Edie Wadsworth

What do iced sugar cookies, knitting and G.K. Chesterton have in common?

December 13, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 12 Comments

Here at our homeschool, we’re following a strict curriculum. Today’s goal: Bake Grandma Evadne’s sugar cookie recipe in the shape of stars….and ice them. Recite G.K. Chesterton’s A Christmas Carol. Make snowflakes while dancing to “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Clause”. Punishment awaits those who do not fully participate!

You must try this recipe. It’s fantastic and comes from the north woods of Minnesota. Of course it’s always better when Grandma makes it….but we had fun and they turned out fantabulous. (And as side note, my kitchen looks like a nuclear fall-out shelter.

Notice the vintage aprons that we bought this summer while we visited Steve’s family in MN…

and ta-da……the most wonderful Christmas cookies ever.

and to make this festive celebration more vintage…..my sweet mother-in-law sent me three beautiful pieces of hammered aluminum…..THE most beautiful pieces that I have received or collected to date…..

and as if that weren’t wonderful enough, she knitted the girls the MOST ADORABLE booties you have ever seen. EVER.

This led us to a grammar lesson about ‘how to write a thank you note’ which the girls thoroughly enjoyed. There’s something so grown-up about addressing an envelope. And don’t forget to admire the snowflakes…..thank you Sandy for the link.

So there you have it…..a wonderful evening of baking…..

and enjoying the festivities of Christmas.

We finished it off by watching ‘The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

C.S. Lewis is a genius…..and his mentor G.K. Chesterton was too. So enjoy the following recitation of his poem “A Christmas Carol”. And here’s a shower of hugs and kisses to Grandma for making our evening so special. We’ll eat a cookie for you.

P.S. Thank you to brother Jeff for the email he sent to Issues,Etc…..which apparently won us blog of the week…….Hitchkicks are in order, I believe.

Grandma’s Sugar Cookie Recipe

Beat together and set aside.

2 eggs

1 cup sugar

4 T. milk

Mix the following together like pie crust:

3 1/4 C. flour

1 t. soda

2 t. baking powder

1/2 t. salt

1/2 t. vanilla

1 c. softened butter (2 sticks)

Mix the egg mixture into the flour mixture. Roll out and cut into your favorite shape. Bake at 400 for 8-9 minutes.

For the icing, I mix 1 stick butter (softened) with 1 stick of Land ‘O Lakes margarine (softened, and don’t try to substitute some other margarine, K? just get the right kind) and then add 1 bag (2 pounds) powdered sugar and 1-2 T. milk, a pinch of salt and 1 t. vanilla. I then pipe the icing onto the cookies and sprinkle. Have a wonderful Saturday and happy baking.

Southern Women 101………

December 12, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 97 Comments

Things you should know about southern women:

1. We love all things ‘hair’—‘fixin’ our hair, dyin’ our hair, teasin’ our hair—-you get my drift.
2. We have two commandments: ~ thou shalt not go out in public without lip gloss and mascara ~ thou shalt surely have cute hair. Don’t mess with Texas. Or Tennessee.
3. We take pride in our warmth and friendliness-–translated, we frequently invade your personal space. We’re huggers, kissers, touchers of all kinds.
4. We make strong eye contact and teach our children to ‘look in their eyes’ and say yes ma’am. Our children will probably be eating iced sugar cookies when they say yes ma’am. But they’ll say it. Amen.
5. We have been accused at times of being superficial…..call it what you like, but despite the fact that I’m reading “The Imitation of Christ” by Thomas a Kempis, my daughter (Caiti) and I will certainly do hitchkicks and spirit hands (we were both cheerleaders) when MAC comes out with a new lip gloss. Y’all think I’m kiddin’ but I just pulled my psoas muscle tryin’ to see if I could still do a hitchkick.
6. We love makeup and all things girly. We love bows and glitter and ribbon and animal print and cookies with icing on top. I have yet to meet a woman, from say, Connecticut, who would dare add trans-fat and high-fructose-corn-syrup infested butter cream icing on to an already suspect chocolate chip cookie. Our motto, “what’s better than a cookie? a cookie with icing on top”.
7. Our official anthem is ‘Sweet Home Alabama’ and watch out if this starts playing while we’re chatting with you at a Christmas party about the current economic crisis…..or the latest new shade of lip gloss. We scan the room for any sign of a girl who looks like she has cheerleader in her past and head on to the dance floor as we sing, “singin’ songs about the southland…..I miss Alabamy once again and I think it’s a sin”
Economics can wait. And you can borrow the new lip gloss while I dance….’cause I’ve already got the new color.
8. Our daughters are the ones with the ribbons in their hair……from birth. It’s just part of our morning routine. Did you have some breakfast? Brush your teeth? Put your ribbon in? We buy ribbon by the spool not the yard. In all manner of colors and patterns.
9. We monogram everything. We’re like sorority sisters who never got over themselves. Only sweeter. We suck you in to our various and sundry habits too. Move here from New York and soon you’ll be monogramming, eating iced sugar cookies, and teasin’ your hair. And droppin’ the ‘g’ from the endin’ of every word. And sayin’ y’all. And gettin’ your nails done.

