Pay It Forward

Popping in with a special offer for my blog readers...

Random acts of kindness have turned into little gifts for you. A great opportunity to get something handmade just for you and pay it forward. I would especially like the opportunity to create for people I've never met (but I'll make stuff for the people I love too!!)

The first five (5) people to respond to this post will get something made by me.
This offer does have some restrictions and limitations so please read carefully:

1. I make no guarantees that you will like what I make. Whatcha get is whatcha get.

2. What I create will be just for you, with love.

3. It'll be done this year (2009).

4. I will not give you any clue what it's going to be. It will be something made in the real world and not something cyber. It may be weird or beautiful. Or it may be monstrous and annoying. Heck, I might bake something for you and mail it to you. Who knows? Not you, that's for sure!

5. I reserve the right to do something strange.

6. In return, all you need to do is post this text on your blog and make 5 things for the first 5 to respond to blog.

7. Send your mailing address - after I contact you.

IMPORTANT: This offer is null and void if I do not see you post your own blog to pay this forward.

I've Lost It...

...the will to blog, that is.

I just haven't done it. It isn't for lack of ideas, or lack of photos, or lack of anything really. It just hasn't been really high on my priority list lately.

I'm sure at some point I will pick it back up again. Until then, you can catch me on facebook.

Kitchen Tip: Washing Grapes

I've discovered an easy way to wash & measure out grapes for lunch boxes or snacks. My Pampered Chef can strainer is just the thing! It holds just the right amount and I can rinse & drain them easily. It's small too - doesn't take up much room in the drawer. I thought it was just for straining tuna, so I'm glad to have another use for this little tool!

Broccoli Slaw Omelet

So, I had a Pampered Chef cooking show a couple of weeks ago. We made this yummy recipe, Thai Chicken Stir-Fry served over rice and a salad (for more meal options!) It was the perfect recipe for me. Most of the PC recipes call for boxed mixes and prefab foods. This one was all fresh whole foods. Perfect!

One of the ingredients that I bought was broccoli slaw. It's a prepackaged salad mix (which is technically prefab, but still a whole real food). I had never heard of it before. But it was on the list, so I bought it.

After the party, there was half a bag of broccoli slaw left. Upon further discovery, I realized that broccoli slaw is just shredded broccoli stems with a few shredded carrots thrown in for color. Well, now that I know that I can totally make my own this summer when the broccoli is garden fresh. But I digress...

I had to figure out a way to use up the leftovers. I've been eating eggs for breakfast a lot lately. One morning as I opened the refrigerator to grab an egg, I saw the broccoli slaw and was hit with inspiration. Of course! A broccoli slaw omelet!!

(Now, technically, it is actually more of a scramble than an omelet, but it's my recipe, so I'm calling it an omelet anyway.)

First, melt some REAL butter in a hot skillet. Then throw in a handful of broccoli slaw. Cook until the broccoli slaw is crisp-tender, about 4-5 minutes.


Break your egg (or eggs) into the pan and stir them up real quick to scramble. (I used 3 "banty" eggs from Tanna - they are half the size of normal eggs and have very yellow yolks an account of the chickens being free-range and grass fed.)


When the eggs are mostly set, flip over and cook until done.

Finally, butter up a slice of homemade bread and pan-fry it while the pan is still hot. Sprinkle the eggs with a little seasoned salt and enjoy!

Pampered Chef has landed!

I love me some new kitchen toys... I mean tools.

This is what I got for hosting my cooking show. Pampered Chef is really good to their hostesses. The boxes landed yesterday. I got my guests' orders sorted & packed before dinner. I told myself I couldn't sort through my goodies until all the kitchen work was done for the day. Nothing like incentive to get the job done!

I'm very pleased with everything I got. I'm using my new stone baker to roast a chicken for dinner. I can't wait!

The T-shirt Dress

I love a little girl in a dress.

One of the things I had to come to terms with when Jade was smaller was her lack of girlishness. She hated wearing dresses. It just wasn't in her programming. When I had Ruby and then Hosanna, I immediately began dressing them in pink, ruffles, and all manner of girly things. Then I waited to see if it would stick.

