Naturally Sidetracked

Canning Chicken from Zaycon Foods

2012-01-20T20:36:00.000-08:00

I have been buying food in bulk from a company called Zaycon Foods for over a year. I have purchased 40lb boxes of chicken, 20lb boxes of bacon, 10lb boxes of steak dogs, 20lb boxes of ground steak hamburgers as well as many bushels of fruit. The prices are lower because you are both buying in bulk, and skipping the middle man of the grocery store. For example, the chicken is $1.49 a pound. I have never been disappointing in the high quality, and absolutely love their system for picking up your food. If only all grocery stores let you order online, drive-up to the truck, check you off on the order list, and then load your food into the car for you. Heaven!
Tonight was the pick up date for my chicken order. I had the kitchen prepared for processing before I left the house. One entire counter was cleared of anything, the cutting board and knives were ready, and all of my jars were pre-measured with salt. I have discovered the joy of cooking with canned chicken and decided to can all of this box since we still have many chicken breasts in the freezer from our last order.
To my surprise though, after I carried the box into the house, my husband appeared donning his chef's jacket and went right to work cleaning the chicken breasts, cutting them and packing them into the jars. It was great to see him make such quick work of the job with his knife skills. I generally plan for 2 hours to prepare 40lbs of chicken, but he did it in less than an hour!

If you're interested in buying in bulk, check Zaycon out, they have been expanding quickly and are covering the majority of the US now!

Snowed In

2012-01-19T21:33:00.000-08:00

I have cabin fever. Days of snow, combined with my first ever Ice Storm. Interesting stuff. I nervously watched a tree across the street full of snow and ice hang in the power lines most of the day, just waiting for it to collapse. Thankfully it has held so far. There are several large limbs off of other trees in my yard and the neighbors.

Snow in Seattle is different than anywhere else I've lived. I went out to shovel the drive today. I got 10 feet in 25 minutes of hard work. My driveway in only one car wide! The top layer was a mix of the snow that was still falling, and the ice storm we had for an hour or two this morning. It was a powdery ice. The middle layer was heavy wet snow/slush. The bottom inch was pure ice. Forget shoveling, I was chipping the drive today.
I have learned a few things with this storm.

I do not have enough honey on hand. My husband has been sick for over a week and has been drinking tea and honey consistently. I also use honey in my bread recipes and needed to bake a few loaves this week. We are down to scraping the honey bear.
When expecting snow, park at the very beginning of your drive way, just off the street. If you really want to try to go out against all warnings of extremely dangerous conditions, you'll have less driveway to shovel. Considering how many times this week I've shoveled our long drive way, you would think this would have occured to me earlier than today.

For those of you who need some help to understand why Seattle can indeed shut down in a few inches of snow, this man writes it all so well.

Snow in Seattle
There are hills in Seattle that I have had a very hard time climbing when they are covering in leaves, let alone ice.

Also, if you're in the mood for some humor. I think these are a few of my favorite Seattle winter storm videos. I could be entertained for hours if I lived on any of these hills.

2 inches of Snow - The streets really do turn into a skating rink.

Car Pinball - This would constitute as a very bad day in my book

Vehicle Sledding -This hill is famous for being shut down in the winter. It is then quickly covered with sleds, skis and boards. The video here is taken from the winter storm two years ago. My husband was working in Seattle when it hit. He left work around 2 in the afternoon and didnt' get home till 7. Some friends that lived in our area took over 9 hours to traverse from Seattle to Lynnwood (11 miles).

I'm hoping that rain will come in tomorrow and clear out our frozen tundra. Tonight I have three kids with fevers, and I am not sure I'm mentally stable enough to take care of 4 sickies after being snows in since Sunday!

Homemade Bagel Chips

2012-01-18T22:24:00.000-08:00

When you make the Original Chex Mix, do you buy bagel chips to put in? Or, are you like me and refuse to pay $5.00 for a 7oz bag? Sadly, bagel chips have always been one of my favorite ingredients in the mix! So, this fall, when I started making Chex Mix recipes, I thought to myself, "I make croutons at home. Why not Bagel Chips?" Well, guess what. I tried it. It's super easy and cheap to boot. Score!

First, you slice your bagels. For future reference, I'm using 3 bagels in this batch.

Depending on what I want the chips for, I slice them differently. For any snack mix, I prefer the coins.

For soup or salad, I go with the faster method of plank slices. Why? Because, I'm lazy like that.

Second, combine 2 Tablespoons melted butter or olive oil with your choice of seasonings mixed in. I'm a garlic lover, so I added 3 large garlic cloves, minced. You could do onion and garlic, parmesan and garlic, herb and garlic (Told you, I love garlic.) Then placing all your bagel pieces in a large plastic bag, pour in the melted butter/olive oil and shake. This will help with equal distribution.

Third, Empty contents of your bag onto a cookie sheet, spreading them out evenly. Pop into a hot oven at 325 for 15-20 minutes until they are turning brown. (YMMV, so watch carefully!)

Fourth, Enjoy! Once they are cooled you can put them in a container for storage for the week, or use them immediately in your soup.

Cheesy Ham and Potato Soup

2011-12-29T19:01:00.000-08:00

We are busily cleaning up the leftover ham from Christmas. Sound familiar to anyone else? I have a few meals that I'm hungry for, but I'm trying to clean up this ham before it goes to waste. I have enough for 2-3 meals, but I don't feel like I have enough to bottle like I'd wanted. I thought a few half pints put away for future ham sandwiches and soups would be wonderful, but it's not going to happen this time around.

I love this creamy comfort soup. It starts very simply with softened onions, large chopped veggies and stock.
The roux is made separate and then combined once the veggies are cooked through.

We served this with homemade toasted garlic bagel chips. YUM!

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped.
2 stocks celery, roughly chopped

1 large carrots, roughly chopped1 onion, finely chopped

3-5 cloves garlic, minced1 -2 cup ham , diced and cooked
3 1/2 cups stock
1 teaspoon pepper

5 tablespoons butter
5 tablespoons flour
2 cups milk
2 cups cheddar cheese , shredded

Directions:

1. Bring you're soup pot up to cooking temperature. Then saute the onions in a bit of olive oil. Once the onions are translucent, combine celery, carrots, and garlic into your soup pot. Cook for 3-5 minutes.

2. Add potatoes, stock and pepper. Cook over Medium heat till potatoes are soft, 20-30 minutes.

3. In separate saucepan, melt butter over low heat. Whisk in flour and cook stirring constantly until thick.

4. Slowly stir in milk making sure to beat out any lumps that form. Continue to cook until you're roux thickens.

5. Add cheese and stir until melted.

6. Stir the cheese mixture into you're soup pot and cook until heated through.

Enjoy!

Creamy Tomato Pancetta pasta with Feta

2011-12-05T19:29:00.000-08:00

Sometimes, when you try to make dinner with whatever you find in the fridge and pantry, you find a masterpiece.
This time I'll contribute it to the wonderful ingredients. After all, with cream and pancetta, how can you really go wrong? Add in simple prep, and 20 minutes of cook time, and it's a keeper for us.

Pancetta and Feta Pasta

Ingredients:
½ lb Pancetta, diced
1 onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
14 oz diced tomatoes
1 can tomato sauce
¼ cup cream
Fresh Basil
Feta

Directions

Fry the pancetta in a saucepan until crispy, about 5 minutes
Drain some of the fat according to diet/taste
Add the onions, fry until caramelised
Add the garlic and diced tomatoes, gently fry around 5 minutes
Add the tomato sauce and leave on low heat for 15 minute
Turn off heat, stir in ¼ cup cream. Add more if you're feeling indulgent!

Top with Fresh Basil and Feta to serve over Pasta. Enjoy!

2011-10-07T23:20:00.000-07:00

I was raised by a woman who is amazing in the garden. She could grow so much food, tucked into a small confine, that it would feed my family and give us enough to share each year.
I then married a man, who was raised by a woman, who to this day gardens 1/2 an acre. In fact, to her surprise, it keeps getting a little bigger each year!
I have, many a time, helped in the gardens. I have weeded a row, or gone out to harvest a few items for dinner, I have snipped many gallons of beans to prepare them for canning.
However, all of those things and more, left me completely clueless as to successfully growing my own garden.
Last year I tried at our rental home in Brier. Khali harvested 3 crops of carrots, and I brought in a few salad dinners, and 3 peppers. Our tomato plants molded in the ground toward the end of summer. It was a might sad.
This yearI tried again to put a few things in the ground. I killed 2 sunflowers and some chives. The 6 strawberry transplants I was given by a friend in the spring have all successfully doubled. I know the strawberries produced, however between the squirrels and the children, I never got anything from the plants. I killed a few tomatoes but one, delicious heirloom variety lived and flourished!
And then became to heavy for my wimpy 3 foot wire cage and fell over. After tying the plant to a tree to support its weight and it falling over, we staked it deeper within the ground with large sticks in teepee form, and it fell over, we gave up and let the tomato plant lay on the ground. The plant had 3 reddish tomatoes on it today! Unfortunately, 2 of them were nibbled on and the last one was infested with slugs. From the looks of it, there are plenty of good green tomatoes on the plant that we will be picking this weekend.

It's really too bad I haven't figured out how to grow my own tomatoes yet. Sure would make canning tomatoes much cheaper in the fall! I am thinking perseverance and a wire caged garden would help further my efforts!

Such a Yummy Day

2011-09-26T22:21:00.000-07:00

Mixed in with a huge day of homeschooling, many loads of laundry, and all the other normal every day things today I canned. Again.

This morning I did a load of Black Beans. I did the same thing as with the Kidney Beans the other day. I soaked them overnight, rinsed them a few times, and then filled the jars about 3/4s full with beans (for pints that is about 1 1/2 cups). I topped the jars off with water and a tsp of salt for flavor. They then processed in the pressure cooker for 75 minutes.
Beans - $3.00
Lids - $1.16
Each Pint = $0.57 cents
The bottles contain a bit more than a traditional can of beans you'd buy from the store.

This afternoon, once I got the chickens roasting in the oven (important for later!), I started working on the 20 lbs of grapes I bought for $0.99/lb. I used my Victorio Food Strainer again with the shorter spiral. I couldn't find any information on which grate to use though. I started out using the apple/tomato grate, and then later moved to using the pumpkin grate as I wanted the pulp for jam. I only had enough sugar and pectin on hand to make 2 batches of Grape Jam. Thankfully though, we did all the mashing/juicing today and there is another 10 cups of grape juice sitting in the fridge to make two more batches of jam tomorrow. The grapes were BY FAR the messiest thing I have canned this year!
Grapes - $20.00
Sugar - $4.00
Lids - $2.33
Each Pint - $1.88
This stuff is Delicious! Even with the ability to buy cheaper, I'm glad I did the work to make this.

Once we ate dinner, my dear darling pulled all the remaining chicken off the carcasses for me. We tossed the bones into the stock pot with carrots, celery, onions and bay leafs, covered in water and let it simmer away while I tried to clean up everything else for a few hours. I was able to get 7 pint jars of delicious Chicken Stock from the 2 roasted chickens! I have always frozen chicken stock before, but now that I have a pressure canner of course I had to can it! It has a very short processing time of only 25 minutes, so I figured.... Why Not!?
Chicken Bones - Free
Onion, Celery, Carrots, Bay Leaf - Negligible
Lids - $1.16
Each Pint - $0.17 cents a bottle!
Definitely worth you time!

I was also taken out to a delicious lunch at Saffron Grill in North-gate. It is one of my favorite Indian Restaurants. We won't break that down.... I'd have a harder time justifying it!

Such a delicious, yummy, ~~disastrously messy~~ day!

Autumn Beef Stew

2011-09-22T21:31:00.000-07:00

Tonight I made a delicious stew. Partially because the weather has started to turn cooler and partially because when I got home from a very long day at 5:30, I needed to figure out something to make for dinner; and many of these ingredients were already in my fridge. Isn't that one of the best things about soups and stews? They allow you to dump things in a pot and still taste fabulous?

When I started this stew, the tomato flavor was overbearing. It was at that point that I added in the leftover roasted acorn squash that was sitting in the fridge from earlier this week. It was just the flavor that was needed. This was going to be just a one off dish of whatever I could put together out of the fridge in a hurry, but the kids all asked if I would make it again, so I thought I better write it down!

Enjoy!

Autumn Beef Stew

Ingredients

3 tablespoons margarine
1 small white/yellow onion, chopped
1 small red onion
4 carrots, sliced
3 stalks celery, sliced
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup all-purpose flour
4 cups water
1 potato, chopped
1 sweet potato, chopped
2 pounds cubed leftover beef roast
2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
1 teaspoon Soy sauce
1 bottle tomatoes
1 acorn squash, mashed

Directions

Melt butter in a skillet, and saute onions, carrots, celery and garlic until they are tender.
Sprinkle Flour over veggies and stir well. Let brown for 1-2 minutes.
Pour water into pot and bring to boil.
Add Potatoes and Sweet Potatoes, then let cook for a few minutes.
Add Tomatoes , Roast, Acorn Squash and seasonings.
Bring to a simmer, and cook over medium-low heat till flavors meld.
Serve hot with Crusty Bread!

A Little Sweetness

2011-09-21T22:17:00.000-07:00

I am the proud new owner of a Victorio Food Strainer/ Sauce Maker. Let me tell you. It Rocks.
Weeks ago I spent many an hour cruising the net trying to figure out what tool would be the best choice for working with blackberries. I have frozen my entire harvest the past two years, but this year I really wanted to make some Jams and Syrups. I made my first batch of Blackberry Jam over a month ago, and while it all got devoured in the first two weeks, the seed content was undesirable. Honestly, it was just plain annoying. The seeds made the jam very chewy and got stuck in your gums all the time!
Unfortunately, I waited too long in the season to make the decision to buy the Victorio, and I only had one bucket of blackberries left. I took my bucket of blackberries, washed them a bit, then dumped them in a large stock pot with about half a cup of water. I boiled them for a few minutes, till the point where they started to soften, then poured them into the strainer's hopper. It took only a few minutes to process the seeds from juice and pulp! (I tried to reprocess the seeds/skins but would not recommend this for blackberries. There was not enough fruit left to separate and I ended up jamming the tool with solid seeds.) I then poured the juice and fruit pulp back into the stock pot to boil with some sugar and some lemon zest till it started to thicken and then poured it into small jars. Thankfully we had a little too much for 8 jars, and I had to use some up, right away. This syrup is amazing on ice-cream and looks beautiful to boot! I can't wait to try it on waffles! I am sad I don't have any more blackberries to work with as I'd love to make a batch of syrup with a bit of Almond flavoring added... Just the thought makes my mouth water.

Along with the syrup, I was able to can a few apple sauce variations. I cut apples in half and roasted multiple huge pans in the oven, then used the Victorio to mash all of the ingredients together. While this took a very long time to make so much applesauce, it was really light work. Both Khali and Porter loved to crank the handle and smoosh the fruit down the hopper. I was able to reprocess the discarded skins and seeds a second time on the apples to reclaim more sauce. I was amazed how dry the seeds and skins where when we were done. I felt there was very little fruit wasted.

I combined some with Pears and a little bit of vanilla and nutmeg for an Apple-Pear sauce.
I mixed some with Poached Peaches and Ginger for Apple-Peach sauce.
I also left a few jars straight Roasted Apple sauce, which is delicious on its own.

At this point, I ran out of large quart bottles, and only had pint, and jelly jars left on hand. With no desire to run to the store to pick up another case, I was inspired to cook down the rest of the apples further to make a delicious Apple Butter. I followed the recipe found here http://simplyrecipes.com/recipes/apple_butter/. I snuck a bit before canning it and think its a definite keeper.