10. We are almost always smiling. Because our mothers and Phyllis Diller told us that ‘ a smile sets everything straight’ . Which is why we’re all now considering Botox. That could be the one downside I see of being southern. All those facial lines from all those years of smiles and laughter. Mark Twain even said “Wrinkles merely indicate where the smiles have been”. Yeah, sadly we see that now. Thanks mom.
11. We love to have people in our home. We pay serious attention to how are homes ‘look’ from the outside…..is their plenty of lighting? Does it beg me to ‘stop by’? That southern hospitality thing is serious business around here. There’ll be place cards and token gifts and flowers and candles and lots of homeade desserts. Our guest rooms will have the latest issues of Southern Living and Cottage Living and we’ll go the extra mile to make sure you’re comfy. Granted, we’ll talk your head off and make you watch football and Steel Magnolias and probably invite you along to attend someone’s funeral with us…..but the experience will be memorable. And in case we forget to warn you, the casket will be open and various relatives will comment on how ‘Hank never looked better’. I never even realized this wasn’t standard practice until last year. I had already picked out my outfit and requested a hairstyle for my ‘departing day’.
12. We all have dogs. We keep our dogs inside. The image of Paula Deen cooking with the dog shedding his hair under her feet comes to mind. We love our dogs. And name them things like Sceeter and Scooter. Hypothetically, of course.

Speaking of cooking, we love bacon fat….and every southern women I have ever met has a jar of bacon fat somewhere in her cupboards. Be careful when you pull out a cup to get some coffee.

13. We overutilize the words honey, darlin’, sugar, sweetie pie..….and that’s when we’re talking to the UPS man. We like our tea sweet and our cookies iced. We like our nails pretty and our jeans comfortably tight. We wear boots in the winter and flip flops in the summer and have very large purses which contain more makeup than the average female from Wisconsin has in her possession altogether. We realize that some of these qualities are short comings and make all manner of resolutions to learn and do better.

Y’all have any questions? ‘Cause there’s a lot of myths going around about Southerners and I could set the record straight.

* A brief update- due to the enormous amount of will power it takes to ‘do’ school near Christmas time, I promised my girls a series of hitchkicks if they finished their math quickly. They came through…….and I did not disappoint.*

Christmas Tour of Homes………

December 10, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 80 Comments

Grab a cookie cookie and come on in!

I am so excited to be linking to all these festive Christmas tours.

Ya’ll are gonna love this cookie recipe. We’re just making iced sugar cookies (recipe here) and putting the final touches on our decorations. The ‘little’ girls wanted to show you their tree first and then we’ll move on to the rest of the house.
They love this white tree and the colors we used coordinate well with their girly room. And we sorta have a love affair going on with ribbon. It’s a southern thing.

Welcome to this Christmas tour sponsored by the BooMama and Hooked on Houses and Kimba……and welcome to my home. I was so happy to participate in this linky party and in fact am using alot of the same pictures I used for Nester’s garland party…….so hope you don’t mind. These fun linky parties gave me the added ‘kick in the tail’ I needed to finish my decorating. I am so happy with how it all turned out and can only say that this garland probably weighs a good 30 or 40 pounds. I pray for the stability and stickiness of 3M tabs…..

And because I have more Christmas decorations than any sane person should, I ‘borrowed’ stuff from the house to make this years’ Christmas cheer fun but cheap. So I snatched the ‘W’ from the kitchen……
and the star I ‘borrowed’ from the breakfast room……
I started with a skinny little anemic garland and added lots of fresh magnolia, cypress and pine and then added my signature Christmas decoration……lots of ribbon!

I had the little evergreen trees from Thanksgiving and put them on candlesticks…..

and voila!! My best garland ever. Thank you Nester for the inspiration.
I took my skills from the garland on the bannister…..which is sadly not finished, so I can only show you this far up.
and I thought you’d enjoy this little jewel…..it’s a cute ‘family tree’ decorated with pictures of all of our brood……..
and this is my favorite tree this Christmas……simple and kinda old-school…..
then there’s the table top tree in the breakfast room…..
and my dining room with a bare but beautiful bird tree…
and a peak into my bedroom where I recently nailed pillow shams right to the wall for window mistreatments (a Nester trick from way back) and added some fun lights for Christmas.
That’s one sure fire thing about being Southern……we know how to do everything ‘big’ and ‘bordering on gaudy’. We tend to be of the ‘more is more’ persuasion. And if you’d like to know more about Southern women, I’ve given a short tutorial here. I would like to add that I’m a brand new reader to BooMama and L.O.V.E her blog. Apparently along with everyone else in the free world. Hope you are inspired to make your Christmas colorful and beautiful!