It did.

Ruby loves dressing up, and even Hosanna now enjoys wearing pretty dresses.

And I love that my little girls look like little girls. Even covered in dirt, there's no denying the girly-ness of a little girl in a pretty dress.

As spring approached, I began to evaluate the girl's clothing needs. Hosanna needed some summer clothes because I had nothing left in storage after last summer's clean out. And that was okay with me because it gave me an excuse to make her some cute little dresses.

I got some shirts on clearance at Walmart, and one brand new (with tags still on) at a rummage sale. I have tons of fabric in my stash, so I just went out to the bins and dug around until I found something that matched. Here is the finished results. Each dress took about 30 minutes to put together.

The one on the left is for Hosanna, and the one on the right is for her cousin, Abby.

These are made from the same yard of fabric that I got on the clearance table at Hancock fabrics a few years ago. It matched both t-shirts so well! But since one has the teacup border, you can't really tell. And she's not going to be wearing them both at the same time anyway.These will fit her all summer, though the skirts may be a bit shorter by fall than they are now. Each dress cost less than $5. And they are much cuter and more modest than the summer dresses I've seen for sale lately. I may make a few for Ruby too.

I love a little girl in a dress.

Garden '09: First Sprouts

I planted my first seeds of the year on April 30. I started with nice, cold-hardy crops: spinach & sugar snap peas. It's a good thing I didn't plant anything else... we've had a number of frosty nights since then.

The spinach was up first, on May 8. It looked at first like little green hairs coming up through the wood chips.

Next came the peas. They took a bit longer. I spotted the first sprout on May 11.The peas are big enough now that I need to get them a trellis. I noticed the first little tendrils yesterday. I bought some bamboo u-hoops at Menards that I am going to use to build a pea fence. That is my project for today.

Hey, It's Me

Well, howdy! It's been like 2 weeks, so I figured it was time to get back to my blog. I have all these ideas running around in my head just waiting for time to sit down and do something with them. I'm working on a few posts about my garden, cooking, sewing, and parenting. For now, some cute shots of the kiddos!

Well, just of the two little ones. (Why is it the little ones get all the camera time, huh?)

Ruby & Hosanna got some new kitchen tools during Rummage-O-Rama a few weekends ago. They have quite the collection now. Ruby is always cooking up something interesting, and teaching little sister too.


I tried to put Hosanna's hair in pigtails. It kinda worked. Of course, she's had a haircut since then as we continue to "blend in" Ruby's handiwork.

Check out the peepers on that kid! Wow!

Again & Still, Plus Other News

I thought I should pop on and let everyone know what's up.

Last week Ruby & I came down with strep throat AGAIN. That made 4x for me and 3x for Ruby. The wise nurse practitioner we had seen each time finally brought in the rest of the family for testing. As it turns out, Teagan & Kordell were carrying it without symptoms. So, we didn't have it again, we STILL had it, as in, it never went away. They put the whole family on antibiotics and we are getting retested next week. Hopefully it is gone for good.

We are STILL working on the new garden. We brought home a load of black dirt from the in-laws yesterday, so we are getting closer. I planted spinach & snap peas in the other garden. No sprouts yet, but hopefully by the weekend there will be signs of life.

My camera cable is STILL missing, so that's why there have been no photos lately. I found one that might work at a rummage sale, but I have not had time to try it out yet.

Kordell went to an art class last week and learned some awesome techniques for improving his drawings. I'm hoping the desire to continue improving will get him interested in learning (in general) again.

Jade went to her first sleepover party last weekend. The mom of one of her friends just happens to be Jade's former speech therapist, and she wanted Jade to come to her daughter's birthday party so badly that she organized the whole thing, food and all, to accommodate Jade. So Jade got to be normal for once. How awesome is that!

Ruby is pushing every button there is to be pushed. She is wearing us out.

