I have been teaching school in this chair for at least a decade. I found it at a second hand store and loved the industrial look and feel. I think it must weigh about one hundred pounds!
Recently I thought about gettting a new office chair but when I tried out new chairs they didn’t seem all that much more comfortable than the one I had gotten used to. I had seen my very chair in perfect condition for sale in U.K. for £375, but mine was an eyesore. Really! Who would have such a thing in their house!? So I refurbished it and it makes me smile when I see it now.
I am a huge fan of gorilla glue and it did its gorilla job of gluing fabric to metal.
mine needed work!
Perfect one for sale in UK
I went with a little color for now...
I think my next little project will be an industrial style table, another terrific find at this UK shop.
I have a solid wood door that I would like to use for the surface and then these chunky legs will make the perfect table. Matthias already distressed the edge of the door when he took a saw to it years ago so it will come with distressed memories.
I have been overwhelmed by dirt for over a year; I have grown bitter looking at that bleakness day after day. Andrew and Jarrett have sacrificed many, many weekends to install irrigation and work the dirt into acceptable contours for a lawn. Friday when Jarrett and I pulled into the driveway and he yelled, “Whoaa, look at that!” I looked and there it was this very light greenish tint to our dirt. Oh thrill!!
The thrill is greater because of the hard work and waiting, because of the severe winds that blew the dirt and sent it everywhere. We would look out the window and watch as the topsoil was blown to kingdom come and Matthias voiced what I was thinking, “That wind makes me want to yell.” It just grated, the dryness the bareness. From time to time we go now to the window and gaze contentedly at our green. And hopefully I have grown too.
I am looking forward to walking on the grass, grandchildren playing out there, sitting outside and having grass all around us.
“You shall have a covenant with the stones of the field…
You shall know that your descendants shall be many,
The best Key Lime Pie I ever ate came from The Cake Box Bakery in Marathon, Florida. We were living south of Miami and had spent the day on Key West. One time we stopped mid-way down the Keys and camped on the beach on Long Key. By morning we had a river running through our tent and we were encased in huge sleeping bag sponges, but I digress. Anyway, on the drive home from Key West, we stopped and bought a Key Lime Pie. Cake Box Bakery included their business card with the recipe on the back. I’ve kept it all these years.
It is Andrew’s favorite dessert and the easiest thing you’ll ever make! For his birthday he wants Key Lime Pie, for an anniversary he wants a Key Lime Pie; for Father’s Day he wants a Key Lime Pie; for; well, you get the idea. When we moved to Oregon, the real Key Lime juice was not available but now you can get it most anywhere.
With a ready-made graham cracker crust, a can of condensed milk, a bottle of Key Lime juice, and a few eggs, you are prepared. The recipe doesn’t even call for baking it. The lime juice thickens the milk and eggs. But I do bake it for about 10-15 minutes at 350º just to be sure. And I only use 2 egg yolks not 4 and I never bother with the meringue because Andrew prefers it without (but really you should).
Aileen and Jason are engaged to be married this fall!
Man oh man, that is a lot of planning in a very short time so we got started this past weekend. Aileen is the most laid back wedding planner ever!
Compared to planning Meghan’s wedding, it is amazing what is available through the internet. It has saved tons of running around by looking online and narrowing down where we go. Taite and I spent the weekend with Aileen at her apartment, which is directly over a bar and grill which is open until 2 a.m. and which is Mexican themed and which play thumpa thumpa music until 2 a.m. interspersed with a little Tom Petty and which you can hear from her apartment as though you are at the bar and for which I was not able to sleep until the bar finally closed at 2 a.m. Other than that for which Aileen calls me the Princess and the Pea, we had a very wonderful time. We ate Sunday morning breakfast before going to church at a great little coffee shop.
For dinner the first night we had New Orleans style food, jambalaya and seafood gumbo at a quaint restaurant .
And since there were no guys around, we ate dinner on the sofa the next night watching chick flicks, It’s Complicated (very intriguing for the fact that I am an older woman), P.S. I Love You (very sad) and New in Town (corny and predictable).
We had an amazingly productive yet relaxing weekend.
Since two of my daughters are traveling home from a family wedding, one is visiting with her mother-in-law, and one is flying high with a ring newly placed on her finger(!) I thought I’d interrupt our recipes for a bit because they won’t know.
I have been so totally bowled over by the sermons of Timothy Keller in NYC that I sometimes finish and just sit in a stupor ( some might call that meditation) and just weep.
