The Pyrate Turns 13

So, on this past Friday, the Pyrate turned 13... I am officially the mother of a teenager.  Wow.  There have been moments over this last year when he spoke to me and that newly acquired deep toned voice shocked me... made me feel pangs of longing for the squeak I was so accustomed to.  But as life would have it, things do indeed change... My son, sweet, kind, funny, patient, and super-smart... is becoming a young man, facial hair and all.  Yikes.  

We spent the entire weekend celebrating with family and friends, starting with Friday evening.  I made his cake during the day... an organic creation: vanilla cake with bavarian cream and fresh strawberry filling, with buttercream frosting and a skater dude theme, made from scratch and decorated by hand, like I do every year!  (recipe will come in a later posting this week) 

The cake was a big hit when presented at the end of dinner!   I know there'll come a day in the near future when I won't be able to do this for him because he'll be off somewhere on an ocean somewhere saving a shark or something... so I'm enjoying these times while I still have them...

The evening's dinner celebration included 35 family members and close friends, and both the Pyrate and I were so moved by how many showed up.  The chain of tables the restaurant put together was so long you had to either call via phone or actually get up and walk to the other end to talk to someone there.  We had good food, lots of laughs and fun all around. 

The night was highlighted by the Pyrate reading a speech he wrote about coming of age, and his views of his life past, present, and future.   I've included it below because it was too loud in the restaurant for the people at the other end of the table to actually hear what he was saying, and also there are others who couldn't be there who the Pyrate would love to share this speech with.  So at the end of this post is that speech.  My son, he amazes me... to no end, how thoughtful and conscious he is.   

That night, three of his closest friends slept over and we got up early the next morning and went to a really cool skate park where we met up with the Pyrates cousins.  We spent the whole day there!  I made sandwiches:  turkey/avocado/spinach, curry chicken salad, and salami/sopressato with cherry preserves vinaigrette, (all recipes coming later this week) on artisan breads bought at a local bakery the day before... organic kettle chips, kashi chocolate chip cookies, and a fruit punch I made from cranberry juice, cherry juice, and fresh squeezed lemons. (recipes later this week). 

The boys had a ball, skating their butts off.  It was interesting to watch them overcome their fears and try tricks they hadn't tried before, and how they supported each other, cheering each other on, making sure no one got left behind.  Very impressive.  I am blessed that my son has such cool friends as these young men. 

All in all, it was a fantastic day!  The sun was shining, there was a gentle breeze, the spring flowers were blooming... The grown ups played frisbee and entertained each other with silly jokes.  I think I might be doing a few more picnics during the warm seasons this year... I had a lot of fun!  That is, until the gangsta squirrels decided to eat our precious leftover birthday cake!!!!!  ARRRRGH!

So, that's how it was.  I survived this better than I thought I would.  I only cried once, and that was out of the pride swelling up inside me as the Pyrate read his speech at dinner.   Another birthday past.  The weekend was over... his friends gone home...  back to life... open house at school tonight.... 

Meanwhile, the Pyrate's coming of age speech :

Maxim Abraham-Klaus Feltus Adamec Recke

    March 19, 1997. Appx. time: 13:00 Pacific Time. I was born. I am the child of Brigette Ruenette Feltus and Andre Recke. This was the beginning of my life. My mother’s cultural history, African American and Native American in heritage, dates back several generations here in America… the last two here in Los Angees.  My father’s story is new to this country, since he moved here just before I was born, and he grew up in a small town in the country side of Bavaria, Germany.    I think that I represent the American part of my heritage more than my German side, one of the largest reasons being that I live in the U.S., so I do not speak much German. I haven’t spent much time there, so I don’t know much about the rest of the German culture.
    I was born into a family filled with creative people. I have relatives that have a myriad of professions, from muralists to singers in bands. My mother was the latter of the two, was also once a makeup artist and hairstylist, then a singer/songwriter, and soon an author of her own cookbook!  My father is a manager in the music industry, where he has helped many artists to go after their dreams, and he is also a very good bass guitarist.  My grandparents are also artistic.  My granny plays piano, writes music, and teaches young people to play.  My paw paw is an amazing cartoonist, sculptor, and landscape architect.  Both of my great grandmothers were creative, one played piano, and was a sought after seamstress, the other a poet and writer.  Even my Opa in Germany is pretty crafty with his hands, having made many of the toys my dad played with as a boy… My family’s creativity encourages me to express my talent like the rest of my relatives. It was inevitable that I would be a very creative person. I love music, art, and science. I wish to create and advance the worlds of all three someday.  I am on my way now in my everyday life while I draw, practice guitar and saxophone, and study the field of marine biology.
    I think that I have some good qualities as a human being. I can see from many different points of view, yet I have a mind of my own and can think for myself. I also think that I am very intelligent and a fast learner. I think that I am fun to be around. I want to be honest, too, but sometimes I worry about what people will think of me if I tell the truth.
    I wish to be the one that doesn’t blend in, the one that doesn’t bend to the seeming force of peer pressure. I want be original, authentically me.  I want to do the best that I can, even though sometimes I don’t show it. But now that I look back on my mistakes, most of them could have been avoided. And I don’t want to be the one who had a lot of potential, but never gets anywhere. I believe that that would be a sin.

