This afternoon, Jeff and Samantha figured out how to make a basket from grapevine trimmings. After searching for grapevine basket images on google and closely examining willow baskets from Tina’s collection, they just made one:
After dinner Jeff decided to keep working on another basket, on the back porch this time – apparently basket weaving had created quite a mess in the kitchen earlier. It was a relatively warm evening, and they already had a lot of cut vines. What can I say – one can never have enough baskets….
Here are some other things we had made from grapevines previously: decorations around a rustic birdhouse (Jeff made this from old weathered barn boards), and a grapevine Christmas tree (really a re-purposed tomato cage, wrapped closely in grapevines and embellished with a string of brown wired fairy lights)
A little side benefit from growing grapes is an abundance of grapevines that need to be trimmed off every year. We’ve been getting better at making wreaths – one at a time…
The largest wreath we made so far was measured around the outside of our round patio table. We used an old woven wire fence panel to support the wreath. When we had wrapped sufficient vines to make the wreath the size we liked, we fastened the wreath to the fence panel with wire. We then cut around the outside and inside of the panel with wire cutters, basically making a wire form on the back of the wreath to keep it stable. We then fastened several strings of brown wired fairy lights to the wreath. Duff and Caleb helped to get the wreath positioned at the peak of the barn – climbing to the vent from the inside of the barn, they lowered a rope, which we used to pull up the wreath. Inside the barn a very long extension cord with a timer connects the light strings of the wreath to an outlet.
We also made some smaller wreaths and Lars is getting rather good at it:
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| Wreath underneath bell |
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| Wreath wrapped with bells |
Here is a recipe for some incredibly good, soft and cake-like pumpkin cookies with caramel icing, courtesy of my friend Robin:
Robin’s Pumpkin Cookies
Ingredients:
Cream sugar and butter, stir in pumpkin, egg and vanilla. Sift remaining dry ingredients and add to batter. Stir in nuts and raisins.
Drop by heaped teaspoon onto cookie sheet and bake at 350 degree F for about 12 minutes. Let cook and then spread icing (below) onto cookies.
Caramel Icing:
Combine butter, milk and brown sugar in a small pot and bring to a full, rolling boil (the kind that cannot be stirred down). Boils for 2 minutes, stirring constantly. Cool and then add vanilla and powdered sugar – beat until smooth (an immersion blender works great for this)
When the boys returned from their hunting trip to Bedford yesterday, they not only brought a Christmas tree for the house, but also two scraggly white pine trees to use for decorations. Well – there are a lot of branches on two trees, and it started to rain before I could use all of the greenery. I did get the garland for the back porch done, by just using green wire to string branches together, and then wrapping a string of clear lights around the garland before hanging it.
Also made a small garland with all the left over short branches and used it for the archway into the back garden. The arch itself has white wired clear lights on it, so it will look nice in the dark as well.
Other branches that were too short or too scraggly I just stuffed into tin buckets or into other containers which I then placed into outdoor flower pots. (I do water these branches so they last longer – even outside)
Now that it is really raining, we are concentrating on the indoor decorations. This year, we used one of our “fabric” garlands around the mantel by the woodstove. (fabric garlands are made by cutting homespun fabric into narrow strips, and then cutting each strip into 4 – 6 inch pieces. These then get tied onto a string of Christmas lights) I used our cast-iron stocking holders to hold the garland in place.