Amazingly, after canning for four days straight, the only wound I received was a burn from that darn apple butter. Watch out when you're cooking it down, you're working with such a thick sauce the air bubbles pop pretty high!

There is a beauty involved with canning. I am enjoying looking at all of the bottles filled with beautiful food. Part of me just wants to keep canning and putting food away. It is the same part of me that sheds a tear whenever I drive past a blackberry bush that is now succumbing to fall. But at the same time, I am very excited to be putting away the canning supplies tomorrow and reclaiming the kitchen and dining rooms. Now if only I could figure out where to put all this food!

September is for Preserving

2011-09-19T21:38:00.000-07:00

I have been very busy this month working on putting away produce for the rest of the year. Blackberry season seemed to be a bit late this year, not really coming on until the second week of September, but the kids and I have managed to put away about 4 gallons of berries, and make one batch of blackberry jam (not to mention several batches of muffins, pie bars, and any other baked good that sounded delicious at the time). I think the season is just about over, but I am trying to get another gallon or two to make into Syrup. We will have to see if the bushes have enough left to support this en devour.

Saturday a friend called me and asked if I was interested in some boxes of tomatoes as she was at a fruit stand in Bellevue picking some up already. She kindly brought me home 4 boxes of tomatoes. When trying to figure out how much of any food you will need, it's a bit of an iffy proposition with multiple variables. I have never tracked how much of anything we've used before in a winter, so this was my best guess. I knew that we needed to make a batch of Chili Sauce, and that we were out of all canned tomatoes. Turns out that 80 lbs of tomatoes turns into 46 quarts of tomatoes, and 9 pints of Chili Sauce. (In case you are wondering, Chili Sauce is what we serve on our roasts every Sunday and is a staple in our home. I believe the original recipe, that my family still uses today, came from my husbands great-grandmother.)

I feel lucky that only 2 of the quarts did not seal. They are sitting in the fridge for use this week. Now I just need to figure out where I am going to store all of these!

It has been a busy weekend. I never want to see another produce box of tomatoes, unless it looks like this. Zander was a pretty good little guy while I slaved over the steaming stove for hours at a time. He thought playing in this box was a great thing, especially when I added Goldfish crackers into the equation.

He is pretty Select, don't ya think?

Khali helped me in the kitchen canning the first two batches of tomatoes on Saturday and was an invaluable addition. She is growing up so quickly! Today she helped take care of the little two by making them a box train and pulling them around, and around, and around the house. She had a good time in the creation of her idea, and the little kids had a good time snacking and riding around.

I am all done with Tomatoes for this season. Now I just have to deal with the boxes of apples.... but that is for another day. I ordered a Victorio Food Strainer to help me with this project that will be here soon! I'm actually a little excited about this next canning activity!

School is Starting... Right?

2011-09-06T11:49:00.000-07:00

After dragging myself out of bed this morning to realize there was only about a cup of milk, I thoughtfully put some bacon on the stove so I could make some breakfast for the family. I then promptly left the room to catch the news and see the weather forecast

Who knew small pieces of bacon cook super fast!? Within just a few minutes, I walked back to the area of the kitchen to find it completely full of smoke. Now, I am notorious for crunchy bacon, but this, even for me, was a bit over done! I could barely find my way to the oven and grab a hot pad to take the pan outside. Thankfully it was my cast iron skillet so I didn't ruin a pan.

So I quickly ran to the store for milk so we could still have some food for breakfast... Cereal!

Since the house still stunk, we ate breakfast outside. We braved coming back indoors to get the little girls dressed and everyone in boots and took the morning to go pick blackberries. We got a good little haul in just under two hours, but upon arriving home the house is still a bit stinky :(.

I thought we'd retreat to the downstairs and read our family book and start in on our school work for the day, but within moment of being home, someone had already traipsed through blackberries and smashed them into the carpet in several areas... So, shampooing carpets came into the job list for the day.

It is now approaching lunch time, and while each child did fill their bellies twice over with fresh berries from the vine, they all seem to be hungry again!

Off to make lunch... then, perhaps, with some really great luck, we will get to start on our school work. Perhaps.

Best Mothers Day Ever!

2011-05-08T23:34:00.000-07:00

My little girls have been talking about Mothers Day for a few weeks thanks to all of the Nick Jr. clips online about Mothers. Abigail has been singing some of the little ditties over and over again in her sweet little voice. "It's Mothers Day, Hooray!" I think this sparked Khali's well conceived plans. My family has given me many wonderful days over the past years, but non have held a candle to today.
Lets start the day off from 00:00 hours. Actually, lets go back an hour before that, Saturday 11:00 PM. My dearest darling husband took Khali out to the grocery store, because she had wanted me to have my favorite breakfast, not just any 'ole thing that Dad was going to whip up. The first store was closed, they came home and tried to order through Amazon Fresh, which wound up not having any open delivery slots, and finally traveled a bit further to a grocery store that was open until midnight. Now this is dedication! I couldn't wait till morning!
Zander unfortunately had a very rough night and was up from 01:00-03:00 crying his little heart out. Interestingly enough, he finally calmed down to Kolton telling him, like a man, that it had been enough crying, he was ok, and that he needed to go to sleep. Add in 3 or 4 'Shhhh's' after that, and the boy was asleep! After all the cuddling, wrapping, rocking, nursing, burping, holding in five positions, all it took was a little man to man talk. Who would have guessed?
Amazingly enough, the sunshine started to stream through the blinds soon afterwards, and my darling was able to arise as well and start making me breakfast! Admittedly, he did crack an energy drink first thing, but I woudn't hold it against him since he shared a few sips with me. ;) It was a rough night! There is something magical about knowing any breakfast is being cooked for you while you snuggle under the comforter snoozing away, but there is an added excitement when its Eggs Benedict that is being prepared for you! Be sure I slept with a smile on my face.
I was woke up to plates of food being brought to me in bed! I do not think this is the first time that has happened, but this is definitely the most memorable! Khali was a bit of a bugger and didn't wake up the other kids to help prepare my breakfast, which made Isabella and Porter sad so they were able to help out by bringing me a glass of milk, apple juice, water, and orange juice. Abigail added her love by sitting next to me on the bed and sharing all of my food with me, and continually snuggling up to give me hugs for Mother's Day.
While I was devouring my breakfast, mostly because my husband did such an amazing job and partially because if I didn't eat it quickly, Abigail would have gotten more than me, Porter decided to be very helpful and lay out the little girls church clothes. This was of course very helpful since after all my lounging around in bed, we still needed to be to church by 9:30!
We were a few minutes late and had to sit on the front row, but at least we got seats in the chapel. The children sand a wonderful Mothers Day medley and I got a lovely little flower to plant in the yard as well.
After church my family went outside to play to let me take a nap in quiet. It was a fabulous nap indeed.
We also invited some friends from church over for Sunday Dinner. We have not had Roast and Mashed potatoes for several weeks so it was a welcome comfort, and wonderful to share with friends as we got to know each other better. After the evening feasting, they brought a delicious apple cake that we baked and served with ice cream for dessert. I really did very little to prepare this meal. I did very few dishes, and barely lifted a finger to clean it all up! My family worked together and got the jobs all done, while I sat in my recliner with my feet up. Aaaahh, I only wish this could happen once a month!
But wait, there is indeed more.
After family bedtime, Porter rubbed my feet with lotion because once again, Khali the Bugger did not want to share any part of her plans to pamper me with him. My son is so loving, and was paid special attention to my ankle which I rolled several weeks ago and asked if I was ok yet. He has such a sweet spirit it makes me smile. Once he went off to bed, Khali started with the facials she had prepared for me. The girl could work at a day spa! First she applied a cleanser. Then, she followed that with a scrub. After those I sat with my head over a pot of steaming water with a towel on top for 5 minutes. As if that wasn't enough, she then applied another homemade cucumber-yogurt mask that she has prepared and was chilled in the fridge with a paintbrush and put cucumber slices on my eyes.
I feel so loved and very blessed by my wonderful husband and adoring children. There are many times in life that the trials presented to me as a mother seem far to large to continue on, but there are always moments like these, where the love and appreciation of my family is so clear, that I have the strength to soldier on. The love of my family reminds me why I have chosen the path I travel and guides me as I strive to live up to those values and teach my children their importance.
I hope all my friends had such a wonderful Mothers Day with their family! Now to take my glowing face to bed, and hope Zander sleeps well.

Progress!

2011-03-31T21:41:00.000-07:00

It's beginning to look a lot like we're moving! Everywhere I turn!

Which is really good news, since we close on our home in 9 days!

I am often reminded how awesome my husbands tendencies to organize are. Earlier today there were boxes stacked around the house where they were packed, some not taped or labeled yet, and the Library had boxes strewn around the floor with very few against the walls. I feel renewed energy to continue to do the work needed to move our family to our new home!

Life has been crazy for the past few weeks, but things are great.

Good News:

I only have 2 bookshelves left around the house to pack!
My Father is now home and healing well after his heart surgeries. This was a very scary time for me and I am so very thankful to have more time to spend with him on this Earth. I am a HUGE fan of Skype.
Zander has survived his first 6 months! He can army crawl around rather well and has finally learned how to sit on his bum! Sitting doesn't last long as he cannot figure out what the purpose of holding still is. There are things to do people! Isabella still loves to care for him and now helps him stand up to 'reach' things that are too high for him to get while he's on the ground.
Khali is attending her last day of public school tomorrow. She is quite excited to come back home to play games, do chores, and help move! Time will tell how long that attitude will last.

I have to... I don't want to

2011-03-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

Packing... Not something that I've been eager to start. I've been putting much forethought into packing, moving, and unpacking everything. I want this to go smoothly. I want their to be order. I want to be able to unpack slowly and make sure that our possessions have well planned places to belong in the new house to have the best chances at keeping an orderly home.

Today the plan is to build 6 boxes and start packing the Library books, and begin the transformation of it into the moving room. Makes sense to pack the books up first since we can safely get stuff from the Public Library for the next month and return it all at the end, unmixed with our books! (This is made more incredibly awesome by the fact that our local Library is updating their catalogue systems and would prefer everyone check out books right now so they can have less inventory on the shelves. Their incentive they've offered is extending the amount of time you get books. 6 weeks instead of 3, talk about a safety net!) Along with those 6 boxes for books, I bring in one garbage can for trash we find along the way, and 1 red bin that we will sort books to be donated for others to enjoy.

I think things are going well. This will be the project that the kids and I can work on together this morning and that will leave Kolton alone upstiars so he can focus upstairs on his work, or rest... Either way, the poor man has been through a lot this week!

I called for the kids and Khali was the first to arrive to pack her precious books. (Is anyone surprised by this?) She starts packing the books in sets, and Porter and I prepare/tape a few other boxes. Smooth Sailing! About now is when Porter looses focus for .3 seconds and is jumping into a box. Que little girls finally coming to help out right now. I know what their thoughts by the glimmer in their eyes. They smile winningly at me, because I am the best mom around and have called the kids to play in the open library room with boxes! This adoration is undeserved, but it melts my heart because immediately a creative all inclusive game was being played by the oldest 4 kids. Why in the world would I interfere with that!?

And that was pretty much the end of moving productively for the morning.

Where is Abigail you ask? Hm.... I'm not sure.

Oh wait, There she is! Her elder brother had her trapped in a box. Of Course.

After a little while, I tried to rekindle some help from the kids and refocus on packing for the move.... I did not succeed.

Zander got in on the action even! Abigail brought me the box because it was the smallest one in the room.

Despite my initial stance on bringing only 6 boxes into the house, packing them and then repeating the process neatly, and orderly to be efficient house packers... The Library is full of boxes, some half built, some knocked out flat, some with torn corners now because the child whom tried to occupy it just couldn't quite fit comfortable with the flaps all folded down.

You know what though?

That's all right :)

More Baby-wearing options - Use your Scarf!

2011-02-01T09:52:00.000-08:00

I admit it, I'm a late comer to the fashion world of scarves. Now I realize how dumb this will sound, but I didn't understand how to wear them! However, when my family came to visit a few weeks ago, I was fully converted. I now own a few and utilize them as often as I can! Scarves are the perfect accessory for those of us who have little babies! Necklaces are fun to hold on to for babies, which is adorable until they can yank it off, ( I have half a dozen necklaces waiting for repairs from previous little hands) or until the baby rubs his or her head straight into a few beads and is no longer a happy snuggly baby! Scarves do not present any of these problems, and they are cheaper to boot! While those two attributes are great, I'm sure you're thinking that does not a perfect accessory make.... but, You can use your scarf as a improptu sling for the baby!

I posted almost two years ago how to use a sarong to hold your baby hands free and loved that method because of its ease. I almost always had a sarong tucked away in the car for those moment when you needed to carry the baby and didn't bring a carrier or the stroller. The sarongs were often used as a blanket for a child whom had fallen asleep in the car ride, not to mention as a rolled up pillow a time or two.

To use your scarf as a carrier, similar to a ring sling:

Smooth out your scarf so that it is not turning on itself and wrap it around your waist and then over one shoulder. It should look like the picture to the left from behind. I find its easiest to manage the knot tieing if you bring both ends to the front of the shoulder. I tie the first half of the knot before I pick up my baby if I can, its just simpler that way. Slip the baby into the carrier and 'sit' them on your hip. Spread the scarf underneath his bum and up over their back. Now it's time to secure your knot. With your baby sitting high on your hip pull the fabric taught and tie the knot. The babies weight will continue to tighten the knot.
Now you can hold your baby in many different holds!

Bring babies legs together to the side of the knot and let them recline. You can see how this would be a great nursing position right? Make sure the scarf is securely under their bum. Their knees should be higher than their toosh to ensure safety. These picture were all being taken as I was shifting him around by my daughter, If I was finished positioning the baby the scarf would have gone up high on his leg about to his knee and you'd only see from the knee to the toe hanging out.

Bring babies legs to the outside hip and tuck them fully into the wrap with their head by the knot. This is a great one for sleeping. Once again, I wasn't finished securing his legs and that stray arm into the sling so I'm still holding onto him. A few seconds later I would have been able to let go and be hands free.

This photo captures the 'shoulder cap' spread of the scarf well. This is extremely important! It will utilize more muscles to hold the baby and allow you to hold them with more comfort and for longer! Take the time to make sure any baby carrier is properly spread over your entire shoulder!

Sit baby on your hip for the majority of awake time. If they are overstimulated, tuck their arms into the sling by bringing the scarf up higher to the neck. Once again, for proper safety and hip position of baby, make sure their knees are higher than their bums. Babies like to be in 'froggie' position.

Game On Diet!

2011-01-06T23:19:00.000-08:00

I hate the word Diet.

My mind conjures up itsy-bitsy portions of bland food with hours spent calculating numbers for fats, calories, or points. I Love food. I do not want to stop eating to become a stick figure and prance around in size 3 clothes. I merely want to make better dietary choices and be a healthier version of myself with more energy. Like twice the energy! That would be Great!

A old friend of mine is hosting a game that I've decided to play along with. I shy away from harsh diets or elaborate exercise routines, but this sounds like its going to be fun, and more importantly, teach me good habits to become and stay healthier. Sound good to you? Want to play the game with me? I'd love to have you as a team mate!

Here is the Info! The Game starts Jan. 10th so let me know soon!

Depending on how many sign up will depend on how many teams we have.

4 weeks of a getting healthy CHALLENGE!!!

Each day you have the opportunity to earn 100 points: a perfect day would be something like this...

