Sugar Crystal Candy

Emma, feeling bored for a project, decided one day to make sugar crystal candy. It was a fun little thing to do. Here's a link if you'd like to try this at home. It's easy. Emma did hers on a pipe cleaner instead of a stick which makes it less fun to eat, but she didn't want to eat it anyway. If you do want to eat yours, make it on a stick. :)

Flower Basket Cake

This is the cake I made for our Relief Society Birthday dinner this year. The theme was "Bloom Where You're Planted." I did a basket weave with Royal icing flowers. I did the flowers this way so that I could make them in advance and then just place them when I put the cake together. It turned out well.

Great to Be 8

I was in charge of our Great To Be 8 (or 8 Is Great) meeting this year and found instructions on Sugardoodle.net for these cute cookies on a stick. They were a big hit!

Wacky Hair Day

Lauren made quite an impression at her school when she showed up like this for wacky hair day. She was thrilled with it. She found out that it wasn't the best hairdo for playing limbo though. :)

Several people have asked me how it's done. Here's the trick: Gather the hair you want for the spike, grab a wad of egg whites and blend it in (especially at the roots), comb into place again, blend in a bit of hair glue (got 2 B glued brand), work quickly and get your spike perfect, hold while you blow dry on low cool until it is stiff. Repeat with all spikes. It may take some time. Be prepared for that.

Smokey Green

I'm calling it a mid-life crisis. I really don't know what else to attribute it to. Boredom maybe? No, that really can't be it. Curiosity? Perhaps. But really I'm just trying to sqeeze a few things in that I'd better do now before I'm way too old. So. . .even though I really don't have time in my life for such things, on a whim the other day I wanted to try the "smokey eye shadow" look. It looks so cute on young, hip, beautiful women. So, I thought, I'm not getting any younger. If I want to see what it looks like I'd better do it now. So I found a bunch of You Tube tutorials and followed along. It was quite a bit more make-up than I'm used to and I was really tempted to take it all off before I went to the school to pick up Lauren and I was totally self-conscious of it the whole time, but I ended up wearing it the whole day and it was FUN. For a day. Really, in the pictures (which I totally retouched to hide the wrinkles and stuff because THEY DO NOT look good with the young, hip, beautiful style I was going for and I'm super bummed that in real life I had to wear the makeup WITH the wrinkles) you can't tell how thick it is, but there is eyeliner on top and bottom and even inside the lashes and I am wearing black eye shadow with the greens and you can't tell that either. But anyway, it was fun. I think everyone should try it for a day.
Also, I think I had just colored my hair, either that day or the day before, so it's really bright. Yup, I'm looking colorful!

cookie press

I found a brand new Pampered Chef cookie press at the thrift store the other day and just had to get it. I've been curious about this for many years. It turned out so fun. There are tons of recipes out there for the cookie press. This is just a simple butter spritz that I colored pink for Valentine's Day. Not all of my kids like them (This is meaningless. They don't like anything.), but Richard liked them pretty well. I think they are tasty, but mostly just fun to make.

Spinach Cubes

So, what do you do with that giant tub of spinach that you bought from Costco and know there's no way you will ever go through the entire thing before it goes bad? I decided to make spinach cubes. This was my own idea that I thought was pretty ingenious. I can't be the ONLY one who's ever thought of it, but this did come from my own brain.

First I cooked it, then blended it, then poured into ice cube trays.

Now they are ready to throw into the blender with my smoothies. They don't blend as quickly as ice. I noticed it takes a bit more blender time to really get them smooth. But it works. Fabulous.

Well, just when I thought I was on to something my friend told me that she just throws spinach into the freezer fresh. I had no idea that would work. So I guess I'll try that next time. Anyway, it was a good idea for a minute. Have any of you ever frozen fresh spinach before? Does this really work? I want to know.

It's BEAN week

The next few posts are for the benefit of anyone who came to the bean class and wanted the notes. I thought this might be the best way of getting the info to those who wanted it instead of sending emails out to everyone who doesn't. If you are a friend or family member who thinks you are going to learn something interesting about our current lives, sorry. You may be interested in knowing that we're eating more beans than usual this week. But feel free to read about beans if you would like to.

