Fall Into the Holidays #11

Fall Into the Holidays #11

Remember! I’ll be pinning all entries linked up to the Fall Into the Holidays board-please let me know if you want to be removed.

Now it’s time to start thinking winter holidays-Christmas, Hanukkah, Yuletide, and New Year’s! Feel free to share your seasonal recipes, diy, crafts, and other related material. Please link to entries, and not your blog main page. Click around the list and leave a few comments!

Fall Into the Holidays #10 Features

Texas Crafty Kitchen’s Apple Pie Shortcake

Made by ChrissieD’s Christmas Quilt

Please remember to link back to this party on your entry and have fun! Please click the icon below. The link up loads in a new page.

2013 Gratitude List

Each year on American Thanksgiving, I post a list of the first 50 things that I’m grateful for, from the past year. Not all of them are terribly serious-and they really shouldn’t be. There’s no actual ranking to any of it. I don’t love canned pumpkin over my health, I guess is what I’m saying.

The only ‘rule’ is that you don’t look at past year’s entries prior to writing this year’s. It’s interesting to see what changes from year to year. This year is probably less in-depth than the past couple of years. This was a rough year, and some of these things cross into that deep, dark area known as ‘a blogger’s private life.’

1. Canned pumpkin

2. coffee

3. health

4. peace

5. healing

6. closure

7. blood kin

8. chosen kin

9. spirituality

10. growth

11. challenges that help grow

12. knitting

13. pound dogs

14. new skills

15. a walkable neighborhood

16. old friends

17. new friends

18. stand mixers

19. dawn dish soap

20. blogging

21. people who read blogs

22. Mid

23. education

24. affordable groceries

25. growing awareness

26. new discoveries

27. technologies

28. clean water

29. casual games

30. deeper understanding

31. sleep

32. affordable urgent care centers

33. support bases

34. social media

35. books

36. Kindles

37. radiators

38. cooking

39. dance

40. living in a fairly safe neighborhood

41. stabililty

42. public transportation

43. sturdy boots

44. flannel lined jeans

45. discovering my past

46. new plans

47. discovering a sense of self

48. apple trees

49. clear travel mugs

50. self respect

2012 Gratitude List

2011 Gratitude List

 

 

Please, stop by Fall Into the Holidays!

Linked to-

love bakes good cakes

little house in the suburbs

flamingo toes

 

Early Winter Musings

It won’t be winter for another month or so.

Tell that to the weather. And the lake. And my mood.

My SADD. My evil, infernal, challenging SADD. This winter I decided to actually make it a challenge-I’ve already had two really, really hard days. They may have been the hardest two days I’ve had in years with regards to my mental state. Since we haven’t even gotten to true winter yet I’ve decided to make a goal of it, one that’s almost ironic considering the running theme of the last few horror posts on the site.

Each day around noon, which means just before when I leave for work during the week, I post a positivity thread. On Sunday I posted a picture of a puppy. Most of the time it’s text-based. I ask my friends list to tell me what’s going good in their life. Sometimes the answer’s a little bleak, but in a way that I think I can appreciate-sometimes just waking up in the morning is as good as it’s going to get. One time the answer was pancakes.

People were really excited about Dr. Who this weekend (and really, the 50th anniversary special was worth being excited for).

I think that the run of death-related imagery the past few days has been a way of me reconnecting with my desire to help people. I think I mentioned at one point that my life-dream job is in the end-of-life field. I want to help people, and for whatever reason I feel like my path is heading in that particular direction. I’m certain my Pinterest followers must love me right now; I started a death studies board on Saturday.

So it’s perhaps vaguely morbid, but oddly grounding at the same time.

Hot Cocoa

There’s procrastination. And then there’s whatever it is that I do.

I was supposed to run this project last winter, when I started seeing homemade cocoa all over Pinterest. I love the idea of being able to make a thing whenever I want it instead of being dependent on whenever the store’s open (ignore the fact that Wegman’s is open 24 hours a day. Do you want to go to the grocery store at midnight for cocoa powder in the middle of lake effect snow?).

It wasn’t that it got pushed back because of other projects. It wasn’t even that I just never got around to it. Oh no, it was…lamer than that.

I kept refusing to buy powdered milk. Seriously, it took me a solid year to get around to buying powdered milk. The price tag on that stuff? Really. However, now that I have it, I’m not sure why I waited so long-and Mid keeps asking for me to make more cocoa.

Swap out the chocolate chips for different flavors to put your own spin on your cocoa. It would be cute in little jars with bows for gifts.

Original recipe here

3 cups powdered milk

2 cups powdered sugar

1 1/2 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips (or peppermint chips, or peanut butter/chocolate chips…)

1/4 tea salt

Mix all in a large bowl. Store in a large jar; my batch was just slightly large than would fit in a quart jar. Mix into hot milk or water.

Please, stop by Fall Into the Holidays!

