Homemade Hooded Towels

My friend, Misty, made some of these hooded towels and wrote a nice tutorial on her blog on how to make them. Click here to read it. If I had followed her directions, mine would have turned out like hers! I forgot to shorten the towel for a smaller hood. Plus, (on purpose) I made my pleats right beside the printed fabric, on both sides instead of one pleat in the back.

I'm so glad she posted her tutorial because I needed to get something for my two youngest nephews, and when I saw her hooded towels, I knew that these were just the ticket!

James and Nate are modeling them for my blog. They turned out nice! My sister's boys are all into camo and hunting stuff, so I think they will like these. Of course, Nate and James now want their own! Maybe for their birthday. :-)

Camo and brown for Tuckor.


Bucks and green for Tannor.


Adela, don't let your boys see these! They'll be in the mail later today or tomorrow!

Thrifty Christmas Napkin Rings

I was looking in the store today at various napkin rings to decorate my table on Christmas day and was appalled to find them priced at about $3 each. Multiply that out and it's just too much for my budget. So, my thrifty side kicked in and I went on a hunt for the fixings to make my own at an affordable price. Here are my results. I'm not going to give a step by step. It's so easy even a cave man can make these.

Start with a holiday themed garland, $5 at Walmart. Add a pouch of raffia for $1.50.


Tie together 3 pieces with raffia.


Add a ring.


Tuck napkin inside ring. Viola! Napkin ring! I could make about 2 dozen of these and the price was $6. Anybody else have any thrifty ideas for decorating?

How to win a book!

My friend and favorite family doctor in the whole world wrote a book. I haven't been able to actually read it from cover to cover yet. I did pick up a copy of it in her waiting room and read as much as I could, as fast as I could. It is wonderful! As the title suggests, it's all about allowing women to mother as nature (and God) intended. From pregnancy to birth to breastfeeding to weaning, this book covers a wide range of these topics in anecdotal style. Dr. Punger filled this book with HER stories, as well as stories from other women. I LOVE what I was able to read in her office! Anyway, she is giving away copies of this book next week, and one way to enter in her drawing is to re-post this information in a blog. So, without further ado, here is all the information you need! Click here to view her blog and enter if you want!

Holiday Give-Away

I'd like to give three Permission to Mother books away before the holidays. There are three drawings and three blog posts to respond to.

The first way is simply to answer the question below in order to have your name entered into a drawing to win.

I'll enter every one's name who answered the question into a drawing and announce the winner on my blog next Thursday, December 10th. Comments need to be received before Wednesday, December 11 at 11:00 pm. I'll mail it to you if you are outside my county, otherwise I'll hold it for you at the office. Everyone is eligible, even if you already own a copy, and entered before and even if you won before.

My book makes a good present for the holidays, birthday, or new baby. You need to be available on Thursday to give me delivery information if you are out of town. I am offering the book at $20.00 in the office and on my store through December 15th to guarantee Holiday delivery.

A very easy Question (which may be redundant for some of you):

How did you first hear about my book?

The second way to enter this give-away is repost the give-away information on your blog, facebook, myspace, digg, etc.... The way you enter this contest is by letting me know that you've re-posted in the comment section of this post.

I'll enter every one's name who reposts and lets me know in the comment section of this post and announce the winner on my blog next Thursday, December 10th.

Comments need to be received before Wednesday, December 11 at 11:00 pm. I'll mail it to you if you are outside my county, otherwise I'll hold it for you at the office. Everyone is eligible, even if you already own a copy, and entered before and even if you won before. My book makes a good present for the holidays, birthday, or new baby. You need to be available on Thursday to give me delivery information if you are out of town.

The third give-away is in appreciation of my readers that have posted a review of Permision to Mother on amazon.com.


I really appreciate the reviews and feedback that get posted on-line. At amazon it keeps my book from falling to the bottom of cyberspace pile of books. I enjoy reading your reviews. Other readers, followers, and potential readers also benefit from your thoughts and like to know how the book helped you. (Right?)


The way to enter this give-away is to let me know in the comments section that you have posted a review. Of course, I probably know that, but it lets me know you want to enter to enter. It's not to late to enter your review now. If for some reason you don't want to enter the give-away, but want to post a review by all means post.

You do need to have an active amazon account to post at amazon. You also must have read the book to post a review.

The details are the other details are the same:

Comments (and the amazon review) need to be received before Wednesday, December 11 at 11:00 pm. I'll mail it to you if you are outside my county, otherwise I'll hold it for you at the office. Everyone is eligible, even if you already own a copy, and entered before and even if you won before.

My book makes a good present for the holidays, birthday, or new baby. You need to be available on Thursday to give me delivery information if you are out of town.I am offering the book at $20.00 in the office and on my store through December 15th to guarantee Holiday delivery.

