sawdust pie for thanksgiving.

 

If I composed a list of Mother Rabbit's favorite tried & true recipes, Sawdust Pie would make the Top Ten List.  It is an exciting cousin of Pecan Pie, but more intriguing.  Simple to make and more fool-proof than traditional pecan pie, Sawdust Pie is more fun to invite to the party.  You can make a game out of guessing what the interesting ingredients are.  Most guests probably won't guess the graham cracker crumbs or the coconut, but chances are all your guests will love it.

The first time I had this unique pie was at Patti's Restaurant in Grand Rivers, Kentucky.  You can serve it warm or chilled, but they topped it with real whipped cream and sliced bananas which continues to be the way I love to serve it.

If you are looking for something a bit different for your Thanksgiving table, give Sawdust Pie a try.

Mother Rabbit's Sawdust Pie

7 egg whites, unbeaten
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 1/2 cups pecans, chopped
1 1/2 cups coconut
9 inch pie shell

Mix all ingredients together and stir by hand.  I use the Cuisinart on the graham crackers, pecans and coconut to insure Small "sawdust-like" pieces.  Pour into unbaked pie shell.  Bake in preheated 325 degree oven until glossy and set (about 45 minutes).  Serve warm with sliced bananas and fresh whipped cream.

Happy Thanksgiving!

the 8.5 hour beauty tip.

Mother Rabbit's very first post on May 12, 2010 was about the importance of getting your sleep.  And guess what?  You are going to hear it again.

Back in 2010,  my initial post included these words:

I am convinced that the reason that many people are grouchy, unhappy, cranky, dull, bitter, discontent, and have bad attitudes or the blahs is from not getting enough sleep. I think most of the world lives sleep deprived.

I want you to remember to always get your sleep.

Next time you can't think of ten things to be thankful for in two minutes, ask yourself "How much sleep did I get last night?"

Very recently while perusing a fashion magazine, I honed in on an article about the new book Forever Chic: Frenchwomen's Secrets for Timeless Beauty, Style and Substance by Tish Jett.  Guess what one of the secrets is?  GET YOUR BEAUTY SLEEP. 

While Americans tend to pride themselves on functioning on 4-5 hours of sleep, French women understand that sleep repairs the body and minimizes the aging effects of stress.  (Remember how Mike's oncologist Dr. Bruce Haughey told us that the body heals while it is sleeping?  Our healing hormones are released only when we sleep - confirmed by world-renowned cancer surgeon and by a fashion magazine. Smile.)

Ponder this fun fact: The French sleep about 8.5 hours a night, according to a 2011 study by Organization for Economic Cooperation & Development, while a 2013 study by the National Sleep Foundation shows that Americans average closer to 6.5 hours.

Mother Rabbit is going to say it again - Make getting a full and restful night's sleep a priority.  The benefits are far reaching, but include a thankful heart, happier outlook and prettier skin!

icing on the cake.

 

I make it a point to not post the same things on my different blogs.     I am making an exception.

 

 INSPIRED HOME OMAHA magazine wrote about our home in the November-December 2013 issue that will be delivered to subscribers this week, and went online at the Inspired Home Omaha web site this weekend. We are humbled and giddy all at the same time.  This truly felt like icing on the cake for our house project.

Editor Chris Christen was gracious to feature us in her opening editorial on Page 6, and our article entitled "A Big House on the Prairie Gets a Loving Restoration" is on Pages 50-57. Use the link below to take a peek!

http://issuu.com/omaha-world-herald/docs/iho_novdec_final/1?e=3790930/5465668

Chris and I went to grade school and high school together. We rekindled our friendship over this process which has made this whole wonderful ordeal even more magical.

 Chris & Karen in Third Grade - Oakland Elementary School

 

Chris & Karen in 2013

It was great fun to see that Chris included 22 add'l photos on the Inspired Home Omaha web site. You can view them by clicking on the Amazing Spaces / More Photos (22) link.

http://inspiredhomeomaha.com/article/20131031/HOUSETOHOME01/131039679#loving-restoration

We really feel honored by the magazine article. Mike said "It feels like a fitting capstone to this project, and I feel that we experienced God's Grace by even getting the house done."  I started the Our Big House On The Prairie blog back in 2010 as a place to encourage Mike with the progress he was making on the house. Back when there was so much yet to do that you could easily forget that you had done anything!  Magic happened when readers followed us, and cheered us along the way with their loving comments & encouragement. 

While you are on the Inspired Home web site, I recommend you click on the SUBSCRIBE tab. For just $9.99 per year you can have this fabulous magazine delivered to your doorstep - 6 beautiful issues. As you can see, it is a gorgeous magazine chock-full of ideas & inspiration, published right here in the heartland.

