You are invited!

Hello there!  It has been such a long time since I have posted anything, and I have missed it.  Between moving back to the family ranch, trying to fix up an old house and welcoming a new baby into the family, my life has been a bit hectic.

I just didn't feel able to keep up with blogging, plus we didn't have internet, so it was nearly impossible.  As things have settled down a bit for us, my sister has decided she would like to try her hand at blogging as well, and invited me to join her.  Perhaps between the two of us, we will have something worthwhile to share.

As she didn't feel comfortable jumping in here, we have started a new blog, Dirt Road Renaissance.  Please join me there!  I can't wait to renew the acquaintances from before!

Easter Eggs and the Koolaid Dye

I have to admit, I've been a bit Scrooge-like in my approach to Easter this year.  Or maybe it just snuck up on me.  What is it doing in March, anyway?  I had the genius idea to hit a few community egg hunts this morning and nearly died of an anxiety attack.  Why does the women who avoids highly congested areas walk willingly into a place that the entire valley is converging on?  Did I really expect my kids to get any treats, with every child in a 50 mile radius there too?  Is a picture with the sneaker-wearing Easter bunny really that important?  Deep breath....  We did make it out alive and with a few treats to show for it.

I saw eggs on sale last week and managed to buy a few dozen, not really realizing just how close the holiday was.  We boiled them earlier this week, although I still had not purchased the dye.  Then somebody I know pinned something on Pinterest about dying eggs with koolaid.  For some reason, my mind took hold of that and decided it was much easier to find the powdered juice aisle at the store than the Easter aisle, which isn't true and I ended up going to two stores because the first one didn't have the lemon-lime flavor, and what is Easter egg dying without green?  Also, I couldn't find the requested blue flavor, so I picked up blue raspberry, which may have been a wrong move.

As I started filling cups with water, I luckily thought first about making sure my little cups could hold the water with an egg in it, so I adjusted the water accordingly.  We still had some major splashing and spilling, but what do you expect when you turn three little kids loose with staining liquid and eggs.  I also realized at this point that koolaid packets don't come with the little egg dipper things.  Spoons worked pretty well, although they added to the spill factor a bit.

When it came time to dye the eggs, I laid down a ton of newspaper and then put down old rags and towels all the way around the table.  I did that because I know my kids can't make it through a meal without spilling a cup of something.  Maybe we'll start doing this for meals too.

Here's the verdict:
Yellow didn't work.  We left an egg in there for an eternity in kid time and it was barely yellow.  I added a bit of orange to it and we ended up with a few hues of orange.  Orange did great, as did green.  I did a cup with black cherry just for fun and it did a good job too, as did the cherry.  They aren't quite the same color, but really not different enough to need both.  The blue did okay.  It was a bit pale.  The pink did pretty well too.  The purple ended up more black than purple.  The instructions said to add a bit of the blue to the grape, so I did.  I'm not sure if grape by itself would have been better.  It was really making Easter look depressing to have two black eggs in the mix.

Luckily, or unlucky, depending on how you look at it, while the dye is wet, it rubs right off.  This means that we could re-do the black eggs, but it also means that when the 6 year old fumbles the egg removal, most of the dye gets scratched off by the spoon.  Once the eggs dried, the color is there and pretty.  However, the eggs tended to get air bubbles on them as they sat in the dye, so some of the strongest colored eggs have funny white dots on them as well.  Also, they took forever to dry and that drove the kids nuts because you need to dye each egg at least twice and we ran out of time for that, as bedtime arrived.

On the plus side, egg dying has never smelled so fruity, I didn't have to measure out any vinegar and the kids thought I was totally cool for using koolaid.

I don't know that we'll do this method again.

Happy Easter!

The cheap-skate, last minute birthday party

I'm a slacker.  I wait until the last minute to plan things like birthdays or valentines or anniversaries.  I get tons of good ideas, but due to the last minute issue, I don't have any time to actually do any of them.  Right around Christmas Eve, I put aside a few sewing projects, telling myself that I would finish them for my little girl in time for her birthday.  Then I promptly forgot.  I remembered again, the morning of her birthday.

Maybe it was guilt that spurred me on to do an actual party for her.  Generally, I say a three year old doesn't need anything but ice cream, frosting and presents, but since the presents were lame, I felt obligated to do a little more.  So we had a Dora/Diego party, sort of.  Since I'm cheap and it was last minute, I had to  use what was in the house and what I could get through the internet.  So, for any other procrastinating mom, like myself, I'll share my Dora party equations.

