It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas--Updated!

Various forms of this sign now decorate half the doors in our home. The Christmas secrets are in full swing. Bean is just so excited that she can't wait until we have the actual supplies to make gifts, or have time to go shopping, so she is creating her own gifts for all of us and wrapping them and hiding them all over the place. I have a feeling we'll be finding Christmas gifts for months to come.

This is one of the few crafts I can post right now--baby gift for a friend who I don't think ever has the time to get on here, especially now that she has a new baby girl in the house. I love how easy these skirts are and how fast they come together--wish I could talk Bean into one for Christmas, but after declaring how much she loved this one, she refuses to let me make one in her size. I never know what is going on in that girl's head.

Updated with directions for the skirt:

For a 3-6 month size, you need 19 inch elastic piece (I used 1", but would probably try 1/2", I just didn't have any), 1 piece of fabric, 9" by 40-45", one piece of ribbon same length as your fabric, plus more ribbon for the bow at the waist if you want. You can adjust these sizes for a bigger skirt--I measured a skirt I had in the size I wanted to get the waist size and length.

Fold one long side of the fabric down a little more than the width of the elastic (I did about 1 1/4") and sew, making the waistband. If you wanted a nicer edge, you could fold it under slightly before you fold for the waistband, but I skipped this. Thread the elastic through, pinning one end once its all the way in and then gathering the material until you can get the other end. Sew ends and then put right sides together and sew the side seam of the skirt. Then hem the skirt--this one I did fold up twice, and ironed for each fold so I'd have a nice hem.

For the ribbon, first make sure you seal the ends so they don't fray--I just use a lighter. I guess you could add the ribbon on before you sew the side seam and then the ends wouldn't be exposed. Just thought of that now. Either way, pin the ribbon around the bottom and topstitch all the way around on both the top and bottom of the ribbon. For the bow at the waist, I just handstitched it on, mostly at the knot, but with a few stitches on the top of each loop as well to keep it from flopping down.

Post pictures and let me know if you make one!

Day Six--The Ravioli

One last day of cooking. I have made homemade pasta before, and really wanted to try making ravioli because my only other semi-attempt (I think I had an extra sheet rolled out and didn't feel like cutting it, so just dabbed on some ricotta and tried to close them up as ravioli) at this failed miserably with lots of ricotta floating in the water by the end of cooking. So this time around, we invited our good friends over, who just happened to go on a cooking tour in Italy last month, to teach us the authentic way. And the three hour process was a lot of fun. Sandra wondered aloud at one point why it was taking so long when they were able to make several sheets in 20 mintues in Italy, but then remember the kid to adult ration--they had 0:4, we had 4:2, so its just good that we managed to do this.

The kids did have a blast dropping the filling on. And I had fun kneading the dough and rolling it out--got my arm workout for the day (which is good since I pretty much don't do arm workout anymore. I've been so lazy about the weights.) And the sauce I made, which I will post a recipe for later, was great. But alas, the ravioli were a little on the thick side and I undercooked them and pretty much everyone in the house decided that the frozen ones from Costco are better. I'm sure if I'd just cooked them right it would have been a lot better.

And so this ended the week. I love that I learned to cook a few new things, and that tortillas no longer intimidate me (the ravioli still do a little). And I love that we've been eating better and spending more time thinking about our food than actually eating it. That's probably a healthy balance. But I also love that I can pull out a quick meal--there is a place for the fast food. Although this has made me want to do better about stocking our freezer with homecooked meals that I can pull out when things get crazy. I think that's my project for next week--just in time for those busy holiday times when I don't have time for dinner prep, but can pop a soup or casserole onto the stove or oven.

And now I need to go find the Halloween stash.

Day Five--Bagel Day!

I loved bagel day. I like exploring different types of breads. I've made all types of french bread, whole grain breads, rolls, irish soda bread, indian naan, english muffins, but I'd never tried bagels.

The day actually didn't start off all that great and I was tired, frustrated and just kind of sad, but hoping that I could find something to get me out of my funk today and a little kitchen therapy did the trick. First, it was pretty amusing watching the kids make this batch here:

I had my friend, Flori's, little girl over here, too, so they each got to make 2 bagels--notice Bugaboo's "fish" bagel in the bottom right. I'm not even sure what he did to it, but I was impressed that he made the hole himself and he insisted on keeping the tail.

