mommo

Thank you

Thank you so much for all of the kind comments about our loss this last weekend. Its weird to think its been a whole week now- I still half expect her to drive up on a sunny weekend day, like today, ready to go to estate sales with us. I have a feeling that feeling will take awhile to diminish. We had a lovely service for her yesterday and it really couldn't have been nicer. The reception after was a high tea, to honor her English upbringing and she would have loved that. The only thing is that the christmas crackers we had bought and intended to hand out never made it to the church so now we have christmas crackers for the next few holidays and then some! So many people turned up it was just really fantastic and such a testimony to her warm kind friendly nature. One very special thing was that I had basically asked for a very specific sign that she was loving her new home and I got my very specific sign yesterday.  It just made me feel so good and completely reassured.

Now that we have the service behind us, as well as all of the other myriad of things that have to get done at someone's passing, I feel like we can really sit and be with our grief and let everything take on a more natural pace.  So thanks again for all of the support and kindness. Normal crafting fun will soon resume!

A little break

My sweet sweet mother in law passed yesterday. She is the one inspiring my bread pudding and pie baking, trying to sort out all of the feelings I have where she is concerened. Almost a year ago, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. I always knew she had super human toughness, but until I watched her endure the months of surgeries and rehab, I had no idea anyone could actually be that tough. Instead of complaining when we would come to see her in the hospital after her surgery that left her with a scar that ran the width of her belly, she would look at M and ask if she wanted to see Grandma's owie. She was the most unassuming and loving person I have ever met. I remember the first time I met her. I was so nervous to meet his parents for the first time. We showed up at their house, she made us dinner and afterwards, everyone got a calculator and we all sat down and played Jepoardy on tv.! It was so odd and so comfortable and I knew right away things would be good. I remember when I had my first baby and how worried she was about me. How she hovered and worried- you didn't always see that side of her- she is a sweet stoic Englishwoman. I remember feeling how comforting it was to know how much she loved me.  She was a constant in our lives. And we had so much in common. Some  saturdays she and Pakka would come over to our side of town and we would drive her around and she , hubby and I would go to the estate sales while Pakka stayed with the kids. Two nights before she died, we all were at the hospice with her and Jepoardy came on ,and in one of her more enthusiastic times in days, she said,"Lets all play". It felt so oddly full circle. We are just heartbroken over here. My little almost two year old nephew showed up at her house this morning, saw her picture on the fridge and kept pointing at it. Then he took Pakka's hand and walked him around the house, looking in all the rooms for Grandma. That is pretty much how I feel today. A little lost, wandering around, hoping to find her in the next room, sitting at the couch playing jepoardy. So I am taking atleast the week off, to help plan the funeral and let some of this sink in. One sweet thing hubby's sister thought up is to hand out Christmas Crackers after the funeral. She loved her Christmas Crackers. It is going to be so sad this year, not to be able to look across the table at Christmas and see her, with that sweet face, wearing her tissue paper hat from the crackers.

Pumpkins and Apples and Elvis

 

Who knew I would grow to love bread pudding as much as I do? This recipe is from the October 2004 issue of Martha. It is incredible. I have modified it but it is always a crowd pleaser.  I have shared a bit about a couple of people in our lives who are terminally ill and this was made for one of them.  We lost my Aunt two weeks ago and being immersed in so much of this lately, I have to say I am learning so much about dignity and patience ,trying to let things go as they will and acceptance. This has been going on for a year and my feelings of not knowing if she will be o.k. or not have been replaced by wondering how long she will be with us at this point. She called us today to ask that we find Elvis's gospel CD because thats what she wants played at her funeral. It is heart wrenching to think of this. To search the internet and find this somewhat onscure CD so she can have the music she wants-music she won't hear with us. And at the same time, it is so delightfully unexpected that this stoic digified lovely woman wants Elvis at her funeral. It just hints to the treasure that she is to me. When I think I have her figured out, she suprises me. At this point, there is nothing we can do to keep her with us as much as we want her to stay. So I bake her bread pudding and fold her laundry and try to show my love to her in these ways.  This has been a good place to write down some of what I am thinking with all of this. Its a good way to help me process some of this.

Life has to go on around us, especially with kids, so this weekend we took the kids to the annual Apple tasting at our favorite local nursery. They have about a million types of apples to try and buy and all kinds of fun things for the kids. One of our favorites was a scavenger hunt that took us all over the nursery looking for these little guys: The next thing we did was to paint these tiny pumpkins and get the kids faces painted. Check out all these darling decorated pumpkins. It was wonderful to just get outside and listen to good music and run around such a beautiful place. Last but not least, here is a shot of some of the entries for last weekend's Lord of the Gourd. There is a pot in the right corner for scale. How perfect is that pumpkin on the left. It won most perfect pumpkin. I think it looks like the one Cinderella would have chosen for her carriage.

Pink and Red!