One chunk of purple felt = a tiny backpack.  It was my first time making a drawstring backpack like this and I think it turned out well.

 Construction paper and some sketching time = Map.

Old flannel sheet = water, over which lies the troll bridge, of course it needed some repairs performed by a 3 year old girl.

Chairs of all varieties in the hall = boulders in Slippery Rock Canyon, of course.

Then we had the dark tunnel, which required a flashlight, obviously to be found in her backpack.

We also had construction paper stepping stones, one of which needed some sticky tape, also in the backpack.

I used some of Dora's friends to help along the way, and even Swiper made an appearance.

When she emerged from the tunnel, she found the cupcake tower and presents.

All in all, I think it was a success, even though I stressed myself out completely trying to come up with Dora stuff in my non-Dora brain.  The little one loved it and fell right into character, with her siblings helping her read the clues.

Maybe if I start planning now, I'll have a stress free birthday for her next year.  Or maybe I'll just try to finish her Christmas projects before summer starts.

My Valentine

These made me snicker this morning.  The top two are my favorites.

Since it's Valentine's Day, I thought I would share my exciting gift with you.  Actually, I was given this gift a few weeks ago, but we're calling it a Valentine/birthday present.  My husband started dropping hints about the amazing gift I would be getting and I quickly gathered that it was a pricey gift, which honestly drops a gift's value in my estimation.  I started warning him that I can't enjoy a gift that costs a lot.  When he informed me that it was free, I was excited.  His hints led me all over my imagination, but didn't help much.  Heavy, antique-like, not made of wood, useful, I saw it several years ago... I was lost.  Then he pulled up a picture of it on the internet.

I love old cook stoves and I have planned to have one in my someday house.  Honestly, the power goes out in Wyoming enough to justify having a wood stove hooked up.  My mom has an old Majestic stove in her basement, waiting to be cleaned up and put to use, but I don't think I could ever convince her to part with it.  Thankfully, my husband's past boss remembered that I'm a lover of such things and offered it to us when they moved, so now I have my own.
 
Of course, this is a picture of what it should look like, ours is not put together and had been sitting outside for several years.  One of the legs needs repaired or replaced, but all in all, it's a pretty good deal, if you ask me.  A little elbow grease and a bit of polish... plus a call to a parts place, and we'll  be in business.  Now we just need a house to put it in.

Mom's Majestic

Maybe next Valentine's Day?

Yikes, it's cold out there!

I think we have had more than our fair share of cold this year.  Our overnight low was -21 and it was -16 when the kids left for school this morning. As I type, the temperature still hasn't reached 0.  Let's hope we make it to our projected high of 8 degrees today.  I am very thankful that our furnace is working.  Our little house is very toasty right now.

The other day, as I was sitting in the car with the kids in back, waiting for daddy to run an errand inside a store, I was trying to stay relaxed and fighting the urge to bang two heads together in the back seat.  To distract myself from the insanity, I started watching the snowflakes falling on the windshield.  They were like mini paper cut out snowflakes.  The kids and I had recently read a book about snowflakes and we knew that each one was different, but I had never seen snowflakes that actually looked like that.  I guess I thought you had to look through a microscope or something.  I think Wyoming snow has been driven by the wind so much, it doesn't look so pretty when it lands.  Anyway, this is the first time I noticed individual snowflakes looking like the snowflakes we draw or cut out or hang on our Christmas tree. When my husband returned to the car I pointed them out to him and he hadn't noticed snow flakes looking like that either.

A few days later, we noticed the same kind of snowflakes on our car as we were going someplace, so I ran back into the house to get my camera.  The pictures are a bit fuzzy because the flakes really are small.

Now I'm just waiting for some nicer weather so I can go cross country skiing!

Our Happenings

I find it funny that every time I make a goal to either go to bed early, or get up early, I get thwarted by my dear, lovely children.  There have been several times in the past 8 years that I have decided that I will get up before the kid(s) do and have some quiet time for myself to get organized and ready for the day.  Without fail, the baby at the time will suddenly alter their schedule to wake up before me, no matter what time I have picked to rise.

