Snow Day

How is everyone holding up out there?

This is a picture of our mailbox from the other day. I know a lot of you have had it a lot worse, but I am just about done here.

Two hour delay on Monday, two hour delay on Wednesday, no school today.

I am still working. The only drawback of working from home is that it doesn't matter what the weather is.

What is going on here? Oh, I woke up to a freezing cold house, we are out of oil. Thankfully, my hubby started a fire and the oil guys are on their way.

The Lady is engrossed in the iPad, the Little Lady is perusing Pinterest for St. Patrick's Day craft ideas and QT is involved in a combination of somersaults and Angry Birds.

I will say it is pretty out there, but then again, I didn't have to shovel this morning!

Projects in our Pjs

This is how we do pre-school projects. 

Not sure if the project is Pinterest worthy, but I will say I have been pinning every apple-based recipe I can find for that bowl full of apples on the table. 

I have to say I am a little sad to see Bamboo go. However, I think we can keep ourselves occupied with the 8,000 other Beanie Boos my children own. 

15 Things. . .

Clearly, I am scraping the bottom of the barrel here.

I found this on Pinterest. Yes, it has come to that.

I think I come across, on average, about 12 of these situations on a daily basis. While no one (to my knowledge) has licked the toilet seat, there is plenty of unauthorized eating in there, which shouldn't surprise anyone who read Holy Guacamole.

Since we don't have a cat (and hopefully never will) I can't comment on the kitty litter, but there was a point in time that the Lady once took a bath in a cat's water dish. 

The Little Lady is notorious for whining and barging into the bathroom.

The Lady loves some sugar and sitting on her brother.

QT is way into Dora (and can I say after a time of being away from her, I am sometimes happy to see her enormous football-shaped head, teaching him some Spanish and showing him how to use a map).

So, I am posting this here as a fairly accurate representation of the things that go on in our house.

Which ones happen in your house?

End of Summer and Start of School

We packed up and headed out to the beach on Friday night. I just wanted one more day to spend on the beach. It was a gorgeous beach day and also a magical one.

Behold. . .

QT stepped foot in the sand! Granted, it took him a while to ease into it, but after playing with trucks on his sand-covered towel, he ventured down to the water's edge with bare feet.

The Ladies got one last day to run and play and we ended the night with some ice cream and a full-on meltdown by the Lady, but really isn't that what the end of summer is about? Ice cream and sheer exhaustion.

End of summer fun

The Little Lady's new pose. Gone is the cheese face. It has been replaced with the ballerina pose.

The next morning we got up and out early and headed over to Mystic to meet up with some friends. It was another beautiful day and I was charmed by the New Englandness of it all, and I live in New England.

Drawbridge in Mystic

Everyone got a new book from the local bookstore and some more ice cream. We watched the bridge go up a few times then got back in the van and headed home to prepare for the Lady's first day of first grade. On the trip home she lost her second tooth, which is great because when I have to drag her back to the dentist next week they won't have to pull it. 

The Lady outside the bookstore

One good thing about the start of this school year was that it was a delayed start. There was no mad dash to get out the door. I made homemade pancakes. I tried to do something Pintrest-y and make the pancake into a shape of a 1. It looked more like a penis than a 1, so I scrapped that idea and had the Lady make her own sign to mark the day.

Best first day of school sign ever!

We were all up, dressed and ready to go. However, there was confusion about what time the bus would be coming and what time school really started. The letter from the elementary school said that they would start at 10:45. The letter from the city said that they would start at 11. We took a guess and headed out. The Lady was 30 yards ahead of me walking out of the driveway, QT and the nanny were behind her in his little red car and I was trying to catch up while at the same time encouraging the Little Lady to maybe hurry up as she tried to maneuver on her Barbie scooter.

The Lady before boarding the bus.

After the Lady got on the bus I obviously ran back to the house so I could jump in the van and meet her at school with a giant bag of school supplies, which included four boxes of Kleenex (each with a box top on it and four additional box tops on the outer plastic, which I debated taking for myself, but figured the teacher would put them toward the class total), two rolls of paper towels and an assortment of crayons, markers, pencils and glue sticks.

I rushed the Little Lady into the van and headed out. I knew that the bus was ahead of me, so I was worried that I might miss the Lady getting off the bus. I was super psyched when I pulled through an intersection and saw the bus sitting at a red light while I went through on the green. After it turned the bus ended up being two cars behind us.

