About me

I am a 37 year old first time stay-at-home-mom. I have just left the corporate world of marketing/advertising to take the summer off… to be a stay-at-home-mom. I’m going to spend time playing with my kids, cleaning, cooking, doing various projects around the house and just de-stressing! At the end of the summer when the kids go back to school, I’ll going to decide what I want to do when I grow up. Until then, I am really looking forward to learning what all I can do when I have a bit of time on my hands.
Ok, a little bit has changed since I started this blog (way too long ago). I’ll be 40 this year (FOURTY) and have been working on my freelance design business. So, the “work from home” thing is really picking up! I do try to take my summers off as much as possible and I’m LOVING spending more time with the kiddos. In the summers we go to the lake and picnic and hike and swim at the pool… I’ve also written a book that is scheduled to be published fall 2017. I’m sure I’ll write an entire blog post about that at some point though.

Here’s me now. Shorter hair, but basically the same.

 

If you want to know a little bit more about the rest of the family, check out this blog post!

I have tried my hand at blogging before, but I’ve always been to prescriptive and they’ve turned out more like a chore than something I did for fun. This time it’s different – Mama Teasie’s Table isn’t really about anything in particular. It’s about life and summer. It’s about long drives in the country, cooking and crafting. It’s about me trying to find out what I want to be when I grow up. It’s about me striving to put good, honest food on our table… as Mama Teasie always did.

This online journal (online journal sounds better than blog, doesn’t it?) is named for my Great Grandmother, Mama Monteith (but all us kids called her “Mama Teasie”). She lived the kind of life that I idealize now – a total departure from the hustle & bustle of modern day America. She was a farmer’s wife and they lived  in North Carolina – in the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.  They had a little farm house, a tractor barn, a chicken house, a smoke house, a canning house, a well house and a woodshed. They even had an outhouse prior to the early 1970’s (but I don’t idealize that part – I like my bathroom and toilet paper, thank you very much). They grew their own produce, raised chickens and harvested the eggs, they traded eggs for staples such as flour and sugar, they hunted, fished and cooked what they ate – except for the occasional trip to the local fish camp (but who can blame them, right? I love me some fried catfish too). Mama Teasie made the quilts on their beds and a lot of the clothes on their backs (so what if Dad wore feed sack shirts until he was in high school?).

She passed away when I was about 10 years old, but the one thing that stands out in my mind, above all else, is what an incredible cook Mama Teasie was. From pies to cakes to fried chicken to homemade pickles – she did it all. Every meal was an event – a celebration of good, honest food – and there was always room for one more at the table.