This time around, I determined I would go to bed earlier and no sooner did I make that goal, then my little girl suddenly started waking up just before midnight to make sure I didn't get to sleep until late.  I'm guessing she is having night terrors.  Her big brother had them for a while at this age.  It's not a very fun evening activity, usually striking one to two hours after the child goes to sleep.  They are difficult to wake when having a night terror and touching or holding them seems to make it worse.  Last night, I put some soothing music on repeat and there was no night terror.  I don't know if the music helped or if she is simply past them, but I think I'll play some music again tonight.

We had some very cold temperatures this past week, coupled with a furnace that only works when it feels like it.  Thankfully, I have a large sweater collection.  I discovered that the cold weather had penetrated the garage and frozen about 25 pounds of potatoes I had out there.  I decided I would try to do something with them before they thawed and I had a nasty pile of mush to deal with.  So, I turned them into fries for the freezer.  I wasn't sure how it would work out, since the potatoes were already frozen.  I thought they might just fall apart, no matter what I tried, but I couldn't stand to just throw out that many potatoes.  I tried two different methods of preparing the fries, one was much faster than the other so we have more of them.  The first method was to slice the potatoes into fries and soak them in hot water.  Then put them in boiling water for 2 minutes, dry and place on baking sheet and put in the freezer.  The other method kind of followed this recipe for baked oven fries, but I didn't bake them for the entire time.  I put them in the fridge to cool and then put them into freezer bags.  I have cooked up both varieties in the oven using the method in the linked recipe and I do like the baked first fries a bit better, but the boiled fries worked very well thrown in some stew I was making.  I was so very happy that both methods turned out perfectly edible.  We ended up with 10 quart bags of fries, plus what we ate for our taste tests.

Another adventure in my life this past week was making deodorant.  I've seen recipes for it all over the internet and I just kind of tucked it into the back of my mind to try someday.  So I finally tried it.  I haven't been using it long enough to have a great opinion, but I don't dis-like it.  My armpits are much more moisturized than usual, but I don't sweat a whole lot in the winter, especially with a moody furnace.  We'll see how I like it as the seasons move on.

Last, but certainly not least in our happenings, we celebrated our anniversary yesterday.  Or maybe we just observed our anniversary.  Nine years isn't generally the center of a huge party, although I have to say that I'm very excited for our 10th, since it will come right after my husband finishes school for good and ever (if I have anything to say about it.)  If I was a more thoughtful and organized wife, I would have created a cute and thoughtful gift inspired by pinterest... and I do have some things pinned with him in mind, but we obviously weren't thinking clearly by getting married so soon after Christmas.  We pretty much doomed the creative gift giving without even knowing it.  But who needs gifts?  I have a wonderful husband who just seems to get better as the years go by.

Have a  lovely blog week!

2013!

I'm always a bit taken by surprise when a month or year is suddenly gone and I'm left feeling totally unprepared for the next one.  Suddenly, it's 2013 and I haven't even evaluated the past year, let alone figured out new goals for the next year.  It isn't as though I didn't know it was coming, it's just that I get so busy, I lose sight of what day or year it is.  We ease into it in November; my husband's birthday and then Thanksgiving, my favorite holiday (food and family, what else is there?)  Then I remember that the advent is coming up, thank goodness we had an extra week this year.  Throw some college finals in for my husband with my late night sewing projects.  I cancelled several because I wanted to enjoy Christmas Eve this year.  I guess the kids will get super hero capes for Valentine's Day.  We don't get to relax after Christmas though, because my son has a birthday two days later.  Then, suddenly, it's a new year and I'm sitting here with blurry eyes and laundry piled all around me.  The kids are all fighting off various sicknesses and ailments that pop up when running with cousins, staying up late and getting up early, not to mention getting soaked in the snow at least twice a day, so it was early to bed tonight.

Now that the house is quiet and the dishes are done, I'm letting myself think a bit about what I would like to work on to make this year better than the last.  I saw this little quote on facebook and thought it fit me so well.

So far I've come up with 3 things:
1. Early to bed.  I am a natural night owl, just like my mom and my sisters.  I am energetic late at night and I can get so much done after the kids are down for the night, but the kids get up early, or at least too early for me to get enough sleep, so I drag myself through another morning, most likely resembling a grouchy bear coming out of hibernation.  I can't make the kids sleep longer (I've tried keeping them up later.  They still wake up at the same time, only grumpier.) but I can go to bed earlier, so I'm going to try.  Perhaps 2013 will be the year of cheerful mornings.

