Holiday Boutique Dates for 2014

It is that time again!  How could the year go by so fast? It is time to do my crafts boutique again.  I hope to see many friends and to share both my old standby products and some delightful new things.

Here is the basic information with the dates and times below the product description.

Cards for Christmas and All Occasions by Marguerite Manor and Fe Langdon fill the hall rack.

My Potpourri and Sachets—Christmas Blessings, Christmas Rose, Peace Potpourri and a variety of anti-moth and anti-ant mixtures will be available in sachets, hoops and acrylic ornaments.  Great small gifts and some would be nice hostess and thank-you gifts throughout the year.  The anti-moth and anti-ant mixes really do deter these pests, although they do not kill them. 

Below is my mixing bowl with one of the mixtures in progress.

Here is one of the Christmas potpourri balls (just needs its ribbon and tags to be complete).

And here is one of the hoops (new this year) with the ball.  (Balls are 3" and hoops are 4".  I also have 3" hoops available.

Vintage Christmas ornaments, European mouth blown glass , folk fabric ornaments made by me in the 80's will be available as well, along with my Mary Kay holiday catalog.

Here are the Dates and Times

SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY

Saturday, November 29, 1:00-4:00 pm

Wednesday, December 3, 11:00-2:00 pm

Saturday and Sunday, December 6 and 7, 1:00-5:00 pm

 I AM AVAILABLE BY APPOINTMENT IF THE ABOVE TIMES ARE NOT CONVENIENT. 

 Please contact me at mamm@pobox.com for the address or to make an appointment.

  

Not everything is up on my Etsy shop yet.  Hoping most of it will be by this weekend.  (I need elves!) Still I hope you will take a look, contact me and come by. 

Visit me on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/margueritemanor

Visit Fe on Etsy https://www.etsy.com/shop/FeLangdonDesigns

Thank you so much for your consideration.  A Blessed and Joyous Thanksgiving to each of you.

It's been a long time and reading of late

It's been so long since I've posted that I've nearly forgotten how this works!  Good to see that Blogger is still here and that it works in much the same way that I remember.  Clearly, I have some revising to do.  Yesterday I was so taken with toggling between preview and edit that forgot to save.  So my lovely post disappeared.  My fault, not Blogger's, although it would have been nice to have had it ask me if I wanted to save.  (Sort of like Zen, the computer in Blake's 7--a sci fi show I loved but haven't been able to find on DVD.

Been reading a great deal in the last year.  Two neighbors have given me good recommendations and I have found some on my own.  The librarian who pulls books for me for the SOS program finds more for me from time to time.

Recently I read Alice Hoffman's The Dovekeepers. Absolutely wonderful book set in Babylonia at the time of the Fall of Jerusalem, it is the story of the siege of Masada.  Strong women characters, a totally different way of life and history that I had not read before, made this one of the most absorbing novels I have ever read.  Will be a television mini-series soon with one of my favorite actors, Cote de Pablo.

Maggie Anton's novels Rav Hisda's daughters take place in the same Mediterranean world a couple of hundred years later.  So far I have only read the first one and I think the second may be in the tote under the table waiting for me to read very soon.  Again they feature strong women characters and open up time, place and Jewish culture so that they are marvelously different from novels set in modern times.

As a student, I majored in medieval history, so Maggie Anton's Rashi's Daughters, were particularly absorbing for they gave me a look at the Middle Ages from a Jewish perspective, set as they are in medieval Troyes.

Highest recommendations for all of these books from a reader who reads too much! Can there be such a thing?  (If I would spend half the number of hours in the day that I spend reading, writing.... I won't go there.)

So this is a kind of test post, to see if I can get it right this time. (And I found the one I thought was lost!  Google gets more points.)

My Holiday Open House

My Annual Holiday Open House will be this weekend.  Here is the flyer that I made for it.

Please come to my

Holiday Open House
Let me help you with your Christmas Shopping!

 Note cards designed and made by me and by my friend Fe Langdon from photos we have taken!  Blank inside so they are suitable for all occasions.  All cards were $4.00 and are now $2.00

Christmas Blessings Potpourri
This is a special and wonderful smelling mixture of herbs and spices with the meanings for Christmas.

Herbal Moth and Insect repellant sachets.  Several kinds to fit a
number of likes and dislikes. All of my herbal products are
perfect for stocking stuffers and appreciation gifts. (They will ward off bugs from your clothes and books.)    

