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Finally a use for Kool-Aid drink mix! I would never have thought to dye yarn with it until my youngest daughter, Jessica, sent me a link for the instructions. I was having trouble finding yarn colors that I liked to make flowers using a "bloom loom". As Jessica said, "You can get just the colors you want or some unexpected ones in the process." It's so simple and fun!
I completely fell in love with your most whimsical, precious website... Are you sure you live in Brainerd and not Oz??? Or at least Wonderland? Your place sounds so very perfectly peaceful that it seems thy nickname must be Nirvana... L. Crockett
I can almost hear my grandparents' voices telling stories... N. Mercier
You are so refreshing to talk to because you are full of imagination. Thank you for reminding me that I have one too! J. Engesser
My daughter and I couldn't have asked for a more perfect getaway. On the way home, she cried- quite hard. She said she missed our cabin at the B&B and wanted our family to move into that cabin. Another morning this week, she woke up early, crawled into bed with me and said, "Mom, I miss our B&B." So I said to her, "You know that feeling that you had in your heart while we were there?" And we talked about the peace and the laughter. I told her that if either of us get crabby, we can remind each other of the peace. Both of us have used that reminder to re-center ourselves in the busyness of our lives. J. Burns
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What a wonderful flaky-crust pie baker my mother was! Shortly after Dream Whip first came out in 1957, she made every kind of pie filling with Jell-o and Dream Whip that was to be found in her Jell-o Dream Whip Pie Cookbook, which I now have. Do you remember Dream Whip? Actually, you can still buy it. Dream Whip is a powdered dessert topping mix that is prepared by adding ½ cup cold milk and ½ tsp vanilla then whipped until light and fluffy. My apologies to the maufacturer, but it is a lame substitute for whipping cream. It did create happy childhood memories, however. By itself, it tasted like powdered milk in whipped form, but mixed with Jell-o... so good! For one kind of pie, my mother would make four different flavors of Jell-o in separate cake pans. When the Jell-o was set, she would cut each flavor into cubes. The cubes were folded into the prepared Dream Whip pie filling. The lemon, cherry, lime, and orange colors of Jell-o looked like jewels. As a child, you can imagine what a delight that was!
During my childhood, growing up in the 1950s on a 160-acre Minnesota farm ten miles southeast of Brainerd in Crow Wing County, my mother tended large gardens. Every spring and into early summer, she baked rhubarb custard pies prepared from freshly cut stalks of rhubarb. This recipe, passed down to me from her, was one of the first signs of spring... a welcome reminder that the long days o
f winter were only a memory.
Rhubarb Custard Pie
4 cups fresh rhubarb, cut up
1 3/4 cups sugar
4 tbsp. flour
1/2 tsp. nutmeg
3 eggs, beaten
3 tbsp. milk
2 tbsp. butter
Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Blend sugar, flour, and nutmeg. Add eggs and milk. Mix. Line a 9-inch pie plate with a pie crust. Put rhubarb in. Pour sugar/egg mixture evenly over the rhubarb. Dot with butter. Cover with a "lattice top" pastry. Before putting in the oven, I like to place a metal "pie crust shield" or strips of aluminum foil over the crust rim to prevent the edges from over-browning. Bake 10 minutes. Reduce heat to 350 degrees and bake for 30 minutes. Cool before serving.
I recently discovered a fun web site named Wondertime. The flower t-shirt craft idea on my previous post, "dandelion poof", came from the site as does this clock. Don't ya love the retro colors? Quoting from the description, it was "developed by two mothers — children's book author Lynne Bertrand and illustrator Janet Street — this woodland clock features a slow painted turtle for the hour hand, a faster gray squirrel for the minute hand, and a speedy ruby-throated hummingbird on the second hand. When is everyone leaving for the picnic, your child wants to know? When the turtle makes it all the way to the bear." The Wondertime site provides instructions, printout of the clock's face, and a source ("Walnut Hollow"... great name) to purchase the clock parts.
To eliminate the use of plastic and paper bags, I use canvas bags for grocery shopping and my weekly trip to the farmers market in the summertime. My plain jane cream-colored bags were begging for a hip new look so with a few markers, rubbing alcohol, a glass, a rubber band and an eyedropper... I have a bag worthy of its contents. Can you envision the bag bulging with in-season farmers' market products... a wooden pint box of raspberries, a bundle of asparagus spears, a jar of rhubarb strawberry jam and a loaf of homemade bread to slather it on, the first purple snap beans and peas of the season, lemon balm to flavor herbal tea, and some cutting garden flowers standing proudly upright tucked to one side? Markers come in so many summery colors with fun names... kiwi, dandelion, marigold, pink lemonade, and boysenberry. Wouldn't that be a dream job... to brainstorm marker names? The directions include a "movement of molecules, given the right solvent," science lesson tied in with the project. To tie it in with a learning objective and create a cute product... how fun is that?! A couple tips: Eyedroppers can be found at your local drug store in the eye care section by the contact lens solutions. Do the project outdoors or with the breeze blowing in through open windows. Permanent markers have a strong stench.
