craftevangelist

Beef & Barley Soup

2011-05-25T22:51:00.000-06:00

A friend asked me for this recipe and I thought I had put it on the blog, but I searched and could only find the intention of putting it on the blog. So, here it is. Super easy. Super yummy. I think I now have it memorized.

Beef & Barley Soup
1 lb lean or extra lean ground beef
1 finely chopped onion
3 cups boiling water
2 Beef Oxo packets (I use 2 tsp Better than Bouillon)
28 oz can diced tomatoes
2 diced potatoes
2 shredded carrots
1/2 cup pearl barley
salt & pepper

Brown ground beef. Drain excess fat. Add onion and saute 3-4 minutes until onion is translucent. Season with a little salt & pepper. Add everything else. Bring to a boil, then simmer 20-30 minutes until potatoes are tender and barley is cooked.

Serve with crusty rolls.

Why I Choose Artfire

2011-05-19T13:53:00.000-06:00

There are a few places to sell your crafty wares on the Internet, but I chose Artfire to set up my shop. Here's why:

No listing fees. No closing fees. No extra fees. I can list as much as I want for a low monthly fee. If I want to sell lots, Artfire is the place to do it! There are lots of perks in going Pro, too. I love having access to all the extra features.
You can list for free! You can set up a basic studio and list your items for free! It's a great way to feel out the market if you're just getting started.
Artfire has the best SEO (Search Engine Optimization), which means that when people go searching for "Reusable Facial Pads," my humble studio shows up on the front page. Tell me, how often do you click through to the second page of search engine results? This is super important. I get most of my business and traffic through people searching and finding my studio on Artfire.
My buyers don't need to set up an Artfire profile to purchase from me. It's just one more step removed, another possible barrier.
Facebook kiosk! My friends and fans can shop right from Facebook! No need to leave Facebook, you can do it all from there!

You can set up your own studio on Artfire and get access to all these great features, too. Just click this to go sign up. Bonus: if you sign up for a Pro account through my link, I get a free month & you get a free month (your third month is free).

Skechers Shape Ups Giveaway

2011-05-18T22:23:00.001-06:00

Hey, check out My Organized Chaos for a Skechers Shape Ups Giveaway!

Yay, free stuff!

Baking with Bokeh + a little rant

2011-05-11T09:30:00.001-06:00

You know, all you need to do to make your baking look yummier is grab some natural light and a low F-stop and you get that nice blur in the background that means you can't tell when it was I last gave my counter tops a good scrub (usually daily, but you never know). These banana oatmeal muffins were pretty good, except the big ones stuck to the cupcake paper like nobody's business.

(Here begins the rant; if you're not one for rants, just skip this part, enjoy the picture. We ate muffins; have a nice day.)

I found the recipe on Allrecipes.com. By itself it would be a fine muffin recipe. I probably should have followed the recipe as written just to have actually made it. But I read the reviews. This is my biggest beef with Allrecipes.com and it really has little to do with the site itself, but much more to do with the users of the site and how they incorrectly use the star system and the reviews. Seriously, no matter how many stars the recipe has, you still need to read through at least 10 reviews to figure out whether you should even bother making the recipe or not and what changes you should make to the recipe should you decide to make it. I mean, it's one thing to make the recipe once, decide it needed a little more *whatever* and write a review saying as much and still rate it well. It's another thing to change 3-5 things about the recipe, declare it fabulous and give it 5 stars. It's like going to Home Depot, going through the self checkout, going home and doing the online survey and saying you got fabulous service at the checkout. "I rock at scanning things and swiping my debit card." I have occasionally seen comments by other users who get upset with previous reviewers who rate a recipe poorly based on the changes they made to the recipe. That makes sense, but it is equally unhelpful to have to read through countless reviews in order to determine what recipe is 4.5 stars. I don't know why someone just doesn't write up their own recipe with the changes they made and then everyone can rate that recipe with 5 stars as written.

