How i like to spend my afternoons...

pumpkin muffins and tea outside with neighbors!

Starting Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving always comes and goes so quickly. You come to this point in the fall and say, "What?! Thanksgiving is almost here?" and then suddenly it's gone and all we can think about is Christmas. Ok, i admit, i'm thinking about Christmas even when i say Thanksgiving is almost here... come on, it's Christmas!!!! but this year I wanted to spend a little more time intentionally celebrating Thanksgiving. i love the idea of having hearts that are full of gratitude. it's something i'd

like to see more in my own heart. So here is our homely, scratchy, but very thankful tree.

DIY or more like GYHTDI (get your husband to do it)

I love our new TV armoire. I love my husband. (not in that order) I know that i when i picked up this 5 buck garage sale find last May i had all these grand thoughts of how i would paint it... but Daryl really is the better painter and since he wouldn't let me do much painting after he saw my work on the primer coat... i guess he thought so too! Daryl and i work very differently... and to be honest, we're still growing in being able to do a project together and actually have fun with the process rather than get annoyed with each other!

I feel grateful for Daryl's hard work and that our living room is now in order... i love how it turned out and already suggested that we paint our dinning room table next. Daryl said he needed a little time off before jumping into another big project... no problem! i'll just get started on the primer!

From my Desk: Personal Cards

I love making these little cards. Usually i include them with birthday presents for the little girls in our lives. but i'm also working on a set for some adults and myself as well. These are a thoughtful and relatively easy gift idea for special people in your life. Here's how you can make them too!

Step 1. Draw a doodle picture of the intended subject. (I always do it in pencil and then go over with a thin black pen.) As i explained to my girls, it's ok to make mistakes, we just erase it and try again. Anyone else out there like to be perfect the first time? we're still learning the art of working on something to get it how we like it.

Step 2. Scan the picture to your computer.

Step 3. Insert it to a word doc or other program(Publisher is easier to use than Word). Size it to make it smaller so that it will fit at the bottom right side. I always 4 to a page, so the cards are 51/2 x 4 inch (i didn't know that, i just measured one!) Copy the pictures and paste it 3 times so that you have four total. Play around so that all four are in the right spot.

Step 4. Add the name, (optional) i usually add a text box and type their name so that it is nice and clear.

Step 5. print and cut!

This time, the girls wanted to make their own cards too. (yeah for color printer!)

a trip to the desert

One of our family's favorite places to get out of the city and into quiet is Joshua Tree National Park. We took the girls there Monday for an actual overnight trip

which was quite the feat around here. We've been many times before (although its been a while since we went as a family) and it was the first time we've ever camped as a family. Usually we pack as though we are camping, get a spot, pay the fee, have a fire, eat smores, watch for shooting stars and then load the girls in the car and drive the 2 1/2 hours back home- it's not that we don't like camping, (ok, i'm still a little on the fence) we both grew up camping and always envisioned doing so with our girls. But with many of Daryl health problems being sleep related, getting a good night rest for him could not include the word; tent.

So this trip was very special for our family. We thoroughly enjoyed the quiet and peace of the desert and the time together as a family.

"playing" the violin... they kept this up for a crazy long time. my arms got tired after one song, but they kept going strong!

The bees at the campground were the only down side. (they didn't sting although it was hard to stay calm when one landed on you) From sunrise to sunset you could hear the constant hum as they busied themselves searching for water. We kept inside our tent, car, or went out for walks until sunset and they went to bed.

{ this moment }

Inspired by Amanda Soule's Friday tradition

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

Amazing Gluten Free Angel Food cake

Last week i made ice-cream. Twice! Both recipes were from my favorite book on the subject, Perfect Scoop by David Lebovitz. I made coffee ice-cream to pair with the my banana chocolate chip cake for my dad's 60th birthday. and then classic chocolate to have with oatmeal chocolate chip cookies for a dinner with my brothers. If you are familiar with David's ice-cream, many of his recipes are custard based or the French-style method which yields such a rich and creamy ice cream i had my family promising to be faithful regulars as soon as i open up my own ice cream shop! (not happening anytime soon!) The other result from all the churning around here is that i had a fridge with quite a few eggs whites that needed to be used or i'd be tossing them out soon.

