Mollie Cox Bryan's Blog, page 6

Guest Appearance on the Taco Society

This was such an interesting and fun experience. The Taco Society came to town and interviewed several local writers and artists. This area in Virginia is chockfull of talent. If you just want to see me, I think my interview is las and starts around 39:20. But if you have a chance, check the others out, as well.

Magpie Monday

I confess. I’m a bit of a magpie. I spend a good bit of the time on the web, reading, researching, and dreaming. I thought I’d start sharing some of my favorite posts, pins, or ideas with you on Mondays.  Enjoy!

An abandoned castle in France.

We’ve been watching Fuller House in my house. Here’s an interesting post on what the actors have been up to all these years.

I just finished reading Gillian Flynn’s “Sharp Objects.” I’m still thinking about it, vividly.  Creeped me out in a very good way.

Ancient Textiles  Found in  an Israeli Mine. So fascinating!

Are redheads really different?

I’m becoming a bit of a Pinterest freak. If you like Pinterest, check out my boards.

Until next time!

 

Magpie Monday

I confess. I’m a bit of a magpie. I spend a good bit of the time on the web, reading, researching, and dreaming. I thought I’d start sharing some of my favorite posts, pins, or ideas with you on Mondays.  Enjoy!

Have you been watching Mercy Street? I forced myself to watch the first few episodes. At first I didn’t like it, but it’s grown on me and now I look forward to it.

Here’s a post on Civil War hospitals and romance.

Speaking of romance: the real life romance of Mary Wollstonecraft and Percy Shelley is fascinating!

This week’s Magpie Monday is a bit brief because I was out of town on a retreat with a few friends.

Until next time!

 

Magpie Monday

I confess. I’m a bit of a magpie. I spend a good bit of the time on the web, reading, researching, and dreaming. I thought I’d start sharing some of my favorite posts, pins, or ideas with you on Mondays.  Enjoy!

A fabulous shout-out to me and my red-velvet lovely-dovey pie.

A blog about tea in England. Pinkies up, everyone!

Loved this post about writing domestic suspense.

Intriguing story about a man who remembered his identity after 30 years. And people wonder where I get my ideas!

Look what my friend Lain is up to. Doesn’t it look fantastic?

 

Until next time,

Mollie

Magpie Monday

I confess. I’m a bit of a magpie. I spend a good bit of the time on the web, reading, researching, and dreaming. I thought I’d start sharing some of my favorite posts, pins, or ideas with you on Mondays.  Enjoy!

A link to a podcast where one of my favorite writers, Susanna Kearsley, is interviewed.

Have you caught the blog Two Nerdy History Girls? One of my all time favorites.  I try to read it weekly. Fair warning: you could spend all day here reading these posts.

Speaking of history, I thoroughly enjoyed this post on historical fiction. Having just finished writing my book on Jefferson Coates,  I found this post spot-on.

Here’s a post about a woman who surprised her husband at her funeral. Seriously. If I wrote this in a book, would you believe it?

Great post about  the history of textiles in Ireland. 

I’m fascinated by crochet these days. I’m trying to learn how to do it. . I’ve gotten the chain stitch down, but now I’m trying to move on to the actual crochet stitch. I found there’s a whole community of crochet folks online, of course, but there’s a sub-community of those interested in crochet as therapy. Check out this list of blog posts.

I’m also fascinated by all things Broadchurch. How about you?

Until next time,

Mollie

 

 

 

When Scrapbooking Comes Full Circle

I thought I had explored everything about scrapbooking–all the meaningful ways it can be used in our  lives. But it turns out that I hadn’t.

When my mom passed away in December, my sister, daughters, and nieces and I were charged with cleaning out her apartment by the end of the month. We thought it would be easier than what it was. (The subject of another post. Maybe.) But I ended up coming home with bags of paper, photos, and, yes, scrapbooks. One scrapbook is one  I made for my mother, a gift, celebrating her life.

Wow.

To say several different emotions ran through me at once is not exaggerating. At all.

So, while I been focused in my own scrapbooking on my kids and a wee bit on myself–and on gifts for other people–I hadn’t considered this gift coming back to me. Even though my loss is still fresh, and turning the pages of this book is sometimes more sad than I can bear, sometimes I catch myself smiling. It’s that little impulse I hang on to, as it grows each time I glance through the book.

A lot of other items have come back to me, mostly photos of my kids, but this scrapbook is something that I made with my own hands for my mom, celebrating her life. I want to remember that celebration. I don’t want to dwell on the sadness.

 

Creating and recording these moments of celebration, of life, is what scrapbookers do. Those happy memories are not constant–at times, we have to work at remembering. Pictures help. When you are grieving, any bit of happiness helps you claw your way back to some semblance of normalcy.

When I’ve told people through the years, as part of promoting my Cumberland Creek books how meaningful scrapbooking can be, this is exactly the kind of thing I meant. As scrapbookers, we are only somewhat aware of the forward ripples we might be creating, right? We think our kids will appreciate these scrapbooks someday. We don’t know.

But my gift scrapbook to my mom that has come back to me?  That’s scrapbooking come full circle, the other way around. It means more to me than you can imagine.

I’m moving forward with the cherished past in my hands–and in my heart.

 

Five things I thought about during my morning run:

1. January in Virginia and it’s a gorgeous day. Could not resist a run!

2. Working on my book about Jefferson Coates early this morning. My husband is going over it. So far, so good!

3. Letting NO CHARM INTENDED (book 2 in my new series) sit for awhile before I go back in for draft #2. Then, perhaps to find beta readers.