This recipe for Banana Oat Muffins has the same issue, of course. These muffins were pretty good made with the changes that most people suggested. They weren't complicated changes, apple sauce for oil, brown sugar for white, add some chocolate chips, whatever. No big deal. I would probably make them again, but follow the recipe as written. 1/3 cup of oil isn't that bad for a batch of muffins and maybe then they wouldn't stick to the cupcake paper so badly.

So that's my rant. I don't know why I don't just use some other site, other than it's just as unpredictable if it's a good recipe or not. I implore you, Allrecipes users, write your own recipe or rate the recipe as written.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-05-04T00:00:00.001-06:00

Helping with the Easter Baking

Home Improvements

2011-05-03T08:30:00.006-06:00

So, in between Halloween and Christmas, a whole bunch of home renos/updates happened, so there are not a lot of other crafty creations in between as a result. So "we" (not really me: my job was taking care of my kids and our handy friend's kids and feeding people) ripped out our kitchen ceiling. I wasn't aware how much of the ceiling was getting ripped out, or I would have done some more covering up of stuff. We thought there was drywall on the ceiling (there was), but there was also lath & plaster, so they had to rip all that down, too.

It was a huge mess, as you can see, but the men had it mostly cleaned up the same night, which was pretty impressive. They bagged it up in heavy duty garbage bags and the garbage men picked it up! We thought we might have to borrow a truck and haul it down to the dump, but it totally work out!

The ceiling looked like this. The lath & plaster took up so much space that there was 2-3 inches of extra ceiling height that we got out of the reno.

They needed to get at the plumbing of the bathroom above the kitchen to take care of a leak. We couldn't exactly solve the problem entirely, but the new non-slumpy, bubbly ceiling is fantastic!

Our super handy friend was super awesome and worked soooo hard for us over the next couple of weeks, taping and mudding and making the ceiling all nice and beautiful. Then his wife came and helped me paint it. Not only that, she helped me paint the sitting room, the kitchen walls & then the front entrance, hallways, and stairwell. I guess I haven't taken any photos of the kitchen painted...

These are the colours we chose for the kitchen (middle brown on left), sitting room (red) and house colour (grey triangle in the middle).

Painting the sitting room. I think this is after the second coat. We did three total. It was done in time for Christmas, hosting the in-laws!

Our handy friend also installed this sweet mantle that my husband scored at an awesome deal on Kijiji. It really put the finishing touch on the room.

The mudroom.

The mudroom again. We're looking at the closet door, which has since been painted and had hardware put on properly (can you tell what's wrong?) and the kids' sock sorter. I used to have this little organizing rack in our bedroom because there was no room for my night table beside our bed, so I could keep my books and whatnot in it.

Looking at the mudroom from the hallway. There are little organizational containers in the cubbies of that bench, one for each member of the family. We still need to put up new trim throughout the house, which is a pretty big project that we'll just have to plug away at bit by bit.

My friend is going to help me again next week paint the rest of the kitchen (we left one wall because it's getting painted a different colour) and the tv room & dining room at the back of the house. After that is done, there will be just the bathrooms and the sewing room to paint!

Christmas Nightgown

2011-05-02T08:30:00.002-06:00

So, I guess I made it back to Christmas now.

There is a tradition in my husband's family of opening a gift on Christmas eve. The gift is always pajamas. It is a sensible gift: that way children look cute in pictures on Christmas morning and they can always use new pajamas. I like to think I'm pretty easy going about Christmas traditions, so we have done this since we have been married and the kids have received new pajamas on Christmas eve their whole lives.

Zoe loves dresses and nightgowns though she has very few nightgowns, so this year I wanted to make a very traditional style nightgown that she would love. She was pretty happy when she opened it on Christmas eve:

She still loves it as much as the day she received it. She loves dresses. She would wear dresses everyday if you let her (which I would since she's in kindergarten and it's not that much longer that she's going to want to wear dresses everyday).

Opening her stocking Christmas morning, wearing her very pink and frilly nightgown.

The two oldest children in their Christmas pajamas.