My favorite and most stupefying is his sermon Praying our Tears. He begins by saying there are three ways of dealing with our emotions; two won’t work.
1. The religious way where we are so uncomfortable with our strong and horrible emotions that we want to deny the power, depth and darkness of them. How many Sundays must you meet with everyone and ask, “How are you?” and be told. “Fine.” What would happen if you admitted you struggle with bitterness, with hatred, with abject fear, with pettiness, with anger? What would happen if a prayer request were about your own wicked soul and not your best friend’s brother’s great aunt’s big toe?
2. The secular way where we say, “those are my feelings, and that’s just the way it is.” ”I have always been like this and there’s no changing me now.” You want to tell everyone everything all the time.
3. The third way, and better way, is to pray your feelings. Bring them before God. Bring the down and dirty stuff before God and know that He knows how to deal with you. He’s not shocked. What a humongous relief to be told, “God already knows worse than you can tell Him about you.”
David tells God in Psalm 39 to “Remove your gaze from me, that I may regain strength. Before I go away and am no more.” In other words, “God, leave me alone so I will not be tormented any longer by You. My days are almost at an end and I just want to die in peace.” God knows how to hear our prayers and how to answer them in spite of us. It is safe to be honest with God. He will not catch you up in your words like an astute lawyer, but will rather hear your cry for help, for peace, for comfort and do the right thing. Christ knew what to do even though Peter tells him to, “Depart from me.” The very presence of prayers like these in Scripture is a witness to His understanding. He is not shocked, He knows how we speak and what we will cry out when we are desperate.
I was awe struck meditating that Christ felt absolutely and totally abandoned by God, His Father, His perfect Father. Jesus asked God the Father, “Why have you forsaken me?” This relationship that was so singular, so full of perfect love, so full of trust and in the last hours of Christ’s life on earth for him to anguish aloud that He was forsaken by his Father. AND to feel safe asking that question!
Our deepest feelings of anger, tears and pain belong with God, not in neat little pre-orchestrated packaged prayers. He understands, He was a man of sorrow acquainted with grief. He can take it. And He will turn it for joy.
So, how do we do this??
“Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy. He who continually goes forth weeping, bearing seed for sowing, shall doubtless come again with rejoicing, bringing his sheaves with him.”
We shouldn’t just ignore our tears (religiosity) but neither should we just dump our feelings (secular) rather we are told to sow our tears. Invest our tears with God. When we do that, when we bring our deepest feeling before God, it will not just make the pain, anger, bitterness go away but it will reap joy! Our tears will be turned into an opportunity for fruitfulness and growth.
But when we pray like this we always need to first have Christ’s death on the cross before us, His saving grace and then we can let ‘em rip. It is safe.
If you are interested in the history of the wine grape in America, you will like The Wild Vine. Not California but rather Virginia is home to the first truly American wine grape, Vitis nortoni. The first American wine grape was called by the very poetic name, Norton! Ughh!
Another book just out is Parrot & Olivier. Olivier’s character is based on Alexis de Tocqueville during his travel to this new experiment in democracy called America. Parrot is the motherless son of an itinerant printer. Parrot and Olivier are thrown together when they set sail for America with Parrot as Olivier’s protector and servant.
If you are a hardcore Jane Austen fan, you will appreciate this little book by Peter Leithart. This blandly titled book, Jane Austen, is chock full of her family history and details of her life.
And the last is a new book by Christoper Hitchens, his autobiography, Hitch-22. I was not thrilled with the book but it is an insight into Hitchens’ mind.
Within minutes of posing my review of it an amazing amount of hatred and vitriol started spewing forth from atheists. I received personally targeted hate filled comments, all from atheists whose god was being attacked. It was pretty shocking. I deleted the review for awhile and then put it back up minus the hate- filled comments. Now another conversation is taking place in the comments which is much more civil.
“O, Lord… Take away our fear of fat, and make us glad of the oil which ran upon Aaron’s beard. Give us pasta with a hundred fillings, and rice in a thousand variations. Above all, give us grace to live as true men- to fast till we come to a refreshed sense of what we have and then to dine gratefully on all that comes to hand… cast out the demons that possess us; deliver us from the fear of calories and the bondage of nutrition…” Nourishment is only for awhile; what we shall need forever is taste. (Robert Farrar Capon)
In this one toast Capon brings up two big ideas, 1. feasting and 2. dining gratefully.
