Last month I ordered a personalized address stamp from The Paper Princess. I just want to give a little plug for this stationary/stamp maker. Her work is really cute and she always sends so many free goodies in the package (like postcards and notecards). The package itself is really rather sweet. I've bought personalized stationary for the kids in the past. Now I've got this awesome stamp of a tandem bike. With the holidays around, support handmade!
I want to post on my blog so much more frequently, but the days go by, chock-full of who-knows-what, and then I'm too pooped to get on the computer. Charles & I are gainfully unemployed and the lack of money is really starting to catch up to us, so we are trying to find any random work. I started a job at Macy's yesterday. At least I'll get to listen to holiday music, dress up fancier than usual, and, here's the bonus, do some knitting on the bus ride to and from work (as well as during lunch break). I can't reveal what I'm working on, as it is a gift, but it's refreshing to start a grown up knitting project. One of these days I will finish the fingerless gloves I started a year ago. I could use them for my bike rides to the bus station.
Now, on to music and dessert. Last Saturday Violet Modestly performed at Soundfalls, a variety show hosted by some good friends of ours in Carnation, WA. Violet (aka, me), was very nervous and had to go pee every ten minutes, but she finally managed to relax and peformed two original pieces (on guitar and singing), then a cover with Alexander Beetroot, and then bass with the whole group of performers ("May the Circle Be Unbroken" and "One Voice"). It was lots of fun.
And, no event of any sort is complete without dessert provided. My contribution were these sprinkle star ginger cakes, and spice cookie sandwiches with apple-butter (homemade), cream cheese filling. Yum-e!
Charles & I are in the midst of launching a new catering business where we live. One of the events we will be offering are dessert parties. To start getting our name out there, and people interested in my treats, we have donated a dessert party for 12 people to Olivia's school auction. In order to cost out the menu and make sure I could handle making what was on the menu, I did a practice run a few weeks ago. Friends and neighbors got to "taste test" the goodies, and I got some good feedback from everyone.
Halloween was hectic, but fun at our house. It was my mom's 60th birthday and she was visiting from Miami, so we threw her a costume party and had family and friends over. I was pretty sleep deprived as I stayed up until 3:30 a.m. the night before making the cake and Olivia's costume, but it was worth it.
I made a chocolate brownie cake with chocolate-coffee ganache for my mom and decorated it with a white-chocolate spiderweb design. Delicious.
I also sewed Olivia's costume (the true culprit of the 3:30 a.m. stint). She wanted to be a candy corn, so I bought some orange, yellow, and white fleece and sewed a little dress using an old dress pattern I had. I made a little pointy hat with cardstock and hot-glued white fleece to it, and added elastic from a party hat so she could wear the little hat. About 5 minutes before she was getting into her costume on Halloween she says, "Mommy, can I be a cat instead?" And mommy said, "NO, YOU MAY NOT BE A CAT!" And it was settled. She was complimented for her costume at many of the trick-or-treat houses. (Frankie was a butterfly for those of you wondering. She wore some felt butterfly wings I sewed when Olivia was 4 years old).
Of course, to follow the festivities of Halloween, we also celebrated Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead on the 2nd. We made an alter to honor all of our grandparents. We included their favorite foods, as well as the traditional Mexican decorations of calaveras (skulls), zempasuchiles de papel (paper marigolds) and tejocotes of gold (oranges). Olivia and Frankie also decorated sugar skulls. We enjoyed a tasty feast of pumpkin in mole sauce, rice and black beans, and meat empanadas (plus lots of Halloween candy). It has been a fun week!
A couple of weeks ago the girls & I went to a friend's house to pick apples. We picked lots of apples. Actually, we estimated that I came home with about 200 lbs of Kings and Jonagolds. What did we do with all of those apples? Well, we peeled, cut and froze a really large amount of them. We made mulligatawny soup, brats braised with apples and cabbage, apple tarts, apples dipped in everything from peanut butter to yogurt, and of course, apple butter.
The butters turned out quite sweet, even with a reduced amount of sugar (almost by half), but still tasty on toast. We still have loads of apples to deal with sitting in our pantries. I may juice a bunch, and make applesauce as well. Any other suggestions on what else we should make?
