Fourth of July fun

To make up for the absence of any fun mommy-inspired creativity in June I tried to make up for it by pulling together a few projects for the Fourth of July. We invited a few friends over on Friday, July 2nd for a little swimming party. Before the kids swam they made firecracker crowns. I forgot to take a finished photo but below you can see how they are made. The directions and idea were from Family Fun. CLICK HERE. Basically you just need tape, straws and pipe-cleaners. They turned out so cute!





I also got creative in the kitchen and made red, white and blue cupcakes. I found the flag picks at my fave thrift store, of course! To do the cupcakes you just divide your white cake batter into 3 bowls and color one bowl blue and one red. Then you glop the batter into the cupcake liners, color on top of color. Once they are baked they are red, white and blue inside. Totally easy and also fun to bite into! Again, I forgot to take a picture of one cut apart, but in the photo below you can see the layers of color pretty well. We also had strawberries dipped in white candy melts on the bottom with the ends dipped in blue sugar. You can just barely see them in the bottom right corner of the photo.







The most visually stunning part of our feast, however, was the layered Jell-O I made. These turned out SO awesome. I didn't know if I could actually make something that looks this fancy but it was very easy. It takes several hours since you have to let the layers set before adding the next layer. But if you have time and plan ahead it's very easy to do. CLICK HERE for the recipe I used.







Each year for the past few years I have helped the boys make special Fourth of July t-shirts. This year we made fireworks shirts. The idea and directions can be found on the Family Fun website. CLICK HERE. Again..........so easy with a great result.





Our friend, Bob, visited us for the Fourth of July. DH grilled out burgers and brats and my parents came over. Grandma brought a pump-action rocket set which was a real hit with everyone. It was especially exciting when Bob launched a rocket across our lawn with a lit sparkler stuck into the end of it! We won't forget that anytime soon. Luckily we did not have reason to call the fire department. We also had our annual baseball game on the front lawn. It was a good way to spend a special day.

4 Little Words...........

..........that brought me back from my long blog hiatus: WHOLE WHEAT CINNAMON ROLLS.
I knew when I snapped a photo of some cinnamon rolls yesterday that I was ready to start blogging again. I am sorry for not writing in so long. To be honest, I got mad at Blogger back around Mother's Day because I was trying to write a post about the tent I received and couldn't get my photos to upload. I tried again about a week later and still had no luck. So although I wasn't planning it, I ended up taking about a 3 month break from blogging. All is well here and a lot has been going on with us. I am planning to write a bunch of posts in the next week or two to update everyone about our summer. For now, I wanted to share a recipe I just tried for the first time that is FAB.U.LOUS. I have been up late for several nights working on things for school this fall. I was dinking around online the other night and stumbled across a blog called Finding Joy in My Kitchen. There are a lot of great recipes over there, but I could not get THIS ONE out of my head and ended up making it the very next day. This is a big deal for me because I have always been too intimidated to try cinnamon rolls. They seem very complicated and I can't even bake an apple pie that I like. What drew me to this recipe was that it looked easy and it used whole wheat flour instead of white which definitely ups the nutritional value. I am pleased to say that in not much more than 30 minutes start to finish I had some very yummy homemade cinnamon rolls. They truly represent the pinnacle of my culinary achievements to date. I did not add blueberries to mine since my oldest son nixed that idea when I asked him. These are really awesome rolls. I am going to make another batch soon and see how well they freeze. They would be great heated up for breakfast every morning. Yum-ola! Well.......it feels good to be back. Please enjoy the two photos I took..........they were EASY to upload so I'll be posting again very SOON!




Before baking (above)




After baking (with icing drizzled on top)

On the to-do list

Since I am back in the mood to blog again, I thought I would share what is on my to-do list for today. I had the day off of work yesterday but basically frittered the day away. Honestly, I get much more done when I have less time. Is that true for anyone else?



