Soap Monsters

Everyday Chaos posted this tutorial back in January. 

It's been on my list of things to make since I saw it on One Pretty Thing.

Bridget's monsters were a lot cuter.  I was just eager to get them done.

I found a huge pack of colorful washcloths at Wallies on sale.  Perfect for monsters.

Tess always draws eyelashes on her people, so I had to add some to her monster.

The kids were excited for their baths last night thanks to these little guys.

I'll have to make a few more with the ears next time.  These seriously only took a couple of minutes to make.

Lunch Special

I bought Mike a panini press for Christmas.  A hot panini is super tasty.  You usually use a nice crusty bread for your panini.  My only beef with that is the roof of my mouth gets all cut up.  Has this ever happened to you, or do I have a sensitive roof?

Well, if you have the roof problem, I have a solution for you! and even if you don't too.

Jewelia's Breadsticks

1 1/2 cups warm water

1 T dry yeast

2 T sugar

1/2 tsp salt

3 - 4 cups flour

6 T of butter divided

1 - 2 cloves garlic

Parsley flakes

1.  In a large bowl, mix your warm water, yeast and sugar together.  Let it sit and get frothy.

2.  To your yeast add the salt and three cups of flour.  I think this bread is best made by hand, give your mixer a rest.  Dough will be sticky.  Slowly add in more flour until your dough is not too sticky to handle.  Roll into a ball and let rest for about 20 minutes.  I have replaced half of the white flour with whole wheat with good results.

3.  While dough is resting, let's make some garlic butter.  Mince your garlic cloves and add them to three tablespoons of softened butter.  Sprinkle with kosher salt.  

4. Preheat your oven to 350°.  Drop the remaining butter on your baking sheet.  Set the sheet in your oven and melt the butter.  Watch it closely so you don't burn the butter.  Trust me, this happens faster than you think. Take the pan out when butter is melted and turn to evenly coat the bottom.

5.  Sprinkle some flour on you counter top and roll your dough into a big rectangle.  Transfer the dough to the warmed pan.  Press dough out to fit the sheet pan.  Be careful with the hot pan.  Take your garlic butter and spread it all over your rectangle of dough.  Sprinkle with parsley flakes.  Before we bake the bread we cut it into strips for bread sticks. I like to use a pizza cutter.  If I am making sandwich bread, I don't cut any strips and leave the dough like one big slab.  Let dough sit in pan about ten minutes, and then bake for 20 minutes.

You want your bread to be golden when you pull it out.  Let bread cool then cut into big rectangles.  Slice the rectangles through the middle to create a top and bottom like the picture on the right.

Load the bread with your favorite fixings and make a sandwich.  This bread is great for a crusty panini or a cold sandwich.  We ate our paninis with cauliflower soup. Yum.

Just so you don't the wrong idea, this is what meal time really looks like in my house.  All Tess has on her plate is ham.  Oh, and I use the nice dishes for my meal and pictures.  

Feathers and fluff

My craft room is super duper messy right now.  It's actually not the worst that it's ever been, but still pretty bad.  I have been working on lots of different things and when I'm in the zone, I let my kids get into whatever they want.  Kind of a bad habit of mine.

Visit my sisters blog to see what we used the feathers for!

Take a walk around the room and you will find little treasures piled up like this.

There weren't even eyelets in any of my projects, yet they are spilled all over the table.  

I briefly thought about linking up to Tater Tots and Jello Creative Spaces, but decided it was too big a disaster here.  Someday when everything is cleaned up I will snap a photo to show you the room.

Messy kids

Last Friday we invited some friends over for dinner.  Five minutes before they were scheduled to arrive Collin dumped kettle corn all over the sofa.

Before the kettle corn, Collin had grabbed several chocolate macarons and smushed them into my rug.  Luckily most of the ganache ended up on the brown parts of the rug.  

I don't know where I was when this was all going down.  It happens so fast with this professional mess makers.

A typical Sunday afternoon

It's sad to think these days will be over before we know it.

Our Book Worm

Davis got a little chapter book for Christmas.  He would read it off and on, but never really got in to it.

Until last Sunday.  

Tuesday night, while I was at the baby shower, Davis finished his first "real" book.  He was so excited.

The next day was his classes library day.  The librarian helped him find the next book in the series.

Last night he stayed up in his bed reading.  He came down stairs around ten to tell me he finished the second book.  The smile on Davis' face was so special to me.  Mike and I told him we didn't find a love for books until we were much older and we were really happy he was enjoying reading books.

We are off to the library to get him a library card and more books.

Slammin good deal

photo credit: Noelle Reynolds Photography

My sister, Noelle, recently moved from southern Utah to the Salt Lake area.  We went from a three hour car ride apart to ten minutes.  It's fun to have Noelle and her family so close.  

Now let me tell you why this is so great for all of you too...

Noelle is a photographer.  Right now she is doing a 20 portrait challenge.

Noelle Reynolds Photography is offering free photography sessions to 20 people from now until April 1st, 2011.  Yes, I said free sessions.  All you do is pay for prints you want to order.

It's been over a year since she has taken our pictures (photos above). I know I'm taking her up on this offer and you should too.

You check her out at

NoelleReynolds.com

Leslie's having a baby!

Last night the McBride Family threw the last 1st baby shower.  Did that make sense?

Leslie is my husband's youngest sister.  She is the cutest gal ever, and having her first baby next month. I'm getting emotional writing this.  Shish, you would think I'm the prego!