Bean cooking tips:
1. Make sure beans are fully cooked before adding acidic foods like tomatoes, chili sauce, lemon juice, vinegar, or ketsup. This will slow down the cooking process.
2. Salt toughens beans so wait until the very end to add salt.
3. Add a few drops of oil (1/4 tsp or so) to the boiling pot. This will reduce the foaming.
4. Drain the soaking water before you begin the cooking process. This will reduce the "gasiness" of the beans.
5. If you add about 1/8 tsp. baking soda per cup of dry beans while they cook it will reduce cook time by about one-fourth.
6. Boil gently and stir very little. You really don't need to watch them much.
7. Make a big bunch at a time. Freeze some whole to add to recipes later and puree some to add to recipes later. Mark the bag with the amount. I usually freeze 1 cup portions. Then I can thaw as much as I need for the recipe I'm using.
8. Use the pureed beans in place of butter or oil in any baked good. If it calls for 1/2 C. butter, just use 1/2 C. puree.
9. Use in place of or to supplement ground beef in casseroles, tacos, burritos, etc. The beans will absorb the flavors just like the meat would.


If you have any questions feel free to ask in the comment section. I will answer.
Next up are my favorite bean recipes. These are the ones I really do use the most often. But don't feel limited. I don't. I use tons of bean recipes.

Fairy Cake

Here are better pictures of the cake. I couldn't get them to load before for some reason.

House cleaning tip #2- Slow Drains

This is completely surprising, but here goes post #2 for the day. This is a tip and a product review, actually.

Slow drains is a common problem in my house; completely inevitable when you have 4 girls with long hair, I've discovered. Well, I finally figured out how to remove the drain stop in the shower and pull the hair out. It's way better than pouring any chemical down the drain. I've never had good luck with those and besides, every plumber I've ever talked to has said, DO NOT pour those chemicals down your drain. If you're interested I'll try to find the tutorial again and post it.

But the sink stopper was too tricky to try to remove. But in my search for how to do it I came across this cool thing called the Drain Claw. I made a snap decision to give it a try and ordered 3 immediately. I just used it today and WOW!!! It took literally less than a minute to completely clear the drain. It was pretty disgusting pulling the hair off at the end, even with a tissue, but seriously soooooo worth it.

A cleaning tip--showers

This is the most worthy blog post I've had in a while. I hope everyone finds this as informational and life changing as I did. It's about my shower. I have forever wondered how you get your shower to look brand new, sparkly clean. It's a constant battle with the soap scum (I can handle this), hard water spots (can't handle this) and mildew (what the huh?). I have finally done it. I've found the answer. Perhaps your shower is always in perfect condition because you diligently squeegie, rinse, squeegie every time and you really scrub weekly. I am not the lord of the shower (I'm not even a fly baby) and you would know that if you saw my shower. (Okay, it's not that gross, but . . .) At least, that used to be true. And then I found this. Instructions to get your shower super clean.
Basically, it goes like this:
1. scrub your shower as usual (do it while you're in the shower).
2. get white vinegar and lots of paper towels. Dunk the paper towels in the vinegar and lay them on the walls of your shower. They will stick. Leave them there for hours (or days if the problem is really bad). Just make sure they stay wet. The chemical reaction will continue to do the job the entire time.
3. Rinse the walls and glass. It should be pretty clean.
4. Get bleach and lots of paper towels. Dunk the paper towels in the bleach and press them into the corners or tile grout or wherever you have any mildew starting. Leave them there for hours or days or whatever you need.
5. Rinse and be amazed.

I left the paper towels on for about 6 hours and my shower was spotless. Perfectly clean. Love, love, love this new info. Am I the only one who didn't know this?

Thank you Chalkboard Inc.

I really hate to do it, but I'm going to have to rip on Kinkos for a minute here.
Here's the situation. This week I made a new family job chart and matching FHE chart. (Ahhhh. . .How nice) New year=new motivation=new charts. I did them on poster board and for lasting durablity I wanted to get them laminated. I had recently been to The Chalkboard store and saw that they advertised laminating for .75/foot.

But there is a Kinkos about 2 blocks away from my house, so I thought I'd save the longer trip (about 5 miles) and just do it there. When I got my project in, they measured and fiddled and showed me how they were going to do it. They charge by the sq. ft. and it's $5/sq. ft. On top of that I was trying to show them how they could lay some of the cards in an order that would save space on the laminating, but they refused to do it that way, insisting that I would need the 3 inch space in order to cut them out. When they got it all figured out the total came to $30.00!!!! Are you kidding? I could have hired someone to make a fancy wooden chart for that. I admit I'm frugal to a fault sometimes, but this just didn't make any sense at all and I had to leave. Thanks, but no thanks Kinkos.


So I drove the 5 miles to the teacher store and dropped it off. I didn't really care what they charged, I knew it would be less than Kinkos. They did a fantastic job, spaced the cards in a way that made sense (I didn't even have to show them), and it came to $2.25. Now that's what I'm talking about.
The moral of the story is teachers (usually retired teachers or students work at the Chalkboard store, I've found) are just naturally smarter than your average Kinko's worker. AND you should never shop Kinkos for lamination. That's all. I'm just trying to make the world a better place by spreading consumer spending tips when I can.