2. Meal plan.  I shouldn't need this as a goal, but I have fallen off the wagon and into the trap of throwing something together at the last minute.  It causes me stress and it causes us to eat the same meals over and over.  Tonight we again had hot ham and cheese sandwiches with tomato soup.  This is in rotation with spaghetti and homemade pizza.  Along with this goal, I want to bake bread more often.  I kind of stopped for a while when we discovered a cheap bread outlet, but when it closed down (keep your twinkie, I want my cheap bread back) bread became expensive again.

3. While my forgetful self will be writing 2012 for the next few months, my brain has a tendency to live in the future.  I have so many plans and hopes for my family, and we're getting closer to them, but I tend to spend too much time wishing I was in my "someday" instead of paying attention to now.  It's going to be a crazy year, with at least one move, but possibly more, depending on job situations.  I want to fully enjoy the area and friends that I have here and now before I move on to the next.  I'm sure when the stress mounts, you'll find me sketching out my dream homestead, but until I am living there I hope to keep it to a minimum.

I hope this year brings you optimism and happiness.  What goals or resolutions have you set this year?

Food Storage Friday: Strawberries!

I just thought that title sounded fun.  I am happy that it is Friday though.  I'm also happy that I have no more strawberries sitting in my house, waiting for me to do something wonderful with them before they self-destruct.  Our local grocery store had a great deal on a flat of strawberries and pectin, so naturally, I along with every other woman in the area decided to make jam.  My husband was thrilled, since he's not been too big on my mock raspberry jam.  He would never have known my secret ingredient if he hadn't come home early.

http://thefrugalgirls.com/2012/04/how-to-keep-strawberries-fresh.html

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get to those strawberries for two days and by the time I did get to them, they were going downhill fast.  I hate wasting so much fruit.  About that time, I ran across this little tip to keep strawberries fresher, longer.  So of course, I had to go buy another flat of strawberries to try it out.  This time, I went through the strawberries sooner.  I washed them and sorted out the berries that needed immediate action and put the rest aside.  I don't know if it was washing them in vinegar, or being more diligent in taking care of them, but this bunch of strawberries did much better.

It occurred to me, as I was stirring in those ridiculous amounts of sugar, that I should find a more healthy way to enjoy this spring-time fruit later on.  I know there are low-sugar and no-sugar jam recipes out there, but I never think of them until I'm elbow deep in strawberries, pectin and sugar.  Even though I know that sugar is the main ingredient in jam, I'm just always blown away at how much!

http://www.housingaforest.com/healthy-dehydrated-fruit/

Apparently, I'm not the only one with strawberries on my mind, because a friend pinned this blog about drying fruit.  And the lightbulb came on!  I have never tried dehydrating strawberries, but I don't know why.  It is so easy!  Well, except for the slicing uniformly part.  If I had an egg slicer, it would have been easy-peasy, but I had to free hand it.  I tried a few.  My husband ate them on his cereal and asked for more.  So I made more and then more.  I'm thinking of running back to the store again to see if the deal is still on so I can make even more, but that would mean sorting strawberries again.  I'm not even sure how many strawberries I dried, but I have about 6 cups of the yummy snack sitting on my pantry shelf.  If my daughter finds the stash, it will be gone quickly.  She already finished off the dried apricots from last fall as well as most of the peach fruit leather.  It's such a healthy snack, I don't really mind her eating them, but I would like them to last a few months!

My total (so far) tally of preserved strawberries:

6 cups dried
5 pints canned jam
13.5 pints freezer jam

I think I will pedal on down to the store again when the little one wakes up from her nap... or maybe not.

Update:
Now that the sale is over, I found some more recipes for preserving strawberries.
No sugar strawberry freezer jam
Low sugar freezer jams
Dried strawberries (in the oven)

Happy preserving!

Score at the Second Hand Store!

Actually, I didn't find what I was hoping to find, which was some magical thing to help me organize my sewing/crafting projects.  I'm not sure what exactly I wanted, but they didn't have anything that excited me in that area.

What I did find was some cute fabric.  I hesitated to buy it, since it was a bunch of fabrics put together in a plastic sack and taped up tight.  Kind of a mystery fabric grab bag.  You can see what fabrics are on the outside, but you have no idea how much is there and what lies beneath.  5 dollars for a fabric grab bag seemed kind of high, but I liked the fabric I could see and I have a few skirts in mind for my girls, so I grabbed it.  I'm so glad I did!  Inside the bag was five coordinating prints with plenty of fabric to work with.  There are also two flannel pieces, not my favorite colors or pattern, but I'm sure I can find something fun to do with them.