At the top of the priority list was mucking out the muddy chicken yard. With all the snow melting (finally! Praise God!) the chicken yard (even though it has a roof over it) has been SO muddy this past week. Muddy as in standing puddles of water, boots slipping around mud. I have been researching some options for it on Backyard Chickens. I was originally planning to get a bunch of sand to put down. Then I read about some people who put the old pine shavings from the coop out into the run. Since I needed to put fresh shavings down anyway I thought this was a great option. I told my husband that I felt like a total Farmer Cluck this morning as I headed out to the local feed store just after 8 a.m. I bought 4 big bales of pine shavings (which ended up being way too many..........but I'll need them over the summer anyway). Then I came home and put on my "work boots"...............





And headed out to the coop, shovel in hand. It took very little time to scoop out the old shavings into the chicken yard. Now I have a nice thick layer of shavings and no mud showing at all. I love it. My boots will stay mud-free and my chickens will have clean feet. I have been bragging all morning that I have the cleanest coop in the county. It smells so good after you lay down a fresh layer of pine shavings.






I grabbed the camera to get a shot of the hens "fighting" over the nest box. I had really disrupted their laying schedule with all my cleaning, apparently, and three of the hens managed to wedge themselves into our nest box at one time. In the first photo Sarah's beak is open because she was basically cackling her head off at Abby and Reba.





Then she managed to wedge herself into the box with them. You can just see her white tail poking out. Reba quickly removed herself from the nest box with Abby following shortly thereafter. Then loud-mouth (dead-footed) Sarah had the whole box to herself. She is such a boss!





After that task was completed I wanted to make some homemade granola. So I have that done. This recipe makes a ton, keeps really well, and tastes SO fantastic.

I must be feeling very domestic today because I also have a batch of bread-dough rising as I type this. I am using this No-Knead yeast bread recipe which we like so well. I divide it into two loaves and it never lasts long.

Once the bread is done the boys and I are going to go to Target to pick up some Project Life photos (I am about 2-3 weeks behind) and to a teacher supply store to get birthday crowns for my preschoolers and a birthday gift for a party my oldest son has later this afternoon.

Also on the list.........we need to write a letter to our Compassion child, Fernando. We got two letters from him within a week of one another and have to write back. And I need to finish revising our preschool brochure, find some songs about birds to sing in class next week, run, put away Valentine's decorations. Oh, and take a shower! So it should be a pretty busy day. It's been productive so far. I love Saturdays!!

Valentine S'mores Teacher Gifts

I had fun making up some little Valentine S'mores treat bags to give my sons' teachers as gifts for Valentine's Day. The printable tags are from Tricia Rennea. I saw them featured on another blog and that is what gave me the idea to make them. I hadn't made marshmallows from scratch for a while so I used THIS RECIPE from Family Fun and made little heart shaped vanilla marshmallows. I dipped them in red sugar and I think they turned out pretty cute. I am sure that marshmallows are easier to make if you have a stand mixer (they have to be mixed for 12 minutes), but I only have a hand mixer and was able to make them without falling over from exhaustion. So don't be deterred from trying this even if you only have a little-ol' hand held like me. Someday I hope to graduate to a "big-girl" mixer, but they are quite pricey, so it may be a while before that happens. I guess I should have registered for one for my wedding.......17 years ago. Anyway............these were fun to make. You could probably still whip some up to give this year, or bookmark the idea for next year. Everyone who received these thought they were very cute. (And obviously, you could do it without making the marshmallows from scratch. Sometimes I just get a "Martha" moment and have to go all out.) :-)








I packaged the marshmallows in a separate treat bag and closed the top with some pink and red paperclips that I had in my stash.

Update on waffle experiments and a new obsession

If you read my previous post you are aware that during our GREAT SNOW-IN I pulled out a waffle iron that hadn't been used since the 1990s and tried out some made-from-scratch waffle recipes on my family. You would also know that my banana cinnamon waffles were met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. As I said in that post, I am not easily discouraged and planned to try out a gingerbread waffle recipe. Which I did. Let's just say that future waffle experimentation is on hold until further notice. Nuff said.

(Sidenote: I will say that between the two recipes (links are in my previous post) I really loved the banana cinnamon waffles. In fact, I ate some of the leftover ones for breakfast this morning. I had refrigerated them and I just popped them in the toaster like an Eggo waffle and ate them with sliced bananas and pancake syrup on top. It was much more decadent than my usual breakfast fixings! So I may make more of these for my own breakfasts and freeze them to eat during the week.)

