Shadowed Cat

I was super impressed with how this picture turned out. I cut out all the pieces of for Big N to put on the orange piece of paper, and she did all the gluing. I *might* have moved a few things while the glue was still wet (if you look carefully you can see the white globs of glue), but I think we did a pretty good job for an accountant and a two year old.

Pizza Dough Cinnamon Buns

We had some leftover dough from a Friday night pizza and I had a craving for something sweet, so Saturday night at 10pm I decided to make some cinnamon buns. Now, they weren't as good as the ones I made from the Pioneer Woman, but they were pretty damn good for a midnight snack.

It was super easy to do, I rolled out the dough into a big rectangle, covered it in melted butter and then spread brown sugar and cinnamon all over it. I rolled the huge rectangle up, cut it into pieces and placed it in an 8 inch baking dish. I threw it in the oven at 350 degrees for about 25 minutes.

I drenched the buns in a icing made from icing sugar, milk and a little bit of vanilla, then decided to eat three of them before bed. Needless to say, I couldn't get to sleep until 2:30am because of my sugar high, so if you plan to do this, don't eat a whole bunch right before bed!

Halloween Crafts

We've been doing a lot of Halloween crafts for the past few weeks.

Here we did hand print spiders for Big N while Little N made footprint ghosts (which we mailed to a family member before we remembered to take a picture).

We made construction paper candy corn that Big N added a little more fun to since she wasn't a big fan of how our craft looked. Although thinking about it now, it's probably because she has absolutely no clue what candy corn is, oh well, no need to introduce more candy now.

Toddler Drawer Organization

Since I'm headed back to work in a matter of days, we need our mornings to be SUPER efficient, so I've started to get everything as organized as possible so it doesn't matter who is doing the morning routine, *cough, cough R*, there will be no excuse for the kids to not have underwear and socks.

Instead of buy an expensive organizer for the kids stuff that probably would end up ruined anyway, I cut up pieces of cardboard and duct taped them in the drawer as an insert. Now everything has a place. Ahhh...I love being organized.

Crinkle Cat

Using Martha Stewart for inspiration Big N and I made this crinkly cat one day during craft hour while Little N was sleeping. Big N is getting so independent in her art. She can now fold the paper herself and do ALL the gluing, she tries really hard to use the scissors herself and can so far cut a triangle. What a huge change from a year ago when it was really just me doing things and her watching. Anyways, we're going to hang this from the ceiling for Halloween but, it was just much to wet with glue at this point to take it anywhere.

World Word Art

If you remember back in March when two of my niece's and one nephew were celebrating their birthdays we made them a zebra, an elephant, and a monkey to hang in their respective rooms. So of course, now that we are celebrating the first birthday of my other niece she needed something to put in her room too. When I asked her parents they said she was really into word world these days, or at least smiles when it's on. So, we went with a word world theme and made the duck for her to put up.

At first I attempted to just use white glue to outline the duck and then had planned to paint everything on colour so it was just a subtle picture, but that didn't turn out well at all, so I ended up painting the whole thing.


Now, we just need all the kids to get healthy so we can actually deliver our present to little B.

Sock Bun Curly Hair

So I've been crazy addicted to Pinterest recently, if you haven't checked it out, DO IT, it's one heck of a time waster, especially the iPhone app, I can now keep track of all my virtual pin board needs.

Anyways, I came across a few posts that linked back to two videos, one for a sock bun and the other for how to use a sock bun to make curly hair and I'm honestly amazed. Considering I have stick straight hair, and I did absolutely nothing like the video suggested, I just threw a rolled up sock in there and took it out in the morning. And I ended up with this:
It makes me believe that if I actually used the water and perhaps a little product in my hair before putting it up there I would actually have a nice wave to my hair. Look out work, my curly hair is going to look awesome! :-)

The Princess and the Dragon

Big N has recently decided that she doesn't like dragons, so R had the idea that the two N's should play the princess and the dragon. Of course with Little N being the dragon, I'm not sure if the thought was to get Big N to like dragons because her little brother was one, or that she should just beat up dragons, but either way, the kids had fun putting together their princess and dragon hats. As you can see Big N did all the gluing on her hat all by herself, which meant it took an extra couple hours for the hat to actually be dry. Big N was definitely more interested in wearing her hat than Little N, but he did enjoy playing with the fire mouth on his dragon.
Big N is just starting to get into the make believe stage, so I think in the coming year we'll have a lot of fun pretending.

Banana Crumble Muffin Recipe

Is it bad that our family can eat a dozen muffins in one day? So, when we're running out of groceries, we go through a lot of muffins. I came across this recipe and it was DELICIOUS! Definitely one to add into the regular rotation. I did make a few substitutions as per usual. Here's what we did:

Ingredients:
1 cup all purpose flour
1/2 cup whole wheat flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp baking powder
2 bananas, mashed
3/4 cup brown sugar
1 egg
1/3 cup butter, melted
1/3 cup packed brown sugar
2 tbsp. all purpose flour
1/8 tsp. ground cinnamon
1 tbsp. butter

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C). Lightly grease 12 muffin cups, or line with muffin papers.
2. In a large bowl, mix together 1 1/2 cups flour, baking soda, and baking powder. In another bowl, beat together bananas, sugar, egg and melted butter. Stir the banana mixture into the flour mixture just until moistened. Spoon batter into prepared muffin cups.
3. In a small bowl, mix together brown sugar, 2 tablespoons flour and cinnamon. Cut in 1 tablespoon butter until mixture resembles coarse cornmeal. Sprinkle topping over muffins.
4. Bake in preheated oven for 18 to 20 minutes, until a toothpick inserted into center of a muffin comes out clean.

