Cottage Blessings

House Tours

Every January, I begin the year in a frenzy of decluttering. In the past week or so alone, I have already torn apart the mudroom and pantry and several closets and have my eye on the basement and garage. The way our house usually goes is that the main floor looks pretty good, but the basement and some individual bedrooms leave much to be desired. Anytime someone compliments my house, I always laugh and say, “Thanks, but don’t look up or down.”

Seventeen years ago, when we were selling our first house, a starter colonial with a fireplace, a glass porch, and a dining room papered in blue lilacs, I managed to get every inch of it looking good. This was no small feat with five very young children, but we were having an open house, and the public needed to see perfection. After cleaning and purging and cleaning some more, I remember looking around at my beautiful, clean house and wondering, “Why are we selling this place? I love it!”

It turns out that our family had not really outgrown the house, but our possessions and junk definitely had. With a little paring down inspired by those impending house tours, it suddenly seemed perfect for us again.

Which brings me to an idea, an idea that has been met with several responses from my teens, none of them good: “You’re not serious, right?”; “Wait, please tell me you would never really do that.”; “That sounds really embarrassing.”

My idea is to set a date, maybe two or three months down the road, and host a “House Tour Party.” We could invite a couple of friends for coffee and cake and then give the kind of tour you would usually only give if you were selling the house. I’m contemplating a full no-holds-barred tour that includes closets, the basement, the boiler room, and the attic with nothing off limits and no stone unturned. Who knows, we might even start a trend and a string of house tour parties will follow. They will be all the rage!

At the moment, this is in the back of my mind in the swirl of ideas that resides there, but I am thinking about clean closets and neatly-made beds and toys laid out in labeled bins and smiling the smile that means, “Mom is not kidding.”

Today was a good day

Today was a good day. I slipped downstairs first thing and made two huge pots of chicken soup, enough for dinner tonight and a couple of lunches besides. Marie told me my chicken soup is her favorite food without even a close rival. I baked a loaf of crusty, brown rye bread dusted with caraway seeds. Rye bread is one of those things that makes me feel successful when I make it. If there is one thing I mastered during the past year, it is bread baking. I don’t want to say “the art of bread baking,” because there isn’t much art to it. Just good, wholesome, simple loaves of warm, crusty goodness.

 

Today was a good day. I brought the younger children to a requiem Mass for the three-year anniversary of a girl gone too soon. My younger boy served on the altar, and I prayed for everyone I knew. Honestly, if you are reading this, I may well have been praying for you specifically. Names and faces kept flooding to my mind, and as they did, I would say, “Please dear Lord, help [names], their family and all their troubles.” Everyone has troubles. We must always remember this. Everyone has troubles.

 

Today was a good day. My husband lighted the fire, and we sat by its light, listening to it crackle. We laughed and talked and broke up squabbles. We said all the same old things to the children: “If you two can’t get along, why don’t you stop sitting practically on top of each other?”; “If you were truly hungry, you would eat a banana”; “Why don’t you go play outside before it gets dark?” The same old comfortable things we have been saying for decades and that I no doubt will babble in my sleep as I doze off in the nursing home. 

 

Today was a good day. I kept up my new year’s resolutions: Mass and rosary and novena and a passage from the Bible every day. I am on day nine and praying to succeed again on day ten. I started another resolution: Bring back Cottage Blessings. Today is day one, and I am praying to be back again for day two. Let’s hope the next post after this one isn’t dated 2024. And if it is, ah well.

 

Today was a good day. Whatever else happens, whatever is troubling or worrying or disappointing me, I am truly grateful for all that is good. I am not the woman I was when I started this blog, but I do love that girl so much and hope to find the little well inside of me where bubbles her good cheer.

 

Immaculate Heart of Mary, pray for us!

Sacred Heart of Jesus, have mercy on us!

St. Lucy's Day

St. Lucy's Day began with baking before dawn.

We made Swedish almond cakes for ourselves and for our friends. 

In the evening we had a candlelit procession, going from room to room and up and down the stairs singing O Come, O Come Emmanuel and remembering the long years the people in darkness waited for the One who would bring light to the world.

St. Lucy's Day is the day we officially light our Christmas lights. The children (and their darling friends) went from room to room lighting first the Christmas tree, then the other indoor Christmas lights and wreaths and finally the lights outside. 

We celebrated afterward with hot chocolate and pastries.

There are few things more cozy than a candlelit tea by the light of the Advent wreath.

Candlelight, cakes and girls in white dresses--Happy St. Lucy's Day, everyone!

A Woodland Walk

We almost always have a big family dinner on Sundays, often with a theme to keep it interesting: "Italian Night," "Irish Night," "German Night," "Steakhouse Night," "Cowboy Night"--well, you get the idea. This was the third or fourth year in a row we have had a "Woodland Walk" dinner, with a menu inspired by a walk in the woods. Just like the "Sugar Spring" dinner in March, the Woodland Walk has become a family tradition, with college students rearranging their schedules to come home and all the children brimming with excitement.

