woken from her nap...photo taken with my iPhone4

Small Town Girl has a new side kick; a sweet little terrier mix named Rosie, as in Rosie the Riveter.

Rosie the Riveter

This tough little girl survived being abandoned in rural Missouri in the wintertime and living in a rescue facility in Bollinger County with forty-two other dogs. She’s never lived with a family before, but after just three days she’s nearly house-trained, she can sit, and she even knows to sit before I’ll pour her food for her.

The name Rosie reflects her disposition – she’s one of the sweetest dogs I’ve ever been around. So far everyone who’s met her has loved her, and she gets along well with people and other animals.

She likes riding backward in the car

She’s between four and five months old, and weighed ten pounds when we took her to the vet on Thursday evening after picking her up from the rescue shelter. We think she’s got Cairn and Jack Russell Terrier in her, though it’s possible there are other breeds in her mix as well.

Rosie has already added immeasurable value to my life, and hopefully I have to hers as well. I now have a partner in crime, someone to play with, and someone who loves to cuddle more than I do (and that’s saying a lot). Rosie will undoubtedly make future appearances in this Small Town Girl’s adventures, so come back for more pictures!

The Dough, all photos taken with my iPhone4

Upon unpacking the gingerbread house-making supplies, I promptly got to work mixing dough and preparing cookie sheets. I tripled the recipe, which claimed to make 2.5 dozen cookies, and still only made enough dough for a simple, small gingerbread cottage. So much for my grand plans of the Frank Lloyd Wright “Falling Water” replica. *sigh*

Clean Countertop, photo taken with my iPhone4

While the dough chilled on the back porch (the fridge was filled to overflowing with ingredients for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day dinners), I prepped the counter top so that I could roll and shape the chilled cookie dough.

Who Killed the Gingerbread Man?

Burying the gingerbread man in dough...Ooof!

When I was ready to roll the cookie dough, I discovered that my parents do not, unfortunately, own a rolling pin. Forced to improvise, I found one of my college drum sticks, cleaned it well, and began rolling the very crumbly dough:

Thank You, Vic Firth

Dough!

Holding the dough together proved challenging. I’d never baked gingerbread before, and I found myself struggling to keep the dough from falling apart as I tried to shape it into walls and a roof for my dream gingerbread home.

Luckily, despite its crumbliness when raw, the cookie dough baked firmly into four neat and tidy gingerbread cottage walls.

Four Walls, photo taken with my iPhone4

With walls complete, the roof went into the oven, and it was time to begin assembly!

Icing, Gingerbread and Cardboard Box Ballast (thanks Dad!)

This was the phase in the project when construction specialists were needed. I called in back-up, a.k.a. my Dad, the engineer. He taught me about ballast, using pieces of cardboard boxes and cans of Diet Sprite to help support the quaintly-crooked walls of the house.

Lessons in Ballast

A few canned goods, a little bit of icing, some coaching from my engineer dad, and several other items of “ballast” later, I had four standing walls. When the time came to assemble the roof, all hands were on deck (dad, mom, brother and me) to make sure everything held together.

While the roof ended up being a little bit too small, it was nothing a slew of Great Value pretzels sticks couldn’t solve.

Preztels and canned goods to the rescue!

Pretzel Roof

Completed Roof

Quite possibly the greatest part about this entire process was the point at which I accidentally made the first snowperson out of three marshmallows and a toothpick. Thanks to some accessories created by MommaGFunk, we ended up with a happy family of snow people living in the cozy gingerbread cottage.

Mom and Dad Snow People

Happy Snow People Family

Gingerbread house and Snow People Tenants (Jack & the Beanstalk live next door)

Arial View

So the gingerbread house didn’t turn out perfectly, but constructing it kept me busy on an otherwise stolid and snowy day in small town Missouri.  It feels good to cross things off of my bucket list, even when they’re things as simple as making a home made gingerbread house. The next time you have a slow day at home, why don’t you cross something off of yours?

