A Few Things That Make Me Smile

My son's first self portrait.

Just thought I would share a couple things from this past week. A little parenting, thrifting, and some things that make me smile.

This week has gone by pretty quickly for me. I'm pretty sure I've spent the entire time trying to clean my house. And I mean trying. I still haven't remotely caught up with it. I saw a status this earlier this week on facebook that said "Cleaning your house with a toddler is like brushing you teeth with an Oreo". This is especially true since most of the time my son is trying to help. While I think it's great my son wants to constantly move around and DO something, my house is really paying the price. If it's not him pulling out new activities, it's me getting out projects and not finishing them and then along comes the 10 month old who lets you know just how sloppy you are when you find the most random items hanging from his mouth. 

I really am enjoying this time in my life though. They say these days when you children are young go fast. So I'm soaking it up. I'll take my most of the time semi clean house and enjoy these moments.

I found these three tea cups and saucers at the thrift stores the other day. They say Deruta Italy on the bottoms of them with some other symbols. From what I've researched they are for real, but in the meantime I find them beautiful and will enjoy them no matter where they are from. My husband wants to open up a Etsy account with me to sell some vintage items e've collected. Maybe these will go up on the site when it opens. We came up with a pretty great name that's fun and personal too! That'll be a whole other blog post though. 

I've been in the Christmas spirit these days. Well, I kind of am all the time, but much more so lately while making items for our Mumre shop. I love getting to use these papers while wrapping orders. I mainly use either brown packaging paper or this lovely embossed creme wallpaper. They are so elegant and simple. 

A pointillism snowflake doodle in my sketch book. 

Someone's gotta eat it.

Along with a bunch of other items we have new items in our shop, I listed this particular tree.
These are so fun for me to make and for some reason every time I see this particular one I smile and feel so much joy.
Perhaps it's because it reminds me of a child's drawing of a Christmas tree with all the zigzags, simple shapes and doodle look to the whole thing, but I'll take the joy, soak it up and use it to make more. Gotta spread the good feeling! Take a look on Etsy for this one and more like it.

Keep a look out for our up coming exclusive sales for our blog readers and facebook followers!

- Hannah

Time to Myself

While I may not be alone, it's time to do what momma wants. I'm watching one of my all time favorite movies, eating a nice snack, drinking some cider, and working on a embroidery project just for the fun of it! My kiddos are down for the night and my husband ended up falling asleep too. The night is young so I'm going to enjoy this minute by minute.

I don't know why it took me so long to get into embroidery. I've always preferred sewing by hand vs. machine. Controlling the color in each stitch by is so similar to painting for me. Each stitch provides a particular feel and texture just as a brush stroke would. Embroidery and painting seem to go hand in hand with me, while I'm working on one I have a fun idea for the other. I often get torn on what to sit down and work on.

Though I love all kinds of crafting, this week I've been into sitting down, enjoying the cool weather, and hand stitching something from scratch. My current project is a fun small snowflake. One of my favorite things on this earth is snow! I can't get over how unique they all are and their intricacy. I thought it would be a perfect piece to just make up as I go and just have fun with it. This piece is inspired by a photographed snowflake with all kind of colors reflecting off of it. I love where I'm at so far and I can't wait to show you how it turns out.

Cheers to time for myself and a chance to chill out and enjoy the little things!

- Hannah

First Canning Experience

The other day my sister and I had our first experience with canning. Neither one of us had much knowledge going into it, but with a little bit of research and all the supplies in front of us we went for it. Besides our garden that was bursting at the seams to be harvested, our first motivation was finding a interesting mix of pickling spices. After one smell the spices intrigued us. Inside our little container were cloves, mustard seeds, cumin, bay leaves, dill, allspice, and a ton of others I can't think of but I wrote them all around the container if someone should ask. 

My first goal was to make pickles, I mainly wanted cucumbers to use for my juicing, but my mom has a knack for buying every variety of vegetables and fruits she can find. So of course, we have a ton of picking cucumbers. I juice them sometimes, but we had so many in the fridge it was time to pickle. My sister and I just decided to do a sort of fridge ready pickling because we will eat them so fast, they don't need to have a shelf life. The pickles are so zesty it's fantastic and have the best crunch I've ever experienced compared to the store bought. We may have to make some with a shelf life after all. 

Pickling Spice from our Co-op Maple City Market

Pickling Cucumbers 

We also tried our hand at salsa making, but in the middle of peeling the tomatoes, we had more of a desire to create a fresh and light tasting pico de gallo. This is probably one of my most favorite creations yet. Even without a fresh onion (we used a little dried minced onion) this was great. For the last couple days I've been eating pico de gallo and some chips for lunch. I find myself nearly licking the salsa bowl clean before telling myself to stop. I'm very happy that this tomato season has just begun and soon we will be making some pasta sauce!

Pico de gallo with a wide variety of tomatoes, sweet banana peppers, sweet jalapeno peppers, onion & garlic chives, dehydrated cilantro, dried minced onion, and garlic powder.

Accomplishments from our first day canning!

-Hannah

The Family Garden

Out where I live there are a couple acres of property designated as a community garden. When I first moved in I wasn't sure how much I would actually be interested in utilizing any of the land. It took a year, but now my family is really into it. In fact, my family (three households of us) have a little over 5,000 sq ft all to ourselves! My mother has always had an amazing green thumb and has enjoyed gardening her entire life. I'm fairly new at this whole growing thing, but I'm in love with gratification of growing something so beautiful and being able to harvest it later for a fantastic meal. 


This year we have decided to try out a new approach to gardening called sustainable permaculture. A family member suggest we watch a film online called "Back to Eden" explaining the methods for gardening in depth. Their website even provides pretty extensive instructions, but it leaves room for you to figure out what works best for you in your location. By adding new covering to your garden you just keep adding more and more nutrients as the year goes on with no tilling involved at all! It's already really impressed us, especially the weeding aspect of it.


I suggest checking them out and get growing!

-Hannah