Happy Birthday Jesus

We don't have very many traditions that actually occur regularly enough to be considered traditions. But our Christmas Eve celebration is the exception. We have been doing this for about 8 years now and it's the best part of Christmas for me. Here's what we do:
Light a bunch of candles--usually about 15. (The number actually coincides with the number of activities we do.)
Then we do things like get new tree ornaments, open new Christmas books and read them, sing Christmas songs, read the Bible story from Luke, set out a treat for Santa, and of course, sing Happy Birthday to Jesus and eat the cake.
Then blow out a candle at the end of each activity and when the house is dark, it's time to go to bed. This usually lasts about 1 1/2 hours and my kids love it.

Favorite Co-ops

Since I've been thinking about getting ready to leave Elk Grove I've felt a little saddened at the prospects of leaving behind some good friends that I've made here. And it occurred to me that I met all of them, almost exclusively, through the various co-op groups that I've been involved in. I truly love serving others and have found the most joy here from being a part of these groups. So, I thought I'd share the joy and let you know what these different groups have been about. In chronological order they are:

Book Club: When I first moved here this was one group I started attending right away. We met monthly at a different members home and discussed the "book of the month". It was always a fun, social event with good food, good friends, and intelligent discussion with other adult women. I liked that the books were suggested by other members of the group and then voted on. I felt like we were always able to get a good variety and everyone's ideas were validated. I have to confess that I didn't always finish the book or even really read it, but that was okay with everyone there. Sadly, I had to quit the group after only about 8 months due to Richard's work schedule, but I enjoyed the time I did spend.

Dinner Co-op: This I did with my friend Laura Blum, who has moved to Hawaii, and I have missed her now for 3 1/2 years. We had a lot of fun making meals for each other. Here's how it worked. We each picked a day of the week. She had Tuesday and I had Thursday. On our day we would make dinner for our own family and for the other family and take it over. It was a great opportunity to try other people's recipes and also try new recipes that you might not otherwise have done. Because, in an effort to impress your friend, you might also impress your family. I made some of my best and ate some of my best meals during that time. I do remember that my family always thought Laura's meals were really saucy and her family thought my meals were really dry--just differences in personal tastes. We did this for about 9 months and then she moved. She had previously done it as a threesome. You would just have to make more on your day.

Babysitting Co-op: I had been having the idea to do this for quite some time when a great gal in my ward, Kristin Claridge, came along with the same idea and a little more initiative. She put the whole thing together with cutsie little "bucks" and everything. It was very well done. Here's how it worked. She announced at church, at "park day", at preschools, etc. what she was doing and created a list of people who were interested. On the sign up sheet you indicated what time/times you were available to "work". All you had to do was set that time aside and be available and willing to take kids during your time. Every weekday, morning and afternoon, was taken care of. So, if you wanted to go shopping without kids, go to your doctor appointment, or whatever, you just called and let the person who had that time slot know that you needed them and it was done. You paid with "baby bucks" (or something) and of course, earned more bucks the more you worked. I loved it. I have seen other versions that use a schedule posted on the computer, and other more technological strategies since then, but it was great for me.

Music Makers: This was started here locally by my friend Cheryl Forbes. It was designed to be a musical experience for baby (newborn to K) and Mom. Moms took turns leading the group for a month at a time or would sign up with a partner so they only had to do part of the lesson or part of the month. The group started out with a welcome song (the same every time), circle time songs, rhythm and movement, good-bye song and a story. It was fun to see how different moms changed it up every month and I learned lots of kid songs that I never knew before (and I always thought I had a pretty good repertoire). This group has morphed over time and we are just about to graduate for good. Yes, I'm feeling old.

Joyschool: If you aren't familiar with Joyschool you can get the whole scoop here. But basically it is a co-op preschool. Moms take turns teaching the pre-designed and fully directed lessons. You register to use the lessons and then just prepare them as instructed. It's really easy and a great, cost effective alternative to regular preschool. The kids just love it when their mom is the "teacher" and "school" is at their own house. Lauren did this for a year and then Ellie did it the next year. I was able to arrange nearly every lesson to coordinate with the lessons I had previously taught and so prep time was reduced to almost nothing the second year. It was great.

