Friday Treat

It has been a long week somehow, and we are all feeling it.

I could fight through it and be a trooper.

Or I could break out the blender and make us a treat and get smiles and better attitudes that way.

So I am going for the obvious - continuing to pray while breaking out the blender for a lunch treat.

What will we be making?

Simple Chocolate Milkshakes

Put 3-5 large scoops of vanilla ice cream in the blender

Add a generous squirt of chocolate syrup

Pour in milk of your choice to about half the height of the ice cream.

Turn on blender.

Get out of the way as children come running.

Add more milk or ice cream as needed to adjust the consistency, and more chocolate syrup if needed too.

Serve to happy little girls.

Enjoy smiles, hugs, and praise for being an amazing chef.

P.S. By using homemade ice cream it is basically just milk, whip cream, more milk, a couple eggs and some chocolate sauce in the end, so not even to terribly unhealthy....don't tell!

Ham and Cheese Crescent Rolls

I needed a quick meal for little girls whose stomachs were not as steady as I would like last night, and after finding a great deal on Pillsbury crescent rolls I decided to try an idea I had.

Ingredients:

1 roll of Crescent rolls
4 slices of ham (Costco ham cut for sandwich meat is great, you cut it diagonally and it is the size of the individual roll)
4 slices of cheese cut in half

On each piece of crescent roll place a piece of ham and a piece of cheese before rolling it up.

Roll up and bake per directions.

Yum.

The girls at more than I expected, and that was a huge compliment to the chef.

You could certainly add mustard, for more flavor, but that would not have worked for my girls.

What is your favorite idea for a quick meal that is still a bit of a great?

Pumpkin Patch

We are beginning to explore more of our new surroundings and are having a great deal of fun doing it. On Saturday we visited a nearby pumpkin far to select the one that would become our jack-o-lantern. We had a lot of fun, and the girls enjoyed looking at everything and exploring.

They were fascinated by how pumpkins grew.

Here is a close up of the actual field:

And another one....

We turned into absolute tourists with our camera because everything was so beautiful! So because I so rarely post pictures here, I am including a few more!

One thing we have loved about our new home is all the farms so close! It is fun to be so close to where your food comes from!

Learning To Say Yes

It seems like by the time I was old enough to be out on my own for university I had gained the expectation that if I asked I was going to be told no. And that made me hesitant to say yes when I was asked things.

Now I am a mom, and I long to be a great mom, a terrific mom, the mom of Proverbs whose children rise up and call her blessed! For me, growing as a mom means learning to say yes.

While I have a ways to go, I think that I am on the right track, and this track is fun!

Sunday night Miss Pear asked if she could make pizza for lunch Monday, and I have to admit, my first thought was to say no, knowing how our morning looked. But I gave myself my check and asked myself, "Why not?" With there being no good answer to that question I said, "Yes!"

Was it easy neat and clean? No, but it also was not hard and horribly messy.

Would it have been quicker to do it myself? Maybe, but that is not the point!

Would it have been as much fun if I had done it myself? Absolutely NOT!

Miss Pear was so proud to have a job, and not just any job, the important job of feeding our family!

She even let her sister pull up her stool and watch.

When the pizzas were ready for the oven I made a huge deal of this and ran for the camera to capture the moment. The pizzas were so pretty:

Once they were out of the oven I took another picture:

Miss Pear was so happy when lunch was served, and we took the leftovers for lunch this morning to Classical Conversations. When it was lunch time she had to tell everyone that she had made the pizza, and everyone made a huge deal out of!

She was so proud of herself and her accomplishment!

And that is an excellent reason to say yes.

Multitude Monday 18

182. A Pumpkin Farm we visited on Saturday who opened despite the rain, and welcomed us to a morning of fun.

183. A quilt store with the perfect fabric to make a blanket to welcome a church friend's baby.

184. Little girls who want to help make the blanket because winter babies need blankets to keep warm.

185. The fascination of children. The construction work never fails to entertain.

186. A large variety of coloring pages in the internet to help feed the fascination. (Although if anyone can find a picture of a cement pumper truck to color, please send me the link!)

187. The faithful preaching of God's word.

188. The words of faith put to music.

189. A sweet daughter who wanted to make us lunch today - pizza. I only helped a little.

190. Fall leaves - I have missed the fall color those 11 falls spent in southern CA.

191. My family's sense of adventure and fun. It makes me spontaneous and adventurous when I am not.

192. An all knowing and loving God who put my family together, truly a special gift! The God and the family.

Sunday Morning Breakfast Experiment Week 1

We are finding that we have girls with a case of the fidgets most Sunday mornings in church. While discussing ways to handle this we decided that maybe a heartier breakfast is in order, especially with the arrival of cooler wetter weather. So this weekend we launched the Sunday Morning Breakfast Experiment (yes, we are all science geeks, we are calling it the experiment!)