In other news, we haven't retrieved any more gigantic eggs. However, today was a 4-egg day which is always exciting because that means all four hens laid an egg today. I found a frozen, squashed mouse in the chicken coop and had DH dispose of it. Before tossing it he brought it to the door to show our boys. My oldest son promptly said, "Mommy, you can write about that on your blog." So I am. :-) I will, however, spare you a photo glimpse of the mouse remains. In case you are wondering I DIDN'T even take a photo. (Thought about it, though!)

My new obsession is planning our garden for this summer. We have not had a vegetable garden since we had the boys. Usually we don't even think about gardening until about the middle of June and then it seems too late to tackle it. So.........I'm getting a head start and planning it all out now. I have been obsessed about looking up information from the Square Foot Gardening (SFG) website. That is the method I plan to use. It requires virtually no weeding..........seriously. I'm all over that. You should check out the concept of SFG..........it's a really neat idea and you can do it in very little space with very good results. I have also been looking through my Burpee seed catalog that just came yesterday and getting on the Burpee website to read the customer reviews of all the different types of seeds. That has been really helpful in deciding which seeds to order. I am pretty excited about our venture into gardening. I'm sure I will write many future posts about it. If any of you do the SFG method, I'd love it if you'd post a comment about how you like it, what you grow, etc. Below is a photo of my garden notebook and some gardening books I checked out from the library today.

Reba's MONSTER egg (and other news from the Arctic)

Laura here, reporting from the arctic zone also known as the Midwest. Temperatures here reaching a whopping 4 above today (or something like that) with windchills around -20 degrees. When this posts we will be on our third straight day off from school. The first day (Wed) due to a snowstorm which dumped another 4-5 inches on top of the MANY we already had on the ground, the second day due to winds creating blizzard like conditions, and the third day due to a HIGH of 0 on the thermometer with windchills of -30. Yeah.........that's what's going on. Because of the cold I have been going out to the chicken coop several times a day to thaw the frozen water and to collect the eggs before they freeze. I was completely blown away by the egg I found late this afternoon. Most of the hens lay in the morning, but when I had gone out around 2:00 p.m. Reba was in the nesting box although nothing was under her when I checked. When I went back around 4:00 or so there was a gargantuan egg in the nesting box........very dark brown so I knew it was Reba's. Of course I had to blog about it. What kind of blogger would I be if I didn't brag to everyone about the huge eggs produced by my girls? You can see the monster egg next to another egg I gathered this morning.



I don't know if it was just a fluke today or if we can expect ginormous eggs from Reba from now on. Time will tell and I'll keep you posted.



Wednesday morning when we had our first snow day I went downstairs and brought up a waffle iron that DH and I got MANY years ago, perhaps as a wedding gift. That would make it a circa 1993 waffle iron in case you are wondering. This baby hasn't been used since WAY before we had kids. In fact........neither DH or I could remember when we had used it EVER. Anywho........waffles from the waffle iron are my boys' new favorite breakfast or just about anytime food. Since I've been a bit of a blogaholic on my days off, I stumbled across a recipe for homemade banana cinnamon waffles. I decided to make these for dinner tonight along with roasted potatoes and scrambled (monster) eggs. Now I'll let you guess...............did my oldest son (the one who's been asking me to make waffles for him about 5 times a day since the waffle iron appeared) prefer his mother's made-from-scratch, farm fresh egg infused, fresh banana-cinnamon with buttermilk waffles OR the generic store-brand pancake mix waffles we'd been having up until tonight? I'm sure you're thinking the made-from-scratch waffles were a hands-down winner, right? You might be thinking, there's no way he could have preferred the bland, boring box-mix waffles. Oh. Yes. He. Did. About 2 bites into the most fantastic waffles this girl has ever produced he announced (in a fairly whiny voice I might add), "I don't LIKE banana waffles." Yeah. That's what he said. Seeing the obvious disappointment on my face he asked, "Are you mad?" To which I replied, "No, I'm not mad. I had just hoped you would like these waffles, but it's okay."