Feasting
I have been intrigued with the relationship of fasting versus dieting. I think dieting is from the devil. Dieting seems kind of cruel; you can’t eat most of what you wish you could and that is how you will lose weight. Then when you get tired of the diet food, you eat like you did before… and gain back all the weight. And on top of all that weight gain you feel guilty because you didn’t stick to the diet.
The Bible makes use of another means to enjoy food more fully and in the end maintain a decent weight, fasting. Fasting and feasting let you enjoy the food you love guilt free.
A general rule of thumb straight from the Bible is, when you’re happy and among friends, eat but when you’re depressed, fast. ”A feast is made for laughter, and wine makes merry; but money answers everything.” (Amen!) And if it’s not a feast day,eat lightly. Save the feasting appetite for feasting with friends. If you are the sort who eats when you’re depressed; stop. It’s not right.
The Bible always combines feasting (which is a positive way of over-eating) with celebrating, never with depression. Fasting is always associated with sadness and mourning; “‘Now, therefore,’ says the lord, ‘Turn to Me with all your heart, with fasting with weeping, and with mourning.’” Joel 2:12
We have those days where there are no holds barred, Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, birthdays and Sundays in general. Those are not days to eat half portions and worry about weight gain. But when plain old Monday morning rolls around, toast is good enough… with home-made strawberry freezer jam.
We need to learn when to feast and when to fast.
Dining Gratefully
Dining gratefully is lacking in America. We are so rich with variety and in quantity of food that we have come to despise food and view it as a curse. Americans have always embraced dieting which is in one sense a way of fearing food, and now there is a new way to diss God’s goodness to us: food allergies. I know I’m putting my neck out there to mention this but you can’t swing a dead cat without hearing about somebody’s food allergy.
Is it me or are there more people than ever with food allergies these days?
These pseudo-allergies allow us to obsess over lists of ingredients on every package of food, ferreting out that bit of flour, that bit of dairy. Do people in India, North Korea or Pakistan have food allergies like us!? America is so abundantly blessed that we have managed to turn God’s blessing of abundance into a curse.
Given our tendency to idolatry, to obsess over ourselves, is it any wonder that we think we are allergic to the most basic ingredients: flour, milk, sugar, eggs…
Picking and fussing our way through the goodness of the earth, food becomes nothing more than nutritional value or a calorie to be counted. To look at food, God given in all its diversity of taste and texture and turn that blessing into a burden to be endured is to become an idolater, spiritualizing away what should be loved. It is thanklessness.
We have left off with thanking God and dining gratefully, and have given license to our propensity to obsess about ourself. Didn’t that bit of sugar, flour or milk make me the slightest bit queasy? Making sure everyone knows just how special we are with our special, limited diet, we forget to drink in the goodness from God’s generous abundance. We have taken this gift of taste and variety from God’s hand and said, “NO.”
We need to thank God for the fat of the land and dine gratefully without excuse.
My disclaimer
Obviously there are people who if they eat a peanut or some other food will seriously end up in anaphylactic shock. There are some who have diabetes or other serious illnesses who really do need to watch carefully what they eat. I am not talking about that. I am talking about the psuedo-allergy thing which belittles the people who really do have food allergies and really can’t eat certain foods. This psuedo-allergy thing tries to make itself look as dire as a real allergy, a real illness. It is not. It is obsessive thanklessness.
So on your feast days, eat for heaven’s sake! And when you are sad and mourning, fast. Between times, eat a little of what you love… And in everything give thanks. Your allergies just might evaporate into thin air. Wouldn’t that be terrific!?
“Bring your father and your households and come to me; I will give you the best of the land of Egypt, and you will eat the fat of the land.” Genesis 45:18
Yep, Peeps and chocolate bunnies for breakfast!
Our feeding frenzy before Christmas Eve service having just caroled our way through the neighborhood
Looks like a totally fake backdrop but it's real! Hostetter's ranch.
Don’t think that the good days are from Jesus and the bad days aren’t. Things don’t happen by accident, they are purposeful and orchestrated, always.
In the day of prosperity be joyful,
But in the day of adversity consider:
Surely God has appointed the one as well as the other
I remember wondering about that portion of Handel’s Messiah where the choir sings,
Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.
thinking, “why would we want just flat land with straight roads, heck, we’d be in Kansas!”
