House Art Journal

One of our sheep gave birth to twin lambs but rejected one. So, much to our children's delight, we have a temporary house pet named Oreo, who drinks from a bottle and wears a diaper at night time (we only allow him on the wood floors). He has gladly adopted us as his flock and baas most disapprovingly when we go away in the car. The other party delighted with the addition of a sheep is our youngest cat, Hotaru, who takes every opportunity to play with him--whether or not the lamb is interested in playing with him . For me, one of the highlights of owning farm animals is the opportunity to observe their beauty, and Oreo and Hotaru are both rewarding in that respect.

I've been meaning for a while to blog about two newer products I've discovered that have made home improvement projects so much easier. If you refinish furniture or do woodworking, you want to check these two concoctions out. It used to be that stripping paint meant donning heavy-duty gloves, a breathing mask, and seting up shop far away from any inquisitive children. With Safest Stripper from 3M , those days are over. This paint remover looks deceptively like Elmer's glue, and feels just as safe: it causes little or no skin irritation (gloves still recommended, but I speak from experience!). Spread on a thick coat, let it sit according to the directions, and the paint begins to gel and crack, and can be easily scraped up with a plastic or metal putty knife. I've had to search hard to find it: our local Lowes doesn't carry it, but our small-town hardware store was willing to order it for me. It works easiest on latex paint and varnish, but with hard work and plastic...

The depths of winter are the poor man's butchering season. For those of us without walk-in freezers in our homes, it is a far easier chore to butcher your own hogs when your garage has acquired the temperature of a cold refridgerator. So these January weekends we are butchering, with lots of help from family and friends. Some aspects of pork butchering are easy to learn: after the men have done the messy work of gutting and hanging, what remains of the pig roughly resembles what one finds in the store. Cutting a ham is simply, if not gracefully, done, and with a pair of sturdy sterilized tree pruners in hand, chops and spare ribs are easily cut. But sausage making is not such a simple proposition, as we have discovered over the course of two years of pig butchering. Combining cubes of fat and odd bits of meat with an array of spices is truly an art, and not one that can be swiftly mastered. Since sausage remains our family's favorite dish, we are striving hard to be careful a...

During the Christmas season, our cats discovered that the apple-crate stable we were using for our Willow Tree nativity figurines was the perfect napping place. Hotaru, our calico, had no qualms about knocking over St. Joseph and displacing Mary, baby Jesus, and the various stable animals from their shelter in order to take a relaxing sleep. Or perhaps he just wanted to be a part of the scene?

One of the highlights of every Christmas morning is brunch, cooked by my husband. After returning from Mass, he slices potatoes into tiny chunks and fries them to a delectable golden brown, then serves them with thickly-sliced mushrooms and onions, a dish we term "Narnian Home Fries" because it reminds us of Shasta's breakfast with the dwarves in The Horse and His Boy . Sausage and Portugese salilio bread completed the brunch, along with the necessity of tea. My eldest daughter cooked a Yule log cake and garnished it with meringue mushrooms, a confection she's been perfecting, aided by our family's recent acquisition of a stand-up Kitchen Aid mixer. My Christmas breakfast duty is setting the table, which I always do the night before. This year I decorated our large wooden lazy susan with boxwood branches, silk white roses, wooden hearts, and red ribbon to make a impromtu Christmas tree as the centerpiece. A stroke of luck gifted us with two red-and-white checked t...

Here's the centerpiece my daughter made for this year's St. Lucy's Day celebration. The little doll is from Magic Cabin Dolls , and the little trees I got at clearance at WalMart. Our children love this celebration, which we celebrate with monkey cake , whose little chunks my daughter observed, could look like eyeballs.

I realized that in the scuffle of the past two months, I never posted a photo of our latest one, Benedict (nicknamed Bene). Born on Oct. 21, 2010, a very wonderful baby. God is good indeed!

My oldest daughter continues to be creative with her cakes. Here is the cake she made and decorated for our newest baby's baptism, complete with blue lollipop on top.

This past year, our family began raising American Blackbelly Hair Sheep for meat. A few weeks ago, we butchered our two oldest males, one ram and one who, because of his youth, we dubbed the "ramb." Unlike our pig butchering, where we had experienced help, Andrew and I tackled this task ourselves, armed with the help of the The Homesteader's Handbook to Raising Small Livestock and Cutting Up In the Kitchen . It was much less intimidating than the pig, and we managed to do both in two days. But from the pig butchering, we learned that some unconventional tools such as tree pruning sheers and a reciprocating saw are more useful in some cases than butchering knives and cleavers. After watching their dad carve up loins and chops, the older children wanted to help. So Andrew set them to work cutting up some of the smaller bits for stew. That evening I tossed some of the chunks with seasoned flour and roasted them 325 degrees in the oven. The family concluded that "ra...