Now I just have to go buy some more white thread.  I think it's a sin for a sewing lady like me to run out of white thread, but sure enough, halfway through a fun skirt for the little one, the spool ran dry and I can't find any more in the house.  That doesn't mean it's not here, just that I can't find it, which is why I went to the second hand store in the first place.  Must find a way to store projects and supplies so I can find them when I need them.  I did find bright blue and hot pink spools of thread...

Cautiously Hopeful...

I feel kind of silly writing a little post after being absent for so long.  I went a month at least without reading a single blog.  It was no fun, but necessary, I guess.  My 2 year old hit a stage that was particularly rough on me.  It resulted in us putting a lock on my bedroom door to have somewhere safe from her.  My computer desk is bare of everything except the computer.  I figured if there was nothing there to play with, maybe she would stop climbing up there.  I decided that after she peed on my desk and on my chair.  Separate incidents, same day.  I spent several weeks following her path of destruction and that's about all I accomplished.  No sewing, no cooking, no gardening.  Just her and me battling our wills.

She seems to have hit her peak and started down, thank goodness.  Let's hope there's no more mountains like this one to climb.  I would post a picture of the little darling, but she is naked in every single one.  On this downward side, she is being very funny and cute.  Yes, she still makes messes, but she's willing to help clean them up.  She is mastering things like putting on her clothes and knowing how to throw garbage away and that makes her happy and a little more snugly, for some reason.  After finishing some job, she'll look at me, waiting for me to tell her what a great job she did.  It's quite fun.  She helped me plant peas and spinach a few weeks ago and has been pretty good about not climbing into the boxes.  She got a watering can for Easter and seems to really enjoy drowning one section of the garden.  

So, as she is moving on in her life, I'm slowly finding my way back to my life.  I finally read some postings from my blog list and today, I actually baked both bread and cookies.  Oh, and I did a load of laundry.  I'm on a roll!  I am looking forward to starting some new projects and finishing a few that I already started.

My little man is being driven crazy by a loose tooth.  It's been loose for over a week and I mean really loose.  It's been sticking straight forward and grossing me out every time I look at him.  I can't believe it's still attached to him.  This is the boy who, in the fall, decided it was time to loose a tooth and loosened and pulled one in one night.  Then he did the same thing on the other side the next week.  Those teeth are finally growing in, since they weren't really ready to come out.  This one won't give it up despite his best efforts.  I just tied another bit of floss to the tooth for him to yank on.  Yuck.  The life of a mother...

Anyway, I'm hopeful that I will again be able to do the crazy stuff I love and then maybe, if the stars align correctly, I'll share them with you.

Beware the Ides of ...February?

I don't know what's going on, but I have had really bad luck these past few weeks.  Add to that, a very severe case of "mommy brain" and you have a recipe for (near) disasters.

First the bad luck:

My crock-pot cracked.  No, that is not a new way of describing a crazy person (although I do think I'm a few cards short of a full deck...) my crock really is cracked.  You can barely see it from the bottom, which is why I didn't see it and why I was baffled at the pool of water coming out from under the slow cooker while it cooked plain baked potatoes.  I'm not sure what to do with the darn thing.  Maybe Walmart will take it back... there's bound to be some kind of recall, right?

Then, the chair that I used to sit in to type at this very computer decided to try to kill me.  It looks perfectly normal, but lean a little too far in any direction and it will buck you out on your head.  The kids love it.  I now sit on it's twin and wait for it to hate me too.

Nothin' but her goggles on...

My thumb and two fingers on my right hand have split open in very painful ways and for no good reason.  Why is it that when you have a crack under your fingernail, you manage to bump or catch that fingernail on everything?  I suppose it doesn't help that I am washing my hands very often.  Have I mentioned that we are in full potty training mode?  Not by my choice, the little monster has decided to go through life in the nude.  When given the option of either wearing a diaper or using the potty, she chose the potty and has done a remarkably great job.  However, that leaves me to clean it out and wash my hands a few hundred times a day, leading to more cracking and whining.

We finally got some snow!  That's not a bad thing, but it just happened to come at the exact time that I had to drive my little wrestler across town. (wrestling started again, oh joy)  I discovered just how bald the tires on the car really are.  I felt like I was on skis.  You know, slide sideways to stop...  Fortunately, I did grow up in Wyoming, on cheap, second-hand tires, so I can manage.  The kids sure gave an interesting commentary from the back seat.

