Hello Again

This week I did something a little crazy.  Even though I have about 3 bushels of apples in my house right now, and tomatoes to be made into salsa, I decided to craft!

I love Pinterest, and I have been seeing so many fun projects that are a combination of candlesticks and mason jars to make cute containers, or candle sticks and platters to make cake stands that I decided it was time to do a little experimenting.  I saw someone once use glass candle holders to make the cutest pumpkins.  She used vinyl for the face, and then filled the containers with orange marbles.  So cute!  Well, what can I say?  I like food a lot more than I like marbles, so I decided to try a variation of that with cute Halloween candy.  And then I thought, why not put the glass bowls on top of some fun candlesticks?  Here's what I came up with:

What do you think?  I'm really happy with how these turned out.  Of coarse, my little pumpkin would look better if I had been able to find the candy corn M & M's like I wanted, but that's another story.  All of the supplies were purchased at Hobby Lobby.  To make them you will need:

• Large glass bowl (from the floral department)

• Small glass bowl (this one was in the candle department)

• Large glass candlestick

• Small glass candlestick

• Lid - also from the candle department (normally used as a base for a pillar candle).  It's not a really secure fit, but it works

• Black tulle ribbon

• Super incredibly strong glue that is intended for gluing glass.  There are a number of adhesives that would probably do the job.  I picked one called Omni-Stick because it dries clear and becomes dishwasher safe.  

• Black vinyl cut into jack-o-lantern shapes.  I used some Snapdragon Snippets designs from the Silhouette online store

 And here's where they are on display in my kitchen.

And here's what is below:

I have about 3 bushels of apples in my kitchen right now (this is not all of them).  So far I have made 32 quarts of applesauce, 7 quarts of apple pie filling, and dried a lot of apples too.  Today I thought I would experiment with my juicer:

So we'll see how that turns out.  The rest of the apples are going to be turned into cider.  A friend in our neighborhood has a cider press and has been kind enough to let us use it.  I'll take pictures and post later on that.  Oh, and all of this is coming from two apple trees.  Ya, just two.  It's been a good year for apples.

Random Ramblings

It has been a long, HOT summer!  I'm sorry that I have been M.I.A., but as much as I love creating I love my family more.  On that note, for those of you who are fans of My Pink Stamper, she made a very important announcement recently.  I can relate all too well to her feelings and applaud her for her decision.

Where does that leave me?  It's very liberating actually.  I truly loved being a Pink Designer, but I tend to have tunnel vision when I'm working with a particular company.  If a product doesn't work or can't be used with the products I'm demonstrating, I disregard them.  I was a demonstrator for a stamp company for about 7 years and I had the same experience.  So now it's like I get a fresh start!  And I enjoy so much more than papercrafting!

I have been doing a little:

followed by a little:

So far I have bottle peaches, made peach jam, dried peaches, lots of peach cobbler, and today I think I may make some peach salsa!  I do a lot of canning.

I've also been doing:

My tomato plants are usually prettier than this.  It's been HOT and dry this summer.














followed by a little:

OK - the picture was of tomatoes, and this is tomatillo salsa, but you get the idea.  The tomatoes aren't ready yet!

And there has been a lot of this:

I didn't know it was possible to produce this much laundry!  During the summer you wear less clothes, right?  Who know that all that swimming could produce so much laundry?

Soon I will be doing a lot of:

 Concord grape juice or jelly anyone?


















After that, it won't be long before we'll be enjoying:

Can you see my "Casper" pumpkin hiding in there?  We have the most amazing pumpkin patch ever.  Apparently it's a good idea to plant your pumpkins where the compost used to be.  The Great Pumpkin is definitely coming to our house this year!  ;-)

Last but not least, now that school has started, I hope to soon be doing more of:

I think it's really important to have a creative outlet.  I love to work with my hands and there are so many crafty/homey things that I enjoy that I could probably putter around all day from one thing to the other.  But I have 3 children, the youngest of whom is 5, and they are my top priority.  That said, I also think it's extremely important that we, as women, spend time doing things we love - preferably while spending time with other women.  We need each other!  Honestly, I'm really bad at that part.  I love being with my friends, but it's far to easy to get so busy with life and the family's needs that you completely forget your own.  My goal over the next few months is to reestablish my priorities, find peace and joy in my family and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and invest some time in making a better me.