One of the nicest parts of collecting everyday china is that your acquisitions break so frequently that clutter is not a lasting problem, particularly when you have children. Since our last teapot was chipped on the spout, I purchased this new one at a flea market which looks so appropriate to the fall. Also I wanted to show off my latest addition to my restaurantware collection of red and white: this floral pattern is so unusual! I've claimed it as my morning teacup.

My husband arranged with his brother that he would raise a pig for him in exchange for a new dining room table, and my brother-in-law agreed. The table was delivered today, and what a massive table it is! Made of reclaimed poplar with antique barn beams, it's an original design of my brother-in-law's. Some of you are familiar with his etsy store, Strong Oaks Woodshop , which also makes Waldorf playstands . Since we're expecting our eighth child in October, this large table is a timely addition to our house: we were really starting to crowd one another at the supper table. And my husband, like many men, couldn't stand it when all the dishes "jumped" whenever someone bumped our old table. But this slab-and-beam is truly more to his masculine taste: it won't be so easily shifted. I don't know what my brother-in-law will name this design, but something along the lines of "A Man's Table" might be appropriate. If you're interested in a ta...

Last weekend, we had two neighbor families over on Sunday afternoon for a little ceremony in honor of Our Lady. Since the Queenship of Mary is my feast day, and it seems that family processions are becoming more regular in our lives, I finally decided to buckle down and make some banners (from Dharmatrading.com ) in honor of Our Lady. My children drew large Marian symbols on scrap paper with black permanent marker: a lilly, a crown with stars, the Holy Spirit, the Immaculate Heart. Then I placed each one under a banner and traced the design with silver fabric paint. Next I carefully dropped diluted fabric dye onto the banners, which spreads until (hopefully) it meets the resistance of the paint, creating an almost stained-glass look. We hung our banners on branches for the children to carry. Others carried flowers, and one little girl carried a small crown of flowers on a sofa pillow. Our hymn to the Queen might have been off-key, but the procession was lovely. We trailed our way to o...

Our neighbor's house is like ours used to be: a rambling old house with multiple shed additions. It's not in the best shape. But I love their ample garden. It looks to me like the garden Peter Rabbit might have stolen into.

We decided to deliver a basket of fresh peaches to our neighbors, the Hatkes, so the little girls got into the jogging stroller, and their older brother chivalrously volunteered to be their chauffer. We live on a relatively quiet gravel road near rarely-used railroad tracks, so it was a peaceful walk. Thank God for the beauty of a quiet evening.

This past fall my husband pruned the vines encircling one ancient peach tree with only two branches left: and the effort reaped dividends as peaches came forth in abundance these past few weeks! We picked several baskets full.

Earlier in the year, Anna and Ben raised pigs with us, and for about two weeks, they had the two young pigs fenced in a square of their lawn: as pigs do, they rooted and manured the ground, turning it up better than any rototiller for a garden. Here's that same square some six months later, bursting with fertility. Anna carefully planned out her garden in small raised beds with a path round a central bed of herbs. My friend is a good gardener indeed!

Joshua Michael July 26, 2001-July 8, 2006 Miss him so much.

I was charmed when I stopped by my neighbor Anna's house and saw how the flower garden next to her toolshed is flourishing. Since the toolshed is right next to the main entrance to her house, (it's ten feet from the kitchen door) she put some effort into making it welcoming and inviting, arranging rocks salvaged from other places in the yard and planting flowering herbs. An old screen now is entwined with a flowering vine, and in front of it she "planted" a log pillar with a small resin statue of Our Lady and Child. The effect is so endearing I had to share it with you all.

I couldn't resist posting this picture of a summer ritual in our family: celebrating the birthdays of our boys and their dad. My husband Andrew's birthday, which usually makes a happy conjuction or coincidence with both Father's Day and the Feast of the Sacred Heart, begins the summer for us. One indispensable hallmark of the celebration is strawberry-cheesecake (the BHG recipe), which my eldest daughter concocts with greater skill each year. This year, in absence of graham crackers, she ingeniously substituted a crust of walnuts and chocolate: delicious! I love the red-blue-white-green hues of this photo, and how our youngest is earnestly helping her father blow out the candles, watched by some Hatke child guests. Now that our picnic table has emerged from the garage, I hope for many casual summer evening suppers and celebrations in the twilight.

Some of you may remember the photo I took of my newborn daughter Polly lying on her quilt in the sunlight. Well, she is nearly two-and-a-half, but she still sleeps with her "blankie" which I made her. The other day, I caught her napping in a laundry basket in a beam of sunlight, and I thought I would share the image with you. How babies grow so fast!