Wordless Wednesday

2011-04-27T00:00:00.002-06:00

Easter bow ties

More Cakes

2011-04-23T13:45:00.000-06:00

So there were some more birthdays and other cake-worthy events in the last 10 months, too. I guess I didn't make cakes for all of them, but I made some cakes. I may have said this before, but I make cakes for the kids of our good friends and co-church planters. This Star Wars Lego cake was requested for the January birthday. (Star Wars Lego cake? Nothin' like a simple cake, eh? Boys....)

The techniques used here: buttercream transfer (YouTube how to) and painting on buttercream and of course, basic piping. I printed out a coloring page that the birthday boy and my husband found on the internet. I filled in only the grey shape of the Imperial Walker for the buttercream transfer. Then I painted on the buttercream transfer using a mixture of real vanilla & black icing paste for the detail.

For the sides, I just piped flat monochromatic lego-sized stripes and piped dots on the top of them for the Lego look. I saw this idea here. From what I can remember, it was a hit. I was in my first couple weeks of our diet & exercise program, so I passed on the cake and ate a protein bar instead. I was told it tasted good.

The sister of a friend of mine commissioned me to make this monkey cake for her son's first birthday. It turned out okay. She looked through my Facebook cakes album and found the picture of Zoe's 2nd birthday cake, which I didn't think was one of my better cakes, but oh well, that's what she picked.

I'm always so nervous doing commissioned cakes. People tell me my cakes look professional, but I'm not so sure. I can tell the difference when I look through professional cake albums vs. my own. I'm not down in the dumps about this or searching for compliments, I'm just telling it like it is. I make nice cakes. Some are better than others. Most are better than these and I never make spelling mistakes, though occasionally I make a blunder and end up with a cake that unintentionally looks like boobs.

(It's supposed to be a purse, but it is kinda pathetic, even if it didn't look like boobs.)

Then there was a wedding. I wasn't really supposed to make a cake for this wedding. I'd thought of offering in advance, but the wedding date was only a few weeks after my due date, so I wasn't sure I would be feeling up to making a cake. But then we were visiting with the couple and while I know they're not big cake people (she's celiac & he doesn't really really care for cake), one of the reasons they opted for no cake was because it was expensive for something they didn't really care for. But everyone's grandma wants them to have a cake, if only for the opportunity to take pictures of them cutting it.

So, this was my first attempt at a gluten-free cake. I used this recipe and the bride told me it was delicious. I'll have to try it sometime. I didn't have leftover cake for me to try, so I was really hoping it was yummy.

For the roses, I made them out of fondant using this technique found on YouTube. Seriously people, I don't know how to do anything. I just Google it and figure it out. The beauty of the Internet is that everyone wants to be an expert so there are free instructions out there for just about everything. LOVE! I was pretty happy with this cake, though the seams were kind of obvious, but not if you take pictures from the right side!

Now, the final cake I haven't shared yet. Simon turned three the day after I began my 10 month blog hiatus. This was his cake. He loves basketball.

I was pretty pleased with the basketball colour I achieved for the fondant. Not always easy to get exactly what you're looking for. I used a bowl to make the shape and then used a lot of icing to make it more ball shaped and less bowl shaped underneath the fondant. It's round enough.

If you had a birthday in the last 10 months, Happy Birthday. If you have one coming up in the next 10 months and need a cake, let me know and we'll work something out.

Crafty Birthday

2011-04-22T09:31:00.002-06:00

In March, we had a birthday. Two actually. Mine and my daughter's. Mine totally gets overshadowed by the child's. I am totally okay with this. I made cupcakes to send to school on her actual birthday. They were strawberry cupcakes made with this Martha Stewart recipe. Honestly, I've been a bit underwhelmed by Martha's cake recipes. I made a perfect white cake (or something like that) from her site, too. And it was kind of dry. I really like that the ingredients called for in both the cake and the icing were simple, real ingredients, so that's nice. No food coloring and no artificial flavours.

While I have a this great cupcake icing kit from Bake it Pretty, with a number of large, fancy tips, the recipe didn't make enough icing for me to frost them all cupcake-shop fancy. I still need to make some cupcakes with that kit. Personally, I prefer a lot less frosting on my cupcakes and I like the homemade look of just frosting them with a spatula and dipping them in sprinkles.

