...you may fall in love.

enjoy!

beautiful beginning

another beautiful day to start the week. this really fits how my mood today. i feel that I am finally moving forward. a fresh start.



today I will send off my registration for squam. I knew that it was going to be difficult to decide which classes to take but the choice was made more challenging by the fact there were so many great sessions to choose from. in the end I chose to go when the wonderful women that I met last year would be there.

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creating matching daughter's apron

I made my first apron to bring to out neighborhood holiday auction for charity and this is an apron to match for a little girl. Loved the first one so much.

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