4. My purging resolution is going well. Yesterday, I purged the bathroom of creme, lotions, and all kinds of sundry items that we just don’t use. (I have two teenaged daughters, so you can imagine!)

5. Sundays are the hardest day for me. I get up early every day. On Sundays, I’d get my coffee and call my mom. We didn’t have the perfect relationship and didn’t see eye-to-eye on many things. But we did have Sundays. And we did have love. And oh, how I miss her.

Christmas Traditions and My Mom

Note from Mollie: We recently lost my mother. I had forgotten about this essay until a reader pointed it out. (It’s one of the essays in HONEY, I’M SORRY I KILLED YOUR AQUASAURS.) The Holidays will be very hard for my family this year without her. Even though I’ve spent many Holidays away from her, mom was always a phone call away. I won’t be baking this year. Maybe next year. 

Here’s the essay:

When I think of Christmas at home, which is in Western Pennsylvania for me, I think of the light-filled city of Pittsburgh and its beautiful window displays, traipsing through the cold and snow with my dad to cut a Christmas tree, and the myriad ways in which my mom made the holidays special—mostly with her baking.

Mom was a serious holiday baker, often starting at least month before Christmas. After she stepped out of her stay-at-home mom role and became a working mom, she continued baking, mostly on the weekends and sometimes into the wee hours of the morning. She and my Aunt Mart would start on a Friday evening after work—making tiny nut cups (or pecan tassies) where they spooned the sweet nut mixture into the mini-muffin sized dough cups and baked them, filling kitchen with the smell of nuts, sugar, and cinnamon. A western Pennsylvania tradition, these nut cups were offered up at every home we visited.

People don’t seem to visit much anymore, let alone share baked goods when they do. Then, we visited and sampled and compared all the goodies, often exchanging recipes or tips on fashioning the more complicated treats, like pizzelles, or lady locks, and poppy seed rolls. I still have not attempted to make the oblong loaf that holds a splendid spiral of deep blue poppy seed. It’s time-consuming and needs skilled hand-eye coordination—both things I definitely lack. I prefer to buy it from my favorite bakery in Butler, Pa.—that is, if I can’t get a loaf from a friend or relative.

Even my mother doesn’t make the roll any more. Every year, she cuts back more and more on her baking. “I just don’t have the energy,” she says, “And people don’t eat like they used to and it goes to waste.”

Wasting food was a sin in my house—but the holiday gluttony was not. Often we ate until we couldn’t eat anymore, then would stretch out on the couch, a bed, or a floor, covered with a blanket and take a snooze until we were hungry for more. We were in a kind of food-induced stupor through out most of our holidays. No wonder my memories of them are so wonderful.

We had our stock of usual goodies—poppy seed roll and cake, pumpkin bread, cherry squares, pizzelles, pineapple square and nut cups. But one of my favorites was my Mom’s homemade brownies, which I could gorge on to this day. Made with Hershey syrup, they are probably the moistest brownies I’ve ever eaten.

Emma and Tess love to get in the kitchen with me and make a mess. Usually, I am fairly strict about sugar, fat, and overly processed food. But during the Holidays, I give in to the pull of my children’s longing for it. We make the cookies, pile on the food-colored icing and colorful sugar, and we often eat them with packaged cocoa. I keep telling myself that one of these days I will do it all from scratch, which would make it a little healthier, at least.

While we are baking and decorating our goodies, I often talk to the girls about their grandparents and great-grandparents and a give them some sense of why I insist on making certain treats like the pizzelles (my grandmother’s specialty) or the poppy seed cake (my mother’s). After all, it doesn’t matter what your family tradition is—what’s important is that you have one.

Recipe for Mom’s Poppyseed Cake

Ingredients

3 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda

2 cups sugar

10 ounces, vegetable oil (You can use less, Mom says, but it won’t be as moist.)

4 eggs

13 ounces (1 can) of evaporated milk

1 teaspoon vanilla

1 jar Baker’s Poppy Seed Filling (Mom is adamant that Baker’s is the best kind to use.)

Method

Sift all the dry ingredients together. Then mix in all your liquids and eggs. (You can add nuts if you want; Mom never did. I think black walnuts would be fabulous.) Mix for 2 minutes on medium speed.

Pour into a well-greased and floured tube pan. Bake at 350 for 50 to 60 minutes.

Cool the cake at least five to 8 minutes before taking it out of the pan. Mom sprinkles powdered sugar on it. But a rum glaze would be lovely, too.

Five things I thought about during my morning run:

Neighbor has a carpet rolled up sitting by the edge of the road. Hmmm. Dead body inside??? (What is WRONG with me? LOL!)
The day is absolutely perfect for a run. Warm, with a nice breeze. Could not let it get by me without an attempt at running.
This, after another dr. appt. with my daughter.
Everybody is home. Which means my writing schedule is, um, shot.
My contest. Not many entries yet.

Check out my Pages of Thanks contest on Pinterest, Facebook, or send your entry to me at molliebryan@comcast.net

The prize is all five books in the Cumberland Creek series—autographed, of course.

Good luck!

 

Five things I thought about during my morning run:

Running straight for the sun and the light is reflecting off the asphalt. Along with the yellow leaves on the road, it looks like I’m heading into a path of light.
Brown pine needles scattered everywhere. As I run over them, the scent becomes strong. Smells so good I want to roll around in them, but I better keep moving.