Quick art for the walls

I took these pictures while we were at the inlaws over Christmas and frankly they were a little blurry, but I loved the expressions of how much they enjoy each other, so I turned them to sepia and printed them in 5x7. I then spraypainted white some oak frames I was a little tired of without sanding to give them a shabby chic appearance.  I then mounted them on the wall going up the stairs :)

Quest for the best bubble blower

My kids love bubbles. I'm lazy at blowing bubbles, so I'm in the market for bubble guns.  So far I've not been impressed with the Sizzlin' Cool Exstream Bubble gun in the $5 price range.

I loved the Super Miracle Bubble Dip Fans, for less than $5, but it's a little too complicated for the 1 year old to blow her own bubbles I do however recommend this bubble maker that we got at Target (don't pay $40 on Amazon though, I think it's more like $12-$15 at Target) after a dismal showing from the Little Tikes Octopus which was way too slow to blow bubbles.  blue & yellow one is like a hurricane of bubbles. 

We headed to Toys R Us to get some new subjects for our testing and found some that on day one are winners (time will tell if they keep their good review). I upped our maximum to $10.

My personal favorite is probably the Sizzlin' Cool Ultra Spin Bubbles made by Toys R Us. It's not on the website that I can see, but it's in the video below. No batteries. Just attach the bottle of bubbles, squeeze it to get some in the fill chamber and pull back and let loose. It says to gently pull back, but it works better to get it ripping pretty quickly. Makes a ton of bubbles and did I mention no batteries?

Henri's favorite is the Super Miracle Bubbles Hover Bubbles which uses 2 AA batteries (not included) and has an on/off switch for the fan (so V would probably leave it running if she used it) and makes nice, big bubbles and lots of them. It takes a minute or two to get primed, so don't get discouraged. It's worth the wait. 

My wait and see pick is the Super Miracle Bubbles Ever Bubble Blaster  I say wait and see because it is designed very closely to the Exstream which I had mixed results, like the reviewers. Some work fine, others come out of the package and pretty much break immediately. This one V managed to make work while pointing it straight up in the air...right at her face which probably wouldn't normally work, but did, so it's stayin in the running until it stops working. 

Valerie's pick is the No Spill Little Kids Bubble Blastin' Plane  I did have already one instance of pushing the button and nothing happening, but touched the screw for the batteries and it started up, so maybe I overtightened the compartment. Anyways, not a lot of bubbles, but super easy to use, it fills up rather than the bubble container attaching to it like the other 3, the filling party is very small however, so it will need to be filled a lot, good for a 1 year old. Henri's less impressed.

Here's video so you can see them in action.

My daughter, the drama queen

As a child, I was known far and wide (well, throughout our extended family anyways) for my legendary temper tantrums.  Well, my spawn has outdone me. This was 2 minutes into a 5 minute tantrum, here's minute 3 & 4 and after minute 5 she was fine and happy again.  Prepare to be amazed....

click here to see.....

Desk #1

I would have taken before pictures of this desk, but I had about 3 hours or so to completely redo it, so use your imagination. I have a solid wood desk probably 30-50 years old. I've had it about 10 years and it was left in the basement of my former house which I bought when the house was 50 years old from it's only owner.  Anyways. It was a nice, solid desk with a great design. 3 huge drawers, then you could swing out an extension and legs to make it into a desk.  Awesome, right? Well, there are some supports on the bottom of the desk extension and a few months ago the wood split where it's screwed in.  I screwed in a few more screws but knew something would need to be done.  Remember when I installed that cabinet door to make an arts & crafts space in my kitchen?  Well, while I was there I grabbed a $5 big cabinet door that looked wide enough for fixing my desk.  I finally got around to testing it.

First, I removed the faulty wood (I'm hanging on to it because I see more repairs to this piece of furnature in my future).  I cut the cabinet door down to size with a saw (as luck would have it, the width was about perfect with the desk and the height it needed to be trimmed was just under the hole that was left from the cabinet handle pull).  I also had to (after much sadness that I no longer have my router and really didn't see having time to borrow one and get it right) cut off the edge of the remaining desk (it had been routed so that it had a fully routed edge all the way around and then the underside of the push out part was routed to fit-excellent design, but I've got 3 kids and about 3 hours for this project).  I then reused the hardware to put the hinges and the legs on to my cabinet door. My pine, varnished cabinet door. Not at all like the dark, peeling drawers I was attaching to.  I lightly (and quickly) sanded with some 60 grit sandpaper and my sander to rough it up and got out the extra 1/2 a quart of brown paint from my office (that's where this goes, it may as well match).  It successfully covered the fact that they are completely different wood! 

Today I took some fancy, heavy weight wrapping paper I picked up at Tuesday Morning (for those out of the area, imagine a Ross or TJ Maxx, but more household goods than clothing)  for just such a project. It was $2.00 for the roll and heavier than regular wrapping paper and, more importantly was larger than my 12x12 scrap booking paper, these drawers are approx 15x15 so 12x12 paper wasn't going to cut it.  I cut the paper approx to size (this project used up almost the entire roll) then laid it in the drawer and trimmed with an exacto knife. If I had had a straight line grid on the back of my wrapping paper I probably would have skipped this step, but I can't cut straight to save my life.  I then dabbed some rubber cement ($3 from Hobby Lobby, had it on hand) around the edges so it won't slide around (I hope).  I then drilled new holes in the drawer fronts and attached cute $1 drawer pulls I got at Michael's awhile back.  If I had more time, I would have filled in the holes from the old pulls (they were bent and grungy metal, trust me, this is a big improvement) and painted over them. I'll probably do that when I need to do the next repair on this furniture, but again, 3 kids, 3 hours....

