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Certified Organic Restaurant in DC {Gluten-free Friendly}

Friends in the Northern Virginia / D.C. area, and visitors to our nation’s capital, I’ve got a fantastic restaurant recommendation for you.  Especially for you Real Foodies out there. Restaurant Nora Restaurant Nora claims to be America’s “first certified organic restaurant,” which means that at least 95% of all ingredients must come from certified organic farmers…

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This Year’s Garden Experiments: Organic Bug Control

  If you’ve been following along with our Garden Experiments, you may know that we’ve experienced a few mishaps along the way.  Recently, I showed our abundant green bean harvest, so you may also know that we’ve experienced some success as well. The first major Garden Experiment was the implementation of a new method: Square Foot Gardening.  You can…

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Tomatoes & Green Beans for Canning

Learning to Can (Can)

Somehow, I spent an entire childhood in the beautiful farm country of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and emerged without any knowledge or skills in the culinary art of canning. A family friend pointed out that the this likely had to do with the fact that my mother was born and raised in east L.A.  Canning was not…

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Chasing Butterflies

Nature Activity for Kids: Butterfly Identification

As you may know by now, we’re crazy about nature here at the Yankee Homestead. [By the way, if you’re a parent or teacher, or have any interaction or influence with children, I highly recommend this book: Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder.  It’s fantastic–both inspirational and practical.  Read my…

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Testing…for Email Subscribers

Greetings, Yankee Homestead Email Subscribers.   I’m trying to get to the bottom of a technical difficulty. 🙂  This is a test to determine if the problem has been solved. If you have a minute to leave me a comment, I’d love to know whether or not this blog post was delivered to your email…

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Liz Mitchell Concert at Wolf Trap

2 Favorite Folk Singers and 1 Fantastic Venue {Part Two}

Did you catch this post: 2 Favorite Folk Singers and 1 Fantastic Venue {Part One}? If there are any children in your life, I highly recommend the two musicians–and their CD’s–discussed in that post. This part is for the locals, or for visitors to our nation’s capital… Do you live in or near Northern Virginia (outside…

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2 Favorite Folk Singers and 1 Fantastic Venue {Part One}

Our family has a slight obsession with good folk music. I love these words from Ruth Crawford Seeger, in her wonderfully helpful book American Folksongs For Children: Many of us open a savings account at the bank when a child is born, and add layer after layer of small deposits which he can later draw…

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Green Beans Galore

Green Beans Galore

  Holy green bean harvest!   I might need to serve some with breakfast this morning, and at every meal thereafter, to ensure they’re all eaten up. And to think…we almost didn’t plan beans this year.  They’ve turned out to be our most successful, low maintenance crop! Green beans do make for somewhat tedious harvesting,…

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Door Shelf

Decorating with Junk: Old Doors and a Giant Map of Texas

The results of a few recent “Decorating with Junk” projects…   Shelf of Love Remember this awkward corner of our master bedroom? Well, it’s still not finished. But this display shelf–made from an old door from my dad’s barn, plus wooden brackets and shelves we had on hand–turned out fantastically!

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CD case--front, before and after

Yet Another Reason to Love the E-cloth

We’re still loving our e-cloths here at the Yankee Homestead.   Have you tried them? I thought I’d give a quick report on yet another reason to love these microfiber cleaning cloths: they remove permanent marker! Recently, I picked up a few ex-library CD’s at a local used book sale.  

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