I love many things. I love my mother, my father, my stepfather and my stepmom Andreas and Shauney, my family, my best friends. I love the ocean, and everything in it. I have no idea why I love the ocean so much. I guess it’s one of those things that is just branded into your brain. I guess it might be because the ocean is the closest thing to pure life and harmony that we can get here on this planet.  I think it’s interesting that we know more about outerspace than we do about something on our own planet, the ocean.  Most of the earth’s organisms live in the ocean, including a lot of the oxygen producing plants on earth.  I plan to explore these things for the rest of my life.
I love my parents. They have stuck with me through hard times, especially my mother. I think its because she knows what its like to grow up mostly without a father in her home. She has always taken care of me, making sure to raise me right. She is always there when I’m feeling down. I love my mom.  I love my dad too.  He’s a really good person, fun to be around, and he works hard  so that I can have a good life.  I love my dad.
     I believe in many things. I believe in peace on earth, and an end to world hunger. I also believe that some religions do not truly grasp the entire concept of the universe, and teach everyone that if it isn’t mentioned in whatever holy book that religion might follow, its not possible. What about the flight of man? A few hundred years ago, Christians thought that the flight of man was blasphemy and anyone who tried to achieve this feat was a devil-worshipper. But now that we have planes, we all know that the church isn’t right about everything. I do believe in God, but I do not believe anything about  the corrupt aspects of any organized religion.
  
Today is just the beginning of another chapter in my life. It will be hard sometimes, but I want to make it through with a smile on my face. I want to be that kid who stood out, the one who refused to give in to negativity. I believe that I will succeed in changing the world, in some substantial way.
When I get older, I want to change the world. I want to try and open peoples’ eyes to pollution and the fact that the human race will cease to exist if we continue on this path of destruction, along with the rest of our fellow organisms. There are many living things suffering in the world. I also want to help to save the ones who need help. I want to be a part of the revolution that changes how people think about the earth in general forever.
    I owe the fact that I have such a good life to a lot of people. For example, my teachers and my whole gigantic family. They are the reason that I am who I am today, even though I might think they are just giving me a hard time. I know I’ll look back and thank them all. So I’m just gonna get it over with now while I have the chance.  Thanks to all of you and those who are not here for all the ways you have made my life a good one so far.  I am blessed and I thank God for you all.
My mom always reminds me that today, already while I’m still very young, I can already make a difference by setting an example with my friends, by being kind, helpful, productive, and thoughtful.  Sometimes it’s not easy to be all those things, especially when you come int contact with so many people not trying to be those things.  But I try anyway.  It’s challenging because there’s a price for all of this.  I often stand out like a sore thumb and kids sometimes make fun of me.  But I just try to remember what everyone who really matters tells me… No one can define who I am, but me.  There is a poem by William Ernest Henley called Invictus.  My mom shared it with me recently.  Apparently Nelson Mandela would recite this poem daily to himself when he was all those years in prison work camps.  Maybe this will help me like it helped him to remember that I am the captain of my own destiny. 

Invictus
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeonings of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds, and shall find, me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll.
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.

Projects for Giving: Edible Gifts Finale!

We've got a few of these already packed gift boxes left, if you're local and would like to grab some up... let me know.  I'll let them go for $15 per box. 

Boxes purchased at www.nashvillwraps.com

A small booklet with recipes and suggestions for how to use the items included in the gift box.