Biggest Loser: In an effort to motivate myself and also friends of mine with whom I had discussed the issue on occassion, I launched the Biggest Loser Club. 12 people signed up and about 6 lasted the entire 12 weeks. The idea here was that the group would meet weekly, weigh in, discuss what was working for them, bring up pitfalls and let the group troubleshoot in an effort to encourage, inform and motivate dieters. I didn't want it to be costly, so I didn't charge much for the experience, however, if I did it again I would probably make the weekly meeting have a payment of $3 for weight gain, $2 for no weight loss, $1 for 1 lb. loss, and $0 for more than that. The money would go into a kitty and the kitty would be given to the biggest loser at the end of the 12 weeks. We didn't end up with much of a reward the way we did it. I would also use groups instead of individuals, because people are more motivated if they think they are letting the group down rather than just themselves.

Service Group: I got this idea out of the Ensign about a year and a half ago. My friends and I have been doing it since Jan. 2007 and it's been so excellent. You get a small group (we use 4) and you take turns doing a service for one person a month. For example, we meet every third Thursday. On our first meeting we went to Suzette's house and she wanted to clean out and organize her garage. A daunting task if you had to do it by yourself. But, we all got together and had her garage cleaned out, swept out, organized, built a storage shelf unit, and got her D.I. pile ready to go in 3 hours. The kids just played around us. We have since painted baseboards, thoroughly cleaned a kitchen, washed windows, steam cleaned carpets, organized boxes of kids clothes, painted a fence, etc. Whatever task you have to do that seems like too much for one day is the perfect task for this group. Besides that it is a great excuse just to get together and hang out once a month.

So, now you know what keeps me busy. I just hope that I will be able to find some fun things like these in Naperville. I'm sure I will. They have been lifesavers for my sanity in the realm of "stay-at-homers". Maybe you found something that sparked an idea in you. Go for it. You won't regret it.

Lauren's Birthday

So, what does a girl who is petrified of dogs what for her birthday?





A PUPPY PARTY!! naturally.






The truth is that her original desire was to go to My Gym, a children's gymnastics center that also offers birthday parties. It truly is a fun place for a party, but when I checked out the pricing for the place I soon realized we wouldn't be offering that place up. So, I checked around some more and some more and some more and after looking into 13 different places I knew two things. 1) We probably would never do that kind of a party, and 2) I really need to go into business running one of these places. SHEEESH!!!





Anyway, so the puppy party was one of the options because we needed to find a party theme suitable to a boy or a girl since Lauren's very best friend is a boy named Manoah. He ended up being the only boy who came, but told me during the party that it was the "funnest party I've ever been to since my whole life." It really did turn out great. Her best friends were able to make it. We played fun games and did fun crafts.






Our opening activity was to make a dog collar for the puppy they each brought. Then we played fun games like "Dog Pound" (a variation of the popular Fruit Basket game), "Doggie, Doggie, Where's Your Bone",
"Over, Under Relay", "Sniff out the Treasure"-treasure hunt, etc. We had a couple others as options for good weather, but it was another rainy day here, so we weren't able to play the Jump Through the Hoop game or the bone on a spoon game. We did a freeze dance to "Who Let the Dogs Out" which the kids enjoyed far more that I thought they would. And of course, had puppy paw cupcakes and ice-cream.

and Puppy Chow with Dog Bones/Scooby Snacks
Richard's big job for the day was to scoop ice-cream and pretend like he was the chef.


When the party was over we all went out to eat to celebrate the birthday and also Maddie's straight A report card. Yay for her!!(This is Maddie being tres chic I think. I'm sure she will kill me when she sees this.)

Maddie chose The Spaghetti Factory (of course) so we went to the one downtown where the restaurant is in an actual old train station and the train goes right by it while you eat. We had a perfect view and let the kids go right up to the window when the train came by (They are standing about 10 feet from the train).

On her real birthday, which was on Monday, she got fresh donuts for breakfast and opened the gift from our family, which was all new soccer clothes and accessories. The real gift is that she got to sign up for soccer this spring. She has been wanting this for a while. I hope she enjoys it and is able to listen to the coach and follow instructions (her most difficult task in life).

Winner of the Best New Game Award goes to. . .

Ticket to Ride. Daren and Joni got this for Christmas and we played it 6 times in 2 days. It is so much fun. We played the Europe version. There is an America version, but I guess it's a little simpler--maybe better for younger players. I love that it requires a little bit of strategy, but still has an element of chance, it doesn't take too long to play, and once you start playing it's not complicated with too many rules to remember. It's really fun. Thank you Daren and Joni for staying up late and playing with me.

How to Soften Brown Sugar

So, I went to use some brown sugar today that had been in my cupboard for over a year and wouldn't you know, it was hard as a rock. It was just a small box, but I had two of them and yes, they were both like concrete. I knew I had heard of ways to soften the brown sugar before, but couldn't remember, so I turned to the trusty (this time anyway) internet and found these great tips. I thought I'd share just in case any of you may run into this trouble as you pull that sugar out to do some holiday baking.

