Have You Seen This One?

I saw this movie last year and just loved it.  It's a french film which requires a little more focus because of the subtitles.  Audrey Tautou plays the story's central character, Mathilde, a young french woman whose childhood sweetheart has gone off to fight in the great war.  Army records show that he was executed at the front for deliberately maiming himself so that he could be sent home.  He is presumed dead but she refuses to believe it.  A fantastic mystery unravels with twists at every turn and flashes between Mathilde's peaceful world and the miserable trenches at the front line.

I found myself totally swept away by the cinematography and was inspired by Tautou's character.  Charming and tenacious, she was determined to use any means to find out what really happened to her true love.   I fell in love with the understated tone, the gripping mystery and the wonderful characters. In addition, I'm a sucker for period films.



Jenny Rosie's unofficial, non rhyming or reasoning rating.....excellent!


Thanks for reading

  jenny rosie

 

Baby Blues.....

 

Our Kids have big blue peepers.  I spend a great deal of time just staring into them.  It's like drinking a tall glass of the coolest, most soothing water. 

    

   jenny rosie

Finger Lakes Fridays

On Fridays I'll be postings pictures of one of my favorite things...the place where I live.

The Finger Lakes region is located in central NY....

most of its residents haven’t even been to New York City.

There are eleven lakes in all, some as long as 40 miles, none wider than 3 miles across, and each boasting its own unique beauty. The region is dotted with small cities, quaint villages and tiny crossroads called hamlets.

St Mary's

I took the kids for a walk last week in the unusual warmth.  The clocks had sprung forward and it was still light at 7pm.  The kids were in their jammies and snuggled under a blanket in the wagon.  I'm not sure a blanket was necessary but I don't think my deceased grandmothers would approve of taking the children outside in March without a blanket. 

We walked around the block circling our house and I caught some different views of the beautiful St Mary's that sits behind our house.  She's one of the things that sold us on our house;  her name is Mary like my mom, the trees in our backyard frame her steeple for a perfect view out the back door, and my son thought her round glowing clock face was the moon for the first two years we lived here. 

Thanks for reading

   jenny rosie

Finger Lakes Fridays

On Fridays I'll be postings pictures of one of my favorite things...the place where I live.

The Finger Lakes region is located in central NY....

most of its residents haven’t even been to New York City.

There are eleven lakes in all, some as long as 40 miles, none wider than 3 miles across, and each boasting its own unique beauty. The region is dotted with small cities, quaint villages and tiny crossroads called hamlets.

I love that we're relatively undiscovered.

I'm no professional photographer and I don’t have any fancy editing software so the subject matter will simply speak for itself.

Winter in Seneca County.

We do a lot of commenting on the weather here in Central NY;  mostly complaints in the winter months.  A blue sky is a bit of a rarity and snow falls most days.

The inhabitants are frequently coming down with infirmities such as cabin fever and the winter blahs.

I think it's quite beautiful this time of year.

Color flies south for the winter and shape, form and texture take a turn in the spotlight.

One notices things one would not notice when all is alive with green

Foliage gives over what it's been hiding.

A sense of quiet comes over the landscape.  Even the sound of tires is hushed on snowy roads.

  

A soul finds its self stretching and sighing during this season.  I was driving around today, wishing I was a great story teller.  I would let my imagination craft a tale of the pictures I took.

about the family that owns this farm

I don't think this barn was built on this spot.  And where did the circular scrapes on the paint come from.

Ah the old Lehigh Valley Bridge

And what's this guy been up to?

Happy Winter

   

  jenny rosie

In the Spirit of Prioritization

It's a new year and time for fresh starts.  As much as I've tried to capitalize on the January 1st thing, I think my life sort of has more of an ebb and flow than any kind of cycle.  ANNNNNDDDD I don't have very much control over when a new idea or self examining thought will take me.  I'm calling it my left brain liberation.

Well I had one of those thoughts the other day....

My husband will tell you that there is nothing finished in our whole lives (except having more children).  This is what my kitchen looked like a few weeks ago

No cupboard doors, half finished ceiling and electric. 
My recipe project that I started with so much gusto in July....stalled.
The baby's room....sittin' there
My son late for school.....twice last week (I drop him off)
Table Cloths from Christmas....unwashed in the laundry room


So as I was ebbing the other day, a thought occurred to me....

Well first I posed the question...."What am I doing wrong?  It's not for lack of trying.  I work really hard all day long."

Then the answer, "Its simple....a matter of prioritization".  Prioritizing does not make a super mom.  Prioritizing ensures that the things that need to get done today, get done.

So here are some examples.

Sure the cupboards need a second coat of paint but first....the grocery list.

or

Please don't try to squeeze one more thing in this morning, get your kid to school on time.

or

Hey blogging is really important but why don't you play with this cute baby instead.

This is me learning how to manage my household...you can laugh.....it's okay. 