As we approached the school, you could see that things were not in order. Buses were lined up at the top of the entrance and cars and buses were backed up onto the main road. I like to think I channeled my husband here as I made a quick move into the church next door, parked totally illegally and got out. The Lady's bus was stopped at the flashing yellow at the entrance to the school waiting to make the turn.

The Lady's school is down off the main road about 100 yards or so. There is one entrance/exit road with two lanes total. The Little Lady and I started walking. People were stopped all over the place, cars were beeping, buses were idling, it was like we were on our way to Max Yasgur's farm. The Little Lady didn't like that the grass was wet, so I lifted her, the giant bag of school supplies, my camera and my purse, and weaved our way down to the front entrance.

The Little Lady could have walked backwards and through molasses and we would have gotten there before the Lady's bus. To say that there was some first day confusion would be an understatement. This year kindergarten orientation was in the morning, so all the parents who had gone with their kindergartners were now trying to make there way out of the school. Chaos ensued.

Ten minutes after the Little Lady and I got to the front entrance, the Lady's and three other buses pulled up. Good thing I met her because at that point they were technically late and all the aides that usually help with directing the students in the morning had already made their way into classrooms.

Gone was that comfortable bubble of kindergarten. I didn't know where the Lady's classroom was and neither did she. But we grabbed hands, made our best guess as to the direction to go and ended up in front of her classroom. I was incredibly relieved that as soon as she walked in I heard another student call her name. I kissed her goodbye, grabbed the Little Lady, stopped and signed up for a few less volunteer spots than I did last year and hoped that the Lady would have a great first day in first grade.

Pinning It Again

I am not sure what it is about this time of year but I am getting back into some Pinterest projects.

If you missed any of my attempts at recreating Pinterest projects, check out some of the links here.

Yesterday I came across this pin:

Source: etsy.com via Aileen on Pinterest

Granted, I don't have much grapic design background, but I was able to recreate these quickly and fairly easily in PowerPoint.

Not quite as artsy as the original but since I will probably never get around to framing and hanging these, I am not too worried. Best case scenario, these get hung in the bathroom and the Ladies and QT follow at least one of them a day!

I also pinned a recipe that I saw online. It was a Curtis Stone recipe for sausage rigatoni. Here is the original pin:

Source: self.com via Aileen on Pinterest

I was able to bang this out pretty quickly last night without the fire alarm going off and with QT hanging off my leg. I did omit the kalamata olives though and added a bit of baby spinach instead of parsley.

Here is to hoping that when we put our place back on the market at the end of the month that someone buys it quick so that I can attempt to recreate more and more of these projects. Oh the possibility of Pinterest fails are pretty good. . .

Pinterest Project 4-6 = Epic Fail?

Um. . . the final Pinterest Projects didn't quite turn out the way I wanted to.

First of all, I am surprised I even completed three (and let's not forget the small side projects I did in addition to the larger ones--they have to count for something right?), I mean I was deprived of chocolate and full of hope and inspiration and pretty, pretty pins.

Pinterest Project 4: Glitter Eggs = Fail

The Lady did make one glitter egg. We squeezed a little glue on it and rolled it around in a plastic baggy. Pretty creative huh? Also, half the bag ended up on the Little Lady's lap and the rest on the floor.

Pinterest Project 5: I got nothing here. Would you settle for a photo of goldfish crackers poured into a carrot shaped baggie and placed gently in an Easter basket? No? No worries, I didn't even take a pic of it. Ugh. Big Fail.

Pinterest Project 6: Easter Egg Cake Pops
This was to be the pinnacle of the Pinterest Project. I have seen a lot of cake pop pins out there. The only time I ever had them were at a birthday party of a friend's daughter last summer. They were super cute and very yummy, but they seemed kind of complicated and I had yet to be bit by the Pinterest bug. Little did I know that all you had to do was bake a cake, let it cool, mix in some frosting, shape into little balls or in this case eggs, dip in candy coating and voila. . .

Original Pin

Source: modernfoodie.blogspot.ca via Aileen on Pinterest

So, I bought three bags of pastel colored candy disks, some lollipop sticks and entirely too much yellow cake.

I should have known that I might be in over my head when the spoon I was using to mix in the frosting broke off in the bowl.

The Lady and I decided to take things into our own hands. Don't worry, I made sure she didn't put her hands back in the bowl after she started to lick her fingers.

We rolled the cake/frosting mixture out into egg shapes and placed on parchment. In hindsight these were probably too big.

