by jphilo | Nov 6, 2025 | Daily Life, Family
I choose writing over crafting and decorating almost every time. Except for when my grandkids request a crafternoon or remind me that __________________________ (fill in the upcoming holiday here) is coming and we need to decorate.
Then off I go to Hobby Lobby or Michael’s in search of craft projects that are 1) simple, 2) related to the upcoming holiday, and 3) don’t use glitter. Before each shopping trip I ask Hiram to get down the box(es) of decorations related to the holiday, if such a box exists. That’s a big if.*
My pre-Thanksgiving 2025 foray to Hobby Lobby hit the motherlode, which consisted of 2 crafts that met all three of my requirements. I brought home the loot, dropped it off with Hiram and the grands, and left on a final errand. By the time I got back the pumpkin project––which everyone agreed was hardly a craft at all as it consisted slotting together each pumpkin’s 2 pieces without cutting or gluing them––and were finishing the last of 6 turkey puppets. The first 4 puppets the kids made came out like this:
At that point their interest waned, they tossed out the instructions and made these:••
Then they turned the remaining feathers into this:***
Today, after spending 6 days recovering from the energy I had expended to avoid doing the actual crafts, I decorated the living and dining rooms for Thanksgiving with the fruits of their labors. Now I’m going to bed to rest. It will take from now until the Sunday after Thanksgiving for me to build up enough energy to shop for Christmas crafts and decorate the tree, not to mention determining why my grandchildren enjoy doing both.
Sometimes I wonder if their DNA contains any of mine.
*As of this writing, we have 1 small box containing Halloween and Thanksgiving decorations, many boxes of Christmas decorations, and no others. Like the title of this post states, decorating is not my thing.
••I just realized that the puppet on the right is upside down. That’s what comes of using feet for eyes, kids!
***Is it just me or does it look like a weird cyclops flower to you as well?
by jphilo | Feb 27, 2025 | Daily Life
Pie advice from a seven-year-old has become a regular thing at our house. Our granddaughter, who always has a lot to say about pie in general and cherry pie in particular, turned seven in January. Between that momentous occasion and many recent opportunities for pie making and baking, our newly minted seven-year-old has been cranking out pie pronouncements at record speed. Here’s a recap:
- In late January I made and froze six unbaked pies. Then I made the scraps of crusts into what we call “pie crispies.” The seven-year-old smelled them baking and came up to declare, with a sparkle in her eye, “I know what we’re having for dessert tonight––pie!” After I explained dessert was not on the menu, she shot me a look that would have killed had she not been offered some of the aforementioned pie crispies as a snack.
- Hiram and I hauled our camper home from points south on Valentine’s Day. We spent the rest of that day and all of the next unpacking, doing laundry, and recovering. On the 16th I baked a cherry pie as part of a late holiday celebration with the family. “It’s delicious,” the seven-year-old said after eating two pieces. “When are you making another one?”
- Last weekend I took four of the six frozen pies out to thaw and then baked them for my niece’s baby shower. (This is the same niece who asked my sister and to make over 20 pies for her high school graduation party and several years later, more than 40 for her wedding.) Two of the pies were cherry and two were apple. When we brought the leftovers home afterwards, the seven-year-old declared, “Can I have all the cherry?” The answer was “You can have one, just like everyone else in your family.” She looked at me and advised, “Next time, make more cherry.”
- The Monday after the baby shower, I took the final frozen pies out to thaw––one cherry and one apple––and baked them to serve at our church small group that evening. When the seven-year-old came home and learned they wouldn’t be served for our family’s dessert, she had this advice. “Next time. make an apple, a cherry, and one other kind like maybe strawberry. Give your friends the apple and strawberry, but save the cherry for us.”
So there you have it. Pie advice from a seven-year-old. Her advice has created within me a huge well of gratitude toward a sovereign God who scheduled her arrival in this world for 2018. I mean, can you imagine the free advice she would have bestowed during the pie baking extravaganzas before my niece’s graduation and wedding pie extravaganzas?
I shudder just thinking about it.
by jphilo | Apr 6, 2022 | Daily Life
Lower your grocery bill with this money saving secret. It was handed down to me by my mother. She learned it from her mother during the Great Depression. I passed it along to my daughter and son, and now I am sharing this family secret with you.
Save your bacon grease.
When I saw these tubs of bacon grease on the grocery store shelf next to the lard, I burst out laughing. Then I saw the store was charging $7.99 (which according to an accompanying sign was a price cut) for 14 ounces of bacon grease. That’s when I knew it was time quit guarding our family secret and speak up.
Save your bacon grease.
Whether you fry your bacon in a pan or bake it in the oven, simply let the pan and the grease cool. Then pour it into a container and store it in the fridge. It will harden up and look like this:
As the BaconUp label says, bacon grease can be used to fry, cook, and bake. Here are a few ideas to get you started.
- My mom always used it instead of butter when frying eggs.
- She also used it instead of oil in pancake batter.
- It is the secret ingredient in her fabulous Franklin Chex Mix.
- I use it when frying hash browns.
- My daughter has even used it instead of lard in pie crusts in savory recipes like quiche.
