Father’s Day Mamaleh-style

| | Posted in Father's Day, Gifts | Tagged ,

Ack!  It’s June 2nd! And, in case you haven’t looked at your calendar yet, Father’s Day is Sunday, June 17th. If you’re like me and haven’t yet decided what you’re going to give your dad or husband this year, and want a little something with some jew-ish flair, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions for the hip MOT pop:

  • A fun kippah for those casual Shabbat dinners at home.  I found some fun sports ones at maybesew, SewingCircleBoutique and RachelTreasures.  I am not into sports at all, sorry, but this one’s for the Packers fans out there, you know who you are:
  • Or how about a “mensch” money clip from one of my favorite Judaica sites, Modern Tribe
  • Does your dad exist on drink coffee (or tea)?  How about a nice handmade “Aba”(“dad” in Hebrew) or “Saba” (“grandfather”) mug for him from AgruArtsCeramics.

Father mug in Hebrew 

 

Hopefully you now have a few unique MOT Father’s Day ideas for your dad or your husband. Happy Father’s Day!

Note: I was not compensated for this post in any way.  I don’t think any of these companies even know I exist. This is all just stuff I like and hope you do too 🙂

Happy Shavuot to the Lactose Intolerant!

| | Posted in Handmade Card, Shavuot | Tagged , ,

Chag Sameach!  I thought I’d whip up a cute little tag in honor of Shavuot which begins Saturday night at sunset.  Shavuot commemorates the giving of the Torah to Moses at Mt. Sinai.  Among all of the customs associated with the holiday, it is traditional to eat dairy foods which isn’t really working for me now that I am lactose intolerant.  So, I thought even better, I’d attach my tag to a nice pint of coconut milk ice cream.

Chag Sameach Gift Tag with Torah

For the tag, I used some Stardream paper (sorry, I don’t remember the color, think it’s the bronze), punched out the tag using a punch,  stamped the Torah and sentiment using a watermark pad (the Torah is from Paper Trey Ink Mazel Tov Stamp Set – one of the best Jewish sets out there; “Chag Sameach” (which translates to “joyous festival!”) sentiment from the Paper Trey Mazel Tov Additions set).  After stamping them, I embossed them using some pearl embossing powder.  I love how the combo turned out!

Chag Sameach Gift Tag

Are you doing anything for Shavuot this lovely Memorial Day weekend?  Chag Sameach!

Another Jewish wedding project

| | Posted in Wedding | Tagged , ,

Rehearsal dinner placecard with detachable hebrew button

All this thinking about our chuppah and wedding reminded me of another project that gave our rehearsal dinner a little Jewish touch. I ordered personalized buttons from Mazel Bride and then attached them to the place cards, simple rectangle tent cards. I designed the cards with MS Publisher and printed them at home on my regular inkjet printer on Paper Source red cardstock.  I got specific buttons for the Bride, Groom, Father of the Bride, Mother of the Bride, Mother of the Groom, Father of the Groom, Flower Girl, Best Man, and Maid of Honor (and maybe a few others I can’t remember.)  Our out-of-town guests were invited to the dinner as well as the rest of our family so their buttons just said “Family” or “Friend”. It made for a fun way for people to introduce themselves. I think the concept would translate very well to a bar or bat mitzvah or any party with a mix of family and friends.

Rehearsal Dinner Hebrew Pin

DIY Chuppah in Honor of My 6th Anniversary

| | Posted in Chuppah, Wedding | Tagged , , ,

Organza and PVC Jewish wedding canopyYou are all so smart!  Yes, indeed, when you combine PVC pipes, gold spray paint, yards of organza and iron-on seam tape, you get a lovely, easy-to-make, reasonably priced chuppah! For those that don’t know, a chuppah is a Jewish wedding canopy. It symbolizes the union of two under one roof and stands for their new home together as husband and wife. The chuppah is open on all sides, representing a dwelling in which family and friends will always be welcomed.