I guess, my first cookbook.  Perhaps someday a collector's item??

 

Graphics by Andreas Adamec, thread bound paper bag books by Scrapbook Supply Outlet on ebay

 

Bubba's Rosemary Lemon Salt

(tins and jars in this posting purchased from www.specialtybottle.com , recycled paper tissue, and recycled paper ribbon all purchased at www.nashvillewraps.com )

BeeBee's Gourmet  Honey Mustard with Beer and Tarragon

The Pyrate's Ginger-Infused Honey

BeeBee's Gourmet  Honey Mustard with Sun-dried Tomatoes and Garlic


Christmas has passed now, and the new year is soon upon us!!  The Pyrate, the Austrian, and the Butterfly all wish you a happy New Year and all the best to you and yours!!!

Projects for Giving: Ginger-Infused Honey (How To Make)

 A jarful of Ginger-Infused Honey makes a yummy gift!

This infused honey recipe is part of our holiday gift projects for this year.  We also made gourmet mustards and rosemary lemon sea salt.   Preparation for all three project can be found here! 

We ordered our honey from a bee farm here in California.  We found it online by googling "bulk organic honey".   You can find links to the shops we ordered from in the post for preparations linked above.

This is another simple project that doesn't require rocket science skills nor do you have to be a professional chef to make this gourmet quality goody that your friends and loved ones will totally appreciate.  It can be used to sweeten teas, mixed with hot water alone and drank as a tea, added as the sweetener in a pound cake recipe, eaten on toast, used as a glaze for roasted meats, added to morrocan sauce recipes, added to tomato sauce for a yummy bbq sauce.  It's great by the spoonful as a sore throat soother too!!!  We bought three 1 gallon buckets of honey for $60 total.  Enough to make thirty-two 12 ounce jars of infused honey.  We bought organically grown ginger at our local farmers market.   In total I spent about $120 including the ginger, the honey, and the jars.   That's about $3.75/jar of infused honey.  A jar of  non-organic, ginger honey in the Korean market costs around $7 for 8oz jar.  

Again, it couldn't be simpler!!!   Buy your honey.  Buy your fresh ginger root.  You'll need about 3 inches of root for every 12 oz of honey you intend to make.

Peel the ginger, cut it into 1/2 inch pieces and mix into your honey.  Close the jar and don't open again for at least 1 week before opening to use.  Store in the refrigerator up to1 month after opening.

Projects for Giving: Rosemary Lemon Sea Salt (How To Make)

So easy to make, Rosemary Lemon Salt 

This is part of our holiday gift project series.  This year's theme is edible gifts.  We made gourmet mustard, rosemary lemon sea salt,   and ginger-infused honey.   You can find the post on how to prepare in advance for these three projects here.

You cannot find a more simple project than making rosemary salt.  Try to make this extra special by getting organic ingredients whenever possible.  We got our salt from a spice merchant online, for a fraction of what it would have cost to buy organic sea salt in the store.  Our ingredients cost under $35 to make 18 pounds of this delicious seasoning that can be used a myriad of ways!   I paid about $20 for small metal tins with hinged lids to hold my little treasures.  It would cost more than $500 to purchase that much gourmet salt at retail prices.  My 18 pounds makes about thirty-six 8 oz tins.  A 4 oz tin of gourmet salt costs anywhere from $8 and more in specialty shops and gourmet stores.   The lemons came from the farmer's market and the rosemary... *smiles* we harvested from our very own garden, from a bush I planted 4 years ago.  So the rosemary cost us nothing!  All you need is 2 parts regular grain organic sea salt to 1 part course granule organic sea salt, for each cup of salt, add 1/4 cup of fresh rosemary leaves, and 3 tablespoons of fresh grated lemon zest.

In a food processor grind your rosemary into a fine meal, then mix together with lemon zest and salt.

Spread the mixture thinly onto cookie sheets and dry in the oven for 2 hours on 140 degrees fahrenheit.   The zest and the rosemary should crumble between your fingers if it is properly dried.  Store your salt in a cool place indefinitely.  However, it will be most flavorful if used within 6 months. 