The goal is to have a hearty, mostly healthy breakfast for Sunday morning mostly prepared Saturday night with minimal work, or at least minimized work Sunday morning. To complicate this we have a peanut allergy, a potato allergy, and a strong dislike of eggs (egg casserole is out, quiche is out, french toast is fine) to manage. I thought the blog would be a great place to chronicle our attempts and our findings.

This Sunday we started with recipes that were not new Sunday morning, so we knew it would work, and indeed we had a delicious breakfast. We welcomed the Lord's Day with a feast of Orange Overnight French Toast, homemade turkey sausage patties, fruit, juice, milk and coffee.

Results: There was a definite improvement in how everyone felt by the time we got home from church about 12:15PM. In fact, I have to make smaller lunches on Sunday! But the good news was that EVERYONE seemed to do better in church. Okay, so Baby still had a case of the wiggles, but not nearly as bad, and it was a quiet case. This might be the solution!

Recipes:

Homemade Turkey Sausage Patties - I made these Friday for lunch, and we all liked them but found them a little spicy, not hot spicy, just a lot of spice. So I will definitely be making these again, but will be almost doubling the meat, but not the spices...except the onions of course!

Orange Overnight French Toast

4 large eggs
1 1/2 cup orange juice
1 cup milk
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp vanilla
1/4 tsp salt

8 slices of French bread cut about 3/4 inch thick (if fresh, let sit out sliced for about
half an hour to dry slightly)

Icing sugar

Beat together eggs, orange juice, milk, sugar, vanilla and salt.

Arrange great slices to cover the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan. Pour egg mixture over top. Cover, and let stand in fridge over night.

In the morning, uncover, flip each slice of French toast over, and cook at 375F for 40 minutes or until browned.

Sprinkle with icing sugar and serve.

Sweet Potato Recipes

Last trip to Costco I noticed something that made me very, very, very happy, and I am not talking about all the excellent Christmas gifts, decorations and books they now have in stock, although that worked too!

I saw the cases of SWEET POTATOES!

Sweet potatoes are in stock, it makes me so happy! They are only available at Costco this time of year, and the price is excellent! So I tend to buy a case every time we go! After all, this is the only kind of potatoes we can have in our home due to allergies, and the cases keep for a long time in the garage! (Do not store them directly on the cement, bad idea)

One of my favorite recipes for sweet potatoes is sweet potato fries. It is very simple, heat oven to 375F. Peal sweet potatoes and slice into fries (think 1 cm square-ish). Toss with olive oil and italian seasoning. Cook for 25 minutes, flip them all over, cook for about another 20ish minutes, or until done to your liking.

What are some of your favorite recipes for sweet potatoes? I am looking for some new ones!

Reading This Week

We have all felt a little bit of the yuck this week, so the week has been a quiet one with lots of lovely reading.

2 things I found on the web today worth sharing are:

• Lindsay's Christian Literature for Children Age 0-8 - we have some of the books on the list, and will definitely be checking out the others.
• Kathy's Time to Winterize - Emergency Kit and Pantry Supplies - with the seasonal forecast being colder and wetter than normal this is something I am readying carefully.

In the crafting front I am rereading Kathy's tutorial on how to make a rag quilt and wondering if Miss Pear and I could do this over the winter?

What are you reading this week?

CSA Box This Week

This week's box looks delicious! We are getting:

Zucchini, Organic - 1 pound
Bunched Carrots, Organic - 1 bunch
Green Chard, Organic - 1 bunch
Celery, Organic - 1 each
Spinach, Organic - 1 bunch
Green Bell Peppers, Organic - 2 each
Romaine Lettuce, Organic - 1 bunch
Delicata Squash, Organic - 1 each
Red Flame Grapes, Organic - 0.75 pound
Dapple Dandy Pluots, Organic - 3 each
Gala Apples, Organic - 3 each
Fuji Apples, Organic - 3 each

The zucchini is a substitution for potatoes which are on our permanent exemption list (as in, "Please never put these in our box as our daughter is allergic!") and zucchini was the automatic substitution.

The gala apples are also a substitution for the d'anjou pears which everyone we know says are delicious, but we respectfully disagree. What am I missing? Are they best for baking or canning? We just want to take them out of the fridge and eat them.

Through our box we have become huge fans of pluots and red flame grapes, so we are always happy to see those in our box!

