You Don't See That Every Day

Christmas is coming. I'm sure you've noticed. Things are getting busy around our house too. On Saturday my sister came over and made a bunch of goodies with the girls and I. We cranked out fudge, caramel oatmeal chewies, peppermint pinwheels, sugar cookies. We were going to make some others, but ran out of certain ingredients, so we'll be making those later. On Sunday, Little K got to sing in church up in front of the congregation. I was a little concerned she might freeze, or cry. But she did great. I don't think she sang at all, but she rang the little bells she was holding, and looked around at everything. And she looked super cute of course. I can still recall the older kids doing this each year in the younger years, and just how sweet they look up in front of church in their fancy Christmas clothes. We hurried home from church and put on our grubbies. Boots, hats, mittens, and scarves came our of hiding. It was time to get the tree! The girls were gid...

The first day of Thanksgiving break around here. Nobody slept in. My body wanted to, but the children did not. The howling wind outside might have had something to do with the wake up time. So I had the older girls make bread today. From scratch. By themselves. With minimum input from the Top Chef (me). And the Boy made cookies today. I don't know if he has ever made them by himself before. I hope so. But, either way they turned out delicious. And our mouths and tummies were happy. We also got in touch with our Irish roots this morning, and had some jigging going on in the front room. We like to listen to Drop Kick Murphys, or Flogging Molly; I'll try and get that home movie up soon .... G and I spent the afternoon without children! We went out on a pseudo-date - to our son's school conferences! So we had time in the car to talk uninterrupted. We had time in between meeting with teachers; and we had time together on the long drive home. Long - because it is rai...

School may be out for the summer, but I'm still making after-school snacks. Because these minions of ours just don't stop eating.Which is a good thing, I suppose! I tried a new recipe today, inspired by not having anything better to do (snort, chuckle, ha!) I got it from this awesome blogger otherwise known as Mavis . Of course the original recipe is what I started with, and like most things I touch, I didn't "stay-within-the-lines". I tweaked it to see if the final taste would match what my taste buds were craving. The recipe calls for flour, oats, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. And then in another bowl vanilla brown sugar, butter, ripe mashed banana, and an egg. Finally add in the chocolate chips. So I had a ripe banana in the freezer waiting for a smoothie, but I decided to use it in cookies instead. And what goes better with banana and chocolate than peanut butter?! Oh yeah! So i scooped up two huge spoonfuls of peanut butter and added it to the recipe. ...

It seems my life revolves around food. Feeding 5 little - well, some are not so little - mouths; And making sure the grown-ups around here are fed; and the two dogs need to be fed regularly also ... it all makes for a lot of food buying, prepping and consumption. So anytime I can find a quick, easy, and good recipe, I will try it out and probably make it way too many times! A friend passed this one on to me last week - Peanut Butter Cookies, without flour! The original recipe calls for 1 cup peanut butter, 1 cup sugar and 1 egg. That's it!! Mix it up, pop some spoonfuls on a baking sheet, bake for 6-8 minutes at 350 and they are done! Cool and eat - yum! But it you know me, I had to 'tweak' the recipe. I cut the sugar in half - it was way too sweet and 'granulary'; And then I added a half a cup of oats instead They still taste delicious - better I think! And the kids eat them up as quickly as I let them. Quick, easy and yummy. (it is also posted on my recip...

We are getting ready for the upcoming Big Holiday. Christmas is upon us and my scrooge-ish-ness is not being tolerated! We actually went and got a tree. For the past 6 years we have gone to the same tree farm - a tradition the kids look forward to every year. Sometimes we ride the "train" like we did this year, sometimes we just walk out to the field. We took our time finding Just The Right Tree. And actually after hugging one and proclaiming it The One .. we found another which we liked better and took it instead. So the one being hugged here - isn't actulaly the one in our front room today. Plenty of supervisors and helpers to cut the tree and haul it to the truck: The same evening after we got our tree the 4 older kids were dropped at my brother and sister-in-law's house and we didn't see them for 2 days and 2 nights. It was amazingly quiet around our home. I spent the time cleaning a bedroom; shopping for Christmas gifts, and ...