Several times recently as i've served ice-cream or cake or cookies, those around me have joked about the irony that i of all people who love to cook and bake am married to a man with wheat and dairy allergies. And true, maybe one of reasons why Daryl has stayed so slim all these years is that he can't eat all the temptations i make. But i have not let his food issues get in the way of attempting to put before him sweet surprises! i've had my fair share of bloopers in the kitchen with gluten free / dairy free this and that. It takes a while (i'm talking years) to get fairly comfortable and even now after several years, when i experiment with something new, sometimes it turns out great, like the cake i made a couple nights ago, and some of my attempts turn out best suited for the garbage (unfortunately the waffles i made last weekend fell into that category... one little change to my fool-proof recipe was all it took to ruin it! which really sucked because i always triple the batter to make enough for the whole week, so it was a lot of wasted rice/oatmeal/tapoica/etc / etc flours!)

So a couple nights ago when i opened the fridge to see what veggies were on their last leg and needed to be consumed for dinner i saw those eggs whites looking at me. Asking to be put to good use! I sat down to look through my recipes and came across Angel Food cake... do you know Angel Food cake calls for 12 eggs whites?! no problem! The nice thing about Angel food cake and what makes it such a great recipe if you avoid wheat and dairy is that it doesn't call for any fat, no butter to replace with various oils. and it only needs 1 cup of flour which is quite small for a cake.

It was my first time to try making Angel food cake and i'm excited at how it came out; Daryl thought it was great. I served it the next day to someone else and they couldn't even tell it was GF/Dairy free! if you are not familiar with GF /Dairy free food then you may not be able to appreciate just how exciting it is when you make something and it actually tastes, looks, and has the same texture as the original. This cake gets a 5 starts in all those categories!

without further ado:

Angel Food Cake (with my changes/instructions)

• 12 eggs (enough for 1 1/2cups)
• 1 1/4 cups confectioners' sugar
• 1 cup flour (i used 1/2 white rice (asian brand), 1/4 tapioca starch, 1/4 sweet sorghum)
• 1 1/2 teaspoons cream of tartar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon almond extract (optional, i left this out and it was still great)
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
  
• 1 cup sugar
• 1. Bring 1 1/2 cup egg whites to room temp. Place bowl in a sink of warm water (careful not to get any water in the egg whites) to speed up the process if you don't have 30 mins to let it sit on your counter.
  
• 2. Meanwhile, mix confectioners' sugar and flours together (sift for even fluffier results). Add cream of tartar, to egg whites; beat on high speed. (make sure mixing bowl is very clean and dry... any water will hinder your egg whites from rising.) Towards the end, slowly add sugar, beating until sugar is dissolved and stiff peaks form. Add extracts and salt. Fold in flour mixture, 1/4 cup at a time. Gently spoon into an ungreased 10-in. tube pan or bundt pan. Cut through batter with a knife to remove air pockets. Bake at 350 degrees F for 40-45 minutes or until cake springs back when lightly touched. Immediately turn pan upside down and place on a bottle so it sits inverted to cool. Let it cool completely before removing cake from pan.

Is your church free too?

“Mom, do we go to a free church?” Claire asked me as we were walking from our car to church this past Sunday. I started quickly thinking through what valuable lesson I could teach her… yes we don’t pay, God’s love is free! … but I decided I’d see first what she was thinking. Side note: my girls ask a lot of questions and I’ve learned that rather than jumping into lengthy explanations- to ask what they think first. That way I can find out how much they already know or if maybe their question wasn’t so serious as I thought it was. So I said, “What do you think Claire? Do we go to a free church” and she said that yes, she thought it was free because that’s what the sign says!

Back from england

We have been back now for 3 weeks. Can it already have been that long? Sometimes I think that England was a dream… we didn’t really spend our summer in the English countryside did we? But I just have to scroll down a bit to see Claire’s smiling face in the midst of those wheat fields that we watched grow steadily each week to remember well our British summer.