Linked to-

funky polka dot giraffe

the prairie homestead

adorned from above

mom’s test kitchen

that suburban momma

lady behind the curtain

life with the crust cut off

the real housewives of riverton

craftionary

love bakes good cakes

little house in the suburbs

flamingo toes

ginger snap crafts/christmas wonderful

The Grim Reaper

I seem to have inadvertently created a theme, haven’t I? I wasn’t trying to go quite so morbid with the last few folklore/horror entries. Hopefully this will run its course.

The Grim Reaper, as he is most commonly portrayed today, may be the most modern of the myths that this month examines. The image of the tall, skeletal hooded figure dates only to the fifteenth century, but may be connected to an older image called the Ankou.

The Ankou is an image that originated in the Brittany region of France. The Ankou was a type of psychopomp believed to shuttle the spirits of the dead. The Ankou was sometimes said to be the spirit of the last person to die in the village. It was described as being a tall, skeletal or almost skeletal figure that drove a cart that it used to collected the spirits of the dying. However, unlike the Grim Reaper the Ankou was not seeing as being death itself but rather just an assistant.

However the image as we are familiar with it now is not limited to one historical source or image. Many pantheons and mythologies feature a similar image of a figure in robes carying a scyth or other tool for the collection of spirits. The modern image is mostly a combination of these images, pulling from older ideas to create a modern psychopomp.

The Funeral Blues

Fall Into the Holidays #10

Remember! I’ll be pinning all entries linked up to the Fall Into the Holidays board-please let me know if you want to be removed.

It’s that time of year again! Time to start thinking autumn, holidays, and changing seasons! Feel free to share your seasonal recipes, diy, crafts, and other related material! Please link to entries, and not your blog main page. Click around the list and leave a few comments!

Fall Into the Holidays #9 Features

Pickled Okra’s Blythe’s Doll

Learning, Creating, Living’s Burlap Candy Cane Wreath

Bloggers and readers! Horrific Knits has an opportunity for you! I am planning a 31 Days of Baking theme for the month of December. If you would like to submit a recipe or post about baking in any form-including memories-please email content and photos to horrificknits at gmail dot com by November 24th. All recipes welcome, as long as it pertains to baking.

Please remember to link back to this party on your entry and have fun! Please click the icon below. The link up loads in a new page.

Note: I’ve been having problems with Inlinkz this week. Here’s the photo link up:

and if you already linked up with a text link…

Even in Death, Beauty

Henri Cartier-Bresson

Plague panel with the triumph of death. Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin

‘Her Firstborn’ by Robert Lewis Reid. (1888) Brooklyn Museum.

‘The Day of the Dead’ (detail), William-Adolphe Bouguereau, 1859

Fayum Funeral Portrait, Mummy Portrait of a Woman, Antinoopolis, End of the Reign of Trajan, 98-117 A.D., Wax portrait on wood, Louvre, Paris

‘For The Last Time’ by Emily Mary Osborn. (1864).

Vintage French advertising poster for funeral flowers.

Detail from the Kentucky Coffin Quilt, or Graveyard Quilt, by Elizabeth Mitchell in the mid 1800s.

‘The Funeral in the Birch Grove’ – Illus. by Artuš Scheiner for Vyšehrad by Julius Zeyer

Playing With the Camera: Christmas Tree

Please, stop by Fall Into the Holidays!

Linked to-

adorned from above

family home and life

nanny to mommy

craft dictator

Salt Dough Ornaments

Looking for a simple Christmas craft to do with your kids? Salt dough ornaments are a lot of fun- you can customize them with paint, and since you can get everything you need at the dollar store, they’re an economical craft too!

All I had were bell and snowman cookie cutters. I wish I had a star or a heart, or a snowflake, but bells it is.

Cinnamon added to the dough makes the ornaments smell nice. My only word of advice is that if you use cinnamon, make sure it’s fully mixed in. I thought the marbled effect on the unbaked dough was nice so I didn’t knead it in fully, but once they dried all the way I wished I had.

Salt Dough

1 cup flour

1/2 cup regular table salt

1/4 cup water (or more, I needed more)

optional: a couple good shakes of cinnamon. Use the cheap or stale stuff. It doesn’t matter.

Mix the all ingredients so they form a ball. Don’t worry about overkneading ,you’re not eating it.

Roll out so that the dough is uniformly thick and cut out to desired shapes. Bake in a 200 degree oven for at least 2 hours. Thicker ornaments will take longer to cook through all the way. Make sure they don’t burn.

*For hanging purposes, a straw about 1/4 to 1/2 an inch away from the edge will punch a perfect hole.

Target has really cute colored baker’s twine for $1 right now. It looks nice used to tie hangers for the ornaments.

Please, join us for Fall Into the Holidays!

Linked to-

twelve o eight

the chicken chick

call me pmc

create with joy

lines across

the prairie homestead