I just had to share some of these recent photos. I took this one this morning, and the others below are shots that Luke took this weekend.
Apparently Luke and Patrick were playing dress up on Sunday morning while mommy was at church for band practice.
This seems to be his new favorite position. He loves being on his belly all of a sudden, and he'll lay like this and just stare out the back door.
The scones that I made this morning called for buttermilk, which for some odd reason seems to only come in a pretty large container, despite the fact that most recipes only take a small amount and then you're stuck with a big ol' bottle of buttermilk that you can't use for anything else. Well, it just so happens that in the parenting magazine I subscribe to which arrived just yesterday, there was an entire page dedicated to ways to use leftover buttermilk! One of those recipes was for a buttermilk crab pie. Now, I also just happened to have a can of crab meat in the pantry as well, so I made another pie crust (de ja vu), and put this little pie together for dinner. It's made with a layer of cheese on the bottom of the crust, then topped with the crab meat (sautéed first with onions), and then filled with a mixture of eggs, flour, and... BUTTERMILK. Bake at 350° for about 35 minutes, and voilà!
I sent Luke out to get an onion for tonight's dinner recipe and he came home with these... and the onion. Hooray for beautiful flowers and thoughtful husbands.
For breakfast this morning I whipped up a very delicious batch of pumpkin scones with fresh chopped cranberries and yellow raisins. The house just smells like Fall. I'm not sure that Fall really has a smell. But it should. And it should smell like pumpkin.
My dear friend, Michele, from church gave me this wonderful new cookbook, "Once Upon A Tart." It is full of so many delicious recipes, and I had a hard time deciding where to begin. I finally chose two for tonight's dinner and dessert.
For dinner, I made this Roasted-Eggplant-and-Tomato Tart with Basil. The crust is simply flour, butter, and margarine. I cut the flour and butter together the old fashioned way with two butter knives, as I am unequipped with all those newfangled fancy schmancy gadgets that do it for you, but it really isn't that difficult. In fact, if you have never made a pie crust from scratch, I challenge you to try. It's not nearly as daunting a task as it may seem. This was not my first, and the more you do it, the easier it gets. The bottom of the crust is covered with a layer of puréed basil and parmesan cheese, then topped with the slices of tomato and garlic-roasted eggplant. The filling is made of cream and eggs, though I don't think I made quite enough because it didn't seem to fill the dish as much as it should have. The tart then bakes for a little over an hour. So delicious!
For dessert, I used another recipe from this book: Crunchy Dried Cranberry-Chocolate Chip Cookies. This cookie is made with oats and wheat germ, though I substituted bran flakes, in addition to the flour. The bran flakes, as I am sure the wheat germ would have done, gives these cookies a very light, crispy texture that just crumbles in your mouth. The combination of the sweet chocolate chips with the tart cranberries completes the yumminess that is this cookie. Oh so good!
Here is a very tiny sneak peek at what I've been working on for the last few months. This is one set of the 5 designs in the series shown in one of the several color schemes.
I wanted the cover letter to match the hand-lettered labeling on all of the designs, so I pulled out my ruler and wrote this by hand. 
And here it is, cover letter, title page, and all 40 pages of printed designs, all wrapped up and ready to be mailed to Westminster/FreeSpirit Fibers. So exciting! I will be sure to give a full reveal of the finished designs once I hear yes or no from the company, which I hear can take several months, so it may be a while. 
This is another one of my Sur La Table finds. My old set of measuring cups were plastic and a couple of them had broken. I love the fun colors. I'll be honest. I think this was the true inspiration for the baking of the cookies.
I recently got around to putting a Sur La Table birthday gift card to good use. One of the things I found was this yummy tea: Mighty Leaf Chocolate Mint Truffle. Good stuff!
Well, as promised, here are some of those freshly pressed fabrics being put to good use. My brother-in-law is getting married in November, and his fiancé's shower was this past weekend. Among the few things that Luke and I gave them were these handmade items for the bride to be.
We gave Patrick his first serving of rice cereal last week. He seemed a little ambivalent about it. He was opening wide and lunging towards the spoon for every bite, and yet, every single time, he would scrunch up his face once it was in his mouth. At the very least, he was very curious.
As well as he seems to be adjusting to the spoon, he has suddenly decided that he does not want to take a bottle. We hardly ever give him one anyways, and when my parents were watching him for me this past Saturday, he refused to eat for them. He has become a nursing snob. We're trying to give him a bottle more often, so he's used to it when we leave him with someone.