Organza and PVC Jewish Wedding Canopy

Today is my 6th wedding anniversary. Six years ago, in one of my earlier Jewish crafty moments, my husband (at the time my fiance) and I, (along with some help from my friend Suzanna), created this lovely chuppah that we were married under. My husband engineered the structural piece and helped me explain how he put it together:

The frame is designed around “3-way corner PVC fittings” available online: http://flexpvc.com/cart/agora.cgi?product=PVC-3-ways or at any big-box hardware store. The other materials are 1″ PVC tubing cut to the desired length and 1″->3/4″ threaded fittings to accelerate on-site assembly. In our case we used 4 ~7 foot poles and 4 ~5 foot poles. Painting takes longer than the entire design/assembly. Total cost including paint was well under $50. For the ceremony it was anchored using planters filled with rocks with flowers and greenery added. Although PVC production is not terribly environmentally friendly, our chuppah has been reused several times and is still holding up.  Sometimes I contemplate setting up in the yard for an afternoon tea but have yet to follow-through 🙂

Organza and PVC Jewish wedding canopy

As for the fabric, the organza was purchased from one of my favorite supply places, Paper Mart, who has terrific selection and prices on packaging and party-prep stuff. Suzanna and I cut a roof and then made four panels that we attached using iron-on seam to tape. We then cut each panel in half so that two smaller panels came together on each pole. It was then tied to the poles using ribbon (in our wedding colors of course). We enjoyed the chuppah even more by putting our sweetheart table underneath after the ceremony!

Organza and PVC Jewish wedding canopy

Hope you’ve enjoyed my little trip down memory lane of our fabulous wedding at Lake Union Cafe with these lovely photos of our chuppah taken by Beautiful Endings photography. Happy 6th Anniversary to my mensch of a husband!

Organza and PVC Jewish Wedding Canopy

Did you make your own chuppah? What did you use? If you have a picture, and feel like sharing, please do!

Challaaaaaahhhh!

| | Posted in Challah, Recipes, Shabbat | Tagged , ,

Honey Glaze Challah

Until this year, I’d never made challah before. Of course I love to eat it but the thought of making it totally intimidated me (probably because I remember one attempt by my mom when I was a kid did not resemble challah at all, sorry, mom). In an attempt to cook more and put my cookbook library to good use, I challenged myself at the beginning of the year to try one new recipe a week. For the most part I’ve kept up with the challenge, some weeks cooking less and some more.  But, what I’ve found is that trying different challah recipes has played a big role in the challenge and I’ve figured out that making challah really isn’t so scary and actually the process is rather therapeutic after a hectic week.

As I mentioned the other week, I love The Challah Blog as it has lots of fun innovative challah ideas and fantastic tutorials for braiding. But, so far my go-to challah recipe has been derived from Tante B’s “Famous Challah.” I’ve made my own addition to the glaze and also simplified her process since I am lazy efficient and like to rely heavily on my trusty Kitchen-Aid. In fact my Kitchen-Aid has gotten such a workout since the beginning of the year that my husband had to replace the grease inside (that has made it work even better and at some point, I’d be happy to share how he did it).

This recipe has worked really well every time I’ve made it at home (Seattle).  But, I even tried it in the desert (Las Vegas) where I was told bread just doesn’t rise right and it turned out great.  It’s not very eggy as far as challah goes but it is quite delicious, especially with the hint of honey on top.  So, if the idea of making your own challah scares you, I promise, it’s a lot easier than it looks so give it a try one of these days.  Happy baking!

Ingredients for 2 large challot:

7 cups of all-purpose flour
2 packages or 4 ½ teaspoon of dry yeast
2 eggs (1 for dough, 1 for glaze)
½ cup vegetable oil
1 Tablespoon salt
½ cup sugar
2 cups warm water
Honey to taste (for glaze – I love the specialty NW honeys available like blackberry)
PAM or extra vegetable oil (for bowl)

Directions:

1.  In bowl of stand-mixer combine 1 Tablespoon sugar (removed from the ½ cup), 2 cups warm water and yeast.Let sit for roughly 10 minutes until the yeast has dissolved and is foamy. It should go from the top picture to the bottom in about 10 minutes.

