Bead and Ribbon Necklace

My kids took MONSTER naps the other day- we recently moved the tiny into her big sister's room, and nap times have been iffy at best.  Since I mostly resemble a large beach ball, but not so quick, these days, I needed something I could do sitting down...quietly...something productive....hey, have I ever sat down and made a piece of jewelry for myself??  Turns out the answer was no.  (I have a piece I helped my girls make for me...and a necklace that was deemed too frightful to give away as a gift...but I didn't think those counted!)



Martha came to the rescue with a simple tutorial...which I read, and promptly ignored most of the instructions, to make use of what I had on hand (satin ribbon, fishing line, lots of beads, and some crimps.)  I love it- it feels "grown up," which is funny because I normally work in REALLY BRIGHT COLORS!  It's still bright colors, but these are almost subdued, right?



The large gold beads are painted wood, the small rounds are stone (possibly jasper?), and there are a few celadon green pearls thrown in the mix too.  The ribbon was left over from my wedding reception.  If you ever need large quantities of ribbon, check out papermart.com, seriously.  100 yards of 7/8 inch satin ribbon is less than $5.  I get lost in that store every time I click over!  Boxes, bags, raffia, ribbon, custodial supplies, spools of tulle in tons of colors...it's endlessly fascinating to me.

Cooking in the Rice Cooker

I kept trying to think what to write...I'm not really "crafting" anything right now....my amazing energy spurt was rather short lived....BUT, I've actually been preparing meals!  My dad is a bit clairvoyant, and just *knew* that we needed a new rice cooker for Christmas.  I received a plain-jane cooker as a wedding gift- little metal pot, held about 6 scoops of rice, with an "on" button that popped up when the rice was done.  This new one?



For one thing, this one is BIG.  A 20-cup capacity means no more asking Aunt LoLo to bring rice to family functions!  A non-stick pot means no more hours of soaking after every batch of rice.  It even has a little cup near the lid hinge to collect the condensation before it drips on the counter, how nifty is that?

My kids adore white rice.  Actually, my kids love most anything white.  Bread, mashed potatoes, rice, cereal, pasta, tatties and neeps, crackers...if it is processed and pale, they are all over it like ...white on rice.  So, predictably, there have been big salty tears at the dinner table this week, especially when the toddler girl comes running to the table, clapping and cheering in anticipation of me opening up the rice pot...only to find NOT white rice.  Poor baby.  Someday she'll forgive for not letting her subsist on a diet of processed foods.

Anyway.  Recipes!  I've had way too much fun with this rice cooker (do you do anything fancy with yours??)

• Oatmeal for breakfast.  Super easy way to get a hot breakfast on a lazy Sunday morning.  Takes longer to cook, but there's no tending!
• Brown/wild rice cooked in chicken stock with black pepper and onions.  I love cooking quinoa this way too.  But be aware, this took nearly an hour and a half in the rice cooker on the "brown rice" setting.  It turned out amazing, but don't be putting your rice in at 5:00 and expecting dinner any time soon.  Just saying.
• Rice with squash.  I cubed a danish/acorn squash, threw it in the steamer basket sprinkled with dried rosemary, and just let the squash cook while the pot of rice bubbled away.  It turned out FANTASTIC, especially served with a quick dipping sauce of soy sauce/peanut butter/sweet chili sauce/and a bit of water.  Oh, I'm not kidding anybody: I hogged most of the sauce and dumped it straight into my bowl.  Too bad no one else in my family likes spicy and peanut all in the same sentence!
• Steamed gyoza-  I haven't done this in years, since I prefer my potstickers pan fried, but it's super easy to throw frozen pot stickers into the steamer basket to cook while your rice cooks below.  Plus, it flavors the rice a bit.  Yummy!  I'm excited, because I have bags and bags of homemade potstickers in the freezer that I know the kids will LOVE, even if they're steamed and not pan fried!
• Tapioca pudding.  This was probably the messiest thing I've done, because it bubbled up a bit and I ended up cleaning out a gummy lid.  But still, to soak the tapioca for a bit and throw everything from my favorite recipe into a rice cooker, and just walk away?  Definitely worth a bit of cleaning up afterwards!  Just don't walk away too far- most recipes call for using a "porridge" setting that I don't have, so you DO want to stick around to check on it once in a while and stop the process when it's thickened.

So, nothing TERRIBLY fancy yet from our rice cooker, but still so nice to shut the lid and press a button!  It's like a crockpot...but faster.  And it cooks rice perfectly.  Yeah.

The Play Room

It could definitely be said that I am nesting. Sakes alive.

But hey! I organized all the kids toys into little matching boxes with lids...and labels! Not surprisingly, the kids LOVE THIS. They can see everything! The labels were at Ernie's insistence- sometimes play time involves dumping out every single blessed box in this room, and the labels help her OCD little self deal with the clean up afterwards. Having a reading child is a wonderful thing!

Look! A play kitchen...with all the supplies divided into "Food," "Cooking," and "Dishes" boxes. Mimi totally doesn't get this system when it's clean up time, but thoroughly enjoys being able to find food to eat and dishes to cook it in. I might have over-thought this one? (Those boxes used to hold peaches. My sister and I, we went through a LOT of peaches this summer in a canning frenzy! LoLo, was the final count 4 boxes? 80 pounds?)

A dress up box! With a mirror! Ooh, and a little TV watching nook with tons of pillows and blankets. And a doll stroller abandoned by Mimi- I saw the way she was driving, it's no accident the stroller's outing ended upside down. It probably crashed and burned.

A very, very pregnant woman. Who just realized this shirt? Isn't flattering. Not after the 2nd trimester.

(Oh, and a basement playroom was a DEFINITE plus for this house when we chose it! With the exception of a few "tiny pieces" toys of Ernie's, every toy is down here.)

