book whore

We're leaving for vacation in approx 3 weeks...
this is going to be the last big vacation for a while as our whole family needs to hunker down for a while and just save some money and hopefully ride out the "depression" or blip, whatever.

I just ordered a bunch of books to take a long, hoepfully these will last me the two weeks we're gone!

For Me:
Water for Elephants: A Novel
The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
Some Things That Stay
The Myth of You and Me: A Novel
The Kindness of Strangers
Sufficient Grace: A Novel

For the babies (my babies are 6 and 3):
Chicka Chicka Boom Boom
Fablehaven
The Tale of Two Bad Mice
The Tale of Tom Kitten

Regarding DIY gifting

This year is going to be a lean year money wise, with the price of gas and the price of dang near everything going up we’ve been having to buckle down. All the bills are getting paid but there isn’t much left over for “extras” even visiting family is going to become an extra I’m afraid.

In an attempt to declutter my life I haven’t bought yarn or other craft supplies in a while. I still have three Rubbermaid bins full of various fibers and I’m intending on using them for gifts this year. We usually plan to spend 200 dollars per kid, this year I just don’t think that’s going to happen. For one thing we’ll have a three month old at Christmas; new born children do not need a lot of gifts. I will be knitting for the baby exclusively though I did already pick up a set of finger puppets on esty to put away from him/her’s stocking.

My other two kids are still young enough that it’s cool that I make things for them, but up until last year I hadn’t actually made them anything for Christmas. I didn’t realize that my making them things throughout the year that they would actually really like something super special (and handmade) for xmas. I knit each of them a hat for the winter and my son wore that hat to school every single day. He told everyone “My mom made me this”, my daughter, who is three, loves her winter hat so much that she still pulls it on despite the fact that it’s June. She puts it on and tells whoever is around “My mommy make this for me”. It didn’t occur to me that I could use my craft for actual gifts for them. I grew up thinking that Christmas gifts had to be shiny and new and just out of the box when in reality it is actually the thought and effort that counts.

You’d think I’d know that by now, at least I’m glad that my children do!
Last year I made them knit donuts and pie slices to go along with a wooden play kitchen that we did end up buying for them. This year, since we have to cut back anyway, I’ve got a pretty impressive list of gifts-to-knit for these kids. Granted, they are going to know that these things didn’t come from Santa but the pile from Mama (and Dad since he did buy alllll the yarn) is going to be unusually large this year.

I’ve actually already started my knitting since I’ll be giving birth in September, I’d like to have *most* of it done by then since babies require a little bit of a time investment on my part, my knitting time may be reduced ;-)

I’m also interested in doing mostly free patterns for all the reasons mentioned above.

Spaghetti with Meat Sauce from Apples for Jam

It was pretty good, different, but good. I'll probably have the leftovers for lunch today.

Giant Puffy Pancake

Last night I made this giant apple puffy pancake for dinner. I'm lactose intolerant so I had to alter the recpie a bit, but it still turned out rather well!

Apple Puffed Pancake for the Lactose Intolerant

6 eggs
1 ½ cups soy milk
1 cup flour
3 Tbls sugar
1 tsp vanilla
½ tsp salt
½ tsp cinnamon
1 Tbls margarine
2 apples peeled & chopped
3 Tbls brown sugar

Preheat oven to 425. In a blender or large bowl, mix eggs, milk, flour, sugar, vanilla, salt and cinnamon until well blended. Melt margarine in a 9×13” pan in oven, add apple slices to baking dish and return to oven until butter sizzles, do not let it brown. Remove dish from oven and immediately pour batter over apples. Sprinkle with brown sugar and bake for 20 minutes or until puffed and brown, Serve immediately.



We did think that it wasn't quite sweet enough for us so next time I think I'll toss the apple bits in some cinnamon sugar and also use vanilla soy milk in place of regular (Thanks Marie for that tip!).

The kids ate it though, well one of them did, my 3-year-old has been super picky lately and she's not eating much. Hubs and I liked it though!!

science

Something else I did when I was younger was a lot of easy at home science experiments. One of my favorite ones was putting white flowers in colored water and watching the flower change color as it drank.

Yesterday I could not find any white flowers but we had celery, so I figured that would do in a pinch. The kids had a ball picking out what colors they wanted to use and I explained to them that the celery would drink up the water through the little tubes on the bottom of the stalk and the leaves would change colors.

They didn't believe me.

Here is our celery this morning:



This is a really fun and easy thing to do with kids, especially since it doesn't involve anything dangerous/hot/etc.

All you need is a leafy stalk of celery, some drinking glasses, cool water and food coloring!

Flower Pressing

I used to do this every year. Of course I said "used to" because for the last several years of my life I feel like I've been rushing.

I need to stop.





So today it was 60 degrees and sunny (yesterday it had snowed!) so while my oldest was at school my 3-year-old and I went outside to collect flowers to press. She did really well, although she really wants to get to the "make stuff with them" part right now hopefully in a couple weeks she'll still be into it.



I regret not having pressed any flowers from when we lived in New Mexico. I try not to keep a running tally of them (my regrets) but lately it seems to be all I've been thinking about.

wow

I'm a poor blogger.

The most important piece of news is that: I'm still pregnant!



Knitting for the little one, I'm planning on dying this as soon as I settle on a color. I'm leaning towards green. The ultrasound tech was 80% sure that the baby is a girl, but there's still that 20% chance that it's a boy!