Last year, I made a 3 shirt for my son's birthday. My husband insisted I put the large 3 on the back of the shirt, since jerseys don't have the numbers on the front. Against my better judgment ("It's not a jersey..."), I complied and my son has insisted on wearing it backward from day one. Funny.

I made a six shirt for Zoe. Pink pink pink. She loves pink. That six is sparkly fabric paint. I used the freezer paper stencil technique to make the six. So easy peasy. I also recently discovered in a different t-shirt embellishment project that using freezer paper as a stabilizer for the jersey knit fabric is super helpful. I could draw on the paper side and then cut the paper and the fabric at the same time instead of fussing with slippery fabric.

So, I sent my birthday girl to her favorite place in the world (school) with 30 cupcakes to share with her classmates and teachers with strict instructions not to return with any leftover cupcakes (remember how I lost 25 lbs this year?). She wasn't feeling great. I knew she wasn't feeling great, but she hadn't vomited and she wanted to go to school. On her birthday. She gets a birthday crown. She hadn't talked about anything else since January. This kid rarely gets sick. And when she does, she can time it to Thursdays (no school) and weekends. She just got her days off (her birthday was on a Wednesday).
By 10 o'clock I'd received a phone call from the school saying she was laying in the infirmary, having thrown up. Of course. So, I picked her up and she spent the rest of the morning laying on the couch at our friend's place while I took her brother to the paediatrician.

She spent the rest of the day at home, napping a little, but mostly being okay and feeling a little sad. We made pizza for supper.

The teacher saved the cupcakes until Friday (3 day old cupcakes...mmmm) and she got to celebrate with her class then.

Then we had her home party on Sunday. It was her request. And it worked out rather well because she invited her grandparents and as it turned out, my mom could make it on Sunday. She requested a Barbie cake. I looked for a picture of barbie that was mostly face, so she could have nice big eyes so she wouldn't look scary and ugly in buttercream, but alas, there were no such pictures to be found in Internet land. When Zoe announced Barbie was beautiful, that's when I knew to stop fussing with her eyes and just let it go. My cake decorating mantra: "You are working in a medium that is meant to be eaten."

She is kind of ugly though.

Hats

2011-04-20T10:13:00.001-06:00

I've been working on some hats for the shop. I love these cute crocheted hats with flowers or other bold designs on them. I am having a hard time photographing in the new house, in the still winter-like light, so I'm not happy enough with the photographs to put these up in the shop yet. It's a lot of work to properly photograph your work to make it look professional! If you're interested in any of these, they are available, just let me know and we can talk.

This one is suuuuuuuper soft. It's like baby angora or something, such a lovely yarn. If you have trouble with sensitivities to wool, try washing it in a lanolin wash (Eucalan) and you just may find that you can wear it. This hat is newborn size. I need to measure it before I list it.

This one is acrylic and a little different with the circles instead of flowers. It has a brim and it looks better on someone than it does just sitting there by itself. Still needs to be measured for size.

This one fits a baby with a head about the size of my baby. But his head is in the 98th percentile or something like that (Benign familial macrosephaly is what the doctor called it. :)), so it could fit your small headed two year old niece for all I know.

The 90 Minute Shirt ... Lesson

2011-04-19T12:43:00.000-06:00

Last week on Facebook, I posted that the baby doesn't have much in the way of t-shirts for the summer. Since the budget is a little tight right now, I thought of this tutorial from Dana of MADE and figured since I have saved a few old t-shirts, I should be able to make some of these shirts for my big-headed little guy for next to nothing.

My first attempt:

To be fair, I didn't have an envelope shirt I was happy about cutting up, so I tried to make the pattern without cutting one up. My failure to follow instructions properly should in no way reflect upon Dana's fabulous tutorial(s). I definitely think this is a pattern failure and if I head back to the drawing board on the pattern, I should be able to fix it up for next time.

