Family in Fall, Sauerkraut Recipe and New Home

In my last post, I wrote about traditional Fall celebrations in the US which my family and I love, but this time of year is even more precious and beautiful to me for many personal reasons. You might notice it too, life usually brings us things in clusters. One such "cluster" is birthdays in my family. Of course, whenever a few people gather, some of them most probably were born reasonably close to each other, and it's especially true when we talk about a large family. I mean, there are only 12 months in the year, aren't there? But some such coincidences seem more like serendipity or kismet, if you will.

And in both my immediate and my extended family we have plenty of such happy coincidences, especially in Fall. My Mom who just turned 75 today, shares her birthday with her youngest twin sisters (12 years apart from her), and my Dad's birthday is just a week after that. In between these two dates, Justin's late Mother's birthday, and Justin himself share a birthday with my nephew - the only son of my only brother (you can read more about my brother, talented artist Andrei Lialin and our books HERE). Be it traditional or personal, with its colorful confetti of foliage, Autumn is a perfect time to celebrate, and these days any time we get out of the house seems like a little celebration anyway... So on Justin's birthday, we went out and about, took some pictures of pretty leaves and each other. Justin's wearing a new shirt which he bought via Duluth Trading Company. He likes their quality, and they have extended sizes. I'm not sure whether or not I've shared this dress on the blog before, but it's by Eloquii, and is at least one year old. The green suede jacket is new to my closet. I purchased it in a secondhand online shop, but the jacket was brand new with tags still attached. My outerwear collection is growing - I went a little crazy and got several amazing jackets and coats this Fall.

I promised to tell you a little about our new home. Yes, we did it! Justin and I bought our very first home together. The long story short, I came to the conclusion that a townhouse will work best for our lifestyle, and pretty fast we landed at the most charming cottage style house which is surrounded by a beautiful mature garden and near the woods and Puget Sound, in the area where we've lived for over 12 years... I admired this neighborhood since we first moved here from Ohio, and was over the moon happy when I saw this home on the market. Both Justin and Anya loved it too, so the day we saw it we made an offer and soon it was ours! It was literally love from the first sight, and a dream come true. It took a while to get our stuff moved from the old cottage to our new home, but you know what was spooky? As soon as we moved the last bits, everything started shutting down due to the Covid-19 pandemic - Anya started online learning, and Justin and I working from home. On many occasions, we said to each other in amazement just how timely it was. Who knew, right?

Not everything is in its place yet, but we're getting there. So far, we've invested in IKEA shelves for the garage, deck furniture for our veranda, and some lovely vintage curtains from the 1960s that remind me so much about my childhood! I went for a layering look in the living room - the way it was common when I was growing up in the 1970s-1980s. (Photos above.) On the photos below, you can see our dining room nook. The sofa was bought a couple of years ago, and I didn't even have a place for it in our old house, but I knew I'd find it some day. Not sure about the age of it, but it's in pristine condition (well, it was before our cats had their pointy paws on it!), so perhaps not too old, like 1980s - what do you think? In any case, it fits just perfectly right with our home which was built in the late 1970s/early 1980s, and with my eclectic midcentury / cottage style interior. The hand-woven rug, just like the curtains, are vintage from Sweden, and was never used before. The style of the rug reminds me very much of what my Babushka (grandmother) used to make when I was a kid. The painting on the wall is only a tiny part of my art collection, and is a recent antique mall find. There are many more wonderful things to share, but I think that's enough about my home for now.

Autumn is so inspiring to me, and I always have an outburst of creative energy when the weather cools down, but it's still nice and sunny out. Some of you might know that I used to be an extremely crafty person who enjoyed making her own clothes, and did a lot of knitting and sewing since I was a teenager. I also had a brief romance with embroidery in my late 20s, but haven't touched this stuff for over 15 years. I don't know exactly why I lost interest in this type of work, perhaps because other things took priority and kept me pretty occupied. But this Fall I suddenly had an urge to start embroidering again, and invested in several adorable cross stitch kits. This is the first one I chose to work on. Isn't he the loveliest hedgehog you've ever seen?

Our new home has been surprising us in many ways, but one of most unexpected ones was to find wild mushrooms right in our front yard! At first, when Justin showed up at the doorstep exclaiming in my native language, "Natasha! Грибы! Грибы!" (mushrooms in Russian), I thought it hardly would be something edible. "Мухоморы," I thought lazily. (Never ever try to eat them!) But, to my big surprise, they were some of my favorite little mushrooms - маслята, or slippery jacks as they are commonly known here. I went mushroom hunting with my Dad since I was a little girl and loved it! I am definitely not an expert on mushrooms, but I am familiar with some kinds and will recognize them practically with closed eyes - I know their shape and size, their smell, and in this particular case their very specific feel (they literally are slippery). Back home, my parents would marinate them, but here I just don't have too many - so I washed and froze them for some special occasion. If you love wild mushrooms, remember to always make sure what you have is what you can safely eat. Consult with knowledgeable people, books, websites, and don't ever eat what you don't know, that's the main rule of healthy and wise foraging.

Remember the cabbage from my previous post? I did make sauerkraut (квашеная капуста) out of ONE of the two huge heads of cabbages. The recipe is from my Dad, and it's very simple and very tasty. Shred cabbage and a handful of carrots, kneed them with your hands as much as you have strength to do. Then pack the vegetables tightly into glass jars (I just used jars from cornichons - of course, you have to wash them first). I had enough to fill 3 jars (all together probably about 4 liters). Anyway, the recipe is for 3 liters of shredded, tightly packed cabbage, so please adjust as you need:

1 TBS of salt

0.5 cup of sugar

1 liter of cooled boiled water

Put salt over the cabbage, just on top. Add sugar to a liter of cooled down boiled water. Fill the jars (already pre-packed with cabbage) with the sugary water. Leave the open jars on the counter for 2-3 days. Place each jar into a bowl because there will be lots of juices coming out of the jars. (You just pour it right back in the jars.)  VERY IMPORTANT: you need to poke your cabbage several times with a long knife or a wooden stick to help gases to come out. Do it as many times as you can remember (5-10 times per day is appropriate.) You will see when the process is finished: no more juice is coming out of the jars. Then clean them, close and put in the fridge. It only sounds like a lot of work, actually it's quite easy, and the result is crunchy, sweet sour cabbage. Russians have tons of uses: salads, soups, sautéed cabbage, pastry (pirozhki), and just eat it as is - just add some onion and aromatic sunflower oil. Have it with some good rustic bread, and you have a wonderfully refreshing, full of vitamins meal!

Finally, a couple of warm sunny early Fall day outfits and a couple of photos from downtown Seattle. Then my freshly cut and colored hair by Erica, as always for the past 12 years or so, and I think I'm done for today! I'm most thankful for all your sweet comments, and as always will see you on the other side!

If you enjoyed this post, you might also want to check out 

these posts about Fall and boho style:

MARCH 2017 ~ OCTOBER 2017 ~ OCTOBER 2017 #2 ~

OCTOBER 2017 #3 ~ NOVEMBER 2017 ~ 

SEPTEMBER 2017 ~ JANUARY 2017

Taking my hedgehogs, wild mushrooms and animal print masks to THIS BLOGGER PARTY for the Wild Thins theme! See you there!