30 meal points (6 points per meal) for eating 5 fully sanctioned meals with no snacking in between. I will provide the list of foods in a bit.
20 Exercise points for getting your butt moving for 20 minutes, this could be anything from a nice walk to a full fledged workout, to dancing around the house with your kids for 20 consecutive minutes!

10 points for drinking 3 liters (yes 3 liters) of water per day, your skin will love you.

15 sleeps points for getting at least 7 hours of sleep that night (or at least be lying in bed trying to sleep 7 hours before you know you have to be up in the morning.) Those with babies who wake are excused (you really have no control over this)

20 Transformation points - you get 10 for getting rid of a bad habit and making sure it stays gone daily, and 10 points for adding in a new healthy habit and making sure it is added daily.

5 communication points for being in contact with at least one teammate and at least one opponent each day (this includes phone, facebook, e-mails and texts)

Here is the best part...
Each week you get one full day off where you don't have to do any of the healthy things!!

You also get one additional meal off.

Bonus points can be earned.

You earn 10 points by turning in your weekly scores on time,this will be Each Monday morning by 10AM, you will want to e-mail me your sheet.
You can also earn a bonus each week equaling 20% of your points earned for the week for losing 1% of your body weight.
Bonus Points can also be earned by doing additional workouts. If you get in an additional 60 minutes over the course of the week you can earn an additional 20 points

PENALTIES:
10 point snacking penalty for snacking between meals on anything except celery.
20 point collusion penalty if any player suggest to any other player a compromise of integrity.
25 point per portion alcohol penalty a portion equals any amount of alcohol up to 6 oz wine, 12 oz beer, or 1.5 oz hard liquor. You may consume alcohol on your day off. If at any point during the game a player fails to earn their weight-loss bonus that player then looses all alcohol privileges for the game.

Soda may be consumed on your day off and that is it. Otherwise you would forfiet your food points for that meal or you would be hit with a snacking penalty if it is between meals.

How to win this game:
At the end of the week your points are turned in and an average is taken for each team, and then a running total is kept for the game until the end of 4 weeks. At the end of 4 weeks the team with the highest score wins.

Approved Foods Lists

Carbohydrates: eat a fist sized portion of carbs or fruits at each meal from this approved list

Amaranth
Barley
Beans: Adzuki, Black, Black-eyed, Broad, Butter, Fava, Garbanzo, Kidney, Lentils, Lima, mung, Navy, Pinto, Soy, White
Bran (whole grain)
Bread (whole grain)
Buckwheat (whole grain)
Bulgar (whole grain)
Corn
Crackers (whole grain)
Leek
Milk
Soy Milk
Millet (whole grain)
Oatmeal (whole grain)
Palm hearts
Parsnips
Peas
Potato (baked)
Potato (Sweet)
Pumpkin
Quinoa (whole grain)
Rice (brown)
Rice (wild)
Rye (whole grain)
Taro
Tortilla (whole grain)
Yams
Yogurt (fat free)

Fruits:
Apple
Apricot
Banana
Blackberry
Blueberry
Boysenberry
Cherimoya
Cherry
Clementine
Cranberry
Currant
Date
Durian
Fig
Gooseberry
Grape
Grapefruit
Guava
Huckleberry
Jack Fruit
Kiwi Fruit
Kumquat
Lemon
Lime
Loquat
Lychee
Mandarin
Mango
Melon
Mulberry
Nectarine
Orange
Papaya
Passion Fruit
Peach
Pear
Persimmon
Pineapple
Plantain
Plum
Pomegranate
Quince
Rambutan
Raspberry
Rhubarb
Starfruit
Strawberry
Tamarillo
Tangerine
Tomato
Watermelon

Proteins: Eat a palm sized portion with each meal

Low fat or fat free
Cheese
American
Cheddar
Cottage
Cream Cheese
Feta
Mozzarella
Quark
Ricotta
Swiss
Egg whites
Greek Yogurt
Anchovy
Catfish
Cod
Flounder
Hake
Halibut
Mackerel
Mahi Mahi
Perch
Salmon
Sardine
Snapper
Sole
Swordfish
Tilapia
Trout
Tuna
Lean Ground beef
Lean buffalo
Lean chicken breast
Lean Duck
Lean Kangaroo
Lean Lamb
Lean Pork Tenderloin
Lean Steak - eye of round, flank, top round, top sirloin
Turkey bacon
turkey breast
Turkey Ground
Venison
Wild Game Meat
Crab
Lobster
Mussels
Octopus
Oysters
Scallops
Shrimp
Squid
Seitan
Soy foods
Tempeh
Tofu
Veggie burgers

FATS: Eat a thumb sized portion with each meal

Avocado
egg yolk (1)
Olives
Nut butters: almond butter, cashew butter, peanut butter, sesame butter, sunflower butter
Nuts: (dry/raw) Acorns, almonds, beechnuts, brazilnuts, butternuts, cashews, hazelnuts, hickorynuts, macadamias, peanuts, pecans, pine nuts, pistachio nuts, walnuts.
Seeds (dried): Flax, pumpkin/squash, safflower, sesame, sunflower
Oils: Fish oil, flaxseed oil, nut oil, oil spray (pam), olive oils, udo's oil, vegetable oil.

Veggies: add at least two fist-sized portions to at least 2 meals each day.

You may eat unlimited greens that are asterisked with all meals

Alfalfa*
Artichoke
Asparagus*
Bamboo shoot
Beans (green)*
Beet root
Broccoli*
Brussel Sprouts*
Cabbage*
Carrot
Cauliflower
Celery*
Chard (swiss)*
Chinese Cabbage
Collards*
Cress
Cucumber*
Eggplant
Endive*
Fennel*
Gourd
Kale*
Lettuce*
Mushroom
Okra*
Onion
Peas (snow)
Peppers
Pumpkin
Radish
Seaweed (Kelp)*
Spinach*
Squash (summer)
Squash (winter)
Tomatillo
Turnip
Watercress*
Zucchini*

Sweetners: use sparingly
Agave Nectar
Honey
Pure maple syrup

For those of you interested in playing let me know we will have a weekly weigh in (this may be virtual depending on where you are located) where you will have to share your weight with at least me so we know if you earned your bonus points. Please leave a post if you are interested in playing. We can work out long distance players easily.

To keep the game interesting and give extra motivation there is an entry of $10/person, winning team takes all!!

Let me know if you are interested in more energy, looser clothes, and an overall feeling of health!!

If you want more info on the game and a great read get the book, The Game On Diet by Krista Vernoff &; Az Ferguson. or you can check out their website at Game on diet website

Up-Cycling Baby Blankets into Nightgowns

2010-12-31T10:34:00.000-08:00

Many of my friends and relatives are sewing for Christmas. The closer the date comes, the more I hear about Grandma's and Mom's sewing pajamas for their children. Because I absolutely love having my children in adorable new PJs for opening presents on the morning of Christmas, the thoughts I conjure are very 'Courier and Ives'.
However, I didn't plan to make anything this year for the kids. The worst place in the world to take many little children is shopping in a Jo-Ann Fabric during the Christmas season. Other than the extreme increase in consumer traffic, there are also displayed of Extremely breakable Christmas Decor everywhere!!! I made the mistake of trying to shop the week before Thanksgiving for some fabric. With-in the first 5 minutes Porter and Isabella had both broken something! We hadn't made it in the store more than 20 feet! I almost gave up and went home at that point, but I continued bravely on and an hour later I left the store with the all the children and one extra bag with some fun material for a project.
Yet last night as my toddling angel was being ~~wrestled into pajamas~~ dressed for bed, I realized that she really needs new pajamas that fit her. Footies are great for babies, but she's now a little girl and needs nightgowns. Yet I had this epiphany at 8:30 pm at night with no major desire to leave the house in a whirlwind to try to get to the store before closing. I did have a stack of beautiful flannel blankets that rarely get used anymore. I try not to let people see Zander wrapped up in the blue and purple tea set blanket, though it does occasionally happen. As most of these blankets are approximately 36"x45" It turns out, it is enough material to create a very simple but adorable nightgown!

I first tried on a blanket that I didn't absolutely love. If I messed up and had no new finished project, I could easily toss it in the garbage and not feel badly.
The blanket did have a cute heart embroidered stitch around the edging which I tried to utilize on the cuff of the arm. I think its a cute little reminder of its first life. The neckline is a bit odd but I think I'll turn it into a V-neck and call it good! Not to shabby for 2 hours of late night creativity.

With a mostly successful first attempt, I got even braver! The neck on my first attempt made me really want to make a nightgown with a yoke. So once again, while wrapping presents for Christmas after the kids went to bed, I took some more tissue paper and redesigned my first pattern just a bit. I traced the original neckline and then drew a larger circular shape 4 inches out. Because I wanted the sleeves and bodice to be gathered into the yoke, I widened both of those pattern pieces as well. The bodice changes a bit toward the top, but if you lay the pattern pieces out together, its not too hard to find the proper shapes.

When laying this out for cutting, I could not get the front and back bodice to fit on the front of the blanket because of their width, so I shortened them and cut a ruffle for the bottom from the back of the blanket along with the yoke and sleeves.

As an added bonus, that I was hoping for, but wasn't sure could be done.... Both little girls can wear the same nightgown. Its a bit big on Abigail, but she doesn't mind. Anything that simplifies laundry, I am all for!

Reviewing Time4Learning.com

2010-12-17T22:25:00.000-08:00

I came upon the opportunity to have a months free membership for Time4Learning.com. I had looked at this site a few times in the past year, but the expense outweighed my interest at the time. However, now that we have an almost 2 year old and a newborn, I really felt that I needed help to keep the older kids actively learning and leave me with a bit more time to manage our youngest children.
Because of the free month, I signed up each of my oldest three children for an account.

Khali is in public school which left her little time to use the program, she did however enjoy 'playing' on the site. She is advanced in much of her education and enjoyed the ability to change skill levels as she needed. She found this site fun and easy to use. She compares it to the K12 online curriculum and thought they were very similar from the user stand point.
Porter is almost 8 and is learning mostly on a second grade level with his math skills being ahead. Once again, he was able to customize his learning to his abilities. He enjoyed that much of the learning is done through flash animation video's which are entertaining and captivating. The program is written so that the children must click continue to progress, so it demands their involvement and attention.
Isabella is 4 and would not be enrolled in any grade level yet, but was able to do much of the work on a 1st grade level. She did not have a hard time keeping up with the video's or understanding the layout of the program and was able to play along on her own most of the time.

I really enjoyed the learning my children were able to do through this program without my supervision. By utilizing the parent tools and lesson plans I was able to have knowledge of subjects prior to my children and have extra resources available such as books from the Library or additional websites. This easily allowed me and my children the opportunity to delve deeper into subjects they were interested in. While one child was taking his or her lessons, it was not unusual to have one or more children hanging around the computer listening to the lessons as well.

There were a few small issues I have with the site.

The login is annoying and never remembers you. Each log in requires you to enter your first and last name and password with no options to remember. This wasn't an issue for my older two, but caused delay with my 4 year old. If it could remember her login, or at the least use auto-fill once she started typing, she would have been able to get started on her own.

Some of the lessons were not narrated. I disliked this for both the 4 and 8 year old. I do not think most 1st graders would be able to read through the lesson with comprehension. My son will skip through the words picking out the ones he deems important and just click forward when allowed. Most lessons are fully narrated and you must listen to it in its entirety before continuing, this is preferable for me.

To check your child's progress, you must log in to their profiles and click on their backpack. I find this very public school oriented expecting the parent to check the child's backpack each night. While the system works, and I really appreciate the documented learning progress of my child, I really wish the site had a better tool written for the parents to use. I would prefer to be able to check on all of my children's progress from the parent/administration log-in.

By spending time on the lessons, your chlid earns time on the playground. This is a great way to let your child play games that are still aimed at learning, however as far as I can tell, once any of my kids clicked on a game in the playground for their earned 15 minutes, the site lost my child and they were then onto playing on PBS or another site. This left it on me to bring the children back from playing to learning, and they often had very long recesses!

Overall I felt that this was a positive addition to our homeschooling and will continue to use the product until I have more time to dedicate to my children's education.

**The author’s opinion is entirely her own, the content was not written byTime4Learning, but the writer was compensated.

Drop Waist Knit Dresses

2010-11-26T16:26:00.000-08:00

Recently, I have been playing around refashioning t-shirts. I trimmed down a few old adult tee's into some little girl nightgowns, but then I wanted to make some dresses. I first tried a dress from scratch. I constructed this completely from a maternity shirt that I have no intention of EVER wearing again in my life. While it went pretty well, it ended up being about a size 4, and really did not fit Abigail. I also didn't realize until after I washed this dress that I needed to be using a ball point needle. Not to shabby for a first attempt. It could have been cute on her, next year, but I scrapped it to make an even better creation.

My next efforts were based off of three t-shirts that Abigail already had that fit her. I simply added a tube of material, cut from another t-shirt, to the bottom to make them little dresses. Each dress is slightly different though they are all built on the same construction principle.

This skirt is the least gathered. It was constructed from a shirt of my eldest daughters that was too short for her to wear any longer. I was able to stretch the t-shirt to its max girth to match the skirt addition.

The Purple skirt was formerly a plain shirt of mine. It was a very cheap t-shirt that had absolutely no shape, so its second life is a drastic improvement. I needed to sew a gathering stitch around the tube before attaching to the top. I'm thinking about adding a purple gathered ruffle around the bottom of the sleeves to make it more co-hesive.

This dress ended up having the most gathering of the bunch. The skirt was the above mentioned maternity shirt that masqueraded as a toddler dress for a single day. The skirt was twice the width of the t-shirt making the skirt much fuller than the others.

I love these simple dresses for so many reasons.

I don't need to find a coordinating bottom when dressing her in the morning.
I don't need to find a coordinating bottom when dressing her again a few hours later.
Only one piece of laundry to wash.
Only one piece of laundry to fold.
Only one piece of laundry to put away!

With 15 minutes of time, a $4.00 t-shirt from Target, an old t-shirt and one seam to sew, anyone can fill their little ones closet with cute every day play dresses!

A Surprising First

2010-10-16T10:39:00.000-07:00

As a mom of 5 kids, new things (kid wise) rarely happen to me. Today, was a different story. I had already taken the younger 4 costume shopping but Khali was still without so this morning we packed up the diaper bag, both babies and took off to go shopping. We were looking for a Witch or a Native American on the 4 round racks of costumes. I let Abigail out of the cart to walk around the costumes and 'help' while I held Zander. A few minutes into shopping, Abigail went behind one rack, and came out shortly behind another rack completely buck naked. The child had taken off both shoes, her underwear, and her dress!

Of course, at this point, Zander was no longer happy either and was beginning to fuss. Khali went to search for her clothes, which were deposited in a few places while I promptly sat on the floor and trapped her with my legs, the whole time trying to calm Zander down unsuccessfully. It might have been only my perception, but Khali took a very long time finding the clothes! Khali sat next to me on the floor and held Zander, while I wrestled Abigail's clothes back onto her under major protest. Two children crying the entire time. I have no idea how many people stopped in Awe, or got in their giggle for the day, I was too busy trying to dress the nudist!

I really wish that I could have taken a picture of this moment to tease her with later in life, but alas, my hands were too full! I think my next shopping trip, I'll just take Zander and leave the rest of the troops home.

Quick Fix - Changing Pad cover

2010-09-25T00:13:00.000-07:00

I am a procrastinator. I over plan, and under achieve. This should be the vinyl saying on my craft walls.

