parents | kimberly ah

May 24 2013

adventures, Forest Park, Oak Park, gardening, home is a 1970s apartment

It’s GROWING!

It’s been a rainy week here in Chicagoland, so gardening has been put on hold…the rain takes care of the watering, but we need to get in soon to pull weeds! BUT, we visited the garden quickly last night before the sun went down and I’m happy to report that WE HAVE PLANTS! And not just weed plants (hmmm…you know what I mean…) we have daikon and watermelon radishes, lettuce and cucumbers peeking out of the ground! Many a high fives were exchanged in the car after this picture was taken. I know we have a lot more growing to do, so don’t think we are getting over-confident around here, but it’s good to see things popping up. Thanks to Mother Nature for all of the good rain to help things along!

We have a busy, busy weekend planned. Tomorrow my parents are bringing my grandma up to see our apartment for the first time! I’ve been trying to clean and get our place into “show mode” and failing miserably. So the rest of my Friday night shall be spent mopping floors and dusting and trying to pretend the guest room looks okay (even though it is the retired furniture graveyard and full of Honor Flight Mail Call stuff!) I haven’t seen my grandmother in so long and we’ve never hosted her in our neighborhood, so I’m really excited to see her and my parents, too! We’re taking them to see our garden and to Portillo’s for an Italian Beef. Then Sunday we both work, then we are going to a potluck BBQ at the community garden and then we are hosting cocktails for our friend Karen’s birthday. And on Monday (Memorial Day here in the US), we both work (boo)…

I’m looking forward to a quiet week next week. Our wedding anniversary is coming up and I still need to finalize my plan for Naoto’s gift. I am wishfully thinking of making something for him…something out of wool or copper. (Those are the traditional gifts for the 7th anniversary.) I’ll keep you posted.

Have a good weekend! I’ll be back Monday

Tagged adventures, food, forest park, garden, gardening, parents

Apr 10 2013

5 Comments

celebrations, crafty adventures, gardening, Office Supplies

Garden Stamp

Shortly after I decided I had to sign up for the community garden (application still pending…) I came across this “From the Garden of” Stamp Activity Kit from Yellow Owl Workshop. I immediately bought it (which is very unlike me…I firmly follow the one day waiting period for all online purchases). I already have two Stamp Activity Kits (the Gift Tag and the Place Card, both gifts from Naoto) and I love them, so I figured having a garden stamp on hand might come in handy if I get to grow vegetables this summer. I optimistically imagined Naoto & I giving some fresh tomatoes and cucumbers to our friends in a brown paper sack complete with a hand-stamped tag. (Realistically–or pessimistically as Naoto calls it, I fear we will grow a garden of weeds and have nothing to offer anyone.)

My parents, on the other hand, are veteran gardeners with many years of success in their gardening gloves. My dad’s vegetable garden is enormous and overflows with produce throughout the summer. They give away a ton and can several vegetables each year. And he and my mom have quite the collection of perennials throughout their yard. Just when they think they don’t have any room for another plant, they fall in love with a new variety and magically find a place for it. (I talked my mom into buying an anemone just yesterday.)

So naturally with all that extra produce, I figured my dad could use some garden tags this summer. Using the green ink that comes in the kit (which, incidentally, is similar to StazOn because it works on pretty much any surface), I stamped a few tags (Martha Stewart for Avery manilla tags 4 3/4in x 2 3/8in, which are apparently discontinued…) and added them to his birthday gift (pistachios and this). It was a quick little project and one I hope to repeat for my own garden!

Tagged celebrations, crafts, diy, forest park, garden, gardening, office supplies, parents, rubber stamp

Mar 09 2013

3 Comments

Christmas, holidays, homemaking, in my library, what's for dinner

The BEST Christmas Gift

A long time ago, I was pilfering through my mom’s cookbook drawer searching for some recipe I’d loved as a kid. My mom hasn’t bought a cookbook in years. Nope, you won’t find a Rachel Ray or a Giada or a Barefoot Contessa book in her drawer. She does have plenty of old-school pamphlets filled with recipes promoting things like Philadelphia Cream cheese and Eagle Brand condensed milk and of course she has the Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook. (Does everyone have this cookbook? Naoto and I each brought one to the marriage and neither of us is willing to part with the copy we brought.) While I was looking through the drawer I found her old Methodist Church cookbook. I flipped through it finding all of the usual church cookbook fare: plenty of jello salads, punches and casseroles. I loved seeing familiar names from our small town and seeing which recipes my grandma and her church lady friends contributed. I told my mom that I wanted a copy of the cookbook.