Hosanna is very glad that it is spring and she can play outside again. Daddy's tractor is her favorite thing right now.

Teagan has too many projects going. Radios, antennas and gardening... oh my!

I am hosting a Pampered Chef party on Friday so this week is all about finding my house again. I spent all weekend rummaging and ignoring the housework, so it's time to buckle down and whip this place into shape!

Coming Home

I had a great day today. I got to hang out with one of my best friends and work on a sewing project. The project went well, and we had a great time. Then I got to make a couple of t-shirt dresses for Hosanna & her cousin. And they went well too. It all came together, my machine behaved, it was all good.

Sitting at my sewing machine felt like coming home after a long absence. I haven't done much sewing since Christmas and it felt great to sew again. Putting fabric to machine is such a relaxing activity. I need to do it more often.

Homemade Mayonnaise: FAIL

Just so you all don't think everything I touch in the kitchen turns to gold (so to speak), I wanted to share today's disaster.

I was trying to make bacon mayonnaise because well, I like bacon and I like mayo and the two combined sounded mighty tasty. (Read the recipe. It will make the rest of this post make sense.) I had bacon grease left from making baked beans on Monday that I had saved for just this purpose. I got out my blender and set to work.

Problem 1: When I started the blender, the egg & stuff that was in there splashed immediately up onto the sides, making it impossible to see what was actually going on in there (other than splashing).

Problem 2: I wasn't watching the clock. Since I couldn't see whether of not my egg and little bit of bacon grease was emulsifying, I just sort of guessed that it had been about 2 minutes, and started pouring in the rest of the bacon grease.

Problem 3: It hadn't emulsified yet. So adding the rest of the bacon grease just assured my doom. It will not now emulsify and turn into mayo.

I tried another method. I put the mess into a wide mouth jar and tried this method with my stick blender. My hand was numb by the time I gave up. It will not emulsify. So no bacon mayo for me.

Bacon Mayo: FAIL

I Could Be a Vegetarian

For the record, I am not a vegetarian. I never have been. I never will be. I like cheeseburgers too much.

But there are days that I contemplate becoming a vegetarian and making my whole family suffer with my veggie ways.

Like yesterday.

I was ill-possessed of mind or something, and I decided to cook a whole chicken. I don't know what I was thinking. I don't like cooking meat at all, really. Not because of any misguided love of animals or anything, I just think it's kind of icky. The cooking part. Not the eating part. Because I love a good roast any day of the week.

So here I am, with a whole chicken. I took it out of the freezer Monday, with intent to cook it Tuesday. Tuesday morning comes along, I pull out my chicken, and it was pretty firm for a thawed chicken. I guess I should have gotten it out on Sunday. It was still awfully frosty. I knew I had to take the giblets out of the middle, but which end were they on??? The whole thing was frozen shut anyhow.

Henny Penny took a warm bath while I made a few calls to try and determine a course of action. 2 mothers later, I had enough information to continue. Lots of prying, wiggling, dunking in water, wretching noises, and hand-washing ensued and I finally got the bird in the cooker.

The good news is... we had delicious juicy chicken for dinner. My carnivores were happy. I was happy. The bad news... I'm too frugal to pitch what's left, so I have to spend today picking the carcass and making chicken stock.

I could be a vegetarian. I really could.

Fingers in the Dirt

IT'S FINALLY SPRING!!!

(Can you tell I'm excited? Because I really really am!)

Spring has finally sprung here in the great white north of Wisconsin. The snow is melted and gone and little green things are finding their way through the dirt. And my fingers are finding their way into the dirt!

I spent yesterday raking out the flower beds in front of the house and raking along the edge of the fence. Ruby helped me load up the leaves in the wagon and take them to the compost pile. Then I started raking around the edge of the rock garden. But I couldn't finish that because the pile of wood chips we took to the garden last year was still spilling out into the yard. They had never gotten raked into the garden like we wanted. So Teagan raked them out over the garden. A few of the rocks on one side had gotten moved last year (to dump out the wood chips) and never got put back in place. Well, we started moving rocks, and pretty soon we had almost doubled the size of our little garden! It's amazing, but when we rearranged the rocks, we had enough for a much bigger circle! We raked up the piles of leaves from last year's raking (which were mostly decomposed) and put that in the new garden area. Then we spread out the wood chips over that. We will add some more something to the new area of the garden, but we've got a good start so far!