Oh, and the baby is a girl incase your couldn't tell from the pink spilling out of all these pictures.

Grandma Linda hosted the shower at her house and all the ladies in the family pitched in to make the most beautiful dessert table.  I have the most awesome in-laws ever.  Everyone is super talented.  Between delicate chocolate covered strawberries to all the hand made blankets we are a force to be reckoned with.  

I put together a little photo collage of the party, but forgot to take pictures of the decorations.  Just know that I made a cute paper bunting banner that said, "BABY GIRL," these fluffy pink and white pom pom flowers, and my first diaper cake.  Oh so cute! 

Leslie we're so excited to meet baby soon.  We love you.

Party with the fishes...

Today we had Davis' friend party at the aquarium.  I thought I could take things pretty easy if the aquarium was kind of running the show for me.  Funny thing is I still found lots of things to worry about.

Like the party favors.  I had tons of ideas of things that I wanted to do, but after a semi stressful, emotional, crazy long week, I reluctantly decided to simplify things.

Then I had visions of this amazing cake.  However, with my limited cake decorating skills, I had to come to grips with reality and embrace my cake.

There were lots of compliments from strangers in the aquarium.  When I decided to not be salty about lowering my expectations, I felt good about their nice words. 

Oh, and I made these little fishy tags on my Silhouette for the straws.

Cute huh?

 I can't believe my little boy is really 7.

 Uh, can I just say it was totally awesome hosting a part outside of my house.  Fourteen seven year old boys running around is a lot to handle.  

Now we are back home, playing with new toys, and enjoying our clean house that wasn't destroyed by party goers.

Have a great rest of your weekend.

Happy St. Patrick's Day

photo taken with my instax camera.

Last night, at 2:32 AM to be exact, Davis woke me up to tell me a leprechaun had been in his room.

Today there are scattered chocolate coin wrappers all over the house.  

Tess drew this picture of a leprechaun and his pot of gold.  We are about to feast on our first ever corned beef dinner.  Hope you had a great St. Patrick's Day!

They're determined!

Davis and I made a little shamrock and coin garland for the front room.

Festive, I know.

Although my garland is cute, all the buzz is focused on our leprechaun trap.

Last year, we almost caught one. :) This year Davis isn't holding back.

Mike listened to Davis' idea and made it happen. The kids have tested it a couple of times and feel pretty confident it's going to catch a little red bearded man.

Our bait is set (the ruffled rainbow) and now it's off to bed.

I'll let you know if we catch our very own leprechaun.

PEANUT BUTTERY BROWNIES

I am so excited that Mike and I made some progress on our "house to-do" list.

This is a picture of our newly re-sealed slate.  We had a natural sealant, but the tile always looked dirty.  Which you can imagine is pretty frustrating after scrubbing it on your hands and knees.  We used a high gloss cement sealer and I absolutely love the way it looks.  Mike and I couldn't believe we waited so long to do this.  Oh, and I changed our toilet seats.  Yeah, they are so nice!  Sorry, no picture of that.  ;)

Now, remember this dessert I showed you last week?  I thought I might be able to make something like it at home. Uh, Yeah!  

People these are delicious.  Mike, and our friend Matt, said they were really rich and to have a glass of milk, or ice cream on hand.  I on the other hand, have a very high tolerance for rich chocolatey things and didn't think they were too rich.  Rikki, you know what I'm talking about.

Rather than reinventing the brownie, I combined two recipes and added my touch of love, a.k.a. a bag of peanut butter cups.

1.  Use this recipe for your brownie batter.

2. Make the filling from this recipe.

3.  Get an 11 oz bag of peanut butter cups.  Chop the cups into small chunks.

4.  Grab a square baking pan and press parchment or tin foil into the bottom.  Grease with non-stick spray.  Pour 1/3 of the brownie batter into the bottom of the pan.

5.  Layer your peanut butter filling on top of the brownie batter.  You may not want to use all of it.  Eat what ever left over peanut butter filling you have. I enjoyed mine with an apple.

6.  Pour the remaining brownie batter on top of the peanut butter filling.

7.  Bake for approx. 30 minutes in a 325* oven.  My peanut butter filling was still wet around the edges, I think next time I won't add so much of it.

8.  Let the brownies cool on a wire rack.  But before they are too cool, top the brownies with your chunks of peanut butter cups.

9.  Set brownies in fridge to firm everything up.

Now eat your little heart out.  And if you a chocolate light weight grab a glass of milk.

HAVE YOU

Found any exciting St. Patrick's Day ideas?

Here are a few of my favorites this year:

- You're my Pot O' Gold

- U can't touch this t-shirt

- Rainbow Mobiles

- Gold Bars

- Green Candied Popcorn

I'm going to see if I can get the kids to make some of these with me.

Oh, I made this last year.  I better get it out!

Dinosaur Museum

Today was Tess' field trip to the dinosaur museum at Thanksgiving Point.

She has been really excited about her school unit on dinos and couldn't wait to get to the museum.

The kids were really good to only touch the displays that had the "hands-on" sign.

Don't you love Tess' manicure?  She did it herself.  ;)

Collin was a pretty good kid and loved looking at all the skeletons.  He always wants to wear a hat, and found that little one in a box.  I need to find him one that's a little more stylish, no?

The museum has a big sand-water area.  Its kind of messy, but the kids love it.  

We finished off our field trip experience with a little lunch at the cafe.  

This is a picture of a peanut butter brownie topped with huge chunks of peanut butter cups.

It was AMAZING!

The brownie, and the whole day really.

My souvenir