When I look at my house/kids/life on any given morning it's so incredibly overwhelming

So now I step into my day with the thought, "In the spirit of prioritization....."
or I make commitments to others with the thought, "In the spirit of prioritization...."
or I tackle my housework with the thought, "In the spirit of prioritization...."

It's not the glam life of doing what I want when I want but I see the value of ordering my day.  I think it'll make me a better friend, mom and wife....

.....I'll keep you posted

Thanks for reading

   jenny rosie

O No You Dit'nt

O yes I did.  Well it's been about a month now and I have some very big news to share.....

My dreams have come true!  I'm officially a stay-at-home mom! 

That's right, a saty-at-home-ity-home mom.

I remember being a little girl playing with dolls and pots and pans and I thought to myself "I wanna be a mommy when I get bigger."

 I did well in school and my head filled my future up with college and career.  Staying at home got smushed behind all of that.....

but it was still there....

When I got married, I thought about how nice it would be to have little ones at home and spend my days caring for them.  There were so many obstacles, though.

     How could we possibly afford to live on one salary.....my husband is a hard worker but he's no brain scientist.

    I'm not really domesticated.  In fact I'm sloppy and a pretty poor cook AND when babies look at me, they generally tend to cry. 

but it was still there...

I was mostly afraid to dream my dream.  I was getting older; past the age that I pictured stay-at-home mommies to be.  I didn't want to talk to Bill about it because he would feel so bad that he couldn't give me what I wanted (husbands really want to do that for their wives, you know).

Our son was born in 2005.  I was working 25-30 hours per week and  thought, "This isn't too bad.  It's kinda how I always pictured it."....wow the stuff dreams are made of, right?

Last fall, Bill and I celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary.  We, of course, couldn't "afford" to do anything major because I was only working 25-30 hours per week.  We spent the weekend at this beautiful place

We came away rested and inspired....the two best indicators of a good vacation.  During the weekend, I summoned my courage and tested my faith.  I told Bill my dream; I mean really told him.  I told him that I wanted to stay home and that I wanted him to be okay with that. 

I saw that my desire had to be changed into his desire too....not just for my husband to give me what I wanted but to see the benefits though his own eyes. 

We prayed because that is what we were reduced to.... Reduced because the equation was there but the numbers were not adding up. 

So this story turns out to have a happy ending.  We waited on our heavenly father patiently for over a year but it wasn't hard.  You see, he needed that time to prepare us for what was ahead (which is a whole other blog post).  When he gives us the desires of our hearts, it's a big deal to us.  We want to be the best possible caretakers of these dreams because they come around but once in a lifetime.

And me?  I'm so very excited about having a dream come true.  I'm soaking it in, I'm relishing the moment and most importantly I'm at peace.  As I reflect on this whole process, I see that it was not  painful as I thought it would be.  I'm not a good waiter.  The beautiful part was that I was never really waiting.  Deep down I knew that the time was not right and that when it was right, everything would just fall into place...

  

Thanks for reading

    

  jenny rosie



What Grandma Gave Me....Her Apple Sauce Recipe

Bill's Grandma lived to the ripe old age of 96.  To me, she was the idyllic homemaker.  Her house which she lived in for the first 95 years of her life, was always spic-n-span and it seemed like she was forever creating something in her pink kitchen. 

 My own grandmothers never lived close to me so when I married Bill, I latched right on to his grandmother.  She passed so many things on to me before she died knowing that, like her, I was sentimental and would treasure them always. 

One autumn afternoon, Grandma showed me how to make her famous applesauce.  "How was it famous?' you ask.  Well of course it was the centerpiece at St John's Episcopal Church's pancake supper every winter.  When you sat down to eat in the church's meeting hall, there was no syrup on the tables, just grandma's applesauce.  She never added sugar; she knew the secret to naturally sweet applesauce.

Grandma's first instructions that afternoon.were to purchase three kinds of apples....Greening, Spy, and Cortland....equal amounts of course. 

Rinse them well

Here's the cool part....Dont peel them; just cut off the stems and the "butts" and quarter the apples

Put just enough water to cover the bottom of your kettle and fill it with the apples

Cook the apples on medium heat checking to make sure the water never boils completely dry at the bottom of the kettle.  Ignore that, while they're cooking with seeds and peels, they look like brains. 

When the apples are soft (it only took about 30 minutes), take them off the heat.

Enter "The Ricer"....this is another super cool thing she passed on to us

That wooden paddle fits right into the cone and separates the flesh of the cooked apples from the seeds and skins as it is pushed out of the hundreds of tiny holes of the cone.

The seeds and skins are left in the cone...

And this is what you end up with.  I wish my camera could do the color justice.

So, you see, the secret to the sweetness is in the core.  The sweetest part of the apple is around its seeds.  Leaving the skins on gives the sauce such a beautiful color.  Could applesauce be any easier to make?  No peeling or coring. 

Thanks, Grandma (she says with her mouth full of apple sauce)

  

  jenny rosie