Today I went out to re-consider some lilies that grew around the edge of the garden. They were beautiful, sure, but I got tired of pulling lilies out of the eggplants. I dug up all I could, about 40 little lily shoots, plus as much of the root system as I could get. Those things are tenacious! We worked up a little dirt on the edge of the woods and threw them in there. I didn't go through a lot of trouble for them. From what I've heard they will grow anywhere. I lightly spread dirt over them and threw leaves on top. If they grow great, if not, oh well.

All in all, I am growing to love my yard & garden. I love going out there and digging around in the dirt. It's very satisfying.

We Be Jammin'

Remember the strawberries I got last week? They became jam yesterday!

5 pints, and 4 half-pints, plus a bit more

In my quest to improve the nutrition of the food we eat, I chose not to use white sugar to make my jam. I used raw honey instead. I had tried to make peach jam with honey last fall, but it never jelled. I wanted to try again.

Tanna gave me some Pomona's Pectin that she had bought but never used. Pomona's is a different kind of pectin which can be used with low-sugar, no-sugar, honey, any sweetener or none at all! It's a great product for those of us who want to ditch the white sugar. This was my first time using it, and I was very pleased with my results! All of the jam jelled perfectly as it cooled.

Another great thing about Pomona's pectin over traditional pectins... you can double or triple the batch! I used 12 cups of mashed berries and 2 1/2 cups of honey to make my jam. And I did it all at one time.

It tastes wonderful on hot pancakes!

So, how does it taste? In a word: Fresh! Instead of being overly sweet, it tastes like fresh delicious strawberries. We ate it on our pancakes this morning and it was delicious! Without all that sugar, you could actually taste the pancakes, the butter, and the strawberries. The flavors swirled around each other, doing a little dance on my taste buds. Mmmm...

Bottom line: I will be using Pomona's again. It worked great. I plan on making more jam this year with honey or other alternative sweeteners. I have some Bing cherries in the freezer that would be delightful and Teagan has requested that I try raspberry jam this summer. We'll be jammin' again soon!

Our Easter

Happy Easter! He is Risen!

I hope you all had a wonderful time celebrating the Resurrection with your families. We were able to attend church on Sunday - everyone was mostly healthy- and then we spent the rest of the day with Teagan's parents & brothers and their families. It was a very nice day.

Here are a few pictures from the day...

All dressed up for church

My poor children had to pose for pictures outside in 32 degree temps with no coats and the early morning sun blazing into their eyeballs. Because I'm mean like that.

This is my favorite. The 3 older kids were all looking down at Hosanna telling her to stand still and look at Mommy...



While we were at Noni's, Hosanna got her first real haircut. Mostly to attempt to blend in Ruby's haircutting job. It kinda worked.

Would you believe I forgot to save a lock of her hair?? What kind of mom am I anyway?? Oh yeah, the busy distracted kind...

And in case you're wondering what happened to Hosanna's nose...

She fought the sidewalk. And the sidewalk won.

My Presentation

I didn't talk much about it here, or anywhere really, but I gave a presentation yesterday. It was kind of a big deal. To me anyway.

Our parent's support group asked me to give a presentation on Jade's diet. We invited people from all over the area. I baked and bought food and researched. I'm a little obsessed with food (if you haven't noticed) so it was pretty fun for me.

Last night was the night. We had 17 people in attendance, not including me. 3 parents of kids with autism, and 14 therapists and staff from local schools. I talked for a little over an hour, covering the basics of how the diet works and talking a whole lot about food.

I baked peanut butter cookies, spice cake (with sprinkles!), strawberry-banana muffins, and brownies! I made a lot. There were leftovers....