Projects for Giving: Gourmet Mustard How To Make

 

Honey Mustard with Garlic and Sun-dried Tomatoes,  Beer and Honey Mustard with Tarragon and Orange Zest

THIS JUST IN:  Gourmet foods don't require expensive ingredients, nor do they have to be imported from some far away land.  You don't have to buy them in Gelson's, Bristol Farms, or Whole Foods.  You don't have to go to your city's version of Beverly Hills and pay exorbitant prices in pretentious boutiques.  From my perspective, quality gourmet foods are made using preparation and cooking techniques that are time-honored, often old world, and often handmade in smaller quantities than mass manufactured foods.   Usually they are made with ingredients acquired with special care and usually the ingredients are organic, straight from the source, when possible locally grown to the maker of the food.  Guess what that means?   You can make your own gourmet foods fresh, organic, more intensely flavored and tasting like the ingredients instead of the machines and chemicals used in mass preparations.    

In our house we made homemade gourmet mustard, rosemary lemon salt, and ginger-infused honey to give as presents this holiday season.   See my previous post regarding preparations for these items here. 

In this post, I'll explain how we made two delicious mustards that I can't get enough of!! 

I will post photos of the actual packaging at a later date, along with the pages from the recipe book that will be included with the gifts when we give them.   We made everything ourselves at home from scratch with organic ingredients purchased from their source when possible, none of the ingredients were purchased in retail stores except the beer and even that was from a microbrewery.  The mustard powder and whole mustard seeds were bought online from a spice merchant.  The vinegar came from a source online as well that promised its product was organic.   The honey came from a bee farm I found online as well.  Purchasing ingredients in this way, from the source and in bulk was a cost savings that will blow you away.   

I made fifty 8 oz jars of mustard, including all the ingredients for under $75, including the cost of the jars which were bought online from a specialty bottle company.   In actual hands on preparation time, I may have spent a total of 2 hours total to make the mustard, over the course of two days.  First soaking the seeds, then the next day grinding them and mixing in the other ingredients.  After that, it is simply the passage of time that makes the flavors in the mustard come together over the course of about 10 days.

This mustard can be used for many purposes.... on sandwiches, in marinades, salad dressings, and so many more things... You will find that a jar of this as a gift is appreciated in a way that something impersonal, bought in a store will never be.   The flavor is so much finer... such mustard would fetch more than $10 a jar in a fine gourmet shop.  Making this was a pleasure.  The experience of tasting it was fine.  Somehow finer than if we'd bought it in a store.  The aroma perfumed my house for a few days until the mustard was sealed in jars.   I can't wait for you to make your own.  You don't have to make enough for 50 jars.  A jar will only keep for about 1 month in your refrigerator so, make what you'll use and then give the rest away.

You can be creative with the ingredients as well.  This is a simple thing, not really a recipe at all.  You will simply use equal parts mustard flour (mustard powder) and whole yellow or brown mustard seeds.  You'll need to soak your mustard seeds in the liquid of choice for at least a day or two before combining with the other ingredients.  We used apple cider vinegar and beer to soak one batch, and white wine and apple cider vinegar for the other. 

For 8 oz of mustard you will need 3 tablespoons of mustard seeds, 3 tablespoons of mustard flour, 3/4 cup of combined liquid (beer, water, vinegar, wine...), and any additional ingredients you want to use to create the flavor you desire.  If you decide to add honey to your mixture, subtract 1/3 of the other liquid, but don't add the honey to the soaking phase of the process.  Add it at the end when you add all the other ingredients before grinding.

After soaking the seeds for two days in the liquid, we added the mustard powder, and the other ingredients.  We added dried organic tarragon, organic honey,  and fresh grated orange zest to the beer mustard.  We added fresh finely minced garlic, honey, and sun-dried tomatoes to the other.  I decided to make the beer tarragon mustard a bit smoother and the garlic sun-dried tomato one more course.  To do this we varied the amount of the mixture that we put through the food processor to grind it smooth.  For the course one we processed 1/2 of the mixture in the processor for 5 minutes.   For the smoother one we processed 3/4 of the mixture in the processor for 10 minutes.   With gourmet mustard you want a bit of  whole seed to be present.   You can see from the closeups above, the difference in texture between the course ground and the smoother.  The courser will be spicier.   

It will taste better with time, so don't worry if the flavor is a bit harsh when you first taste it. Once you've gotten the consistency you like, store your mustard away for about 10 days then check the flavor.  At this point, taste it to see if you want to add more salt, more honey, etc... then store your mustard in a sealed container in the refrigerator for up to a month.

Enjoy!!!