Is this the yummiest yarn you have ever seen? I have been really having a great time with a swap I have been doing through www.iwasknittogetherinmymotherswomb.typepad.com . It has been a really fun swap with really great people, organized by the nicest lady. This ,sadly, is the final month but my partner Elizabeth made sure she finished it up great for me! It felt so crazy to get not one, but two stellar swap packages this week.  Elizabeth (go say hi! http://www.k1p1k2tog.typepad.com/my_favorite_things/put in this amazing Lorna's Laes and Tiny Toes and it is just the push I need to finally get some socks on my needles. The box was so full- I just kept pulling out more and more treats including these three (3!) books. The Stocking book has the cutest stocking ornament pattern so that might be a good little entry into sock knitting.

She also included the sweetest scarf kit complete with pink translucent knitting needles. The best part is that they have glitter in them! I don't think better needles exist for me.

And here is the rest . It really was such an amazingly lovely and generous box of goodies. 

The little sweater pattern is so cute- complete with huge pom poms. Elizabeth is a Grandma and I think I know how her grandkids feel because she has the spoiling thing perfected!

It has been amazingly beautiful around here lately. Today it was 78 and the sun was out all day. The fall is so amazing because the quality of light is so different.  Sadly they say it is going to get cold starting sunday. Little secret here- I really do not enjoy the winter. I hate the cold and all the dark is too much. Get up and its dark, eat dinner in the dark. Ugh. I dread the cold months to come. I think I need to sit down and make some sort of game plan so that I can pace myself through the winter and try to enjoy it. Or atleast make the best of it. Any suggestions?

Hubby was putting up the new shed the other day while I was at work and he was home with the kids and a piece of sheet metal fell and cut the back of his hand. It really did a number on him and I had to come home from work so he could go get stitches. It was so bad he had to get stitches inside the cut and on the outside. Yikes! I felt pretty bad for him- it looks very painful. I hope no one is too sensitive to this, but I will say there were copious amounts of blood. As I was looking at the mess the blood made all over the shed and on the deck, I saw that , in his clueless husbandly way, he grabbed MY GRANDMA'S VINTAGE LINEN TEA TOWEL to wipe up some of the mess. For a split second I almost didn't feel sorry for him anymore. But that is just silly. But ,wow, that was a really cute little towel before yesterday. I thought that you guys could appreciate that. Have a great friday!

Cake and goodies

Let me just say that Lord of the Gourd 2006 was a huge success. We had lots of folks who brought lots of food and some pretty good size and weird looking pumpkins! Ours topped out at 52 lbs. which was my exact guess so I was pretty impressed with my pumpkin weight guessing skills. This is the cake I made for the party- Chocolate pumpkin cake with cinnamon cream cheese frosting. Yum! The cake recipe was from October's Country Living and the cream cheese frosting I sort of improvised. It was good! Hubby lost the heaviest pumpkin category by 13 pounds. The Lord of the Gourd was Bob, 2nd year in a row- just watch out for next year though!

A really wonderful box of goodies landed on my doorstep on thursday. Selena ( www.apronthriftgirl.typepad.com ) sent the most amazing box of red and aqua swap goodies. That girl has me nailed! So many really wonderful red and aqua things. Here is how it all looked when I opened the box:

Everything was wrapped up in different bits of fabrics. The fabrics themselves were all wonderful prints and all day I just kept staring at them until I finally made a little something which you will see at the end of this post. All the prints were fantastic! Here is one of my favorties

These two cups were in the box and they are so perfect in the bathroom. The kids needed cups for the bathroom so I was excited to put these to good use. Aren't they perfect?

Here are the rest of the goodies- oh except two gorgeous balls of yarn which I took out and went to put with my stash to get ideas. There is a red and an aqua and they are gorgeous!

Everything is lying on the cutest vintage linen towel and I have a thing for vintage linen towels. There were two red polka dotted napkins, some of the cutest blue milkglass flower beads, beautiful ribbons and buttons, and the cutest sublime stitching embroidery pattern which will be perfect with my new clover embroidery tool. So what did I tell you? Pretty amazing box of goodies! And here is a photo of the little cat I made for M who needed a treat this week. I still can't get over how great all these prints are together.

She looked at it and told me how cute it was and that she especially liked his pants. I hope everyone had a great weekend and maybe next year we will get a little online Lord of the Gourd going where we can all grow our pumpkins and then folks can post their pumpkins and weights online. One big bonus to growing your own pumpkins is that they are softer and easier to carve. Have a great monday!

Lord of the Gourd

Here is a picture of what we refer to as "my husband's mistress" around here. Every year for the past three years, my husband has dedicated his energies to growing pumpkins. Actually, not just pumpkins, but the biggest Atlantic Dill he can manage. Slowly over the last three years he has spread the fever among friends and neighbors and now we have the annual, "Lord of the Gourd" contest. I think he is on his way to a personal best this year, though it looks like last years winner might edge him out again this year. He has become the pied piper of pumpkins and it is so endearing to watch him, making friends all over by talking about pumpkins.  If anyone shows the least bit of interest, he is ready with seeds and books so they can join in. So this sunday we will all gather in our backyard to for the big weigh off. It should be mostly sunny and everyone is bringing a festive dessert. Last year's winner is bringing authentic Belgian hot chocolate which is like hot brownie batter! Yummmmmm.  Should be fun! Here is another picture that shows how coddled this baby is. He keeps it on a strict watering schedule, makes sure the bottom won't rot out on the ground. Hand pollinates. It really is a bit much but one day we may grow one of those 1400 lb pumpkins!