Since the cookbook was published in 1984, I knew finding one would be pretty impossible. I sifted through eBay listings of church cookbooks for weeks, but gave up and kind of forgot about it for awhile. When we were celebrating Christmas Thursday, I opened a box that had some new kitchen towels and new measuring spoons inside and there it was, tucked under a kitchen towel–the church cookbook! Apparently my mom told my aunt that she was searching for one and my aunt offered up her copy for the cause! (Thanks, Aunt Karen!)

My mom and I spent a good amount of time looking through our books and discovering recipes that include outdated ingredients (Have you ever used Dream Whip before?), many cans of cream of mushroom soup, oleo (aka margarine) and lots of Jello. I’ve already picked out a few recipes to try. I’m starting with a Jello salad, since Naoto and I have been in a Jello groove lately and I’m super-psyched to see several lima bean salads and casseroles!! Limas are my favorite and who knew they were the star of so many dishes!!

Tagged books, celebrations, Christmas, food, holidays, home, homemaking, memories, parents

Mar 06 2013

1 Comment

adventures, celebrations, Christmas, crafty adventures, handmade=happiness, homemaking

Monogram Tea Towel

I whipped up a quick tea towel for my parents last night. It was a last minute craft, one where I didn’t even iron all if the wrinkles out of the tea towel…

I keep a stash of plain white flour sack tea towels in my closet for craft emergencies. (Mine are from Target, but you get the idea.) They are the first things I learned to embroider (I made a sushi towel for Naoto) and the fabric is thin but not too thin for little stitches. My mom has several of these towels that she’s had for years, and like most things, the ones made today are much thinner than the old ones. (They don’t make things like they used to.)

Because I wanted to keep things simple with a monogram (A for Adami, in case you didn’t put that together…), I just practiced writing a few cursive A’s until I found one I liked, then I traced the A onto the fabric with a Pilot FriXion Pen. I use the FriXion pens in my calendar, I love they way they write and the eras-ability factor. So imagine my delight when I heard from Mollie and read a great tip here that the ink disappears when it’s heated, making the FriXion pen perfect for embroidery and quilting (and probably other crafts). I didn’t have to worry about heating up my A to remove the lines because my 6-strand split stitch covered the thin (0.5) line perfectly.

Sidenote: I do have first-hand experience with the disappearing ink. I left my FriXion pen on my balcony on a sunny summer day last year and when I went back to use it again, the ink flowed clear instead of black. Huge bummer for me, but thankfully I had about ten back-up pens…

I think my parents liked it–my mom told my dad he should use it when he bakes bread–and I think the red variegated floss (Anchor #1206) matches their kitchen just enough. All-in-all I think a quickie tea towel makes a nice little gift, don’t you?

Tagged adventures, celebrations, Christmas, crafts, diy, holidays, home, homemaking, parents

Dec 20 2012

The Igloo Drive-In

Presley always tries to coax me into staying home when she knows I’m going away for the day.

On Tuesday I met my parents in Peru, Illinois for some Christmas shopping, eating and good ol’ hanging out. Peru is in the central part of Illinois, only about a half hour away from my parents’ home. It’s a nice place to meet because there is a little mall and plenty of stores without the traffic of Chicagoland. I did most of my Christmas shopping online or in my neighborhood this year, but there were a few things I needed from a big box store to round out my gift list.

The best part of the day was dinner. I finally got to try the Igloo Drive-In! My parents stopped there on their honeymoon forty years ago. Back then, car hops delivered their food to their car. It’s not like that anymore, but it’s still charming. The menu is small, but all of the drive-in classics are there. On the wall, they have maps where customers can pin their hometowns…people from all over the country have visited the Igloo!

I had a tenderloin sandwich and a homemade root beer (which I accidentally Instagrammed five times–oops). I love that the tenderloin came wrapped in parchment paper with a little toothpick and the root beer came in a frosty mug. Sometimes simplicity is perfect.