Oh, and my husband recorded some video of my kids trying to ice skate with the camera, but my computer has decided that it is too old and feeble to process anything like that and rather than just skip on over the offending videos, it refuses to let me have any photos at all, so I don't even have a photo to share with you, other than the child, au natural.

Now, the mommy brain:

While doing the routine task of throwing a diaper away, (she will wear them when we have to leave the house.) I threw it in the toilet instead.  Too much potty cleaning, I suppose...

I mentioned that wrestling has started again.  I do this because my son loves it.  I personally like the sport of wrestling as well, but keeping my little monster under control at wrestling practice has become way too much for me.  I found myself dreading practice and then leaving completely exhausted from the exercise of chasing her down every time she made a break for it.  She of course does not go down quietly, so we disrupt the entire practice with shrieks and a mad dash through the boys.  I decided that she and I will not be staying at practice anymore.  Yesterday, after dropping the boy off and making sure the dancing girl could stay and play with some other unfortunate sisters of wrestlers, the little one and I left.  We crossed the street and I attempted to un-lock the car.  Only the key wouldn't go in.  At this point I'm trying to remember if there is a separate key to unlock the doors. (I don't lock the doors all that much... I'm too trusting that way)  I tried the passenger side... no luck, (picture woman with squirming 2 year old in one arm) and I was about to call my husband to tell him to leave work and bring me his keys, when I look in the back seat and notice.... no car seat.  And there's a fold down arm-rest.  We don't have one of those in our car...  Look about 15 feet to my right, and there's my car.  I laughed really loud and then looked around to see if someone saw this whole production, but I don't think anyone did.

Which leads me to my next act of stupidity, although I should have seen this one coming.  Every time I go to a fabric store with a child, I leave with either the wrong stuff, or far too much (or little) of the right stuff.  Anyway, today the monster and I went to a fabric store.  I like to look through the remnant rack to get some inspiration.  I did find a few little scraps that I wanted to add to a skirt that is in the works for the dancing girl.  (Her skirts are getting way too short.)  I have to put them on the very bottom part of the cart, balanced carefully, because the baby will tear them to bits, making check-out difficult.  Anyway, I notice a sign saying that patterns are on sale for only $.99.  So I took the opportunity to pick up a few that I've been eye-balling, but could never bring myself to buy. (I mean, how can I spend $15 on a costume pattern?)  At this point, the monster escaped and scattered birthday cards on the floor, so I wrapped things up.   Checked out quickly, (a little too quickly as it turns out) and went to pick up the other kids so our evening ritual can begin... That means complaining about wanting a snack and fighting over who gets to stay up a little later.

It wasn't until later that I really looked at one of the patterns I bought, one for me, and realized that I bought it in teenage-girl size.  Oh, well, I thought.  At least I didn't attempt to buy any fabric.  And then I remembered the two scraps balanced on the bottom of the cart.  At least I didn't shoplift them.  I left the cart inside the store.  Maybe when I get back there tomorrow to exchange this pattern, they'll be there waiting for me, on the bottom of the cart that pulls to the right. 

Hopefully, March goes better for me.

Yummy Buttermilk Bran Muffins

During my growing up years, my mom would occasionally make up a batch of bran muffins.  The batter would sit in a big pitcher in the fridge and every morning, we would bake a batch for breakfast.  They were good with some jam on them, but I preferred them with just a big slab of butter tucked in there.

A few years ago, I was sorting through my mom's recipes, looking for old favorites to copy for my collection and I ran across this one.

I scanned it and saved it on my computer and then forgot about it.  Then, a week or so ago, I got a sudden craving for my mom's bran muffins.  I think it must be a winter thing... yummy, hot muffins on a cold morning...  So I pulled up the recipe, and then added some scary (to my husband) ingredients to my grocery list and I prepared to make me some muffins.  My husband was truly terrified to see All Bran and plain bran flakes in the cart.  And he was even more scared when he came home early and saw the nasty looking mixture of buttermilk and bran before I mixed in the flour.  I admit, it looked bad, but knowing that I love the product, I plowed on and made the muffins.
Except this recipe is for a large family of hungry eaters.  I didn't have a bowl big enough to mix it in.  I had to use my two largest bowls.  Keep that in mind if you decide to make them.