I bought a terry cloth fitted sheet when I was pregnant with Abigail. I did get it died as an experiment that wasn't all that successful as the brown is streaky, but the cover looks better brown than the yucky cream it came to me in. Unfortunately, it didn't fit my changing pad, since it was a standard fitted crib sheet. I tried to keep the excess fabric tucked under the pad, but honestly, I'm not that detail oriented! I just used it as it was, and didn't really put much more thought into it.

Nesting comes in different forms, and for me, this just needed to be fixed. Tonight!

So while Kolton read The Storm Testament II to the family for bedtime, I turned the cover inside out and put the sheet onto the changing mat. That allowed me to easily pin 4 places to sew new box corners and also able to cut the excess sheet away leaving an extra 1/2 inch allowance hanging past the table. I also pinned where to sew 2 button holes for the safety belt to be threaded through. That only took a chapter.

Once the kids were brushing their teeth and heading to bed, I quickly sewed the new seams for the box corners and 2 button holes. Then I took underwear elastic and zig-zag stitched that around the entire bottom of the sheet pulling the elastic taught around each corner. 15 minutes :) tops for this... and it only took me about 2 years to actually get done :)

Homemade Soft Scrub Cleaner

2010-09-03T11:53:00.000-07:00

I like homemade cleaners for multiple reasons.

I do not have to run to the store
Gentle on hands (especially delicate children who will be doing the scrubbing this time around)
Control of product
Less Chemicals
Less expensive
Less cleaning product to store under my sink for my little children to get into

Today I decided the bathrooms had to be scrubbed down better than the usual swish and swipe, so I mixed up a batch of 'soft scrub'. I filled the bottom of a container with Baking Soda, then using a cleaning toothbrush to stir, proceeded to add dish soap until I had a nice frosting consistency. To help the kids try to have a good attitude, I also splashed in a few drops of Orange Essential Oil in as well at the end. A minute later, we have a container of cleaning stuff ready to use! The amount shown above was enough to clean 5 sinks and counters, 1 garden tub, 1 stall shower, and an attempt to clean one normal tub.
I gave my older children each a rag and some cleaner and set them to work on the bathtubs, showers, and sinks. I LOVE how this product works on fixtures. It shines them up beautifully! It also did a wonderful job on the sinks, tile countertops, and even the shower door that was starting to get the hard water 'fog'.

Isn't this just a beautiful shining sink???

As an added recycled bonus, I have found that you can wash the thicker baby wipes that are often sold in grocery stores with your other towels and rags and they come through the wash just fine and ready to be used as small rags, or to be reused as a baby wipe again. Its actually scaring me a bit to see how many times these can go through the washing machine and continue to function, so I'm glad we are reusing many of them.

*If you have not completely neglected your tub for way to long, it also does a great job cleaning that up as well. If however, you haven't given your tub a good deep scrubbing in a very long time, you are going to need something with more oomph to get off the yucky dirty oily ring around your tub. (I personally, am not admitting to this......)

Thai Cashew Chicken

2010-09-03T11:36:00.000-07:00

Because Kolton works by the International District of Seattle, when he eats out, its often Oriental food. When he did the grocery shopping last, he came home with a large bag of delicious cashews and the veggies the dish require with the idea in mind that we could recreate one of his favorite dishes. I Googled up many recipes to try to get an idea of how to approach the dish, since I had never before seen or eaten it. That night, I worked beside Kolton in the kitchen as we put together the dish and tweeked things here and there till we were happy with the outcome. Since the original creation we've continued to modify and are now happy with the dish as a keeper.

2 Tbs. canola oil
1 Tbs. sesame oil
2 T Chili Paste
1 clove garlic
1 tsp shredded ginger
1/2 cup low-sodium chicken broth
1 lb boneless skinless chicken breasts, thinly sliced
1 large green pepper

1 large red pepper

1/2 large onion, cut into 1/2 inch pieces

2 carrots
1/4 cup oyster sauce

1 Tbs. sugar
1 cup Cashews

Heat oils in a pan over medium heat on the stove top. Stir in Chili paste, Garlic and Ginger letting the spices warm for a few minutes, being careful to not burn.
Take these minutes to coarsely peel and chop all of your veggies.
Once the spices have had time to infuse the oil, stir in the chicken broth and allow to warm for a moment before proceeding.
Carefully put all chicken pieces into the pan turning and stirring to allow all chicken to be coated in the sauce before you continue to cook for a few minutes until chicken is no longer pink. At this point stir in your Oyster sauce and Sugar. Next place large vegetables into pan, turn down to medium low heat, cover with a lid, and continue to cook until vegetables are lightly cooked. I think this dish is best when the vegetables have a bite to them and are not mushy, but you can cook them for as long as you'd like.
While the main portion of your meal is cooking, I like to toast my cashews for just a moment in a cast iron pan. I have skipped the toasting step before and no one seems to complain though.
Serve topped with Basmati Rice topped with almonds and you have a finished dish!

*You can add other veggies as well. The time pictures above I tossed in a sliced zucchini.

Foodies - Great Resources!

2010-08-27T23:09:00.000-07:00

I go through phases in my kitchen leaning on one method of preparation more than the rest for periods of time, depending on what life has on my plate. I am aware that going into the rainy season soon on top of being returned to baby momma status, that I will be soon turning to my Crockpot to avoid the evening dinner woes that are inevitably on the horizon.

Today I came across another local North West transplant. Whom like me, is enjoying a summer of moderate temperatures, unlike the ones we left back home further South. If you're looking for some recipes to add to your menus, check Jessie out over on her blog Bites. I have a few recipes bookmarked to start with including the Slow Cooker Chocolate Mess. With a name like that, and a picture of it served with Ice Cream.... I just can't wait! She also has beautiful red dish ware that serves as the backdrop to most of her food pictures that I'm in love with.

Tonight for dinner, I made her Crockpot Chicken with Black Beans for dinner knowing that I would be coming home from shoe shopping with the kids and we would all be hungry. With only 5 ingredients, I had the time to put it together in the Crockpot while telling the kids to get their shoes on and get themselves into the car. The recipe also works using frozen chicken, which I tend to always have in the freezer and keeping preparation simple. We served this over rice, but I would like to try it wrapped up in a tortilla next time. The kids all asked for seconds, so despite its lack in appearance, this recipe is a keeper for us!

Crockpot Chicken with Black Beans

1 lb frozen boneless chicken

1 (15 1/2 ounce) can black beans -drained

1 (15 ounce) can corn - drained

1 (15 ounce) jar salsa, any kind

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese

Directions

Combine frozen chicken, black beans, corn and salsa into Crockpot.

Keep in crock pot on low for about 5 hours or until chicken is cooked and easy to shred.

Add 1 package of cream cheese (just throw it on top!) and let sit for about 1/2 hour.

Break your chicken into pieces, or shred and serve over a bed of rice.

Lovely Birthday Flowers and Cake

2010-08-21T13:09:00.000-07:00

I am one lucky girl. For my birthday my husband got me a Silhouette Craft cutter, sent this beautiful bouquet of flowers to me during the day, and then took me out to Sushi for dinner.

After dinner we came home to eat my Chocolate Cake with Caramel Frosting that I had made earlier in the day using my brand new Cookie Paddles that my wonderful Mother-in-Law sent me. I have heard many wonderful things about the uses of these paddles, and I am so very happy to have my very own!

Caramel Frosting

2/3 cup Butter
1 cup Packed Brown Sugar
1/3 Cup Milk (though any cream will make this even better)
4+ Cups Powdered Sugar

Melt butter over medium-low heat. Once melted stir in Brown Sugar until well combined and continue to cook for 2 minutes. Add Milk and bring to boil. This may happen very quickly so watch closely! Turn off heat immediately and let this mixture cool. Once cool, use a hand mixer or whisk to slowly add powdered sugar until you have a nice thick frosting consistency. If you start to add the Powdered Sugar before your butter mixture is completely cool, be careful you do not add too much sugar.

**As you can see in my picture, I wasn't patient enough and added a bit too much powdered sugar making my frosting very hard to spread on my cake. It tastes delicious either way, but if you're going for a beautiful even frosting, wait for the butter mixture to come to room temperature, and add the powdered sugar slowly. I had a few little hands helping to pour in the sugar as fast as they could...

The next time I make this cake, which has been requested by the older two for their birthday, I may try to sprinkle a bit of high quality sea salt over the top. It might not be kid friendly, but I'm betting it would taste Delicious!

Yummy Banana Bread

2010-07-28T12:08:00.000-07:00

I have a lovely friend that shared some Banana Bread with me, and after devouring it at her home, I knew I had to have the recipe! Her grandmother had created this recipe and passed it down through her family, and now you can make it too! Be warned though, the first time I made this Banana Bread, the entire 9x13 pan was gone in a few hours, and then we made a second batch which lasted the rest of the day.

Banana Bread

1 1/2 cups Sugar, I prefer a mixture of white and brown.
2 Eggs
1/2 cup Oil

1 1/4 cup Mashed banana
1/4 cup Buttermilk or Soured Milk

1 tsp. Vanilla

2 1/2 cups Flour
1 tsp. Baking Soda
1/2 tsp. Baking powder
3/4 tsp. Salt

Set up your mixing bowl and cream together the first three ingredients. Then combine the next three ingredients into the bowl. Measure and mix the last 4 ingredients together before pouring those into the wet ingredients and lightly mix together. Don't let your mixer go for too long on this step!

Pour into a greased 9x13 cake pan and pop into a hot oven at 350 for about 30-40 minutes. The Banana bread should be a lovely golden brown on top and pulling away from the edges of your pan. Test the center with toothpicks before taking out of the oven as there is nothing worse than gooey banana bread!

Thrift Store Find

2010-07-10T11:47:00.000-07:00

I went to the Goodwill this morning, more as an escape for an hour with no children than anything else. I wanted to check for side snap infant shirts, a new maternity dress, and look for a whole pile of matching wooden buttons for some curtains that I am going to be sewing for the next few days. I new I was hoping for too much to find 20 matching buttons... but sometimes you just never know!

While I was back in the homegoods section, I spotted a package of fabric that caught my eye. It was the bottom pink fabric that I initially thought was so cute, however, once I picked up the package, I noticed that the other three prints where the same style in different colors. THREE PRINTS! I looked for a price tag and it was marked at $1.00! 4 yards of material for a buck!

I tried to get a picture of just fabric, but Abi thinks that anything I'm making must be for her, and automatically claims any fabric that is not put away to play with as a dress, skirt, pillow, or blanket.

Now I just have to figure out which girl gets which print, and what skirt pattern to use this time around! I had initially thought that a 3 tiered skirt would be adorable with each girl getting a layer of each print, but Khali has vetoed that already, so I'm still thinking.

Cold Dinner - Peanut Sesame Noodles

2010-07-09T17:08:00.000-07:00

Everyone once in a while, the weather gets so hot that even in Seattle Washington, you do not want to turn on the stove or oven even for a minute. If it happens that you also do not want to eat sandwiches, and cannot convince your family that a salad can be considered a meal, then you need recipes like this.

Picture taken from www.foodmayhem.com

Peanut Sauce

1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/3 cup soy sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
4 teaspoons sesame oil
1 tablespoon white vinegar
3 to 4 cloves minced garlic
water to thin sauce and make stirable

Cooked, drained and cooled Spaghetti Noodles

Garnish

thinly sliced cucumber
crushed peanuts
shredded carrots

The sauce just needs to be well combined and can be done many days before hand. I often make a double batch and keep the extra in a pint jar in the fridge for another dinner or lunch. Combine everything right before eating and enjoy! This is a wonderful vegetarian cold meal for those hot days. Its also great picnic food if you want something a bit different than your usual fair.

Enjoy!

Dry Mixes in the Kitchen

2010-07-08T21:02:00.000-07:00

Today , despite the extremely warm temperature, the little two girls ate the rest of the oatmeal packets that I had bought on a killer sale this past winter. All of my girls love oatmeal whether its for breakfast or a snack, and the older kids are also able to make their own, which at this season in life, is a big plus for Mommy! I have made up an oatmeal mix before hand and kept it in a larger container to measure out individual bowls, but really wanted to keep the 'single serving' idea going to reduce both disaster and waste. The girls all really enjoy being able to choose different types as well. Many websites tout being able to use snack size bags for this, but I really dislike storing food in plastic bags. I may be the only person with this problem, but without a doubt, one or two bags of some substance gets pushed to the bag of the cupboard. Undoubtedly, I only find it way after its prime and it often will have bugs of some sort. That means all my efforts to be frugal and healthier are blown to bits because I end up throwing away the food from that cupboard! I have learned to keep all food in very tightly sealed containers, it just works out better for me. Luckily I have kept all the baby food jars Abi has eaten in the past year and they are a perfect size to store a single serving of a flavored oatmeal!

I let the girls help with the entire project, from the blender, to the measuring, to the snacking on the raisins the entire time, which created a huge disaster, but proved to be a lot of fun as well. (I would have taken pictures of them being all cute, but my camera was upstairs and I was too lazy to go and get it, sorry!)

Here is what we did:

1/4 Cup quick oats
2 Tablespoons ground quick oats (like a coarse flour)
1 Tablespoon non-dairy creamer (think coffee)
1 Teaspoon -1 Tablespoon sugar (sometimes brown, sometimes white)
2 Tablespoons dried fruit bits of your choice (or however much more you can git into the jar)

We mixed up three kinds of oatmeal this time around, Blueberries and Cream (which contains dried blueberries and extra creamer), Raisin Spice (which contains raisins, 1 heaped tsp cinnamon and a healthy sprinkling of nutmeg) and Apples and Cinnamon (which contains dried apple and 1 heaped tsp of cinnamon). The sugar amount is really going to vary depending on what your families tolerance is currently set to. Since my kids have been eating the Quaker oatmeal packages, they like it very sweet. I am planning to make each batch with a bit less sugar until we taper down to 1tsp of sugar, unfortunately, right now, to make it palatable for them, we are closer to 3/4 Tablespoon.

The best parts of this kitchen endeavor are the ingredients are of much higher quality, each serving seems to be much more filling and they are much less expensive than the store bought counterpart!

Since the kitchen was already a dusty disaster, I figured we should just keep on rolling and put together some muffin mix in larger quart mason jars as well. I followed the "Universal Muffin Mix" the is found all over the net. I have made this mix before and rarely change a thing on it. I often cut in 2.5 cups of Crisco, reducing the amount of oils/fats that are necessary later. This makes the mix much more time consuming to make, but I prefer it to the regular recipe. Make sure you have a very large bowl if you are going to attempt this! This mix fills my large 'Thatsa Bowl" from Tupperware that is a 42 cup capacity. Once mixed, I measured 3 cups of the dry mix into my quart jars and labeled them for the pantry. With this size dry mix, I use 1 cup water/liquid, 2 eggs, 1 tsp vanilla, and 1/4 cup of oil/butters. This results in roughly 12 large muffins. This is very akin to the Better Crocker Muffin Mix's that are so simple to make, but offers so many more possibilities. One of our favorite variations that is not listed on RecipeZaar is Strawberry Banana Muffins. Mix in a big heaping spoon of strawberry jam with a few over rip bananas. And, if you're wondering; Yes, heaping spoon, sprinkle, pinch, handful... those are all very useful words in my cooking vocabulary. Cooking is about living a little!

Once the muffin mixes were done, I really wanted to forge ahead and make up a half dozen bread mixes as well, but alas, my ankles were barely differentiable from my calves, so my time in the kitchen was over. Hopefully another day in the near future will yield more dry mixes for my pantry.