Challah

2.    Once yeast is nice and foamy, add the remaining sugar, salt and 3 ½ cups of flour.  Mix using the bread hook.

Kitchen Aid Mixer challah

3.    Add egg and oil.  Mix.

4.    Add remaining 3 ½ cups of flour slowly and mix using bread hook.You may need to scrape the dough off the hook several times and put it back in the bowl. Keep mixing until the dough has formed a nice ball and springs back when pressed with your finger.  If for some reason, it’s still too sticky, add a little flour.

5.    Spray a bowl with PAM (you can also swirl veggie oil on the sides but I find PAM oh so easy) and put the dough in the bowl. Cover with Saran wrap and a dish towel and put somewhere warm to rise. If it’s cold out you can turn your oven on to 150 and then turn it off and put the bowl in there to rise. The dough will look like the picture on the top. After an hour (or more), it should look like the photo on the bottom.

Challah

6.     When the dough has risen, give it a good punch down with your fists and then put it back to rise some more. Depending on how rough a week I’ve had, I may give it a second punch down but I haven’t found this critical in making this recipe work.

7.    After 2 hours, turn dough onto silicone mat to roll out.

8.    I use my hands to split the dough into two even sized balls – one ball for each loaf.  If you want to make three smaller loaves, as I did last week, just split it into three.

9.    Then with each of those balls, portion out the dough according to the number of braids you need. Here, I did 3-strand loaves but there are tons of options out there.

10.  Roll out each little ball on the silicone mat being sure to work out any air pockets and then braid directly on baking sheet covered in either parchment or silicone baking mat using whatever braiding style you prefer. (I recently upgraded to an extra-large baking sheet that takes up my whole oven that can hold 2 large or 3 small loaves. Now I just need to find the right size silicone baking mat for it!)

11.  Once the loaves are braided, cover them with a dish towel and let rise for 30 minutes.

12.  Preheat oven to 375°F.

13.  After allowing loaves to rise, beat remaining egg in bowl.  Using silicone pastry brush, lightly brush over each challah. Then drizzle honey on top, to taste and also brush on using same silicone brush.

Challah honey glaze with pacific northwest blackberry honey

14.  Bake for 25 minutes. Then, turn off oven allow the challah to sit in the oven for another 10 minutes.

15.  Remove and allow to cool on rack.  Enjoy!

challah

Happy Mother’s Day to my mamaleh!

| | Posted in Gifts, Jewelry, Mother's Day | Tagged , , , ,

Happy Mother’s Day to all the mamalehs and bubbes and tantes out there!  Today I wanted to share with you the gift I made for my mom.  Before I had my son Avi (almost 3 years ago), I was an avid jewelry-maker and even sold my jewelry but sadly it’s something I’ve done very little of in the last few years, in part because tools and small pieces do not mix well with babies/toddlers.  My mom has been wanting a new gabrielle renee bracelet for a while now and I’ve also been saving this beautiful star toggle for just the right occasion so I figured it was time to get creative.  So, using amethyst briolettes, mini apatite rondelles and sterling silver chain and wire, I created this: 

A simple, chic piece with a very subtle Jewish touch.  I love how it turned out and hope my mom likes it!  I may have to find some more of those star toggles… What did you get for Mother’s day, mamalehs?

Farmer Queen

| | Posted in Gifts | Tagged , , ,

Today is the beginning of a new chapter for my friend Andie  To celebrate her transition to full time farmerhood, I decided to make something befitting of her status as Queen Farmer; a woman who not only likes to dig in the dirt and hang with the animals, but do it with a little bling. You can read all about her adventures on Andie’s Farm.

Every good farmer needs to wear sun protection. So, I started with a nice simple cotton hat from Target. Then, I played with the layout I wanted in Silhouette Studio, keeping in mind the dimensions of the hat. I knew I wanted to overlay rhinestones over the word “farmer” so it took some fiddling around to get things laid out just right. Using flocked heat transfer, my first attempt with a different font choice (a version of Chevalier) was totally unsuccessful as the little stripes just came apart after I cut them with my Cameo. I ended up using a different font, the name of which is now totally escaping me. But remember when using heat transfer that you have to cut to the image in mirror so that when you iron it, it will read correctly.