For those of us with dairy allergies, bacon grease can be a life saver and a flavor enhancer. No matter what your dietary needs may be, saving bacon grease really can lower your grocery bill. So can other recipes found on this blog, most notably bone broth. It’s another example of old-fashioned suddenly going vogue.
I am so in vogue!
by jphilo | Nov 20, 2020 | Daily Life
Once a teacher, always a teacher.
Those words were ringing in my ears today as I created a sequencing activity to send to my Wisconsin grandkids, ages 8 and 5. It was precisely the sort of thing I often set out for my country school kindergarten through second grade students in the 1980s.
Because once a teacher, always a teacher is absolutely true, I’ve created virtual version of the activity for Gravel Road readers. Below are 7 pictures of our home addition construction taken on 7 different days. See if you can put the pictures in numerical order from first to last. Each picture has been assigned a letter to make the process easier. Those who leave their answers in the comment box below will be given a virtual smiley face sticker.*
Like I said, once a teacher, always a teacher. And this teacher knows that students of all ages love stickers.
Picture A:
Picture B:
Picture C:
Picture D:
Picture E:
Picture F:
Picture G:
*If any of my former country school students complete this activity by themselves or with their own school-aged children, they receive not just 1, but 2 smiley face stickers.
Sign up to receive website updates and See Jane Run! book news on Gravel Road’s home page right under the picture of–you guessed it–the gravel road.
by jphilo | Oct 8, 2020 | Daily Life
Life with my heart in two places began in 1978 when Hiram and I moved from the ice cream capitol of the world in Le Mars, Iowa to a remote part of South Dakota. I was homesick for paved roads, orderly green fields of corn and soybean, and living close to the library and stores. And my family. I really missed my family.
Not surprising since I was twenty-two and away from home from the first time.
The surprising bit began seven years later when we moved back to Iowa, and I became homesick for South Dakota. My homesickness continues to this day, even though my morning walks along the lake are filled with beautiful views. I snapped this picture and imagined what fall must be like in Harding County as the cottonwoods drop their leaves against a backdrop of rugged buttes and short grass prairie.
Life with my heart in two places won’t end as long as I’m on this earth.
Writing fiction is the perfect way to cope with homesickness. Every afternoon I sit in our Iowa living room, open my work in progress, which on this day is Hear Jane Sing!, and start writing. Immediately I’m in the town where we once lived, surrounded by the children and families I still love. I can smell the crisp, fall air and almost touch the stars hanging low in a sky untouched by light pollution. When it’s time to fix supper, I return to Iowa where a trip to the grocery store for missing ingredients takes ten minutes or less.
So far as life with my heart in two places goes, this is the best of both worlds.
Sign up to receive website updates and See Jane Run! book news on Gravel Road’s home page right under the picture of–you guessed it–the gravel road.
by jphilo | Aug 26, 2020 | Daily Life, Recipes
When in a pinch write about pie. That’s my best authorly advice for wannabe writers when unusual life events blast their routines to smithereens.
A plethora of unusual life events also explains why this post features pie instead of an update about See Jane Run! Here’s what made the short list
- The Iowa derecho. It did a number on our yard. Everything but the giant cottonwood in the east pasture has been cleaned up. The tree’s our late-summer-into-fall project that we’ll keep chipping away at.
- Grieving friends. A text came from friends during the weekend just passed about the unexpected and devastating loss of a family member. To preserve their privacy, I won’t go into details other than to say it wasn’t COVID-related. They’ve been texting updates, and each one leads to fresh tears.
- House construction. A crew arrived this past Monday before 7 AM. By noon they had constructed the forms for the foundation walls . At 5:30 they had emptied the contents of 4 cement trucks into the forms. Tuesday morning they were back at 6:30 AM to disassemble the forms. It was great entertainment for the whole family, but not conducive to writing. This modern process for building foundations is also not conducive for the hiding of dead bodies. I’ve rebranded the time lost to writing as research because it makes me feel better.
Okay, that’s enough of that. Let’s move on to pie. My recent Instagram post about taking a pie to neighbors who helped us out during the derecho was pretty popular on Instagram and Facebook. It came to mind when I didn’t have time or energy to blog about what I’d hoped to tell you about See Jane Run! this week.
A little voice in my head said when you’re in a pinch blog about pie because people love pie. So here’s what I have to tell you about pie.
- The crumb top apple pies I made, one for our neighbor and one for our family, were delicious.
- You can pulverize rolled oats into flour in the blender and use it instead of regular flour in the crumb topping to make gluten free apple crisp that’s almost as good as pie.
- To make the pie dairy free and soy free, replace butter with half Earth Balance vegan buttery sticks and half lard.
- Homemade pie crust made from Grandma Conrad’s Never Fail Pie Crust recipe is the absolute best. If you want to go vegan, you can use Crisco, but it’s not the same. Sorry about that.
Finally, here’s the connection between a post about pie to a cozy mystery blog. In one of the final chapters of See Jane Run!, Jane makes an apple pie and uses Grandma Conrad’s recipe for the crust. Because as Jane and I both know, it’s worth writing about when we’re in a pinch and when we’re not.
Sign up to receive website updates and See Jane Run! book news on Gravel Road’s home page right under the picture of–you guessed it–the gravel road.
