Just over a year ago, when I first started sewing, I came up with a list of things I wanted to make. At the very top of that list were new throw pillows, placemats and pot holders. In all that time, I’ve only managed to make one pillow.* The other items were left by the wayside as more exciting projects caught my attention in quick succession.

The home dec projects now have a new glamour for me. It’s possible the chilly weather we’re experiencing here in the mornings has reminded me of the approach of the cold, dark rainy months ahead and the need for bright and cheerful comforts.

I’d been hoarding a bunch of Joel Dewberry fabrics and thought it was high time to cut into them. They’ll be appearing in a lot of my next few projects. The pillow on the left was made by following Dacia Ray’s tutorial for a Log-Cabinish pillow. I recalculated the size of the pieces for my smaller pillow form. It was fun to make.

The pillow on the right was inspired by a project in The Impatient Patchworker. I’m hoping the free motion quilting becomes a little less stressful as I practice it more. I have a hard time keeping my loops smooth and rounded rather than sharp and pointed. I had to take a long lie-down after quilting that one. Luckily, I had some nice pillows to cushion my head.

The cooler weather is also making baking very appealing. I used up a little bit of zucchini, carrots and apples in these muffins. They’re good, but a bit like eating a thick vegetable slaw. I’m going to make something decadent and totally lacking in nutritional value next. Sometimes, you just need to indulge.

*Oops. I’ve actually made two other pillows. I forgot about the shark pillow.

It was going to be wonderful. The whole family would gather together, do something creative, laugh, tell stories and eat sensational food.

Nothing ever turns out quite like the vision that precedes it, does it? The first glitch in my plan for a family pizza baking night was Robert had to work. Luckily, he was able to work at home, monitoring his company’s servers from his desktop computer, but he wasn’t able to join in the cooking project.

The second problem was my ambition. Instead of using the standard recipe for the dough provided by my cookbook, I just had to make one of my extra wet but generally better than run-of-the-mill sorts of dough. Wetter dough produces better bread. Commercial bakeries almost always make their dough wetter than home bakers do because they can handle the sticky mass in their industrial mixers. Regular bakers like you and me often have trouble handling something that sticky. Being the curious sort of home baker that I am, I’ve experimented a lot with wet doughs and have grown accustomed to handling them; however, I should have known that it would not be fun for kids whose threshold for frustration is low.

Thinking I was giving the kids an especially clever tip, I told them to wash their dough-coated hands with cold water, which shocks the dough and makes it easier to clean up. Somehow, Claire thought this meant she wasn’t supposed to dry her hands, and brought drippingly wet hands back to the table where she continued to massage the dough. She did this over, and over and over again. Pretty soon, her batch of dough was soggy wet, a totally unmanageable heap.

Mom had to jump in to the rescue. I took over shaping the pizza dough. While I was doing this, Sam and Claire started to bicker furiously. Their father couldn’t stand the commotion and stomped out of the office and put the kids in time out.

So much for laughing and having fun!

I struggled to maintain my cool. I’m a hot-tempered person (something I’m not proud of), so I’m happy to report I kept a positive attitude throughout all this and was able to rescue pizza night from becoming a total fiasco. The kids, once released from time-out, came back and–wow–had fun adding the toppings to their pizzas. We kept it simple. Just a little sauce, some mozzarella, pepperoni and black olives.

We popped those suckers into the oven, and then, the fire alarms started going off! Wooo hoo! This was definitely a night to remember.

A few minutes later, after the alarms were silenced and the smoke cleared out, the pizzas were done. They looked fantastic. The cheese was bubbly and golden brown. The sauce smelled fragrant. The crust was puffy but not too puffy. And every inch of those pizzas was stuck to the bottom of the baking sheets. Dad had to come to the rescue at that point. He chiseled the pizzas off the pans, keeping them somewhat intact, and we could finally eat.

You know what? They were really, really good. The sauce was exceptional. I used a can of roasted tomatoes and followed a recipe for pizza sauce found in the River Cottage Family Cookbook. It was incredibly simple and incredibly delicious.

We’re going to have another pizza night and things are going to go more smoothly. We learned a lot this time around. Use normal dough. Liberally sprinkle the pans with cornmeal so the pizzas don’t stick. And, in the famous words of Douglas Adams, “Don’t Panic.”

I was motivated to hang a couple of inspiration wires after reading Amanda Soule’s book, The Creative Family. The kids LOVE this. Hanging their work with care shows an appreciation for their creativity and hard work. I’ve never seen such a flurry of artistic activity as I did after I hung up the wires and added some of the kids’ best work.

They’re taking their work as curators very seriously. The artwork has been much rearranged and added to and subtracted from since I took this picture. Making them responsible for displaying their work in an effective way has also made them more discerning about what makes a good picture and what would work in this space and what would be best displayed elsewhere. Currently, the kids are showing an “inspirationational people” theme on the wires: superheroes, mom, dad, siblings. It’s fantastic. Our refrigerator, on the other hand, is bedecked with a more eclectic batch of their creations, from crazy-looking cats to self-portraits.

Incidentally, if I ever met Ms. Soule in person, I’m afraid I might hug her for all the ways in which her book has inspired positive changes in our family life. First among those changes is starting each meal with what has become known here as “the thankful thing.” I often have tears well up in my eyes when the kids say something especially sweet and heartfelt. Last night, Sam was thankful for baking chocolate cake with his mom and sister, having his dad home after a long day at work and bringing home a cool library book. Claire was thankful for the good food we had to eat, especially the chocolate cake we made. I was thankful for having a good little girl who behaved so well while I was attending a tour for school library volunteers. There were a number of other children who weren’t nearly so patient or quiet (I can’t blame them, really–it was boring–but it was nice not to have to worry about Claire). Robert was proud to have a son who worked so hard to learn at school and was becoming an excellent reader. There were high-fives all around for this.

This is the decadently moist and tasty chocolate cake the kids and I made. They took great pleasure in watching their father eat a bite and declare it delicious–all the while knowing it had pureed beets in it and his aversion for that vegetable. After they told him about the secret ingredient, he swore he could taste the beets, but I’m sure it was just his imagination. I couldn’t taste them at all and it didn’t stop him from eating a healthy portion of the cake.