And then Flori got back so I chatted with Flori, and we boiled and baked bagels, and all my stress just disappeared. There is something very soothing about spending time in the kitchen with someone, cooking or baking together. At least, spending time in the kitchen with people you work well with. I guess cooking together can be tricky--I know Daddy-o and I took a few months to figure out that we needed a chef and a sous-chef for each meal in order to avoid issues.

Then came the best part when we sat down to a lunch of warm bagels with cream cheese (no, I didn't make it from scratch--cheese just didn't happen this week), hot pepper jelly and savory pumpkin spread, all courtesy of Flori who is queen of the homemade. I really do love eating good food.

The rest of the day was pretty easy again--french toast for breakfast, which I know doesn't sound like an "easy" breakfast, but we have it pretty much every week, so it feels like a quick meal, and then leftovers for dinner--we had chicken, rice, and beans to make burritos with the fresh batch of tortillas I'd made today, so it was a tasty, and quick, dinner. I think that's the trick to the homemade thing--make extra of everything so you can use it in a couple different meals.

Oh, and I tried the yogurt we made a couple days ago. Its okay, but very runny. I don't know if that's how homemade yogurt always is, but Bean wasn't too excited about it, and didn't like the flavor of the lime and agave sweetener. I personally thought it was tasted great, but I've never liked the drinkable yogurt. I actually prefer the texture of greek yogurt which is really thick, so I don't know that yogurt is something we'll do again. And cost-wise, it really doesn't matter--its about the same either way.

Almost done! I think tomorrow is going to be the last day--then we'll eat sugar cereals, McDonald's, and the leftover halloween candy on Saturday! Just kidding. That actually doesn't even sound good to me right now. Or ever, really. Except the candy. I do love candy.

Day Four

Today's adventure was noodles for our chicken noodle soup. This actually is somewhat normal fare around here--I probably make homemade noodles about half the time for our soup. My mom used to do the same and whenever we'd get home from school and smell the stock simmering on the stove, our first question would be, "What type of noodles tonight?" I was always excited when she said homemade. They're pretty easy, too. Just 2 cups of flour, 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon of salt and a little water. I used the Kitchenaid to knead the dough for a few minutes. I've done if from scratch, but my arms were tired. Probably from all the tortilla rolling. And then the trick for cutting them is to roll out 1/4 of the dough in a rectangle, then flour it, roll it up, and then cut thin slices off the roll. The most difficult part is unrolling the little slices, which tend to stick a little.

The finished soup was very tasty, and very easy since I had the chicken and stock already cooked from Monday's dinner so all I had to do was add sliced carrots and some onion and garlic (I was out of celery or would have added that). When its all finished, I throw in some frozen peas. They help cool it down for those of us that are a little impatient when it comes to dinner time.

We also made a couple types of muffins this morning. I realized a few days ago that I was hosting our weekly playgroup today and needed to have a snack, so I pulled out a couple muffin recipes that we like. Both call for granulated sugar, so I decided to make the pumpkin ones with Blue Agave Sweetner (from Trader Joes) and see how it worked, but make the blueberry ones according to the Cook's Illustrated recipe (I know that you may not be able to see the recipe without a membership--I was going to post the recipe but for some reason blogger isn't wanting to cut and paste, and I didn't feel like typing it up, so this is my plug for you to get a membership--its a great resource and they usually have a deal for 1/2 price for the year if you wait/look around) because I know we like them that way and I just didn't want to take a chance on nothing being edible. The pumpkin muffins had a different texture than normal so I think I'll stick to normal sugar for them in the future. I had already reduced both the sugar and the oil from the original recipe, so they are a little better for you than normal.

All the baked goods did mean that I ate a lot more today. I'd been feeling really good by the end of the day because I haven't been snacking as much since it's a little harder to come up with snack foods, and I also think that by spending so much time in the kitchen cooking, I feel done with the kitchen and food when I'm finished. I don't keep sneaking back in all afternoon. So instead of being completey stuffed how I often am by dinner time, I have been appropriately hungry for that last meal of the day, and then again first thing when I wake up. It's felt healthy. A nice benefit from really trying to think about my food a little more. I just need to make sure I don't bake with sugar too often.

