Small luxuries

A couple of years ago, I always had fresh flowers or leaves in my home.  A single bloom in a bud vase, a little bundle in a mason jar, maybe even just a couple of fresh hosta leaves in a bottle.  I'm not sure when I stopped doing it, but the other day I cut a few little garden clippings and put them in a tiny vase and realized that I missed having something fresh around all the time.

 So I decided that I'm going to make a concentrated effort to keep this little vase filled all the time.  

And I'm going to post them to instagram under the hashtag #simpleblossoms if anyone wants to play along.

You can tag me (@remembrancespottery) if you like.

Incidentally, there are a couple more of these little vases available in my etsy shop if you need a little something to fill yourself.

Have a great day!

Peony Prototype

I have been meaning to make a peony shaped votive candle holder for over a year now.  The prototype came out of the kiln last night, and I'm thrilled with the result.

I've been intrigued by the Victorian's "language of flowers" for years, and found out that the peony is for "happiness in marriage".  I'm thinking it might make a great wedding gift.

This one was the prototype but there will definitely be more (mostly because I really really want to see a whole row of them lit along the center of my dining table).

 This is the side view. 

And the "work in progress" picture.

Being the prototype, this particular one won't be up in my etsy shop, but these hosta leaf ones were listed today.  Incidentally, hostas mean "devotion" in the language of flowers.

Mushrooms and toadstools.

A few weeks ago, I was playing around with some leftover clay and made this little collection of mushrooms.

None of them modeled after anything in particular, except the morel in the middle.

 And then when we went camping, I came across these interesting specimens...

...and these bright red ones!

And these wavy ones.

So back home again, I made a couple more...

 And kept discovering them.

 All over the place.

 This one was huge.

I would love to learn more about them and find out which ones we can eat.

And of course, now I want to make some fairly realistic copies in clay.  

I'm just trying to figure out how the stem can support the heavy top.  

Stay tuned.

Linking up with:

Keep Calm Craft On over at Frontier Dreams

Inspiration

For as long as I can remember, my aunt has had a rather large patch of feverfew in her front yard flower bed.  Years ago, she let me take home a seed head, and I have had it growing in my yard ever since.

 It is one of my all time favourite early summer flowers.

 I decided to capture their essence in clay so that I can enjoy them year round. 

 At some point, I discovered a "double" feverfew flower in my yard, and both kinds have now been growing in harmony ever since...although they migrate all around the yard and I never really know where they will turn up.

 I've got a few extras listed over here in my etsy shop if you want to have a closer peek.

What garden flowers are you ejoying this year?

Linking up with:
Frontier Dreams for Keep Calm Craft On

Leaves

When I was a child, I would collect leaves from spring to fall, iron them between sheets of wax paper and collect them in scrapbooks.  Buttercups and other small flowers were included in there too.

I'm starting to think that many of my latest projects are in fact just a throwback to my childhood.

 I'm still preserving leaves, trying to capture a moment in time.  The only difference is the medium.

  My children collected rocks (they still do), and nice leaves in the fall, but they never preserved them.

I remember having a flower press too.

I have to wonder if kids still do this, or if it's a thing of the past.

I'd love to hear from you if you remember doing it, or if your children/grandchildren did.

Mason Jar Frogs

It's summer time.  

Time to gather a few flowers from your garden and bring them indoors to brighten things up.  

Time for displaying the wildflowers your children bring in from their walk. 

And time to share your bounty with family and friends.

 I love putting flowers in my many (MANY) mason jars, but I always found that I needed so so many to make a nice arrangement that didn't flop all over the place.

 So I made myself some frogs that fit over any standard mason jar...and then I made a whole bunch more!  See how well they hold up just a few little stems?

They fit all of the sizes, so I can cut violets in the early spring and put them in the teeny ones, lily of the valley in the pint jars a few weeks ago, and I'm looking to putting such a variety of wildflowers in the quart jars all summer long.

If you want to play along, I have them listed in 6-packs in my etsy shop under the "vases" section.

They can also be custom ordered for wedding centerpieces and bouquets for a DIY wedding.

Linking up with:
Keep Calm Craft on over at Frontier Dreams - cuz making your own bouquets is crafty, right?

Of Flowers and Vases

I love bringing fresh flowers into my home.  From the first bloom of the year (daffodils at my house) all the way through to the last greens of winter, I usually have a little snippet of something fresh in at least one room in my house.  

I've been working on some new vases so that other people can have that luxury too...vases that I hope are lovely enough to stand on their own, but not so intricate that they detract from the flowers that I add. 

 Especially since I tend to just grab a few simple blooms without ever doing anything fancy with them.

I'm finding that I really like grey vases with flowers.  For years, I made all my vases white, but I think I see a lot more grey vases in the near future.

 See how the flowers just pop against it?

 And although these aren't vases, I think the flowers on them give me permission to add them here.

I made them as spoon rests, but people have been buying them for ring dishes, soap dishes, for business cards...that's one of the things I love best about doing shows in person...you get to talk to the customers and see just how they are going to use the pieces in their every day lives.

Linking up with:

Keep Calm Craft on over at Frontier Dreams

Where I've Been...in the garden

If you are a regular reader, you will have noticed that my posts have become a little irregular lately.

 I've been spending all of my free time getting the garden in order since we had such a late start this year.  The sage is doing wonderfully!  It's huge.

 Last year's onions are still providing us with all the green onions we need.

 Sorrel, which comes back year after year is one of our first greens.  I tried it sauteed in a pan according to something I found on the internet.  Imagine pureed spinach (texture) that tastes like straight up lemon juice.  I think I will just continue to add a few leaves to our salads and sandwiches instead.