Guess what else?  Mother Rabbit has been asked to contribute ideas & articles for the magazine.  If you look closely, you will see a couple things that I comtributed in this issue.  Chris is a real dear to allow me to be a small part of her amazing creative team.

the bathroom basket.

Mother Rabbit believes that every bathroom should come equipped with two things (besides toilet paper.)  Flushable wipes and a sturdy box of matches.

The flushable wipes need no explanation.  Matches are the best natural odor-eater you can find.  Light a match after you have finished your business, and no one will know what you have been up to.  It is easy, clean, and works like magic.

How?  It is the sulphur dioxide that is produced when you burn a match.  It turns out that our scent receptors are very sensitive to sulphur dioxide, and it saturates the smell receptors which inhibit our ability to smell 'other things'.   If you asked me, it seems to just absorb the odors right out of the air.

 

You will never find Mother Rabbit wanting to spray a chemical mist into a room that seems more toxic than what you are trying to hide.  You know what I mean.  If you are in a situation with no matches to be found and a cover-up is necessary, you have to stop inhaling - spray - and run from the room before the other nasty smell gets you.  So far, I have never fainted before exiting the room and deep breaths could revive me.

Gift yourself - and your bathrooms - with these handy items.  You (and your family) will thank me!

katie amend jewelry.

I couldn't be more tickled to announce the launch of Katie Amend Jewelry... just in time for holiday gift giving. 

Mother Rabbit lovingly calls Katie her adopted daughter.  She was the little girl from across the street when we moved to Dallas, and within hours of moving into our Stanford Avenue house,  Katie became Abby's best friend and one of my bunnies.

Please check out www.katieamendjewelry.com where you will find "stuff you can throw on with a white T-shirt or wear to a cocktail party".

A new mommy, Katie launched this new business because "nap time is craft time".  She has found a perfect creative outlet while her darling son Crawford snoozes.  Katie lives in Houston, Texas with her darling husband Cullen.  As well as being the leading car on the fashion train, Katie is also my go-to-girl for everything related to technology.  This girl's skill set is expansive!  And I couldn't be more proud of her.


A little jewelry story from Mother Rabbit:
Anyone who knows Katie has been admiring her jewelry choices for years.  She has a way of picking things out -  layering jewelry pieces - and putting things together that we all want to emulate!  Several years ago, my daughter Abby and Katie, along with another darling friend Ashlea headed to the isle of Capri.  These girls certainly had the adventures!  But my favorite giggles come from the stories of the almost 10 pounds of jewelry that Katie brought with her - and of course, couldn't live without on the trip.  The goods in "The Jewelry Bag" were shared by all the girls.  Their photos are evidence.  But the funny stories happened because Katie couldn't even carry her own bags up and down the ancient winding stairways around the city "because she packed so much jewelry".  Unfortunately, but fortunately for Katie, my Abby's bag got lost - and she became Katie's personal Sherpa. 

Every time I see Katie, she has a layered bracelet collection on her wrist that is so thoughtful & clever I want to steal it.  Part of the magic of her jewelry collection is the ability to wear the pieces in fanciful combinations.

Katie is a gem of a girl, and I hope you enjoy viewing her newest adventure.

knee bender.

In the spirit of Reformation Day, October 31, 1517 when Martin Luther made a courageous stand for the gospel - I am posting this story about another brave man who made history, and quietly stood alone doing it.

 

What were the first liquid and food consumed on the moon?

Article by Eric Metaxas:

 Forty-three years ago two human beings changed history by walking on the surface of the moon. But what happened before Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong exited the Lunar Module is perhaps even more amazing, if only because so few people know about it. "I'm talking about the fact that Buzz Aldrin took communion on the surface of the moon. Some months after his return, he wrote about it in Guideposts magazine.

And a few years ago I had the privilege of meeting him myself. I asked him about it and he confirmed the story to me, and I wrote about in my book, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About God (But Were Afraid to Ask).

The background to the story is that Aldrin was an elder at his Presbyterian Church in Texas during this period in his life, and knowing that he would soon be doing something unprecedented in human history, he felt he should mark the occasion somehow, and he asked his minister to help him. And so the minister consecrated a communion wafer and a small vial of communion wine. And Buzz Aldrin took them with him out of the Earth's orbit and on to the surface of the moon. He and Armstrong had only been on the lunar surface for a few minutes when Aldrin made the following public statement:

"This is the LM pilot. I'd like to take this opportunity to ask every person listening in, whoever and wherever they may be, to pause for a moment and contemplate the events of the past few hours and to give thanks in his or her own way." He then ended radio communication and there, on the silent surface of the moon, 250,000 miles from home, he read a verse from the Gospel of John, and he took communion. Here is his own account of what happened: "In the radio blackout, I opened the little plastic packages which contained the bread and the wine. I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me.  In the one-sixth gravity of the moon, the wine slowly curled and gracefully came up the side of the cup.  Then I read the scripture, 'I am the vine, you are the branches. Whosoever abides in me will bring forth much fruit ..Apart from me you can do nothing."