Later on when I was putting my youngest son to bed I asked him if he liked the banana waffles I had made........still grasping for some waffle validation, don't you know. He said, "WHAT banana waffles?" I said, "The ones Mama made for supper tonight." He said, "Oh! Those tasted YUCK! Sometimes when I eat the food you make it doesn't taste very good to me."

Alrighty then..........Not one to be easily discouraged, I am totally planning on trying the gingerbread waffle recipe in the link above sometime VERY SOON! I'll let you know how it goes. ;-)

A bit of everything

Be forewarned..........this is a very photo-dense post. I am too lazy to do a bunch of separate posts so I'm playing catch-up and writing one big post to describe all that's been going on here since I posted one week ago. First let me say that the reason I finally found time to blog tonight is because we had to cancel a family get-together that was supposed to be at our house TONIGHT because there is a big ice storm moving into the area. I was really bummed out because the boys and I were really excited to have everyone over here and we had made a bunch of stuff to give out to the guests. But, I would rather have my loved ones be safe, so instead I am catching up on blogging.


I guess I'll start by summarizing what I've done in the past week. OK...........last Wednesday night I went to my MOPS Christmas party which was very fun, as always. We had an ornament exchange. I forgot to take a photo of the one I brought home.........it's a glass snowman with green accents. Love it! On Thursday last week my oldest son had his winter program for school. The theme of his program was "Peace". His role in the program was to read aloud a report he had written about Nelson Mandela. He got up in front of an auditorium filled with people and read his report out loud. He was so poised and read with such expression. I was so proud of him that my eyes welled up with tears as he read. He is such an awesome kid!! On Friday I went out to a local Mexican place with a few friends to celebrate the 40th birthday of my neighbor. On Saturday the boys and I went over to Amber's house. She is our daycare provider. My little boy goes to her house two half-days a week. She always hosts a Christmas get-together for her daycare families and had a breakfast this year. There is always a special guest who appears during her get-togethers----------Santa Claus! And he always has a gift for each child. My boys got two new games from Santa...........Chutes and Ladders and Yahtzee. These are great additions to our games collection. Thank you, Amber! I went shopping Saturday afternoon and Saturday night the boys and I and my mom went to a Christmas pageant at a mega-church in our area. We met my friend Julie and her family there. (DH was home with the dog. We have to keep him on a rigid medication schedule. He has made it almost 6 weeks without a seizure, the longest he's ever gone and we don't want to mess that up!) The pageant is amazing.........almost like (I imagine) a Broadway show. There are live animals (camels walking past us only 1 foot away) and angels who truly fly across the set on zip-lines. There was real snow falling on us during one part and there is always just an amazing and touching reenactment of the first Christmas story along with an inspirational modern storyline. I am so glad we went.


During the past week in my preschool classroom, the children and I were busy making parent gifts. Below you can see the one my little boy made for me!! If you are curious about this project, read this post over at my school blog. These would be great to make if you need to still whip up a last-minute gift. They take only a few minutes and turn out really pretty.







Last Friday I read this post on WhimsyLove and instantly knew I wanted to make some of these to give my female relatives at our get-together that was supposed to be tonight. When I was out and about on Saturday afternoon I stopped by my favorite thrift store and picked up 5 vintage spoons for about 75 cents. They had the half-price colored tag on them!! I typed up the story from Nikki's post and printed it out on cardstock. I used a corner-rounder to decorate the corners and then I adhered them to another color of cardstock and fancied up those corners. I tied a ribbon around the spoon and stuck an ornament hanger through the back so the spoons could be hung on the tree as shown below.






I punched a hole in the corner of the story and tied it to the spoons as shown here.

I love the message behind this story. I truly believe that the best IS yet to come. Hopefully I can still get-together with my family soon and pass out the spoons I've made.

When I went to Hobby Lobby Saturday I picked up supplies so my boys could make an ornament for each person at our family gathering (the one that now ISN'T tonight.........can you tell I'm disappointed?). All the holiday items were at least 50% off, so I got some great deals. I wanted the clear glass ornaments but they only had the frosted ones left. I have seen lots of initial ornaments around the blogosphere lately and wanted to copy those. I wasn't totally thrilled with the sticker letters I found, but they were glittery and Christmasy.

