Eggplant pizza

Quick and tasty supper :)

Slice eggplant about 1/4 inch thick, sprinkle with salt and place in a strainer over a bowl to drain all bitter liquid.

Rinse off and pat dry with paper towel.

Spray baking pan with olive oil, place slices on pan, brush with olive pile, sprinkle with salt. Drizzle tomato sauce or pasta sauce on top. Add thinly sliced mushrooms, thin sliced meat of choice, one slice of tomato, cheese and bake at 375 for 15 to 20 minutes until cheese begins to bubble.

Sprinkle with parmesan cheese and top with a spoonful of garlic pesto.

Pesto is optional but I like it. Although I would recommend not using basil pesto as the flavor is very strong and if you use too much that is all that you will taste.

Bread

Today was a day for cooking. I made some mini loaves of bread, and one bigger loaf. I love the mini loaves because they are the perfect size for sandwiches to be packed for work and school lunches. I also love that I have control over the ingredients, organic no additives or preservatives etc... I know exactly what we are eating.

I just used my basic bread recipe, it is a base that you can build off of, add cinnamon and raisins, dried fruit, whole grains etc... But today I just felt like making plain bread.

The recipe I use is simple, 1 package of active dry yeast, add 1/4 cup of warm water and 1 tsp of sugar to the the yeast stir and let sit for 15 minutes.

Add 2 cups of warm water, 1 tsp of salt and add flour kneading until the dough is no longer sticky, cover in a greased bowl and let rise in a warm spot for two hours.

Add more flour and knead a second time. Grease the pan you will be baking it in, place dough in pan cove and let rise for two hours. Bake at 400 for 40 to 50 minutes.

The dough should use at least 6 cups of flour otherwise it will taste strongly of yeast. The crust comes out of the oven very hard and crispy (hard as a rock lol) but softens as it cools. If you put it in a Tupperware container it softens even more.

My favorite mix for this is 40% whole wheat flour, 60% white, add toasted flax seed, sunflower seeds and any other seed / grain i happen to have in the house at the time.

Another good one is to spread the dough out, put Swiss cheese and slices of ham on top, roll it and bake. So tasty and all you need to do is cut off a piece and instant lunch :)

Home made hot chocolate mix

For the past two days here the weather has been horrible, cold and snowing. It shouldn't snow for at least another three weeks!

Because I don't really drink coffee and I ran out of my favorite tea I decided to make some hot chocolate mix. It tastes much better than the stuff that you buy in the stores and it's cheaper. I double the recipe and get roughly 80 cups of hot chocolate for $18. for that price I would only get 30 cups if I bought three boxes with 10 packs. I also used all organic ingredients. All ingredients are pronounceable and identifiable :)

Ingredients
2 1/2 cups skim milk powder
2 1/4 cup powder sugar
1 cup cocoa powder
1/4 cup sugar
1 tsp salt
1 bag milk chocolate chips

Mix all together, add 3 tablespoons to a cup, pour boiling water over it, stir well to melt all the chocolate chips and enjoy!!!!

Breakfast apple pie yogurt

So after making all 100 mini apple pies and 200 cookies I found myself with some left over diced apples that hadn't been seasoned yet. I added a handful of the apples to some plain Greek yogurt, sprinkled in some cinnamon and nutmeg, a bit of granola (I love natures path organic granola so yummy!) drizzled with a bit of honey and it was so good!

The kids loved it although in theirs I puréed the apples, aly will eat whole apples but if you cut them she won't touch them and drew wont eat apples if he can see them.

I have to admit... I think that this tastes better then my apple pies and the best part is that it is so much healthier than actual pie lol.

Next time I am going to use vanilla yogurt and skip the honey drizzle it was a bit to sweet for me.

Hazelnut hot chocolate and cookies

It is a cold day here today, cloudy and dreary. I have 200 cookies to make for a BBQ at work, I'm exhausted and would rather spend the day curled up on the couch with Aly watching Harry Potter and reading books or coloring.

To give us some much needed energy me and aly made some hazelnut hot chocolate from scratch and it was good. The recipe is very simple

2 cups of milk
2 tblsp cocoa powder
4 tblsp home made nutella (store bought works too)
You can add more or use less nutella to your taste. 4 tblsp gives the hot chocolate just a nice mild barely there hazelnut taste.