Maternity Dress Refashion

2010-07-08T11:37:00.000-07:00

While blog hopping, you will find a few zillion tutorials on how to up-cycle different articles of clothing. I have a few articles of clothing set out for such purposes, but this dress was higher in priority. This is a maternity dress by Motherhood Maternity, which I bought used for $5.00, that fit well when I had a baby bump, but now that I have a basketball bump, the dress is just a bit too short to comfortably wear to church.

I have 6 pairs of yoga style black maternity pants, and some of them are floods, so they were an easy choice to donate to the project. I cut off the pant leg hem and also the waist band, then I pressed the pants so that the outer leg seam was 1/4 of an inch to one side. I then cut 4 inches from that outer seam the entire length of the leg so that my material was really 8 inches wide, with a seam 4 and 1/4 inch from the front side. Repeat this from the other leg of the pants, so there were 2 long strips. The bottom of the dress was 35" wide so I trimmed the length of the strips to 35 1/2 inch and sewed them together to make one long tube using a 1/4 inch seam.

From that point, all I needed to do was to fold the strip back in half, making sure that the seam was going to be on the inside of the dress, and pin it to the dress hem. Because I was working with 2 very stretchy materials, I pinned very close together to increase my chances at an even finished look without puckering. I do not have a walking foot, so I stitched very slowly, making sure to not pull on the materials while sewing with a small zig zag stitch. Viola! I can now wear this dress for the next 12 weeks of pregnancy.

If I get adventurous, another day, I might shorten the sleeves and add a black binding to those too.... I haven't decided yet. What do you think?

Fireworks extravaganza

2010-07-05T09:21:00.001-07:00

Our family was able to enjoy a wonderful weekend! We took the kids out to an Indian Buffet for lunch on Saturday and as soon as they were full we hopped into the car and drove north to the Tulalip Indian Reservation to buy Fireworks! Despite the fact that its only 10-15 miles north, of course it takes over half an hour to drive to. Apparently every other family had also procrastinated buying their fireworks until the last day, because there were entire lanes filtering off the interstate at our exit, and we drove in the same line of traffic all the way to the makeshift parking lots behind the casino. Once we parked in the field, Kolton took the older three kids over to buy fireworks. Now, if you are like me, you are niavely expecting that there will be a large firework tent set up, maybe 2 or 3 since everyone told you to make the drive North. Instead, there is an entire city of different people who have bought fireworks wholesale and now have their own table/shack/area to resell these fireworks to the public. I'm sure many people paid whatever the seller was asking, but not my Dear Darling. He haggled and got a good price and had a bunch of things thrown into the deal. Bottle Rockets and Firecrackers were heard intermittently throughout the entire weekend from our home! Sometimes with children's knowledge off the porch, on the patio, in a sand volcano the kids had erected. Other times, it came from behind the corner of the house, or out the garage door when no one was expecting it. Abigail cried quite a few tears and yelled 'noisy' at her father many times.
We had invited a family friend over to set off some fireworks while we were at church, which was great fun when they got here around 8:30. We did some sparklers and some spinning flowers on the driveway and quite a few bottle rockets as we waited for it to get darker. Another friend called and told us they had a nice flat cult-e-sac to set off fireworks with another family. While our home is the perfect setting to see the entire horizon lit up with everyones fireworks, we lack flat area, so we packed up the 8 kids into the 2 vans and headed over. Everyone had such a great time blowing up the fireworks for a good hour, and watching the neighbors doing the same. When we had blown up the majority of our fireworks, we headed to our friends backyard where they had just built out a new brick patio! Comfy chairs, a warm fire which had settled down to mostly coals, and a large trampoline entertained everyone for another good hour, while we roasted marshmallows for smores and chatted through the noise of the explosions. I've never been to war, but that is how I'd imagine it would sound. Constant explosions.
Thankfully Kolton had the good sense to save a few fireworks for when we got back home, so back into the car we loaded! Abigail has such a great time running around with all the other kids, 15 in total, and watching the pretty colors she happily was carried up to her bed from the car and fell asleep on her comfy pillow. She went from scared of every explosion to numb to the noise in swift evening! The big kids settled down on the trampoline with pillows and blankets to watch the rest of the fireworks that we had and then watch the horizon for another hour. Porter had the good sense at 11:30 that it was past his bedtime and he went to his room. The little girls fell asleep outside and needed to be carried to their beds. The fireworks started to dwindle a bit around that point in the evening but had a resurgence at midnight as many people sent off their last fireworks for a Finale. It was a great time to sit with Kolton and watch them. Of course, Kolton wasn't sitting for most of the time since I kept complaining that the ash from the firecrackers and bottle rockets kept getting on my blanket. It was such a great night filled with friendship, laughter, family, love and a lot of black powder. I went to sleep soon after midnight watching out my bedroom windows as the fireworks still lit up the sky.

Rectangular Sewing Again!

2010-06-18T15:50:00.001-07:00

Every time I make something, I think its the coolest thing I've ever made! Even better than what I made last week. Of course, that only lasts until the next time, but its a fun feeling! I have discovered a LOVE for sewing anything that doesn't require a formal pattern, gathers, pleats, zippers or even button holes. When I stumbled upon "The Idea Room" I found a ton of fun crafts to make, but since I was looking for a quick gift idea, I settled on this.

The Fashionable Fabric Keychain. Have you ever noticed when looking at other peoples sewing projects that they have the cutest stinking fabric you've ever seen??? I often feel like this, and sometimes is discourages me from starting the project, but this time I ignored the thought, dug through my stash for a minute, and came up with a pairing that I thought was pretty cute. I also already had the fastener on hand from previous attempts to make a binky clip. Boo Ya!

A simple craft with everything on hand; so perfect for so many reasons, no runs to the store and no money spent are my favorite two! Her tutorial was very simple to follow with lots of pictures. I think the most time consuming part was changing the thread and bobbin on the machine twice to match the materials!

A Week of Crafting in Review

2010-06-16T23:47:00.000-07:00

Fruit Storage
I started asking around and perusing the net for a large fruit basket about a month ago. Preferably one with tiers for easy access and superior storage abilities. You can go through a good amount of fruit in a family with 4 kids. The only good choice that I felt was an option is a tiered hanging basket, but seeing that we are renting, and I know it would be a penalty to screw anything into my lovely kitchen cabinets, that will not work. A friend sent me to a blog featuring someone making a tired dessert tray with different sized plates and small candle holders. Turns out that is a large craze at the moment and there are many, many different takes on this idea in blogs everywhere.I adopted the idea to use long ceramic trays, and a package of cake stand columns, sealing the deal with e6000 glue. The top tray is just low enough below the counters that you can still easily get to bananas. The night I made this and took the picture, we were running low on fruit, but you can see how much potential space is available for your produce.

Up-cycling Jeans to Apron

The biggest downfall about the way we shop for my dear husbands clothes, can be a

great boon to available craft denim to me. You see, he doesn't like to go shopping. Who can blame him when we always drag along the kids? When we go to the store, we buy 3-4 pairs of jeans, and a

few new shirts, generally a pair of shoes. Since they were all bought at the same time, they all wear out about the same time as well. So in the past week or two I've accumulated some materials just waiting to be up-cycled. I stumbled across "A Girl and a Glue Gun" in a search for recycling denim projects and loved what she did! Her tutorial says to use the

same size jean for your apron that you'd normally wear. I think that using a slightly larger jean would be preferable because I like a bit more side coverage to my apron. Of course, since this isn't a

Maternity apron, I couldn't model it, so I just layed it out for a picture.

Crinkle Toy

We had some company in town over the weekend. We BBQ'd for lunch one day, and they bought a bag of Sun Chips in the crinkliest bag ever. Despite Micheal Pollan's warning that the more something crinkles, the less you should buy it, Sun Chips didn't listen. This is definitely the loudest chip bag ever, and its compost-able you know. Since I have been collected the plastic cereal liners to make reusable sandwich wrap-ups with, it was natural I would want to keep this bag to create a baby toy. I had seen an adorable 'how-to' done by "Andrea's Originals" in a previous craft search and had a link in an email! Horray! I love when I think ahead enough to mail myself craft projects. Otherwise, it was just a passing thought. I did some research on the bag itself to make sure it was safe to use for such a purpose and feel that it is. The bag cannot currently be recycled by most municipal recycling plants, and will only decompose in a proper composting unit. Unless the bag is surrounded by the key ingredients in a composting pile, I think it will work well for this project. Like most crafted things, I would machine wash, but hang to dry. While I was sewing Abi played with the pin cushion. It happens to be a turtle. I had my camera with me and managed to snap a picture before she sensed the cameras presence. She's also modeling the apron. After the other girls had tried it on, it was of course her turn, and she never wanted it taken off for the night. I wish I was as handy with the camcorder, because she says 'turtle' so well, its just adorable!!

Fitted Table Cloth

After all helping little hands went to bed, I started to work on this last project, a tutorial given on "Smashed Peas and Carrots". I had cut the proper dimensions out earlier in the day yet any time I started to work on the corners the entire table cloth got the wiggles. The table the girl covered on her blog, has exact square corners, making it an ideal candidate for the simple box corner treatment she whips together in minutes. I didn't realize up front that my table has large rounded corners. So while I wanted the same outcome, I had to change what I did. Instead of the simple box corner seam, I ended up gathering toward the center of the corner from each side, and then tucking material from each side behind the middle of the corner material. I then folded the excess up and under to ensure that the entire perimeter of the table had 4 inches hanging over. Perhaps all this has technical names that would be much easier to understand, but I don't know what they are, Sorry. Overall it's been a fun week!

Calorimetry Crochet A.K.A. Thick Headband

2010-06-07T19:18:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I saw a few of these adorable headbands that were selling for 10-15 dollars each! Of course my frugal nature sent me searching for general instructions so that I could whip up my own and use up some of my yarn stash. After all, if you don't spend money on finished products, you can spend that money buying new notions, right? Well, once you clear our your old stash to make room of course. For this project I was using some left-over Alpaca/Lambswool blend that I had hand-died. This project really does not require much yarn, so check your stash and see what small yarn cakes you have tucked away.

I searched around for awhile and found an Etsy store which sells patterns with wonderful reviews. I normally do not buy patterns, because for small projects there are generally plenty of ideas shared for free on the net, and I feel I am competent enough to figure things out on my own through trial and error. I worked through the pattern in about 2 hours. While it was well written, and rather easy to understand, the thought behind the pattern really lacked. The bottom calorimetry (made from the pattern purchased on Etsy) lays flat, and because of the way the pattern increases and decreases the edges are rough.

So, the next morning, I started working up a different pattern to see if I could get better results and I am much happier. Can you see the top calorimetry has some shape to it? It is slightly concaved. This stretches and fits to the head well. The size difference was a concious choice. I made it a bit smaller to fit both Abi and Issy, where the bottom wrap would fit a large toddler up to an adult. The best part of buying the pattern was the cute flower that came with it. I trimmed it out in white to make it stand out and then attached it to an alligator clip so that it can be worn separately. I tried to model it on Abigail as well, and while it fits, she wouldn't leave it on her head long enough for me to snap the picture. I don't know where she gets that stubborn nature, I really don't.

Organizing Benefits

2010-06-07T11:10:00.000-07:00

We took a few days off last week once the workshops were over. It was a much needed break so everyone, including me, could decompress. This morning, despite both the little girls are fevering and not feeling well in general, we're starting little by little back into a home routine. Can I just say, I LOVE being home with the kids and not needing to go anywhere?

As you can see, all of the kids like their book holders. Their books are all at the table so we can switch between subjects quickly without loosing a child's attention, and they can also be used as dividers for those children who really just wish they were an only child.

Onesie Refashion

2010-06-04T22:18:00.000-07:00

Abi has decided it is time to start learning to go to potty, which renders her onsies pretty useless. She has quite a few long sleeve onsies from winter time that still fit her so I have decided to make them work for a little while longer.

Using my sewing scissors, I trimmed right above the leg binding all around the bottom of the onesie first, and then slightly eased the curve to be a bit less dramatic. I then just set my sewing machine to a wide zig-zag and pulled the cut edge taught while stitching to create a lettuce effect. Since it does not require turning under a hem the shirt is still plenty long enough for her. If summer ever arrives I think I will further refashion her onesies to be short sleeves. This refashion took about 5 minutes with Abi helping on each step. She knew they were her shirts and wanted to take part after all!

Meeting Organizational Needs - On the cheap

2010-06-03T16:07:00.001-07:00

For the entire year, the kids have had their school books in a bookcase on one shelf next to the kitchen table. We have tried labeling areas for each child, separating each area with plastic pencil cases, and even bookend/dividers. Regardless of the method that was in place, the little two could not put their books away in the correct place. I was lucky in they would get their books and pencils put away off the table, period. While the piled shelf doesn't really bother me much, except for the morning that I cannot seem to find Child X's writing book, this was (one of) the biggest bains of my eldest child's existence. Other children's books were in her area, they were touching hers, they were breathing the air of her books!

So off I went again, on a late night search for another solution that I could enact to fix this massive disaster of a problem. I came across some very cute and chic magazine holders including the ones found here. Of course I didn't have any magazine holders laying around the house to just cover, so I had to do a search for a good substitute, preferably one I did had laying around the house already as

a.) It would be free

b.) I wouldn't have to run to a store

c.) I could start right away while I was still excited for this project!

While I know some people have used cereal boxes for such a purpose, I needed something a bit more heavy duty. I came across the idea of using a USPS Priority Mail box and thought, Perfect! I happened to have a small stack laying upstairs next to the computer waiting to be used for such a purpose!

I cut my angle with a steak knife after finding that my utility scissors where doing a poor job. I measured just under 12 inches high on the back side, and 6 inches high on the front and cut the boxes. You can cut them to any measurements that you think would work well for your situation, but I wanted to be able to use 12x12 scrap-booking paper on each side so that dictated my cuts. Originally I had wanted to use fabric like the Chic ones above, but realized I did not have adequate prints that the kids would like, so I resorted to what I had on hand. I used spray adhesive to put on the paper and then permanent marker with lettering stencils to write their names on the tall end for each child.

*warning* If you are tempted to write your children's name using fancy stencils, ask yourself if your child is going to think that their O is a Q, or their L is an I. Apparently I should have written in my clearest De'Nalien print and called it good.

Since I want these boxes to stand up to daily wear and tear of childrens use, I bought some contact paper and proceeded to cover each one. I even used a bit of packaging tape to hold the contact paper down on the inside of the box so that there is very little chance of the books getting caught and ruining my creation. Hopefully these will last and solve the messy bookshelf problem.

Reusable Snack Bags - 2.0

2010-05-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

The first few bags where so much fun, and I had the supplies sitting and waiting, that I knew I'd make more. So after dinner had settled, and the wheels in my head had more time to turn, I called my mom to run my new idea past her. Of course I talked to my Mother-in-Law as well. They are both wonderful consultants and extremely patient when I am trying my hardest to turn my thoughts and images into communicable words.

Instead of a flat bag, I wanted to put a pleat at the bottom of the bag, like the old fashioned fold over sandwich bags. Does anyone remember those? My wonderful mom thought that it would both put less stress on the side seams of the bag, and also help with functionality. What neither of us realized is that it also makes it so the bag can 'sit' on the counter when you fill it, and also in a child's lap helping to prevent spills. This is definitely the way I'll make the bags from now on.

Reusable Snack Bags

2010-05-20T18:17:00.000-07:00

This has been the funnest day project! To make it even better, it uses up a bunch of scrap fabric that I've kept for far to long and wondered what to do with. In fact, the shiny stuff on the inside I remember using to make some kind of fabric flower when I was a little girl. Pretty Please tell me I'm not the only person that has some of their mothers fabric stash? Its hard to throw these types of things away!