So, someone had posted a quote on Facebook this morning saying something about a mistake is only a mistake if you don't learn anything from it, otherwise it's a lesson. So, this is my lesson. Follow the instructions! (sigh) When will I learn this? On the plus side, I didn't spend anything on fabric. I cut up an old t-shirt of Dan's and an old tank top of mine (for the ribbing). The tank top ribbing was a little loosey-goosey so that probably didn't help the situation, but I don't think having a tighter rib would have fixed the pattern issue. I will try one of these again, but I'll have to have a pattern re-do.

I Made This: Spring Bunny

2011-04-18T09:46:00.000-06:00

So, I'm working backwards here. I just finished this painfully cute amigurumi bunny that was featured in CRAFT Magazine a few weeks ago. As I mentioned, we welcomed a new addition to our family last fall. He is also painfully cute.

This will be his first Easter, so I made him this.

I used some leftover, fabulously soft yarn from a shrug I made myself last year (was it just last year? I can't remember... I don't think I blogged about it since I couldn't bear to expose my back fat for a photo of the shrug), so this little guy is super soft on top of being unbearably cute. It's a pretty easy pattern to follow. I really appreciated the part where they show you how to make the nose and where to position the eyes/nose; it makes all the difference in the cuteness factor.

So... yeah... how ya doin?

2011-04-17T16:45:00.000-06:00

Well, yes, ok. I don't usually do apology posts for long absences from my blog because this is my life and my blog and I can do what I want, but I mean, we're going on 10 months here, so perhaps a little apology is in order. Sorry. Anyway, it's been a busy year. We sold our condo, bought a house, moved, put a new roof on the house, painted the bedrooms in the house, took a vacation to Tennessee in August (eight months pregnant: what were we thinking?... it was great), had a baby, replaced the ceiling in the kitchen, painted some more rooms, hosted the in-laws for Christmas, painted some more, and lost 25 lbs along with doing the regular life stuff. In there I managed to do some sewing and some other crafts, which I'll share here. If you don't already, follow me on Facebook, I am marginally better at posting there.

Me in my new jeans (after losing about 20 lbs here)

I'm coming back here, though, with all the stuff I've been working on, and with some projects I need to work on and maybe y'all can help me with that.

How to Chop a Pepper

2010-06-19T22:47:00.000-06:00

My kids love fresh red, yellow and orange peppers. Peppers and other chopped up veggies keep them happy while I prepare the rest of a meal. I learned how to core them like this on the internet somewhere, but now I can't find it, so I made up my own step by step how to. This is how I cut up my peppers now.

Cut off the bottom bit of the pepper.

Cut off the top of the pepper. Set the top and bottom aside for later.

Get in the way of your light while you try to take a picture with one hand while holding a knife. Cut the pepper beside one of the connector white bits.

Do that again, so you get a piece like this and a nice clear look at the insides of your pepper.

Cut away the connector stuff from the side of the pepper on one of the sides.

Cut beside the next connector piece to free another piece of pepper like this.

Keep doing that until you have freed all the outside pepper pieces from the core and connectors. Now you can slice or dice the lovely pieces because they're almost flat and rectangular. Easy peasy.

Now turn to your top & bottom pieces.

Cut in between all the bumps on the top of the pepper.

When they're all cut, loosen them from the stem piece with your hands.

Until you've taken them all off the stem piece.

Even if you're planning to just serve these as crudite, these little pieces of pepper, while not conventional, are bite-sized and perfect for a veggie tray.

I usually chop the bottom piece into wedges, too.

When you're done, this is all that's left for the trash. Seeds in tact, not all over your cutting board or knife, and not a bit of delicious pepper wasted!

Here are all my peppers chopped up and ready for creole sauce.

2010-06-15T16:48:00.000-06:00

Remember when I posted this nifty little idea? Well, little did I know that rip-stop nylon is $16 a metre at Fabricland and when I was there last time it was one of the few fabrics that was not included in their sale at the time. So, no ripstop nylon for us. But today I was reading someone's blog and they mentioned oil cloth and I thought I remembered seeing something about making your own oil cloth. So, Google to the rescue and I found this handy little tutorial by Burda Style. It's a little different from the one I remember reading earlier. This is not an authentic oil cloth. I think authentic oil cloth is actually oiled many times over. But I think this could be a much cheaper option to buying rip stop nylon to line the other side of a pretty fabric bowl cover.