"I had intended to read my communion passage back to earth, but at the last minute [they] had requested that I not do this. NASA was already embroiled in a legal battle with Madelyn Murray O'Hare, the celebrated opponent of religion, over the Apollo 8 crew reading from Genesis while orbiting the moon at Christmas. I agreed reluctantly.

"I ate the tiny Host and swallowed the wine. I gave thanks for the intelligence and spirit that had brought two young pilots to the Sea of Tranquility.  It was interesting for me to think the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the very first food eaten there, were the communion elements.

 

And of course, it 's interesting to think that some of the first words spoken on the moon were the words of Jesus Christ, who made the Earth and the moon - and Who, in the immortal words of Dante, is Himself the "Love that moves the Sun and other stars."

 

 

A true knee bender.

dressing your house for the season.

Since we all like to spruce up our wardrobe with the change of seasons, don't we owe our house the same courtesy?  Mother Rabbit recommends that you carve yourself a little "outfit change" budget for your home several times per year - maybe spring, fall and Christmas.  I am not talking about a total-makeover-sort-of-thing.  I am talking about adding a few seasonal accessories for interest - and for fun.

For inspiration, you might want to peruse some magazines or explore Pinterest.  I personally make a visit to my local Pottery Barn store to see what they doing with the current season.  I never cease to be inspired about something, and I like when it mixes and matches with what I already have around.  I have decided that I am "giving myself permission" to spend x-amount of $ dollars every season, and it is not as much as you might think.  The point is, whatever your budget, slowly build a great collection with your seasonal purchases.

Just for fun, I will show you what I did for Spring and Fall this year...  For starters, I stand back and view my living spaces.  What am I tired of? What looks tired? What would make this room feel like Spring (or Fall) was approaching?  What inspiring thing did I just see that I would like to try?  These are all questions you might ask.  Then, I just start moving stuff around and playing.  I actually "pretend" that I am a decorator and know what I am doing!  I ask myself 'what would Shelli Holechek try?'  And sometimes it works.  I just move and play and try things until it feels right.

Here is the "change of clothes" that happened at my house this SPRING...

 

 For the most part I just moved things around for a fresh look, and pulled out all the glassware I could find because the clean & sparkle said "fresh season ahead"...

 

 My favorite seasonal purchase was pears.  A dozen fresh looking pears.  They are from Pottery Barn and look so real that I am still tempted to check. 

 

 The fun about Spring is that you can have fresh flowers straight out of your yard for a blast of color.

 

I also purchased new pillow covers for the sofa.  Washable ones.  Because in the spring & summer, sometimes sweaty kids plop down on the sofa.  This pattern from Pottery Barn was in the bed linen section, but I couldn't resist the yummy print.  The pears and this bold & cheery print made the house seem ready to welcome the new season.



And this FALL...

 

It was as easy as adding pumpkins for some fabulous fall color.  I like to use real pumpkins.  They make fabulous 'fake' pumpkins now, but I think it is hard to store them without getting them beat up.  There is something about having the real fruit of the vine that shouts "Happy Fall to All!"

Out with the summery pears, in with the cool heirloom pumpkin!

My seasonal 'plurge' this fall was the pumpkin pillows for the sofa.  I love them, and the warm fall-feel they brought to the room.  I went into the PB store with my $25 off your $50 purchase coupon, and walked out with the pumpkin pillow covers.

 

No one can properly decorate for fall without a fall scented candle.  This one is my new favorite:  Yankee Candle Salted Caramel.

Again, I moved stuff around and did this in the dining room.  I dug through some old fall decor and found the 'vintage vine' that I wrapped around the candle inside the hurricane.  Then I spotted the fall leaf boughs (in corner in mercury glass) that I found on super-sale two summers ago in Dallas at PB.  The very large leafy stems were originally priced at $49.50 each, now priced for clearance in the middle of the summer at $1.99 each.  I blew for three.  Just tickled I remembered I had them!

In the kitchen, I started with an antique wooden bowl where I placed gourds that I grew in my own garden.  Then a added a squash from Hannah's garden, and some finds from walks with the grand kids.  My fall decorations make me smile.

It is not too late to give a room a 'change of clothes' for fall!  Pick one corner of your house and help it shout "Fall is here and it feels so good."  You might surprise yourself with the festive flair you can add with a pumpkin and a candle, even on a shoestring budget.