Vintage mouth blown glass ornaments, new

Vintage tin boxes (perfect for the sachets or fill with tea bags,
candy or other small gifts), new

At my house

Saturday, December 14, 2013, 1-5 pm
Sunday, December 15, 20113, 1-5 pm

Also available by appointment. 
Please contact me at mamm@pobox.com

Always available, year round and twenty-four seven at my Etsy shop
http://www.etsy.com/shop/margueritemanor

If you would like to know my address so that you can come to it please email me at mamm@pobox.com.

Thank you so much.

Thanksgiving, Counting Blessings

It is hard to believe it has been a year since I have posted here.  Time to get back to it.  It is good to begin with Thanksgiving and a reflection and recollection of blessings.

First I am always grateful for my parents.  Although they have not been with me on earth for too long a time, not a day goes by that I do not remember them with love and gratitude.

Second I am grateful for family and friends, especially those friends whom I have known for decades and with whom I am growing old.  For the youngest member of my family, who at sixteen months, charms and delights us.  For the oldest of my friends, who at ninety and a half (as he himself said two days ago) reminds me of my father.  A member of the "greatest generation", he reminds me of Papa and also of how much thanks we owe to those who have served in our nation's armed forces.

For those among my family and friends who served in the military, I am grateful and in this month of November that also includes Veteran's Day, I honor you.

For my 'best friend" from high school, our small Catholic girl's school, herself a Marine, I am so grateful.

For all the neighbors, especially three women who have become like sisters, who help me, befriend me and give me their time, I give thanks.

For the faith that my parents taught me, even when it wanes at times, I am very grateful.  It is so much a part of me that I once told one of my professors at the Divinity school, a very famous Catholic theologian, that "Catholicism was in my bones and blood". He looked out the window for such a long time, that I feared I had offended him.  When he turned back, he said simply, "mine too".

I am grateful for the gift of a first class education, for the teachers, especially the Sisters of the Holy Cross, who taught me in high school, my advisor and mentor at Stanford and the professors at the Divinity School.  Thank you.  You were all blessings in my life.

For my garden, especially the rose this year, which bloomed and bloomed.  Each one is so beautiful, so unique and they have a kind of patience and humility that only plants have.

Every day, I give thanks for the caring and superb team of medical professionals who cared for me at Stanford Hospital and Valley Medical Center's Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Unit. It has been three years.  Hard to believe that it has been so long.  I am almost pain free now, as nerves that had been damaged from overuse have healed.

For a diet that came out recently that I have been following for seven months, I am thankful.  If I live long enough I may solve my lifelong weight problem (or win my lifelong battle, depending on how best to phrase it.)  More, I hope, in later posts.  For now I am grateful for the seven inches I've gotten off my waist. Hurray!

For the people who invented computers, the Internet and all the technology I take for granted, I give you thanks.  For the people who invented durable medical equipment, especially the power chair I am sitting in even as I type this, I give thanks.

For the gift of still being alive slightly over sixty years after I was paralyzed from the neck down by the poliomyelitis virus, I am grateful. And that that virus, a nasty thing,no longer afflicts so many people I am also grateful

Praise and Thank God this Thanksgiving.  Thank you to all of you who are my friends.

I am grateful to Google too, for making my little blog possible.  I hope to be better organized to post more often.

        

It's Been Too Long!

It has been too long.  I have almost forgotten that I have a blog.  Internet connection problems have slowed me down and taken much of the fun as well as the joy out of all things net related.  Some of these problems seem to be resolving.  So here I am trying to remember how to do this.

A few days ago, I was refreshing my memory in a skill that I developed twenty or so years ago--potpourri making.  I whipped up a big, big batch (nearly 30 cups) of Christmas potpourri, which I will bag this week for sale on my Etsy shop.


 Here is a picture of the potpourri in my big shiny aluminum bowl that was originally intended, I am sure, for holding salad.  (Big stack in grocery store of the day and my recollection is that the bowl cost all of four dollars!  Wish I had bought three!)
 

Below is a closeup of the potpourri in the bowl.  I wish I could share how wonderful it smells!

The next step after mixing all the dry ingredients together is to pick the wet ones and add them.  They are a mixture of essential oils and fragrance oils.  I try to use essential oils because they are more natural and usually also stronger and they last longer.  (Some potpourri that I made in the late eighties is still pleasantly fragrant.

 Here is a photo of the oils, after I had chosen them from the collection. 

 The house smelled heavenly.  Unlike baking the fragrance lingers several days later, even though the product is neatly sealed in a large zipper bag.  Since it isn't edible, it also doesn't have calories.  I should have done much more of this and much less of baking over the last forty years.  Oh well.  I enjoy baking too!

To bed to read another installment of Laurie R King's amazing re-invention of Sherlock Holmes with Mary Russell, his young apprentice and wife.  