On the table tonight: another flip

2010-06-11T15:24:00.000-06:00

So, on Sunday, husband arranged to have some people over for dinner. I think somewhere between his brain and my brain, it wasn't fully communicated that he meant to barbeque some hamburgers for said company. I usually like entertaining and having people over is no big deal and even better when it motivates me to get everything tidied up for company. But I didn't shop for hamburgers; I was just going to stick with my meal plan and make a little bit more. I was pretty sure I had enough chicken in the freezer to feed a few extra people.

Tonight was supposed to be grilled chicken with my mom's Rice Pilaf (boy, my mom's recipes sure are being featured this month!). Since next Saturday is supposed to be hamburgers and hot dogs, we will flip the meals around, since I didn't buy anything perishable especially for this meal. I will have to send husband for some patties since I'm not sure I have enough ground beef in the freezer to make enough burgers for everyone, and if I do, I didn't take it out to thaw it in time. Frozen patties are not so bad, though I don't usually like to have so much filler in my burgers.

I am experimenting with baked potatoes in the crockpot. I got the idea from the Saving Dinner newsletter and googled it to find "A Year of Slow Cooking" come to my rescue again with Crock Pot Baked Potatoes (it's also where I learned to make my own yogurt). I hope they work out because I didn't get them started until after 1:00 and it's supposed to be 6 hours on high or 10 hours on low. Our company is expected around 6:00 pm. We might have to finish them off on the BBQ if they're not finished in time. They were super easy to prepare and if they work out, we'll totally be doing baked potatoes once a week throughout the summer. If they don't, we'll be headed down to the mini-mart for some potato chips tonight.

Meal Plan: How We've Been Doing

2010-06-10T19:05:00.000-06:00

As you can tell, this month has been all about the meal plan. Since I'm doing it anyway, I figure maybe you all can benefit from all my hard work and planning and get some inspiration.

June 2010

Here's how things have actually shaken down in the last week... Wednesday went as planned... yay successful day 1! But by Thursday, as you know, things got a little off course. I had forgotten about the family BBQ planned at my daughters school and even went as far as preparing the scallopped potatoes during quiet time so everything was all ready for dinner. When I remembered the BBQ, I figured I could leave everything in the fridge and pull it out for dinner the next night.

On Friday night, things did not go quite as smoothly, since we were at a birthday party that began at 3:30. I would have liked to put the meatloaf and scallopped potatoes in the oven at 4:00 for a 5:15 or so dinner. We were not home. Thankfully my wonderful husband thought to put them in when he got home (yay for blogging about dinner plans!) and we were able to eat by 6:30 instead of pulling out some kind of back up plan.

We also switched Saturday & Sunday's dinners around because we didn't have briquettes for our barbeque to grill the pork chops. We had yummy homemade pizza on Saturday, which I ended up taking down to the park where we listened to a friend's band play at a local festival. Husband bought briquettes on Sunday afternoon and we had delicious BBQ pork chops for dinner with a salad.

Beef Barley Soup went ahead as planned on Monday, but somehow I had forgotten to buy barley on shopping day (it was on my list; I checked), so husband picked some up along with some fresh Safeway crusty rolls on his way home for work. It added an extra 20 minutes to finishing the dish once he got home, but soups are so forgiving (it also gave me time to warm up the rolls in the oven... mmmmm....). It's a delicious soup recipe, make with ground beef instead of a more expensive cut of beef, which makes it a pretty cheap meal and very easy. I'll have to post the recipe before the month is out.

I opted to switch Tuesday night's "Snacky Supper" with next Thursday's "Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup" since it has been chilly all week and I like to take advantage of the cooler days to eat warm food when I know it will be warming up later on in the month and they'll be plenty of opportunities to eat Snacky Supper.

