Happy Thanksgiving
I am thankful for…
A place at this table.
A huge network of love and support.
Food glorious food.
My amazing, incredible, beautiful little family.
What are you thankful for?
Welcome Back! I’ve Missed You!
Loyal followers,
I’m so sorry that I’ve neglected you for so long. It’s been an unexpected(ly wonderful) year, and I just haven’t had the time or the energy to keep up with my blogging duties. Honestly, I haven’t been doing much that you’d want to hear about, anyway – cooking and gardening took a back burner to my new life’s work: building a baby. Here’s what I’ve been up to since you last heard from me:
It’s hard to do anything other than sit and stare at the little monkey; you can practically watch her grow. But I’m going to try, just as I’m going to try to start cooking again, and wearing clothes other than pajamas, and using words instead of just cooing. Motherhood is weird (awesome, unbelievable).
On with the flour and flowers!
xo
Mamma Purple
Happy New Year! Won’t 2013 be grand?
One of my (many) New Year’s Resolutions (they’re more like… guidelines, really) is to get this blog off the ground and running strong, which of course primarily means that I have to keep posting. So what better way to start off the new year and the new pace than with a New Year’s Post?
2012 was a pretty great year. I won’t go into the details – you’ve seen most of the exciting bits here – but it surpassed my expectations. I have big plans for 2013, most of which involve reading, cooking, or gardening, but I’m not going to go into details there either because I don’t want you to hold me to anything. :) But the past week has held promise, and I’m looking forward to infinite projects, goals, book lists, recipes, friends, family, trips, stay-at-homes, food, kitties, and much, much more for 2013.
Here are a few snippets of my holiday season for you, since I’ve been a bit off the ball. A look back at year’s end, if you will:
First, Reenie enjoying the Christmas tree. Can you find him?
Then, a light and brief snow flurry, with some of the biggest snowflakes I’ve ever seen. (We didn’t have a white Christmas, but we did have snow the day before, snow and ice the day after, and more snow two days later. All of which disappeared from the ground within an hour after the actual precipitation stopped.)
And finally, a home-made peppermint “mocha” in Hubby’s new, incredibly beautiful pottery coffee mug made by Cousin Bootsy.
Plus, I hinted at this earlier, but I was given a pasta maker attachment for my KitchenAid for Christmas, which I tried out in an undocumented lasagna attempt (mostly successful) this weekend, and which I promise I will be trying again in an actual, documented adventure that I’ll share with you. (I’m planning to make spinach linguine and butternut squash ravioli! But not at the same time.)
A very smart person once told me that the best way to stick to your resolutions was to tell everyone, so you’re held accountable. (Clearly I’m not following through on this, but it was very good advice.) What fun-filled or thrill-seeking plans have you made for your new year? Any exciting (or necessary) resolutions?
Happy New Year, everyone.
‘Twas the Thursday Before Christmas (a hot chocolate and cookies story)
It’s almost here – the impending family, friends, food coma, and gift wrap extravaganza that is Christmas. And in our time of frantic shopping, wrapping, planning, decorating, baking, preparing, I thought I’d share a calm moment of bliss.
Nothing could be more holiday-appropriate than peppermint hot chocolate with under-baked chewy chocolate triple-gingerbread. So take a quick break from your high pressure schedule and cozy down with a warm drink, some cookies, and a loved one. Take a moment to appreciate a few smooth creamy sips before the sugar rush kicks in and you slam back into the ever-hectic Now.
If you’re feeling decadent, you could even pull out that milk frother you bought years ago but have only used twice. When’s a better time than the Thursday before Christmas? ―When all through the house every creature is busily shuffling tissue paper and curling ribbons, counting labels and triple checking the list to make sure no one is missing.
Holiday Sculpability – Etsy Shop Back Online
It’s that time of year again – trees up and lit, cocoa restocked, wrapping paper piled high in the corner, and Claybabies!
I know you’ve all been anxious since Sculpability has been bereft of critters for many months, but your long wait is over! It’s Christmas, and the Claybabies have returned!
Check out the Etsy shop, or let me know if you have any ideas or requests. I’m a bit particular about what I’ll make (things that can be interpreted into round shapes work best), but I’ll give it a shot or counteroffer!
Happy (day before) Thanksgiving!
It’s been a busy week, and I haven’t had time to get a real post together for you today, so I’ll just share the pretty new books I got at our Friends of the Library book sale this past week.
I promise I’ll put something good together for Friday, when we’re all sitting around like fat (happy, totally satisfied) slugs, digesting copious amounts of delicious food.
Chalkboard Contact Paper and Loose Leaf Tea
I discovered chalkboard contact paper sometime last year, on Shelterrific, who in turn apparently got it from ModFruGal, who I don’t follow but I clearly should. (Remedying that right now…)
Chalkboard paper comes in 18″ by 6′ rolls, like all contact paper, and you can cut it down to any size you want. At first, I used it to label things. Lots of things. I labeled my clear counter-top containers that you can already see through, and can probably already tell what’s in them (maybe overkill?). I labeled my canning with the contents and can date (definitely not overkill – who the heck can remember when you canned something?). I labeled the coffee in the freezer so we could tell the difference between hazelnut and regular, because I know a few people who are militantly opposed to flavored coffee (with good reason) and I would hate to incur their wrath inadvertently by failing to properly distinguish.
Two Years! Woo!
