My Grandmother's Legacy

This is my Grandmother's Legacy.

You might think it odd or even disrespectful that I consider a pot of dumplings (or Spaetzle for the rest of the world) to be my grandmother's legacy. But this pot of dumplings signifies so much more than that.

My grandma passed away this August at the age of 86. She was very much the matriarch of our family. Out of 7 brothers and sisters, she was the last one living (if any of my family reads this, I counted baby Julie). She had two daughters, five grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. She was the surrogate mother and grandmother to the children and grandchildren of her sisters and brothers as they passed and welcomed anyone into the family. And she did it in the most delicious way.

My grandmother was the best cook and baker I ever met. Walking through her door always meant being greeted by the most wonderful smells imaginable, and she made everything from scratch, including soup noodles. Her food meant comfort, love, and family.

This will be the first holiday season without Grandma. While she hasn't been able to cook or bake for the last few years, her mind was still present and she was always ready to share stories and memories of the past. I will miss her more than anything. But she will always live on with us, since we still have her recipes. We will still enjoy Tarhonya, stuffed peppers, cucumber salad, berliner krantz, kifli's, kolach, angel wings, chicken and dumplings, and a bunch of other recipes that I have no idea how to spell. She taught us how to make these recipes, and when we do, we know she will be with us in spirit.

Doing it Alone

I have to give a lot of credit to single parents, parents whose spouses are deployed in the military, and parents whose spouses travel frequently for work. I honestly don't know how they do it.

My husband is traveling this week for work. This means I am alone with our child from the moment she wakes up in the morning until she utters her last whimper at night. At 19 months old, she is exhausting! If I had to do this week in and week out, I think my life expectancy would be cut by at least 20 years. Thankfully, my husband's job doesn't require him to be gone more than a few weeks out of the year.

I enjoy evenings with my husband. When "daddy's home" it signifies a milestone of the day. The energy of the house changes and it's like we all (the child, the dog, and I) take a deep breath and know that someone is here to save us! to entertain us! and to distract us from our crabbiness. My daughter looks forward to having someone else to "UP!", and I enjoy not being the only arms around. Not to mention the fact that I finally have someone who can talk to me in fully intelligible sentences... well, mostly. Even if he has to go straight to his office and continue working, I feel a sense of peace knowing he's here.

My husband thinks his job is hard. I know he works hard. He starts his workday at 6am and works until 5pm and often later. He deals with impossible demands and constant complaints from customers and disgruntled and uncooperative coworkers each and every day. But he gets to talk to adults, eat real food at restaurants (and often gets reimbursed for it), and since he's in sales, his scenery is constantly changing. And most importantly, every other week his employer deposits a whole buncha money into our checking account for his efforts.

Being a stay at home mom has much different perks. I wouldn't change it for the world. But I also am grateful, each and every evening, for my teammate to come and help me with this teeny tiny Tasmanian devil we call our daughter.

Organize Your Tops!

I am not a neat person. Ask my husband, this is his biggest issue with me. I constantly leave stuff EVERYWHERE. But somehow, I still believe that I'm organized. I'm probably not really organized, but the trick is believing you are. If you can get past the clutter on my counter tops and open my cabinets, you will see there is some truth in this. It does help that in our new house I have more cabinets than I know what to do with. But that's besides the point.

One organizational issue I had was how to organize the lids to my pots. Do you try to stack them up? Lean them against the sides of the cabinet? There really didn't seem to be any solution to this problem. I wanted some kind of organizer, and in my mind I envisioned a wooden rack with dowel-rods separating the lids to hold them vertical. The problem was I had no one to make it for me and wood work is a hobby I have no desire to pursue. I was complaining to my sister when she suggested I try a dish rack. I couldn't believe how simple the solution could be. I found this perfect dish drying rack at Ikea for $5.99! The size is perfect for my cabinet and fits all but one of my lids (it's just a smidge too bulky to fit).

Happy Organizing!

Wine Cork Garland

I've recently joined Pintrest, and I've been amazed by all the wonderful and creative crafts I've come across. It's awesome to me how people come up with these things. I've actually started to make some of the crafts that I've pinned, although I have yet to actually finish any of them.

While looking through many tutorials, I've realized that I'm pretty crafty myself. One craft I came up with myself and am most proud of is my wine cork garland. My husband and I love wine, as does many of our friends and family members. When we were married, our wedding had a wine theme and I collected wine corks to use as table card holders. I ended up with way more corks than I knew what to do with (mostly collected by friends and family, I promise, I'm not that big of a wino). So I came up with this ingenious idea to create Christmas Tree garland from it. I had been trying to find a unique garland for our tree, and nothing I found fit our personality until I came up with this.

So here's my very own tutorial:

Supplies:

• many, many corks. I've found the rubber ones are the easiest, but this can be done with cork corks as well and I've even used a champagne cork.
• twine
• wooden beads (I used 3/4in ones from Michael's)
• acrylic paint
• Phillips head screw driver
• paint brush
• sissors

1. Paint the wooden beads and allow them to dry thoroughly. I did half of mine red, the other half green.

2. Cut your twine; I made mine about 7-8 feet long to begin with.



loop knot



3. Tie a knot at the end of your twine. I also added a loop, as I feel it makes it easier to hang the garland on the tree

4. Start making holes in your corks. I used a Phillips head screwdriver. Please be careful not to hurt yourself or your table. For some corks, I put the holes width-wise, others length-wise. Not all of my holes were very straight, but I don't think that really matters.

5. String your beads and corks on in a way that is pleasing to you. To make it easier to string the corks, I made a giant needle out of some wire.

6. Once you've reached your desired length, tie another knot with a loop at the end and you're done!

The best part of this, is that every year you can make a new string!

Here's my tree the first year I did this. One strand isn't quite enough for a 7 ft tree,
but I think it's a pretty unique garland!