The verdict:  Even after seeing what goes in and how funky it looks, my husband was willing to try one and then he ate another one and another.  The kids love them with raspberry jam and the little one eats them plain.  I don't know if it's the buttermilk, or what, but for being so full of healthy stuff, these muffins are delicious.  Try them!

Where did January go?

...and where have I been?

I've been here, doing the things I always do, but for some reason there seems to be fewer hours in the day, or at least less time during the afternoon nap.  I just can't fit as much into that time slot as I used to.  We have been furiously filling out financial aide forms, scholarship applications and tax information. (My husband is a full time student)  We finally signed up the Dancing Queen for a dance class like we've been promising to do for at least a year, and that sends us hustling down the road each Thursday.  I'm also a cub scout leader, oh joy.  One hour a week with some wild and funny boys keeps life interesting.

We seemed to spend January shuttling our kids to and from birthday parties.  What's with everyone being born in January?  We took advantage of those parties to take the other, not invited, child out on a "date" with Mom or Dad.

We just had a February birthday.  My "baby" is now 2 and I suppose now she has an excuse for her monstrous behavior.  We celebrated by letting her run around naked and trash the house, her two favorite things.

This is the PG version.  There's usually more skin.

Okay, she does that everyday, so it wasn't that special.  We will be doing the whole cake and ice cream song and dance this weekend when we go to Grandma's.  I did make her some leg warmers to keep her somewhat warm while she goes through this phase of needing to be naked.

Still need to fix the gray socks to make them leg warmers.

Her birthday hits at a perfect time, as far as my crazy creating whims go.  During the month of January, I discovered this blog, and was inspired to make some stuff.  Lucky for me, I just happen to have a couple of little girls that like to play with kitchen stuff.

Beets!

Bananas!

The carrots took forever!

Eggs over easy...

A few varieties of cheeses.

The radishes aren't finished yet.

I think everyday for a week or two, my husband would come home to find me in the middle of some other felt food project.  I find it makes me happy to create something fun and quick like this.

What have you been up to?

After a lovely little cold and some house cleaning, I finally feel like I'm myself again.  For some reason, I feel the need to catch up on some past stuff before I can move on to the new year and future plans.  I forgot a few things that I made for Christmas.  The pictures were still on my camera until this morning.  My siblings and I have a gift giving rotation.  Last year, I tried to finish a quilt that one of my sisters had started.  The top is finished, but I haven't finished quilting it yet.  Maybe by the time the rotation goes around to me having her again?

This year I took another go at finishing an unfinished project for another sister.  Several years ago, she had started working on a wool saddle blanket, like this one.  I knew she had stowed it away in her attic, so sometime in October, I snuck into her house and swiped it.  Sort of.  Actually, I broke a shelf while trying to hoist myself into her unfinished attic access door.  It took some stealthy gluing and sweater rearranging to cover my tracks as well as a more flexible and tall husband to finally get up there and hand down the project.

I also made her some sheep potholders from old sweaters.  I originally planned on making a pillow, like some of these, but I just didn't have it in me.

I found a picture of the ninja suit, which was an even bigger hit than I expected.  Too bad we left the pants at Granny's house.

And here's the football cake that he requested.  The kid didn't pick a theme, unless it was just "BOY".  He wanted a dress-up party with a football cake at a bouncy house place.  So that's what we did.

We've been enjoying this July January weather.  Yes, that is my husband wearing a t-shirt outside in January.  We actually got outside to do the fall clean-up that didn't happen in the fall because winter was here then.

My husband and I celebrated our 8th anniversary.  "Celebrated" gives the impression that we did something special.  We cleaned the bedroom.  It really needed it since that was the dumping place for all Christmas projects and supplies.  He also brought me some flowers and a sweet card, once again proving that we have completely switched places on the card giving spectrum.  I guess "special" is all relative.  He also called me into the office and surprised me by playing 'our song' and dancing with me right there.  That was special to me.

I have a few other things on my mind too, such as trying to figure out why the salt is sabotaging my baking.  Is it possible for salt to be saltier than it should be?  Everything is coming out too salty, no matter how much I cut the salt back.  Maybe I have a little kitchen elf "helping" me...

I'm also needing to go through my pantry and figure out what I need more of, and how much has been used, but I'll probably never get around to that, so don't hold your breath.

Hello 2012!