Fall Wreath

Since I return to work November 1st, I needed a fall wreath that could easily change into a winter wreath without too much effort. I have a very large feeling that we'll be especially busy from November till Christmas with work starting, then an exam on December 1st, then Christmas parties galore. So, that's my reason for this haphazardly thrown together wreath.

It's an argyle yarn wreath, with the blocks out of both felt and foam pieces I had lying around the house. I didn't want to glue them on because I want to use the yarn again for the holiday wreath, so they are attached with painters tape, and the yarn around them is also just stuck in place at the beginning and end. This was the easiest way for Big N to help out too, hence why the blocks are everywhere.

It's not the prettiest thing ever, but it'll do the trick to put us in the fall spirit, and I don't think the trick or treaters will be judging me based on my door wreath. And if they are, one less candy for them! :-)

Haunted House

I came across a really cool blog post about how to paint a haunted house that looked super simple. However, the day we decided to make haunted houses I didn't have the patience to get out the paint. So, we did a similar house with construction paper. Big N picked where all the windows should go. Then we glued a yellow piece of paper behind our black house. It was super simple and Big N thought it was great.

Perfect Pumpkin Pie

It's official. I made my first pie last weekend to celebrate Thanksgiving. The kids and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I didn't take a picture because I was too busy eating, is it okay that I ate 3/4 of a pie in one day???

I took my recipes for the crust from here and the pumpkin filling from here. I did end up making a few substitutions based on what we had in the house. So, here's what we did.

Pie Crust

Ingredients:
2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp. brown sugar
pinch of salt
1 tsp baking powder
1 cup of lard
1/3 cup cold water
1 egg yolk
1 tsp. vanilla extract
1 tsp. distilled vinegar

Directions:

1. In a medium bowl, mix together flour, sugar, baking powder, and salt. Cut in lard until mixture resembles coarse meal.
2. In a separate bowl, whisk together water, egg yolk, vanilla extract, and vinegar. Stir into flour mixture and knead dough briefly, just until smooth. Allow to rest 15 minutes before rolling out. Pastry is easier to work with when chilled. Can be stored in refrigerator for up to 1 week.

Pumpkin Filling

Ingredients:
1 (15 oz.) can of pumpkin
1 (14 oz.) can of evaporated milk
2 large eggs
1 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp. ground nutmeg
pinch of salt

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees F. Whisk pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, spices and salt in medium bowl until smooth. Pour into crust. Bake 15 minutes.
2. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees F and continue baking 35 to 40 minutes or until knife inserted 1 inch from crust comes out clean. Cool. Garnish as desired. Store leftovers covered in refrigerator.

We're going to attempt to make an apple pie later this week, so fingers crossed it all works out for us.

Turkey Broth

A few years ago, I would have never guessed I would be the person making my own turkey broth although being as cheap as I am, I should have known better. So, with our leftover turkey bones and my trusty crock pot, I attempted the task, which was surprisingly easy.

I put all the bones, etc. left from our 12 pound turkey into the crock pot, I added two diced carrots, and one cubed onion (a lot of recipes I saw called for celery too, but we didn't have any in the house, so I omitted it), and some parsley (or what I think was parsley, it was green and not labelled). I filled the crock pot close to the top with water and cooked it on low for about 12 hours. I strained the bones out and then put the liquid in freezer bags for later use.

I'm not a broth connoisseur but it smelled pretty good, and since it's just flavoured water, I'm going to say it turned out just fine.

Wall of Fame - September

I'm behind again, but here's how the September wall turned out, not great, but a heck of a lot better than August.

Monday Meal - Carrot Zucchini Curry Soup

Now, I'm not a soup person, I can probably count on one hand the number of times I've actually enjoyed eating soup. It started with a really good butternut squash (we think) soup at the wedding we attended on Friday, which led to my rethinking my soup hatred. I came across a Zucchini Soup recipe that was cooked in the crock pot (my favourite machine), so I decided to give it a go, until of course I realized I only had one zucchini left while the recipe was calling for two pounds of it. So, needless to say, I made a few substitutions here and there, and the soup turned out FANTASTIC. We'll definitely be making this one again.

Ingredients:
1/4 cup of butter
1 Zucchini, thickly sliced
3 Carrots, sliced
1 shallot, finely chopped
1 small onion, finely chopped
4 cups of water
4 tsp of chicken broth mix
1 1/2 tsp curry
1 tsp sea salt (approximate)

Directions:

1. In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter, then cook the shallots, onion, zucchini and carrots for a few minutes, to soften and coat the vegetables with butter. Place in the slow cooked and add the remaining ingredients. Cover and cook on high for 4-6 hours.

2. Transfer to a blender and puree.

Paper Pumpkin

I came across this blog post at Sweet Bee Buzzings and took the author's advice and made this craft with the kids. I followed her directions pretty closely, so check out her blog for the tutorial, but it was quick, easy and the kids were amazed with the result of our construction paper and pipecleaner pumpkin.