I love how it turned out even with the quick job I did on it. It's by no means professional, but it looks nice and is functional again!

Folded down...

With the table part up (the new/reused cabinet door)

The new drawer pulls, top and bottom say "pull" middle says "open"

Inside of the drawers

at home in my office, the same color as the foundation/trim

Videos

We got cookies the kids had decorated, then they sang some songs for us. It was hilarious. One kid during one of the first songs came to his/her mom to hug them then all the kids decided they should do the same at random times and were giggling the entiere time....

Playing in the mud...

Chasing Chickens at Grandma's house

Learning to jump, she loves these shoes because they are noisy..

the grand finale! What Valerie & Paul's new quality time entails.....

Yummm... sweet potatoes....

It seems if I'm not busy cleaning, I'm busy cooking or crafting! I seem to get into a groove with one and slack off on the others. Right now I'm cooking. I saw a box of sweet potatoes at Costco and decided to challenge myself.

Last night was this great maple syrup & pecans recipe off pinterest (I mean, seriously, is there any better way to eat sweet potatoes?) tonight we made a hashbrown recipe using them that had red pepper and bacon. Called for Canadian bacon, I used some super-awesome bacon I got on $5 Friday at Safeway last week and left out the chile flakes so the kids would at least try it.  It was so good, Paul even asked for seconds.

I also made a freezer biscuit recipe my mom found when she was cleaning out her recipe drawer so I have no idea where it came from, but it works, the entire family loved them. I'm going to include them with a ham & bean soup dinner swap.  You pop them in the oven straight from the freezer and they were really fast and easy to make. I did roll them too thin, next time, I'll make sure I have a ruler to make sure they are thick enough, but they were still yummy.  The heavy cream is pretty expensive, though I think I spent almost $7 on cream. I probably would wait for a dairy sale next time...

6 cups all-purpose flour, plus some for rolling out
2 Tbsp sugar
2 Tbsp baking powder
1 1/2 tsp salt
4 1/2 cups heavy cream (you could just use 1 quart, I had to add a lot of flour as they were pretty sticky)

1. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper OR use Pampered Chef stoneware like I did a skip the parchment paper.  Set aside.  Whisk the dry ingredients in a large bowl, stir in the cream wiht a wood spoon until dough forms, about 30 seconds. Turn dough out onto floured counter and gather into a ball, knead briefly until smooth, about 60 seconds, adding flour if necessary.
2. Pat dough to 3/4 inch thick. Cut out biscuits using a 2 1/2 inch round biscuit cutter (or go old-school like my mom used to and use a drinking glass-I actually used a scallopped circle cutter and it looked nice.  Set them out on to the baking sheets with plastic wrap around them adn freeze until frozen solid about 6 hours (probably fine with 4 hours)Transfer to a Ziplock (or wrap really well in the plastic wrap you used to cover the pans) and freeze for up to 1 month. DO NOT THAW BEFORE BAKING.
3. Bake from frozen at 450 degrees until puffed and golden brown-20 to 25 minutes. Serve hot with butter and jam or honey.

Changing the way I make bread

So I've been trying multi-grain  bread and white bread and it was just too dense for my family's tastes and I had to be home most of the time for the kneading, rising, etc. So I pulled out my breadmaker that had been gathering dust in the bottom of the pantry (ok, not really, I've been making Hawaiian sweet rolls in it (recipe at the bottom of this post)).  And started having it do the dough tough work. It takes 1.5 hours and I use only enough ingredients to make one loaf (many recipes call for enough ingredients to make two) then I bake it in the oven in my regular Pampered Chef stone pan so it looks like a loaf of bread, though I'm looking into Pullman pans which make bread look more like the kind you get from the store.

Anyways, my bread is coming out much fluffier and I don't have to watch it as closely. I can throw the ingredients into the maker and get everyone ready for the day and off to school, come home and pop it in the oven for 35-45 minutes depending on the type of bread.

Here's that recipe for Hawaiian sweet bread I got from a friend of a friend on Facebook-I use it to make rolls for dinner:

1 cup water; 1/2 cup sweet condensed milk (1/2 of a regular sized can); 1 tsp salt; 1 Tbsp butter, 3 1/3 cups BREAD flour (you could use all-purpose, it just will be less fluffy); 2 tsp yeast. Put all the ingredients in the breadmaker and set for dough cycle. Original directions suggest spearating into 3 sections, rolling each out like a snake, mesh ends together and braid, place in baking dish. Rise 25-30 minutes, brush melted butter on top after rising Bake at 250 for 30-45 minute until top is golden brown.  I roll them into 2 inch balls and put them in a greased 9x13 pan evenly spaced, then raise and brush with butter and bake about 30 minutes.