Pinterest Success

Any other Pinterest addicts out there?  I don't know if I have quite reached addict stage yet (yet!) but I really enjoy checking out all the latest pins from my friends and family.  Who would have thought that a website that is just pictures could be so fun and so inspiring!  You have to be a little bit careful though, especially when it comes to trying recipes.  I once saw a pin for "edible glitter", that when you clicked through to the original website, it was actually a recipe for non-toxic glitter - made from salt!  Ack!

I have had a few success stories though.  Most recently I tried this:

What is refrigerator oatmeal?  Personally, I would call this more of a muesli.  The end result is YUM-E!  I have three growing children, two of which are tween girls that are eating me out of house and home.  We've kind of been a cold cereal family.  I grew up eating cold cereal, I like cold cereal, my family likes cold cereal, and cold cereal (if you get the good stuff) can be fairly healthy.  It's darned expensive though, especially when your family is eating two bowls of the stuff.  These really are as yummy as they look, and fairly inexpensive to make - especially if you make your own yogurt, which I do.  The only suggestion that I would make, is if you try the Banana Cocoa version, I would use (maybe) 1 tsp of cocoa instead of the 1 tbsp.  I think my favorite is the blueberry maple.  My family likes them too.  Well, except for maybe my husband.  He thinks I'm trying to kill him when I make anything healthy for him.  I think the chia seeds were a little too much for him to think about...

I got one!

Hee hee!  I joined in the insanity last night and went to my local Wal-Mart to see if I could get one of the Cricut Expressions that they had advertised.  Do you want to know how badly I wanted one?  I arrived at the Wal-Mart at about 9:50 pm, and sat down by the pallet where they had all the Cricuts and cartridges bundled up and stayed there for the two hours until the craziness began.  You know, if you can look past all the insanity and the bad that these sales can bring out in people, it can actually be kind of fun while you're waiting!  I got to visit with some really nice people, answer a lot of their questions about the Cricut, and I found a great local source for cheap Cricut cartridges.  Of the five of us that were there first we had it all planned out how we were going to help each other get the colors we wanted.  And I think the one dad in the crowd was glad to have people there who knew what they were talking about to help him know what to get for his daughter.

One of the girls I was standing there waiting with kept asking, "How are we going to know when it's time?"  I just told her, "Trust me, you'll know.  Just wait - when it gets close to midnight some customer is going to decide when it's close enough and will start grabbing and it will start a chain reaction."

Yep, that's exactly what happened.

By the way - there are still Cricut Expressions available online for the same price as they had in the stores.  Check them out here:  yellow, green, aqua, and plum - the price is up to $225 now though. 

Oh, and did I mention I'm not allowed to play with my Expression yet?  I have to wait until Christmas...  :-(

Sorry, I haven't disappeared

Sorry, I haven't disappeared!  I have been extremely busy lately with a number of projects:

• Bringing in the harvest - you'll see from some of my older posts that I have a fairly productive garden and like to can jams, salsa, and fruit.  It hasn't been quite as busy this year because a lot of my garden has been eaten by this:

 Yes, that would be an enormous buck that my husband shot (with the camera) that makes a salad bar of my garden.  I am not a violent person, but I am having very violent thoughts towards this deer...

• I taught my first Cricut class last week at Joann - you wouldn't think that would require a lot of preparation since I love my Cricut and am fairly savvy, but it did.  And it was preparation that didn't require a lot of crafting, unfortunately.
• And to top it all off, I had a near death experience last week!  I went for my weekly allergy shots, only to end up in anaphylaxis, needing epinephrine and a visit from the paramedic.  Great fun!

I need to get crafting again though, so there will be some new creative posts soon.  I promise!

A little word on domesticity

I was curious to see what definitions I would find if I googled "domesticity".  One of the definitions was, "A house servant; a maid," which made me chuckle because it certainly feels that way sometimes.  My favorite definition was, "Affection for the home and its material comforts."  There is just something very satisfying about creating things that add to the material comforts of your home, isn't there? 

I am in heaven right now because I am experiencing domestic life at it's best.  My parents are visiting from out of town and we are busy with outings and just spending time together as a family.  I love it.  I haven't had a lot of time to sit down and create but I have been enjoying teaching my mom a little about how to use her Cricut - and now I want an Expression even more!