I started dinner, while Daddy brought the five youngest out for a walk in the woods, gathering items for a centerpiece on the way.

The day was made to order, sunny and crisp.

Meanwhile, back at home, stew was simmering--beef and mushroom with a few sprigs of fresh thyme.

I took some time to decorate:

The walkers returned and added decorations of their own:

They made a collage for the table with some of their woodland finds:

We had French baguette, still warm, from the farm down the road--

--and a salad of spring greens, chopped apples, walnuts and vinaigrette.

These metal mice seem to appreciate the children's haul of chestnuts:

They weren't the only ones looking pleased:

We had lingonberries, my favorite condiment. (I'm hoping they grow in the woods of Sweden):

Mixed berries and raspberry sherbet floated in the punch bowl:

Asparagus added a touch of green:

Dessert was our own invention--"The Woodland Walk Sundae"--blackberry ice cream, peach ice cream, raspberry sorbet, hot fudge, cream, and oak and acorn butter cookies.

But the best was yet to come. Note the mysterious bag on the mantel:

It held an even more mysterious basket:

You see before you an optimist:

There is nothing like meeting new friends:

A cardinal, a bear, a mouse, an owl and, what is that, a racoon? A badger? I'm not even sure.

But I do know one thing--October is off to a good start!

*******

Woodland Walk Menu

Mixed green salad with walnuts and apples

Beef and mushroom stew

Mashed potatoes

Roasted asparagus

Lingonberries

French baguette

Mixed berry punch

"Woodland Walk" sundaes

Beauty everyday

Most mothers have an ongoing "to do" list--that catalogue of tasks needed for family life to run well. I have a notebook bursting with them and always have. It sometimes amazes me to find a ten-year-old to do list and see that the items on it could have been written this morning. It goes on and on.

About a year ago, I changed my approach to lists in two ways. The first was that instead of writing "to do" as a heading, I would write "Accomplishments for [day, date]." Somehow or other, the word "accomplishments" has such a positive connotation that my lists feel a bit more worthwhile. The second and far more significant change is that I began creating an entirely separate daily list for Beauty.

It occurred to me that my lists would always include tasks like "make dental appointments" or "clean out girls' closet," but there was very little in them to satisfy the heart. By creating a daily list called "Beauty for [day, date]," I added some planned beauty to each and every day. Most days, the Beauty list would be very simple. It might say, "Light a lilac scented candle" and "Gather a bouquet of flowers for Our Lady" or "Take a country stroll." Other times, it would include a project like "Can strawberry jam" or "Have a picnic in the woods." Whatever it was, it would always be something we might not have remembered otherwise--the kind of activities that everyone loves but always leaves for a someday that too rarely comes.

Here are a few examples:

"Arrange flowers for teatime centerpiece."

"Bring friends to visit Sagamore Hill."

"Can fresh peaches from the farm."

"Have tea and hot cross muffins by candlelight."

"Take photos by the rhododendrons."

"Put up the Easter Egg tree." (Looking at this photo from last year, I realize that it is only a few days until Easter and our little Easter Egg tree remains in the garage. Perhaps it should  go on the Beauty list for tomorrow.)

Beauty for Tuesday, April 11, 2017

1. Make potpourri from anniversary roses.
2. Decorate mantel for Easter
3. Gather forsythia and cherry blossoms.

A Casserole

When I was growing up, my mother almost never made casseroles.  I was an only child, and she was the type of thrifty person who didn't like to make anything that would go to waste.  A normal sized casserole would have taken our family three days to eat, and she always said there was no reason to keep eating the same thing until you were sick of it.  More important than that, my father could not abide anything with ketchup or Campbell's soup or Velveeta or boullion cubes.  (My mother's lifelong secret was that she always snuck a boullion cube into the gravy for color.  My father, Lord have mercy on him, never suspected, resulting in a long and happy marriage.)  Needless to say, for such a meat-and-potatoes man, all manner of casseroles were out.

If Mom had been the sort who made casseroles, chances are I would have been tired of them, but because it was a food never served at home, yet perpetually on the tables of all the large, bustling families I knew, I felt somehow as if we were missing out on something.

Almost every Summer, we would spend a week with my Aunt Robertine in the woods of Connecticut.  My aunt had five children, more than enough to justify a casserole of any size.  How I loved Aunt Robertine's kitchen, always with a huge tray of something savory waiting near the stove.  The children would come in and help themselves to a bread crumb topped tuna bake, and I would be right there among them ready to fill and refill my plate.  There was something warm and friendly about lining up for food and sitting shoulder to shoulder at the table.

That is not to say my mother could not cook as good a meal as anyone.  It's just that two pork chops and three potatoes would feed our whole family, and, good as it was, this did not seem half so friendly to me as a great big casserole.

Yesterday, as I was putting dinner on the table--a completely plain and hearty "Sour Cream Noodle Bake," loaded with browned ground beef and cottage cheese and cheddar--I thought about an only child from long ago and how much she would have loved it, particularly if she could have shared it at a long, beaten up farmhouse table lined with children exactly like ours.