10 Ways To Soften Hard Brown Sugar

It happens to the best of us: rock hard brown sugar. How to soften it? Ten easy tips below:
Place the brown sugar in an airtight container with a slice of fresh bread placed on top. Seal and leave overnight. It should be soft and fresh again in the morning, if not just let it sit another day or two.

Sprinkle a few drops of water over the chunk of hardened sugar, place in a plastic bag, seal, and let sit for a couple days.

Place brown sugar in an open container, then top with a moistened cloth (paper towel works too). Let sit overnight.

Place the hardened sugar in an airtight container with a few apple slices. This should soften the sugar within the next day or two. Remove apple slices once sugar is soft again.

Use foil or plastic wrap to cover the top of the sugar. Then set a dampened sheet of paper towel (not dripping wet) on top of the foil. Place in an airtight container and seal. Let sit overnight or a few days as needed. Remove foil and paper towel once the towel is dry and sugar is fresh again.

Buy a clay disc or if you have a pottery piece on hand (from a broken clay pot, etc.), set it in water for about 30 minutes. Dry the piece so it isn’t dripping wet. Put the clay piece in a container with the sugar and seal. Check after a few days. Keep the piece in with your sugar for months if you’d like–will keep it soft.

Quick Tip #1: Need the sugar soft now? Put the brown sugar in a container and place in the microwave with a small bowl full of water beside it. Microwave for about 1 minute–check. If it’s still hard, try for another 30 seconds. You can keep doing this until the sugar is soft, but watch that you don’t melt the sugar.

Quick Tip #2: Place the hardened sugar in a baking pan and set in oven (temperature at about 250° F). Check after 5 minutes. If still not soft, continue checking every few minutes until it’s soft and ready to use.

Quick Tip #3: Place the brown sugar chunk in a microwave safe plastic bag. Take a square of paper towel and moisten with water (not dripping wet–wring out excess). Place the wet paper towel in the bag with the sugar and seal. Place in the microwave for approximately 20 seconds. If still not soft, microwave for a few seconds more, repeating until the sugar is ready to use. Be careful not to melt the sugar.

Quick Tip #4: Stick chunks of the brown sugar in a food processor or blender and chop/pulse until useable.

For best results, make sure to store brown sugar in a sealed, airtight container. A clay disc kept in the container can keep it soft for months (see tip above for clay disc).
Brown sugar can also be stored in the freezer and thawed a few hours before using.

Persimmon Update

WARNING!! Do not eat them!!-- even if you get really tempted to try it. Just don't. EUWWWWW!! So, here's how it went. I cut it open when it was looking nice and ripe (just guessing of course, because I don't have a lot of experience with them.) It looked innocent enough; safe and harmless with its pink innards just soft enough to bite into. I got the idea from the internet that you could eat it raw like an apple. Which just goes to show that you can't trust the internet info. all the time. I bit into it and immediately there was a coating in my mouth that was making my lips stick to my teeth in kind of a squeaky way. I felt like I need to stretch my mouth out, and drinking water did not alleviate the problem. As for the taste, I'm not really sure. It was probably okay, but I was so overwhelmed with the feeling of it in my mouth that I didn't even pay attention to the taste. I think it would have been okay though, if only there was a way to get past the lip shrinking experience. Bottom line--if someone gives you persimmons, either throw them away immediately, or find a nice cookie recipe for them. The cookies were really good. Really, really good now that I know what they started out as.

Persimmons

What do you do with them? Richard knows a lady who grows persimmons and every year she gives him some along with some persimmon cookies. The cookies really are pretty good, but what do you do with the persimmon? I'm not making the cookies. I already looked it up. You have to wait until they are just ripe and then peel them and cook them. It seems like too much work for what you get in the end. I'll let you know how they taste. I'm going to eat them like an apple when they are ripe enough.

Movie Review

So, Richard and I were in need of some "time out" tonight and decided to see a movie. We haven't done that in a while and really didn't even know what was out there. We ended up seeing Dan in Real Life.
This movie had the whole theater laughing and cringing and anxiously anticipating every scene. It far exceeded my expectations (since I really didn't have any to begin with). Steve Carell has found a character that fit him perfectly. I can't tell any of the story or it would ruin it. But do see it.
People who would enjoy this the most would be single adults (past or present), parents of girls, parents of teenagers, people from large families, okay, just about anyone even if you don't fit into any of those categories. Enjoy.