We live in a crooked, rough world full of sin, sadness and suffering. Wise people and fools live in this crooked world but wise people understand God’s plan includes crooked things, fools never learn. Fools try to change the course that God has set before them, wise people learn to navigate. So, how does the wise person navigate through the rough hard things in life?
1. Wise people begin by understanding God did not intend for us to have an easy, carefree, simple, painless life.
2. Wise people understand they are not God’s public relations with a slapped on happy face. In the day of adversity wise people embrace grief. Wise people go through sadness and mourning, while foolish people try to ignore it.
Better to go to the house of mourning
Than to go to the house of feasting,
Sorrow is better than laughter
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning
When times are sad, you need to mourn, go through it. Eating, drinking and partying when you’re depressed is foolish. But then, when times improve, eat, drink and be merry. When times are bad, mourn and grieve but then when times are good, play Settlers of Catan with your kids, go to Baskin Robbins for ice cream, and read books to them in bed.
3. Wise people choose their friends carefully. He who walks with the wise grows wise.
It is better to hear the rebuke of the wise
Than for a man to hear the song of fools.
Wise people have friends who will pray for them and be there for them.
4. Wise people accept that ultimately bad days come from God. Ministry to others comes out of pain and brokenness, we don’t wish for it and we wouldn’t choose it but through it we are able to talk about God’s goodness in a way that convinces.
My example here is fairly trivial but in the mind of eleven and thirteen year olds it looms a bit bigger and really, that is where trials begin. Matthias is on the losing-est baseball team this year and Taite was left in the dust in her dance class because while others of her age were progressing in dance, we did not have the finances to put her there. Did we sin as parents? Did Taite sin? Did Matthias? Does God hate us!? No, He loves us.
He knows that if we lived a simple, carefree, painless life we would never need Him, we would never seek Him, and ultimately we would die apart from Him. So, he brings us trials. God has made our lives complicated and crooked on purpose but one day He shall make “Every valley exalted, and every mountain and hill made low, the crooked straight, and the rough places plain.”
Could Matthias have been placed on a winning team? You bet. Could Taite have been dancing with girls her own age? For sure.
And so, Taite and Matthias have had the privilege of misery in their young lives, to be humiliated and miserable through no fault of theirs. That is where God will work. They have been able to say, “This stinks,” and then move on knowing by faith and not by what they see right now, ‘that all things work together for good to those who love God, to those who are called according to His purpose.’
As we discussed this Matt proclaimed triumphantly, “If it’s true that good things come out of bad, we’ve got a whole lot of good coming!”
“First thing we gotta do is belittle, deride and heckle them.” If that is what the mainstream media’s reaction is to someone or some group, my curiosity is piqued and I figure that person or group must have gotten something right.
I am not a tea party-er, but there we were in Washington D.C. on 4.12.10 right when the big happening was happening so we jumped in the truck and found a fantastic parking spot a few feet from the event and were there for Tucker Carlson and Rev. C. L. Bryant’s speeches.
Listening to Rev. Bryant was very rousing. I had heard that the Tea Party group was a bunch of wackos and here was this guy giving a very emotionally packed speech and the reaction was supportive and vigorous but way, way short of riotous and wacko. Way short. The crowd thought he was marvelous and they cheered with enthusiasm but one week old Valiant was safe in this crowd.
I hear that Tucker Carlson is the hotty of the conservative movement. He was at the Tea Party too.
At the very end of the event, people were walking through the crowd saying, “Clean up your mess, don’t leave any trash,” and other incendiary things like that.
I left wondering why there is such vitriol against this group, they are polite and neat as a pin, all they want is for big government to leave them alone.
I don’t think that’s asking too much and the Tea Party does so politely.
I was pretty amazed to see that this lowly kitchen was Julia Child’s domain. It is lacking counter space, has just a single sink, pretty minimal storage and not many gadgets and yet what a gourmande. This was definitely the highlight at the National Museum of American History at the Smithsonian.
Julia’s pots and pans were nothing like what chefs today have, and generally famous chefs today design, produce and sell their pots, pans and gadgets- Paula Deen, Mario Batali, Rachael Ray, Wolfgang Puck, Jamie Oliver… But not Julia, she bought some copper pots and she was good to go.
My recent House Beautiful featured various designers and chefs with their favorite pot or pan. Mostly they were ugly, worn and loved. A few, I think, were trying to hype their own line of cookware. But the old ugly ones you knew were the ones these people could not part with.