Projects For Giving: Prep for Gourmet Mustard, Rosemary Salt, Ginger Honey Tea

Some of you have asked that I tell you what I'm doing for my holiday giving because you'd like to make along with us some of the things we'll be making.  So here's a brief summary of what we're doing.
I'm doing gourmet gift bags, filled with gourmet mustards, rosemary salt, Korean ginger honey tea, a recipe booklet, and other goodies to be determined... We'll be making around 50 of each item. Leftovers can be used by us, or given to people at other occasions such as a hostess gift when invited for dinner, or for no occasion at all, just to say "I love you!"
So we bought things in bulk.  Spices came from the Monterey Bay Spice Company.
We got our honey in 1 gallon containers from Miller's Honey.
You'll need jars.  I purchased my jars from the Specialty Bottle Co.  I used 8 oz jars for the mustard, 12 oz jars for the ginger honey tea, and I used 8 oz rectangular tins with clear hinged lids for the rosemary salt.

Then there's the packaging.  We've stopped using that cheesy, ink-laden holiday paper you can find in every drug store during this season, and opted for more eco friendly Andreas and I will make labels and tags for our items.  Some will be printed, some handwritten, on cardstock and attached with ribbon.  Other packaging will be recycled paper brown kraft wrapping paper, and recycled paper raffia ribbon that we got at Nashville Wraps.  This company carries a vast assortment of eco-friendly packaging and gift products.  I also get my reuseable green grocery bags here, 10 bags for about $6, and that's what i use instead of traditional gift bags. 

Everything you'll need (except for any fresh produce ingredients) can also be purchased in my Amazon Store.  Look for the section in my store that's titled Edible Giving.  I've set that up so that you can do one-stop shopping for everything you'll need.












Gourmet Mustard

Basically what we're doing is soaking mustard seeds for a day or so, then adding mustard paste made with the mustard powder (mustard flour) You'll get further instructions for this next week.  For now just collect your ingredients.
You will need to get some yellow or brown (depending on your preference) organic bulk mustard seeds and organic bulk mustard powder (mustard flour).
You'll also need to purchase whatever spices you want to add to it, and the day before you prepare this mustard, purchase whatever fresh herbs, horseradish, etc.  you'd like to mix in. 
If you want to make champagne mustard, you'll need to get some champagne vinegar.  Otherwise you'll need either cider vinegar, wine vinegar, or plain white vinegar.  About 1/4 cup for every cup of mustard you intend to have as end result.   If you want your mustard to be a brighter yellow you'll need a bit of turmeric as well.

Korean Ginger Honey Tea
You only need three things for this.  You need jars for however many you want to make, enough honey for however many jars you want to make, and the day before you're ready to make these, you'll need a generous amount of whole fresh ginger root.  Pretty darn simple.













Lemon Rosemary Salt

... if you thought things couldn't get any simpler, you'll need two things for this.   Lots of fresh organic rosemary, and sea salt.  You'll need both coarse and fine grain sea salts. 















That's pretty much it!!!
Check back in a few days when I've got all my ingredients ready and I'll have photos and instructions for how to make these gifts!

Giving a Tinker's Dam

 It's that time again.  The holidays are upon us and even though we should probably think about giving more frequently than just this once a year, it's a time to forgive yourself, revive the practice enthusiastically. 

If we go back to 1877, in the Practical Dictionary of Mechanics, Edward Knight puts forward this definition:

"Tinker's-dam - a wall of dough raised around a place which a plumber desires to flood with a coat of solder. The material can be but once used; being consequently thrown away as worthless."

This is a blog about worth and value in giving, but let me preface by saying that all of you out there who were planning on sending me an extravagant check in the mail as a holiday gift, I won't turn up my nose to it!  Don't you fret!!!  Just carry on with what you have planned!!! :)

In our house, over the last few months, I have quietly instituted a lifestyle evolution towards living a little cleaner, greener, and with more inner substance.  You won't find me doing any sort of massive conversion to some new extreme.  I am not interested in that.  There's something about extremes that just doesn't sit well with me.  I think if more people thought in terms of balance at the center of things,  instead of trying to right the boat by running frantically to the other end of the deck, the human race might even find a way to stay afloat.