Happy Thanksgiving to all.  I will show the potpourri later in the week when it is in pretty packages with ribbons.  

 

Plain Brown Loaf

Several months ago I discovered that the bread I had been buying as "whole wheat bread" was not what it appeared to be. After wheat flour, its next primary ingredient was soy flour!

I cannot eat soy, since it is incompatible with the thyroid medicine that I take. It explained why I had not been feeling well.

I opened the Safeway online website and began to examine labels. Too much soy. Not good.

Time to begin baking again. I have a wonderful beer-batter bread recipe, but beer has yeast, which in turn is on the list of things that may cause one to break out in hives, which has been a problem for several years. I have been trying to devise a diet that would lessen the occurrence of hives.

Soda bread seemed appropriate. St. Patrick's Day was approaching so that made it even more timely to make soda bread. I found a nice, tasty Irish Soda bread with raisins and made it several times. This most certainly was not what my ancestors made before they immigrated, though and I really wanted a whole wheat loaf.

 Finally, I found this recipe, http://www.myrecipes.com/recipe/irish-brown-bread-10000000522965/"

 So yummy!  Highest recommendation to all of you who bake.  I have also made it with 1 1/4 c buttermilk substituted for the yogurt.  (And sweet milk soured with vinegar, I believe it would take one tablespoon, could be substituted for the buttermilk.)

It is becoming my house bread.  I am filled with gratitude for my plain brown loaf, my ancestors who surely made something similar and the Internet for making the recipe available.  It is a good, even wondrous time to be alive and I am glad.

Reading and more reading

Several years ago a kind neighbor who is another avid reader began to bring me books from the public library. Then she found out about SOS, short for special outreach services, a program our public library has that pairs volunteers to a person who cannot go to the library and with the help of one of the library staff, delivers books. My library card stays with the librarian who emails me once a month to ask what my wants are and I respond with requests.

In November I requested books with a holiday theme and discovered Jan Karon. This marvelous writer wrote a Christmas themed story, called, I believe, Shepherds Abiding and I loved it. The next month's bag of books included In the Company of Others, which is truly one of my all time favorite books. Set in modern Ireland with flashbacks through a journal to the nineteenth century I was transported. The characters are also a bit older than I am instead of thirty-five years younger, so this helps a great deal, too.

I have read a great many mysteries over these past few years too. A lovely recent one was The Laughter of Dead Kings by Elizabeth Peters. Her Amelia Peabody series is one of my all time favorites, along with Marjorie Allingham's Albert Campion series, and Dorothy Sayers Lord Peter.

Many of these books are "cozies", stories featuring amateur sleuths who have some other occupation in their lives than police work and who just happen to keep finding dead bodies and then figuring out who the murders were. They feature florists and chefs, bakery owners and quilters and they take place in knit shops and other small town venues.

Tonight I will go back to reading one of the chef's as she solves a murder.

I prefer stories that have good puzzles, interesting to quirky characters and one or few murders. I don't like the really, really dark stories especially since I read before going to sleep, but mainly because those are the kind of things that I am trying to avoid too much of on television.

Another favorite of mine is Earlene Fowler whose stories feature a heroine who is a small museum curator in a town on the Coast of Central California. Wonderful characters and very good writing make her books very good reads.

I have read most of Susan Albert Wittig's China Bayles series twice and think highly of them as well as the series of stories set in the Edwardian era that she co-authored with her husband under the pseudonym, Robin Paige.

If you have any books to recommend to me, please leave a comment.

I am so grateful for this service from the library and to the volunteer who brings my books and has become my friend.

Pancakes

Most of the time when I run out of bread, I make whole wheat oatmeal muffins, an adaptation of mine from an old Betty Crocker recipe of the 1960's. Very moist and yummy. Other times I make buckwheat pancakes and spread them over a couple of days in place of bread. Cold pancakes may seem odd, but they are actually quite good.

Today I didn't want to take time with muffins--thought they would take too long to bake, so I opted for pancakes. But being out of mix--I like Bob's Red Mill's Buckwheat Pancake mix--I googled for a whole wheat buttermilk recipe.

Here is what I found

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/wheat-germ-whole-wheat-buttermilk-pancakes/detail.aspx

Yummy. They smell wonderful as they cook and puff up so that they are unbelievably light and airy. They would be wonderful topped with yogurt and blueberries, but I enjoyed just honey.

Perfect on a cold fall afternoon as lunch.

I am grateful for the Internet, which returns recipes at my fingertips and for food in the house that I can turn into quick and interesting meals that are also fairly nourishing. Happy eating!

