If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

If you do stuff, stuff gets done.......

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

some scenes from last week

My daughter and went to Oklahoma City to do our monthly grocery shopping last week,
Before we went,  I cleaned out our fridge and found some sad looking apples.
So I peeled them, put them in a crockpot with just a little sugar, cinnamon and cloves.
They cooked all day and turned into.....
Apple Butter~
see the yellow lid?  that is from a mustard jar.
Did you know that some peanut butter jar lids and some mustard lids fit perfectly on  standard canning jars?

I did not actually can this apple butter,  just put it in jars and will store it in the fridge until we eat it.  

Gavin helped me make a triple batch of ....

freezer biscuits.  They are even more delicious with apple butter.  

Daughter Nina embellished this tiny onesie for Andie for Easter.
She also did a shirt for Elizabeth.
Nina used her Silhouette machine - I don't know much about them  except Nina makes really cute things with it.  

Isn't this yellow rose pretty?
it bloomed so early, on a $3.97 Aldis rose bush.  


my 3 sweet little Easter Bunny Grandchildren




Friday, April 6, 2012

Do you belong to Kraft First Taste?  
They send out coupons for  new Kraft products a few times a year.  
In March,  they sent me  a free coupon for their new product that is flavored bread crumbs and grated cheese that you mix together to bread meat, then bake it.  

  With the free coupon, I got a package of

 KRAFT FRESH TAKE - CHEESE BREADCRUMB MIX - CHILI LIME & PANKO 

the instructions say it will coat 6 pieces of meat.  I was cooking 4 smallish pieces of chicken so I just used half the bag.  



this is what chicken looks like coated with the cheese and breadcrumbs.  We thought it was delicious and tasted like a restaurant entree.


In fact,  we liked it so much, that I used the second half of that bag the very next night to coat tilapia filets.
It was delicous!

Have you tried any of this Kraft cheese and breadcrumb coating?  it comes in 6 flavors but we have only tried the chili lime one.

Tuesday, April 3, 2012

What Happened?


4 freshly dug up Boxwood bushes on our sidewalk
What happened?  that is the question Gavin and Elizabeth both asked when they got here this morning.  
They aren't used to seeing bushes and so much dirt on our sidewalk.  


There has been a row of boxwood bushes along the front of our house since before we moved here.  
I never have liked them but just got around to doing something about them.  

A woman from our area Facebook FreeCycle group asked for bushes, trees, bulbs, etc to move to her yard.
I asked if she wanted the boxwoods and she does.  
I did not know how hard they would be to dig up. My stepson offered to bring his very large John Deere tractor over to pull them up.
But I like to do things myself so I got a shovel yesterday and tried digging them up.  

I softened the ground with water,  then used more water to wash off the roots once I got them up.  
See - I dug up 4 of them all by myself!  
It was hard, dirty work but doable.  


The lady from FreeCycle is coming over later with her 15 year old son to finish digging them up and to move them to her yard. .    
yea!  
I will be so glad to have these bushes move to a new home.  

After we do some dirt work,  I want to plant KnockOut rose bushes and zinnias where the boxwoods were.  
I think that will be much prettier,  don't you?

Monday, April 2, 2012

hodge podge of weekend pictures

our backyard garden
tomato and pepper plants doing fine
seeds for herbs, lettuce, cukes and squash - not yet sprouting

start at composting
if we are going to garden, we need compost and Jeff is reseaching ways to "cook" it in the backyard.
in the meantime, I got a big bowl from the junk pile waiting for the yard sale, and put the weekend scraps in it
peels from veggies and eggs and coffee grounds
starting somewhere!

bread
mixed in the bread machine and baked in 2 Pyrex pans
watching your son being a really really good daddy
priceless!



Baby Andie getting posed in Grandpa Jeff's Stetson
on the left is photographer Emily and Sheena -
Emily took 400+ shots of Andie and her parents
she posted one on FB and it was wonderful - I can hardly wait to see the rest  

some more of the photo shoot props
fun tutus, hair bows, outfits!

Nina brought over baby things that Elizabeth had outgrown to pass on  to Cousin Andie
Elizabeth wanted to take everything out of the tubs and show it all to Sheena in the driveway.
See her handing off so much stuff that Sheena can hardly hold it?


I've got a dirty house after a very fun weekend.  So I am off  to work on that for now.
hope you all had a fun weekend too!

Sunday, April 1, 2012

toddler towels inspired by Pinterest



Gavin and Elizabeth have outgrown their baby hooded bath towels.  I've been looking around at tutorials and found this one and Nina liked it too.  She got the bright colored towels at Target and I sewed them up.  They sewed up fast but these towels turned out too too big for an almost 2 year old and a 3 year old.  


I was in Walmart looking at their towels, looking for smaller bath towels but did not find any.  I did find this inexpensive beach towel and decided to give it a try.    It is narrow enough,  just 27 inches but had more length needed.
My toddlers were not here when I was sewing so I used a long sleeve shirt that is a size bigger than Gavin to measure how long to cut the beach towel.  I cut off about 15 inches from the 58 inch length,  leaving the body of the towel about 43 inches.
From the 15 length strip,  I had plenty to make the hood and the 2 triangle pockets for the hands.
I used white thread that blended it really well,  and a zig zag stitch to seal up some of  the raw edges, others got turned under twice and then zig zagged,  There was a even a square of towel left to make a small wash cloth.

I could of cut the top of the hood straight but I cut it n the diagonal.  I think the point looks sort of cute and elf like.  But Nina said it reminder her of a KKK hood - but those guys don't wear sunshine yellow stripes, do they?

Here is Gavin modeling the new towel.  He liked it very much and Elizabeth did too, she was here at a different time and I did not get her picture.

So,  I will be buying several more beach towels to sew up more hooded towels to have here and their own homes.    I think they will be nice for bath time and after a swim in the wading pool.
This striped beach towel comes in several colors - I think there was a hot pink, grass green,  bright blue too - and they sell for $3.97.