Muffin Tin Lunch

To celebrate their new thrift store table and chairs, the kids got to eat lunch at it (well, and most lunches since.) BTW, I'm loving this new-to-us wooden Dora table.  It's quite durable. and $6 for the table and 2 yellow little tikes chairs -- um, I couldn't pass that up. I'd love to have more childless time to explore our 3 in-town thrift stores.  I love finding good deals.  Maybe I'll start going Saturday mornings now that football has started.

I wish, wish wish, we had two 6 hole muffin tins, so each kid had their own "plate." But we only have a 12 and our walmart only has a 12.  So the search continues.  And they shared well.

Anyway, they had garden tomatoes, apple slices, mandarin orange slices, carrots, celery and cheese sticks sliced up so they fit in the tins.  And because my kids cannot eat celery or carrots without it, dip in their own bowls.  And when I say DIP, I just mean Ranch Dressing.  Nothing fancy here, folks.

I was pleased with how lunch turned out.  They ate a little more than normal and a much bigger variety of healthy foods than normal.  Usually it's a sandwich and a fruit or something similar.  a main thing and one fruit or vegetable side.

If only I had an equally healthy lunch! I think I had a couple of handfuls of raw almonds and a handful of reece's peices.

His Turn to Paint

Husband took over crafting over-seeing duties a few times last week so I could do something else ... and Son got his first real taste of painting "the white animals" as Daughter calls them.

wow, when did this little baby become a little boy?

concentrating.

I love how he's turning into such a fun, sweet, smart little boy.

excuse the mommy brag ...

In the last month, Daughter's drawing ability has just EXPLODED.  Before she was drawing shapes, a few of her favorite letters and blobs of things that she would later have to explain.  NOW, she's drawing things that we can actually identify.  And it's pretty exciting for 3 out of 4 of us ... Son just couldn't care less.

Last weekend we introduced them to Toy Story and Toy Story 2 on Dvd (We have read both kids all three of the Golden Books, but they haven't seen the movies yet)

Can you tell what inspired this picture?  Toy Story 2

a carrot, a horse, and a rope shaped like a lasso

I LOVE: GOOF OFF

It does not matter that I THINK there are no non-washable crayons in the house, there always seems to be some somewhere. (sigh) Seriously, if you buy my kids non-washable crayons - you're on my "I don't like you" list.  

Notice Daughter pointing to Son's latest masterpiece

It drives me crazy whenever the topic of crayons on walls come up and people start screaming "MAGIC ERASER."  Guess what ... in my house, on my walls, Magic Eraser is almost as effective as water and a rag.  Apparently, I have super non-responsive wall or some other such garbage.  But I have never been able to get Magic Eraser to get ANYTHING off my walls.  (except washable crayon -- but well, water and a rag gets off washable crayon and it's hella cheaper)

Anyway, I was just resolved to the fact that we were going to have to repaint the walls and cut off Son's hands so he couldn't color on the walls anymore (completely joking about chopping my son's hands off. maybe.)

Then I remembered this great stuff that I bought to clean up a fantastic cabinet that my Pawpaw built for me when I was about Daughter's age.  Growing up, I definitely didn't treat this amazing piece of furniture with the respect it deserved and when I moved in with Husband, it needed a deep deep clean to get off years of crayon, glitter paint, puff paint, chalk and all the other stuff I did to it.  So this stuff has been under our kitchen sink for 5 years, completely forgotten about.

the ULTIMATE REMOVER.

The only downside to Goof Off! (and it tells you on the list of things it removes) is wall paint is susceptible to it's magic removing ability.  Some of our wall paint faired much better than others.  The paint in Daughter's room was completely unphased, the red paint in the dining room didn't care.  Our pantry cabinets that fell victim to a tragic sharpie accident a couple of years ago sang with JOY with they were cleaned (well, that was me singing). The living room walls were the only walls that we really had to be careful with.  We ended up using a q-tip so we only got the crayon.

All our walls look great now.  Not a crayon mark in sight.  And so far, no ones hands have had to be removed.  I love GOOF OFF!

Wordless Wednesday: upgrade from the crib

The Place Mats - Finished

I decided I was going to make place mats with the left over wonky log cabin fabric back in  ... oh, JUNE! And, finally, in the last couple of weeks I finished them.

