I am so looking forward to Thanksgiving this year! For the first time in a long while, nearly all of my father's family -- who live spread out all over the US -- will be gathering in one place to celebrate together. So much has happened since the last time we were all together and I can't wait to hug each one of them in person again.

Because we had so much fun with our grateful chain at our Thanksgiving playgroup, I thought I'd make a more grownup version to share with our family. I whipped up these cards last night. I haven't decided exactly what to do with them yet -- printed out on cardstock, they make cute placecards, or else it might be fun to have everybody fill them out and try to guess which card belongs to which person. (James, Anne, and I did a test round -- can you guess whose is whose?)

You can click here to download some of these cards for your own table. Have a wonderful holiday (if you're in the US -- if not, have a wonderful regular old Thursday). We'll be back online next week.

Last Friday, our playgroup hosted a small Thanksgiving party, complete with turkey sandwiches, pumpkin muffins, and other seasonal goodies. As a part of it, we thought it would be fun for the kids to make a grateful chain, something I remember doing (and loving) several times when I was in elementary school. We cut strips of construction paper, asked all of the kids what they were grateful for, wrote it on the paper, and stapled them together into links to form a chain.

In case you are wondering what kinds of things 2-3 year olds are grateful for? Pizza and chips. Tigers. Ninjas. Legos. Caillou, princesses, iPads, and the song Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star. Oh, and this little guy?

He was grateful for himself. He said it over and over again, his own name, every time we asked him. At first we thought maybe he didn't get the purpose of the exercise but you know what? I think he did. And I think it's very important to remember to appreciate the sheer miracle of your own existence from time to time. Only just 3, and Little C.'s already got this worked out.

Our chain grew and grew throughout the party as we moms added links to it (I confess that I got a little teary-eyed as I listed off my own thankfuls: healthy family. Missing cat returned. New house. Good friends.) By the end of the party our grateful chain was so long that it had been stepped on a few times and patched several more, thanks to a post-lunch surge of boisterousness. But we didn't mind. We're thankful the chance to run off a little steam, and especially for the midafternoon nap that's destined to follow.

What are you grateful for this year? I'm grateful for you readers, the ones who have been reading from the beginning and the ones who have only just stopped by. Thank you for being here!

When we visited Rosewell Plantation this past summer, I brought home a little cookbook from the gift shop chock full of colonial-era recipes, including one for a tempting concoction called Marlborough Pudding, a uniquely American recipe that was a staple at the first Thanksgiving celebrations. It might surprise you to know that this isn't traditionally a pudding at all, but rather, a pie. A sort of "if they mated" between pumpkin pie and applesauce, with a little custardy goodness long tucked away somewhere in the family tree popping out in their offspring and making everyone scratch their heads and say, "Wonder where THAT came from." Oh dear, I fear I've stretched this metaphor too far but you get the picture.

I adapted the recipe a little for modern times, which is to say that I omitted the whole pie aspect because making pastry is a little more time-consuming than my schedule usually allows. Instead, I put the pudding back in Marlborough pudding. The result is a creamier, heartier version of baked applesauce, full of tartness and spiciness and all kinds of autumnal goodness.


























Ingredients

4 large apples
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
Juice of 1 lemon and grated peel of 1/2 lemon
1/2 cup heavy cream (we use 1/4 cup coconut milk solids and 1/4 cup coconut milk for this since we're a dairy-free household. for more info, click here.)
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/4 cup butter

Directions:

Place apples in saucepan with about 1/2 cup water and cover. Stew over medium high heat until very tender and then drain. Pass the apples through a sieve to puree. Preheat the oven to 450 degrees. Mix the pureed apples, sugar, and lemon juice and peel in a bowl. Beat in the eggs. Add milk, cinnamon, nutmeg, vanilla and butter and stir until well blended. Pour the filling into a glass baking dish and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 350 degrees and keep baking for about 20-25 minutes more, or until mostly set but still slightly soft in the center. Remove from the oven and cool before serving.

Now I understand why this whole Thanksgiving thing caught on. Served with a dollop of (coconut) whipped cream on top and some graham crackers for dipping, this deliciousness is definitely something to be thankful for.

Have a great weekend! The winter holiday season officially begins next week -- are you ready for this?

We have a crop of oak and maple trees lining the street in our new neighborhood, and they make the biggest, crunchiest leaves ever. A month or so ago, their leaves were all over the sidewalk in heaps of red and gold and orange, but by now, their colors have faded to a drab brown. Still, we thought they might have a little life left in them yet, and so we brought a sheaf home to make art with.