]]> http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/2010/crossing-it-off-the-bucket-list-the-gingerbread-house-part-2/feed/ 3 http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/2010/crossing-it-off-the-bucket-list-the-gingerbread-house-part-1/ http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/2010/crossing-it-off-the-bucket-list-the-gingerbread-house-part-1/#comments Sat, 25 Dec 2010 20:48:05 +0000 MilliGFunk http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/?p=2947

The Good Stuff, photo taken with my iPhone4

I’ve always wanted to build a gingerbread house, and this year I finally did it.

Buying a gingerbread house kit would be the small town equivalent of saying “I want to build my own home” and then heading down the highway to buy your own prefab modular estate. There’s nothing inherently wrong with it, but it just doesn’t qualify as crossing that dream off of your bucket list.

Old-Fashioned Christmas Candy, photo taken with my iPhone4

In order to cross the gingerbread house off of my bucket list, I needed to build the house from scratch. I needed to shop for the ingredients, make the dough, assemble its walls, and decorate it by hand.

The urge to create said gingerbread dream house hit me while at the grocery store with my mom. The family had hit day three or four of sitting in pajamas, reading books and watching movies.

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m not good at sitting still for that long, and I was getting antsy. As previous posts (see homemade bread post) make evident,  baking is often my way of avoid stir-craziness.

Goody Goody Gum Drops! photo taken with my iPhone4

A quick Google search from my phone lead me to the following recipe for homemade gingerbread:

Ingredients

• 1 (3.5 ounce) package cook and serve butterscotch pudding mix
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1/2 cup packed brown sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

Directions

1. In a medium bowl, cream together the dry butterscotch pudding mix, butter, and brown sugar until smooth. Stir in the egg. Combine the flour, baking soda, ginger, and cinnamon; stir into the pudding mixture. Cover, and chill dough until firm, about 1 hour.
2. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Grease baking sheets. On a floured board, roll dough out to about 1/8 inch thickness, and cut into man shapes using a cookie cutter. Place cookies 2 inches apart on the prepared baking sheets.
3. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes in the preheated oven, until cookies are golden at the edges. Cool on wire racks.

(RECIPE SOURCE)

MommaGFunk and I acquired all necessary ingredients for the gingerbread house, so we checked out at the small town supermarket and  headed home to begin our gingerbread-house-making adventure…

]]> http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/2010/crossing-it-off-the-bucket-list-the-gingerbread-house-part-1/feed/ 1 http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/2010/deaf-helping-deaf-the-significance-of-philanthrophy/ http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/2010/deaf-helping-deaf-the-significance-of-philanthrophy/#comments Thu, 23 Sep 2010 18:36:13 +0000 MilliGFunk http://smalltowngirlsguide.com/?p=2600 My career may be in nonprofits, but I need reminders like this one of just how important philanthropy is – not just for the recipients of a volunteer’s time and resources, but for the volunteer himself.

My friend Dave Mills (a.k.a. @versadave if you’re a Twitter user) is partially deaf. In this post, Dave will tug at your heart strings and nudge you to be more giving with your time as he tells you about his experience volunteering through the United Way at St. Joseph’s Institute for the Deaf.

When’s the last time you volunteered? What’s that thing “in your heart, your life, your past, that you can use to help change the lives of others in a positive way”?

Thank you for this fantastic post, Dave.

Small Town Girl's Brooklyn Smoothie, photo by Small Town Girl

After several days working out of town, driving more than 70 miles to and from work each day for meetings, I came back to my office to find a brand new food processor sitting in an unopened box on my desk chair.

There was no note letting me know who’d left the gift for me, and when I asked around the office to try to learn who I should direct my thanks to, no one would take the credit. Ultimately, I left a thank you note on the office’s island countertop addressed to the “person who gave me the anonymous food processor”.

The Anonymous Food Processor, photo by Small Town Girl

To this day, I don’t know who it was who brought me the food processor, but I’ve already used it more times than I can count to make smoothies after my training runs.

Thank you to whoever gave me this anonymous gift. You probably knew you were going to give me some slicing and dicing and blending, but what you may not have known is that you’ve given me a little bit of hope, and you’ve made me feel really loved and cared about.

I don’t know much about butterflies, but I know that it’s not every day that a butterfly lands on your hand and stays there for several minutes. That’s exactly what happened during my Missouri float trip on Monday, and it was like A Small Town Girl’s Guide if Walt Disney were directing the screenplay.