As you can see, even this one proved a bit difficult with its delicate features but it ended up being easy to fix because the other thing I realized during this process is that laying a longer word across a curved hat is REALLY tricky. I ended up going with plan B and ironing it on one letter at a time (this also solved the problem of the “E” as all I had to do was re-cut a single “E”).

That worked much better!

Then it was time to figure out the rhinestones. I didn’t manage to photograph this process (probably because it was done in the midst of sick-toddler wrangling) but I used two different methods for the rhinestone designs. For the word “queen”, I used a rhinestone-specific font that came with the Rhinestone Starter Kit. For the tiara, I converted a standard graphic to a rhinestone design using the rhinestone tools feature (from the Silhouette Studio designer edition). A couple of the crown points were one stone off to me so I ended up adding a couple stones as I lay out all the rhinestones (pink ones for “queen” and clear for the tiara) onto the templates following the easy instructions in the starter kit. The final step was ironing them on the hat and ta-da: my one-of-a-kind “Queen Farmer” hat:

Happy farming Andie!

Mother’s Day Mamaleh-style

| | Posted in Jewelry, Mother's Day | Tagged , , ,

May is creeping up on us and in case you haven’t noticed, Mother’s Day is Sunday, May 13th. If you’re like me and haven’t yet decided what you’re going to give your mamaleh this year, I thought I’d offer a few suggestions for the chic MOT momma:

  • One of my favorite Judaica artisits is Emily Rosenfeld.  I love how modern and simple her pieces are.  We have the Noah’s Ark mezuzah for my son’s room.  A great mother’s day choice would be the Tiny Heart Necklace with each child’s initials in Hebrew (either for their English or Hebrew names).

  • If you’ve ever been to Israel (or maybe Vegas), you probably know who Michal Negrin is.  If not, just think sparkly Swarovski crystals meet retro meet Judaica classics.  Here’s a sweet hamsa that’d be perfect for Mother’s Day:
  • Does your mom exist on drink coffee (or tea)?  How about a gorgeous handmade “Ima”(“mom” in Hebrew) mug for her from AgruArtsCeramics.

Hopefully you now have a few unique MOT Mother’s Day ideas for your mom or yourself (just be sure to forward this to whoever needs to know).  Happy Mother’s Day!

Note: I was not compensated for this post in any way.  I don’t think any of these companies even know I exist (except for past purchases from some).  This is all just stuff I like and hope you do too 🙂

Winner, winner, Shabbat dinner!

| | Posted in Challah, Shabbat | Tagged , , ,

As I write this, the most delicious smell is wafting from my kitchen and I only hope the result will taste as good as it smells!  I have been home all day with a sick bubelah so decided it was a challah-baking kind of day.  But, rather than go with my fav traditional recipe (which I’ll share with you another time), I decided to go with one from one of my favorite Jewish cooking blogs: The Challah Blog.  I mean what is there not to like about challah, but Amanda over at The Challah Blog takes it one step further with all kinds of fun kinds and shapes (great tutorials in this regard – it is now my go-to braiding reference).  A while ago, she posted about a maple syrup challah  that sounded divine.

A few preliminary thoughts: 1) I used the maple syrup cold from the fridge (since we always have it on hand) and my yeast did not foam up as much as usual so I wonder if perhaps this would work better at room temp; and 2) I am used to a recipe that makes two BIG loaves of challah which this didn’t.  It made two lovely smaller loaves (which is probably just as well for our waistlines).

Mmmmm….I just had a bite and it is delish and has a really nice texture.  I took Amanda’s advice and sprinkled cinnamon on one but I agree, I want even more of the maple sweetness.  I wonder how to achieve that?

Finally, we have a winner from our little Earth Day giveway, using a random number generator for a number between 1 and 8, I got #3: KaraAnne Grodin!  Shabbat shalom to all!  I’m off to have some wine and challah 😉