Pumpkin Muffins

2 cups all purpose flour

1.25 cups whole wheat flour (you can just use all white flour if you want)

2 tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. ground nutmeg

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1.5 cups granulated sugar

3/4 cups brown sugar

Mix all dry ingredients.

2 cups pumpkin puree

2/3 cups oil

1/3 cup applesauce

2/3 cup water

4 eggs

Add and beat until well combined.

Fill three 3x7 inch greased loaf pans. Bake at 350 degrees for about one hour.

Lesson for the day: People think you are a little crazy when you tell them you made your own butter (even though that is by far the easiest thing I've done this week). And my kitchen lighting is terrible. I knew that, but all these food pictures now that its very dark by dinner time are just reminding me.

Day Three

More tortillas--this time we tried flour and even though they were a little trickier to roll out (they kept sticking until I started flouring both sides once or twice during the process), they cooked up so fast and were still good several hours later. None lasted longer than 8 hours, so I can't vouch for the freshness past that point, but it seems like this is something I could make a few days worth at a time.

I used this recipe, which sounded great because it only had a few ingredients, and not a lot of baking powder. I'm assuming that people must have different preferences for their tortillas and that's why they make some of the types that you can buy, but we're just not fans of the big puffy ones that are usually sold at the grocery stores. I like them thin, like the ones we'd eat at a good burrito shop. And these did turn out pretty good.

Breakfast was eggs and toast. I bought our first free-range eggs. And these were truly free-range. The woman I bought them from said she thinks she should call them yard chickens because they just wander around the yard and eat what they find. After reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, where they talk about all the "free-range" chickens that never leave the barn because they don't know that they can walk out the tiny door on either end, I wasn't too excited about paying 3x as much for eggs that aren't any different than what we get from Costco. But these were big, with very dark, firm yolks that stood tall when I cracked them into the bowl, and while the flavor difference wasn't huge, I think they were a little better. Daddy-o grew up eating these types of eggs and said they actually used to like when his mom would buy the milder eggs from the store. Guess when you have your own chickens, you take it all for granted.

For dinner, I cooked up the cranberry beans I'd bought at the Bradford Store--I'd never heard of these, and from what I've learned, they are even better fresh, but they apparently use these, or something very similar, in Italy. After gathering ideas from several recipes, I decided to cook them, and then saute an onion and some shredded cabbage and parsley and add the beans to that mix. It was pretty tasty with rice--the beans are creamier than pinto, but very mild flavored so even the kids would eat them (minus the onions and cabbage).

And the lesson for today--I use a lot of little random things that are processed--like my cooking spray. I went to spray a pan today and suddenly realized I shouldn't be using right now. There are just so many things we take for granted!

Day Two

(Sorry for the not so attractive picture--I meant to take one before we started eating it, but didn't quite make it and was very limited in the angles I could then shoot from. Not to mention the lighting in our kitchen is terrible. On the home improvement list.)

We love roasted chicken. Everyone eats it, which is a big deal for any meal, and I love the utility. One nights chicken and root veggies turns into chicken soup later in the week (just simmer the carcass after you clean the meat off in water with the trimmings from carrots, onions, and celery for a couple hours to make stock), and if I can buy large enough chickens, we usually have enough meat left for another meal as well--stir fry, enchiladas, pasta salad, sandwiches, or whatever casserole you use chicken in.

For roasting, I usually brine mine first--just soak it in a bowl of salt water for several hours/overnight in the fridge. Makes it juicy and delicious. And then I don't have to actually do much else to it. We like a few cloves of garlic tucked under the skin on top of the breast (which does take away from the attractiveness of the final product, but tastes way too good to skip), and I like rosemary sprigs also tucked in there, but Daddy-o seems to have a digestive issue with rosemary, so I leave it out now.

The rest of our food today was pretty simple--oatmeal and more cider for breakfast, leftover tacos and mexican rice for lunch, and popcorn and fruit for snacks. I did make bread --mostly followed my recipe here with a couple changes. I added about 1 cup of cooked oatmeal, no oat bran, and substituted honey for the sugar. Next time I think I'd cut the honey in half. I like the way it tastes, but the kids weren't huge fans. Or maybe it was the honey--we got some local honey awhile back and just opened it--its REALLY sweet. I guess whatever flowers we have around here for the bees have sweeter nectar than the ones they use for commercial honey. I'm not even sure how commercial honey works--do they get honey from bees all over and mix it so the flavor is pretty consistant from batch to batch?