Holy Moly! I was sitting here thinking “hmm, I know I missed the 1 year anniversary of LivingWithPurple, but I wonder when the 2 year anniversary is? I should have a post for it!” So I went and looked, and it turns out that…
LivingWithPurple is two years old TODAY! (On WordPress, anyway.)
Happy birthday to my blog, happy birthday to my blog, happy birthday dear bloggy-blog, happy birthday to you!
And to help celebrate, I give you: a cat on a hat!
Thanks for reading!
xo
Miz Purplest
Fun at the Kids’ Table
We had a work dinner at the C&O Restaurant. Work dinners when the whole office is in town have developed the tradition of the “kids’ table”. The kids’ table is the fun one, so obviously that’s where I sit.
I didn’t make any of this meal, but I sure ate a lot of it. De-lish. Here are the details…
I may have been a little obsessed with the salt bowl with its teeny tiny spoon. I was not as obsessed as Katie was, but I did get a little carried away.
Happy New Year
Since this is my first post in the new year, I want it to be special. Unfortunately, I haven’t done anything exciting in the kitchen or the garden recently, so instead of wasting this moment on an ordinary post, I’m going to spend a bit of time writing about time.
2011 was an active year. It held not only my own wedding, but the weddings of several of my closest friends. It included the birth of one friend’s beautiful new baby, Eleni, and the pregnancy of my beloved Alice, who will have her own beautiful new baby (currently called Groucho) very soon. It traveled the world – from home sweet home to Massachusetts and Maine, and then to France, Italy and Monaco on an extravagant sailing cruise. It welcomed a new kitten, and watched as he grew into a holy terror of a teenage cat; it gave my older cat the time she needed to adjust to her new little brother, and to become a braver, more social member of our family. It helped bring our basement renovation to very-near completion, and suggested new projects for the new year. It introduced us to new friends, and brought the expectation of having old friends closer by. It gave us a chance to play the family balancing game yet again, but in new ways.
2012 promises to be equally amazing. We are looking forward to meeting Groucho without a wall of skin between us, to finishing the basement renovation and starting the next round of updates, to watching how last year’s pantings impact this year’s garden, to opening new doors and finding new projects. We are looking forward to the bustle, but also looking forward to having a bit more time to relax. We are looking forward to reaping the benefits of our new home theater by making our friends come to us.
For 2012, I’m setting the following goals:
– I will plan healthy meals, and plan ahead so that every day’s meals are not a struggle.
– I will be more active, not just in the garden but in actual exercise, so that I no longer feel like a slug.
– I will balance my social time (last year’s resolution was to leave the house more – bah!) with my quiet time, and I will read more of the books on my “to read” list.
– I will spend less money and get more out of it.
– I will be less of a pack rat, and find more things that I’m finally ready to part with.
– I will spend more time in my garden just enjoying things.
New Years is a bittersweet time. Another year is gone; another era of life is past. My childhood is one year farther away in my memory. I get past the melancholy by looking forward to new beginnings. There are so many exciting things to come; some things I know about, but some things will leap out to surprise me in the moment. Right now, I’m dreaming of daffodils.
How about you? What are your goals for the new year? What are you reminiscing about, and what are you looking forward to?
~*~
Zombie Penguins
I have weird hobbies… These little guys now are available in my Etsy shop!
I’m actually not very big on zombies. Zombie movies scare the bujeezus out of me – more so than almost any other kind of weird-thing horror movies (I will readily admit that horror movies in general are…not my thing). But for some reason I am really into little zombie animals. When I made Steve the Zombie Sheep as a gift for a friend a bit ago, I didn’t know it was going to become a theme – but somehow the idea of tiny zombie animals stuck in my mind and I just kept making them.
My House at Halloween, 2011
For some reason I’m not really getting into the holiday season this year. Typically I love Halloween, and I had big plans to make paper pumpkins and bats and ghosts and tape them in our front window, since we have such a perfect window for it. But I haven’t really gotten around to it – maybe because of basement work, maybe because I’ve just been really tired (or maybe because instead, I’ve been spending my time cooking things and writing a blog about them…). Either way, the only Halloween decorations we have this year were lovingly made by Calin’s niece, Ali, who taped them to birthday presents for each of us. (No, we don’t have Halloween birthdays – either of us – but four-year-olds are allowed to give late presents.)
Anyway, here is our house for Halloween this year:
As usual, Reenie is diligently guarding the candy.
I don’t have a picture, but I do want to point out that, despite slacking off entirely on the home front, I am wearing an orange bandanna with black cats, orange bat troll earrings, and purple suede cowboy boots. Don’t get me wrong – I’m still into this.
~*~
Speaking of holidays, look what I found in my freezer… (I ate one in dough form first, to make sure they were still good. They were, so I baked a bunch and then we ate those, too.) Mmmmm…
A Busy Year
How did we get to the middle of October? I’m looking back at my posts for the year and I was doing pretty well for a while there, keeping up with things. The last post before this week was me talking about how I wanted to do one post a week. Ha. But it has been a very busy year for us – wedding after wedding and then OUR wedding (which was a whole week instead of the usual weekend) and our honeymoon and basement work. And on top of that it just hasn’t been the best weather this year – which never helps me want to do anything. Mostly I’ve been sleeping.
Here are some of the highlights you’ve missed in the past few months:
LivingWithPurple 
