Hello April!!

I totally failed finishing out my March crafting month blogs. I was in training at work for the last three days of the month and I was so exhausted by the time I got home I just didn't feel like blogging.

However, since I was training in Nashville, I met my (former) roommate A, who now lives in Nashville with her hubby D, twice! Once we had lunch together in her company's cafeteria (where I snapped this photo)…

…and a second time to indulge my craft and love of photography! I haven't uploaded let alone edited my pictures yet, but here are a few I snapped with my phone!

Baking Craftiness: I Get Inspired...

Every single time I visit I Am Baker. Every time there is inspiritation overload! I read the blog and see the photo’s and instantly want to go home and try my hand at whatever it is she had created!

But the day I saw this post, it was just before throwing a wedding shower for A. And I always wanted to try out decorating cookies with Royal Icing. And I was apparently feeling very brave… I used Amanda @I Am Baker’s sugar cookie & icing recipe and I found a very detailed ‘how-to’ at Sweetopia’s site here! Of course Amanda also has a great tutorial up as well right here… it just wasn’t up until after I made A’s cookies!

Let me start by saying the sugar cookie recipe was delicious! Not overly sweet, they complimented the icing recipe very well! My friend R-Jo came over to help me decorate them, and I think we did a pretty good job for our first time! What do you think?

(R-Jo's Masterpiece's)

(we made this one specifically for A. The initial's represent her and her new hubby. It was a joint effort that we were really quite proud of!)

We were so nervous, I think it took us 4 hours to finish decorating them, but I will definitely try making them again! Hopefully I’ll have a reason to soon…

#48 a.k.a. My Grandpa K.'s Craft

I’ve mentioned my Grandpa K before. Not just in my blog about my 101 in 1001, but also when I told you about my Grandma K. I don’t really remember off the top of my head what my grandpa did before he retired (although I’m sure I’ve asked before). What I do remember, is that after he retired, he painted. And he baked. And sometime after he passed away, my family got the Joy of Cooking book that he used to cook. And then when I moved, I moved it with me!

So, I’ve had this cookbook in my possession for a little over 5 years and not once have I cooked anything from it which is why, on my list of 101, #48 was to make one of my Grandpa K’s bread recipes. He just made the best breads and now that I've tried that, I want to make one of the pie recipes. I can only hope to make a pumpkin pie as good as Grandpa's!! But one thing at a time, and the other day it was bread! Take a look at the process and my results!

My roommates have recently moved out, so the first thing I did was unpack some of my cooking things starting with my nesting bowls! I just love using this for baking!

Next is the Joy of Cooking book opened to the page for the French Bread recipe. Can you see all the fingerprints and bits still left all over the pages? *sigh* dreamy...

Ok, so the first step was actually scalding the milk? I had never done that before, so I actually looked up what in the world that meant and then I was so nervous that I was going to burn it, I didn't take a picture =o( But then you let the milk cool to 85 degrees, and that was less stressful, so here it goes!

While it was cooling, I started to activate the yeast with some warm water in another cup. I had to let it sit like that for 10 minutes!!

 While waiting to mik all the liquid together, I mixed the flour salt and sugar together, then made a hole for the liquids to pour into... It always makes me thing of building sand castles...

 

mix it up!!(see that little pile of flour? I'm really proud of myself because that's the only flour I spilled the whole time I was making this bread!)

Then you have to let them raise and shape them into loafs and slice them a little with some scissors! Then they have to raise AGAIN! You have to have patience to make this bread...

Cook it for a while and 'voila'! Looks good doesn't it? My friends (aka guinea pigs) thought it was!

In Awe

My mom taught me to craft.

I remember all the while growing up times of painting and stenciling under her tutelage. Chalk was a big form of entertainment whether it was on a chalkboard or concrete. And I couldn't begin to count the hours I spent with a big box of crayons and coloring books. Coloring can still keep me entertained =o) I spent a lot of my life watching my mom and learning from her. Seeing all she did to sew and help create things for church... so it would probably surprise you to know that there were times she surprised me!