Now that I have energy I am off to try to make 200 cookies in 3 hours and get my house and kitchen clean while I'm baking lol. Hopefully I at least get all the cookies made.

Park, sushi and Dr. Who

Today I had plans for a lot of crafting, I was going to work on my autumn leaves blanket, possibly start Drew's Gryffindor scarf and find some type of art project to do with the kids. Instead I worked all day, picked up sushi on my way home and then while Andrew went camping in the back yard with Drew and Aly amazingly fell asleep early I ate the sushi and had a Dr. Who marathon. Of course between work and sending the boys out to sleep in the yard my Dad came over and we all spent some time outside and going to the park. I have discovered that the 9th Dr. is my favorite so far and even though I know I watched a lot of the earlier episodes with my Dad when I was younger I don't remember them at all. I wish I could find them on DVD.

Here is a picture of the park, isn't it pretty? I must remember to bring my good camera when the leaves start to change colors.

Fair and wands

Today we went to a fair in a small town. It was somewhat dissapointing. There used to be a wonderful farmers market where I would buy handmade soaps, fresh honey, hand spun and dyed yarn and other wonderful unique handmade things. This year the farmers market consisted of two henna booths, on selling sunglasses, one selling shirts and the other few had all the same rings and necklaces that can be found at booths in the mall.

The carnival was very overpriced ($28 for a kids wrist band for that price I can buy both kids a wrist band at tinker town and have money left over). Despite all of that though we still had fun, the petting zoo was great, Drew is still "king" of the balloon darts, out of 6 darts he popped 5 or 6 balloons each time and ended up with all the good prizes. Aly got a henna tattoo and we bought enough tickets for the kids to go on two rides.

Here is me and aly on the Ferris wheel

Once we got  home and relaxed a bit me and Drew watched Dinosaurs (does anyone remember that old tv show? Not the mamma hee hee hee hee) and made Wizard wands. Both of the kids wanted one after our Harry Potter Marathon the other day.

Making wands is surprising easily, all you need is a chopstick (or however many you need) a glue gun and some paint.

First step as to separate the chopsticks, then you put a big glob of the glue on the thicker end of the chopstick. Wait a few minutes, put a bit of cold water on your hands and then shape the glue into a handle. Add more glue as needed to get the shape that you want. For Aly's I added a swirl the length of the wand and added some zig zags to the handle for Drew.

 

 

In the picture above you can see Aly's wand with the glue dried. It does take awhile for the glue to completely dry, once it has you can paint it. For the first coat I used cinnamon brown (just cheap acrylic paint). Once that was dry I added some random streaks of metallic copper to make them a bit more tonal and natural looking.

 

 

Here is a picture of both wands finished.

 

Just a warning though, if you are like me and have a child who puts everything in their mouths or picks at things then I would avoid adding the swirls etc... the length of the wand. I ended up making another one for Aly because while watching Harry Potter she sat and picked at the swirly parts (without realizing she was doing it) until she ended up peeling some of them off.





Educational fun, and more pretty jars

Tonight we painted popsicle sticks (it would have been much easier to buy the already colored ones but this was more fun) and once they were dry I wrote down some simple words and math problems. Now every day I have Drew pick two popsicle sticks (there are four words or four math problems on each one) and he writes them out, practices sounding out the words and solves the math problems. We have discovered that he has a real talent (and really likes) math.

I added the odd fun word (like zombie, ninja, booger, snot etc...) to keep him amused and a few encouraging prhases like "you are so smart" and "keep up the good work" and one very special one that says "trip for ice cream".

 

 

Of course I needed something special to put these in. I came across some really fun candlesticks (honestly I wasn't looking for them!!) at the thrift store when I was there looking for jars to use for canning. Beside the candle sticks was a shelf full of rose bowls in various sizes and designs so I sat some different candle sticks on top of them until I found the ones I liked the best. I used the glue gun to put them together....

At first I thought that they would be perfect for candles....

But realized that I would never actually use them since I wanted to put them on the built in bookshelf in the living room.

Instead one holds candy and the other has the popsicle sticks.