A Year Later, Giving Back

A year ago I was a patient at the Spinal Cord Injury Unit of Santa Clara Valley Medical Center. I have written several times about that in this blog. To recap.

Last year, the day before Halloween, I could not stand up to rise from bed. After many years of living with the lifetime effects of polio, which I had as a child during the last big epidemic of 1953, and the somewhat more recent arrival of arthritis, I needed help.

That help came from the wonderful team of professionals at Rehab 1, as the Spinal Cord Injury Rehabilitation Unit at Valley Medical Center is known. There I was cared for with much kindness and outfitted with new durable medical equpiment and taught a whole range of new skills. For the very first time in my life, I was given the sense that living with disability for so long and simply caring for myself, was an accomplishment. It is one that I celebrate everyday now as I use my beautiful power wheel-chair, more valuable than a sports car to me, in place of the old manual chair and wooden crutches that had been my daily companions for decades.

Now, for the first time in many years I am doing simple things like exploring the neighborhood, joining a friend for coffee or lunch, going for a haircut (by myself!), or shopping in a physical store instead of only online. Now, I am living my life as a real person, instead of a virtual person. Having the freedom to do this is lovely.

I want to give back to the people who have helped me so much to continue to help their patients. So I have the following fundraiser to offer.

I am a Mary Kay Independent Beauty Consultant. For the Fourth year in a row Mary Kay will donate one dollar from the sale of each of its three special Beauty that Counts™ lipstick shades that sell between Sept 16th and December 16th, 2011. I plan to match this for each of these lipsticks that I sell with $1 to Valley Medical Center Foundation for use in the Spinal Cord Injury Unit.

I will also donate one dollar from each of our hand creams that I sell for the same purpose. We have two hand cream fragrances, Peach and Fragrance free. Either of these would make a very nice hostess gift, stocking stuffer, gift exchange present or other small present. Consider buying a few extra to use as presents during the winter for non-holiday occasions.

Please help me to give back and to build my Mary Kay business by buying one of these lipsticks or hand creams for yourself or as a gift. I will, of course, be happy to show you more from our line of excellent products. Thank you so much.

You may order directly from my Mary Kay website http://wwwmarykay.com/margueritemanor/default.aspx

Travelling by Internet

I have never been to Tennessee, but the other day a little of Tennessee came to me. Via the gift of the Internet and the United States Post Office, blending new and old technologies, beautiful beeswax candles and delicious, piquant honey arrived at my door. Here is a photo

I bought these items though Local Harvest http://www.localharvest.org/

I could not find candles near by so opted to go to the Heartland. Local Harvest is such a great venue. It can put us in touch with local producers, especially to see who vends at our Farmer's Markets and who provides Community Subscription Agriculture boxes in our local area as well as help us find more regional specialties all produced with care in small batches by small businesses throughout our country. This is an excellent way to help the economy become stable again!

I am grateful for this little bit of Tennessee and for the woman whose fine handwriting on the address label as well as her care in packing in addition to the products themselves showed me a glimpse of someone who cares about what she is doing to earn her living. May she, and all of us, prosper.

Bread, the Staff of Life

A friend gifted me with the most sumptuous and scrumptious loaf of bread that I have ever had. Here are some pictures.

My bread never rises this high! I need lessons, or maybe I just need more patience.

My friend, who is a busy, busy person, said that she has found the time to work bread making into her schedule because the cost of bread has risen so much! I have seen this in my own grocery shopping. It is a comment on the bad state of our economy, I think when something so basic as bread becomes unaffordable.

On the other hand, it is good to regain control of something so basic as the bread that we put into our mouths by making it ourselves. Somehow, I think we need a revolution in this country to regain our time and do for ourselves the things we have allowed big companies to take over for us. So I will be making bread again.

First, though I want to know how my friend gets her bread to rise so much. Oh, and it tasted every bit as good as it looks!

I am grateful for bread, for the time to make it, for the friend who shared it and for friends to break it with.

Art by my Friend, Fe Langdon

Today my friend Fe, whom I first met when she came from our local church as a communion minister, brought me lunch from our local Hobee's.

Fe is a gifted photographer and artist. She has been making cards for about as long as I have and in the course of our conversation as we talked about our art and craft, as well as catching up on our lives, she shared her website with me. The website, which she designed herself, is at this url

http://www.mycomfortcards.com/

Fe has expanded her art by taking classes in the book arts and graphic arts programs at Foothill College. Trained originally as an electrical engineer--Fe holds a Master's in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University--her eye for the artistry in nature is, I believe, inspired from that discipline and then transcended by her spiritual quest and gentle personality.

I commend her art and her website to you. She will be away for part of this month and part of next, so if you send her an order, please be patient. She will respond, I am sure.

