Sustainable Living

Yummy Yummy Yarn

/ makingofahome / 3 Comments

On our trip to the Northwoods, Mom had to have some fun too.  I made my way into town to visit my favorite spot:  The Knitter’s Nook.  This quaint shop is housed in a petite white residence, just off the main drag in town.  It is owned by the most lovely of couples, and the yarn in their shop is exquisite!  All fibers are naturally derived, no acrylic yarn here.  This shop is an absolute tactile experience.  I spent the first twenty minutes of my time in the shop just feeling the various fibers they had to offer.

After spending a bit too much time in the shop (my husband was supervising both girls and their two cousins in a toy store..oh my 🙂 ), I emerged with my spoils.  Lamb’s wool, Alpacha, and a wool/bamboo blend, all in the most beautiful of colors. I spent the rest of the trip curled up on the back porch crocheting. Perfection.

The Squirrel Whisperer

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When we peer out the windows of our home in northern Illinois we see cardinals, blue jays, squirrels, chipmunks, rabbits and the occasional turkey, but every time we make the trek up to the Northwoods, the concentration of wildlife, only four short hours north of us, never ceases to amaze me.  The area is literally crawling with critters, and let me tell you…my girls LOVE it!

On this particular trip, my five year old became especially fond of the squirrels.  Any time we were indoors, I found her standing at the front entry way of my husband’s grandparent’s home.  She would settle into her post at the door and just wait.  As soon as she spotted a squirrel in the distance, she would tap on the door and make a little clicking sound with her tiny mouth.  This is when the magic happened:  A minimum of five squirrels would come running up the front steps, place their bitty hands on the iron frame of the door and wait.  Then my daughter would open the door just enough to slip a few peanuts through the gap, and the squirrels would grab the nut and scurry away with treasure in hand.  Amazing.

This went on for four days.  Morning.  Noon.  Night.

Love.

Generational Wealth

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As I sit here to write this post, I am not thinking of generational wealth in the form of monetary currency passed down from one generation to the next.  Instead, I am pondering the wealth of knowledge, the wealth of history, and the wealth of love that is exchanged when multiple generations of a family spend quality time with one another.

This past week my family was fortunate enough to spend many days up in the Northwoods of Wisconsin with my husband’s grandparents.  While on the trip my girls were able to hike and fish with their great-grandfather, cook and feed the wild life with their great-grandmother, and ramble about the woods with their second cousins.  There truly was a great deal of “wealth” passed from one generation to the next on this short vacation.

Humbled

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Last week I was incredibly humbled, surprised and excited when Becky from Clover and Thyme honored me with a Versatile Blogger Award!  Thank you so very much Becky for this wonderful honor!  Being new to this whole blogging world, your recognition really brightened my day and reaffirmed why I do what I do.  Thank you.

If you get a chance, be sure to stop by Becky’s blog.  It is a joy to read!

So here are the Rules for Versatile Blogger Award according to their site:

  •  Thank the person who gave you this award.
  •  Include a link to their blog.
  •  Next, select  blogs/bloggers that you’ve recently discovered or follow regularly. ( I would add, pick blogs or bloggers that are excellent!)
  •  Nominate those bloggers for the Versatile Blogger Award — you might include a link to your post nominating them, or to the Versatile Blogger Blog.
  •  Finally, tell the person who nominated you 7 things about yourself.

As I said earlier, I am still very new to this whole blogging world, so I am just beginning to explore all of the wonderful blogs that are out there.  Here are the blogs that I follow regularly and I would like to award with the Versatile Blogger Award.  Thank you all for what you do!

Amanda Blake Soule at SouleMama.  I have been following this blog for nearly a year now and it is utterly amazing!  Her posts vary from crafting to homesteading and everything in between.  I also have many of her books which also contain fabulous project ideas for moms and kids alike.

Ashley English at Small Measure.  I found this blog a few weeks ago via SouleMama and it too is just fabulous!  I especially like the amazing recipes she includes in many of her posts.  Yum!

Paola at Love and Cupcakes.  This is a wonderful blog featuring wonderful recipes.  I especially love the desserts that can be found on this site 🙂

Scott and Kim at Aquaponic Family.  This is a great site about an at-home aquaponic system.  It is full of great information!

And here are a few interesting tidbits about me: 1.  I could live on cheese and desserts alone.  2.  I enjoy reading the classics (must be that English teacher in me 🙂  3.  I fell in love with photography when I was a senior in high school when my parents gave me my first Canon Rebel for a graduation present.  4.  I just saw The Hunger Games and LOVED it!  (The books were of course fabulous as well!)  5.  I have been taking on a more active role in my husband’s fitness company and I have been greatly enjoying it.  6.  My girls and I have been enthralled with the Junie B. Jones book series these days.  She is a hoot!  7.  We just returned from a great trip and I cannot wait to share some of our experiences with you!

Have a wonderful week!

Reading and Soapmaking and Gardening, Oh My!

/ makingofahome / 6 Comments

Last week my husband was in a very minor (thank goodness!) fender bender, so I had to bring the car in this week to get repaired.  This left the girls and I without a vehicle for two days and I must admit that it was a wonderful couple of days!