A very crafty day

Today was a very crafty day at work, because of where I work (group home) we can not have any decorations that can not be bolted down. My co-worker found instructions in an old craft book of hers to make a vase out of an old book. We didn't have any old books on hand and to be honest the thought of cutting up a book to make a craft absolutely horrifies me. Instead we used a pad of construction paper. Admittidly if it had been a full pad of paper it would have ended up looking a lot better.

The instructions to make this are very simple, along the bound edge draw an outline of half of a vase, cut out the shape through all of the pages using an exacto knife, glue the first and last page together. We used the scraps of leftover construction paper to make flowers, they were flopping a bit so we added pipe cleaners to the back of the stems.

And using two old, small, cardboard boxes we made these two vases with construction paper glued on the outside to make these vases.

We also tried origami and I must admit that it was a huge failure even with step by step picture instructions. I remember folding notes into fun shapes and animals in school and making paper cranes, drinking cups, sail boats etc... all with no problem and now I can not make a crane to save my life. I should have taken pictures of the great disaster but I did not. I will be trying it again soon but I will most likely use you tube videos instead of pictures from a book.

Playing with the glue gun

While at Hallmark I saw some cute glasses that they called Hillbilly wine glasses that were really just jars with a handle. While googling them I came across many different pictures, ideas and names for them and discovered that they were easy to make. All you need is a glue gun (although I saw some people used glue made specifically for glass, and no I don't remember the name of that glue since I didn't really pay attention), some candlesticks and jars.

Even though I was intrigued by them I wasn't planning on making any until today when by pure chance while at the thrift store looking for some old Goosebumps books (my kids discovered my sisters old collection of them and have become addicted) I saw three candlesticks and a huge collection of old canning jars.

Not only did I get a lot of the books (for $0.50 each and buy 3 get 1 free) I also managed to make these for under $2.

Before

After

I do have them more spaced out on my desk, I just grouped them together for the picture but they look much nicer than the old plastic basket I was using to hold everything, although I have realized that I am almost out of paper clips lol.

I think that I am going to tint the jars by painting them with a mixture of elmers glue and food coloring so that the pretty designs on the jars are more visible.

Crochet - Filet leaf square - the start of an afghan

Many years ago I bought a pattern off of e-bay planning to make this gorgeous fall blanket, some of the yarn is as old as the pattern. I was disappointed that I paid a fair bit for a pattern that turned out to be nothing more than a chart and a color guide that someone tore out of a book or a magazine. It wasn't even the full pattern.

I do really want this blanket for me it's just that at the time (in 2006) I had just started crocheting again after 10 years (I learned as a child and stopped when I was 12) and my son was a newborn and I wanted to make things for him first. One thing led to another, there was always something to make for someone else, then I learned to knit and well, now I have decided that I am actually going to make this. Don't get me wrong, I will be surprised if I actually finish it this year because it is the time of year when I start to make hats and scarves and slippers so who knows if I will actually work on the blanket?

At any rate here is square #1

The color is not the actual color of the yarn, I really need to start using my camera instead of my phone to take pictures.

Tye Dye Cake

For my Dad's birthday me and the kids made him a tye dyed cake. Since we had enough batter for two cakes, we did a test run with a cake for us first. I wish I had gotten a picture of the finished and then cut cake that we gave him, that one looked a lot better lol. Although there is no picture of it, we used chocolate pudding as the icing and covered it in rainbow sprinkles.

Step 1: Make a white cake batter, seperate into bowls and add food coloring.

Step 2: Pour batter in rings starting in the center of the pan, don't worry the batter spreads and fills the whole pan.

I love how bright the colors were in the uncooked batter, however the next time I do this I will add a lot more food coloring because once cooked the colors are very faded.

Step 3: Take a tooth pick and mix the colors together a bit to give it more of a tye dyed effect.

Step 4: Bake your cake, let it cool ice and enjoy!!

This is what the cake looked like out of the oven and cooked. I really really do wish that I had a picture of the iced one.

I got the original idea for the blog from birdonacake.blogspot.ca it is the post from February 15, 2012 I would link directly to it but my computer is having issues at the moment. The desktop is so old that it really should be retired since having multiple pages opens just about crashes it but I figure that since we have the laptop until the desktop dies, no need to replace it lol.

