The Forgotten Brush Giveaway!

Fellow artist and very supportive Twitter friend, Laura is having a great giveaway on her blog! She's a truly talented artist and seriously been a huge encouragement to me in the handmade community. Take a gander at her great blog and enter her giveaway. She's showcasing some amazing artists and you can win a bunch of crafty stuff, just in time for the holidays!

Oh, and yes, I'm part of her giveaway (just love that headband)!

The Forgotten Brush

Cookies!

So the holidays have officially begun! Happy Holidays!

It’s been a crazy week. I’ve successfully made it through an anniversary, 2 Thanksgiving dinners, got some Christmas stuff done and even made the time to price most of my stuff for the craft show. As I’m sitting here on the couch trying to figure out what to write next, I realize I should talk about what’s sitting quietly in the kitchen. Taking the place of any sort of normal meal since yesterday are the few remaining cookies from the cookie exchange I participated in this past holiday.

For the first time in my “adult” life I was asked to take part in a cookie exchange. Nothing too crazy just 4 dozen cookies to exchange on Thanksgiving…of course my baking skills aren’t the greatest. I really had my heart set on making my Hungarian family recipe for Kolatch or Kolache. I bought all the ingredients and was prepared to take a day after work to bake all of them. Then I had some time management sense talked into me and I decided to make a Thumbprint cookie instead. Much much easier and A LOT less time to make. They turned out so nicely; I’ve decided to share my mom’s recipe. I promise, they’re super easy and don’t have a ton of ingredients but are so good!

Thumbprint Cookies

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 cups ground almonds (optional)

1/2 teaspoon baking powder

1/4 teaspoon salt

1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

3/4 cup butter (room temp)

3/4 cup granulated sugar

2 large egg yolks

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

powder sugar (optional)

1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees, Baking sheets may be ungreased, or lined with parchment paper.

2. Combine flour, ground almonds, baking powder salt, and cinnamon mix. Set aside

3, In a large bowl, combine butter and sugar, cream together until mixtures is light and fluffy. Add egg yolks, vanilla extract. Beat until throughly mixed. Add flour mixture, stir until mixed.

4. Shape dough into small balls, about 1" diameter.

5. Place balls 2 inches apart onto baking sheets. With your thumb press an indentation in the center of each ball to hold the filling. Bake 20 minutes or until cookies are set and very lightly browned. Remove cookies from baking sheets and cool on wire racks. When cooled sprinkle with powder sugar (optional)

Makes about 3 dozen cookies.

Oh, and I will be making Kolatch before Christmas, I’ll just need to find a free weekend to do it!

...Commented on your post.

Hello all!
Long time no blog…my apologies! There just isn’t enough hours in the day to work, apply for jobs, have a hobby AND blog. So now I’m trying to catch up here. I promise I’ll be better! Afterall, it’s almost the holidays and I’m going to actually enjoy them this year :)

So, I’m sort of a social networking site whore. I’ll admit it, I check Facebook everyday and I’m always on Twitter (I did cancel MySpace though…creepy!). For me it’s been a great way to keep in touch with family that I don’t get to see often. Everyday I can count on certain cousins (and a few great friends) to cheer me up with a comment or wallpost. I find it funny that if you were to look at my Facebook Wall and my Fanpage it’s mostly made up of my family. I’m so lucky they’re my biggest fans! I keep in touch with family from Wisconsin, Texas and my best friend (she’s also my cousin) almost like they’re here. I’m even in constant contact with a cousin (by marriage) that I’ve never even met before! She seems like an amazing person and just as loving at the rest of our clan.

So I guess this entry really isn’t about much of anything, but I think you get my point if you have family that you deeply love and appreciate that isn’t close enough to hug. Distance does make the heart grow fonder and Facebook makes the distance a little less noticeable on those days where you post a crabby comment and have your wonderful cousins to show you love.

So to all my long distance family that are friends and fans…I miss you dearly and thank you!

Giveaway!

I promised and now I’m delivering. I have officially hit over 200 followers on Twitter so now it’s time to give away my favorite pair of earrings from Flock Together Crafts.

One lucky winner will get my “Tail Feather Earrings”! They're a beautiful pair of all natural, hand picked pheasant feather earrings. I’ll be sad to part with them, but can’t wait till someone else can rock them!

Thank you all for the support, I truly love the handmade community and it’s supporters!

Here’s the details on how you can win!

• Visit FlockTogetherCrafts on Etsy and let me know your favorite item
• Follow this blog
• Become a fan of my Facebook page
• Follow Flock_Together on Twitter
• Blog or tweet about the giveaway and provide me with the link
• Purchase something from FlockTogetherCrafts on Etsy and provide me the transaction link (5 extra entries)

Lots of ways to enter and win! I wish you all good luck.

**Already a fan or follower? Just leave an additional comment with your info.

Make a separate comment for each entry.

Giveaway will end Sunday November 15, 2009 at midnight. Winner will be picked by random. This contest is open to EVERYONE!

Please leave a way for me to contact you in each comment.