I'm not sure what search I was doing that I stumbled upon the Idea of Re-usable snack bags, but I'm so glad that I did! Once again there are many tutorials and options out there, but the one that I thought would be the easiest and fastest I found here. If you are going to make your own stash of baggies, I recommend when you sew the second end seam (the first step) that you pull your outer material just a tad bit longer. Then when you flip it right side out to sew on the velcro, the outer material is naturally a little bit longer than the inner material. I think it creates a cleaner look.

I tested out the snack size bags with cereal in them for the little girls when we went to the grocery store. I think they are the perfect size for individual treats. The larger sandwich sized bag I think will be more functional for sharing treats. After dinner, I have a few other fabrics to whip into cute little snack bags. I even have one or two fabrics that aren't quite so girly, so Porter can not look silly, though he really could care less.

Covered Diaper Wipe Case

2010-05-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

I finally finished my Diaper Wipe Case! There are a few zillion tutorials online that I read through and loosely followed. These cute cases often retail for $20+ in baby boutiques so of course I had to make my own. I bought 1 fat quarter which is probably enough material to cover two cases. I had felt on hand, the trim, and all the buttons. I covered the case in a morning while listening to a movie with the kids and baking something. It didn't take long, just a ton of glue sticks! Tonight I found the buttons that I think finished the look perfectly and glued them on. Viola! Finished feels so good!

$1.00 for the Fat Quarter Material

$1.25 for the Huggies Diaper Wipe Case

$0.10 for 5 glue sticks

So my grand total for this adorable little project comes to; $2.35

I can handle that :)

Buttermilk Syrup

2010-05-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful Mothers Day. My Loving Husband made me an omelet and a strawberry smoothie, complete with ice cream to start out the day! At church we had a wonderful talk about the value of mothering in sacrament and the primary children sang a few songs for all the mothers. To top it all off my Darling took the baby to his classes and I sat all by myself in Relief Society. Honestly, I didn't know what to do with myself! No one was pulling on my shirt, begging for snacks, or otherwise distracting me. It was fabulous.
After a little nap, I woke up hungry (of course) and began thinking of desserts. I wanted to make a cookie bar, so after sifting through a few recipes I settled on a Blondie. To make it extra special I topped it with Buttermilk Syrup. Sooo Yummy! Trust me, you'll want to try this. You'll also want to make this is your large pot even though the ingredients will initially measure into the bottom inch of the pan. We substitute this for maple syrup on our breakfasts from time to time. It has a wonderful butter flavor that is a welcome change from the maple every now and again.

Buttermilk Syrup

1 cup white sugar
3/4 cup buttermilk
1/2 cup butter
2 tablespoons corn syrup
1/3 teaspoon baking soda
2 teaspoons vanilla extract

In a saucepan, stir together the sugar, buttermilk, butter, corn syrup, and baking soda. Bring to a boil, and cook for 7 minutes over a medium heat. Stir occasionally. Remove from the heat, and stir in the vanilla.

Sewing Hair Curlers

2010-05-05T19:22:00.000-07:00

I have been wanting to sew these hair curlers since before we moved! I saw this posted on another blog and put it on my 'to sew' list. Unfortunately Wonderwoman is no longer blogging, but her website is full of wonderfully creative projects that I'd love to make more of. Wonderwoman found the idea here, but her's were far more inspirational. I made them out of 3 old handkerchiefs my grandma sent me in a fabric stash, and a little bit of fluff that was also laying around. Total cost- negligible. My type of project!!!

Khali's hair had been washed and was still slightly damp when I put her hair up. I used a little bit of gel before hand as well. I made 14 curlers total, but I believe that I only used 10 in her hair. (I have had to use all 14 when wrapping my hair) Thankfully it only took about 10 minutes to wrap her hair, and she didn't really care because she was reading a book :) She also didn't mind leaving them in for a few hours to dry, because she just read her book.

I let the curl rest for a few minutes upon taking the curlers out before trying to separate them. Isn't she a pretty little girl?

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins

2010-04-24T12:57:00.000-07:00

The absolute worst part about making muffins is cleaning the tins after-wards, right? These little gems are worth the effort though.
I understand they sell paper liners but I never seem to have any the morning I want to make muffins. To make quick work of clean up this is what I do. I take a paper towel and wad up a corner to be about the size of the inside of the mini muffin tin. I then pour a dab of oil onto the towel and wipe the inside of each tin. You may have to get more oil on your towel after half a dozen or so. What about a cooking spray? Well, like I said above. The worst part is cleaning the tins, and I really think the cooking sprays are harder to clean off than the food! When I was using the spray's I would have to use steel wool to clean the pans! If I used just dish soap, they would darken with a sticky goop on them the next time they were put in the oven. I'm sure there are studies done, but I don't want to think about what that does inside my body.
With the clouds looming outside the windows and the kids all happily distracted with Saturday Cartoons, I whipped up a batch of Lemon Poppy Seed Mini-Muffins to be devoured through the morning hours. The advantage of a large batch is they can snack on them and give you more time to do other things without children whining at 11:30 that they will starve if they do not eat lunch right away.

Lemon Poppy Seed Muffins
makes 96 mini muffins or 24 medium muffins
1 1/3 cup sugar
Grated zest 2 lemons
Juice of 2 lemon
4 cups all-purpose flour
4 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup combination of sour cream and plain yogurt
4 large eggs
3 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 splash of almond extract
1 stick (8 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted and cooled
1/2 cup oil
4 tablespoons poppy seeds

For the Icing:

1 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted
2-3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Directions:

Center a rack in the oven and preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
In a large bowl, rub the sugar and lemon zest together with your fingertips until the sugar is moist and the fragrance of lemon strong. Inhale deeply and think of wonderful spring weather then whisk in the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt and poppy seeds.
In a large glass measuring cup or another bowl, whisk the sour cream, yogurt, eggs, vanilla and almond extracts, lemon juice, melted butter and oil together until well blended. Pour the liquid ingredients over the dry ingredients and, with a rubber spatula, gently but quickly stir to blend.
Muffin batter should be treated much the same as pancakes. Do not over work, a few lumps are actually preferred.

Divide the batter evenly among the muffin cups. Bake mini muffins for 15 minutes and medium muffins for 18 minutes, or until the tops are golden and a thin knife inserted into the center of the muffins comes out clean. Transfer the pan to a rack and cool for 5 minutes before carefully removing each muffin from its mold. Cool the muffins completely on the rack before icing them.

To make the icing:

Put the confectioners' sugar in a small bowl and add about 1 1/2 tablespoons of the lemon juice. Stir with a spoon to moisten the sugar, then add enough lemon juice, a dribble at a time, to get an icing that is thin enough to drizzle from the tip of the spoon. Then drizzle lines of icing over the tops of the muffins.

Enjoy!

Getting Sidetracked in the Kitchen

2010-04-07T19:31:00.000-07:00

Two nights ago, I used my Bosch to whip my whipping cream while I chopped strawberries to make Strawberry Shortcakes. Apparently, that process takes much less time that I had anticipated, because when I went to check on the cream, it was chunky! Thankfully I had more whipping cream in the fridge and the second time around I watched the Bosch more carefully and we did manage to have dessert. I put the ruined whipping cream in the fridge thinking that it would be good on top of waffles or french toast for breakfast.

Unfortunately, the combination of the kids being sick and my pregnancy has left me without energy in the morning so we have eaten cereal and oatmeal. This afternoon I was planning to make some Banana Bread with the brown banana's I bought yesterday for 10 cents a pound and the recipe I love uses buttermilk. I didn't have any in the fridge, but when making butter from cream, you also get buttermilk as a side product! At last I had figured out how to use up my mistake!

I put the whipping cream back into the Bosch and let it whip for another few minutes until there was a clear separation of the solids from the liquids. People have said you can hear a change in your motor at this point... I just waited till a lot of the solids where sticking to the wire whisks.

At that point I poured as much of the liquid off into a separate bowl as I could. Then gathered up the solids in my hand and squeezed them over the bowl, after all you don't want to waste your buttermilk! You could also use a fine colander for this step if you are incline to dirty another dish. Your buttermilk is now ready for use.

Now you will need to rinse and work your butter in cold water a few (3-5) times, until the water runs clear. I highly recommend using ice water for this step or your butter will get too soft to work with successfully.
At first I started doing this with a large wooden paddle, to work the water into the butter, but after trying that, I figured my hands worked much more efficiently.

To make my butter presentable I put saran wrap inside of a muffin tin before stuffing the butter into it. I then put it in the fridge to harden it for a few minutes before unwrapping and plating :) Ready to eat with the hot fresh Banana Bread. Now, wasn't that fun?

2010-04-06T12:15:00.001-07:00

A few random thoughts from my lovely Easter weekend:

1- When making foods from your childhood, do not rely on internet recipes. Even if you pull up 10 recipes and they all use Mayonnaise, they are wrong, You're mother will tell you to use Miracle Whip. If your mother is unavailable, make half the recipe with each ingredient and learn for yourself that all those professional cooks from food network and the many thousands of home makers on recipezaar are fallible.

2- Many successful homemakers will tell you to do one load of laundry bright and early every morning and you won't get behind. Those people apparently don't have 4 kids. Two loads a day might keep you on top of things.... maybe

3- I will never again waste my money on a 'spiral sliced ham'. For half the price per pound I will happily cook my Ham fresh instead of reheated (Drying out) cooked meat. A homemade glaze tastes better than that little gold packet, it was not hard to carve the meat off the bones, and I really did think the meat was much moister and tasted superior. If you can roast a chicken for dinner, you can easily handle cooking a fresh ham.

4- Sometimes when you come across one of those recipes that looks like the person had way to much time on their hands and you would never be able to reproduce... you're wrong. Once in a great while, they are very simple and just look like you took alot of time :) Try these Bacon Wrapped Eggs for your next special breakfast or brunch. They are Yummy!

Bacon Wrapped Eggs

(for each egg you want to cook you will need)

2 pieces of Bacon

1 egg

Partially cook your bacon, as close to done as you can get without it being crispy. You want limp, pliable bacon strips. Grease a muffin pan with butter or some of your bacon grease. Cut one piece of bacon into smaller lengths and line the bottom of your muffin cup. This is particularly well suited for the fatter end of your bacon. Once you have the bottom well covered, take a full strip of bacon and curl it into your tin so that it lines the sides of that particular well. Then crack your egg into the middle. Thats it folks! Put this in the oven at 325 for 15-20 minutes depending on how well you like your egg cooked.

Tip: If there is a particularly fatty part in your bacon, trim it before lining muffin pan.

Curried Coconut Chicken

2010-03-14T17:02:00.001-07:00

Since moving to Washington, I've fallen in love with Indian foods. Thai too, but that is another post, and we really should concentrate on getting one post up before we commit to a repeat. I first tried to recreate Butter Chicken, since that was my absolute favorite dish at all the restaurants..... It didn't work out so well. But in conversations with friends, they suggested I try making a Coconut Curry dish. My husband and I have combined multiple recipes to create our favorite. Through many months of tailoring, we have the recipe that I will be cooking for a long time.

Curried Coconut Chicken

INGREDIENTS

1.5 pounds boneless skinless chicken breasts, cut into 1/2-inch chunks
1 teaspoon salt and pepper, or to taste
2 Tablespoons vegetable oil
2 Tablespoons curry paste
1 Tablespoon garam marsala
1/2 onion, thinly sliced
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1 (14 ounce) can coconut milk
1 (14.5 ounce) can stewed, diced tomatoes
1 (8 ounce) can tomato sauce
1 Tablespoon sugar
Optional - (but I prefer to add them all)
1 zucchini
1 potato
1 handful chopped carrots
1/2 cup raisins

DIRECTIONS

Season chicken pieces with salt and pepper, and let them sit for a little bit.
Heat oil and curry paste in a large skillet over medium-high heat for about five minutes. You really want to infuse the oil. Stir in onions and garlic, and cook 10 minutes until onions are translucent. If you need more oil in the pan, add it now. You do not want your onions to be swimming, but you do not want them to burn either. While you are waiting on those onions, prep the rest of your vegetables.
Drain your can of tomatoes, saving the liquid to add in at a later point. Cook the tomatoes for a few minutes. Then add the can of coconut milk. You can use Lite, or Regular here, both impart the same flavor. Once the milk has come to a boil, add chicken. Reduce heat to medium, and cook for 7 to 10 minutes.
Pour tomato sauce, prepared veggies, tomato liquid and sugar into the pan, and stir to combine. Adding all of the option ingredients makes a wonderful one pot meal and the flavors are wonderful. Turn down your heat to low, simmer, stirring occasionally until thick. I recommend atleast 1 hour to really let all the flavors meld.
In the last ten minutes add the Garam Marsala. Do not over cook once you put this spice blend in as the flavors will cook out.

Serve over Basmati rice with homemade Buttered Naan. I dare you to not have multiple helpings :)

Our last week begins

2009-07-13T07:05:00.000-07:00

Yesterday our two contractor friends finished up as many projects as they possibly could before heading home around 7. We had only planned on them for Saturday, but working on housing is always full of surprises, and more and more projects arose. The hot water heater is still not installed or functioning, but hopefully that will be a quick fix this morning and we can once again turn water on to the house. I finished cleaning up and sanding the bathtub last night around midnight and got it painted, so it looks much fresher. I'd say it looks spiffy next to the new handles on the faucets!
Today we have packers coming, as well as a wonderful organizer from CleanSlate here in Utah to help me out for a few hours this morning. Thank Goodness for friends that are willing to have your children at their home while you're moving!!

Where does time go?

2009-07-11T22:43:00.000-07:00

Its been a week since the 4th of July??? Geez.
So, Kolton, Abi and I took a short trip up to Seattle to look for houses for 2 days. Abigail was a trooper, but all this house stuff has seriously affected her sleeping schedule. I'm getting really frustrated with 20 minute naps already! She didn't sleep longer than that while we were in Seattle during the day, and hasn't been much better since we've gotten back. I keep leaving her in a stroller outside under the patio because its quieter out there than in our house with pnumatic nail guns, tile saws and hammers going.
Today has been quite eventful. My MIL, Jamie, brought back the big kiddo's from their trip to Cache Valley and helped clean and prepare food all afternoon for us. Our friends John and Cynthia had helped to take partially finished bathroom the day before, so we put up Drywall and Shower board for the shower stall, and now the Tile is being laid on the floor and the bump up. I'm sure the neighbors wish we were not using the Tile saw at 11:30 at night, but they'll get over it. If my kids can sleep through it at the same house, they should be able to handle it too! I also got the living room hardwood floor oiled, thanks to our wonderful friends coming over and spending the morning moving everything out of the living room and mopping for us.
We also have painted, stained and installed a ton of baseboard and wall trims with our friends help as well. And if you've ever stayed at our home before, the big drum roll item.....
Today, Kolton was able to replace the handle on the hot water valve in the upstairs bathroom!!! This means that when you would like to take a shower or a bath, you will no longer have to use a pair of pliers to turn on the hot water! Why is my house only getting fixed for me to leave it???
And since little things keep popping up each day, today's was a bit bigger. We found out the hot water heater has been leaking and will need to be replaced as well. Hope no one minds how stinky we all are until that is replaced tomorrow! Hopefully everyone will be done working on their project in the next half hour and we can put away noisy power tools till morning.... Hopefully.