We stuffed red gift shred into the ornaments as shown. This was much harder than you would think as you pretty much had to do it strand by strand. My little boy soon tired of the project after this photo was taken. I can't say I blame him!

After filling them with the shred, we attached the top, added a letter sticker, an ornament hanger and a ribbon. We made 15 ornaments in all and have some left for future crafting.

The photo below shows one finished ornament.

Also this weekend I made a ton of chocolate pretzel rods to give as gifts to Sunday School teachers, school teachers, bus drivers, etc. OOPS! I guess DH needs to get a bag since he is the bus driver for our oldest child who attends a private school!! I think I have an extra one, honey!

Here they are all packaged up and ready to give out!!

We also have exciting news from the chicken coop. On Saturday I went out and found a perfect little brown egg frozen to the ground in the chicken run. I had to pour warm water on it to get it off the ground and the shell broke in the process. I didn't get a photo of the FIRST egg due to this! Below you can see Sarah and Abby hanging out on the roost in the chicken run. I have suspicions that Abby is our egg-layer.

On Sunday there was another perfect little brown egg, this time inside the coop on the floor. It was still warm to the touch when I brought it inside. Since we didn't have a nesting box in the coop yet, DH and I had to scurry to put something in place with the hope that our egg-layer would soon find a proper place to deposit her daily treasures. The next two photos show two little sets of hand holding our first (unbroken) egg!!

We decided (for ease of time and labor in very cold weather) to repurpose an old kitty litter bucket to use as a nesting box. DH just used a screw to attach it to the wall of the coop as shown below. On Backyard Chickens I have read that it helps the chickens know what it's for if you put some fake eggs in it. So you can see two plastic Easter eggs in it in the photos. On Monday there was another perfect little brown egg. It was found below the nesting box, not inside. But the two eggs IN the nesting box, the fake ones, were mysteriously moved to different places so there has definitely been some fowl play involved. haha

Below you can see the nesting box relative to where the roost is in the coop. Today I could find no evidence of an egg anywhere. So we'll have to see what happens next. Very exciting developments in chicken farming I must say. I have yet to cook one of the two eggs we've retrieved. DH seems a bit squeamish about the whole thing but I've just been too busy. It's kind of scary that we have moved so far from our agrarian roots as a society that we are cautious to eat food that comes directly from the animal of origin. When you think about it, there's nothing more natural than eating an egg laid by your own hen, is there?? I'll let you know once I cook it if it's the best egg I've ever had.

On the homemade gift-making front I've been busy. Below is a photo of a little doodad I made for my oldest son's teachers. As I mentioned above, their winter program theme was "peace" so I decided to make these little word-art knick-knacks for his teachers as a gift. I had seen something very similar in a Country Living magazine a few months ago. Luckily I had a thrifted Scrabble game in my crafting stash. I just sawed off the letter-holder pieces to the right size and glued the letter tiles onto them with Elmer's glue. Easy peasy! These would be great to make for Valentine's Day, spelling LOVE or other sentiments.

In keeping with my "give thanks" pillow from Thanksgiving I decided to make up some "believe" pillows. I gave one to each of my classroom assistants who are also my youngest son's teachers. I also gave one to Amber, our daycare provider. And I kept one for myself since I am also my son's teacher and since all his other teacher's got one................. I love how these turned out. I am already thinking of "let it snow" on blue burlap for January, "love" on red for February, "get lucky" on green for March...........OK..........maybe not that one!! :0)

Also for Amber, our daycare gal and my good friend, I made a Christmas apron. I didn't use a pattern, just kind of winged it. I started it Sunday night and finished it yesterday. I gave it to Amber today and to my face she said she liked it. Actually, I know she really did like it because she loves aprons. I loved the really big rick-rack. Aprons are so easy to whip together. I can't believe I don't actually own one. I need to change that!! Maybe a good Christmas break sewing project.

Here's a closeup of the rick-rack trim and fabric.

