Knitting Zeal

Happy Mother's Day!

We had a fun and busy weekend that culminated in enjoying a cup of decaf from my new Keurig coffee brewer!  

The monkey boy picked out a pretty bouquet of flowers for me at our local flower shop, along with a get well balloon, since I've been fighting a wicked cold for the past few days.  He also presented me with his gift that he made in preschool.  It was a plaster mold of his hand with a sweet poem on the back.  It was really cute and he was very excited to tell me all about it since he had been keeping it a secret for the past two weeks.  

For breakfast this morning I made a new baked oatmeal recipe I found on Pinterest.  The recipe called for strawberries, a banana and chocolate chips in the oatmeal.  I also added some blueberries.  It was good, but took much longer to cook than the recipe suggested.  I'm not sure if I added more milk than called for, or what, and I ended up serving it in a bowl instead of cutting into pieces.  It was really tasty!  

Strawberry, banana, chocolate baked oatmeal! Yum!

We had family over for the afternoon and the kiddo had the chance to play with some of his cousins.  The weather was beautiful and they had a great time outside in the playhouse and yard.  The beautiful thing of the day....my house stayed NEAT!  All the time spent putting away and organizing the toys paid off.  I'm giving it until Tuesday, when we have a play date scheduled, until it's trashed.

Cousins!

Hope you had a nice day celebrating motherhood!

Bunny popcorn!

I like to give my nieces and nephews (also referred to as "the cousins") a little Easter treat each year.  Instead of buying some trinkets fromt he $1 Target bins or candy, I decided to make Bunny Popcorn, a recipe I found on Pinterest.  

Ingredients: popcorn, m&ms, white chocolate, sprinkles

Fresh popped corn

I discovered a super-easy way to pop corn on the stove, absent of the chemicals found in microwaved popcorn.  I can't remember where I read how to do it, but it definitely works great for me.  I use a large 4 quart stainless steel stock pot (360 Cookware) and about three tablespoons of oil.  I heat the oil in the pot with three kernals of corn, covered, until those three kernals pop.  Then I add a half cup of popping corn kernals and periodically shake the pot back and forth to prevent scorching.  I also vent the lid slightly to let off steam.  Within minutes, I have a full pot of popcorn with very few unpopped kernals.  

For this batch of bunny popcorn, I popped a total of one cup of popcorn, in two batches, and used everything pictured above: one bag of spring colored m&ms, one bag of premium white chocolate chips, rainbow sprinkles and a bit of salt. After the popcorn was popped and lightly salted, I melted the white chips in the microwave.  It is very easy to ruin white chocolate in the microwave, so watch it and check it often.  I think I might have microwaved it for about a minute and a half, or less, stirring it often. Once melted I drizzled it onto the popcorn and m&ms and stirred it up to cover the popcorn.  I added some rainbow sprinkles as an extra touch of color, as I had run out of spring colored sprinkles.  I bagged up the bunny popcorn in quart sized zipper bags and ended up with about 8 bags 3/4 full.  It was really tasty!  

Bunny Popcorn! Yummy!

Rainbows for St. Patrick

It's a week late, but then I just realized that the cold/sinus infection I've been nursing is going on week four, so I clearly have lost all track of time.  

I was not up to making a rainbow cake or cookies to celebrate, as in years past.  But, there is always time for jello, which is ridiculously easy! The kiddo even helped a bit with the mixing. We made a rainbow out of jello using six different colors/flavors.  Normally, I limit his consumption of food dyes, but make an exception from time to time.  Silly me thought he would find the rainbow jello delightful!  Nope!  He said there were too many colors and he didn't like it.  He's not a jello kid.  Oh well, it still looked pretty and I enjoyed some of it while feeling blah.

Menu plan Monday for the week of February 13, 2012

I kept to last week's menu plan with the exception to Thursday, as the kiddo and I spent the afternoon and dinner at The Little Treehouse for a blogger playdate.  On Sunday, I made the mango chicken curry dish.  It wasn't my favorite, but the mango was great in it.  Now I recall why I stopped making chicken curry, I just don't like it. The kiddo wouldn't touch it!  No surprise there.  

I topped it with coconut and didn't use chutney, since I included mango in the sauce.  If you like chicken curry, this was a good recipe to use!

This week's menu plan is based upon what's in my freezer, as it's packed and I need to seriously empty out the basement freezer so I can defrost it soon!  Our basement freezer is for storage and is currently filled with lots of frozen fruit from last summer.  I had thought that I would take advantage of a snow day and defrost it then and just stick the contents outside in the snow while it defrosted, but we've had such warm weather that even this weekend's snow was just a dusting.  

Monday: Sticky chicken for soup and leftovers! 

Tuesday: heading to my sister's for dinner to celebrate with all the kiddos!  Will bring a green salad.

Wednesday:  Chicken enchiladas

Thursday: Shrimp scampi with angel hair (love the Pioneer Woman's recipes!!)

Friday: Chicken sandwiches and salads.  (tried to make this last week, but never found peanut oil in a small bottle, only in the giagantic size! Hoping to find it this week in a smaller quantity.)

