marie-madeline studio

cold love

Can it really be Spring? We thought Spring had really sprung several, several days ago. We had pulled out the short sleeves (well, some of us) and even our sweet girl, Dare, was coming to her sewing lessons without her winter coat. But now? Snow has fallen and sweaters are still a must.

To keep warm we're making things with love. Ridiculous, first try, quickest of the quick scarves made out of love. Trying new-to-us Mexican meals. (There's no question in our minds whether or not that's in the love category.) Sewing with love. Hand-making with love. And cooking up something fun for all our very faithful blog readers. And we know you'll love it!

keep warm wherever you are with love.  XO the girls

Pie Breakfast Perfection

Mom has fond childhood memories of going to visit her grandmother in the hills of Southern Kentucky.  They would stay for the weekend, climb steep stairs to sleep in the attic, and eat orange slices & circus peanuts out of a glass rooster dish.  Grandma was a cooking master -- she never measured the ingredients for her to-die-for biscuits.  She also would make fried pies... homemade biscuit dough, dried apples, and a pinch of cinnamon.  They would stay on the counter all day, covered with a flour sack dishtowel so you could snack on them throughout the day. 

None of us ever got to know our Great-Grandmother (she died in the early 80s), but we love the memories Mom has of her.  In fact, we now get the pleasure of having her old meal-chest in our dining room, the same meal chest she'd stand over and knead her dough on.  One drawer was full of flour and the top had linoleum on it. 

We now make our own version of Grandma's Fried Pies, and we wanted to share it with you.  In true Grandma fashion we're not giving you any measurements --- just use your own good sense.  They are absolutely delicious for breakfast with a glass of cold milk.   

Grandma's Fried Pies

-Refrigerated Grands Bicuits

-Regular Applesauce (we like the kind with no sugar added)

-Cinnamon & Sugar

Seperate biscuits.  Take one biscuit and roll out into a round flat dough (you'll need some flour on the counter to prevent sticking).

Spoon some applesauce onto half of your dough, leaving space on the sides for sealing.  You really don't have to overfill them.  Sprinkle with cinnamon and sugar to taste.  (We usually move our dough to the lightly sprayed cookie sheet before putting the filling in, but you can do whatever suits you.)

Fold other side of dough over and seal by taking a fork and pushing down.

Continue with the rest of your biscuits.

Pop into the oven and bake at 350 degrees.  We cook them for about 15 minutes, then check with a toothpick for doneness.  They might need cooked a few more minutes. 

Happy Eating! We think Grandma would be proud --- even if we don't use made from scratch dough.

Hugs and kisses,

xox us

Featured!

Good morning! 

We were so happy and honored to be featured on Melissa's blog today!  Melissa has recently started a new Friday feature called "What's on Your Bed?" where she's showcasing designers and friends bedrooms.  So run over there and take a peek at ours (well, two of ours.  You'll read why the third room wasn't photographed.  Hmm.) 

Melissa is also our good friend and fellow pattern designer, so be sure to check out her work!

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend!  We hope you are keeping warm --- it's freezing here!

xoxo!

the happy girl apron... coming soon!!

Say hello to the happy girl apron – a sweet confection that’s nothing but fun! With four layers of girly ruffles, this apron was designed to make baking cookies (or throwing parties) just that much more happy. Adult size fits most. The girls’ apron includes sizes Small (3, 4, 5) Medium (6, 7, 8) and Large (10, 12, 14). Our little girl friends even like wearing a matching happy girl apron over their clothes as a boutique-style addition to any outfit. And since both adult and children’s sizes are included in this one simple pattern, it’s the perfect Mommy and Me apron, too!

Some of you may recognize the adult happy girl apron as a rejuvinated version of our frilly fandango apron pattern that retired long ago.  Now it's back with an updated size range, because we just felt like every little girl needs a ruffle-y apron at some point in her life!  And this one fits the bill, for sure.  (We made ours out of Lecien's 4 Girls Collection Berry Doll.)

So... what do you think?  More pictures coming soon.  But if you've already decided you'd like to add the happy girl apron pattern to your collection, it's now available for pre-order on our website!!  (And if you pre-order within the US, we'll ship the pattern for free when it gets here.  Just add it to your cart and check out now as normal.)

By the way, that cake really was delicious.  It was chocolate inside!

xo, the Long ladies

P.S. Watch the blog next week for our biggest pattern reveal of the year!  We're SO excited!

Clean Slate.

Sometimes in life you are all of a sudden taken with the thought that you need to wipe everything away and start off with a clean slate.

Well, that's the way we've been feeling lately about organizing our home, stored boxes, rooms, studio, you name it.  It just seems that things build and build until finally you want to throw everything into the middle of the floor and start doing something about it.  Inevitably when we do that we make a huge mess.  And we're up to our eyeballs in piles of things.

So, we've been wading through things the past few days and gone to bed beat.  Which isn't a bad thing.  Occasionally we get kind of 'overly organized happy'.  Like today when we decided to clean out the HUGE deep freeze, two small freezers, and two refrigerator freezers.  Oh, and the laundry cabinet.  See?  Overly organized happy definitely.