Garland, neighbors and my book giveaway winners…..

December 8, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 267 Comments

There is a riveting discussion going on in my previous post so check it out…along with all the comments. Our neighborhood progressive dinner was last night so I’ll show you some fun photos from that and announce the winners of my book giveaway. But first, here’s a peek at my garland…….that I’m ‘froofin’ right up for the Nester’s garland party on Wednesday. Get your ‘garland on’ and join us! (I sound like I’m doing a news segment—-now back to you Leigh Ann)
And here are my lovely neighbors—-those people whom I have the pleasure and privilege of sharing my life with….(and my dog and my kids and my baked goods, and my Christmas decorations that stay up until Feb 1st—I’m one of those)
And here’s the Tankini Squad—those neighbors who are home in the summer lying by the pool—-and no.. heavens no Leigh Ann, I will NOT be posting swimsuit shots this summer—unless it’s my head photoshopped onto Jennifer Aniston’s body. So be thinking ahead of time who you’d like your head photoshopped onto. K? (And as I scroll back through these pictures right before I post them, it occurs to me that I have a bit of a 70’s flair going on—the wide leg trousers jeans, the shwanky blouse, the Farrah Fawcett hair—–I think I could be the sidekick of Cousin Eddie or a young Burt Reynolds….I even have a little bit of a swagger). Note to self: easy on the feathered bangs.

More fellowship……

and my dear very own guardian angel….Donna…..who has been my next door neighbor for the past 8 years and is now moving. I’m still in stage 1 denial of her leaving….so when I’m able to speak of it like a normal adult, I’ll get back to you.

And the winners for my book giveaway (which took me forever to decide on–because I had to research all the books they recommended) are Denise, Meme, Musings from a Homeschooling Mom, Kelly, and Sheri. I’ve made my Amazon order of your recommendations and can’t wait to start reading. Email me your address—and when my books come in—I’ll mail them to you. Thank you for taking the time to read and comment! Hugs and love to all!

Buns and jumpers……and other perils of being home all day……

December 6, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 12 Comments

I have a good reason for posting these pictures. I’ll tell you in a minute.

First let me say that one of the major roadblocks for me when I was deciding to homeschool was what I’d like to call the denim jumper road block. Or what I call the ‘buns and jumpers’ factor. I do not own a denim jumper and if I did, trust me, I would not wear it well. I envisioned that everyone who homeschools wears denim jumpers and tight librarian buns and grows their own wheat and takes vows against electronics and laughter and makeup; none of which I was willing to do. Imagine my surprise when , after reading a few ~~hundred~~ blogs, I realized that it takes all kinds.

And ex-doctor/ADD/obsessed with all things fashion and decorating/ moms like me have our little niche in the homeschooling world. I found that there are in fact plenty of fun-loving, hip, classical- book loving women who have journeyed out into the homeschooling wilderness with nothing but our dry erase boards, laptops, lip gloss, a lot of good books.

So when my 16 year old daughter commented on my ‘uniform’, it gave me pause.

First let me say that she often mistakes my closet for the dressing room of Target. She shops, she tries things on, she leaves things lying on the floor, and never brings the number back. So when she meandered in to ‘try on’ a few things and came out wearing part of my ‘uniform’, I was aghast. My uniform is not a denim jumper, but it is a pair of lounge pants from Victoria’s Secret; the boyfriend pants with the bedazzled ‘PINK’ on the rear. And a stretchy mock turtle neck and wooly warm sweater from Target. I often vary the color of the mock turtle. But the rest stays the same. I wash it, of course—maybe twice a week. But that is what I LIVE in people. Everyday, until I have to leave the house.

So when Caiti said to me, “You can’t wear these EVERYDAY!” I say,

“Ummmm…..Yes. Yes, I can. I can…… and I do. And this is the one thing in my closet that is off-limits. Take the Fry lace-up knee boots and the Rock ‘N Republic Jeans and the Micheal Stars t-shirt and what-have-you……but for the love of all things cozy and comfortable…….back away from the lounge pants.”

And when the girls and I go to ballet or to Hobby Lobby, I exchange the lounge pants for jeans but often leave the top ensemble in place. This present lounge wear addiction that I’m nurturing did not come about overnight. I didn’t purpose ahead in my mind that when I started homeschooling, I would forsake all cute clothes and resort to one pair of lounge pants as my official ‘uniform’. It just happened. I do make an effort to change out of the lounge pants for a short time in the evenings. So my poor husband can at least get glimpses of the fashion guru he once knew.