Saturday: out!

Sunday: Roasted turkey breast, veggies to be determined!

I'm linking up to Organizing Junkie.

Happy Valentine's Week!  

My funny Valentine's weekend

We celebrated V-Day early this weekend.

I went to Valentine's tea with the girls on Saturday:

Yummy desserts at Valentine's Tea at Tilly Mint's!

We have a fun family Sunday morning breakfast:

Strawberry pancakes!

The boys bought me the pretty flowers that made our centerpiece!  The kiddo has his FIRST Valentine's party tomorrow.  He has very little interest.  He actually refused to help out with his Valentine's and got mad that I bought little tubs of playdoh to give out to his friends. I think he wanted to keep it all for himself, but he said he'd rather save them to give out to his class next year.  He had picked out little tubes of bubbles for his classmates at Target a while back.  Before Christmas, when I was placing a TinyPrints order, I also ordered Valentine's stickers that were printed with a message and his name.  I used some little baggies I had leftover from making treats and bagged up the tubes of bubbles with the playdoh and a lollipop, adhering the sticker to the front.  I wanted the kiddo to stuff the bags or stick the stickers on, but, maybe next year.  He also chose not to make any Valentine's for his non-school friends or family.  Maybe after his party he'll change his mind and get more into it.  Or not.  I'm ok with that!

Preschool Valentine's!

We also watched Charlie Brown's Valentine's special this weekend.  I really don't like it, but the kiddo does.  

What do you do with your kids to celebrate Valentine's day, if you do??

Crafting a pompom wreath, an easy Valentine's day project

My addiction to Pinterst has led me to be more crafty lately, which is really a good thing.  I have neglected my crafty side for too long.  I saw a variety of different wreaths on Pinterest and came up with an idea to make a pompom wreath.  Eventually I found one very similar, in different colors, on Pinterest too.  I used to make wreaths all the time, and even sold some for a while at local craft shows.  That was at least 18 years ago.  More recently I made Christmas wreaths.  I have not made any Valentine's decorations lately, so this project was overdue!

See, I have a love for the pompom.  There isn't much use for them in daily life, especially when you are an adult.  I'm not sure why I love making them so much, but as far back as I can remember, I always enjoyed wrapping yarn and snipping, snipping, snipping the ends until I had the perfect pompom ball.  

So, after deciding my color theme for my wreath, I dug through my yarn stash and added a skein of very inexpensive yarn from the craft store.  Then I dug out my Clover pompom makers....they are a great little tool for making various sized pompoms.  It took about a week or so on and off in my spare time at night to make all of the pompoms.  Sharp scissors are really important!  I ended up with around 40 pompoms in various sizes and colors.  I also had lots of yarn dust everywhere from all that snipping and shaping.

 

Starting to assemble the wreath

 

Using a styrofoam wreath form, I wrapped it with a single strand of red yarn until the entire wreath was covered.  I tucked the end in, although I suppose it could have been glued too.  At first I thought I would pin the pompoms on the wreath, but then decided to hot glue them instead.  It was quick and easy to do and it turned out great. Before gluing, I decided on placement of the largest pompoms, then added more and more going from largest to smallest, filling in the gaps with the smallest ones.  

 

Once all the pompoms I had made had been attached, mainly to just the front surface of the wreath form, I hung the wreath and decided it needed more pompoms.  Seeing it on the door at a different angle helped me see the gaps where I needed to add more.  It cost under $10 to make and looks great!  My son has requested that I make him one for his room in rainbow colors.  Time to search the yarn stash again!  

Valentine's Day Pompom Wreath!

 

Valentine's Va-Va Voom theater in Philly at Plays & Players

 

Photo courtesy of Plays & Players

Go back in time this weekend in Philadelphia to experience a Valentine’s performance based on the Radio Era of yesterday. Plays & Players presents Valentine’s Va-Va-Voom, a special Valentine’s Day themed presentation by the Hear Again Radio Project. The featured episodes are “Puppy Love” from the show Our Miss Brooks and “Blondie Gets a Valentine” from Blondie. The Hear Again Radio Project presents classic radio dramas as they were originally broadcast with live Foley sound effects and the same commercials that would have aired with the shows.

Showtimes are for February 11 at 7pm and February 12 at 4pm and 7pm.  Tickets are reasonably priced and available in advance for a discount or purchase at the theatre before the performance.  Plays & Players Theater is located on Delancey Street in Philadelphia, near Rittenhouse Square.  I haven't been there yet, but it's on my to-do list for activities to do this year.  They also have two upcoming family friendly productions of Superheros are Super this year that I think my son would enjoy.  Learn more by visiting the theater's website at www.playsandplayers.org

As a special to my readers, you can use the discount code knittingzeal to save $2 off admission.  This discount code is good for the Hear Again Radio Project in February and April. This is also good for "Superheroes Who Are Super!" Family-friendly 1pm matinee Sat, Feb 18 and Sat, April 14.

If you go to a performance, please let me know what you thought!  Happy Valentine's Day!

Crafting FAIL!