Gourmet Goodies

It seems that as soon as school is out my children decide it's time to set up a lemonade or Kool-Aid stand.  It's one of those things that I remember doing as a child, and now I find myself wondering why my parents let me!  The way my mind works is, if you want to earn some money you need to be selling something that people will actually want to buy.  So once in a while, during a moment of insanity, I agree to make something that my children can sell to earn some extra money.  It's actually a good way to teach the kids a little economics with the cost of supplies, the time it takes to make things, how much to charge, etc.  With Father's Day coming up on Sunday, I naturally thought:  food.  So this is what we have made so far:  homemade caramel and chocolate dipped pretzel rods, and chocolate dipped rice krispies.  We're going to wrap them up in cellophane, complete with ribbon, and of coarse a cute tag!  What's next?  Homemade marshmallows.  I've never made those before, so stay tuned!

Wow, what a milestone!  I've reached the 1000 visits mark since I started a counter a couple of months ago.  Thank you for looking at my blog!

There is a lot of domesticity going on at my house at the moment.  The children are out of school, DH is done traveling for a little while, and we are finally starting to see some summer weather here.  I think I could spend a month in my yard and there would still be work to be done!  I love veggie gardening, in fact, we planted our garden on Memorial Day and we are already seeing sprouts!  It's so fun to take the children out into the yard and see their excitement when they see the seeds that they planted starting to pop out of the ground.

I also made soap last week.  I learned how to make soap a few years ago for my mother-in-law so she could have fragrance free soap.  I don't get to make it very often because it's not a very kid-friendly process and I only like to do it when I won't have children underfoot, which is pretty much never.  I'll post separately about the soap later this week.

I have also had some craft room time, miraculously!  It was time to pay the piano teacher again (she let's me pay her in cards, bless her heart) so I have been creating to my heart's content.  It's just a sacrifice that I make...  ;-)

I have finally been able to spend some quality time with my Preserves cartridge that I was so excited about getting.  

and my personal favorite:

Market Day Follow-Up

I was somewhat amazed this morning when I went with my daughter to school to help her set up her little booth in the gymnasium so she could participate in Market Day.  You would be surprised how many people own those miniature theater popcorn poppers!  My daughter's fears were confirmed in that most of the items for sale were food:  popcorn, soda, chocolate, candy, and then the more creative Killer Krispies (gourmet rice krispy treats), and decorate your own cupcake booths.  But there was also a good assortment of adorable homemade magnets, flower headbands, flower clips, and tie-dye items.

The Capri-Sun items were a hit - we should have made more.  She sold out within 5 minutes!  The parents were asked to leave before they were able to start their buying and selling, but apparently she had a line as soon as the selling began.  She made over $2000, sold out, and then had the rest of the time to buy, buy buy!  And she did!  I got a phone call when school was out asking for me to pick her up because she was having trouble carrying all her loot!

I don't know that the experience translates well into the real world with the inflated cost of items, but it was a fun experience for her.  Last year we sold Capri Sun purses at the annual town summer carnival, or should I say, we tried.  For those of you not familiar with the culture in Utah, it's a pretty crafty place.  The trouble with selling handmade items is most of the people who walk by your booth are there shopping for ideas more than anything else.  We may give it one more try though, now that we have expanded our repertoire!

Go Jamie!

This is going to be a departure from all the papercrafting I have been posting recently.  I have a passion for papercrafting, but there are many other things I feel passionate about.  With 3 young children this is something that hits close to home. 

When I first started seeing commercials for Jamie Oliver's Food Revolution, I immediately thought that was a program that I needed to watch.  But I kept forgetting!  So finally I remembered to program it into the DVR and I was able to watch a couple of episodes Sunday evening.  All I can say is, bless that man!  He isn't saying anything different than what nutritionists and other health professionals have been saying for years.  If it takes a celebrity to get people and excited and motivated about eating a more healthy diet, then I say go for it!

I generally pack a lunch for my girls, for a few reasons.  First, because it's cheaper.  Second, because it's better for them, and last because my oldest daughter quite literally gets sick every time she eats school lunch.  I figured the reason she got sick was because she isn't used to eating processed foods, but I didn't really fully understand until I went to the school and joined my girls for school lunch one day.  Corn dogs and "potato wedges" (code for:  we don't want to call them french fries) were on the menu that day.  I won't go into the details of how revolting the food was, but suffice it to say, the only time my daughters will be eating school lunch from now on is in the case of dire emergency.

