Snowy day

Yesterday and today we had our first snowfall of the year. We don't get much accumulation here but we make the most of what we do get! Micah and Levi wanted Aleks to help them build ships and then take them down to the creek. They set them a-sail and then fired at them with the BB gun trying to sink them. Levi made the argument that it wasn't fair to use the sight because cannons weren't equipped with them and it gave an unfair advantage. He maintained this policy until the battle got too fierce and then he broke down and aimed with the sight. ;-)

Elisabethe and Abigail got out of the bath and after they were freshly braided they decided to have "Church". They got down their song books and proceeded to go through their repetoire which consists of: Jesus Loves Me, God's Love Is Like A Circle, Come And Dine, and snippets of other tunes. It's so sweet to hear their singing!

Since we are homechurching again we've compiled our own "songbook" in a three ring binder. We thought it would be best to begin with the old songs that don't require the women to sing one thing and the men something different (what is that called anyway?) So far we have "Oh For A Heart To Praise My God" 1742, "All People That On Earth Do Dwell" 1500's, and "Praise To God, Immortal Praise" 1772. I want to add some of the old carols this week as well. These songs are meant to be sung slowly and I'm pretty sure that we sing them slower than most people would, but we find it helpful to meditate on the words rather than just race through the songs. That seems to defeat the intended purpose, doesn't it?

Since Thanksgiving is just around the corner we've brought out our meager Thanksgiving/Pilgrims/Early Settlers/Native American books out. We also have a set of Indians and canoes and horses that they haven't played with since last year when we read aloud The Sign Of The Beaver, they really enjoyed that story. The Story of Sarah Whitcher is another wonderful, true story that we like! We have two turkeys that are going to be butchered early next week, they are an old heritage breed from Rhode Island called Narragansett. They aren't broad breasted like a Butterball but they are so flavorful, I can't wait!

I love THanksgiving, it is good to reflect on all of our mercies and give thanks afresh!

Oh happy day!

I have *finally* got all the CdV's uploaded to the other site. I did the last 40 yesterday and today and I'm so glad to have that done!!! They are here if you'd like to take a look.

Well, in other news........ we got more cider pressed, bringing our total to 55 gallons, that's a good feeling. ;-) I've been busily sewing my wrapper that I need for the "Christmas in Zoar" event coming up in 3 weeks. And, we made homemade cranberry apple relish! We had it with herbed porkchops one night and with chicken tonight. It is *so* good!

Sorry for such a short post but I'm rather tired tonight. ;-)

Quilted Petticoat

On the sewing front, I completed Abigail's quilted petticoat today. It is brick red on the outside and mustard on the inside. I machine quilted it, which was a first for me, to see if it was feasible to do one for me on the machine. I don't have a walking foot so I don't think I'll do mine that way. My sewing list is shrinking slowly but surely! I want to speak with a certain reader about a fan front gown she made recently, I have some linen that would look well made up this way.

Our Anniversary

Today, November 3, 2008, is the eighteenth anniversary of our wedding day. We were married in the local Presbyterian church on a Saturday evening.

We had our reception at Delhurst restaurant where Mr. G worked at the time. My brother did the photography, my brother-in-law DJ'ed and my sister Dawn sewed the five junior bridesmaid's dresses. These were all gifts to us.

Mr. G's supervisor provided the catering and her mother made the cake!


And so we lived happily ever after!

Beautiful yet functional

I have long had an admiration for Fraktur and especially for the Distelfink birds. Fraktur is Pennsylvania German folk art that saw its heyday from 1740 to 1860 and was used to decorate everything from baptismal records to dower chests. They were colorful and folksy renditions of birds, flower, hearts and even people. So when I decided that I needed some Shaker-type boxes to hold my china buttons and silk ribbons, I knew that I'd like to try my hand at doing a Fraktur motif. The box below is finished except for the coat of shellac that will mute the colors quite a bit.