Jade spent the whole weekend eyeing up my tote full of treats. I promised her that on Wednesday she could eat her treats. She's been snacking all day. Breakfast, lunch, and 2 snacks worth of treats so far....

I think I may have gotten a bit carried away with the food part of it. But I really wanted to give people a feel for what the diet is really about. Going into the natural foods aisle for the first time is daunting, and I wanted people to be armed with information. I also sent everyone home with a list of resources and some recipes.

It went very well. I was a little nervous going in, but this really is a topic I know well. Once I got going, it was all good. Those in attendance said they learned a lot, and I was able to encourage one mom to keep trying... the rewards are worth it. My whole intention was to inform and encourage, so mission accomplished.

Strep & Strawberries

Yesterday was interesting. I woke up with a familiar feeling...

A visit to the doctor confirmed my suspicions. I have strep throat again! For the third time this year! And Ruby has it too, for the second time. What in the world?! Craziness.

On our way home from the doctor, we picked up 16 lbs. of fresh strawberries. My fruit co-op friend called Sunday night with a great deal on berries. I didn't know I would have strep throat the next day, so I ordered 2 flats! They were really gorgeous, and a really super deal. But they needed to be done up right away. If I were to wait until after my presentation and do them on Wednesday, I would have had a lot more go south. As it was, I only had about 4 berries that I couldn't use.

Look at those beautiful berries!

I ended up just capping them and running them through the food processor. I put half of them in a big bowl in the refrigerator. They will become jam on Wednesday. The rest I measured in 1 cup increments and put in baggies to freeze. The plastic boxes that the berries came in worked perfectly to hold the baggies of puree. These will be perfect for smoothies, strawberry bread & muffins, and who knows what else!

I was super-duper excited about the strawberries, because I just last week used up the last of my berries from last year. I was expecting to wait until the end of June for good fresh strawberries, but the Lord blessed us with these right after we had run out. What a good God!

Popcorn for Breakfast

The kids & I had a new taste sensation for breakfast today.

Popcorn Cereal.

I popped up some popcorn, put it into bowls and poured milk on it, just like cereal. We topped it off with sucanat & cinnamon. It was SO tasty!! It tasted like Corn Pops, but not quite as sweet. I wonder if that's how Corn Pops started? Hmmm...

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised with how good this was. Cheap & easy. And more nutritious than any box of cereal (especially Corn Pops).

Look Closely...

Something's different about Hosanna. I didn't notice at first. Look closely...

If you click on these you can get a closer look...

The second picture is pretty telling...

See that bare patch in the middle?

Unbeknowst to me, Hosanna got her first haircut. Courtesy of Ruby. And I didn't notice until the next day.

We met Noni in town and went to lunch. As we were waiting for our food, Noni looks at Hosanna and says, "She looks different. Did you cut her hair?" No, I say, it just looks different because it's laying down. After her bath last night it hasn't been sticking up anymore. No, she insists, the hair is shorter on top. I look again. Sure enough.

Suddenly, I have a flashback to Monday afternoon. I had picked up a pair of scissors from the kitchen table and put them in my pocket. I didn't know where they had come from. I figured Ruby got them out of Kordell's room.

I turn to look at Ruby. Ruby, I say, did you cut Hosanna's hair? Ah, the mischievous smile told all. She did indeed cut Hosanna's hair. Thankfully, she didn't cut it quite to the scalp. It's still a whole half inch long. Noni said to just leave it and we'll gradually blend it in as she gets haircuts.

No more fountains for awhile. I'm sure glad I took pictures of it while I had the chance.

Ruby's Angeled Eggs

Ruby did such a good job helping make the "angeled" eggs yesterday that I wanted to share a picture! She was so proud of herself. She peeled the eggs, mixed the filling, and filled the eggs. Mama put on the "sprinkles".

What a big helper! I think I'm working myself out of a job. At least I hope I am...

PS... If you look really closely at her left hand, you can see the scar from her bagel-cutting incident a few weeks ago. It's looking pretty good now.