Also, not long after this photo was taken, the Lady fell asleep on the couch. She joined her already sleeping siblings. Usually, this would be a wonderful time of the day for me, but not only was it 4:30 in the afternoon--so bedtime was going to be a huge ordeal, but I was stuck microwaving candy disks on the defrost setting at 30 seconds a clip.

Close up of the cake pop pre-dip

So the first couple of cake pops actually turned out ok. I made special care to pre-dip the lollipop sticks so that they would stay in the cake.

I got through the yellow candy coating pretty well and a few of my eggs even came out looking like the original pin.

Things started falling apart after that. I am not sure if the cake balls were too big or I didn't put enough candy on the stick, or if I didn't dip them deep enough into the coating. (Does this sentence seem like it is drifting into "mommy porn" territory or am I not understanding the full definition of that? I haven't yet read "Fifty Shades of Grey")

Anyway, things literally started to fall apart. . .

By the time I got to the pink candy coating, things seemed a bit desperate. It seems that even though the lollipop stick wasn't able to stay in the pop, anything else that came in contact with it was affixed with super glue like strength. I am pretty sure I could have scooped this stuff on top of a construction helmet and hung myself from the closest I-beam.

Also, it wasn't easy to clean.

Well, I had come this far. I had a few salvageable cake pops, a sink full of caked on candy and enough nonpareil sprinkles under foot to give me the confidence to finish this Pinterest Project

So, I grabbed the flower pot I found at Michael's for about $4. Stuffed it with the foamy thing (yes, it's technical name is Foam Mousse--but foamy thing works for me) and proceeded to make the best damn cake pop Easter Egg flower arrangement ever!

The final product!

I bypassed the fake grass and shoved in the only available thing I could find that was green. I guess I should be more upset that only two people actually ate the cake pops, but I am pretty proud of some of my Pinterest Projects and am feeling much better now that I have ripped through a bag and a half of peanut M&Ms.

Pinterest Project Three

I know. I know. I know. I have been lacking in blog posts lately and this Pinterest Project Three is like two weeks late. I have no good excuses at all and am sorry to report that this project is kind of meh for me. 

There are certainly some more challenging projects that I want to take on, but lately time and energy have both been lacking. I choose this pin because I have been wanting to find a good baked french toast recipe. I loved the idea of individual servings for each person. 

I also have this vision in my head of what I want breakfast to be like at my house, especially on a weekend. I really do see my whole family sitting down at a nicely set table enjoying a wide array of breakfast items, the smell of bacon in the air, a nice hot cup of coffee in my hands, everyone focused on family. 

The reality of course, is far different. Usually we have to open up a few windows after the bacon cooking sets off our incredibly sensitive fire alarms (well the smoke doesn't help), the Ladies are usually fighting over couch space after they have already rifled through the snack drawer and started their day by eating some Pirate's Booty or pretzel rods, or in the case of the Little Lady, a stick of butter. 

There is nothing like popping your head out into the living room after you hear the fridge open and seeing your kid eating a full on stick o' butter. "I'm just eating this mom" she told me as I removed the butter from her hand and tried to stop my gag reflex from kicking in. I love butter too, but even I have a line. 

Anyway, moving on---I usually buy at least one baguette a week. I like to make panini's with it. (Ohhhh maybe I will pin a panini recipe of mine, or in actuality the one I stole from my sister) It is super easy and a quick meal. If I have any left over, I will sometimes use it to make garlic bread for a pasta dish later in the week. Most of the time though, I find myself with leftover bread that I throw in the freezer and then never use again. I figured this french toast bake could help alleviate the unnatural amount of half eaten baguettes that shower down on me every time I open the freezer.

It is a super easy recipe. Click on the link below the picture to get the original recipe. I modified mine a bit because I didn't have the nutmeg or a real vanilla bean and I used Aunt Jemima's syrup because that is what I have in the house. Also, I used milk instead of the half-and-half.

 

Original Pin

Source: annies-eats.com via Aileen on Pinterest

5-6 cups of french bread cut into 1 inch cubes

Mix with 4 eggs, 1 cup milk, 1 tsp cinnamon, 1tbs vanilla, 1/4 cup maple syrup

Separate into individual bowls (I used two smaller ones for the Ladies), cover and refrigerate overnight.
Bake at 375 for 20-25 minutes

The finished product

Viola! French toast bake. The Ladies topped theirs off with a little bit of butter and some syrup.