So what are we learning? Homemade means lots of dishes. And I'm tired of being in the kitchen by the time I do all the cooking. Oh, and there's the slightly stressful moment when you start to feel hungry and think, "What can I make to eat now?!" I probably should have spent more time last week making up some snacks for us--like granola, which I haven't gotten to yet, or crackers, or something. At least popcorn is fast.

Day One

Menu:

Breakfast: Pancakes with homemade butter and jam, apple cider (not homemade, but locally made and unpastuerized)

Lunch: Fresh tortillas, grapefruit, yogurt

Dinner: Fish tacos, bean tacos for the kids, mexican rice, guacamole and salsa and chips

I didn't get around to all the prep work I was going to do on Saturday, so today needed some give and take--I haven't made yogurt yet, and since we had some store-bought left, I figured people might as well eat it before it goes bad, and after making the tortillas for lunch and for our tacos, I decided that using some premade chips, which only have 3 ingredients in them, was okay. We'd invited friends over for dinner and I wanted dinner to be nice.

I also realized that there are quite a few things we use that I just have no interest in making--mayonaise and beer, to name a couple--but beer-battered fish tacos are just too good to tamper with, so we went ahead and cheated.

But the kids and I did make corn tortillas today and it was insanely easy. 2 cups of masa (corn flour) to 1 1/4 cups of water (and then add by tablespoon as needed--I needed a couple more Tbsps.) and a pinch of salt. Then you just make balls out of it, press in between 2 peices of plastic (I used one pastry mat and one gallon size freezer ziploc--this keeps the dough from sticking to the rolling pin) to roll out and cook on a hot griddle, about 1 minute per side. They were so good hot off the griddle--just like from the tortilla ladies in Old Town San Diego. They do dry out easily though, so the ones for dinner weren't near as good. And even though it was a simple enough process, it was messy with the kids and took about 1.5 hours to make 2 dozen or so--I doubt we'll be doing this on a daily basis, but it was fun to try out.

Coming up tomorrow: roasted chicken, which will then be used to make chicken stock for Wednesdays soup, and some yogurt making.

Swimming in Leaves

Loving the Leaves

Don't be fooled by that look--she came back for more a few minutes later.

Processed vs. Pure

I've been planning our menu for next week and as I started coming up with the things I want to make from scratch, like salsa and bread and tortillas, and looked a little more at the ingredients I wanted to use, I realized that I'm not going to make it through a week of eating totally unprocessed foods. We can't even get raw milk in this state (but if I want to drive about 3.5 hours into SC, there is apparently some available.) And I've realized that as healthy as the many foods are, pretty much everything in the store has been processed in one way or another. Our beans have been dried, tomatoes canned, herbs cut and dried and ground, oats rolled. . . its all been changed in some way or another. Here's a hard core look at an unprocessed diet. That's just not what I wanted to get out of this.

Our goal is to just eat foods that we can recognize the ingredients and know where they came from (and know its not a lab somewhere). So since tomatoes aren't really in season right now, we'll make our salsa from canned tomatoes and call it good (and it will taste way better than any fresh tomatoes I could buy right now). And the rolled oats--I think that's still a very healthy breakfast, even if they were touched by a machine. I think we'll even go ahead and use granulated sugar where needed, although I do have molasses, local honey, and agave syrup to try where I can. Its more about homemade and starting out with the purest ingredients I can. And just having the experience of making our meals, rather than dumping them out of a box or bag. I do a lot of this already, but I want a week where I can see what it would be like without those added conveniences, and food additives.

So our in our modified challenge, we'll still be using dried foods and a few canned goods, drinking our milk (hey, at least its organic!). And we'll probably be cheating a bit in other areas as well. But coming up in new cooking experiences--bagels, ravioli, yogurt, granola and tortillas, all of which I've wanted to try for awhile now. And can I say how much I love the internet--having all these recipes right at my finger tips is awesome.