 We are at the very end of the asparagus harvest.  I only have two plants left, but I actually picked more than ever.  Two meals worth, plus some little snacking.

Not food - but so pretty.  A few here and there in the house are really making a difference.

 Rhubarb is also doing better this year than ever before.  We just keep cutting and cutting.  yum!

You may (or may not) remember my "eat what you grow/grow what you eat" challenge from quite a while back.  I wanted to see what we were able to grow enough of to last all year.  Herbs are one thing that we definitely grow enough of.  This is half of the sage I have harvested so far.  We now have enough for my family.  The rest will go to friends, neighbours, and the food bank.

Also planted: tomatoes, peppers, potatoes, greens, pumpkins, zucchini, and some new herbs.
New perennials: grapes...hopefully they take.  It's my first time trying to take vine cuttings.

Coming soon:  all kinds of berries.  That's always a great addition to the lunch box.

What are you growing?

Happy Spring!

Happy Vernal Equinox my friends.  Although it is officially the last day of winter my yard is still buried in snow.  I'm sharing this picture from last spring to keep heart and remind us all that spring weather will eventually arrive.

And just because I am dreaming of flowers...here is my latest project - drying and very, very fragile at this point.  It's about 10" across and I get nervous every time my boys walk past it in case of "accidents".

What I learned processing home grown fruit

This is the first year that I have had enough fruit in my own garden to process.  I learned a couple of things.

When you leave for work in the morning and there are 3 peaches on the ground, and you come home to find 100 peaches on the ground, it is time to pick them all...even if they aren't ripe.  I considered trying to salvage the fallen peaches too, but they were too bad to be salvaged.

I still managed to get about 20-25 pounds (our estimate - I forgot to weigh them).  I learned that the boiling water trick to remove the skins does not work with under-ripe peaches.  I learned that it takes a whole lot longer to peel a basket of tiny peaches from the garden that have bug bites than a basket of perfect peaches from the market.  I learned, belatedly, that I should have trimmed off the bottom branches of my peach tree as the fruit is too shaded to get very big - it's marked on the calender for next spring.  And I learned that 2 1/2 hours of peeling does not result in very many peaches at all.  I had planned to can them, but ended up freezing them in portions that will be just right for with waffles this winter.  I just couldn't add the amount of sugar that was required for canning.  I. couldn't. do. it.

 12.5 pounds of grapes that I picked from my friend's driveway.  If they were my own grapes, I would have made juice with half and jam with half, but the deal was - I would pick her grapes, make jam, and then split the jars between us.

I questioned the part of the recipe that called for peeling 8 cups of grapes, and reserving the skins to add back in.  I'm glad I followed that part of the recipe.  I followed the whole recipe.  From a cookbook.  Because it would be tested.  It failed - miserably.  I ended up with 14 pint jars of grape sauce/syrup.  I re-opened all the jars, poured them into 2 big pots, added pectin (of which there was none in the original recipe) and reprocessed them.  Now I have 14 jars of very thin jam, bordering on sauce.  I questioned the part that said to add 2 cups of water to the 3 cups of sieved fruit (per batch) but did it anyways.  Next time I won't (the joy of cooking says add up to 1/2 cup, if necessary).  I learned that grape seeds really jam up the food mill, so I will try to find something better for next year, however, I also learned that boys really love to peel (squish) grapes, so I will remember that for next year.

I processed some apples too, and learned that my new apple corer doesn't work nearly as well as my mom's old apple corer.  Darn "new and improved" design.  Its just different enough to be useless.  I learned that, like the peaches, the tiny little apples don't go far once you remove the "weird" bits.  I was trying to make a couple jars of apple pie filling but ended up with just one, because once the boys saw the bowl of apple chunks, they wanted apple crisp for dessert (and S actually stepped up to make it), and because I gave up with a third or so of the batch left to peel.  Arthritis is not my friend.

And last but not least, I learned that there is a reason I label everything.  I label the spices, but apparently, someone else in my house does not.  A jar of unlabeled spice that I took to be paprika (because there wasn't one labelled paprika) was actually cayenne pepper (of which we have 2 jars???).  Add that to the fact that little tiny jalapenos are stronger than great big jalapenos and you end up with 10 quarts of salsa that is borderline too spicy to eat.  I did correct one mistake between batches though, and used the plump juicy tomatoes for tomato juice and bought more plum tomatoes for the salsa to save an hour and a half or so of simmering time.  And by the way, juicy tomatoes just have to be roughly chopped for salsa, but plum tomatoes stay in great big chucks if they are roughly chopped.  Another item to note on the recipe for next year.

The biggest lesson I learned:  although I consider myself quite old-fashioned and about the most "could-make-it-as-a-pioneer" person I know in real life (I'm not counting my internet friends), I would fail miserably if I had to support our family on the food that I could put up.  The weekend of canning just about did me in.  I can't imagine having to put up a whole winter's worth of food.  It's not all bad, though.  So far, I have managed to put up a year's worth of dill pickles, sweet pickles, hot peppers, salsa, tomato juice, half a year's worth of jam (with fruit in the freezer waiting for me), and dried all the herbs we should need and a few extra bits here and there. I'm not giving up yet though...I have cancelled my weekend plans and hope to stay home to do round 2 this weekend.

Linking up with: Wildcrafting Wednesday at Mind Body and Sole
                         Homemade Monday at Frugal by Choice, Cheap by Necessity
                         The Backyard Farming Connection - Hop