The one item that will be new to us is the delicata squash. I had never even heard of it, but our rule is that we never substitute something out because we don't know what it is, we get it, do some research and try it. If we don't like after that, then we know, but we are trying to be adventurous in our eating. I might try this recipe with the squash. Have you had this before? Did you like it? How did you prepare it?

If you had this box coming to your door this week what are some of the ways you would be preparing the contents?

When in Doubt - 5S

We have had a few projects on the go, like making the car fit in the garage now that the temperature is dropping and organizing the pantry now that it is better stocked. These jobs seem somewhat overwhelming, and we found that once again we fell back on our "business" knowledge. Now all the terms I am going to use have homemaking equivalents, but what make these 5 terms work is putting them together.

To start these projects, we basically started by "5S"ing the area. This is a foundation of lean manufacturing, and honestly is one of my secret weapons in a big organizational project. And for all the times I laughed or rolled my eyes and manufacturing engineers "5S"ing parts of their home, I apologize, I was wrong.

5S stands for:

• Seiri (sort)
• Seiton (straighten and set in order)
• Seiso (shine)
• Seiketsu (standardize)
• Shitsuke (sustain)

So basically it ends up being this:

• Sort - go through everything in that area, touch it all and sort it into piles to keep in this area, to move to a more appropriate area, and to purge. Take everything that does not belong in the area OUT!
  
• Shine - I like to shine at this point even though I might have to do it again after strighten - clean it all up, dust, wipe, polish, the works, after all, you just pulled everything out! All those surfaces are clean!
• Straighten - now that you have successfully purged the area of everything that does not belong, set the area in order! Put things in their new home, organize like with like, and items that get used together next to each other as much as possible. Again, if you find something that does not belong in that area take it out!
  
• Shine 2 - this is where shine really belongs, and you might have to do it again, or at least a little touch up.
  
• Standardize - congratulations you have a whole new organized area - now label it or in some way make sure you know what goes where! In manufacturing they will actually take colored tape and tape squares on the floor and label absolutely everything so you know where stuff goes when you are new and come into the area.
• Sustain - this is the tricky one. Now that you have done ALL THIS WORK you certainly don't want to have to do it again! So now you have to maintain the area. This is easy. If it is your pantry just make sure you put things back where you got them from, and when you put away your grocery shopping put it in its spot as opposed to just jamming it all in quickly. When you go into this area you might just want to do a little straighten as you go through, makes it easy to sustain it!
  

And yes, this was one of the first major steps to organizing our pantry, which is looking great! Although not labeled because I am giving myself time to use everything for a while before I commit to its location.

Once I had this done in my pantry I started using another business practice...but that is for next week.

Multitude Monday 17

I fell off the Multitude Monday bandwagon when Monday was also Bible in 90 Days check in day, and let's face it, on a Monday a gal can only do so much! But I have to confess, having a thankful heart is much easier when you are writing it down throughout the week to post on Monday morning. But this one is written all in one sitting before I hit publish, so it should be interesting., but more importantly, it is a return to purposefully giving thanks in the craziness of life, of Monday.

171. A husband who knows I cannot do it all and while I was cleaning the bathroom Saturday came in to chat with me and while doing so cleaned the entire shower.

172. A husband who saw the gorgeous Le Creuset pot at Costco and bought it for me because he knows I love to cook, especially for our family, and love Le Creuset. It's new home is sitting on the stove, it is beautiful.

173. A daughter who wanted to wear the split skirt in her closet simply because I made it for her. She then asked what we could make next. She was thinking of something for her little sister.

174. My littlest who is not so little any more who came running up to me, turned her little face up to me and said, "kiss!"

175. The crew of construction vehicles that pulled up Friday to start preparing the lots in our neighborhood for new homes. The girls are so happy to watch - there are nose and finger prints all over the windows and I am thrilled.

176. Little girls who think I am a genius and want to help me with everything.

177. A loving God who gave me this wonderful family!

178. ...and who meets me in my weakness...

179. ...and who gives me a desire to do better in the most important roles in my life and then helps me.

180. A church family who understands that teaching children to worship is an act of worship and encourages us in that.

181. Another day to love God, love my family, and grow in grace.

Seven Tasty Ways to Stop Wasting Food

...can be found here. Great tips - some I do, like the bread crumbs made with the heels of my homemade bread - but some I need to try like saving my veggie shavings for stock.

HT to Frugal Hacks

Taco Soup

Some time in the last 2 or 3 weeks when my brain was going in many directions at once I saw a recipe for Taco Soup and promptly forgot to save it or print it or make a mental note of where to find it. And, of course, could not find it again.

So I did what all resourceful women do - I combined 2 recipes and winged it! Here is what I ended up with and it was delicious!