While sequestered we had the most marvelous of times!  We read a ton, made a few more kinds of soap, and worked a great deal in the garden.  It was wonderful to know how much fun we could have, without ever leaving the comfort of our little home.

 

Diggin’ In

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This week the girls and I have been out working in the garden planting beets, carrots and lettuce.  We are trying some different heirloom varieties this year, so we are all excited to see how they work out.  We have ordered all of our seeds from The Seed Savers Exchange the past two years and have been thrilled with the results!

For beets we planted Early Blood Turnip and Detroit Dark Red

For carrots we planted Dragon (This one we have planted in the past and my girls love it because the outside of the carrot is a deep purple and the inside of the vegetable is a brilliant orange!) and St. Valery.

For lettuce this year we ordered the Seed Savers Heirloom Lettuce Collection which contains Amish Deer Tongue, Bronze Arrowhead, Crisp Mint, Forellenschuss, Red Velvet, and Susan’s Red Bib.

(A quick side note on “Gardener Number 2″…She is currently only wearing dresses because she said that jeans are not “girl clothes” 🙂  This summer should get quite interesting with all of the gardening this gal loves to do.  Love her.)

 

Organization Station

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When we moved into our house, the room that I missed most from our previous home was our mud room.  Our mud room had been the catch-all of our house, and without one in our current home, it seemed that our kitchen had become the place where everything was dropped:  coats, shoes, bags, papers, purses, keys, the works.

Well, after nearly four years I finally have my own make shift mud room!  Last summer my husband’s grandmother gave me an antique mirror and I had been desperately trying to find a home for it with no luck whatsoever.  Finally I came up with the idea to create a “mud room wall” in our garage, featuring the mirror as the focal point.  After a bit of carpentry work by my hubby, a little paint, and a quick visit to an antique mall, the project is complete.

I kept some existing hooks because they were so well fastened to the wall studs, but I needed some extra places to hang all of those coats that seem to accumulate so I used some antique pull-knobs, cabinet latches, a door knob and even a door stop to create a few more “hooks.”

I call my new creation my “Organization Station” 🙂

Fuasa—Italian Easter Bread

/ makingofahome / 19 Comments

We have many food traditions in our house, but the one that reigns supreme is my Nona’s fuasa recipe.  My nona, Madeline Zanocco (the woman in the photograph on the left), emigrated to the United States from Vicenza, Italy.  She had five children, the forth of which was my grandfather.  My grandpa, Angelo Zanocco, decided to take on the role of rebel child in the family because he was only one of Madeline’s five children to marry a non-Italian.  This is why I always chuckle when I think about the fact that it was my German grandmother, Adeline (in the photograph below), who taught me to bake her fuasa recipe, and thus carry on the family tradition of making Italian Easter Bread every spring 🙂

I have been making (and eating) fuasa on Easter Sunday from as far back as I can remember.  The sweet crunchy goodness of the bread is synonymous in my mind with the holiday celebration.  Now that both Nona and my grandmother Addie have both passed on, I have made a point of continuing with the fuasa tradition each Easter.  I have made fuasa with my girls from the first year of their lives (My oldest can be seen in the picture below from 2007, making fuasa for the first time when she was only six months old.), because I find so much value in passing on our family food culture to the next generation.

And when I say I will make fuasa each year without fail, I always think of the year when I decided to triple the fuasa recipe (that means I was making 15 loaves of bread), and my oven broke.  I frantically called around to our friends in the area, but all were already away for the holiday weekend.  So, I packed up by 15 loaves of dough, my hubby, and my 18 month old and drove to Illinois State University where my sister was attending college.  From there I went to her friend’s apartment to bake.  Yes, I was baking 15 loaves of bread, with a toddler, in a college kid’s apartment…while he was having a party!  I’m not sure I was their favorite person that night 🙂  But the fuasa got done none the less.

It has been so fun to see the girls take on more of an active role in the baking of the fuasa each year.  It is truly my hope that they continue this tradition and pass it on to their little ones some day.

Nona’s Fuasa Recipe

2 yeast packets

2 cups milk (scalded then cooled)

1 1/2 cups sugar

2 teaspoons salt

8 egg yolks (save the whites to use on the tops of the loaves before baking)

1 1/2 sticks butter (melted)

9 cups flour

2 teaspoons vanilla

1 teaspoon almond extract

Stir yeast into warm milk.  Set aside.  Beat egg yolks, add sugar, salt and flavoring.  Then add the melted butter.  Next add the flour and milk mixture, alternating between each.  Beat until smooth.  Place on floured board and knead.  Place in a large bowl, butter the top of the dough, cover with a damp towel and let rise until double in size.  Knead dough again.  Divide into five pieces, roll out and knot.  Place in greased pans, butter the top of the dough, cover with a damp towel and let rise until double in size.

Beat the egg whites.  Baste the top of each loaf with egg whites, then sprinkle with sugar.  Bake each loaf for 20 minutes at 350 degrees and 15 minutes at 250 degrees.  Enjoy!

I wish each of you a very blessed Easter weekend!