I wasn't totally in love with the final project. First, I was out of powdered sugar. I think a little sprinkle would have made the final product prettier to eat. Second, it was a little dry. I did like that it wasn't overly sweet, but I will play around with the bread:egg mixture ratio a bit next time. Also, I was kind of jealous of those fancy blue, oven safe bowls--my little white ramekins weren't quite cutting it in the cute culinary container category.

I know that some of you are out there making Pinterest Projects. My cousin texted me a pic of a homemade travel seat she made for her little lady. Perhaps she would be interested in giving us a rundown on how her experience went? 

If anyone out there wants to guest blog their own Pinterest Project, just email me and let me know.

Pinterest Project Two

I know you have all been waiting for this.

Let's just say that maybe I should have counted those Dr. Seuss-inspired fruit kabobs as my second project.

The thing is, I have a lot of ideas pinned, I just don't always have the necessary materials and/or the actual skills to pull these things together.

Does anyone know where to get canvas fabric? Let me know, I am in over my head here.

Anyway, I figured that over the course of these projects I would try to do a recipe/food inspired project, something for the kids room, a repurposing project and at least one sewing project.

The problem with the sewing projects is even though I have a sewing machine, I am terrible at using it. My old Pots and Pans and Sticky Hands teacher/Girl Scout Leader would not be proud of the incredible lack of sewing skills I have retained from my childhood days of creative crafts.

To be fair, I think I am actually better at hand sewing than using the machine and in the last few weeks, I have sewed my fair share of torn stuffed animals, including Mr. Ducks, Ladybug pillow, and a giant dog, who's name escapes me at the moment, but who we travelled home from Disney World with a couple of years ago.

And even though I have used the sewing machine in the past successfully to make some cute little ribbon belts for the Lady, as well as her second Halloween costume--that was like three years ago and perhaps whipping out the machine at eight o'clock on a Friday night, while I should have been putting the Ladies to bed added a bit to the confusion and the almost epic fail of this project.

The Lady, age 1, in the tutu I sewed for her.

This project should have taken ten minutes to do. It took me over an hour.

The original pin:

 

Source: instructables.com via Aileen on Pinterest

How cute are these? T-shirt bags! I mean who doesn't have old t-shirts hanging out in their drawers that they never wear anymore, but don't quite want to get rid of? The best part is that they are super practical. You can use them for grocery bags or a gym bag. How cute would be a ballet bag made out of an old graphic tee? The best part is that you can just put them right in the washing machine to clean them.

I was inspired. I was duped by the simplicity. I was screwed at eight o'clock on a Friday with the promise of another Pinterest project and an intense desire to go all Office Space on my sewing machine.

Here is how it panned out.

 My sewing machine. With the instructions open. My problem was that bitch the bobbin.

 So, you take any old t-shirt. Here I am using a freebie from one of my husbands work events.

 Take a plate and trace around it. I used a blue piece of chalk from our art bin.

 Cut out the neck along the chalk mark. Then cut out the sleeves, leaving the seam in place. It is important to keep the seams so that it maintains some strength.

 Turn the shirt inside out and sew along the bottom seams. You should probably pin the two sides together. I omitted that step and allowed the Lady to operate the foot pedal. You can see how that worked out above.

 Probably not what this should look like.

This is also probably not supposed to happen.

 Turn t-shirt back to the right side out and viola.

So simple. Despite my lack of sewing skills, a few restarts and a ton of extra thread. I was able to sew the thing together into a bag. Pinterest Project Two--complete.

 The bag hanging on the back of a chair.

We decided to use it for QT's toys. The original pin says to use a Youth size M or L for the bags and those would probably be better for grocery bags or bags for the kids. My t-shirt was an Adult L and it is really roomy. Good thing we have a ton of crap to stuff it with.

I saw another little project that I wanted to try. Apple cars. How cute. The original pin made them with grapes but we just got a ton of blueberries at Costco so we used them instead.

Source: bentonbetterlunches.com via Aileen on Pinterest

 

The best part is that the Ladies helped make them and it actually got them to eat them. This was about ten minutes after the Lady told me she didn't like healthy snacks. Granted she was trying to angle for a Hershey's kiss (if I can't eat them--she can't have them either!) but I was pleased to see that the actual project distracted her from that snack choice for a while at least.

 

So, we will see what next weeks project brings and if anyone knows someone who gives free sewing lessons--you know where to find me.