Our first project was to make leaf rubbings (which reminded me of that old Barbie fashion plate game from the '90s, does anybody remember that?) So simple: just arrange your leaves on a sheet of paper vein side up (with a dab of painters' tape to hold them in place), put another sheet of paper on top, and rub with a crayon to make colorful prints. We tried several types of paper but found that the thinness of calligraphy paper gave us the best detail.



After we'd made rubbings of all of our leaves, Anouk and I unpeeled the leaves from the paper and the paper from the back of the leaves and got out our watercolors and painted them. Surprisingly, leaves make a great medium for watercolor paint -- the paint adheres really well and kind of lights up all the grain/detail in the leaf. It was fun to see the old leaves made colorful again -- this time in pinks and blues and purples.


























I had thought I might string the leaves up on twine to make a garland or incorporate them into some kind of a centerpiece but before I could, A. commandeered them for use in a very intricate and complicated Barbie colony under the dining room table (I think they are being used as a kind of blanket/airplane hybrid) So there's that, too.

What have you been crafting with lately?

You might have noticed that last month's 12 in 12 didn't happen -- I was busy being a bridesmaid in my friend K.'s wedding and felt like I had enough to concentrate on without adding a blog project into it. This month we're glad to be back! Last Tuesday the 12th was a pretty ordinary day for us meaning: lots of painting, potty training, and more unpacking but some bright spots (in a very cold day) in between. Be sure to pop over to Darcy and Rebecca's blogs to see what they did on 11-12-13.



8:30 AM: Dutch babies for breakfast. We have these all the time because they are so quick to make and so delicious. Today's was topped with blueberry, lemon juice, and a drizzle of honey.



9:15 AM: Our house is still covered in boxes but of course I spent Anouk's TV time trying out different ways of styling my mantel instead of dealing with them, because priorities.





10:00 AM: A quick walk around the neighborhood takes twice as long now that there are all of these fallen leaves to play in.



11:00 AM: Ordering our Thanksgiving ham and treating ourselves to fresh ham rolls for Elevensies.





12:15 PM: Our daily trip to Lowes. We've been here so often in the past few months that Anouk knows where everything is and the names to half the colors of the carpet samples.



3:00 PM: Books from Grandma arrived today! After a nap, Anouk reads them while I prep dinner (turkey burgers and red beans and rice).







5:45 PM: Helping Daddy put together our kitchen table. This table has now officially been with us through five moves and has survived without a scratch. I'm glad to have a functioning dining room but I'll be a little sad to no longer have excuses for eating dinner on the couch, in front of the laptop. Bad mommy, but I have to admit I enjoyed them.



8:00 PM: Testing out a new cookie recipe for the blog. It was delicious flavor-wise, but a bit of a bust when it came to texture. Back to the drawing board.



9:15 PM: Ending the day with a little trim painting and listening to Ali Brosh's Fresh Air interview. Tired, paint-covered, but happy. :)

All year long, as my sewing skills matured, I've been pinning more and more elaborate DIY advent calendars that I planned to recreate. But of course procrastination got in the way, and here it is, mid-November, and I haven't started on one. Usually procrastination doesn't pay, but in this case, it did, because I'm in love with the advent calendar we ended up with, featuring Christmas (and Hannukah, and Solstice)-themed picture books, 25 in all.

I scouted these books over the past few months from various thrift stores and used-book shops. (All in all, for a total of 24 books, I would estimate that I spent roughly $12). I wrapped each book individually in Trader Joe's bags, tied some with bakers twine, stamped others, labeled each with a number decal, and put them all together in a basket. Come December 1, Nou will have one to open every night, and James and I will read it to her before bed. By Christmas, she'll have a whole collection, and after Christmas, they'll all go back in the attic to wait for next year (prewrapped, to cut down on prep time). As she gets older, we can replace some of the more toddler-appropriate books with books for big kids or even chapter books and YA.



The winter holiday season is definitely already heavy on the sugar and material goods, so it meant a lot to me to be able to find a way to offer Anouk a holiday treat that was fun without being unhealthy, and also offered us a way to spend time together as a family. Anne has already been poking around the book basket, asking, "Mama, WHEN can I open them?" The anticipation builds. I can't wait for December, and our first holiday season with our big girl. :)

For a complete list of all the books we used in this project, click here or visit the tab at the top of the page.