Ginger Blossom

Open
Originally uploaded by FlockTogether

I was born and raised in Park Ridge, IL a nice city that border the Northwest side of Chicago. I went to school in the city, lived in the city and for a while worked in the city. I’m done with the city. When I was growing up everyone wanted to someday live the swanky city life. Get a job in a high-rise, live in a cool loft or apartment and be a regular to the bustling city nightlife. Been there, done most of that. Done and done. Don’t get me wrong, I do have a great appreciation for the wonderful sites in the city, the Field Museum and The Art Institute are two of my favorite places. For some people Chicago is the place to be, but I have visions of grandeur. I want to live in a small house, with a lot of land, a barn for my studio off a country road somewhere.

So why do I bring all this up? The other day The Woodsman said “I want to take you to a place that I know you will love…” and he was right. He took me about 35 minutes North, right to the border of Wisconsin (he’s a country boy) to a glorious handmade Mecca called Ginger Blossom. It’s a heaven for anyone who loves handmade, eclectic, ethnic art or just has an appreciation for every kind of stuff. This handmade paradise is literally up in the country. This by far is the hardest place to explain so I took a bunch of pictures. I will, try my best to explain it though.

Ginger Blossom is in Richmond, IL. It’s a few buildings situated on a working organic produce farm (you can buy the produce right on the front lawn). Ginger (the owner) travels the world to get the most amazing handmade art, decorations, textiles, and anything else you can imagine straight from the artists that make it. Anything ethnic they have it. Another major draw for me is everything there is handmade, meaning that no 2 things are the same. From the wool socks and hats made in Nepal to the hand carved armoires housed in the barn, this is a place anyone who likes the different would enjoy. It would take days to make it through and thoroughly look at everything in the various buildings.

A big perk of Ginger Blossom is the cost; everything is cheap since it’s straight from the artist. I was lucky to have The Woodsman buy me a $6 pair of hand knit wool socks and an $8 wool hat. These types of things are in abundance since there are 2 buildings just for them. I’ll definitely be going back there before Christmas. Oh, and that house in the country in my dreams, will be furnish and decorated with objects from Ginger Blossom…I guarantee it.

Check out my ‘Ginger Blossom’ set on Flickr!

What Would The Woodsman Cook?

Woodman's Dinner
Originally uploaded by FlockToghether

I have a woodsman (who I refer to as “The Woodsman”), he is the best and only one I know. He almost never lets me leave for work without breakfast and always puts the seat down. Pretty lucky, huh? He’s the grill and drink master in the summer while I usually cook non-grilling dinner…now that it’s almost winter our cooking dynamic has become much more interesting.

The other night he wanted to cook dinner and take care of the ALL the grocery shopping (like I said before, I’m lucky). He wanted to use up some of abundant amount of wild game we have in our freezer. He decided on duck breast schnitzel, potato pancakes and salad. Easy enough right? I honestly had no idea what to think because 1.) I have never cooked duck or potato pancakes 2.) it was already past 7pm. Needless to say with a little collaboration and a lot of patience in maneuvering in our little kitchen, we made an amazing and unique dinner.

So around 9pm we finally sat down to a duck breast schnitzel with mushroom sauce, potato pancakes with sour cream and applesauce, fresh veggies and salad. The duck with sauce was SO good, and it’s definitely going into out normal dinner rotation. Below are the recipes for the duck schnitzel and mushroom sauce.

Duck Breast Schnitzel
2 boneless duck breasts, flattened to 1/8-1/4 inch thickness
Flour
1 egg, lightly beaten
Fine, dry breadcrumbs
Salt & pepper to taste
Butter or Margaring
Dredge duck in flour, and dip in egg. Dredge in breadcrumbs. Salt and pepper to taste. Melt butter in a skillet over medium high heat. Add duck, and fry until golden brown, turning once. Move to a plate and keep warm (keep what’s leftover in the skillet to make the sauce)
*Taken from Ducks Unlimited Wild Feasts Cookbook

Mushroom Sauce
1/3 c flour
1/4 tsp each salt and pepper
3 c sliced white or cremini mushrooms (I used canned)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1-1/3 c chicken stock
1/3 c light sour cream
1 tbsp soy sauce
2 tbsp minced fresh garlic

In same skillet, fry mushrooms and garlic until no liquid remains, about 5 min. Add reserved flour mixture; cook, stirring, for 1 min. Stir in stock and bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, stirring, until thickened, about 3 min. Stir in sour cream and soy sauce; pour over duck. Sprinkle with parsley.

Enjoy!

Flock Together & The Woodsman

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What A Pheasant Surprise!

After a fun filled day of exploring an amazing handmade and ethnic craft store and making our way through miles of corn maze, we came home to a welcome surprise. I had my first Etsy sale! I’ve sold things to friends and at craftshows, but this was my first “official” online transaction. I sold the pictured pheasant feather headband. I just wanted to share the good news, and I’m hoping that this will be a new trend!

Also, this morning I won a random drawing for Twitter followers from welovecolors.com. It’s an awesome place to find any kind of tights and leggings. I’m so excited to get my mystery tights. I’ll be sure to post pics of them when I receive them!

I'll be posting a lot more this week, I have a lot to share!

~FT