Fe is one of the people who gifts my life with her friendship and I am so grateful for her and grateful to be able to share her art with you.

Another Wheelchair Throw

For years I have enjoyed knitting washcloths. Here is a patchwork throw with an elaborate pouch attached that is made from sewn together washcloths.

This is photographed from the viewpoint that the user would have. It is made from Lion Cotton yarn that is made in America and it is washable. I love this yarn because it comes in beautiful colors and knits into a soft fabric.

Pattern coming soon.

I am grateful to see this project coming to fruition.

First Wheelchair Lap Throw

My knitting lately has consisted of making lap throws that will fit the needs of a wheelchair user. These need to be sized so that they do not drag and catch in the wheels and they need some way to hold them in place so that they don't slide off the lap of the user.

The first problem is solved simply with the use of a measuring tape. The second is solved by attaching a tab with a buttonhole so that the tab will loop over the user's seat belt and then button onto the throw. A pocket is also part of the design, made to sit on the person's lap.

Here is a picture of the one I am currently finishing made from red, white and blue Lion Cotton (yarn made in America).

The ungainly looking hole is actually a knitted in slit for a pocket that will be added to the wrong side. Here is the pocket before it is sewn together and then sewn in.

The tab is made but not yet attached, so that will be a photo in the next post.

The pattern will be posted on my Etsy site as a pdf file for immediate delivery. I plan to donate a portion of my sales for this and similar patterns, to Valley Medical Foundation for the Spinal Cord Injury Unit's use.

The most difficult part of the design, I think, will be writing the instructions for placing the pocket to be sewn into the throw. I got it wrong several times before I got it right, just in the doing yesterday, so writing it will be an interesting challenge. If it is truly never to late to learn, then I guess it is not too late to become a technical writer, even if it is just for my own patterns.

I am so grateful today that the heat wave has ended and I am making progress on projects I have been planning for several months.

Fourth of July, 2011

Technically, I am a day early. Once the Fourth of July was a holiday. Now it is a long weekend. For a while last week, it looked like it was going to be a winter holiday complete with cold and rain. Now it has warmed up considerably. Better for watching fireworks displays and back yard barbecue. I am engaging in neither--will probably watch the Capitol Fourth special on PBS.

I love red, white and blue not only for the signal of patriotism that they bring to mind but because they are a gorgeous color combination. My knitting project is a red, white and blue lap throw designed to be sized for use by a wheelchair user, like me. (Will post soon.)

It is difficult to get excited about red, white and blue, in the patriotic sense, this year, because the economy is still such a mess and so many other problems abound, here and abroad.

It is also difficult not to be cynical about patriotism because there has been so much co-opting of it by politicians serving their own interests and not the common good.

The spectacle of California's annual budget debacle, which occurs ominously close to the Fourth of July each year, was mitigated by the fact of a signed budget. It would have been a better budget if the sales tax and vehicle registration taxes had been extended.

A total government melt-down at the Federal level looms large and threatening if the debt ceiling is not raised. This must be done. I am disgusted by the posturing of politicians who threaten the well-being of every one of us by their blustering.

Social Security and Medicare, the biggest fuller of budget deficits, could, I believe, be fully funded, with a small increase in payroll tax or getting rid of the cap on the amount of income that is taxed. (In other words, tax all of it--the percent might actually decline.) What a federal budget drain could be eliminated if we would just pay for what we need! Instead, we cut providers payments and threaten deeper cuts and changes in these programs. We have a government that creates dependency and then threatens to pull the programs away--not a great model of a "social contract".

We then feel helpless to do anything about it, although we can do more than we think by participating in government. Voting, writing letters, joining caucuses and action groups, setting up new co-coalitions are all things that we can do.

It's also a good time to think about buying American, and buying small. Patronizing local businesses and helping to set up more. How can we invest in one another, not in giant corporations?

2011 is such a time of discouragement and disgruntlement with our economy and our government that it is difficult to feel celebratory. Maybe we need to look to the Founding Fathers, who got together and did something about it.

What can we do after the bunting comes down and flags are put away and grills are cleaned? Let's make something together--a more civil, decent, healthier and more economically viable America.

I hope so. I think we still can. After we give thanks for the Declaration of Independence and for our freedoms and our democracy, lets get involved in it again.

I am grateful today to have the Fourth of July to celebrate. I am grateful too for beautiful weather, for a friend who is expected this afternoon and for friends who visited on Friday. Grateful, for the opportunities to think about what can be done and hopeful that more will be accomplished.

Today, this eve of the Fourth of July, I am asking myself what more can I do, how can I become more involved?