I am very happy for her.

Goodnight Brown

 Years upon years ago (OK, roughly a dozen), my husband and I were looking for our first home.  We were expecting our third child (now twelve-year-old Margaret), and our young family was bursting out of the one-bedroom apartment that had made such a perfect honeymoon suite.  All through the weary winter, we scoured real estate ads and pounded the pavement, hoping to find a house in time for the new baby's birth.

Then one day, we toured a certain tidy colonial on a postage-stamp lot in a nice neighborhood.  The house had nothing in particular to recommend it--it was neither beautiful, nor ugly--and, to tell the truth, I was not especially interested in it.  That is until we entered the last of three bedrooms.  The walls were an appalling shade of crayon green--you could not even pretend that it was something pretty like Kelly or Chartreuse--and the floors were a deep dark red.  Anyone else would have backed quietly down the stairs never to return again, but I--young mother that I was--could only stand on the threshold to that room and sigh, "In the great green room, there was a telephone and a red balloon and a picture of the cow jumping over the moon."

Suddenly, my dreams of a pink frilly bedroom for the girls departed with a "goodnight room," and I imagined myself in a rocking chair, the quiet (young) lady whispering hush.  The room we would have and all its appointments were already etched in my mind from a thousand bedtime readings--bears, chairs, kittens, mittens, clocks, socks, house, mouse.  In less than a week's time we were sitting at our lawyer's kitchen getting ready to sign a contract, not on a house really, but on our own personal setting of Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown.  

I do not even remember a single other thing about that house we almost bought in back in 1997.  Just as we were about to sign on the dotted line, I felt a wave of indecisiveness.  Our lawyer sent my young husband and me to a diner to talk it over, and two cups of coffee later, we phoned him to say we would keep looking.  My husband promised that if ever we did find a house we wanted to buy, he would give me carte blanche to paint the girls' bedroom in any garish colors I liked.

It is funny to think how nearly that simple picture book came to charting one of the earliest courses in our lives. Literature has a way of affecting us deeply, but perhaps not so demonstrably as that.  

Goodnight Moon was not a book I ever recall reading as a child, and, to be honest, the first time I thumbed through it, I could not for the life of me understand why it had such a following.  But anyone who has ever read the book to a child knows that Goodnight Moon is like a battered lamp lying forgotten in a cave.  It goes unnoticed until some childish Aladdin sits by your side, rubbing the lamp by way of his rapt expression as you read, "Good night light and the red balloon"--words that seem mundane without him there to show you otherwise.

 Not far from where we live on Long Island, there is a cozy little restaurant with paneled walls and horse finials standing guard over each booth.  Until becoming a regular there and reading a newspaper feature framed on the wall, I did not know that Margaret Wise Brown was a Long Islander and that she enjoyed fox hunting on foot--or, more accurately rabbit hunting--not far from where we live.  Sometimes, I like to imagine the rolling hills, the blare of horns, and the yip of dogs so different from Long Island today.  (Might some hidden hollow of rabbit kits sniffed out by her eager hounds have inspired "the great green room"?)  Margaret Wise Brown looks radiant in the photo, and I love that her two male companions are drinking tea from cups and saucers.  Perhaps one of them was her fiance, a Rockefeller no less.

As you can see from the blurb about her life, she died tragically and young--actually at the very same age I am now.  She never did get to marry that fiance--or see the books she had written brought to life by the rapt expression of a child of her own.  From now on, when we read her book--especially when we read it before bed--we will say a prayer that she rests in peace.

 

Those golden wheels explained

in The Cottage Garden!

Haystack Full of Gunthers

Anyone care to venture a guess as to why these large golden bales are in our driveway?

And no, it is not a publicity stunt in advance of the book! Though the timing is perfect!

Bouguereau on Blue and White

Last year's summer in California continues to inspire us!

One of the things we remember well, particularly in Mission Carmel, was the wide variety of blue and white tiles featuring devotional scenes.

The Holy Family:

Our Lady of Mount Carmel:

We also admired the Pieta by Adolphe-William Bouguereau, a larger-than-life painting standing floor to ceiling against a wall of the Legion of Honor Art Museum in San Francisco.

These images and memories formed the inspiration for a simple springtime project--"Blue and White Tiles for Our Lady."

We began with a wooden plaque, holy card, container of tiles, tile glue, and a gold-leafing pen.

It only took about two minutes to gild the edges.

After planning the location of the tiles, a special glue was brushed on the wooden surface and the back of each tile square.

Gluing the tiles did not take long at all.

Here you have it, a partially finished product. It is incomplete because, being a novice at tile work, I thought the mosaic glue would also act as grout. No such luck. I will need to return to the craft store some time soon--or make my own grout from a mixture of white sand and glue. (This photo was taken before the glue dried so you can still see a bit of it round the edges.)

Knowing it might take a month or more before we return to the craft store, I decided to post the project as is, because it is quite pretty already. I am thinking about turning it into a holy water font eventually or putting it on the front door.

Whether or not I ever get around to putting grout in all those cracks!