The inspiration for this particular box was this 1785 document on the right.

Distelfink birds are technically goldfinches, but I wanted mine to be a little different so mine are a deep teal blue. I thought that I had a lot of china and glass buttons but as you can see, there is room for many, many more! I acquired most of my antique buttons from Ebay but I recently was given a few hundred mother-of-pearl buttons that were in my Aunt's collection.

A new dress and a clothing inventory

I finished Elisabethe Mercy's new dress today, she needed some new winter dresses and I wanted to complete them before the snow flies. This is the second time I've made coat sleeves in a dress and the second time they've come out too short! I even lengthened the pattern to avoid this, so I really don't understand what went wrong; it's not as though we have chimp arms in this family or something!

I put a waistband in though I prefer to construct little girl's dresses without one because they go together so much faster!

I gave her three growth tucks so hopefully she won't outgrow it before spring. The birthday dress that Rebekah got in the beginning of August is already on the short side. :-(

We have Amish friends whom I admire for many reasons, one of which is how diligent they are in taking care of their possessions. I don't consider our children careless but they certainly don't *cherish* every single thing that they own either. I made a clothing inventory for the girls so that every Saturday night they can make sure that they are able to account for their homemade clothing, otherwise things are liable to disappear. Mrs. R asked that I share it, so here it is albeit not in the beautiful font that I originally wrote it in.

Clothes Inventory for Little Grahams

~Tabitha’s yoked red print dress with sleeve caps
~Tabitha’s short sleeve light green print dress
~Tabitha’s blue pinafore
~Tabitha’s maroon pinafore
~Tabitha’s underpinnings
~Rebekah’s green print fan front dress
~Rebekah’s light green dotted print summer dress
~Rebekah’s red homespun dress
~Rebekah’s short sleeve blue print dress with shirred sleeves and soutache braid
~Rebekah’s tan pinafore
~Rebekah’s underpinnings
~Elisabethe’s brown print yoked dress
~Elisabethe’s blue homespun dress
~Elisabethe’s maroon print dress
~Elisabethe’s red pinafore
~Elisabethe’s underpinnings
~Abigail’s brown print dress
~Abigail’s yoked mint green print dress
~Abigail’s double pink fleur-de-lis dress
~Abigail’s blue pinafore
~Abigail’s underpinnings

We had Tabitha's birthday supper this evening and here is her dessert. I have saved this recipe for months in anticipation of this day!
The recipe is:
Pecan Pies in Pumpkin Shells
Hollow out 8 mini pumpkins and divide roughly 1 1/2 cup of pecans among them. Preheat oven to 350 and grease a cookie sheet. On the stove combine: 1/4 cup butter, 1 cup maple syrup, 4 large eggs, 1/2 cup sugar and 1 tablespoon vanilla or rum. When combined pour over pecans in shells about 2/3 full. Bake for 45 minutes or until filling is set. Bake the tops too. Very good!
A while ago Mrs. R did a "I've come to realize" post and I wanted to post mine.
1. I've come to realize that my family (husband and children) and I...... are best friends!
2. I've come to realize that I talk..... a lot
3. I've come to realize that I love...... my life!
4. I've come to realize that I have..... a lot to be thankful for
5. I've come to realize that I've lost..... my desire to go with the flow
6. I've come to realize that I hate..... being ashamed of myself
7. I've come to realize that marriage is...... hard work
8. I've come to realize that somewhere, someone is thinking..... I wish I could be happy
9. I've come to realize that I'll always have.....a reward for the services I do, nothing is unseen
10. I've come to realize that I don't...... have time to be in a funk!
11. I've come to realize that when I wake up in the morning..... I'm pretty cold ;-)
12. I've come to realize that before I go to sleep at night.....I need to pray for my family
13. I've come to realize that babies..... keep you young!
14. I've come to realize that today..... can never be retrieved
15. I've come to realize that I really want...... Mr. G to get a better job
16. I've come to realize that my true friends.....are very few but much loved
17. I've come to realize that my husband.....has been the perfect one to help me be more Christlike
18. I've come to realize that I need.......to get Mr G's trowsers cut out!