Coming back has been so good in many ways, the comfort of your own bed and pillow is incredible! Having a stocked kitchen and counter space! … I will never complain of lack of counter space again! Hearing English in our own accent, yes the English accent is romantic and wonderful, but it can also be tiring to hear it all day long. You have to concentrate harder and I don’t think I realized this until I heard an American speaking on TV one evening after being in England several weeks. It felt so soothing to hear that American … ok ... it was Tom Hanks being interviewed… of course it’s enjoyable listening to him! But it was his accent first that I found so refreshing and then his humor!

We are trying to settle into a routine which has been harder than I expected. I’m still adjusting to my alarm going off at 5:15am again (this summer I didn’t start work until 9am). Although I do enjoy having my afternoons at home now. Working all day this summer, I would long for afternoons off to play with the girls, bake, run errands, it all sounded so wonderful. And now that I have it back I find it hard to be as productive as I’d like to be. I’ve been napping more than usual, I feel behind with the house chores and I haven’t sat down to play pretend with my girls recently.

Life. Why must it always take so much work to run smoothly?

Claire's Quote

"I've got stories in my mind. I normally have stories in my mind; real stories and pretend stories - there are more pretend ones though. The main real one is the one that has the baby doll." Claire

England Art by Girls

Natania and Claire have become prolific coloring artists. We have stacks of crayon and pencil drawings in this flat. Here are a couple drawings they made to send as letters.

By Natania: This is a drawing of the outside of our apartment.

By Claire: "I LOVE YOU. I Like eNgLAND. I LiKe you."

White Cliffs of Dover

We were able to borrow a car for a week and as we considered our options of where to go we agreed on one spot; the white cliffs of Dover. Our family enjoys getting out in the beautiful world that God has created and this seemed like a perfect fit for us.

Maybe someday they will come back as adults and get a picture in this same spot.

It was not simply cliffs that you gazed at from the trail, this shot of a descending green valley on the edge of the cliffs was enchanting.

Here is a clear shot of the cliffs with a glimpse of a noisy distraction/entertainment that was coming. Hint: can you see the yellow thing?

Decades down the trail of life will we return to these cliffs? I can almost picture it; Becky and I returning with white hair (truth be told, I would have no hair at all).

Although it was a delight to watch rescue training, the proximity of this roaring beast marred the peace and tranquility of these colossally quiet cliffs.

You've sung the lines, "Don't build your house on the sandy land..." Well, here is the second verse, "Don't build your house on the chalky cliffs." Look at the remains of a once lofty and proud house that has fallen.

Stolen out from underneath me!

Have you ever heard someone say, "It was stolen out from underneath me?" Well, I know more of what they feel when they say that. In my case the bed was paid for but my nap was stolen out from underneath me. Since our flight leaves for Los Angeles on Tuesday, we have been selling all our furniture through the British equivalent to Craigslist.

This Sunday afternoon I was enjoying the last dregs of my nap when Becky jolted me out of bed. She was nearly pulling the sheets out from underneath me as she directed me to dismantle the dear bed. Within twenty minutes the bed was gone.

Our first "goodbyes" have been to our furniture. Though our rooms are empty our minds are furnished with many memories from our time here.

Through International Customs...On Accident!!!

We enjoyed looking down at this port from the white cliffs of Dover. You can see a stream of cars getting onto a ferry in this picture. A steady flow of these ferries were going and coming across the English channel. It was great to see this international port from the cliffs but we hadn't planned on going on a visit until...

We took a wrong turn on one of the roads and before we were able to turn around we found ourselves headed on a one-way road leading on to one of the Ferries.

Even with GPS (SatNav as they call it here) you can still have the craziest time trying to interpret which exit to take on their roundabouts. Well, this time we interpreted it wrong and we soon found ourselves at a guard booth.

We had to explain to a guard at a gate that we had entered on accident. By that time there was no way to turn around so he gave us this Owl pass in order to let us through the gauntlet of customs that lay ahead of us.

"Customs: SLOW"

We followed the signs that had the picture of the owl and finally made it out of customs. I hope that is the last time we have to go through customs without making the international trip.