Silhouettes

I've been wanting to make these of the kids for a few months now. My parents had a set done at Disneyland when my brother and I were little and I love how I can recognize myself in that almost 30 year old silhouette. So I finally got around to this and made this set for my Mom for her birthday last week. I love how they turned out so I will still have to make a set for us here at the house.

I started with a picture of each kid's profile--it helps to take them against a contrasting background, or in our case, in a dimly lit hallway with the flash. Then I resized them so their faces filled the frame and printed out the size of photo I needed for the frame I bought. After that, it's just a matter of cutting out the head, trying to include some of the hair shape and other small details (if your kids have long eyelashes, it looks awesome to include those--mine don't, or they weren't at the right angle when I took the photo.) At this point, I have seen lots of different instructions--you can paint over the photo, or if you use Photoshop, you can actually create the silhouette before you print so you can just cut out the photo. I didn't feel like painting and because I didn't have any black cardstock, I traced the profile onto stiff craft felt and cut out the silhouette. I wasn't sure how it would turn out, but I actually really like the texture that this added to the final product and the stiff felt was really easy to cut. I don't think normal felt would work as well.

Chain of Thanksgiving

We started a new activity for November--each night, we each come up with one thing we are thankful for from that day and write it on a strip of this fall colored paper to make our Family Thanksgiving Chain. I read about this idea in a magazine somewhere (I've been flipping through too many magazines lately) and thought it would be a fun way to make Thanksgiving stand out a little better as a holiday, since my kids were already starting the "As soon as Halloween's over, is it Christmas?" questions. And it is fun to see what they are thankful for--Bugaboo's first two nights were "being able to see stuff." We've forgotten a couple of nights already, but I do think it will help us be a little more grateful for the many blessings we enjoy.

Things have been pretty busy this week, and so I'm pushing back the food challenge for another week. I want time to really prepare and come up with some fun recipes. Speaking of which, those of you who offered recipes (Molly, Soybeanlover, anyone else), I would love to have them. If you have links, just leave them in the comment section so anyone else who's interested can try it out as well. I'm planning to try making butter, some type of soft cheese (I'm hoping I can make something that we could use for pizza), yogurt, tortillas, granola, and then various breads, of course. I'm going to try grinding my own corn as well for some cornbread. But I think we'll be drinking milk (maybe raw--I'll see what I find) and using some cheddar cheese--we live on that stuff and I can't imagine going a whole week without quesadillas. I could do it, but I'm not sure what I'd feed the kids for lunch. Actually, Bugaboo's addicted to sunflower seed butter roll-ups--I'm not sure if I can make my own? I guess it's just ground sunflower seeds--need to look into that this next week.

So the new start date is next Sunday, Nov. 15. It will be a good warm up for all of the Thanksgiving cooking. I'll post recipes as I try them, and about our trip to the local farm store. We'll see what type of natural goodies they have.

Time for Change

We've had a couple of conversations lately about how our lives are going pretty well these days (I know, I know, knock on wood. . . we shouldn't ever say it outloud.) We still have more tantrums and fighting than I'd like, and the volume around our home is set a little too high, but for the most part, we're all happy and healthy and things are as smooth as they can be with a couple of rugrats. And when we were looking back at this last year, we realized that it was one of those with nothing really big to report on. . . no moves, no job changes, no school completions (well, preschool), no additions to the family, no earth-shattering news.

So we decided to beat Fate to the punch and make a little addition to our family:

Meet Molly: (I know some of you were waiting for the ultrasound picture--gotcha!)

We'd talked about getting a dog, but the time has never been right. But a couple weeks ago, we got an email from someone at church who had just learned that their 8-year-old daughter was allergic to their dog, so we figured why not. She's 3 years, housebroken and trained, used to kids, and after being abused by her first owners, has been rehabilitated for the last 2 years by this loving family. I don't think we could get a better dog for our family right now.

The best parts of having a dog:

~Bean got so excited when we told her we were keeping Molly that she choked up and exclaimed, "I'm so happy I'm crying!"
~I'm going for a lot of walks!

~The food under the table has been disappearing before I get around to sweeping.

~She is seriously the sweetest dog.

The worst:

~Walks in the dark when its cold out.

~The food dissappearing from the kids' hands.

~The stench after she's rolled in some dog's poop. Seriously hadn't missed that smell these last 10 years.