Last night and tonight went according to plan, as well. So, all in all, we've done pretty well at sticking to our meal plan. This week is a pretty good example of how I am loosey goosey with meal planning. Some might call it flexible, relaxed. That sounds so much better. Once you have a plan and shop for it for the week, you can bump the meals around pretty easily if it ends up not working out so well for that particular day. It's so nice to have a plan and not be fretting about what to make for dinner at 4:00.

Happy meal planning!

Tonight's Supper: Turkey Mac & Cheese Casserole

2010-06-09T16:50:00.000-06:00

This is another one of my mom's recipes. Apparently it was my older sister's first solid food, which I love because for one, it's a casserole which automatically means it contains a many ingredients and these days with all the concern over allergies and everything, there's no way most moms would give this as their baby's first solid food. And it's full of potential allergens: fish, wheat, milk, cheese, and whatever's in condensed mushroom soup. By the way, my sister is not allergic to any of these things (or much else, for that matter).

Here is my mom's recipe. I made the following changes: I used butter for margarine, canned turkey (please don't do this: use some cooked diced chicken or something better; I was being cheap and lazy. Canned turkey is gross. If you don't believe me, buy some and try it) instead of canned tuna (husband won't eat tuna), brown rice rotini pasta for macaroni, and some Alymer's Accents tomatoes with spicy red peppers instead of regular tomatoes. I also threw some cottage cheese in there to use up the rest of it. I also omitted the salt since the turkey was pretty salty (eeewww...)

My kids don't really like this, but I will make a salad or some crudite and serve it with some rolls. I like to give them things they don't like so they get exposed to new foods and who knows? They might be hungry enough to try it one day and maybe they'll like it. I probably shouldn't try very hard with this recipe since it isn't the healthiest I've got.

What's for Dinner tonight: Meatloaf and Scallopped Potatoes

2010-06-03T13:10:00.000-06:00

Oops! What's for Dinner TOMORROW Night

ETA: I just realized we have a dinner at Z's school tonight! I guess in all my planning I still failed to put this event on the meal planning calendar. Thankfully this meal is a great make ahead meal. Everything is all ready to go for tomorrow night. What a great way to start the weekend!

Here starts the original post:
It wasn't until I was in college that I realized that Ham and Scallopped Potatoes is a much more common combination of dishes than Meatloaf with Scallopped Potatoes. But this is what we ate growing up. What potato dish do people eat with meatloaf? Mashed potatoes? Meh. And I really like scallopped potatoes. And meatloaf. Ham, not so much.

This is a popular meal around here. Z will eat the potatoes, S will eat the meatloaf and husband and I love them both. Husband is not big into leftovers, which is really a shame. It's not that he won't eat them if I prepare them for a meal, but he won't usually think to eat them for lunches or meals on his own. That's the whole point, in my mind. However, this is one of the meals he will heat up on his own.

What we're eating tonight has actually been frozen. I made the recipe a couple of weeks ago, but the entire recipe is too big for the casserole dishes I have and for our family, so splitting it up is perfect. So today I just have to prepare the potatoes and pop them in the oven.

Enjoy! (We will!)

Today's Recipe: Chicken Creole

2010-06-02T15:57:00.000-06:00

This is a dish that my mom either got the recipe from one of the cooks at the restaurant we used to work at or she made up inspired by the dish at the restaurant we used to work at. At the restaurant, it was served with either shrimp or chicken over pasta or rice with a cornmeal muffin (that last bit was important because that was the part I, as a server, had to do; and since there were a couple different things that could have been served with the dishes, you had to know which dish got what). Since my family doesn't really eat shrimp (sad, I know), we go for chicken and usually pasta.

So this is scanned directly from the cookbook of my mom's recipes that she made for me and my sisters. It is awesome. There is nothing like having all the recipes you grew up with at your finger tips. Mom, if you have a problem with me scanning your recipes in, let me know, ok? I will probably make the recipe almost exactly as printed, except I'll use butter or olive oil instead of margarine because that's just how I roll.