Taco Soup

1.5-2 lb. ground beef or ground turkey
1 onion minced
2 can pinto beans (4 cups cooked)
2 can black beans (4 cups cooked)
1 can Rotel tomatoes (I used Kroger Tomatoes with Green Chilies, the can is 14.5 oz)
1 can diced tomatoes
1-2 pkg. taco seasoning (1/4 - 1/2 cup)
2 - 4 cups water (whatever you need to get the soup consistency you like, I just rinsed my tomato cans into the pot)

Brown ground beef with minced onion. Drain. Toss everything together into the CrockPot. Turn to low and forget about it until supper time - in my case 8 hours later, but it would have been done before then.

I served it with shredded cheese, tortilla chips and sour cream.

It was delicious and enough for 1 meal for us and 2 meals in the freezer.

Friday? Really?

Somehow this has been yet another week that managed to sneak away on me.

Miss Pear is doing great with her cast off, but it is taking some getting used to, and frankly her arm is a little bit sensitive, and does not have a full range of motion at the moment, so that is slowing her down. But she is enjoying coloring again tremendously and has finished almost half her Dover Butterflies Coloring Book, and even completed a page of handwriting today. We have kept things quiet for her to have time to adjust again, and that is proving to be an excellent decision.

In the quietness of the second half of this week we have managed to try a new soup recipe (will be posted soon), and finish Miss Pear's Tessa Bloomers which I made in a purple corduroy with kittens stitched on. They turned out great, and the pattern is exceptionally well written. I am planning on cutting out the Anaclaire Jumper Pattern for each girl next (I am thinking no apron but with a bottom ruffle).

In my effort to get more iron in our diets and healthy protein while still eating simply and not breaking the budget I found a new recipe to try next week: Slow Cooker Mexican Pinto Beans. I am always looking for ways to serve beans and lentils to my family in ways that they will love. So if you have a great recipe I would love it if you would please share a link to it or a copy of it in the comments!

At Our Home Today You Will Find

Miss Pear - Cast free and gaining movement in her arm as the day progresses. It just came off this morning and she is both thrilled and apprehensive. She has a special bubble bath in her afternoon plan.

Baby - running around waving one sock like a flag and the other sock half off. My Southern California girl cannot figure out what these things are mom keeps putting on her feet. But she has become very good at saying please and thank you...as in please take these things off, thank you!

Supper in the crock pot - Taco Soup - a combination of 2 recipes, will let you know how it turns out.

Little girls napping - it has been a big morning.

Mommy thinking some quiet reading time would be great.

Happy Canadian Thanksgiving

We may live in the US now, but for my first 23 years I lived in Canada, so we celebrate both Thanksgivings. Canadian Thanksgiving is a little different that American Thanksgiving. But basically it is traditionally a time we give thanks for the harvest, and therefore it is earlier in the year because the harvest is finished earlier.

We are trying a new tradition this year to try tie the two Thanksgivings together in our family seeing as we will not be heading over to our neighbors in Southern CA this year for American Thanksgiving! We started a paperchain with each chain having something we are thankful for on it. We started it Sunday and strung it across our dining room window. Between now and our next thanksgiving we will add to it and see how long it gets.

Our menu for today is not the traditional turkey based one because we spent 11 years in Southern CA and this time of year it was often too hot to roast a turkey. So here is our family's menu for today:

Pork Tenderloin in a dry rub
Rice Casserole
Zucchini Bake
Candied Carrots
Coleslaw
Dressing (just made and put in a casserole dish)
Rolls

And for dessert we are having Mars Bar square - not exactly traditional, but very Canadian.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Official Start of NHL Season

We can't help it, we are Canadian, and we love hockey - even our girls at 2 and 5 love hockey. Miss Pear even has a favorite team in the East and the West!

We got all excited when preseason started and then hardly any of the games were televised. Very disappointing.

But the Montreal and Toronto game will be televised tonight. Did I mention that both my husband and daughter are die hard Canadiens fans? (That would be Montreal). So I pretty much know what we will be doing this evening.

And I feel the need to make a cake to celebrate.

What does a hockey night look like in our home?

Well, we sometimes eat in front on the TV - a huge rarity around here. Actually, it only happens for hockey or a rare and special movie night. With it being the start of the season it will be an eat in front of the tv night. I make something fun for dessert, of course. And once the supper supplies are cleared from in front of the TV either trains or playmobile are set up and we spend the rest of the time playing and watching and laughing together.

There are no square eyed TV zombie looks, we are all laughing and talking and having fun together. It is wonderful.