Painting at work

I was given a picture of pictures that someone thought would look great at work. Having no way to find the originals (although I am taking a wild guess that they came from pinterest since most people that I know lately are obsessed with that site.) I decided to try painting them myself.

To be honest I have very little talent when it comes to drawing or painting but I really like how these turned out.

I raided my kids stash of acrylic paints and used a sponge paintbrush for the background and a random loose brush that was in the bottom of the bag for the tree and birds.

I really like how they turned out unfortunately the colors match nothing at work except my dull beige office that will hopefully be a bright tropical blue soon. I may just end up putting at least one of them up at home.

I really like the second one but I am not sure if I should add something to it or not, a silhouette of a bird, maybe a butterfly? Or just leave it alone? I can't decide so for the moment I am just going to leave it the way that it is.

Flavored water

I have been challenging myself to drink at least 10 cups of water a day because to be honest... My fluid intake used to be more cafeine than anything else. I have been searching for flavored water that I can make myself and so far I have found these two that I really like and they are so easy!

The first one is citrus water, I make it in my to go cup that hold just over 3 cups of water, I take one slice of orange and one slice of lemon, cut into quartes, squeeze the juice into the cup then add the fruit pieces, a tiny drizzle of blue agave nectar, a few ice cubes, fill with water and all done :) occasionally i add a slice of lime but i find the lime makes it a bit bitter.


The second one that is my favorite is cucmber (I thinly slice about half an inch) three mint leaves and a cery thin slice of lime. I only add a drizzle of agave if the lime adds a bitter taste. This drink is very refreshing and perfect after a workout!
 

Crystal Egg Geodes

On Sunday me and the kids wanted to do more of a science project than a craft, we came across THIS from MarthaStewart.com and decided that it looked really neat.

(please note the picture below is the one from the martha stewart website)

Aren't they pretty? Ours did not turn out looking like this and I know exactly why. We did not use enough Alum powder. It is very expensive to buy. A small container here cost $5 and we would have needed four containers to do this project. However we thought that maybe we would get some results with one container.

We gathered all of our supplies

And discovered that blowing out eggs is actually kind of fun and not too messy if you do it over the kitchen sink. Cutting the egg shell in half without it cracking was the hard part. We followed the instructions, and then waited, waited and waited. While waiting we actually researched geodes to find out how they form in nature.

Finally our results.... While we didn't have the nice crystals like in the picture above you can see in the bottom of the egg shell where some crystals were starting to form. If I ever come across alum in bulk or on sale (in theory I don't see why it isn't on sale now, it is the start of canning season here after all) we will try this again to see if we get different results.

Melted Crayon Art and glow in the dark bubbles

Today me and the kids decided that we needed a new craft project so we looked on pinterest and saw some neat pictures done with melted crayons.

Our supplies:
2 large canvases from the dollar store ($1.25 each)
2 boxes of Crayola Crayons from the dollar store ($1.00 each)
a blow dryer
newspaper to put under the canvases
and some black acrylic paint.

We started of by placing the crayons on the canvases then taping them down so they wouldn't slide off then went outside to melt them. We discovered that +45celsius weather before the high humidity means that the crayons don't just melt... within seconds of the the heat outside combined with the blowdryer the crayons liquified. I don't think that all of the melted crayon wax will ever come off of the driveway lol.

The end results were not perfect but the kids are happy and have them hanging in their room.

Once it got dark out we decided to try and make glow in the dark bubbles. This was a complete failure. We made green and blue glowing bubble water, we started off with store bought bubbles and added a bit of liquid dishsoap to make bigger bubbles. The next step was to cut open glow sticks and add it to the bubble solution. This was a complete disaster!! My kitchen glowed blue for a long time, I had to wipe it up with all the lights out so that I could see where all of the glow stick liquid landed when one exploded.

The bubble solution glowed nicely long enough to take a picture but in the three minutes that it took to take a picture, get shoes on and go outside, the glow was already gone. On the plus side the bubbles were huge :)

My lesson learned for the day... read reviews posted on blogs etc... before doing projects like this. Had I read beyond the instructions I would have found a lot of posts saying that this didn't actually work. Or better yet... check pinstrosity.com LOL.