The School Room

The "school room" got a little bit of extra attention this week. I helped the girls clear out the last of the toys from here, and I spent an evening moving the desks around, tossing about fifty-million old art projects, and organizing our art cupboard.

We've been doing school anywhere we land, but I want to have this room set up so that all four of us can comfortably be occupied when the baby comes. My favorite nursing chair is there, desks for the girls, all of Mimi's books, Ernie's school books and supplies, our art supplies, the easel, and a little boom box the girls can listen to songs on.

This cabinet was a huge score on Freecycle last year- one door had been torn off, but I actually like it this way since it reinforces that the uncovered side is free for anyone to use, any time. The side with the door is MY side!

Hmm...my lettering isn't showing up that great, but on the kids' side is board games, card games, paper dolls, a shelf for each girls' art supply box with markers and crayons and colored pencils, and finally the scratch paper and coloring books and a big box of "open art" supplies like stickers and such. Oh, our fabulous new Aquadoodle pad is down there, too- it was a gift from my brother, and the kids L.O.V.E it!

On my side, the top shelf is gardening supplies, followed by "my" art box and art supplies that kids need my supervision with like tempura paint and chalk. The bottom shelf has tons of fun stuff they can use, they just need to ask me first! That includes pipe cleaners, ribbons, clothes pins, construction paper, more stickers, butcher paper, raffia, more paints, little wooden pieces for painting, etc.

I actually organized this cabinet a few months ago, and I am THRILLED to say it stayed organized! Most of my work tonight was getting rid of things we didn't need any more, and re-packing things neatly into their boxes. That's a skill Ernie still hasn't mastered.

I still have a few minor things to deal with in this room-- hanging our classroom posters in visible spots, and putting up hooks to hang my tissue paper balls that are currently tossed on top of the cabinet-- but it feels good to have this room more functional!

Cooking

Cooking, cooking....how LONG TILL THIS BUN IS DONE?!?!!

Sorry, I'm kind of completely insane these days. Tonight's the full moon, right?? So....lots of ladies have their babies on the full moon. I'm sure it even works on ladies who by all historical records have another MONTH before any chance a trip to the hospital.

Sigh :)

But, I've been keeping busy cooking other things, too! I'm lucky enough to have a good friend with good kitchen skills, similar taste in food, and a daughter Mimi's age (her Ernie-aged daughter is in school during the days, much to Ernie's chagrin.) We've had a few cooking sessions, and the chest freezer is bursting at the seams!

• A double batch of spinach and feta turnovers made about 20 for each of us.  I made these before Mimi's birth as well, HUGE hit with the husband!
• A double batch of my favorite gyoza/potsticker recipe made about 80 for each of us (and cleaned the local grocery store of its entire stock of round dumpling wrappers)
• A quadruple batch of my favorite biscuits, and we each have about 35 biscuits cut and frozen away for a soup night. (And can I say, I make a good biscuit?? Try the recipe!)
• A triple batch of butternut gnocchi gave us each two trays full (and we ran out of time and tray space to make the potato/ricotta gnocchi- those are still to come!)

All those things, plus gallon bags of sloppy joe mix, beans, chili, and soup. Oh, and about 20 pounds of shredded cheddar cheese, plus mozzarella and parmesan. Add another 40 or so pounds of chicken breasts in various whole, cubes, strips, and cooked/diced variations. Yes. We shall eat well!

PS- Wonder Daddy says I was photo bombed by the hippo.  What do you think?

Kids Made This: Really Big Canvas Art

When we moved into our current house, it had a LOT of stuff in it. Shelves of cleaners in the laundry room, a shed full of landscaping lights and hot tub chemicals, an enormous area rug, a rolling kitchen cart, a ladder....and these weird "finger painting" art pieces up on the wall. The entire house was painted in muted earth tones, and once we started bringing in our Crayola brand of crazy colors, they had to come down IMMEDIATELY. (Because really, by the time we were done, the room these hung in was yellow, basil green, and lilac.)

I spent a day coating them with lots of primer, and let the kids go to town!

These made fabulous presents for our Wonder Daddy, and we have super-unique art work that's kind of color coordinated for our yellow-basil-lavender room now. Perfect!

Vessel of Light

Taken January of 2010...before Baby Boy, before hair cut....but it IS a picture of me singing!

Every year our youth organization for the teenage girls, "Young Women," has an evening dedicated to welcoming girls who will be turning 12 during the coming year and graduating the primary program to move into the Young Women program.  (They'll stay in the Young Women's program until they graduate high school/turn 18, and then they move onto our women's organization, Relief Society.)  We call it New Beginnings.

This year, we chose the theme of the Ten Virgins: we need to fill our lamps with oil by doing good works, strengthening our testimonies, and living the gospel.  Our president found a fabulous song online, A Vessel of Light by Toni Thomas and Diane Tuiofu.  You can click on that link to download sheet music and see the lyrics- this piece won a Special Recognition Award in a 2007 Relief Society music contest.

ANYWAY, because we will have four youth groups combined that night, I offered to make a rehearsal CD for everyone to learn the song with, and recorded a vocals track for good measure.  My husband helped me make it on an evening when the kids were safe and asleep (and away from our NOISE) with their grandparents. Is this the first time I've been able to share a song that doesn't involve my point and shoot camera??  I believe so!  It's piano and vocals, on an actual microphone!  I'm singing STANDING UP!  It's always fun to record something on piano, then pretend I'm a rock star, singing along to the accompaniment in my head phones to record the vocal track.  Huge thanks to Wonder Daddy for helping record this and mix it down a bit.

It's a pretty song, I can't wait to hear the girls sing it for their parents and friends in a few weeks!  (Click on the link below, it should start playing the mp3 file in a new screen.)  

Vessel of Light