So I don’t judge anymore. I’ve lost every judging right there is. I wear a loose (fairly fun and fancy free) bun almost everyday and my own special ‘uniform’—–lounge pants with a limited variety of tops. My very own version of buns and jumpers.

So scroll back up to the top and see my bun and then take a gander at the top half of my uniform. There you have it. Maybe I’ve just given up. Or at least given in—-to comfort.

Please advise…… before I start selling all my clothes and boots on Ebay. Is this a phase? Am I just taking advantage of wearing lounge pants because I can. Will I grow weary of lookin’ like a lazy college student who doesn’t understand that PINK flannel PJ bottoms does not constitute proper outerwear? BTW, there is nothing more disappointing to any husband than to see a Victoria Secret bag that houses oversized lounge pants and a hoodie. Look on the bright side, it could be worse. It could be a matching track suit. I see a good new years resolution coming on here.

And if I seem a little over-dressed for church…..well, cut me a little slack. I’m making up for a weeks’ worth of lounge pants. If it’s any consolation, I’m still wearin’ plenty of makeup. And all manner of hair products. When that ceases, by all means, intervene.

My obsession with books……and a book giveaway

December 4, 2008 by Edie Wadsworth 21 Comments

I have a dangerous obsession with books. C.S.Lewis once said that a person’s most frivolous outgoing expense every month should be his books…….I’m finding that very true in my little small town where NOTHING I ever want to check out is at the local library. Is George McDonald really that obscure? Shouldn’t every reputable library have Louisa May Alcott’s Eight Cousins and more than one copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin? They have every last book in the Goosebumps series. Too bad I’m not into prepubescent slimy monster stories. So Amazon and I are good friends. This is one of my most recent purchases….a book about how to lead children in discussions about books. It’s fascinating and should be on the shelves of every educator who plans to teach children the love of reading.

This quote is my favorite:

What children read is important. The theory, still in vogue, that says that it doesn’t matter what your child reads as long as he or she reads something is just plain wrong. If anyone tries to convince you otherwise, don’t believe it. This notion springs from the assumption that kids need success–any success–to bolster their self-esteem, and if they have to struggle a little it might leave them feeling bad about themselves. Nothing could be more wrong-headed or insulting to children. Kids’ self-esteem comes from the same source as adults’ self-esteem: taking on something that seems hard at first and then doing better at it than you ever thought possible. Kids are hip; they know when they’re being dumbed down, and no child develops genuine self-esteem from being praised for something he or she didn’t work at.

As a little help for the giveaway here’s the list of my latest Amazon order…. mostly for the kids

The Phantom Tollbooth

Babe: The Gallant Pig (Babe)

Atlantis: The Legend of a Lost City

Discovering Great Artists: Hands-On Art for Children in the Styles of the Great Masters

The Lutheran Book Of Prayer

The Railway Children (Nesbit)

From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler

The Orchard Book of Roman Myths

Lost Horizon

Eight Cousins

A Wrinkle in Time

Now what I want to know from you is: What are you planning to read in 2009? Do you have a list? I want to know so I can maybe add it to the ever growing list of books I want to snuggle in with this winter. And because I love you all so much I’m giving away a copy of the Lutheran prayer book to the person who leaves me a comment suggesting a book that piques my interest that I either haven’t read or have been wanting to read again. I often post prayers from the Lutheran Prayer book and it is a wonderful resource for a christian of any denomination. You could tell me about a great childrens’ book too….I’m always on the prowl. To give you all a fair chance at picking my book, my kids don’t read Goosebumps and I don’t ever read anything by Patricia Cornwell. Now…..Ready, set, tell me what to read.

To further assist you, here’s what I’ve read so far this year: Mere Christianity, The Great Divorce, Reflections on the Psalms, Reading Between the Lines, The Imitation of Christ, Charlotte Mason’s series on Homeschooling, The Well-Trained Mind, The Well-Educated Mind, The Pilgrims’ Progress, Uncharted, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, Madame Bovary, Pride and Predjudice, Heart of Darkness, New Moon, Twilight, Amusing Ourselves to Death, The Book of Concord, Julius Ceasar, Emily Dickenson, History of the World, What’s So Amazing About Grace, The Defense Never Rests, A Generous Orthodoxy, The Mind of the Maker and probably 100 letters that Abigail Adams wrote to John and I can’t remember what else.

Addendum: you people are serious readers…..it’s gonna take me a day or two to sift through the titles……or order more Lutheran prayer books.