December 2015 – Home at Winshaw

Christmas-time

Merry Christmas! It’s almost here! Marian is very excited. I am only slightly less so. I’ve been having lots of fun making up some simple decorations for our home mostly with items that we either gathered from the woods, or already had on hand.

We found the absolutely perfectly shaped, fluffy little cedar tree. I really wanted a little tree for our first tree. (this is our first Christmas at home together!) This one was exactly what I had in mind!

The one thing we did buy was a string of starry lights. I love these so much, they are very tiny and bright and strung on almost invisible copper wire. I love that they just disappear into the tree in the daytime! We got the solar powered option, but there are also battery powered options. In the picture above Jordan and Marian are wrapping the tree in lights. She was so happy we were getting a Christmas tree!

All decorated and glowing!

I used one of my antique 6 gallon crocks for the base. Jordan filled it with rocks and water, and it worked beautifully!

Our tree is decorated with pine cones, candy-canes, strung popcorn, and two types of homemade woods ornaments. The gold ‘stars’ are sweet gum balls that drop from the trees in the fall. The silver balls are Sycamore seeds that we found on some low branches. Each of these we gathered and spray painted, then glued red, green, and gold ribbons to each one! I love how they turned out.

I’m hoping to keep most of our ornaments homemade and also new made every year. Most of these ‘nature’ ornaments just aren’t going to last season to season, so I was thinking it would be a fun tradition to have with the kids that we would actually make our ornaments before decorating the tree every year.

Two windows in the sitting room got decorated with extra greenery and pine cones.

Enjoying the cozy lights with a mug of something hot to drink. We’ve been drinking lots of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate lately…

The second stocking down is my stocking – the one I’ve been using for Christmas all my life. My Granny made it from an old quilt and added buttons and notions. I thought it would be fun to continue the quilt theme, so I added three more stockings for our family also made from vintage ‘cutter’ quilts I had in my stash.

I made a wreath for our door with cedar and pine branches, dotted with a few pine cones here and there.

I still have Christmas baking to do, and we still haven’t made our Gingerbread house. Will it happen? I don’t know. But Christmas is coming anyway!

Last week we breathed a sight of relief as we shipped the last of our Christmas bed orders out. We also made a fun trip into Nashville to do some last minute shopping, then we drove around some well-to-do neighborhoods and ooohed over the Christmas lights (and the houses). And ate pizza. It was sad because both kids fell asleep before we were looking at lights….but Jordan and I had fun!

I have been planning little gifts for Marian and Alan for months. I am so excited for Christmas morning!

Missing my family in Texas this year – but it’s also been fun to start a few of our own traditions. It will be fun to see how they develop as our kids get older. What are some of your families favorite traditions? I’d love to hear!

A very Merry Christmas to you from Winshaw!

Backroading

One of our favorite things to do together since we got married is something we call ‘backroading’. Which basically means purposely getting lost on the farthest-back back roads we can find, and putting lots of miles on our pick-up.

On a recent Sunday we were staying home from church because we were all still recovering from a bad case of sniffles. But we were so ready to get out of the house (had been sick for two weeks!) that we decided to take that day and go backroading. We hadn’t done that since the summer, so it was high time! I packed a lunch to take in the car, and we were off!

One of our main purposes for backroading is to look for old houses. We just love coming up on a 19th century homestead and imagining what is used to look like in its glory days. It’s so sad to see these beautiful old houses abandoned and falling down.

This particular backroading trip took us into Kentucky,and we got to see some beautiful country! One of our biggest dreams is to have land of our own someday, so seeing fertile vistas really sparks our ‘someday’ conversations.

Jordan has trained me to be on the lookout for anything made of log. This log barn hidden in the woods was a neat find. Many times the old houses we see are also likely to be log underneath the painted siding.

Love seeing big barns! We can’t wait to build a barn of our own.

A general store in an abandoned downtown. (occasionally the roads to lead us into towns, but we leave as quick as we can!)

An old broken dam at a mill site over a big creek…

Sometimes if we are lucky, we catch glimpses of 19th century mansions that have been restored and are being lived in – it doesn’t take much imagination then to see what a grand place it must have been back in the day!

You really never know what is around the next bend in the road!

We ended our day with a beautiful sunset as we crossed the state line back into Tennessee, headed home.

Dutch Oven Bread

I believe this is a fairly well-known recipe, and you can find it many places in cyberspace. However, I wanted to repost it because just in case you haven’t heard of it – you NEED this bread in your life.

I make this bread because I don’t have time to make bread. It’s seriously so easy and takes almost no time. And I just love the texture – it’s chewy and soft, and not at all crumbly. You can even slice it thin for sandwiches and it stays together perfectly. Eventually I want to learn all about sourdough bread, because I have definitely not figured it out yet. But until then, I am so glad to have this recipe.

During one winter when I was growing up we had a non-working oven in the kitchen. Mom started making this bread on the back porch in a dutch oven placed in a washtub with live coals from the heating wood stove. So, I have fond memories of enjoying this delicious bread. It’s also great to accompany soup.

Do let me know if you try it!

No-Knead Dutch Oven Bread Recipe

1/4 tsp active dry yeast
1 1/2 cups warm water
3 cups all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting. You may use white, whole wheat or a combination of the two.
1 1/2 tsp salt
Cornmeal or wheat bran for dusting

Instructions:

1. In a large bowl, dissolve yeast in water. Add the flour and salt, stirring until blended. The dough will be shaggy and sticky. Cover bowl with plastic wrap. Let the dough rest at least 8 hours, preferably 12 to 18, at warm room temperature, about 70 degrees.

2. The dough is ready when its surface is dotted with bubbles. Lightly flour a work surface and place dough on it. Sprinkle it with a little more flour and fold it over on itself once or twice. Cover loosely with plastic wrap and let it rest for about 15 minutes.

3. Using just enough flour to keep the dough from sticking to the work surface or to your fingers, gently shape it into a ball. Generously coat a clean dish towel with flour, wheat bran or cornmeal. Put the seam side of the dough down on the towel and dust with more flour, bran or cornmeal. Cover with another towel and let rise for about 1 to 2 hours. When it’s ready, the dough will have doubled in size and will not readily spring back when poked with a finger.

4. At least 20 minutes before the dough is ready, heat oven to 475 degrees. Put a 6- to 8-quart heavy covered pot (cast iron, enamel, Pyrex or ceramic) in the oven as it heats. When the dough is ready, carefully remove the pot from the oven and lift off the lid. Slide your hand under the towel and turn the dough over into the pot, seam side up. The dough will lose its shape a bit in the process, but that’s OK. Give the pan a firm shake or two to help distribute the dough evenly, but don’t worry if it’s not perfect; it will straighten out as it bakes.

5. Cover and bake for 30 minutes. Remove the lid and bake another 15 to 20 minutes, until the loaf is beautifully browned. Remove the bread from the Dutch oven and let it cool on a rack for at least 1 hour before slicing.

Yield: One 1 1/2-pound loaf.

Adapted from The New York Times. Online recipe source here.

(Atlanta’s note – rising the bread in between towels was too messy for me, so I just do my second rising in the same bowl covered with a towel)