Our 4th of July Weekend

2009-07-07T08:04:00.000-07:00

For the Fourth of July weekend, we headed up to Cache Valley to spend a bit more time with family and friends before we ship out. Kolton and his brother Caleb went mountaineering/camping up Logan Canyon. I drove them up and dropped them off with the kiddo's on Thursday. Once they were sprayed with bug spray and loaded with their packs, I headed back to Richmond through Franklin Basin. It is a gorgeous place, a high mountain meadow full of wild flowers. I passed three semi's that had just dropped off sheep for summer grazing along with a few cowboys and sheepdogs. We even got to forde a few creeks to the delight of all the children. Isabella got to see her first deer bounding across the road. I thought it was much funner than driving home on the highway. Of course, Friday afternoon when I went to get them, I wanted to go back the same way to enjoy it one more time. Little did I know that there was a 90 degree turn that I had taken coming down, and missed going back up. That small error resulted in me being three hours late to pick up a frantic and sunburned husband who was sure I had driven off a cliff, or worse. Of course the road that I did get to take through the mountains was anything but pretty and serene... I was wishing for something more than 4 wheel drive and 2nd gear to drop into.... a horse would have been nice! Live and Learn... If i ever get the chance though, I will drive through Franklin Basin again.
We did get to go to the fireworks show in Logan with our family. I do believe that they have the best fireworks show Ever! Atleast in Utah! We also BBQ'd a few times and saw some extended family members who were all very excited about out upcoming adventure. I tried very hard to just relax, and not stress about all the work that was awaiting us upon arrival home. It was a nice weekend.

Tuesday

2009-06-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

Today was once again full, and not over yet. I did get my bath and shower scrubbed twice today with scrubbing bubbles. Man that stuff is terrific! I'm impressed, my shower surround almost looks good! We also moved the kiddo's beds into the other bedroom today. Now all three of their mattress's are on the floor layed next to each other. It was hard to not be mad when they were jumping all over the place on them... but can you really say No Jumping On the Bed, when you're missing a functional part of the bed?
I also was a very lucky girl today, though I don't truely feel so lucky. My MIL reminded me to call my dentist to finish my implants before we left for Seattle. When I called them bright and early Monday morning, they had just had a cancelation for Tuesday at 1 and I told the I would be there! This was supposed to be an hour appointment to make a few molds, check on the screws, and be back on my way home, so I took along Abigail while Kolton kept the older kids. Turns out that his two o'clock appointment was misscheduled and he had time to not only do my molds, but fix a broken filling all right then. That was unbelievably fortunate, I was not planning on having it done before leaving for Seattle. Everyone knows I'm do not love the dentist, so I probably would have just suffered for a long time before finally getting in to have it fixed next year. Unfortunatly, that was alot of dental work for one sitting, and an even longer time when you are trying to hold a baby on your lap and keep her entertained while having 2 people with gadgets stuck in your mouth. Thankfully my darling husband was wonderful when I got home and made me soup to drink and took the fussy little baby to let me rest. A few hours later, with a small nap and a sandwich, I am now ready to start back into house work! Ceilings, here we come!

And it just keeps coming

2009-06-29T23:48:00.000-07:00

Aaaahhh, to sit down in front of my computer for a rest! I miss having extra time to cruise facebook, check email and blog! Today has been a very busy day, like the last few weeks before hand. We accomplished a lot though! I finished brown paper bagging in the bathroom and even got it painted today. If anyone is wondering, I would never recommend doing that technique in a wet room. I also thinks it looks much better stained than painted, but live and learn. I installed shower curtain rod holders in twenty minutes. Those are the $5.00 projects I will have to try hard to remember in the future.... Not everything takes large blocks of time to accomplish. Kolton has been busy painting trims all day. I think he got stuck with the worst job. I'm glad he can continue to do the detail work while I flutter around from job to job, and together we can keep each other motivated. Once the kids got to bed tonight, we scrubbed hard wood floors in Khali's room and the hallway. Alot of paint had been spilled and it has been a few years since I had scrubbed and polished them anyways.... =X Its rather embarrassing how dirty the floors have been. Thankfully, we are done working and just need to clean up paint brushed, plaster, and so on tonight cuz we are done for.

Latest Update

2009-06-27T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well, Yesterday I started out the day thinking that I had one month and 4 days to do all the work. By the time Kolton came home from work, we had lost two weeks of that time frame.
His company was great and gave him two weeks paid leave, but the downfall was it started immediately. This, I hadn't expected! We had thought that the company would want him to finish his current projects to not leave them in a bad position, but we were wrong. Amazon wants him as soon as possible, so we now have a new start date of July 20th.
The work contract came via Fed Ex yesterday as well. I didn't wait for him to get home, I ripped it open of course to start reading all the paperwork! I can't tell you how excited I was when I saw an error that included 15000 stocks as part of his offer. I pulled out my cell and did the math. That was 1.2 MILLION in stock after it vested in 4 years. At that point I txt'd Kolton whom was in the middle of an exit interview with his company and asked him what that was. Of course we called the recruiter and let him know about the error when Kolton got home, but wouldn't that have been a wonderful error for us?? Wishful thinking. Oh well, I'm sure our honesty will pay off.
Today we have both of our mothers coming down to help out. I Love those women! We got the Kitchen and bathroom ceilings painting last night, as well as the first coat of Kilnz painted on Khali's walls and ceiling. I have the paint to finish the kitchen and the upstairs rooms, so those are the projects we'll be working on today. Enough resting on my toosh, Off to paint!

Phew!

2009-06-26T09:12:00.000-07:00

If I were to title the next month of my life, I would choose a title like "Running like Mad", or "Busy as a Bee". Trying to pack up the house, finish home projects to be able to sell, and do the normal stuff that make up the ballast of my life like laundry, meal planning with what we have on hand, and cleaning takes up alot of hours in ones life! Combine that with trying to not completely neglect our children and baby, and Whew!
Yesterday I did manage to clear out 2 more boxes to give, and 3 to add to the keep pile. It is very gratifying to know that the large black beauties and the giveaway stack are filling up quickly with things that have taken up precious real estate in our home for far too long. I am really hoping this move with help me to further understand my distaste for over consumerism. I also got the front yard and drive way sprayed for weeds; we need as much curb appeal as we can get!
Kolton and I spent the evening, after putting kiddo's to bed, going through the files of paperwork. Doesn't that sound like fun? While I thought it may kill me, we got through it and it wasn't really so rough! We actually had a bit of fun looking at old pay stubs, copies of pell grant checks, and acceptance papers from the U. Though the papers do not lie, neither one of us can remember how we made the money last. It was nice to get a little look back before we take a leap forward. Thankfully my neighbors let us borrow their shredder, complete with blade oil for the evening. We have a large box full of shredded papers to use as packing now, and much more space in the filing cabinet.
Today, I need to figure out dinner early and get it ready to go as we are going to try our best to paint in the kitchen today. The ceiling will get a nice coat of bright white, but we haven't figured out yet the best way to handle the walls. I'm wondering if we can take the non paneled walls and make them a bit darker blue? Or what about a soft brown? Before we took off the patio I wouldn't have dreamed of putting a saturated color in there, but now that there is plenty of sunlight maybe the kitchen could be warmed up a bit.
I did find a wonderful recipe last night (early this morning) before heading to bed. Oatmeal Jam Bars. We used huckleberry jam this morning and they turned out great! I have a small box full of old jams my Grandmother sent down. We will definitly be making these a few more times in the next month.

Seattle, Here We Come!

2009-06-25T08:23:00.000-07:00

Its official! Kolton accepted the Amazon offer last night. We are all very excited! It feels like waiting in line to ride a big roller coaster, my stomach is all in butterflies and we are anxiously awaiting to see what thrills will come. Now to pack and get the house ready to sell, all with a 5 month old whom thinks mommies hip is her seat to see the world. This is certainly going to get interesting!

More Painting

2009-06-22T08:07:00.001-07:00

Saturday, my husbands family came down for the afternoon to help me paint the living room. I had taken out one of the bookshelves entirely, and emptied the other pretty well. I had even emptied most of the buffet drawers so that it was possible to move it. Its always surprising what you find behind large pieces of furniture that haven't moved in several years, miscellaneous crayons, train engines, matchbox cars, bouncy balls, I even found MarioKart for the DS! Wahoo!!! With their help we got the walls all painted before we went as a family to the Oquirrh Mountain Temple Open House and dinner at Outback SteakHouse. Once we got home around 11, I was way to stuffed to bother going to bed, so I grabbed the trim paint and went to work again. In retrospect, painting in the middle of the night, in a room that only has one light, when you are tired isn't the best idea. Several spots needed to be touched up the next morning. After making a big Fathers Day breakfast in Bed with the kids, I went to work getting the ceiling. Thank Goodness for handle extensions! Kolton was ever so nice and finished all of the edging on the ceiling, even though it should have been his day to relax. I'm so glad, I'm not sure my shoulders or neck could have handled any more painting above my head! As soon as the plastic gets removed and the furniture is moved back, I'm sure the room will look fabulous! Thanks so much to my wonderfully family!

While the whit e paint and supplies were out, I gave the front door a few coats too. I'm not sure I really like the new look. Its very vanilla. Of course, when you are used to the same front door for 5 years, change takes a bit to get used to, right? What do you think?

A Cycle for Mom?

2009-06-16T20:21:00.000-07:00

How boring am I that I'd rather have this bike than a motorcycle? Last year I started to tell Kolton that I would really like a Tricycle. They have some with a basket between the two wheels that would be perfect for carting cargo around, and I'm sure I would be safer as well. Its got to be harder to wreck on a three wheeled Bicycle right? Remember, I'm a clutz! hehe
But this bicycle by Madsen is new! Do you see the bucket? It has two seat belts on the inside!! Oh that would rock. I wonder if I could pad one side out and have Miss Abi-Dabi sit in there? She's probably not like it much, as she'd be too little to see over the sides. It would be great though to have a choice when it was time to go on a small errand to the Library or Grocery store.
You can enter to win the bike in July by mentioning this contest on any of your social networking sites.

2009-06-16T19:54:00.000-07:00

While my best friend was over today, she made a fantastic statement today. Packing with a nursing baby is not ideal. Thankfully we are only trying to stage the house, so it is like prepacking- just the things that you won't use for a few months that are taking up the valuable real estate that we would like to sell! I've been packing a few boxes here and there as I could find the time, and had successfully packed up most of the children's books and games. Its amazing how simple that sounds, but we have so many of both! Today Jeanine and I packed up extra toys and the majority of the schooling materials to add 7 more boxes to the count! It was amazing how fast things got catagorized, sorted, and carried to their places. I love her.

Abigail is a fantastic baby, but since the stress level is running high in the house, she's been affected and is a bit more momma hungry than usual. She's spending less time on her tummy, which is unfortunate. I think she is so close to crawling in a forward motion! She can push up to her knees now, but hasn't gotten to rocking yet. She can move backwards a bit, and no longer has any issues getting stuck on an arm mid role in either direction. They grow up so fast! I made a new recipe for biter biscuits over the weekend and slow dehydrated half of them over night instead of baking them. I really like the texture for Abigail. It seems to get gummier on the outside, but we have not had pieces seperate yet. They have been helping to entertain her while she is sitting in her stroller or highchair during my work times. She also finds Porter wonderfully entertainning. Such a sweet little man I'm raising!

Also, did you know that if you wash your clothes and there are little sister clothes present in the load, that your clothes do not come clean and need to be rewashed in their own load? This is subject matter that I have not been trained in apparently. Ugh.

I surrender!

2009-06-15T10:52:00.001-07:00

Today we are watching a neighboring families children. So to add to my four, we now have another 6, an almost 3, and a barely 1. Its been an eventful morning, but Abi just couldn't hang any longer! I put her in the swing while I cut up oranges for lunch, and when I came back outside with the plates of oranges, Porter had swung her to sleep! He was quite proud to tell me he even fixed her baby legs for her. While it doesn't look especially comfortable, I still felt bad pulling her out of the swing to wrap her in a blanket.

2009-06-12T22:08:00.001-07:00

I wrapped some soap in a washcloth to give to Brittney for her baby this weekend! Wrapping is one of those 'extra' things in my opinion. You know, the type of things that you do when you have two hands and extra time! This only happened because I had to get out all the wrapping supplies for a wedding gift the same day. hehe Ahh, to have ample time to be creative..... what a great dream....

Just a little motivation

2009-06-09T09:46:00.000-07:00

Its amazing what you can do in just a few minutes when you a.) have a sleeping baby and b.) have the correct supplies in the garage and c.) a bit of motivation. Mine? I really want a new house! So this one needs to sell!
Today after Abigail fell asleep I grabbed a gallon of white paint from the garage and went to the front porch. I painted all of the door trim and also all 4 of the white columns that line the walkway in front of my house. Maybe I can find another 20 minute project for the rest of Abi's nap.... Hm....

Cordinated?

2009-06-05T09:24:00.000-07:00

As many people have pointed out to me, we are behind on our family portraits. Even my own walls are adorned with pictures from 2 years ago. But as every mother knows, there is a large stress that comes with picture day! What in the world are you going to dress everyone in? I have read many articles that suggest avoiding a loud print as it will forever scream from the wall in its loud voice. The same writings also state that polka dots and stripes should never be considered for a family group picture for the same reasons.
Armed with that knowledge, these are the clothes that I've put together for family pictures. All three little girls have princess seaming on their tops. The older two girls shirts are identical prints in different colors, where the baby is wearing a solid color dress cut in the same shape. Kolton and I would both be repeating a child's color but in a darker, muted hue. My shirt also mirrors the princess seaming while being a V neck which is said to be the most flattering neckline for pictures. Then we come to our precious little boy. I had originally gone looking for a green polo so he could be in the same style shirt as dad. The shirt in the picture is all I could find at the first two stores. Do you think he needs a different shirt?

What a week!

2009-06-04T08:38:00.000-07:00

Last Tuesday, after feeding the family Zucchini muffins for breakfast, I decided to mow the back yard before the garbage man came to empty our black beauties. Abigail's morning nap is almost the right length of time for the job as well which works nicely. A little over an hour after I started, I came inside only to hear my phone ringing. Who was calling? My father, was asking if today would be a good day for me to start working on the back patio. Not to make myself out to be lazy, but mowing the back yard is generally all the physical exertion I plan for one day!!! But it was an unplanned day, so it would work out well, and father drove down from Cache Valley to help out.
I have some serious Admiration for my father, let me tell you why. When he got out of the truck, he started carrying all his neat tools to the back yard. He brought three wrecking bars in various lengths and weights, 2 types of power saws, a large and small axe and his nifty 18Volt cordless power screwdriver. I can't quite tell you how much I envy some of those tools! I have a 12V screwdriver, and when you have not been blessed with ample arm strength, those extra 6V are a God send!
Dad had put a lot of thought into the demolition of my failing back patio, not only did he figure out how to deconstruct it from the house, but then he led the work on the demolition endlessly even though I was anxiously waiting for him to want to take a break so I could follow suit without guilt. Even with Dads injury to his shoulder last year that left him with very limited use of his shoulder, he was a pro with the wrecking bars and axe. I tried my best to be helpful, I took out screws, held crowbars where he told me too, carried debris to the garbage cans before they were finally emptied early in the afternoon and (annoyingly, I'm sure) kept asking him if he was sure the roof over where he was standing wasn't going to collapse on him.
We were able to do most of the demolition work the first day, and thankfully I had the good sense to put something in the crockpot while Dad was driving down, so we had a lovely warm meal together as a family and slept like rocks.
Wednesday morning, My dad was out working before I had even rubbed the sleeping bugs out of my eyes. By the time I had made the family breakfast and gotten Kolton off to work, Dad had cleaned up the area and was prepped to start working on the back patio again. We needed to rebuild the roofing overhang as well as install a rain gutter. Amazingly the rebuilding process took just as long as the demolition! Abigail was a champ both days. This wa s one of her naps in her swing while Dad and I were installing the rain gutter. The little girl slept through hammering, sawing, even heavy debris falling to the ground noisily! Bell was also a great little helper measuring all sorts of things, picking up stray screws, climbing ladders to nowhere, and so on. Notice she is barefoot in the picture? She was most of both days. I cannot tell you how many times Father, Khali and I each put shoes on that little girl, but it was obviously not as many times as she took them off! Poor daddy, I remember him telling me to get my shoes on soooo many times when I was little! She did get a little splinter in her toe, but that didn't teach her a thing.

