THE santa cookie

I spent the morning learning how to make Santa cookies with friends. We had a lot of fun.
These fulfilled the 2 requirements i have for spending a lot of time on a baked good - which are - 1, it has to look good and 2, it has to taste awesome. We gave these to our old neighbors wrapped in cellophane bags with big bows. So cute!

bread bowls

One recent evening we had bread bowls with home-made tomato soup for dinner. We all LOVED them!

fruit

Sneak a peek of my beautiful fruit on Hoosier Cook.  

autumn vegetable soup

Celebrate the first day of fall with this colorful, nutrient packed, and soooo good soup. 

Check out Hoosier Cook (my food blog)to see how to boil up a pot of your own.

our 4th feast

Check out my food blog for our easy and healthy 4th feast. When my Dad and Hoosier Daddy caught wind of what was in the mix, they made fun of me, but were pleasantly surprised in the end. Ha!

Hoosier Cook

berry parfait

Tart and sweet, a perfect Sunday morning breakfast!

Very Simple to make:

1. Find some cute glasses
2. Fill the glasses with three layers: berry mixture, plain yogurt (or vanilla yogurt to really sweeten it up), and granola
3. Repeat layers for an adult sized serving
   
4. Top the last granola layer with one of each type of fruit used.
5. Enjoy!

Check out my new food site -->Hoosier Cook

or click on my button found on the sidebar.

first snow

It has become tradition to celebrate the first snow with a snowman and a wintery treat. Ty had to spend the day at school (how sad he was!), and Matthias was in DC, so it was up to Beckham and I to create a snowman fitting for the first snow. This was in Indiana - December.


This year's snowman is sporting:

• a Chilean wool hat
• meat thermometer for an eye
• play dough container for the other eye
• a carrot nose
• twiggy mouth
• scarf that Zaccy made Matt
• Beckhams mittens
  

We topped the day off with gingersnap cutout cookies.

tamales

We made pork tamales with double chili sauce on Sunday.
Well, I made tamales and Matthias made alfajores.
A wonderfully Chilean dinner.

kabobs

Pork, mango, and pepper. Delish and beautiful. Nothing like a weekend BBQ with the people you love most. Good food almost always puts us in happy spirits. . . even if the Bar is looming over a certain someone's head. One more week to go hun.

happy heart day!

10 ways we celebrated St. Valentine's:

1. Went to Wonder Lab yesterday for discovery hour and learned all about the heart and blood. Ty & Becks loved it! They got to listen to each other's heart beats, found their own pulse, learned that when they run how their heart beats faster, and learned why they get scabs (which fascinated Ty because he had a "goggle cut" scab).

2. Made heart shaped sugar cookies for friends. Out of the whole batch only about 6 made it out. Half of them got burned and the 6 that were decorated by the boys were all licked clean of frosting and sprinkles in 3 minutes... gross. A secret ingredient from my mom that I would like to pass along is adding orange peel rind in the dough. Yum!

3. This morning I made pink heart pancakes for the boys, they loved them!

4. Ty exchanged valentines at school and delivered some to friends. By this evening Ty's cheeks got to be a rosy red = lots of corn syrup candy, poor guy! I am lax on holidays with the no-corn diet.

5. Made mini heart shaped pizzas for dinner. I cut the pepperoni into heart shapes.

6. Decorated Valentine cakes and delivered them to new members in our ward for YW's last night.

7. Had FHE lesson with the Lyons on Love. We learned about all that HF has given us because he loves us. Then we took turns drawing a heart out of a bag that listed something to do to show a person in the family that we love them. We used the cut out from the Friend.

8. Made and received V-day phone calls to grandparents and cousins. Thanks for the valentine packages and letters! We love and miss our family!

9. Rented Pride & Prejudice and No Reservations.

10. We are going to Super Fun Friday tomorrow to participate in a Be My Valentine activity.

me time

I haven't posted in the last week because I haven't felt like saying much - we had a really eventful week last week (preschool, Ty's ear infection, play group, library,YMCA family fun night, Chocolate Week festivities, zoo, running 8 miles, swimming, Super Fun Friday, etc.) but for some reason I just feel wordless. And sometimes I feel like all I do is talk about my kids and what we do- then that makes me feel like I really don't have a life outside of my kids... Like all I am is a mom - don't get me wrong, it is the best, but seriously a girl gosta have some self time. So I am going try to think of three things that I did for myself last week:

1. exercised 5 days - woot woot (3 runs and 2 swims)
2. cooked like a maniac: dutch oven bbq ribs; dutch oven chili (thanks for the DO lessons dad!); chocolate ganache made into hot chocolate, orange roughy seared on bacon with balsamic vinegar, honey & rosemary; lemon/coconut bread pudding; chicken-andouille file gumbo; orzo with lemon, garlic, parmigiano & herbs; and fregola with wild mushrooms, sherry & cream. Yes, the food was for the fam, but cooking it was for me.
3. I seriously can't think of a third - I guess a short nap, but that doesn't count!

So here are 3 things that I would like to do for myself this week:
1. Get my quilt top out and finish it (without kids around me).
2. Of course exercise.
3. Go on a date with the husband.

We'll see what happens...

ooooh ooooh #4 - find New Moon and finish the last two chapters! Does anyone have a copy? Help a sista out!

it tastes like snow

Today while the boys ate lunch I whipped up a treat for them- the recipe is from the Friend (a church children's magazine we get). Simply, they are rice krispy treats shaped into balls and rolled into powdered sugar - made to look like snowballs, hence the name, "snowball dessert." I found they rough up the roof of the mouth and are chalky, but Ty and Matthias loved them...kids. When I asked Ty if they were good, he said, "It tastes like snow... sugary snow!"

Today was freezing cold and I didn't plan anything for the boys other than Preschool because I hate leaving my house when it gets this cold, so after Ty asking several times where we were going and me answering, "nowhere," he asked if I would read the Velveteen Rabbit to him. I checked it out from the library last week not knowing if I would ever get to it, but we snuggled up with eachother and a blanky and read it the whole way through. After we finished Ty said, "But I am not a real rabbit." ? ok ? And it was never mentioned again.