In These Hills: winter

Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts

A February Birthday

>> Wednesday, February 26, 2014 – winter

Elizabeth turned 15 this month! She loves orange so we found orange candles and flowers to go with her birthday table runner which I made last year.

This owl onesie was a huge hit. For some reason both girls have been wanting these.

On the day after her birthday she passed her driver's permit test. We have another driver in the family!

I'm not sure where the time has gone!

Valentine Greetings (a bit late)

>> Tuesday, February 25, 2014 – winter

Life has been so busy for us that we celebrated Valentines a bit late.

I had thought to perhaps buy valentines this year, but Elizabeth wouldn't let me.

Nelson made these boxes last year and filled them with chocolates for us.

Helen made this bouquet of paper roses for the table.

I was inspired by maps this year and made Nelson this card.

Inside were the latitude and longitude of places I'd like to visit with him.

He had fun looking up all the coordinates.

Liz filled decks of cards for each of us with "52 ways she loves us." Each card had a note. This one says"you will put the cookie dough on the sheet for me." They were very personal and I cried :)

Elizabeth has been baking a lot this winter.

Here are the macarons she made for a Valentine's Tea. YUM.

The College Search Continues

>> Sunday, February 23, 2014 – College, winter

The college search has continued throughout the winter. Helen has heard from almost all the schools and has been accepted with merit at all of them. She was named a Schubert Scholar at Ohio Wesleyan and invited to compete for additional funding so we took a trip to Ohio in January. It was quite a lot of work to prepare as she had to create a portfolio of her work.

Here she is just before going to the essay and discussion portions of the competition.

I was so incredibly proud of her. It took a lot of guts to do what she did and some of the examining professors came up to me to say how much they enjoyed meeting her. She was rewarded with additional scholarship money. Here's a photo of Ohio Wesleyan in the snow. It was cold--polar votex cold.

She also took her portfolio to the College of Wooster and met with the Theatre Department and a number of students. They also have given her substantial funding.

So now we wait for all the final offers to come in so she can begin to weigh all the various factors. She almost has too many choices!

An Orange 14th Birthday!

>> Wednesday, February 20, 2013 – cooking, Crafts, winter

Elizabeth celebrated her 14th birthday on Monday. It's a big year for her--she graduates from the Waldorf school and heads off to high school. She spent last week taking placement exams and is waiting anxiously to see where she is placed.

Happily her birthday fell on President's Day so we had the day off to celebrate. I did some birthday cooking in the morning and then Helen, Liz, and I headed out on the town for her special day.

Our first stop was a vintage clothing store which is two floors of designer vintage clothing and fabric. She loves fashion so this was a big hit. We stayed for a long time!

We then moved along to lunch at a local Italian restaurant and stopped in the neighboring chocolate shop afterwards. We didn't end up buying anything, but it was fun to look.

Finally, we went to the fabric store. She was getting tired of having her photo taken by this point :). I bought some fabric to make a new table runner for her birthday dinner. We all found little items for crafting.

After we got home it was time to work on the big dinner. I had decided to make a small, tall birthday cakes by baking the batter in cans. I used the tomato cans from the lasagna I had made earlier in the day. After I filled the cans I decided to quick look online to make sure I was doing it right. I found this blog which revealed her...um...struggles with this baking method and realized I had put in twice as much batter as I needed. I removed the batter, put the cans on a pan just in case and crossed my fingers.

Success. Here's what they looked like after about 25 minutes in the oven and the all-important 10 minutes of cooling in the cans.

We took a Downton Abbey break and celebrated/mourned the final episode with two pots of tea and petits fours. This just about made Liz's birthday perfect.

After Downton Abbey the girls decorated the cakes by slicing them horizontally and filling each layer with whipped cream and fresh raspberries. Here Liz is also getting candles ready to put in the birthday board made by her Great-Great Grandfather.

Liz's favorite color these days is orange so we also got carnations yesterday and dyed them orange with food coloring in the water. Magic!

Here's her orange birthday table with the fun table runner I whipped up.

We wrapped her gifts in orange as well.

Gifts for a 14 year old are hard--we gave her a kit of Smash Book materials, some fashion/sewing books, and a Vogue poster--perfect.

Here's the cake on the birthday board.

Liz agrees that it was the most perfect birthday ever!