Schedule Subject to Change

Our homeschooling schedule was just not working for us.

The key problems were that we were not getting all our morning storybook and chapter book reading in, I was not getting my work done, and frankly, by the time we were finishing up we were not having a whole lot of fun.

Old Schedule:

Breakfast, Bible, Scripture Memory and Catechism
20ish minutes of play while I get some work started
9:00 Math and Handwriting
Recess
10-10:15ish Start Reading and Phonics
Playtime
Lunch
Naps

The good thing was that we were done by noon.

New Schedule

Breakfast, Bible, Scripture Memory and Catechism
Storybooks and chapter book reading
9:00ish Girls to play, me to start some morning work, and often the girls "work" with me, but we are at least in the same big downstairs room.
10:00 Math and Handwriting (although we are not doing handwriting while Miss Pear has her cast on).
11 - lunch playtime, work with mom time
Lunch
Naps (yes, Miss Pear still naps)
After nap time and post nap time play in room time to finish waking up we do Reading and Phonics.

This is working so much better for us. The school time is going faster because there is not this feeling of drudgery that we will be here all morning, attitudes are better, my work is actually getting done and I am not feeling so far behind and like I will never catch up. Plus our days are just going smoother.

It was revolutionary to me when I realized that I could set the schedule any way I wanted, and that did not mean finishing everything before lunch when frankly we are not huge morning people around here, at least, not with projects that require a lot of thought!

CSA Box for This Week

This week in our CSA box I made no changes, substitutions or additions and we are getting:

Romaine Lettuce, Organic - 1 each
Green Onions, Organic - 1 bunch
Rapini, Organic - 1 each
Baby Bok Choy, Organic - 3 bunches
Bi-Color Sweet Corn, Organic - 2 each
Red Radishes, Organic - 1 bunch
Cucumbers, Organic - 1 each
Zucchini, Organic - 1 pound
Nectarines, Organic - 4 each
Peaches, Organic - 3 each
D'anjou Pears, Organic - 3 each
Gala Apples, Organic - 4 each

What would your plans be if this was the box you were picking up?

I already have plans for many of the vegetables, and hope to do better than I did with our last box when we all passed the ick around and I ended up throwing a lot away. I did not even pull out any of my usual tricks to use up veggies! So sad. Although we did love the new thing we tried - lemon cucumbers!

Christmas Crafting

I am fairly sure I will be making these hanging towels for Christmas presents if they still have those nice towels at Costco!

I am thinking for my mom who is impossible to buy for but claims she is not (a 2 pack to go with a 2 pack of dish clothes).

I am also thinking homeschool group tutor and Sunday school teachers....

Are you making any Christmas gifts this year? What is on your to make list? (Help a girl out, I am still looking for ideas!)

Monday Mayhem

Well, maybe not mayhem, but it was one of those days where the day kind of got away from me, so it has taken me until now to pop in to say that I am over visiting a friend today...you can find me here!

May the Lord bless us this week as we strive to be faithful in the ordinary everyday.

Done - Now What?

This is the point that is hard. I am done reading the Bible in 90 Days. Now what do I do? I think it is complicated by the fact that this is the second time I have finished reading the Bible this year.

My plan for the rest of the year is not necessarily my plan, it feels like a plan God started to write through what He taught me as we read. One thing that came up again and again in my reading was the importance of being faithful in the everyday. I am great at being faithful in times of crisis, but sometimes in the everyday I get off track. I miss a day of reading, which sometimes becomes 2 or more. I forget to stop and pray for that list I keep by my sink. My kitchen Bible gets put away during a cleaning and not pulled out again. It is little things, but these serve to pull me off course. I have a Bible study I have wanted to do for a while....actually I am pretty sure the book has been in our home longer than Miss Pear, who is 5. This study is about walking faithfully with God, walking worthy, and I will begin that on Monday.

That still leaves the question of my Bible reading because as much as I enjoy a Bible study based in a workbook they have never replaced actual Bible reading for me. So between now and the end of the year I will be reading the New Testament chronologically. Technically in my The One Year Chronological Bible NLT the NT started September 24, but after reading at 4 times the pace I don't anticipate it being a problem to catch up.

Although that is a concern for me...not having to catch up, reading at a slower pace. Another thing I learned while reading the Bible in 90 days is that while we are all wired differently, God has wired me to need large portions of scripture daily for my soul to feel nourished, to feel plugged into Him, to hear His voice. That is just me. I am not sure this is enough Bible daily for me, even with the study guide, so if it is not, I will just read 2 days of reading instead of 1, and see how that works.

So that is the plan...I think. I will let you know how it goes...but for now, I have some reading to do.