School lunch, generally, consists of processed, preservative laden, reheated garbage.  And it proves just how mixed up people are in what they think is healthy eating.  A few years ago I worked in an industry where I frequently had the opportunity to talk to people about their diets.  I remember one conversation that I had with a mother who's child was struggling with constipation.  I asked the mother how many fruits and vegetables the child ate.  Her response?  "She usually eats a salad with her school lunch."  First of all, it's highly unlikely that the child ate the salad.  Secondly, the salad was probably made with iceberg lettuce which is almost entirely water.  On one episode of Food Revolution, the head of food services gave Jamie a hard time for not having enough veggies out for the kids.  So what did she put out?  French fries!!!!  There are a lot of foods that people consider "vegetables" that only marginally qualify - potatoes, corn, and even carrots are mostly carbohydrate.

I digress...

Here's where I have a confession to make.  I like food.  I wish I was one of those lucky people for whom food is fuel.  But I'm not.  I like good food, and I like to feel good about what I am eating so I try very hard to cook good meals for my family - generally from scratch.  I bake my own bread, I can make my own yogurt, and I can honestly say that we eat a lot of vegetables - especially in the summertime when the garden is producing.  I am not stick skinny, and probably never will be, but we eat well in this household, with rare exceptions.  My children eat brown rice regularly, like tofu, like vegetables and it's all because they have had the opportunity to develop a liking for these foods.  Do we ever eat sugar and junk food?  You bet!  I think those things are there to be enjoyed, but only occasionally.

The benefits of preparing a meal go far beyond good nutrition too.  There is just something nurturing and healing about preparing good food.  It can bring your family together too.  If you agree that eating habits need to change, go and sign the petition so this revolution can move forward!

Laundry rant

Where do you fold your laundry?  Do you fold each load as it is done on top of your completely clear dryer surface?  Do you have a counter in your laundry room?  Or are you one of the millions of people who dumps all the clean loads of laundry on top of your bed, with the best of intentions to fold it all that day, only to end up with an enormous pile of clean laundry on the floor at the foot of your bed?  I mean, a person needs a place to sleep at night, after all.  OK - so maybe there aren't millions of people who do that, and I'M NOT ADMITTING ANYTHING!  Especially considering that I have a really nice laundry/craft room that just happens to be leaning more towards the crafting function and is a little cluttered at the moment.  I mean, hypothetically...

This morning when I woke up I honestly looked at the pile of laundry, and turned to my husband and sighed, "The laundry fairies didn't come last night."  Well this afternoon, I finally broke down and started folding the laundry.  I could not believe what I found!  I usually toss the socks aside as I am folding with the intent of folding them later.  What did I find in my pile of clean socks?  Dirty ones!  And I know how it happened too.

1. Nameless child comes to laundry room and gets a new pair of socks.
2. Child proceeds to take off dirty socks, and leaves them on laundry room floor.
3. Child puts on clean socks.
4. Various family members come in to laundry room, find socks on the floor, and add them to the laundry basket full of (clean) socks.

It's my fault really.  If I kept the socks folded and put away, they could leave the dirty socks on their bedroom floor instead.  Honestly, this is right up there with finding clean, folded, laundry in the dirty laundry basket because they didn't feel like putting the clothes away in their closet/dresser.  OR my personal favorite, all the garbage I find on the floor around the empty trash can in their room and bathroom.  Is it any wonder that some animals eat their young?

I'm surrounded!

My entire family is sick!  And it's no wonder.  My daughters were in a musical at school two weeks ago that they had had early morning practices for since January.  And despite my best efforts, they weren't terribly cooperative about going to bed early during this time.  They made it through the week of performances and BAM!  They both got sick with a really bad cold.  My husband, brilliant musician that he is, was doing the percussion for the musical and I don't know if it was the fact that he was surrounded by kids, or the change in his schedule, or what but he got it too.  And then, of coarse, the inevitable happened and my 3 year old little guy got sick - probably the worst of everyone.  You can wash their hands, sanitize every surface, give them their vitamins and they still get sick.  I love my children, but they really are just walking cesspools.