Wow, the last few months flew by!  I entered my Christmas preparation hibernation sometime in November and I feel like I'm just barely coming out of it.  It seems like once I get a few ideas of things to make, I just can't stop.  Here's a few snatches of what kept me busy for the past two months:

I decided that we really needed Thanksgiving napkins when I found a yard of clearance fabric.  One yard of fabric makes a lot of napkins.  Napkins take longer to make than you would think.  I'll finish the rest next year on Thanksgiving Eve.

Also in the fabric clearance was this cute scrap.  Since my 5 year old girl has grown out of her old apron, I couldn't help making a new one.

Hand puppets are a lot harder to make without a pattern than  you would think, but I had a lot of fun with these.  The old king is my favorite, although I made his outfit too small to fit my hand into.

Since the little one pretends to ride anything she can while yelling Yee-Haw, I thought she could use a stick horse.  I adapted several horses that I found online to achieve this particular breed of old levi and cast off sweater.  Unfortunately, I think it's too heavy for her.  I'll have to make a smaller version for her birthday.

I had to make another one of these for the little one, since I was lazy last year and never did it.  Coincidentally, her stocking matches her horse.

There's a few more things that I don't have pictures for, like the puppet theater and the ninja costume that we put together out of cast off clothing.  I must have been too tired to take pictures of them.  And suddenly, it's a new year and I'm still recovering from the old one.  Hopefully, I'll get all this holiday stuff put away and get my head facing the right direction soon.

Happy New Year!

What to do with green tomatoes?

Trying to grow tomatoes in a cold climate automatically means that you will end up with a lot of green tomatoes at the end of the season.  Even in this warmer climate, I wound up with many unripe tomatoes.  In the past few years, I've been experimenting with different things to do with these little guys, since I don't want to waste anything that can actually be used. 

Of course, there's the cool sounding fried green tomatoes, which I don't really care for unless they're not truly green.  Even when I do make them, I'm usually the only person that eats them, since they just look funny to everyone else.

In past research, I was surprised to find that the green taco sauce (that my dad has to have) is made from green tomatoes.  I found a few recipes online (this one is complicated.  There are simpler ones) and tried it out.  It turned out too hot for my kids, but the adults liked it.

I have also made green tomato relish, which tastes just like the relish that everybody loves on their hot dogs.  I'll post the recipe at the end of this post.  My mother has been busy canning jars of this all fall after my sister dumped a few boxes of green tomatoes in her lap.

Since the relish is already being covered, I decided that this year, I wanted to make mock raspberry jam with my green tomatoes.  Don't laugh, it really turns out looking and tasting like the real thing.  The texture is right and the tomato seeds look like raspberry seeds.  I couldn't find my recipe though, so I was thrilled to see the recipe posted at a friends blog, Home Maid Simple.  I guess I'd better get busy sorting and washing my tomatoes.

I have also just been informed that you can make a mock apple pie with green  tomatoes, but I don't think I'll try that just yet.

What have you done with your green tomatoes?

Green Tomato Relish

Grind and drain:
13 cucumbers
6 onions
20 large green tomatoes
2 green peppers
2 red peppers (or green or yellow...)

Add:
2 tsp salt
1 tsp pepper
1 tsp ground cloves
8 cups sugar
4 cups vinegar

Boil 1 hour

Make a paste:
4 Tbs flour
2 Tbs dry mustard
2 Tbs turmeric

Add paste and stir until thick.  Can pints in water bath for 10 minutes (4500 ft elev).  16 minutes above 7000 ft.

It's getting cold outside!

Happy Halloween!  We're a bit behind in the holiday department.  Finally got most of the pumpkins carved this weekend and roasted the seeds last night.  Of course I left the costume preparation until the last minute and was up late last night altering the vampire cape so it wouldn't drag on the ground.  The witch hat disappeared for a while, but was found again, in the closet of all places.   

Almost a year ago, we wandered through a store and found costumes for almost nothing and thought we were so clever for buying next years costumes when they were cheap. I managed to out-smart myself in all of this however. We purchased a cute little duck costume for the little one, but I had to put it away because the big kids kept trying to squeeze into it.  Now, it's Halloween and I can't seem to remember where I put it away exactly.  Aren't I clever?  Wherever it is, it's safe. 

We enjoyed a very nice October, but the nights have gotten very cold.  I harvested everything I could out of the garden and cleaned it all up.  It felt good to finally get some order to the jungle and be done for the winter.  I had planned on putting in a fall garden, but I just never got to it. 

Growing up, we always had a snow storm on Halloween, but it doesn't look like we'll get a storm tonight.  Hope you have a happy, warm and safe Halloween!