So, I had the brilliant idea to make heart shaped crayons for Valentine's Day.  I figured it would be a good way to use up the big box of broken crayons we accumulated and the kiddo could give them out at school to his classmates for V-Day.  I found decent sized heart shaped ice cube trays in the $2.50 bin at Target.  

I spent Sunday morning peeling off labels and chopping up crayons.  

chopping up naked crayons into bits

(Tip:  use an exacto knife to score the label of the crayon and then peel the whole label off in one piece.  It will protect your manicure too!)

I then filled my heart molds with chopped up crayon bits, set the tray on a foil covered toaster oven sized cookie sheet, and preheated the toaster oven to 250 degrees F.  Then I baked the waxy bits for about 15 minutes or so, until they looked melted enough.  I've made molded/repurposed crayons this way many times before.  It smells like melted crayons.  This time it smelled a little stronger.  I chalked it up to using mostly non-crayola brand crayons.  (We had an assortment of brands and non-brands from various restaurants, along with washable toddler crayons mixed in.)

The first batch of heart crayons turned out ok.  Once they were melted I swirled the colors around a bit with a toothpick, then let them harden.  They were not shiny like crayons I've made before.  Again, I figured it was the result of inferior crayons.  (Really, Crayola brand crayons are the best.  They melt well and they color the best, in my opinion!)  

Melted wax ready to solidify into crayons

So, I made a second batch, since I still had a good amount to chopped up crayon bits. This time, thankfully I was still in the kitchen, there was a lot of smoke along with the bad smell.  My mistake: using an ice cube tray!  It felt like silicon, but apparently was not!  The tray melted.  

Notice the melted mold/ice cube tray! FAIL!

So, after opening windows and turning on fans to ventilate probably toxic fumes from my kitchen, I learned that I should suck it up and spend the extra money on acual silicon molds that are definitely oven safe.  

We did end up with some crayons, but I'm not sure of their quality at all.  They will be used here, as they are not gift-worthy!  

heart crayons!

Teacher's knitted gifts

For Christmas, I decided to knit up some very simple washcloths to pair with awesome bars of goatsmilk soap that I bought at the Lititz Farmer's Market in apple cinnamon scent. I wanted to give a knitted gift to my kid's three preschool teachers, but didn't have time to do anything elaborate.   Wrapped up with a pretty bow, I think they turned out nicely.  I also gave each teacher a gift box from Penzey's that included two spices and a mini cookbook.  

I figured that the teachers did not need junk sitting around their homes, so useable and consumable items would be appreciated.  About two weeks before Christmas we received a message from two classmate moms asking for contributions to the "group gift" for the teachers!  Not being familiar with preschool protocol, I debated what to do.  In the end I contributed the money, which wasn't much, but I think I will have to rethink what I do next year.  

This past week we received two thank you notes from two of the teachers.  One thanked me for the potholder.  Seriously.  I haven't corrected her yet.  I guess it could be used as a potholder?  It's cotton, so it won't melt.  I did tie it to a bar of soap, but I guess that wasn't a good clue.  C'est la vie!

Welcome 2012!

Happy New Year! Early Morning, January 1st, 2012

 

I really can't believe how fast the holiday season flew by.  December was so busy, I barely blinked and it was over.  We had a great time over the holidays and enjoyed the season.  Having a four year old in the house made Christmas more magical and certainly more entertaining.  

We don't really do much for New Year's Eve, so it was fairly quiet.  (Except for the neighbor's noisy midnight celebration in the street!) I watched CNN's coverage of NYC.  Anderson Cooper and Kathy Griffin crack me up.

Today we had friends come over for brunch.  I made the Pioneer Woman's Baked Cinnamon French Toast again...it was great!  The boys played all afternoon and had fun.  For dinner I made the traditional pork roast with sauerkraut.  Using the crockpot, I put a bag of rinsed kraut in the bottom, added a bag of baby carrots, then added the pork roast.  I used Penzey's 33rd and Galena seasoning on it and added slices of apple around.  After 8 hours on low, I added bisquick dumpling batter to the pot and let it puff up for about a half hour.  It turned out great and we have enough left over for dinner tomorrow. 

This year one of my personal goals is to become more proficient at using my DSLR camera.  For Christmas my husband gave me a speedlight for my camera.  To get more practice in using my camera with different settings I decided to do a 365 project this year where I take a photo everyday.  I found several groups doing this, but decided to go with the one hosted by Picaboo.  One of their expert photographers and bloggers is Steph of A Grande Life, a local mom blogger who I met last summer.

This week's themes are Goodbye Holiday and Just Keep Shooting. I already completed the first day's photo, even though the project officially kicks off on Monday.  I like there there will be different themes and techniques suggested to try.  For today's photo, I used manual focus with the manual setting on my camera, along with my 50mm lens and an f-stop of 1.8.  The goal was to capture the last of the holiday decorations/lights in a different way, out of focus with the lights highlighted. I photographed both my tree's lights and the lights on our banister.  

I won't post all of the photos here, but once I find a spot for them, probably on flickr, I'll post a link.

Happy 2012!