The final outcome of those two days is awesome. I am so thankful for my father's ability to come down and help us out like he did. Kolton and I are now of the opinion that we should have taken off the broken back porch 5 years ago when we first moved in! The big window in the kitchen now filters in natural light making the kitchen much more welcoming. I absolutely love it!

Thursday we had our last clogging practice day and needed to go shopping for two birthdays. Of course Porter got in the car with no shoes other than his clogging shoes, so we was quite noisy as we stopped at Michaels craft on the way home. Atleast I knew where he was in the store at all times. I could hear the Tap Tap Tap, Sliiiiide as he ran and fell wherever he went. Thankfully we got things for both people and could then come home! Friday we had two parties with the latter being a Mom and Daughter night out where we got to watch a Princess movie, do our nails, hair, and eat little sandwiches! It was a welcome break for Abi, Khali and I.
Saturday morning Abigail and I woke up with buggery eyes and stuffy noses. Isabella woke up with 7 bites on her upper back. I'm not sure whether she slept with a spider in her bed, or if she had layed down outside on top of a spider nest the night before? I did know that she has bad reactions so we started on the Benedryl right away with her. Kolton and I had planned another high energy dayas we planned to clean out our Shed in the morning. That involved taking everything out that has been piled in there through the winter, and properly assessing whether it was to keep or to yard sale. I have always been a bit astounded at the Clean Sweep style TV shows where they take the belongings to the yard and spread them out to sort. But it amazed me how much we had put into that little shed! Not too much got thrown in the trash, but it did get reorganized and now fits in there with some extra space to sort to, as we are planning on going through the house room by room doing the same thing.
Thankfully we got that all put away before our friends showed up for 'Uncle' John's Bachelors BBQ and Poker night. I was able to stay and help with the food for our guests before taking the 4 children to the drive in alone. Now that was an interesting experience, but I was proud of myself for being able to handle it.
Sunday was our family recovery day! Man were we tired! Abi and Issy still had runny noses and Isabella's bites were still pretty swollen so we took advantage of the rainy weather and played games inside as a family and watched a movie in blankets on the couch. The whole family was in bed sleeping by 9, including Kolton, Abigail and I.

Jewelry

2009-05-26T10:21:00.001-07:00

Over the holiday weekend, I went to Michaels Craft and bought a jewelry making board. I have wanted one of these for the longest time! I have a good supply of beads and fixings, but never a long enough stretch of time to make an entire project!
I took a group of beads and layed out bracelets for each of the girls on Friday. I continued to work on these throughout the weekend whenever I had a few minutes to spare and they are almost all done! I will take pictures of them on the girls when I finish them. Abigails bracelet is a funny thing. She doesn't have much in the way of wrists, just a nice little fold, so she won't be able to wear her bracelet for long, as it could feasable be rolled off of her hand without much effort. But hey, little Chunks have the right to be adorned too!

2009-05-21T10:12:00.000-07:00

I absolutely LOVE my new hair cut. Yes, I almost had a panic attack when I saw my hair falling to the ground.... 6-8 inches of hair looks like a ton strewn around on the floor! The stylist did do a wonderful job though! I must say, I think this is the best hair cut I've had in years. What makes it the best you ask? I took a shower at night, went to bed with brushed wet hair, woke up in the morning, put 2-3 curls in the front, and TADA! Not quite Wash-and-Go, but pretty darn close! I'm a happy camper. Amazing how great a new style can make you feel. The second best part, it only cost 6.95 =)

Herb garden

2009-05-06T19:24:00.001-07:00

For the past two days, the children and I have been constructing, filling and planting a herb garden! This is right outside of our back door; off of the patio.
I reused the many blocks that were partially lining my patio to make the perimeter. I think it looks much better for this use.
We mixed the soil using equal parts of peat moss, multiple manures and vermiculite as recommended by Mel as the 'perfect soil' for raised beds. The kids really liked that part!
We have planted Rosemary, Thyme, Cilantro, 2 Basils, and 2 Chives along with our Tomato plants and marigolds.
The place where we planted our tomato plants last year did not receive enough sunlight.... and taking into consideration that I might not actually get another gardening space put in this spring for the tomatoes, I thought they could cuddle up with the herbs.
I woke up this morning to Khali telling me that she'd already gone and watered our herb garden. I love my daughter!

Traveling....

2009-04-19T11:08:00.001-07:00

Have you ever gone for a road trip and this is what the front passenger side looked like when you started out of the garage? Can you recognize the tiny square where your feet are supposed to fit? If you can, You are a Mother!
The mothers curse is such a wonderful prophecy, I can't wait to be grandma and commiserate with my lovely daughters when the little children in the backseat say to them "Mom!!! I don't have any room for 'such and such' will you please hold it for me!" After all, I remember saying the same things to my mom.

The Dangers of Streptococcus

2009-04-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

Most people know how to differentiate Strep from a sore throat. Not to mention a higher severity of pain, Strep starts with the immediate onset of immense throat pain. Many other virus's and bacteria's will cause a sore throat, but they usually come on a day or two after sniffles, congestion or coughs.
What many people do not know is that if Strep is left untreated, the bacteria really loves to travel further into your body and attack your heart or kidneys! This is why the treatment of Strep with antibiotics is so important. I learned this the hard way. After having strep for over a week, I started to notice some other more embarrassing symptoms that did not seem quite normal for strep. I then spent 3 hours at the insta-care waiting for a prescription of antibiotics and to learn the above mentioned information. I not only had a Strep throat infection, I now also had Pyelonephritis. Its been a rough two weeks. I can't wait for spring weather and good health to come and stay!

Look! No Hands!

2009-03-25T10:50:00.001-07:00

When you do an search for babywearing you will find a zillion different techniques and about as many products for sale. I have used most kinds and love them all for different reasons at different stages of the babies life. This carry works well with a baby that has good head control.
Here, I am using a sarong I bought used at a thrift shop for 3 or 4 bucks. Since I have a smallish baby, I first fold the material in half lengthwise, then drape the material over one shoulder with the bulk of the sarong behind you. Sit the baby on your hip and bring the material around to the front under her bum, then just tie the ends in a tight knot. Before letting go of your baby, make sure the material forms a pouch under her bum and spread the material up the babies back as needed. I also tug at the material to make sure the knot will not come untied. The greatest aspect of this carrier is how small a sarong folds up. You can easily store it in your purse for on the go errands and shopping and its pretty comfortable for shorter carries as well.

Leftover Roll Dough?

2009-03-25T09:51:00.001-07:00

Last night I attempted to make a new recipe for rolls to go with our soup. The recipe took over an hour to rise the first time, and over two to rise the second! Needless to say, dinner was quite late last night. After dinner I put in the second batch of rolls to bake and threw the rest of the dough in the fridge. Now it also happens that we made homemade fries over the weekend and I have a large pan of oil sitting on the stove. Combine those two and you get? Dough Nuts!

This was such a fast treat for the morning. The biggest key, other than yummy dough, is HOT oil. Make sure the oil temperature is over 375 with your thermometer before dropping in the dough. I did not have a donut cutter, so I used a small juice glass and made large donut-holes instead. Donuts fry up very quickly so don't walk away! I turned the donuts over after a minute, and pulled them out of the oil after two. Let them drain for a minute before topping them with a simple glaze or sugar-cinnamon combo. Simply Delicious! Now i'm only wishing I had saved more dough and made less rolls!

This one? or That one?

2009-03-20T08:28:00.000-07:00

I know these are not the greatest pictures, but....
Which shirt makes a better outfit?

Tonight's Pizza was absolutely Delicious!

2009-03-18T17:31:00.001-07:00

Every other Wednesday when Khali goes to Liberty Girls we stop in at the Magna Reams. They knows how to make pizza crust and their bread sticks are not bad either! You get two large, partially cooked crusts for $3.18! We only eat one pizza for dinner when we make these and there is even an extra piece or two left over! In contrast, we can demolish at least 1.5 pizza's from most of the delivery chains. Together with a side salad and you have a $5.00 dinner. Talk about savings!

Bacon Pizza
Prep Time: 25 minutes Cook Time: 13 minutes

Ingredients:

1 pre-baked crust
1 Tbsp. oil
2 onions, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/4 tsp. paprika
1 Tbsp. flour
1/8 tsp. pepper
1/3 cup sour cream
1/2 teaspoon dried thyme leaves
1/2 lb. bacon, cooked crisp and crumbled
1 cup shredded Cheddar cheese
1 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
Chopped Tomatoes (optional)

Preparation:

Heat oven to 425 degrees.
Heat oil in large skillet and saute onions and garlic until crisp tender, 4-5 minutes. Add paprika and flour and cook and stir for 3 minutes. Add sour cream and thyme and cook until thickened, 1-2 minutes longer. Spread over prebaked crust and top with bacon and cheeses. Bake at 425 degrees for 8-13 minutes until crust is golden brown and cheese is melted. 6 servings

Seeing our Trials as Blessings

2009-03-16T08:24:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I woke up Saturday morning only to find that the kitchen sinks would not drain. I started to try to clean them out first with baking soda and vinegar, then boiling water flushes, and finally resorted to asking my darling for help using plungers. Working on the drains for well over an hour, we had gotten some water to go down the drain, but they were far from clear. I finally caved and called a plumber. Thankfully many plumbers work weekends for the same rates at weekdays, and we had a nice gentleman playing under the sink in the grime by afternoon. Unfortunately, plumbers, are not cheap. For 2 hours of snaking the drains, the drain made a lovely sucking noise as the water quickly drained, and I owed him $150.00. Ouch!
Now here is where a choice comes in. I could either use my allotted bi-monthly budget, or put this bill on a credit card. Trying to be a responsible consumer, I wrote him a check realizing it would cut my grocery funding in half for the next ten days. Yikes!?
After searching around on the web for some frugal meals, and flipping through my home storage cookbook, I went to my fridge and cupboards with a fresh sheet of paper and pen. I made a list of meals that I could make with things that I had on hand, and also a few that I could make with only one or two things from the grocery store. With a bit of planning I was able to make nutritious meals for our family all week long, and amazingly my freezer and cupboards are not empty. This was not the easiest week to cook dinners, yet it was very gratifying. I could have easily made a different choice and put this on a CC to worry about later, however I am now very happy to have gone through this learning experience and to come out triumphant.
We have all been told to not go to the grocery store when you are hungry, and to always make a list, but how about we add one more to this list? Do not go to the grocery store, until you have made your meal plans for the week and gone grocery shopping through your cupboards and freezer.

Look!

2009-03-12T17:03:00.000-07:00

Abby found the toys that turn around the top of her swing today! She was well entertained while I prepped this soup for dinners.

Up-cycled Ribbon Edge Lovey

2009-03-12T09:10:00.001-07:00

Bell and I had fun today up-cycling an old dress of mine into a Ribbon Edged Lovey for Abby! I also had a nice stock pile of ribbons that I bought when making hairbows for the older girls so this project was made completely from things we already had. Bell had a lot of fun helping cut each of the ribbons, and then handing them to me while I was sewing. I roughly followed the instructions found on this blog. I did not applique anything but I did add a thin batting. This does make the lovey less likely to be carried nicely in my purse, but with all hard wood floors, everything is nicer with a little cushion. Now only to wait a few months for her to be interested in it!
This lovey is a bit smaller than I had wanted, some darling little one was helping out a bit too much when I was cutting this material. I plan to next make a quilted top and back it with fleece with no batting. I am going to try 24" with ribbon tags only at the corners... I think it will be a little more useful that way.

Faux Boppy

2009-01-15T22:40:00.000-08:00

Because we chose to not find out the sex of this baby until birth, I had very little in the way of clothing and equipment. After all, if it was a girl, I would want to buy pink frilly things. Where as a boy needs lots of driving equipment printed on his clothes, and sweaters. There are few things cuter than baby boys in sweaters.
While shopping the past week, I looked at the prices of Boppy Pillows. Wowzers! $35 dollars. Their were also no super cute pink patterns, so it was pretty easy to pass up. Who pays that much for a pillow? You can make a pillow right?
A Googling I go.... and end up with this Boppy Sewing Pattern. I used some material I already had on hand to make the pillow form with. I must admit, my boppy is not as pretty as the commercial counterparts.... but I'm rather attached to my Franken-style stitching. Tomorrow I'm going to delve into the fabric stash and see what I can come up with for a cute cover.

Third Body Balm Attempt

2009-01-14T14:27:00.000-08:00

I noticed last night that the lotion that I made up pre-Christmas for Porter and I was about gone. Since his skin has stayed at a small rash instead of full blown red pocks, scratched till bloody, I've considered it a success. I also used the balm on my poor tummy in the last month of carrying Abigail and was surprised how supple my skin felt. My hope is that my skin will repair better because of it...... We all need to hang onto those little hopes, they get us through the days.
So, I took my first attempt - a Massage Bar that ended up having too much beeswax in it. Once you rubbed really hard with it, your skin felt nice, but it was just too hard to be practical - and combined that with a few oils that I have since acquired in my stash. I added in Rape Seed Oil, Castor Oil, Aloe Vera Gel, Flax Seed Oil, and Evening Primrose Oil. Once all that was melted in the double boiler, I poured in a bit of witch hazel and took my hand held mixer to it. I had not used the blender on my previous batch of lotion but I think its a big key to making the lotion 'lighter'. Considering this was just a throw together batch, I am very pleased with the results. If you're interested in making lotions or balms, this is the recipe I (almost) followed the first batch. I didn't use any water, just used more witch hazel. I also used a few different oils to make up the 1/2 cup of almond oil. If you are adventurous, you'll definetily want to read up on the quality of oils so you can create you own concoction.

Family Reunion

2009-01-06T20:04:00.000-08:00

The quiet that has seemed so odd for the past week has now been broke. Grammy and Papa brought the kiddo's back home tonight. One by one they ran in the door. Khali was the first in and couldn't wait to see Abby. She delivered a kiss and a giggle before running up to see her room. Porter was through the front door next. He cooed at his little sister and had to be told it was ok if he wanted to kiss her. He's such a sweetie, he whispered to her since she was asleep. Isabella was the last through the door, demanding to see the baby. She was very excited to see that now we are both moms. She has a baby doll (from Christmas) and I now have a baby Abby.
Grammy and Papa stayed for dinner and a short visit before heading back out to brave the winter weather.
As happy as it made me to see each of my children, and have them back home; I couldn't help but to let out a big ole sigh once we had the kiddo's in bed. The few hours of all 6 of our family home was a nice little insight to how life will be for a while. Noisy, Chaotic, Stressful but full of fun I'm sure. How all of this would work without such a wonderful husband and father, I haven't a clue! Thank you darling. :)

And the baby is......

2009-01-05T18:09:00.000-08:00

A Girl!

Miss Abigail Dawn was brought into this world January 4th, 2009 at 11:09 P.M. She was born at Great Expectation Birth Care with Mom, Dad, and Rebecca Williams; our wonderful midwife. She weighs in at 8 pounds, and measured 20 inches in length.