Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Too busy

to write a decent post that is. So just a quick update, & that will have to do for now. I got my temple recommend :) & now we're making plans to go & be sealed as a family, exciting! I've had some kind of sinus infection or something & the kids have had runny noses. Emma thinks if life doesn't happen exactly according to her wishes that it requires screaming, we're working on that. I have baking I've been meaning to get around to & errands to run. Oh & somewhere in all this I need to get around to eating breakfast, hmmm... I think I'll go do that now.

Monday, July 13, 2009

ISLAGIATT (pronounced is-lah-gee-aht)

It Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time, my dad came up with the acronym (or whatever you want to call it). And it did seem like a good idea at the time, create a blog & write updates regularly-no big deal, easy. WRONG. Exactly where in my life am I supposed to find time to write a creative & well edited post about my family & life? For instance, right now I'm sitting at the table while my two year old eats her cereal which consists of a milky fistful of cheerios stuffed in her mouth while she draws with the spoon on the table. She actually does quite well using a spoon, fork & knife but sometimes nothing will get her to use them, instead opting to shovel food by the fistful in to her mouth (she has wonderful manners when she chooses to use them). So after the half hour to an hour it takes to consume breakfast then its time to get dressed. Me, I can throw on any old shirt & a pair of jeans, five minutes. Emma, half a dozen dresses & 20 minutes later we might actually have made a choice (it will take that long anyway to get her dressed so why not let her pick out what she wants to wear & avoid the screaming). Somewhere in all of this Liam will wake up & he will be hungry, very hungry. So we might actually walk out the door by 10 am to do all the errands that need accomplishing now that we fixed the car (trying to repair your own car & keep an eye on 2 kids requires ingenuity, take the car seats out of the car & strap the kids in them on the lawn. More on that later). So once we're actually in the car its off to the grocery store(s), library, to find shoes for Liam, a stop by the church bookstore to look at temple dresses (soon, very soon we will be going to the temple to have our family sealed), probably grab lunch on the run somewhere along the way, & the kids may or may not get a nap (that always makes for a more interesting day). Once we get back home its time to make banana & zucchini bread (separate loafs, that would be an odd combination), fix dinner, family home evening, get the kids in bed absolutely no later than 8 pm, & then finally relax. Of course at some point during the day something will probably go awry.

And that's all I have time for folks, Emma's done eating breakfast, Liam is still sleeping :) *correction: Liam just woke up, I didn't get enough sleep last night (my own fault) & we're off to attack our day. Wish me luck, its already starting to get a little crazy.

Friday, July 10, 2009

Don't drink, don't smoke, What do ya do? (sorry, I've been singing that for 2 days & its stuck in my head)

Home canning, this year I have made my first foray in to home canning with relative success. Armies of apricots marched on to the chopping block to the beat of my domestic drum, pitted, halved, packed with juice they were canned in to 13 quarts of golden, delicious, summer.

Chopped & simmered, lightly flavor with a tiny dash of spice, they were jammed (only it came out more like syrup but it is still absolutely heavenly).

Pureed & boiled, then poured on to baking sheets & dried making a scrumptious fruit leather. Yet more halves, in to the dehydrator they went, resulting in luscious dried apricots good for snacking on.



I tried my hand at pressure canning meat, only 2 quarts just in case I didn't get it right. One sealed beautifully & now the chicken is sitting on my shelf awaiting whatever recipe it may become, the other didn't seal & was soon made in to a lovely enchilada pie.

I'm converted to the joys of home canning, I shall never buy canned goods again (well, not quite, but a girl can dream).

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Its beautiful

If I do say so myself. I found a handy dandy little tutorial with some HTML script to copy & paste so I could make the background of my blog be this lovely cherry blossom pic that I photoshopped with paint.NET (a lovely FREE :) photoshop copycat).

Friday, July 3, 2009

Monkey Mama

I am in the process of making another monkey, this time a boy monkey. I found the original pattern at mmmcrafts which I used to make Emma's monkey.




So now its back to the sewing machine :-)