What are your favorite holiday reads? For grownups, too? For some reason I always think of Gone With the Wind as a Christmas book, not sure why. It's definitely the opposite of heartwarming.

My sister brought me back a bag of lavender sugar from her trip to France last summer. It was so much fun to cook with -- it made my old tried and true recipes seem fresh and exciting again. We used it in as much as we could -- in lemonade, shortbreads, sugar cookies -- and even experimented with a lavender-sugar caramel.

I enjoyed my present so much that I thought it would be a good thing to try to DIY for our own handmade holiday. (The sugar my sister gave me was handmade by monks who have been making it since the 1500s or so, but I refused to be daunted.)

We ended up making three different batches of flavored sugar to give as gifts this holiday season: rosemary, lemon, and lavender. Here's how we did it.
















1. Gather your desired herbs and rinse, let dry (It's definitely best to use fresh herbs for this!) For lemon sugar, peel the fruit and lay the peel aside in a warm place to dry for a day or two, otherwise the moisture in it will make your sugar clumpy. When the peel feels dry to the touch, cut a few notches in it with scissors and you're ready to go.

2. Fill a clean small jar with a layer of herbs. Then add a thick layer of sugar. Repeat until the jar is filled. Use more herbs for a stronger flavor and less for a lighter one.

3. Let stand for 3-4 weeks, shaking and turning daily so that the flavor can be distributed throughout the jar (Anouk was a big help for this step). Test every week or so, until the flavor is as strong as you want it.

4. Strain the sugar through a sieve to remove the herbs and/or peel. If you like, you can leave a few small springs for festivity's sake. Pour back into the jar and tie with baker's twine or ribbon. Include a handwritten recipe for something to use the sugar in if you like or a small box of tea to use the sugar with.

I think the thing I like best about this -- besides the fact that it's so quick and inexpensive to make --  is that it's a grownup friendly DIY gift that little hands can put together almost all by themselves. Next I'd like to experiment with combining some of these flavors -- rosemary and lemon, lavender and orange peel. (And then I'd like to experiment eating some delicacies made with them).

Have you ever cooked/baked with flavored sugar? What did you make?

Have a great weekend!

I picked this adorable Japanese mid-century children's book at the thrift store recently during a Christmas-book buying binge. As soon as I saw the delicate water-colored cover, I knew I'd be taking it home. Yes, I totally judged the book by the cover without even a thought to what was inside.

Luckily, as Anne and I soon found out, the story is just as charming as Kazue Mizumura's illustrations. A basic overview of the plot: After a tofu vendor gives him too much change, young Taro has to decide whether to return the extra money or not. Of course he decides the right thing (spoiler alert), and everything ends happily.



This book was written in 1962, and it's fun to see little glimpses of what the Mad-Men era was like in Japan. I love this scene of the father reading his paper in his kimono with the little ashtray in front of him. And the old radio on the chest of drawers, and the Eames-ish-ness of the table...



Reviews I've found of Taro online seem to exclusively support it as a childhood favorite with a sentimental value that lasted into adulthood. More than a few reviewers even mention passing Taro down to their children and grandchildren. A potential family heirloom for 25 cents? Not bad. Not bad at all. Taro is out of print, but used copies can be found all over the internet.

What have you added to your book collection lately?

I'm writing a batch of thank-you notes this morning. I actually love writing thank-you notes -- I've never seen them as a chore, not even after James and I got married and had to write notes to each of our 200+ guests. It was kind of nice, actually, to sit down in the evening with a plate of leftover wedding cake and reconnect with memories from our special day that we shared with each guest.

I don't consciously use a template for writing my thank-you notes, but I have noticed that I tend to structure my messages similarly each time I write them. When people mention that they (or their kids) frequently get writer's block when writing thank-yous, I always want to share my little formula, which looks something like this:

1. Thank you for the specific thing that person gave/did.  Thank you for the concert tickets. 
2. How the gesture made you feel in the moment.  It was so generous of you to pass them along to us. 
3. How it makes you feel now: I still can't believe how much fun we had that night. 
4. In a new paragraph, offer a compliment or offer to return the favor. The next time Bieber is in town, I'm taking you. 
5. Thank them again -- for something more general this time. Thanks for being such a thoughtful friend. 

An example:

Dear Maura,  

Thank you so much for babysitting little Jean the other day. It was such a relief to be able to make my appointment and I am so grateful that you were able to take her on short notice.  

I'm here to return the favor anytime! You're the best. Thanks for being such a wonderful neighbor.  