I used this quilted place mats tutorial on Pink Penguin.  I modified it a little.  First, the size.  I made ours the size of the green place mats we use now ... so slightly bigger than the tutorial.  I also decided to make them double sided, instead of a solid back.  Also, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to play around with free motion quilting and the walking foot on the new sewing machine. So all the quilting is different; some I like more than others.

a fun little swirl turned flower-ish.  this is one of the ones that I just started quilting without any real plan.

a couple of the straight line ones.  I should have slowed down.  So, ya know, the lines would've been straighter!

the only stippled one I did. Man, I got hand cramps and had to take a break, TWICE.  But I really like the look. Maybe one day I'll bite the bullet and actually stipple a quilt! 

all 10.  8 regular sized ones and two smaller ones (for the kids) that were just left over blocks from the wonky quilts (those two have solid black backs)

I think what I most learned on these place mats is how much quilting changes the look of the quilt.  in the ditch, beside the ditch, straight lines, free motion ... they all REALLY change the overall look of the work.

We'll still use the green place mats until they are ready to be retired, but it's pretty nice to have place mats that match the black napkins and blue dishes a little better. Plus, I only used fabric, thread and batting I already had.

I love: No Pudge Fudge Brownie Mix

And even more than my love for No Pudge Fudge Brownie Mix is my love for the dear friend that introduced me to it.  sigh.  We go way back. And I trust her completely especially when it comes to the important things in life. Like no guilt chocolate, for example.

just add VANILLA YOGURT.   no, seriously.  JUST add vanilla yogurt

I hate all things DIET.  I hate the word.  I hate diet colas, I hate reduced fat or fat free anything and everything.  seriously, I don't waste my time on any of that.  I'd rather have a piece of fruit and a glass of lemon water than fat free cheez-its and a diet coke. 2% milk is the closest thing to "diet" that you'll ever see me willingly touch.

So, why, you ask, do I like these fat free brownies?  Well, for starters they taste great -- absolutely no chalking, bitter, reduced calorie taste involved. Second, and this is just as important, they aren't very rich.  I can eat a brownie and not feel like I need a half gallon of milk to wash it down.  It's light and really tastes like chocolate.

Also, my third favorite reason I love these things, is you can make single servings in the microwave in about a minute.   SUPER.  You don't want to bake a whole pan of brownies even if they are fat free?  grab a ramecan or another microwave safe dish and 1 minute later ... you have a brownie.

sigh.  I love Tina and I love No Pudge Fudge Brownie Mix.  Now I just have to find them so I can buy my own!

I FINALLY made those reusable grocery bags

Since I started my WIP project sidebar on the blog, there's been ONE project sitting there, right at the top.  Those reusable grocery bags.  I got excited when I bought the fabric by the pound and started searching for tutorials on how to make reusable grocery bags.  I ended up making 3 pleated purses and 9 reusable grocery bags plus I still have one VERY large piece of fabric left and lots of scraps.  Not bad for $30 worth of decorator fabric!

Well, I ended up bookmarking almost a dozen of the tutorials I found.  Seriously, google "making reusable bags"  There's  A LOT out there.  And I decided to visit each tutorial and decide which one would be the easiest for me to make.  Some tutorials required I make a pattern or print a pattern or use a plastic grocery bag as a pattern ... but really, I wasn't interested in all that.  I wanted something quicker.  I ended up choosing the one that looked the easiest and even then, I didn't follow it exactly. The EASY TUTORIAL I used.

Anyway, I deviated by sewing 3in gussets (like with the pleated purse) instead of doing that weird folding thing.  That means that my bags have fabulous depth and can stand up on their own, but it also meant I had to cut handles into the bag another way than the tutorial said.  But that was easy to figure out and I really think the gusset way was much easier than the weird folding way that I struggled with for about 30 minutes before decided I needed another plan!

I followed the directions and didn't bother with a "finished" look.  I just zigzagged around all the raw edges and reinforced around where the handles met the bag.  The zigzag is enough to prevent fraying and with a grocery bag, that's good enough for me.

After I switched to gussets, the bags only took about 20 minutes to put together start to finish. And because my fabric was all different sizes I started working with the size I had instead of cutting down the fabric to the exact measurements.  So some are deeper, some wider, some taller.  I like them like that.

The bags. Well, 7/9 of them.  Two are filled with tomatoes in the fridge!

Husband holding the tomato bags for a better view

Now all I have to do is to remember to keep these bad boys in the car so we can actually use them and stop bringing home dozens of plastic bags every week that we only use to put dirty cat litter in!