A Month of Dinners

2010-06-01T17:37:00.000-06:00

Today is 15% off day at my grocery store. It's the first Tuesday of every month. A couple months ago I started planning our whole month of suppers at the beginning of the month. Then I would stock up on all the pantry-type and freezer-type items I was planning to use for the month on 15% off Tuesday, save some money, save time doing weekly meal plans and shopping lists and have a whole list of ideas all at my finger tips. I don't adhere to my meal plans as strictly as I should, but since ideas are half (or more) of the battle, having a plan is super helpful.

Since the next 15% off Tuesday isn't for 5 weeks, I planned 5 weeks of meals, for which I'm pretty impressed with myself. Originally I was using an idea I learned from Passionate Homemaking, assigning categories to each day of the week and slotting 4 different meals into those categories and rotating them through. Our lives just aren't that regular, though. It's a good idea and I think I may modify it still (with my own categories), but I didn't stick with it for this plan.

That image up there is my actual meal plan (you can click on it to see a larger image). The smudges are just my edits getting rid of some of our family's personal information: plans for the day that might affect the amount of prep time I have or if we're planning to have people over. I may post some of the recipes (or links to them) throughout the month, if anyone is interested. But you're welcome to use the ideas to inspire your own meal plans, if anything looks interesting.

As soon as my husband gets home, I'll be headed out the grocery store. I hope it's not too busy!

Make Your Own Popsicles

2010-05-31T14:14:00.000-06:00

I mentioned in passing that we make our own popsicles around here. If we have leftover smoothie, I pour the extra into popsicle molds and freeze them for popsicles. Works great. I gave you the recipe for Orange Yogurt Creamsicles. They're delicious! Here's a slight variation on the Orange Yogurt Creamsicles: Pineapple Orange Creamsicles!

1 can pineapple (tidbits, chunks, slices: it doesn't matter!)
1 orange
2 icecream scoops of frozen orange juice concentrate
2 cups plain yogurt (I use homemade)

Put it all in a blender and blend until smooth. Freeze in popsicle molds (I bought some great ones at Ikea this spring). I didn't use all of the juice from the canned pineapple (mostly because I like to drain it and have a little drink), but I did use some to help sweeten it up. If you have a sweeter tooth than me, you might like to add some honey or something. Oh, and on using the frozen orange juice concentrate: I just wrap the can with plastic wrap and put an elastic band around the top to keep it in place and put it back in the freezer until the next time I want to make smoothies or popsicles.
These are delicious! I'm a big fan!

I Won!

2010-05-30T19:30:00.000-06:00

I feel like I never win give-aways. Part of the reason for that is that I don't enter very many. Sometimes I decide the entering process is too arduous to bother with. Sometimes I just decide I don't really want what's being given away. And when I do enter, it's usually for something so good and cool and well-advertised that everyone enters (ie. Pioneer Woman giveaways). Still, entering online give-aways always have better odds than the lottery (even Pioneer Woman's giveaways) and they're free! So, when I see that I've not won another give-away (even one I didn't enter) I feel like I never win.

So, here is my first win! I entered a giveaway on Monster Bites for one of my friend Naomi's Owly Baird stuffed owls. So I get to pick one of these cute owls! Because, as it turns out, Naomi is actually my friend in real life, I won't be picking my Owly Baird until either the baby is born or we decide to tell people the gender of our baby. I don't want to choose a gender-neutral owl just to keep our little secret (not telling people is a LOT harder than I thought it would be!).

Naomi's shop, Butterfly Garage isn't just full of cute stuffed owls. She also makes adorable upcycled wool bears like this guy:

But I think my favorite things she makes are Judies Booties. How sweet are these?

Naomi actually gave me a sneak peek into some new projects she has on the go. They're so great. You'll have to check back at her shop in a week or so to see what she's got new in there!

Fundamentals of Cuteness 1010 by WooWork Crochet

2010-05-30T12:05:00.000-06:00

I can't rememeber if Dude Craft crochets or not, but if he doesn't, this is the only guy I "know" (and that in the Internet way of knowing) who crochets. And he's come up with this adorable study in cuteness, pertaining to the placement & size of eyes & mouth on amigurumi. You need to click through the link to see what he makes with all his samples!