Tabitha's 10th birthday

Tabitha's 10th birthday is technically tomorrow but Mr. G got called for a job interview tomorrow so she got to open her presents today. She has wanted a red dress for quite a while so I decided to sew her one and she also got a flannel petticoat and a pinafore. She is a voracious reader so I bought her Probable Sons (a big thank you to Cassandra for steering us toward Lamplighter books) and Treasures of the Snow by Patricia St. John. She wanted a diary so I found her a sweet one with a kitten on it and she also got a crafty-thing to make pillows with and, of course, underwear! With her own $20 from Gramma she got a lot of Sculpey clay and a mold to make Sculpey people.

This was my first ever attempt at making sleeve jockies, they are piped with brown piping, the sleeves themselves are bishop sleeves and the cuffs are trimmed in a matching brown stripe. It has a yoked bodice and instead of gathering the lower bodice portion I directionally pleated it in both the front and back. She has 3 growth tucks in the skirt. The whole thing has plenty of room so hopefully she can wear it for 2 winters.

We will have her birthday dinner and cake on the 22nd, so more pictures to come!

Cider pressing!!!

We went today and got our apples pressed. This process started by going to the orchard earlier this week and picking up apples. The orchard owner lets us pick up all the windfalls that we want for free. Because this isn't an organic orchard, we bring the apples home and wash them individually in soap and water. It is time consuming, but I feel better about the cider if I know we've removed as much pesticide as possible.



Here are our apples dumped in the hopper and ready to be ground up. Abby "helping".

The ground up apples get dumped in layers on slatted trays which are covered in cloth. The cloth gets folded over the apples before the next tray is added.

The last picture would be on the right hand side of the picture below. After all of our apples are ground then the stacked up trays are pushed into the middle. Can you see the slatted trays? Then, the whole tray area goes up and gets pressed which is what makes the cider. It goes into a holding tank and we put it in jugs ourself.

We dropped one jug off to friends on the way home so this is what we came home with. Total cost: 25 gallons of cider at a quarter a gallon= $6.25 plus $.39 for each jug= $9.75. Grand total $16.00

Steps toward self sufficiency

Mr. G is on an e-mail ring for self sufficient minded folks and one fellow remarked that his family had gone to kerosene lamps in an effort to reduce their electric bill and he was pleased to report that they'd reduced their bill by $200 a month! Now, I know ours won't drop that much (our whole bill is nowhere near $200) and I've already reduced it a lot by washing our clothes in cold and not using a clothes drier. Anyhow, we're going to give the kerosene lamps a try and we'll see how it goes. Kerosene was $4.20 a gallon and that's a little bit discouraging, to say the least! Here are our 2 beauties. The one on the right hangs above the kitchen sink and then after the supper dishes are washed it hangs in the livingroom. The one on the left is hand blown and it's heavy!

Then, on the wood cutting front......... Aleks has wanted a crosscut saw for a long time, we've made do with what we had up until now. Today Mr. G went to the flea market and found a great 1 man crosscut saw for $20! It can have a second handle put on thus converting it to a 2 man if need be. As soon as Aleks saw it he pulled it out of the trunk, got out his file and began sharpening it. While he was doing that we checked the bees; the "A" hive is doing fine but the "C" hive will need to be fed this winter to survive. I'm not thrilled about feeding them, but the choice is either that or they'll starve to death.

Laundry joys and toys

As you may know, I'm an avid clothesline fan. I *love* to see the rows of shirts, dresses, petticoats and underbodies flapping in the breeze. I've hardly missed having a dryer at all except for two Sundays ago when I forgot to wash the girls' good white socks for church and, since it rained for a few days together, we missed church due to cold sockless toes. ;-) So, this weekend, Mr. G is going to rig up a contraption by the woodstove. I want two chains hung from the ceiling two feet apart and then I can put dowels through the links to dry apples on. Can you visualize that? I can also hang socks and undies on the dowels and they'll dry quickly by the stove. I could also hang dresses and shirts on hangers and hang them in the chainlinks. It won't be very pretty but it certainly will be handy!