So we've begun a whole slew of things... the Austrian is taking our master bath toilet apart this weekend because the water pressure in it hasn't been right in over a year, and we're wasting water with double flushes. (go ahead and breeze on by that mental image...) Long before the city ordained the new twice a week sprinkler allowance, we'd already cut back the watering of our garden and front lawn.   Last year, I stopped buying regular lightbulbs and started buying slightly more expensive, but longer lasting energy efficient bulbs.   We stopped using our air conditioning and heater except in cases where it was absolutely necessary...instead using ceiling fans, and alternately, extra blankets on the bed.   We stopped eating out so much, and the Austrian and I started visiting our local farmer's market every weekend.  I started reading labels on packaged foods, paying close attention to the ingredient hierarchy, and the ratio of the serving size to amounts of certain things like sugars, sodium, and saturated fats.  I've eliminated much of the prepared foods we were eating and replaced them with fresh foods prepared at home.  I don't even know why we were doing anything differently.  I am a hobby gourmet, and we were paying manufacturers to do things I can easily do at home, cheaper, tastier, and without a dramatic investment of time.  I eliminated the enormous amount of leftovers we were throwing in the trash due to our busy lifestyle, by purchasing disposable oven-safe, microwavable single serving containers and packing and freezing leftovers for the Austrian to take to work for his lunches.  The containers are made of recycled materials, and they are manufactured in a certified green factory and can be found in every Smart & Final store and most of those large outlets such as  Sam's Club and Costco.  I've had two yard sales this year, and gave away about 200 pounds of clothing to Goodwill.  We overhauled a small area in our home that was completely disfunctional and largely useless and turned it into a craft supply storage area... reducing the amount of clutter in my life by about 40%!
 

One of the greatest successes in the last year, (beside our eco-friendly self-produced wedding), was our christmas gift project.  I am being VERY generous when I use the word "our".   The boys were not really fully on board until the last weekend of production.

It might have been asking a bit much to get the Austrian, who I suspect to have borderline OCD, and the Pyrate who is probably sick of me and my big ideas, no matter how much he patronizes them.

But this stuff was not going to make itself!  We were on a tight budget, with wedding and trip to Mexico coming up in a few months, so we needed to use our creative resources and give in a very different way.

Once the guys got into it, they were very helpful and we were all very proud of what we'd done.  I spent 3 full weekends basically doing nothing but making the components of our christmas presents. We made several different things.The idea was to give things made with our own hands which had to be in some way useful.   We did some really cool stuff!
We made glass magnets decoupaged with art.

We decoupaged glass vases, framed mirrors, decorative platters, lazy susans, cigar boxes, and more.  I decoupaged wooden blocks and made block puzzles from images out of art magazines.  Grown-ups like to have them on the coffee table to fiddle with, and kids... well they love that there's 6 different images to puzzle together.


I made a beautiful jerk seasoning mix and layered the ingredients in the jar like a sand sculpture.  We made a seaweed mint footscrub, an oatmeal lavender milk bath, and little cones of individual cocoa mix and marshmallows.   Andreas designed customized labels for everything so that our gifts had a nice theme.

I purchased reusable grocery bags  and kraft paper (brown paper bag paper) for wrapping, from Nashville Wraps, an online company that sells gift packaging, including a huge and varied assortment of eco-friendly, recycled, re-useable products. 

We made our gifts, wrapped them in brown kraft paper, packed them in brown unbleached tissue paper, in reuseable grocery bags, and I can't remember the last time any gift I've given received such a response of gratefulness. 

NEWSFLASH:
People really like it when you do something thoughtful and actually give more than a tinker's dam instead of just going through the motions.  People actually get it when you've reached inside yourself and used your inner gifts for benevolence.

At a time when we probably should all be thinking more about how we spend our money... a time when we should be more conscious about how we consume... a time when we should be practicing less waste and more sustainable ways of living... getting creative in the way you give to others is the obvious move.  Not only is the gift more meaningful to the recipient, it is also profoundly good for your own mental, emotional, and yes, even physical health, to create and give.

So if you're a fantastic writer, write a short story and find self publisher online to print it, and give it as a gift.  If you're an artist, paint something and have copies printed, frame it and wrap it up in a bow.  You might think you're not very handy, or that you don't have the time, but those are excuses.  Giving is not giving if you don't get up off of something and give it.  Everybody has a talent for something.  If you're a handy household do-it-yourself-er, print up your favorite home improvement advice and anecdotes on nice paper, bound in a creative way and give it to all the homeowners in your life.  

