Monday, September 28, 2009

Cinnamon sugar shaker (say that 5 times fast!)

It's Kitchen Tip Tuesday time and I haven't participated in quite a while but I have a good one for you this week!

Here it is:
It's my cinnamon sugar shaker (a repurposed sea salt shaker). I keep it premixed so that it's readily available whenever I'm making cinnamon rolls, french toast, cinnamon toast, oatmeal, etc. Then there's no extra work involved in sprinkling it right on.

I use Rapadura/Sucanat/evaporated cane juice (whatever you want to call it, it's all the same stuff) and ground cinnamon. Our personal taste is approximately 3/4 sugar and 1/4 cinnamon. I like a LOT of cinnamon! Sometimes I mix it stronger than that. Just use a funnel and pour in your cinnamon and sugar, leaving about 1/2 inch at top. Replace shaker top and cap and then shake and roll it around until you have it mixed evenly.

Now it's ready for whenever you need a cinnamon sugar mixture!

Monday, September 21, 2009

Menu Plan Monday - 9/21

I didn't go back to my archives to check, but I think it has been several months since I've posted a menu plan.... I have a menu plan every week because we would never eat otherwise, but I just never seem to remember to post them.

We are having lovely fall-ish weather around here (today's high is 50) so I feel comfortable cooking warm meals every day and actually using my oven to start baking again since I don't have to worry about my house being a zillion degrees.

Monday:
Dinner out with friends then back to our place for the season premiere of HOUSE!!

Tuesday:
baking: Zucchini bread and dinner rolls
Shepherd's pie, rolls with butter

Wednesday:
preserving: apple butter
prep: thaw ground beef
Tuna salad sandwiches, veggie tray

Thursday:
Taco salad served with corn chips and homemade salsa

Friday:
Homemade pizza, veggie tray

Saturday:
baking: applesauce spice cake
Grilled cheese, tomato soup

Sunday:
Michael and I will get something from a restaurant (it's our new weekly tradition) in the late evening after the kids go to bed. The children will eat leftovers.

Also, at some point during this week or the weekend I'd like to get the preserving of my pumpkins done so I can start using the puree in my baking.

Be sure to visit I'm An Organizing Junkie for more wonderful menu plans!

Friday, September 18, 2009

You Capture - Up Close

I'm a little late getting this posted, but I couldn't pass up this week's You Capture theme - Up Close.

We did a homeschool science unit on caterpillars and butterflies and I purchased one of those butterfly house kits. You know the kind with the live caterpillars that you watch turn into a chrysalis and then emerge as butterflies... Well, it worked and let me just say, that God's creations are sometimes astonishing! This is of us releasing them after they all emerged!

Nevermind Eli's head in the background. Cropping it made some of the details too fuzzy, so this is actually my shot straight out of the camera with no editing.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

The PUMPKIN - duh, duh, duh, duuuuh

Okay folks. Here's the scoop on the pumpkin who has been affectionately named Lt. Col. Pumpkin. It's an inside-joke-thing!

Here's what the pumpkin looked like on August 24.

Soon after that photo the leaves near the beginning of the plant started dying so I knew it only had a few more weeks before we would need to cut it. I started trimming off dead leaves and cut off one whole leg of the vine that was only taking nourishment from the main vine to give it as much time to grow as possible.

Finally, we decided that this past Thursday was the appointed day.

Here is "pumpkin day" in photos:

It's up to her chest lying on it's side!! In reality, we should have stood Lt. Col. Pumpkin up on his butt when he was still young, but alas, we didn't think about it until he was too frumpy to sit properly!





Family photo!
















Michael, our friend Jesse and Eli moving Lt. Col. Pumpkin from his home.













Lt. Col. Pumpkin weighed in at a whopping SEVENTY-FIVE pounds - you read that right, I said 75lbs. Holy moly, no wonder it took two men to get him off the ground.








We actually had 2 pumpkins. The smaller one was on a smaller plant and even though it was also lying on its side, it ended up looking fairly pretty and properly shaped.

However, the only thing I could think while taking this photo was "quick, get them off my glass top stove before it breaks!!"


Tune in next week for the next installment - Lt. Col. Pumpkin goes to work!

Saturday, September 5, 2009

Comparisons

Jacob at 9 months (10/04)

(Photo quality is not great because it's from before the studio went digital.)






Eli at 9 months (2/07)

I thought it would be cute to have Eli's photo taken at 9 months in the same outfit Jacob had been wearing and with the same background.











Rachael at 10 months (we were out of town during most of her 9th month) (7/09)

Then when Rachael came along, I just knew I had to continue the "tradition" I had inadvertently started. So, instead of jeans, she's in a denim skirt and I added a red bow to make that very boyish shirt seem a little more girlie!