A New Bread Recipe

I have enjoyed making my own whole wheat bread for some time now. All the while, sticking my head into the sand over the fact that I was, little by little, running out of honey. The recipe (which can be found HERE) that I have been using from www.breadbeckers.com is awesome! BUT, at 1/3 cup of honey per two loaves, I have been thinking that I had better come up with a solution, and soon! Well, the inevitable happened. I am out of honey. At $40 per gallon, I don't plan on stocking up any time soon. I used to be able to get it for $20 a gallon. SO! What to do, what to do? I decided to experiment by mixing the recipe I had been using with another that I have used in the past, but didn't like nearly as much. Much to my surprise, it worked! I now have a honey-free recipe that turned out as good, or better than my old standby!

I made two batches. The first I kneaded by hand and I found it to be very soft and easy to knead. It never did "toughen" up. I formed this dough into two loaves. The next batch I made, I let my bread machine do the mixing and first rising. Then I took it out and formed it into 15 large rolls. This batch did super, as well!

You can see some of the bread here in this photo. The rolls on the left were the honey-less recipe. The rolls that look a little more golden on the right was the breadbeckers recipe. But, the loaves turned out golden, too, so I think the pale rolls had more to do with cooking them for a little less time. They were totally done in the center, and very soft!


A close-up of the basket.


The perfect roll! Doesn't it just BEG to be dipped in a hot bowl of soup?


After some very "scientific" blind taste testing, the results were in: although the bread was still slightly sweet, it had just a hint of a sour dough flavor. There were no complaints over the change in flavor, and it is now the new, even cheaper bread of choice for our family!

Here is the recipe:

2 cups very hot water
1/4 cup melted butter
2 Tbs molasses
1 egg
1 1/2 Tbs salt
1 Tbs sugar
2 Tbs Lecithin (optional)
1 tsp gluten

Mix all the above ingredients in a bowl or dump into bread machine. Add 2 cups whole wheat flour and 1 Tbs yeast. Mix thoroughly. Add 3 more cups flour, one cup at a time until dough can be turned out on counter and kneaded. Knead for 6 minutes, adding more flour as needed. (if you use the bread machine, add flour until a ball forms in the machine and pulls totally away from the walls. Cover and let rise for about 1 hour or until doubled. Pinch and shape dough into 2 loaves, place in greased bread pans, cover, and let rise again. OR, break off about 1/4 cup dough, roll playdough style into a 6 inch long, 3/4 inch diameter "snake". Tie into a knot, place on greased cookie sheet, cover and let rise again. Bake loaves in 350 oven for 20 min. (or more if needed), bake rolls for about 12 minutes.

Random Thoughts From Someone Who Hasn't Blogged In Awhile

There has been this nagging thought in the back of my mind that I have been neglecting my blog. Then I think who really wants to see another blog with pictures of my kids doing something cute/amazing, or photos of yet another person's Thanksgiving turkey and all their family and friends (conveniently enough, I forgot to take my camera with on Thanksgiving Day) or marvelous Christmas decorations hung and artfully arranged without any mishaps. So, in lieu of another boring predictable blog, I am stepping out of the mainstream and giving you a peek into our normal, imperfect life. Don't worry, it's as boring as the predictable blogs!


I never did understand the love affair some people have with raw cookie dough. The kids and I whipped up 3 batches of cookies to take with us to our friend's house on Thanksgiving day. Keeping (clean) fingers out of the dough proved to be a challenge.


Notice that I have photos of all the dough, but I neglected to take any pictures of the huge pile of actual cookies we had a couple hours later. And I challenge YOU to take a better photo of 5 kids who are on a cookie dough sugar high. And yes, Rebecca is now pleading with me "Can I please go, now, Mom?"


Remember the Thankful Tree a couple of blogs back? Well, in spite of all my good intentions, the holiday week kicked my butt and we didn't get as many hands on the tree as we thought we would. Hey, I got a picture of it before I removed it from the fridge, so that should count for something, right?


Did you ever wake up in the morning and say "Who cares what I look like, I just want to sit at the table and eat a donut?" Yeah. Me neither. But James has! This was Black Friday morning, after Rebecca and I got up at 3:30 am and hit the stores with our list in hand. We got everything we had on the list!!! All two items. Can you spell success? Then we went by Dunkin Donuts, bought a box of 14, went home, threw them on the table and went back to bed. When everyone woke up, we had eggs and donuts and coffee. (Sounds gross now that I think about it!)


After the donuts and coffee, we put up our tree! Hold your applause. By the next day, 95% of the lights were (and still are) out. Something got unplugged and for the LIFE of me, I can't find the end it should be connected to. So, sometime before Christmas Eve, I have to UNdecorate the tree and get the stupid thing lit! You know, Christmas is for kids! And we have 5. (just in case you didn't know) So, I can't be all hum-bug about it.


So, there you have it. All my dirty laundry: I forget to take pictures of important things. Projects that are started don't always get completely finished. I feed my kids donuts for breakfast (very rarely, though) Plus, I have a dark Christmas tree sitting in my living room that looks nothing like the photo above. Hey, I just realized that I DID take a picture of the tree before the lights went out, so that should count for something! So, as you read other blogs today and maybe feel overwhelmed by their apparent jockeying for the next Martha Stewart award, remember that there are some of us out here in the blog world that are just (gasp!) normal people!

Live, Love, Laugh and hug the people you love!