This cool little butterfly with a partially broken wing landed in this small town girl’s hand and stayed there for the longest time. When a sudden movement by a friend scared the butterfly away, I thought that our moment had ended.

Little did I know that the butterfly, who returned to me a few seconds later, had other plans. Again, the butterfly stayed with me for several minutes before flying away.

There are moments in small town life that are nothing short of magical. I feel lucky to have had one of them on Monday afternoon.

On my list of things to do before I celebrate my 30th birthday is learn to make martinis. Considering that I love fresh fruit and that I love to make things from scratch, it’s not far-fetched that I’d attempt making my own blueberry-infused vodka to use in blueberry cocktails (martinis included) later this month.

I’m fascinated by the berries and the vodka, coexisting in this chilled 2-quart jar. The longer the vodka sits, the more the skins of the berries tint the vodka purplish-blue, so that each time I open my refrigerator I’m graced with a new variation on the same ingredients. The vodka and the blueberries are on a journey.

While the flavors of the blueberries and the vodka will eventually blend, the berries themselves remain firm. There’s something allegorical about this relationship that gives me hope that I can continue to adapt to rural Missouri without losing what distinguishes my life experiences from those of the friends and family who surround me here.

As with so many aspects of my life in Small Town Missouri, the vodka’s incubation tests my patience. It’s the slow change of the vodka and blueberries that fascinates me though, and so my experiment with homemade liquor has become a lesson in enjoying the process – of my kitchen concoctions, and also of myself.

Here’s what my porch looked like at the start of summer:

This was unacceptable. It was neither warm nor cozy; welcoming nor comfortable. This small town girl had her work cut out for her.

A couple of days of hard work, and this is what I turned my back porch into… Unfortunately, there’s not a good place for my porch swing, but that just gives me something to look forward to when I own my own home later down the road.

The house itself isn’t fancy, but the porch is a place of refuge now for me. There’s nothing else that brings the comfort of sitting outside after a long day of work, drinking something cold and talking with someone you love on  a small town porch. I hope that you have your own version of the small town porch; someplace that’s quiet and comfortable and safe for you.

Bradford Pear, photo by smalltowngirl

“Why on earth did you move from New York City to rural Missouri?”

I’ve been reading some C.S. Lewis lately, and he summarized very eloquently a part of my reason for moving “home” that I’d not yet been able to put into words:

…This is, I think, one little part of what Christ meant by saying that a thing will not really live unless it first dies. It is simply no good trying to keep any thrill: that is the very worst thing you can do. Let the thrill go – let it die away…and you will find you are living in a world of new thrills all the time. But if you decide to make thrills your regular diet and try to prolong them artificially, they will all get weaker and weaker, and fewer and fewer, and you will be a bored, disillusioned old man for the rest of your life…

-C.S. Lewis, from “Mere Christianity”

If I can find the thrills, the beauty and the intrigue in a life as simple as a small town girl’s life, then the world – and all the happiness in it -will be my own. Here’s to seeking out the greatness in the simplest of things. Here’s to life in Small Town, Missouri.

photo by smalltowngirl

Christmas is four days away, and I’m curled up in my pajamas with several inches of show outside. My best friend and I are spending this snowy December day experimenting with vegan cookie recipes at her parent’s home in the Chicago suburbs.

"Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar" Cookbook, photo by smalltowngirl

Our cookbook of choice today is “Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar,” and the first recipe we’re trying is for Peanut Apple Pretzel Drops. Peanut Apple Pretzel Drops include, among other things, dehydrated apple slices, crushed pretzels, crushed peanuts, flaxseed, and cinnamon.

Apples and Pretzels, photo by smalltowngirl

Neither of us are accustomed to cooking in her mom’s oven, so our first batch turned out a little bit crispy on the bottom.

Oops.

Crispy, photo by smalltowngirl

We were able to salvage the top half of each cookie in the first batch, and the second batch turned out well.

Road trips to Chicago to see friends is one of the many things that I’m beginning to see as an advantage to life in the Midwest. Our day together involved Peanut Butter Oatmeal cookies and Cranberry Walnut Thumbprints, too. You’ll have to wait until tomorrow to hear about those though. Happy Holidays!