As a mom isn't it always the case that when you're family is sick, you get up with them, wipe their noses, get them medicine, etc., only to wear yourself down to the point that you finally succumb and get sick the worst of everyone?  I haven't had a cold/flu since last July (knock on wood)!  I have had probably the healthiest winter I have ever had which is for one of two reasons.  Either it is because I got sick so many times last year that I am immune to all the bugs out there this year, or because I got a flu shot for the first time last fall.  Either way, I will get a flu shot every year from now on, and I DON'T WANT TO GET SICK!!  Help!

There are some advantages though, I suppose.  Because he's been sick my 3 year old has been napping in the afternoon, which normally happens sporadically at best.  So I have had a little time to play in the craft room.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE the colors in the strawberry card.  This was made using, once again, Stampendous stamps - specifically Fresh Fruit. 

 

And this little bunny was made using the Penny Black set called Garden Friends.

 

A day in the life of a 3 year old

Domestic life these days consists of potty training my almost 3 year old.  My philosophy on potty training is wait until they have been waking up dry for a few months, and then bribe them with sugar.  It sure is working for this little guy.  Yesterday was a constant cycle of going potty, getting a treat, eating said treat, and then immediately squeezing out another drop and the cycle would start all over again.  I eventually had to go out and buy a bad of M & M's that I could divvy out 2-3 at a time so he won't completely rot out his teeth or die of the sugar high.  He definitely has the plumbing all figured out, we just need to work on making going to the bathroom a priority when his sisters get home from school and he's having too much fun to bother.  He's learning a lot in the process too.  I get a frequent run down on who the boys are in the family, and who the girls are.  This morning as we were gettling bundled up in preparation for some snow shovelling he gave me a big hug and said, "Mommy, you're such a cute grirl (girl)!"  Ah, the joys of motherhood!

Isn't he stylin' in his Cars underwear?  You wouldn't believe how hard it was to get a G-rated picture of him though!

The moral of the story

In a few weeks I will be celebrating my 14th wedding anniversary.  I remember how excited I was when I was registering for wedding gifts at ZCMI.  It was so fun to be picking colors and designs and patterns and planning how I would like to decorate my home.  Then came the reality that getting married just after Christmas, away from most of my friends and family no less, means getting the shaft when it comes to wedding presents.  Sorry, that probably sounds really cynical and selfish - I guess because it's true...

Then came the reality that my tastes have changed quite a bit from the 22 year old, still in college, 90's bride that I was with lots of jewel tones like forest green, burgundy, and navy blue in my color palette.

Next comes children.  Need I say more?  I didn't have that much in the way of nice furniture, housewares and such to begin with, but what little I had quickly got trashed - some literally, some figuratively.  Case in point:  I have always liked Dansk dinnerware and flatware.  I find it to be simple and elegant with clean lines and, for the most part, tasteful colors.  I had had my eye on a flatware pattern called Solara, but at almost almost $30 for a 5 piece place setting it was a little out of my price range.  Imagine my delight when a few years ago while I was perusing Costco (after all, all things good come from Costco) and happened upon a 45 piece Dansk 18/10 dinnerware set for around $50 that was very similar to Solara.  I love having a spoon that I can scoop ice cream with!  It was all fine and good until I started noticing that pieces were disappearing.  In fact, you might say that I had an out of body experience when I realized that pieces were missing.  I went a little crazy....

Which brings me to the reason for my rambling.  My mother suggested that I try a company called Replacements.com.  After much searching I found my pattern, and would have purchased from them had it not been for Ebay.  I love Ebay!  It just so happened that I found a couple of sellers who had the pieces that I needed and voila!  I'm back to a complete set.  It cost me almost as much for the replacements as it did for the entire set, but that's beside the point.

The moral of the story is, don't let your children clear the table if you're using your good quality flatware.

Domestic Bliss?

Thank you flickr

So, what do I do when it's my week to blog about the joys of domestic life but I'm not really feeling it?


I'm such an all or nothing person. Sometimes I'm really domestic and organized with my lists and meals planned out and at other times, I do nothing. Like this past week. I left the dishes in the sink. We ate out twice because the dinner hour was too fast approaching and I had made no preparations. There's dust everywhere in the house because of our recent remodeling project. And what do I want to do about it? Read my book. And maybe play around in my sewing room (I guess that's sort of domestic) or watch season 5 of Project Runway (I'm pretty sure that's domestic too).



So that's how it is. The good news is, it's only 3:15 pm here. I still have time to redeem myself. Maybe I'll go fix dinner....

or read my book.