I have also been using my own soap to do laundry with, so far so good. I like washing the littlest girls' things by hand, it is such a pleasant chore. I also wash the church socks by hand with my glass washboard. To stand at the sink and rub the clothes, smell the pleasant homemade soap smell, to think of each child as I do the work I've been blessed to have been given....... It makes me thankful.

Below is a picture of our entire toy collection. Almost. We do have some Schleich animals that are made in CHINA! But we no longer buy anything made in China and we don't buy plastic toys either. The children don't seem to tire of this meager selection, but then again they don't spend much time in the house these days either. They use the blocks to make houses and barns for the animals to live in, use the wooden fruits and vegetables as tables and chairs in addition to their intended use, play "hide-the-button" with them, make a store and sell their merchandise, cut out paper dolls to live in the houses, sew toys for each other and the list goes on! I actually think that having too much stuff is the worst thing you can do to encourage creativity and thankfulness. None of the children have very many wants; they don't see the advertising that encourages consumerism, so they are grateful for every plaything that they get. We instituted the rule when our oldest was young that when we are out, "if you ask for it then you don't get it", this very effectively stops nagging and whining in public. They are, of course, encouraged to tell us what they would like to have, but not in stores! This picture doesn't include the outside toys like the wagon (best purchase we ever made!), picnic table and a mini teeter totter. For a while the teeter totter was strung up in a tree and the children used it as a bull to ride! They like to put up swings and climb trees, go berry picking and leaf hunting..... all the things that children will be drawn to if they are allowed to be children.

She Looketh Well To The Ways Of Her Household

September is almost over and you can feel the difference in the weather as Winter prepares to make its debut. The mornings are chilly and we've had a fire a few times already to dispel the cold. The days warm up nicely, and it feels good to be outdoors soaking up the sunshine and, of course, cider pressing is one of the delights of the season!

As always, when Winter is near, I feel the overwhelming urge to "prepare". I'm not sure if that's an outworking of being agriculturally oriented or what, but I'm very in tune with the seasonal changes. My friend, Mrs. R, calls this Autumnal feeling "nesting" and I suppose that is as good a term as any. It's the desire (urge?) to make sure you have enough food put by for the Winter but it also entails the need to sew and spin and knit.

It's a very real need to know that you have adequately prepared your children for the upcoming season. I'm not sure if you'd have this feeling if you primarily bought your food and clothes. Is it only for those who have taken the tasks upon themselves? I don't know.

So, I'm busily stitching garments to keep the children's elbows and knees covered and I'm yearning to sit down at the spinning wheel and listen to its rhythm and feel the sensations of wool becoming yarn as it slides through my fingers.

I have a long list of garments still to be sewn including wool coats for the girls and some warm dresses. I'd like to do wool flannel petticoats but I'm not sure if that will come to fruition this year or perhaps it will wait until next year. Mr. G and the boys are cutting additional firewood now to add to what we already had so when the snow flies, we will be ready.

Apples!

We go pick up apples at a local orchard every year and dry them or press them into cider. The owner lets you take for free all that you want of the windfalls. Today was the first time we went this year and this is what we came home with. The orchard owner told me the varieties but I've forgotten; there are 4 different kinds anyway. We will go again on Wednesday to get some Grimes and more Yellow Delicious and maybe press some, although I was going to wait a few weeks. Those apples will give about 10-15 gallons of cider and we *love* ciderptation is great to get these pressed, but later apples make better cider. We'll see.

I really love the Autumn. How it smells and how it looks. It makes me happy.