The only other handmade gift I need to finish (I mean, start and finish) is pajamas for the boys. I made them a set of pajamas last year and wanted to continue the tradition. I already have the shirts and fabric so I'll start those tomorrow. They'll be ready to wear by Christmas Eve. Whew! Now you can see why I haven't posted in a week! In case I don't post again before Christmas, please have a blessed day with your family. And treasure the reason behind the season. There is truly no greater gift than Jesus. My wish is that each of you reading this would know and embrace that truth this year.

Bakerella wannabe

I recently found the website, Bakerella. While I do like to bake, I have never felt inspired or confident about baking things that are decorated. I truly admire people who can decorate beautiful cakes.........that is really a talent. I have many hobbies and have never really wanted to take up cake decorating. However, when I looked at all the great ideas on Bakerella, I actually wanted to try making her cupcake bites. They looked doable and are very similar to a cake ball recipe I recently bookmarked over at Kelly's Korner. Since I had to take a dessert to my MOPS maidrite fundraiser on Wednesday, I decided to try out the cupcake bites to see if I could pull it off. While my cupcake bites didn't turn out as cute or perfect as Bakerella's, I was still pleased with how they turned out. They tasted really good too. I decided to do a post since a few of my MOPS buddies were wondering how to make them.

I started with a boxed red velvet cake mix and baked it according to the package directions. Once it cooled, I used 2 forks to crumble it up in a large bowl. It is easiest if you crumb up about 1/4 of the cake at a time. Try to get the pieces down to true crumbs, not chunks.

Then I added about 3/4 can of cream cheese frosting and worked it into the cake crumbs with 2 forks.

It takes a little time, but after everything is mixed the mixture is moist and looks kind of like raw hamburger!!

I chilled the mixture overnight which made the next step easier. The following evening I used my Pampered Chef cookie scoop to scoop out balls of the mixture. Then I used my hands to roll the scoops into balls. I placed the balls on waxed paper on a cookie sheet and put the cookie sheet into the freezer.

I chilled my cake balls for probably about 20 minutes which I think was enough time since they held up pretty well in the next step. They could probably have used another 10 minutes or so.

Here's what my hands looked like after rolling all the balls!

I had purchased a peanut butter cup candy mold at Hobby Lobby to do the next step. I made the "easy" Bakerella version of cupcake bites. She has another version she makes using a cookie cutter to form the bottom of the cupcakes. I may try that version too, but this way is really easy. The next two photos show the mold I used.

I wanted white "bottoms" on my cupcakes so I melted white almond bark in the microwave and put a plop of it in the bottom of each cup of the mold as you can see below. Then I squished a cake ball on top of each blob. I think my cake balls were a teeny bit large for these cups, but the almond bark still squeezed up the sides which is what you want.

Then I put the whole mold into the freezer for about 5 minutes or even less to set. I don't know what that weird triangular spot is on my freezer, but there are the frozen waffles I have for breakfast every day!!

For the next part I melted some pink candy wafers in a glass measuring cup in the microwave. I bought these at Hobby Lobby too. I really wanted red tops, but I couldn't find red candy wafers.

I guess I didn't take any photos of the next steps. After chilling the balls in the freezer I popped them out of the molds and held them upside down and swirled them in the melted pink candy. It was a little hard to get it so there wasn't a teeny line of red velvet cake showing between the layers, but I did better after I practiced. Before the candy set I sprinkled each cupcake with rainbow sprinkles. After only a few minutes the candy had set and my cupcake bites were done.

I'm not the best food photographer by any means, but here is what they looked like when finished.

A fun thing about these little treats is that they are completely edible. The cake part on the inside was incredibly moist. I loved these with the red velvet and cream cheese frosting. However, I've been dreaming about making them with chocolate cake, chocolate frosting (homemade, not canned), chocolate candy melts and chocolate sprinkles. Doesn't that sound awesome? These would be so cute to give as a gift all packed up in a little white box with a cute ribbon. I spent quite a bit of time looking at all the fun ideas on Bakerella's website. I also want to try the cake pops which are basically the same thing I did here, but in just a ball shape and attached to a stick!! I think I'm addicted and I'm going to have to make a variation of these for every major holiday. They are just so cute, fun, and yummy!!