Tagged adventures, food, parents

Nov 26 2012

3 Comments

celebrations, holidays, homemaking, Thanksgiving, what's for dinner

my mom’s twinkie cake

When Hostess filed for bankruptcy the week of Thanksgiving (which, for the record, is very sad to me…even though I have probably only eaten five Twinkies in my whole life and even though hopefully some other brand might buy the product rights and the Twinkie may make its comeback in the future), I joked to my mom that she should bring her Twinkie cake for Thanksgiving dessert. I know, I know…we followed our completely traditional Thanksgiving meal with something completely nontraditional…it was delicious!

This is one of those old-school recipes that I loved as a child. Ahhh…the innocence of childhood…when I didn’t realize that blue can of Crisco was filled with artery-clogging hydrogenated oil…sigh…Now, as a semi-responsible adult, I am a label reader and I manage to talk myself out of many treats that list hydrogenated oil in the ingredients. I make an occasional exception (Chewy Sweettarts are one.) and to me, this Twinkie cake is one of the best exceptions.

This recipe comes from my mom’s recipe box, and her recipe says it comes from her mom’s kitchen. (We all have these recipe cards in our recipe boxes.) I’m sure my grandmother found the recipe somewhere else, maybe from one of those church cookbooks where recipes get passed around to all of the members of the tiny, small-town congregation. And, I should also say that this cake isn’t meant to be one of those fake-out recipes…it doesn’t taste exactly like a Twinkie. It lacks the weird sponginess and the sugary, light and fluffy filling. The cake (from a box-mix) is dense and moist and the filling is rich and creamy. It has the spirit of a Twinkie, but it is decidedly homemade (and delicious.)

Twinkie Cake

Box of Yellow cake mix
Prepare cake per directions.
Bake in jelly roll pan
Cool

For the filling:

5 tablespoon flour
1 cup milk
Cook over low heat until thick like paste. Cool

1 cup sugar
1/2 cup oleo*
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Crisco
1 teaspoon vanilla
Beat well. Cream together until fluffy.
Add the thick flour & milk mixture once cooled. Beat again until fluffy.

Slice cooled cake in half. Spread fluffy filling on half & then put remaining half on top.
Refrigerate. ENJOY!!

If you’d like to make a HoHo cake, use chocolate cake mix instead.

In spite of the fact that my dad ate three (!!!) pieces on Thanksgiving, we still had some cake leftover for Naoto & I to enjoy over the weekend. mmmm…

*oleo=margarine

Tagged celebrations, food, homemaking, memories, parents, Thanksgiving, Twinkie

Nov 23 2012

5 Comments

celebrations, holidays, Thanksgiving, Trader Joe's, what's for dinner

This was my Thanksgiving…

Another Thanksgiving is behind us…it’s all a little sad for both Naoto and me–we love hosting a party, even a small one of my parents and our friend, Santron. Even though the guest list was small, the food was plentiful! We had all of the classics: the turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, stuffing (we make this one every year–it’s Naoto’s signature dish!), green bean casserole (I caved for the classic, although we used the Trader Joe’s stuff and it was much lighter than the Campbells version!), fresh veggies (courtesy of Santron), Hawaiian rolls (courtesy of my mom) and Kathy’s grandma’s cranberry sauce…I made it on Wednesday and I am a cranberry sauce convert…the cognac makes it delectable!

For dessert, my mom made a Twinkie cake, in honor of the “late, great” snack.

The table was half planned, and half happy accident. On Wednesday night I cut a long sheet of kraft paper and made a table runner. I used my fancy gold paint to draw feathers and polka dots. My mom brought up some pheasant feathers (from my dad’s “feather collection”) that I used with my glittery votives to fill out the center of the table. I forgot to buy flowers so my mom mentioned my jade plant (purchased this summer at Trader Joes) as an option. It’s in a copper pot, so it was kind of perfect. (Well, probably not perfect for Sandra Lee, Queen of the Tablescape, but perfect for us.) I finished off the table with a tiny turkey, a gift from my parents earlier this fall.

For the place cards, I used acorns from this Paper Source garland kit (not available again until next fall). I was in a neutral & metallic mood apparently…