Fire Truck Cake

This cake was a lot of fun to make. Not having to make fondant in several different colors really helped cut down on the stress, and time, and other than the fact that my piping skills are still a little shaky (literally), I really like how this turned out.

I found several different examples online that I took ideas from. The only thing I decided to wimp out on was raising up the cake so it really looked like it was sitting on the wheels. I just didn't have time for that, so I took the easy way out and just stuck them on.

The halloween candy was very useful for this--dots for the lights, mini M&M's for the controls. I had to buy the rest because we actually mostly got chocolate this year, and I still needed Mike and Ike's for the tail lights and licorice for the hoses and ladder. And cookies for the tires. I loved the idea of "gluing" several cookie pieces together with black frosting so the whole stack looked like a real tire with treads.

And the best part was when Bugaboo walked in and started grinning and jumping up and down. It's nice when my finished product actually matches what he had in mind.

Guess Who's 3!

We had a great day celebrating the 3 years of Bugaboo. He insisted that he didn't want a party, but picked going to Chuck E. Cheese in the morning, so I talked him into inviting a couple of our friends to meet up with us. No singing, food, or presents, just games and playing with friends.

The four of them had a blast.

Then, at Bugaboo's request, we did have our friends' over for dinner. And his dinner cracked me up--he doesn't really like pizza, but whenever we do order pizza, we get cheese bread him and that was what he picked for dinner. Cheese bread, avocado, yellow bell pepper, and Pirate's Booty. The rest of us had pizza and salad to go with the avocado.And here are the kids' trying to dismantle the door with the new tool kit they brought for Bugaboo while Bean took notes on the whole event. These 4 kids are quite the team when they get together. A very LOUD team, but they have so much fun.And now this cute little guy is three. He's actually seemed older than two for quite awhile, and its hard to remember our life without him--we feel like he's been in our family forever.

He's a non-stop talker, who can get very focused on whatever has his attention at the moment. He has one of the best laughs I've ever heard, and begs us to tickle him sometimes until he's gasping for air. He has very strong opinions and isn't afraid to tell us what he thinks. He doesn't like my hair in a ponytail or braid and will pester me until I take it out and then he giggles in relief because I look "normal" again. Any food that looks questionable gets a loud, "Bleh!" He wants to pick out his own clothes and can dress himself completely, although it may take an hour because he gets sidetracked along the way. He also wants to take care of his own bathroom needs, but we're still insisting on helping in that area, although he often locks us out. He loves to ask questions and loves anything that proves how big he's getting.

Thanks to everyone who helped make his day great. He loved all the gifts that were sent and has been carting various new toys around with him all day, while dressed in his pj's or cowboy outfit. I'll send pictures!

Halloween

Our two little trick-or-treaters.

I made the fairy princess skirt by tying 6" x 24" strips of tulle in 4 colors around a loop of elastic. Pretty simple and turned out a lot better than the tutu I made for her 4 years ago which is still too big. The floral head wreath thingy (what are those called?) is just silk flowers and ribbons glued onto a wire. And we cheated and bought the wings. I'd actually been kind of excited to try making them, but then these were at the dollar store, and since you can't make anything for a dollar, I decided to just save the money and time.

Buggy's costume was even cheaper because we happened to find the firefighter raincoat this summer and he had the boots already, so all we had to do was buy the $1 hat. And he made such a cute fire fighter, especially by the end of the night when he had turned fire fighter pin-up. He got hot so he took off his shirt and was running around with his coat open, showing off his chest.

We started off the afternoon at our church party before visiting our neighbors for candy. They had a few games, a potluck dinner, and then trunk-or-treating--where we all opened up our trunks and handed out candy. Bugaboo figured out the fastest way to get that donut in his mouth.

I'm glad Halloween is over, although we still have more candy than I know what to do with. It just seems like such a strange holiday with no real purpose that I'd ever support otherwise (begging, eating tons of candy). One of the hypocracies came out when we were trick-or-treating and we stopped at the house on the corner where a man lives who I've waved at, but never actually spoken to. I'd been reminding the kids to say "thank you" and Bean had to be reminded at that house so I brought it up again as we walked away and she explained, "I don't want to talk to strangers." So apparently we can take candy from them, but not say thank you.

Until next year. . .