Christmas Around the House

Here are some pictures of our house decorated for Christmas.

This is the nativity scene in our entry way

Our mantel

A close-up of the stockings on our mantel

This is in the entry way on the opposite side of the nativity scene

This is in the hallway

This is in our guest bathroom

This is another one of our guest bathroom

I love this sign!

This is my favorite of all of my Christmas things - Santa kneeling at Baby Jesus' manger

Homemade Savon de Marseille (soap)

I saw an episode of Martha Stewart crafts on DIY where she was making a soap called "Savon de Marseille". I decided to try it myself and it was really easy. I ordered the ingredients online from Majestic Mountain Sage http://www.the-sage.com/. All you have to do is melt the soap on your stove top and the trick is (I later discovered by e-mailing customer service) to keep stirring, especially after you add the french clay as it will stay clumped if you don't. My kitchen smelled so good as I was making this. I added a little Rosemary essential oil to it to give it even more scent. After I mixed and melted, I then poured the melted concoction into a soap mold that was designed for small guest soap bars.

After they cooled off, I wrapped the bars in unbleached parchment paper and packaged them for Christmas gifts. I also kept some to use in my bathroom and the guest bathroom

Eggs in the city

Well my girl Pearl (my Silkie Bantam chick) has finally decided to start laying eggs. She laid her first one on Nov. 25 and has been cranking them out ever since, almost daily (she takes a day off every 3 or 4 days).

I can't believe what joy there is in going out every morning and looking in the nesting box of the hen house and discovering the gift of an egg. Sometimes I even happen to look outside and notice that Pearl is in the hen house and I wait about 10 minutes and go out and there it is - a fresh, warm, beautiful egg. The Bantam breed of chickens is smaller than the average chicken and therefore have smaller eggs but I don't mind. I have been using two of Pearl's eggs to equal one large store bought egg and it seems to be working out just fine. I have farm fresh eggs right here in the city.

I found a wire egg basket on ebay. It had been barely used and the seller said she purchased it from an estate sale of a couple who visited Europe often and had a lot of vintage items. This basket is actually from Italy which is etched in the bottom of the basket. I think it looks like a flying saucer.

Rocks

It is amazing to me how simple little things like rocks can make such a BIG difference. We purchased some from a contractor who gets them from a local river and brings them down to sell. They still have moss on them which adds a unique color to the rocks. The contractor told us that we can pour buttermilk on them to grow more moss...who knew?

BEFORE

AFTER

My Mom Corner

I finally cleared away a spot in our master bedroom for my "mom corner". I have been dreaming up this space since we moved into our house in April. It began with a search for the perfect piece of furniture to "house" all of my piles of books and things: devotional and Bible study books, homeschooling books and papers, gift books, home keeping books, a small basket where I keep cards from my husband so I can read them over and over again and room for things I haven't even thought of yet. I found the perfect piece in a Pottery Barn catalog, but the price was more than I wanted or could pay, so...we went to Target and found something that looks just like it and it was on SALE for only $39. My dear, sweet husband put it together the same day and I am just loving it.
It isn't filled up yet and quite frankly, I don't want it to be, I want to feel as if I have room to grow as I come up with new ideas and inspirations.

I am finally able to keep all of my Martha Stewart Living Magazines together which is convenient because I refer back to them often for decorating ideas, recipes, crafts, etc. I found some really great magazine holders at - yes you guessed it, Target - don't you just love Target?
This is it -- my bookcase, my chair, a small vintage table beside my chair and a window that lets in light. I truly feel blessed to have this space.

Father's Day

We decided that we needed to get out of town after spending so much time on the house lateley. We took a drive to Balch Park and then on up to Hidden Falls. The weather was fantastic - in the 70's -- it was hard to convince ourselves to come back to the Valley heat.

Visitor's information booth at the entrance to Balch Park.

A huge fallen redwood that the kids love to climb on and around right inside Balch Park.

Playing in the cool pools of water at Hidden Falls.

God's majestic creation.

A day of old-fashioned fun

Remember being a kid and playing in the mud? I remember we would get a big ball of mud and put it on the ground and make an indentation with our elbows and then do a little detail work to get it to look like a bowl and then set it in the sun to dry...mud bowls, how cool!

Our daughter loves mud too! We haven't landscaped our backyard yet so she has a yard full of dirt at her disposal. Water and mud in a bucket is just about as good as it gets.

Our Big Red Barn

We have been dreaming about having this barn (it's really a shed but it is just too nice to be called a shed) ever since we saw it at Home Depot. It's a Tuf Shed and it could be converted into a guest home if we ever wanted to do that. We knew we wanted/needed it for our new home. We are renting 2 storage sheds and we wanted to save money so we figured out the cost and we will save money in the long run by having our own storage. We have packed a lot in there but still have room.

This is the front view. I love the turbine fan on the roof, it looks so cool.

That is my husband opening the window.

This is the loft which is great for additional storage and the sky light which is great as we don't have electricty out there...yet.

Well, that is our barn.

The chicks have arrived!!

Here are the newest additions to our family. The girls are all bantams so they will be about half the size of a regular chicken. Their eggs will be smaller too (it takes about 2 small bantam eggs to equal a large egg), but an egg is an egg, right?

They are all asleep except the gray one whom we named rascal in memory of Greg's cat who had the same coloring and was well, a rascal at times as this one is turning out to be. I just love how they fall asleep --they are just so darn cute!!

2 of them are silkies and will look like this when they grow up

2 of them are Ameracauna's and will look like this, they lay the gorgeous green and blue eggs

Yes, they even sleep standing up.

My daughter named this one "Kitty".

Well, enough cuteness for now.

On making homemade bread...

I have been making bread since my early 20's. I just love the idea that I am making something like the pioneers used to, with my own two hands. I used to love to knead the dough by hand, but now that I have a preschooler running around, I have found a new love, it's called a bread machine. I bought mine at Wal-mart for about $40 and have regularly used it since I purchased it last November. My goal is to make all of our bread and stop purchasing it from the store. My favorite breads are artisian. I love, love, love, sourdough. I had a sourdough starter for years but recently I let it die so I need to start a new one. It is easy enough, 1 cup flour, 1 cup warm spring water, and one packet of yeast (there are other methods but this is easy and fast) let it sit on the counter a day or two and watch it bubble and ferment. I just need to make time to put it in my sourdough crock (I really don't know what it is I just call it that). This was a fun find at an antique store.  It is rather small, about 5" tall and 5 1/2" round but big enough for my purposes.


A great book that I use is Rustic-European-Breads from your Bread-Machine. This is a wonderful book that inspires you to make more than just white sandwich bread (which is yummy too). I have to admit that one of my favorite foods in the whole world is bread. I love it with room temperature butter or with butter and fresh salsa--got this idea from a mexican restaurant! I recently purchased a unique piece of pottery that I bake my french bread in and it is fabulous!


It is called Pomaireware from laarsenassociates. It bakes the PERFECT bread, because it is unglazed and the bread retains moisture produced by steam. It is virtually fool-proof. I just put the ingredients in my trusty bread machine and set it on the dough setting and wait a few hours until the dough gets mixed and is ready for it's second rise and take it out of the bread machine and let it rise on my silpat mat for another 30 mins. then form it into a nice ball and put it in my pomairware bowl. Let it rise again and pop it in the oven.