Oh, and like Saturday when we went through bolts and bolts of fabric rearranging them into their (new) proper places.  But, it looks SO much better now!

So, here we are.  Not exactly out of the woods yet (the hall closet is still untouched), but definitely headed in the right direction.  Now that we are going the right way we're planning on taking a break tomorrow with a good friend coming out and spending the day with her sweet kids --- talking about fabric, eating yummy food (we haven't officially decided on the main meal), guacamole dip & chips, and banana pudding.  Oh, and Abi and Achaia have plans to make some adorable handmade cards like these soon.  Aren't they darling??  We're adding that to our list.

Much love from here! xoxo Kristie + Apphia + Achaia + Abigail + Abiah

recipe try-outs

As of late, we've been having fun trying out some new recipes.  It seems like they've just been popping out of the woodwork and calling our name.  It probably helps that we have several men in this house who are always up for a new food-related-item.  Ahem.

So, enter our try at Friday Cookies {above}.  Most of you probably have no idea what a Friday cookie is.  That's okay!  Most of the time they fall under the heading of "Soft Lofthouse cookies" or "Those cute cookies with sprinkles that you get at the store, with lots of icing".  Well, we've taken up calling them Friday cookies, as we used to get them every single Friday. (We've completely grown out of that.  Healthy reasons helped too.)  When we found this recipe, we knew it was a must try.  And, what do you know??  They were ready to eat with Friday night movies.  Ahh....  Now, a word on the taste.  They aren't exactly like the store-bought variety, but real close (and very yummy).  Oh!  The recipe calls for letting them sit for at least 3 hours for the flavors to blend together.  We'd definitely second that.  In fact, they taste even better after a couple of days.

Another new try-out was this Peanut Butter Chocolate dessert.  It's really yummy too.  The recipe calls for a 9x9 pan, and I made it in a 6x11, or something like that.  Let's just say, it's a nice hearty, tall dessert.  Sorry we didn't get a picture of it almost running over the sides of the pan.  My personal opinion was that there was a little too much cream cheese in one of the layers, so I may try and tweak it a little.  Truthfully, we aren't big cream cheese in dessert eaters around here.  (Except for some of the boys that hardly know what cream cheese is, let alone what is exactly tastes like...)

Oh, and we did try these Olive Garden style breadsticks, and they were really really good! Next up to try might be this, or this, or this, or this.  Oh, and these are so cute too!  We'll probably never get around to trying these, though they are so terribly lovely we might just make them for decoration... what do you think?  We better stop right now.  We must have food on the brain!

xxx Kristie, Apphia, Achaia, Abigail, & Abiah.... who are trying to be adventuresome cooks

About the house....

 
 .... you'll find some of these tangerine cuties.  Now, according to one of our friends, food cannot be labeled "adorable".  However, if any food could be, it would be these.  (Oh, and they are good too.) 
                               Then in the kitchen, you will see these speckly salt & pepper shakers.  We got them on our trip, and have had so much fun using them.  You see, one of our Fiesta shakers had broken, and we were stuck with using the pepper straight out of the "box".  Somehow that just didn't seem right.  So, these happy shakers fixed all that.  Besides the fact, we got some red speckly bowls to go with them (you can kinda see them in the background). 

Also, we have some sunburned faces around the house.  It's our first sunburns of the year--- summer is coming!
                  Rainbow sherbert.  Yummy.  Need we say more?
                               And, finally, a happy new skirt that Achaia scored in a Fredericksburg store for $10.  It's light and airy, and has tucks and velvet ribbon.  Unbeatable combination!

Happy Thursday to everyone! xxx

the story of the primrose dishes (as told by Achaia)....

The dishes were so beautiful.  And I couldn't say no.

It all started on Monday.  I was out flea marketing with my sweet mom and sisters, along with two good friends.  We were in a store I'd never been in before.  I turned around to walk in one of the booths, and guess what caught my eye?  These lovely dishes!  I had to get down close to them, pick them up, run my fingers over the pretty floral design.  Sigh.  Perfection.  It took some refraining on my part, but I didn't come home with all the dishes the store had.

After getting home and looking in one of our Fire King books from our dearest Nanny, I found the pattern is called Primrose.  It was made in the late 50s to the early 60s.  What could make me happier except the fact that they match with some of my all-time favorite fabric? 

spring cleaning (in the summertime)

We never did quite make it around to our official spring cleaning this year.  Too busy.  But this week we've started taking it one room at a time, scrubbing and reorganizing as we go.  Are we the only family that has dust elephants (not bunnies, mind you) underneath our furniture?

Don't forget, our free shipping offer ends at midnight on July 4th!  Use code SUNNYDAYS at the checkout.

XX us

laundry day.

 

We like simple things.  Like using an old teacup instead of the not-so-cute plastic thingy to scoop out our powdered laundry detergent.  Just because we can.  It makes laundry days more fun, don't you think?

love, the Long ladies