If you write poetry, tell good jokes, bake great cakes, or even have great taste in music, there's super ways you can capitalize on your talent and use it for giving.   Frame a beautiful poem printed on parchment,  in an old frame and sign and number it.   Write a mini joke book.  Make a cake mix with all the dry ingredients for your most loved cake recipe and pack it up in a cellophane bag with instructions for what wet ingredients to add and how to bake it.   Make a list of must-have music and print it on card stock decorated with holiday regalia, add a personal note with holiday wishes and give it as a greeting card.
There are all kinds of great books out there if you want to try your hands at crafts.  You should, keep an open mind, don't start out too ambitious, don't get in over your head with something that will take months to finish.  And if you have many gifts to plan, don't choose something that you can't create in multiple fairly quickly.   

This year, we're going to step it up a notch with the edible goods, since I'm writing about food in my blogs.  I'm not completely committed yet to what all the goods will be, but there will be some sort of recipe booklet type inclusion, that, perhaps, I'll make available for sale after the holidays are over.

If you really feel that you just cannot create something, but you have a generous heart, that in itself is a talent!  Gather up some of  your friends and loved ones and plan a trip to your local rescue mission to serve a meal or deliver some cheer to children's ward at your local hospital.  Take books to read them, and boardgames to play.  This will be appreciated greatly by the staff and the patients alike!

You can find some really great books on crafting in my bookshelf in the right margin of the blog page.  All the books there are ones I have in my library and recommend!  So have fun, and remember to give from the heart!!!

All photos in this blog are taken by me, of items made by me, using recycled and re-purposed materials and cost very little money to make, but 3 weekends of my time, and a lot of love! 

Etsy-Cool! Shopping Etsy

handblown vase on Etsy.com

One of my recurring craft fantasies is that I will get it together enough to actually produce enough original craft items to sell them.   Recipients of my craft items tell me all the time... "You should be selling these."

They don't understand... a lot of heart goes into the one piece.  I don't know if I could put that much heart into duplicates of the same piece.  So I do something different every year.  This summer when we got back from wedding/honeymoon and settled back into home life, I discovered that I had so much arts and crafts paraphernalia that I needed an official craft storage area to organize it all.  I had a lot of stuff before the wedding, but after?  I had arts and crafts stuff all over the place!  It was swallowing me up.  So we dedicated an area downstairs in our house.  Tore out existing cabinetry, and spent a couple hundred dollars at Ikea to purchase a closet organizing system of shelves, drawers, pull-out baskets, and more.  I now officially have a craft supply storage area!!!  Woo-hoo!!

Perhaps this will help me to focus long enough to create at least some limited edition collections of items that I can sell.

Meanwhile, I know it's not the be-all-to-end-all, but I'm admiring the artisans on the wonderful website Etsy where people like me... (well, perhaps people a little more organized than I)... sell their artistic creations.

stained glass nightlight

Etsy is a fabulous place to look for one-of-a-kind gifts of all kinds.  I've bought everything from gold jewelry to custom-made stationary.  They've even got artists and crafters from all over the world who re-purpose, recycle, re-use to their hearts desire.   The art of re-purposing is a hot arena these days with being "green" or more eco-conscious is the popular trend of our times.

 sushi usb flash drive 2 GB

For our wedding, I made crepe paper flowers, inspired by ones I found for sale on Etsy.  I bought victorian style wrist cuffs to give my bridesmaids.  I've bought handmade hats to give as christmas presents, and there's so much more!!!  Pottery, Gothic fashion, unique holiday decorations, custom formal wear, office accessories, linens, custom period costumes, custom electronic accessories!  You name it you'll find it on Etsy.

leather macbook case

Yes, perhaps someday soon, I'll get it together, y'all... But where to start???

 

Rosie O'Donnell's custom Munny Sculptures!

What's really cool is that the prices are usually very reasonable since you are buying from the person who created the item you are purchasing.  This is great because you get great customer service from most vendors, and a much more personal story behind the items you purchase.  I love objects with a story.  Here are some of my favorite Etsy products for this week:

my friend in alaska makes these hand knit crowns...

wooden iPod case

custom made in YOUR size

blossom lace earrings

made-to-order iPod docking station

100% cotton handmade baby beanie

handmade picture frame