365: March 29

Aaron picks up about 12 pounds of Lego off of the playroom floor.

365: March 28

Our Crepe Myrtle tree in the front yard. It has exploded with flowers in the last few days.

365: March 27

Aaron climbs the rock wall at the Spring Fling at school. He was up there just like a little bug!

365: March 26

Max is packing up for a Scout weekend. Sometimes I wish that I could enclose my entire life neatly in a zip lock!

365: March 25

Fiona!

365: March 24

Through our front window…………………

365: March 23

Chocolate Chip Pancakes

Once a week, we have breakfast for dinner. (BFD) Here is a kid friendly, fairly healthy recipe for pancakes for you. I pulled this one from either Parents Magazine or Parenting Magazine about 7 years ago. The chocolate chips are my addition! I’ve tried several other pancake recipes, but always go back to this one. It doesn’t taste funny if you overmix it, always helpful.

3 eggs

1/2 C sugar (you can cut this down to 1/4 C if you want to)

1/2 C canola oil

1 1/2 C flour (I use whole wheat)

1 T baking powder

1/4 t salt

1 C milk

1/2 C mini chocolate chips

 

Combine eggs, oil and sugar. Add dry ingredients except for chocolate chips. Heat a non-stick pan over medium high heat. Drop pancakes in to pan and immediately sprinkle with chocolate chips. Cook until the bubbles start to pop and then flip.

 

We serve these with a fruit smoothie for a complete meal.

 

Fruit Smoothie

1 C yogurt of your choice

1/2 C juice of your choice

1 C frozen fruit of your choice

 

Blend in a blender and enjoy. Leftover smoothie can be put in to popsicle molds and frozen.

365: March 22

I had to lay on the street to take this photo of a single daffodil by our mailbox. I almost gave a neighbor a heart attack as she turned the corner! We’ve got snow flurries today after it was 74 degrees on Saturday!

365:March 21

Max and Aaron assemble the Life game from Christmas.

365: March 20

Making funnel cakes from a recipe on Tasty Kitchen. The electric skillet gets the oil to the proper temperature without needing a thermometer. The batter is drizzled in to the pan with the squeezy bottle.

365: March 19

I watched Paula Dean make deviled eggs the other day. I didn’t have an egg plate. I found this at a thrift store. It make me smile at the cost of $1.00! Go me. :)

365: March 18

See that? Open window. On March 18!

365: March 17

Mmmmm! Reubens on the panini maker!

365: March 16

365: March 15

A tufted titmouse on my feeder!

365: March 14

One of the neighbors hired a limo for a concert. Our boys ended up getting a ride!

Mama’s Potato Salad

This stuff is so good that I have to prevent myself from standing by the fridge and eating it out of the serving container with a soup spoon!  This recipe is from the Betty Crocker cookbook. The secret to good potato salad is cooking the potatoes BEFORE you peel and chop them. It is easy to overcook them if you do it the other way.

Sauce

1 1/2 C mayo (Please NO miracle whip)

1 T  yellow mustard

1 T  white vinegar

1 scant t salt

1/4 t pepper

 

salad

6 medium potatoes

3 stalks celery, chopped

1 medium onion diced

4 hard boiled eggs, diced

 

Scrub the potatoes and poke a few holes in them with a sharp knife. Put in to a pot of water and bring them to a boil, reduce heat and simmer 15 to 20 minutes.  While they are cooking, mix up the sauce and chop the celery, egg, and onion.

After the potatoes are cooked, drain off the hot water and cover the potatoes with cold water. Using a paring knife, peel the potatoes. The skin will come off easily. Cut the potatoes in to bite sized pieces. Add the rest of the ingredients and then add the sauce. Refrigerate to mingle the flavors.

365: March 13

Spring cleaning being done by fits and starts. Today I washed the small vase collection from the top of the fridge. The chip can is a duplicate of the one that my mom had when I was a kid. We used to take the can to the grocery store and they would re-fill it for a quarter. I found this one in a thrift store in Ontario for $2.00. It was pretty grimy so I washed it as well.

365: March 12

This is the door to the basement. The boys leave this door open just like the toilet seats are left up. Drives me batty. Close the door so I don’t have to listen to the constant sound of gunfire from the XBox!

365: March 11

Those cows show up every where. This one seems to want to go on a ride in Fiona with the top down. Doesn’t she know that it is raining?

12 of 12 March 2010

 Kit is from Digital Scrap Cafe. It was a 3 part mini, but had no name! Not sure how to tell you how to find it. The designers are pure creativity designs and Brooke Nelson of  Scrap with Brooke.
The font used is Ariel Rounded MT Bold, a standard font.

Journaling: left hand page:  
6:42 a.m.- Aaron warms milk for his morning hot chocolate, 6:43 a.m.- self sufficient child means I can check email quickly, 7:08 a.m.- bus is here!, 11:13 a.m.- hay blowing machine- never seen one of those!, 11:19 a.m.- gas up to $2.63- 20 cents lower at the other Kroger--I guess you pay for the neighborhood,  11:46 a.m.- grocery store- personal sized watermelon--mmmmm!