Unexpected "blessing"

Upon coming home from Church the boys discovered where one of the missing banties has been, she went broody in the barn roof overhang and hatched out 6 babies. The children are happy, Mama is not. Chicks in September mean potentially freezing to death in the winter, plus, we were trying to thin down the flock so there won't be so many to feed. Anyway, they're here and that settles it. The children have spent the afternoon holding them and could only eat lunch in shifts so that somebody could "babysit" at all times.

Two happy girls. They didn't even change their dresses before racing for their turn to hold the new arrivals.

Root cellar progress, new chairs & birthdays

The root cellar is coming along nicely. Aleks and the boys work on it pretty much everyday. With all the rain we got it flooded, so they had to bail out the water and frogs that had taken up residence there. ;-) You can't really tell how big it is, but it's about 4 feet deep (so that's 2 feet under the frost level) and about 8 feet long. The doorway will go about where the shovel is now. Aleks dug it by hand and only uses hand tools for all his work. It is such a good feeling to see your children embrace your values and ideals; I couldn't be more pleased!



Below are the chairs that I kept forgetting to take pictures of. I have had these for years and finally this year they got re-upholstered. They date to the 1920's which is an era that I find really pretty, furniture-wise. My sisters had just dropped off the bedframe in the background, BTW.

Levi and Micah's birthday was August 29 but we didn't celebrate it then as we were all sick. We gave them their presents yesterday; Levi wanted a box trap and Micah wanted a knife. Knives are really expensive, *way* more than I thought they would be, but it was all he asked for and I know he'll take care of it, so we bought him a nice bone handled one. They also got a DVD of Buster Keaton's The General, we're in a silent movie phase right now and had rented this fron the library before. They think it's hilarious. ;-)

For those of you who find birth stories boring or nauseating, you might want to skip this next part. I was going to give a recap of the twins birthday on their birth day but better late than never.

We lived in Yanceyville, North Carolina at the time (1996) in a log cabin. It had heat and running water but was pretty quaint and primitive. There was no bathtub or air-conditioning so I took about 3 showers a day to deal with the heat. I knew I wanted a homebirth as we had one with Katie and it was wonderful but I wasn't overly concerned about going preterm because I had followed the midwives advice and eaten a lot of protein to give the babies the fuel to grow. So, we get to my due date. We get a week past my due date. In August. In North Carolina. With twins. Enough is enough already! The midwife brings me castor oil. She isn't sure about the dosage so she brings me 6 ounces of the stuff of which I manage to drink 5 ounces. As a side note, that is WAY too much castor oil, a regular dose is a tablespoon or two. So, the castor oil does its job and I'm thoroughly cleaned out but the diarrhea keeps coming. Hours worth of racing to the bathroom to go and all there is is an oil slick in the toilet. OK, I know that is too much information but remember, you were warned! I feel horrible. We go to bed around 10 and I get back up at 10:30 to go to the bathroom and my water breaks. I call the midwife and say in a *very* whiney voice "I can't do labor NOW, I'm so sick!" She gets there about 11 or 11:15 and contractions have started, we fill the pool because I'm having a water birth. I get in and it feels really relaxing. The midwife checks me at one point and says that I'm at "6" so I jump out of the pool to go fix my hair remarking that it's almost transition so I better hurry! There were 5 midwives there and 1 accompanies me to the bathroom, I'm not really sure why. At 1:19 Levi is born, he weighs 6 lbs 14 oz. I hold him in the water and he looks at me and all around for about 5 minutes and then I don't want to hold him anymore. A midwife takes him but his cord is really short so she doesn't go far. The midwife checks me again and she feels the other baby's cord prolapsing. She says we have to get the baby out NOW! So, I stand up and push and push and push. With contractions and without. Micah is born quickly and weighs 7 lbs 15 oz. At the time they were my biggest and littlest babies. They both nursed like champs though I never got the hang of nursing them together; they were weaned at 16 and 17 months respectively. And now they are 12. How did that happen?