Love, 
Eliza 

Some tips: Don't exaggerate or overdo it -- doing that is the quickest way to sound insincere. Use synonyms -- "nice" is nice, but "wonderful, amazing, kind" are all more interesting and less generic. Try to sign off with something better than "Sincerely" (unless you are writing a business thank you). And always, always handwrite if you can.

The thing I like best about this method is that it makes it easy to be sincere. It's hard to sound rote when you are really considering the nice thing that was done for you and how it made you feel. It's basically just the first rule of writing (write what you know) boiled down into a few lines.

Do you like writing thank you notes? Do your kids? Do you have a favorite stationery to use? I am a huge Crane & Co. fan but I have to admit I like a lot of the cute notes Target has had lately.

We had a busy weekend -- we had a yard sale, we met up with friends, and we finished a few projects around the house -- but yesterday we did take the time to observe Veterans Day with a trip to the Armed Forces Memorial at Town Point Park, in Downtown Norfolk. The memorial had been on my list of places to visit for a long time... what better day to finally go and see it?

After seeing it, I think I can safely say that this is my favorite memorial I've ever visited, including some of the more famous ones in DC. It's one of those that truly blends form with function and ends up feeling both terribly sad and inspiring at the same time. A sheaf of letters -- each from a servicemember who lost their life in wars ranging from the Revolution to the Gulf War of 1991 -- are printed on bronze and then scattered across the stones and bushes in the pavilion as though blown by the wind toward the Elizabeth River.





Around the corner is a replica of The Homecoming, a famous statue that stands in the US Navy Memorial in DC. It shows a sailor reunited with his partner and son...it's impossible not to smile when you see it. But the real draw of the memorial are the words. All these hopeful/sad/mad/scared last words home whirling and twirling out to sea and away from home just like the men and women who wrote them.

It made us feel so many things to read them. I think the first and foremost was grateful. Thank you, to all our veterans.



This is just a short incident in a fellow's life, I tell myself, and soon it will be behind me, and I will have forgotten it, and settle down among you all again. - Robert Baum, d. 1943

Last year, I made a vow that I was going to handmake each and every one of the presents I gave to my family and friends that holiday season. I imagined myself lovingly painting mason jars and embroidering initials on napkins by the fire all through December. In reality, I spent the weeks before Christmas in a frenzy, leading to a total meltdown on Christmas Eve while I sat up at midnight arranging photos in albums that I would give to my mother in just a few short hours. When it was all over, James turned to me and said, "I don't care if it costs ten thousand dollars, we are never, ever doing handmade presents again."

He didn't have to say it twice. I agree: I will never again attempt to make each and every one of my Christmas gifts for others. However, I think a few handmade presents here and there -- made WELL in advance of the holidays -- would be OK. I'm already hard at work on this year's crop, and over the next few weeks I'll be sharing a few of the gifts that have been big hits in the past and some that I am in the process of making. So that you can get a head start, too. :)

The first are these custom state prints. I was inspired to make these after stumbling across the (free!) Stateface font, in which each letter corresponds to the shape of one U.S. state. I downloaded it, immediately fell in love with it, and started using it everywhere. I made nursery prints for my friends with new babies, wedding prints for my friends who had been married that year, and custom notepads and address labels for anybody who came to mind.


Here's a quick primer on how to make these prints in Photoshop: open a text box and type the key corresponding to the state you want. Adjust your chosen state to the size and color that you want just like you would with any other font, highlight it, and then under the Type menu at the top, click on "Convert to Shape." This turns the state font character into an outlined shape that you can fill with whatever you want (other text or even a fun pattern.) For the nursery and wedding prints, I decided to place a heart to mark the location of birth or marriage and then insert the geographical coordinates underneath just because I liked the way the string of numbers looked next to the swirly font of the names.


Then you either print out your work at home on high-quality paper or at a professional printer (they can make so many things -- custom stamps, tote bags, personalized stationery, to name some of my faves.) Pop it into a frame with a nice mat, and you have a holiday gift that looks like a million bucks (but didn't cost it).

Each of these designs took me only a short time to make once I had the hang of things but because it was personalized for someone special to me, it felt like I was working on something special. You don't need any expert graphic design expertise to make these prints, just the right font and a little creativity (and Photoshop, though you could probably do this in other image editing programs). The possibilities are endless.

Will you download the Stateface font? What would you use it for? Are you planning on making any of your gifts this year?