Showing posts with label Baking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Baking. Show all posts

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

A little Valentine fun, a little organizing fun


First, a little Valentine fun.  I always like to bake candies/cookies/foods for the kids' teachers.  They all have way too many "teacher" things so this makes the holidays more fun and shows how much we appreciate them!  This is Amariah (she really dislikes having to stand in the pictures, can you tell?  Lol!) with some goodies for her three teachers that she has this year:  Cinnamon Apple Jelly, Brown Sugar-Oatmeal Mini Loaves, Peanut Butter/Kisses Surprise cookies and Oreo Truffles.  Yum!

Well, since I've been back from Mexico... I have been FREEZING!!  I'm not one to complain but that sunshine on my face and sand between my toes every day ruined me!  I've been trying to stay busy.  My projects have only been ones that can be worked on by the fireplace.  I LOVE my fireplace so much!

I finally put my cabinet together.  Well, I guess I should tell the truth... Rich finally put my cabinet together.  We talked about painting it a different color because I didn't think black would look good in that room.  But here it is finished and it will stay black:

Oh, I think I need to show a before shot.  This is what the room looked like in October when I decided to tackle re-purposing two of my rooms.

Here's a (not so good) close-up shot of what this cabinet's purpose will be.

I finally found an open cabinet that held three sections with interchangeable shelves.  One section for each child.  When they come home from school, they go straight to the laundry room and drop off their bags, books and lunchboxes.  It has been wonderful this week to use this cabinet.  I got so tired of stepping over bags and kicking them out of my way.  This is a lifesaver!  And now for the fun part!  I'm going to show you how we made the boxes on the top shelf that will be used to hold all their papers.

I grabbed these boxes from when I put Christmas candy out on the shelf at Hobby Lobby.  At the time, I had no idea what I would use them for.  They turned out to be the perfect size and shape!

Then each child went through all my scrapbook paper and picked out some paper for the sides, front, and lettering.  We used Elmer's glue because it is safe for the kids to play in.  This was their favorite step of the whole process.  Here are Amariah and Robbie spreading out their glue.  Ryan, at age 14, was too old to get his picture taken and I had to make him sit down and play in the glue.

Once they glued the paper to the front and the sides, I used a xacto knife to cut around the curves in the front of the box.  If you don't have a Cricut, then I highly recommend you get one!  I only have the smaller one but it gets the job done.  I originally bought it for my scrapbooking but have used it on every thing else!  We cut out their names and glued them to the finished box.

Robbie had fun saying his letters as he put them in the machine.  He was so excited to see his name print out.
 

This is what the finished boxes look like...
 





It's a little bit of organizing but on a grand scale for our family!  School stuff has been an eyesore for us as long as I can remember.  Now I have one more small cabinet to buy for this room to hold all their extra school supplies then I can mark it off my list as complete!

I am grateful for fun loving kids that like to get in there and be messy with me as we create and see what we can come up with.  I love to bounce ideas off of them and see how creative they can be.  A simple but messy project, a small amount of time, but wonderful memories made!


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Baking


It's extremely hard to have a favorite Gooseberry Patch cookbook... being that I have 27 of them now.  I love them each and every one!  The one that is open in my kitchen and getting ready to be used shortly is "Gifts for Giving".  I found a recipe for Brown Sugar-Oatmeal Muffin Mix.  I've not tried it yet, but it sounds scrumptious!  The recipe makes enough for three batches.  I am actually going to revise it a little and make mini bread loaves.  From my Pampered Chef party last month, I received the mini stone loaf pan for FREE with my hostess gifts!!  I have been oh so anxious to try it out!  Instead of loading my friends and family up on cookies and candies this year for Christmas, they will receive a mini loaf of bread with a jar of home-made cinnamon apple jelly.  Well, I just can't imagine a Holiday season with no cookie baking or candy making... so maybe I'll have to add a little of that to their Christmas plates.  =]

I am grateful for my love of baking.  I wish I could say it was instilled in me from my mom, but that wouldn't be true.  I do have fond memories of when my grandma would babysit me during the summer.  Every afternoon when we put the little ones down for a nap, we spent that time in the kitchen.  My grandma had cute little pans for me and my cousin to bake our little pies, cookies, brownies or fudge in.  I looked forward to our afternoon baking sessions.  Those are truly precious memories that will never leave me.

I'm really excited to get started on it all!  Working on my shopping list right now for the rest of the ingredients.  Thank you Gooseberry Patch girls for putting together such wonderful cookbooks!