I always thought I knew how capable my mom was... and then I was in Brownies where my mom was a troop leader. Our other troop leader was pregnant and my mom put together a project for us. I mean most people would probably just throw a shower. Buy some gifts. But we made a quilt! My mom, in turns, had each of my fellow Brownie troop friends over to our house to stencil a quilt square and before my very eyes, I watched my mom take all of those squares and turn them into a beautiful memory quilt!

And then, in the fourth grade, I learned how to knit. We learned for a class project after we read a book. It was called the Ernie and the Mile Long Muffler and, to be quite honest, I still remember all that it was about and I LOVED it! haha Anyway, for class everyone had to knit a square. Just a small square, but it was an assignment. We all learned how to do it and did it! So at the end of the time, my teacher had around 30 knitted squares and she asked MY MOM to put them together! So she used yarn to stitch the squares all together and then put fabric all the way around  to turn it into a blanket that my teacher hung on the wall for the rest of the school year!

My mom did that! And do you know how many people (besides me) think its awesome that my mom used to sew pretty much all of my dresses and halloween costumes when I was a kid? Not to mention all of the stenciled borders in our house and homemade curtains and everything else she used to do. My mom was DIY before DIY was popular!

It's pretty cool.

I hope that someday I'm the kind of mom that my kids are proud of...

Coloring

I remember…

I think that's how a lot of these National Craft Month blog posts will start. My memories. As accurate as they can be. Which is really only as accurate as my mind has made them. Some of them are recent, some are older, and some are from my childhood, remembered by that part of my brain that houses childhood memories… that makes them more precious.

And here I find myself back to my opening statement… I remember.

I remember my Grandma K. She was sweet. Lovely. She wrote poetry. She grew up on a farm. My grandpa loved her very much and referred to her as the "Queen Of Them All". She signed some of her things QOTA. She loved gardening, especially her roses. She had a fountain in her garden and while I can picture it, I can't begin to say anything about it other than it was stone. There was a big swing, I think it was red. I remember swinging on it with my grandma. I remember doing bunny ears, sticking out my tongue and kick-lines for the 8mm video camera with her and my aunts. I remember she loved Olga the Walrus that lived at Brookfield Zoo; Grandma had a picture of Olga stuck to a cupboard in her kitchen.

But what I remember most of all, was coloring with my grandma. After we finished our meal and after we had cleaned up the dishes and washed off the table, it was time! I knew what drawer held the white typewriter paper and where to find the little tupperware (I think it was yellow?) that help those treasured colors. I would get them and sit at the table with Grandma all set to draw…

In my mind, we always drew the same thing… I'm sure there were times we didn't, but I always remember starting with an apple tree; a good strong brown barked tree with big loopy green 'leaves' and bright red apples all over it. Then there was grass… there should always be a lot of green grass under your tree. It's more comfortable for when you nap underneath. The sun was next. A big yellow circle with yellow rays that came streaming out of it. We liked sunny days best =o) Sometimes there were birds in the sky! One of us would be climbing a ladder and there would be a basket under the tree to catch the apples that we picked. On another limb, there was an occasional tire swing and sometimes in the background there was a little garden or some little piggy's or cows. But the most important part, the thing that was always there, was the apple tree.

It may sound silly, but to this day if you see me with a plain white piece of paper and some crayons you can rest assured that I'm about to color myself climbing a ladder into an apple tree with a basket under it to catch all the ones I've picked.

A Month to Craft

Do you know what I heard on the radio this morning? Probably not, so I'll tell you!

March is National Craft Month!

If you're not a crafter (I did not think that was a real word! I thought I was going to get the red squiggly underline!) you probably aren't very excited about this. But I am! I grew up with a mom that liked to sew and paint and color and she taught me to love sewing and painting and coloring. And over the years I added a love of photography and decoupage and stamping and (sometimes) knitting …

As a matter of fact, some of my favorite memories have to do with crafting with my mom and my grandmas and my cousins and my friends... I mention this because I plan to blog once or twice a week this month sharing stories of crafting memories and photos in honor of National Craft Month!

Do you have any favorite crafting memories or stories or projects? I'd love to hear about them!