Sometimes you can have it all. The Diva (my high school aged daughter) and I made these cupcakes this morning for our large family party tonight. We wanted the icing to be Tiffany Blue and the cupcake papers to be silver. We found a way for both. A very light application of Royal Blue food coloring by Wilton will turn icing the famous hue, which also resembles the color of French royalty. I made the gluten free vanilla and chocolate cake recipes from Cooking Free by Carol Fenster, a favorite cookbook of mine, and the dairy free icing came from a recipe I saw at Gluten Free Mom. It goes with her Christmas cookie recipe. I baked those cookies as well last week, and they were wonderful. The secret to the icing is almond milk. We ate these at the party, and no one knew they were created without dairy...

Debris lines the streets of the Oklahoma City metro area. Hit hard by the ice storm, we'll be cleaning up for a long time, and I've heard Tulsa is worse. We're part of an official seven county disaster area. I took these pictures near HH's office on the south side of the city. Because I have children in schools north and south, I get to see damage throughout. After studying which trees were most effected by their icy coating, these are my thoughts about the storm. Where I live (way, way north,) we had just as much ice. However, I lost few trees. My biggest casualties were my Redbuds (Cercis reniformis,) but the ones growing on our property are old and weak splitting at the slightest wind. Our native oaks lost some branches, but damage was minimal. My Southern magnolia (Magnolia grandiflora) and Loblolly pines (Pinus taeda) came through the...

As many of you probably know, a devastating ice storm hit Oklahoma last Sunday.  We lost our internet the first day which is why I haven't been posting.  Thank you for all of your lovely, thoughtful comments.  They make the blog more interesting, and I'll try to respond as soon as I can.  I'm still without internet, so I drove into town to HH's office and am typing on his laptop.  We then lost our electricity on Tuesday.  Lucky for us, our power was restored twelve hours later.  Our home is fully electric, so I made hot dogs and blackbean soup (canned) in the fireplace, and the kids and I pretended we were camping.  Over 100,000 homes and businesses lost power on Sunday and are still without electricity today.  Please keep those folks in your prayers.  This situation really hurts local businesses during the Christmas season. I've taken some pictures to give you an idea of the...

After reading posts on the advent season from two very talented bloggers, Tongue in Cheek and Plant Whatever Brings You Joy, I am inspired to share some of the Red Dirt Hacienda's holiday traditions over the next few days. Just don't expect mine to be as erudite or classy. Exhibit A: our over-the-top advent wreath. No evergreen or pottery wreath for our family. Ours is rugged to survive three children who joyfully light the candles at every opportunity and nearly set their hair on fire while trying to blow them out. Still, I don't know what we would do without our wreath and our calendar of small books to start dinner conversation and share about the meaning of Christmas for our family. Every Thursday, the kids' school has mass, and last week, the children sang a Yiddish folk song titled "Light One Candle to Watch for Messiah." The tune always...