Journaling: right hand page: 
5:18 p.m.-Aaron in Tae Kwon Do class, 6:36 p.m.-chocolate chip waffles for dinner, 8:13 p.m.- both dogs settle in for Mama love as we watch "Who Do You Think You Are? on T.V., 10:17 p.m.-books and magazines on my bedside table, 10:17 p.m.- Craig escaped for a virtual guitar lesson, 10:18 p.m.- Max watches Ghost Hunters, asking me to lock all the doors!

Grandma's House

Do you enjoy the Pioneer Woman? I love her stories. Today she linked to a story she had written about her Ga-Ga's house. It seems that Ga-Ga is moving out of her home to live with her daughter. Ree walked around and took photos of the inside of the house. There are pictures of the couch and the kitchen and the peaches within. That story is on her blog along with those photos. When her kids grow up, they will have access to those memories.

I am so glad that I am here to document things with my camera and then in my scrapbooks. While I remember all of the clocks in my grandmother's home, I do not have photos of those memories. It's possible that they exist, but I have not unearthed them now. Take a minute today and photograph those seemingly mundane things in your life. Do you always have Oreos in your cookie jar? Do you still sleep with the blanket that was on your bed in college? Is your marching band jacket still in your closet? (theater geek married to a band geek here!) Document, document, document. Write those stories down. Get out and take a photo of your child's school. Someone will be grateful down the road.

Stay tuned for 12 of 12!

365:March 10

Bailey settles in for his afternoon nap with his Cuddle Pup toy.

365: March 9

Aaron started Tai Kwon Do last month and loves it.

365: March 8

365: March 7

Time to put away the Valentine Spud and haul out the Easter ones!

365: March 6

A fun day of scrapbooking was had today!

365: March 5

Score! New dining room furniture at a consignment store. :)

Musings upon recipes and scrapbooking

Did you go and check out some of the recipes from the carnival? I did! I noticed a commonality among most of the posts. I got some new recipes, but I also got a good dose of storytelling. This got me thinking. (I know, steam coming from my ears!) Quite a few of the bloggers participating in this carnival are scrapbookers. We do like to tell a good story!

I have found that my blog is helpful when I am ready to tell my story. I can go back and see which photos I need as well as my journaling directly from my blog. Cut, paste. Easy Peasy. (say it with me, “pumpkin squeasy”, which makes me think of pumpkin bars, but I digress) I do think that I’ll be posting more recipes. I am ready to start a cookbook. If I post the recipes, then I am forced to either snap a photo or go dig one out of the photo archive on my hard drive. If I have to take a photo, then I have to cook. Mission accomplished all the way around! 

So, stay tuned. More coming.

Too tired to cook, would rather read instead!

I’ve joined in a new recipe blog. Today, I am feeling too tired to cook. Most days I’m all about the home cooked meal, but I am wiped out today. I’m declaring it officially all right to give your children a bowl of cereal if you all sit down together to eat it! Add a fruit smoothie made with yogurt and frozen fruit to round it out.

So, go check out some new recipes here. Once again, the power of the girlfriends will save the day! Have a great read and I’ll be back tomorrow with more 365 photos!

Brownie recipes

I discovered a new brownie recipe a few years ago and my friends all refer to it as “momto’s brownie recipe”. (a variation of my on-line moniker on my scrapbook board) This recipe is from the Hershey’s website. Do not substitute Hershey’s Dark Chocolate powder- didn’t work.

Deep Dish Brownies

3/4 C butter or margarine, melted

1  1/2 C sugar

1  1/2 t vanilla (run it over)

3 eggs

3/4 C flour

1/2 C Hershey’s cocoa

1/2 t baking powder

1/2 t salt

1. Heat oven to 350, if using a metal pan, grease it, no need to grease seasoned stoneware

2. Combine butter, sugar and vanilla in a large batter bowl. Add eggs and mix well. Combine dry ingredients and add to egg mixture, stirring well. Spread batter evenly in to 9 by 9 pan.

3. Bake 40 minutes and remove the pan. Cut in to bars after cooling. (or eat from pan with a spoon)

If you really want brownies, but don’t want them slathered on to your thighs, try the next recipe. I cut these and wrap them individually to keep me from eating the deep dish ones.

Low fat/low cal brownies

 

1/3 C margarine

1/2 C sugar

1/4 C light corn syrup

2 t vanilla

1 egg

1 egg white

1/3 C cocoa

1/2 C flour

Preheat oven to 350, spray 8 by 8 inch pan with cooking spray (no need for this if using square Pampered Chef stoneware pan!). In a large batter bowl, cream margarine and sugar. Add corn syrup, vanilla, egg and egg white, mixing until blended. Combine flour and cocoa, adding to wet ingredients. Pour batter in to the pan.

Bake for 25-30 minutes, cut into 16 squares.

Calories: 119, fat 6 g, cholesterol 13 mg, carbs- 14 grams, sodium—67 mg

365 March 4

Max grabbed the camera to shoot this photo this morning. Typical of early in the day. I’m reading blogs and the pups are bookended on each side. I have to sit Dan on my left side because he sits so close to me that I can’t use the mouse.

365: March 3

The nightly wrestle on the floor. Even the dogs get into it!

365: March 2

This folks, is not what I signed up for! Snow! School let out early and was delayed by 2 hours the next day. The only one happy about it? Bailey the dawg. He loves to roll in the snow. ;)

Back to 365

March 1

Max hanging with his Dad watching TV.