A Valentines Tale

>> Sunday, February 17, 2013 – Crafts, winter

Getting everyone inspired for making Valentines was a bit of a challenge this year. Liz joined me at the table to make cards for a little while, but Helen wasn't so enthusiastic. It's an ongoing theme/challenge with teens--how to keep up the handmade traditions as they get older and less engaged.

I got inspired to do a little bit of "found poetry" out of the newspaper. Liz's Valentine poem was made up of words clipped from an article about an Albatross who had recently had a baby and flown across oceans to care for it. Helen's came from a travel article on vineyards in France! Perfect words in those two articles, I tell you!

Here's the one I made for Nelson.

Helen and Liz finally got inspired and disappeared for an afternoon. They drove into town, had coffees, and bought a large amount of gourmet chocolate. They came back and made Valentine boxes for their purchases. Yup. My girls are now driving off for afternoons on their own. Here are Helen's designs.

Liz got inspired by origami and made us these little boxes....filled with chocolate!

The weekend before Valentines day Nelson disappeared into the basement to work on a mysterious project. The girls were mystified. I had an idea since I know that Nelson isn't a big fan of making paper valentines and he hadn't joined in the paper/glue extravaganza either. He presented us each with a wooden box he had made... filled with chocolates.

No worries about us eating all that chocolate. Before I could catch him, Odin climbed up on the table and finished it all off foil coverings and all. Bad doggie. He got put in the crate for a long time!

Needlefelted Tapestries

>> Wednesday, November 28, 2012 – Crafts, solstice, waldorf, winter

The Waldorf School Winter Fair is on Saturday. The 8th grade is in charge of decorating and Liz, Helen, and I decided to do some needlefelted tapestries to cover a bulletin board. These will be up on the board and then framed with pine branches.

Liz created this advent spiral

I made this woodland scene

Helen created King Winter

February brought....

>> Saturday, March 3, 2012 – winter

...a very, very busy month.

After a stressful week in Florida, Nelson joined me for a second week to obsessively watch his Dad's ventilator, waiting and praying for him to recover enough to breath on his own. He's getting there....off the ventilator, but still with a tracheotomy and feeding tube.

Meanwhile, life went on.

Helen and friends shot a movie in a cool old warehouse.

My brother and his wife came to stay with the girls

Fun times--she brought chocolate from where she works.

Nelson chopped a lot of wood

and took lots of long walks--great stress relievers.
One day while I was at the hospital he texted me this photo from a walk.

My paperwhites bloomed while I was gone and Helen mailed me a sweet photo.

It made me realize how long I was gone.

We got home in time for Valentines Day.

And Lizzie's 13th birthday!

Her birthday was 2 weeks ago--she is just getting to celebrate with friends this weekend!

And, just one week after being home for Valentines and Birthday...off to Washington, DC, I went with the girls. This was partially a trip for work and long planned.

We took the train and the slow travel was a good thing for me.

March came in like a lion, bringing some good snow, but I honestly hope it goes out like a lamb.

We need things to calm down!

On the Edge of the Sea

>> Thursday, March 17, 2011 – Crafts, winter

Even though the sun is shining more strongly and the roof beginning to melt, there is still 2 feet of snow in our yard. Last weekend we escaped to Maine with friends.

We began our visit at the beach which was gloriously bright and windy.

The surf was spectacular.

The girls found lots of sand dollars. They are such treasures to me.

After the beach and a lunch of hot chowder and lobster stew, we moved on to our most favorite shop in Maine--Halcyon Yarn.
We had so much fun! After awhile the guys quietly disappeared up the street for a coffee.

Liz choose the makings for this Spring Simplicity scarf.

I decided to try the Alpine Topper.

Helen purchased the makings for a felted camera bag of her own design. My friend chose a sweater pattern for her shivering dog.

We finally met the guys at the coffee shop and soon yarn was draped everywhere as we began winding it into balls. The guys helped. You gotta love yarn-friendly husbands. We met some knitters who invited us to join their knitting group at the library. Maribeth--if you're reading this, you might recognize a friend in this photo...

That night we played Shanghai Rummy for hours. We all madly knit in between hands. Liz beat us all.

Sunday we awoke to a beautiful sunrise, a bit of Bach, and more knitting. It was a quiet morning.
I sat with my journal and Rachel Carson's The Edge of the Sea. She has such wise things to say about this earth of ours.