This beloved pot of mine was a gift from my parents when Andrew and I got married. The colors were very in. So, we’ve had it thirty years and somewhere in the midst of those years it became the popcorn pot. That is all it’s used for now. But every time we have popcorn, this is the pot we use. Like a lot of cooking around our house, popcorn was Andrew’s domain, but lately I have kind of gotten the hang of making it and I’m not left with a cup of old maids in the bottom anymore.
Do you have anything like this, ugly and worn but you love it best and can’t bear the thought of replacing it with new?
This recipe is amazing. When we arrived at the Eastern Shore, there on the table at the house where we were staying was a plate of scones made by Melinda Blymen. I took a nibble of the coconut scone and then another and then another and then another until Andrew and Tim had no idea that coconut scones ever existed on the plate. I think Erin maybe got one. Make this for a special Sunday breakfast with a cup of coffee and the day will start perfectly. I am told they freeze well, so go ahead and make the full batch!
Make the scones: Preheat the oven to 400 degrees. Line 2 baking sheets with parchment paper or Silpat. Whisk the flour, baking powder, salt, granulated sugar and shredded coconut in a bowl. Using a pastry blender blend in the butter until the mixture is in coarse crumbles.
Whisk the coconut milk, eggs and coconut extract in another bowl, then stir into theflour mixture until just combined. Stir in the pecans; do not overmix.
Scoop 2-to-3-inch mounds of dough onto the prepared baking sheets (a large ice cream scoop works well for this). Sprinkle the tops with sugar and bake until golden brown, 15 to 17 minutes.
Meanwhile, make the glaze: Whisk the coconut milk, coconut and vanilla extracts and 1/2 cup confectioners’ sugar in a bowl until smooth, adding more sugar as needed to thicken. Drizzle over the scones while still slightly warm.
If you are a single male and read this blog, take note, there are some incredible single women in this world and I would like to encourage you to get your act together and think about getting married some day. Obviously there are some terrific guys around, it’s just that the girls have to do the waiting.
I just spent ten days in Washington D.C. and had the privilege of meeting some amazing young, single women. Actually I’ve been in Seattle recently too and those single women are amazing also. Basically there are a lot of amazing SINGLE women all over the place! And not every one of them wants to be married, but a lot of them do. But they don’t live lives pining away for Mr. Wonderful, they carry on with grace and enthusiasm.
I have been struck by these women’s poise, beauty, intelligence, humor, their ability to thrive in the workplace and remain feminine.
I am glad that Andrew and I went to the Hirshhorn Museum, it’s usually the one I skip in favor of the National Gallery. I know the National Gallery by heart, enter the main entrance, take a left then another left and you are in heaven, the most fabulous Rembrandts.
I am attracted to some modern art in a way that never used to appeal. Some is just silly. Some of it is eye catching and makes me smile. I would put some of it up in my house. I would be proud to say my grandchildren made this:
I like this in a very attainable way, not in a, my gosh, it’s a Vermeer way, but more like, hey kids let’s do a little project today at the kitchen table sort of way.
These are painted dowels evenly spaced. Besides a museum where would you want to see this thing? It takes a lot of space for this sort of art. I know a boy who would be plucking and honing those dowels into arrows for his great hunt in the sage brush. One very large room had polyester yarn hanging in about ten places from the ceiling and then secured tautly to the floor. (You MUST take a look at that gem!) The sign upon entering said, “Do Not Touch the Art,” and there stood three women in the room, one gently running her finger down the yarn while one of the other women was scolding her, “It says. ‘Don’t Touch.’” And really it was just silly, I mean suppose she broke a string, was it irreplaceable? Would it take the artist to reattach the yarn to make it genuine? Did American’s tax dollars go to pay for the thing!?
There is though an aspect to modern art that is very appealing to me; the obvious delight many abstract artists have in the everyday object of the everyday world. Andy Warhol’s Campbell Soup Can piece of work, for example. Who doesn’t love to see all their canned food happily, neatly and brightly arranged on the pantry shelf? The duplication and repetition in his work is a great way to wordlessly demonstrate the age of machines and mass production. Warhol didn’t really even participate in producing the piece; the labels were silkscreened by various helpers in the studio. And doesn’t that too attest to the mass production of canned food?
Yet, given the choice between owning a Rembrandt and owning a Warhol, I know which one I’d choose.
