A little updating

I was browsing around for craft inspiration the other day when I stumbled upon this cute mother's day gift idea from two years ago over on the blog brown paper packages 

It just so happens that we have a black step stool in our bathroom that the bugs use to reach the sink for hand washing and teeth brushing (and other activities that are slightly more irritating to mom.)  So when I saw this footprint step stool I could instantly envision my own stool transformed.  I tested Big-Bug's foot against the top step of the stool and found it just barely fit, he is getting so big! So I decided the time to act was now!

Before their bath that night, I painted the bottom of the bugs's feet with white acrylic paint and had them each step both of their feet onto the top step of the stool.  Then I penned their names along with the month and the year on a strip of star paper (that happens to coordinate with the green paint in my bathroom) and set the stool to dry in the garage.  Because I sort of acted on a whim, I found myself without modge podge AND acrylic clear coat, so after the kids were settled into bed I waved goodbye to my husband (who was happily installing a new graphics card into the computer) and ran out to pick up my supplies!

I took the advice of the original blogger and applied modge podge to the entire top step of the stool and let it dry over night.  The next morning I sprayed on a finishing coat of clear acrylic and it was complete!  I am so in love with this idea :)  I can already picture myself gazing at the stool remembering my boys when they were too short to reach the sink!  And when they outgrow the stool, I believe the lower step would make an excellent stand for a house plant so I can continue to enjoy my little guys' footprints!

Happy Fat Tuesday!

It's Mardi Gras! :)  We won't be doing a lot of partying tonight (with the kids and all) but that doesn't mean we won't be having a good time today! We put our party colors on display this afternoon by making some paper bunting and a festive paper "wreath" for the front door.  And of course, no Mardi Gras celebration is complete without a king's cake!  I actually made two cakes this year; one for the family and one for my girlfriends who are coming over later tonight to make homemade laundry detergent and vanilla extract.  Yep - we are party animals! ;-)

Greta's King Cake

Dough

1 cup milk

2/3 cup warm water

2 eggs

4 1/2 tsp yeast

1/2 cup sugar

1/4 cup unsalted butter

1/2 tsp ground nutmeg

5 cups of flour

1.2 tsp salt

Filling

1 cup sugar

2 tbsp molasses

cinnamon

1/2 cup flour

1/2 cup butter

Icing

2 cups powdered sugar

milk

green and purple sanding sugars

1.Add these ingredients to your bread machine in the following order: milk, water, butter, yeast, eggs, sugar, flour, salt.  Start the bread machine and run the dough cycle.

2. While the dough is processing, mix together the white sugar and molasses in a small bowl.  When they are well combined, add the flour and stir until mixed.  Melt the 1/2 cup butter in a microwave safe dish.

3. When the dough cycle ends, turn the dough out onto a cutting board and slice the dough into two equal portions.  Set one portion aside and roll the other portion into a large rectangle. 

4. Sprinkle half of the molasses mixture over the rolled dough, then sprinkle generously with cinnamon.  Drizzle half of the melted butter over the sugar and cinnamon. 

5. Starting on the long side of the dough rectangle furthest from yourself, roll the dough up like a jelly roll/cinnamon roll. 

6. Next transfer the rolled dough to a baking sheet.  Bring the two ends of the roll together to form a circular ring of dough.  Pinch the dough together at the seam to seal it closed.

7. Using kitchen sheers, snip the dough ring in one inch intervals, cutting about one third of the way down.

8. Next roll, fill, shape and snip the second dough portion as described above.

9. Cover the two cakes lightly with a kitchen towel and leave them in a warm place to rise for 30-40 minutes.

10. Preheat oven to 375 degrees F

11. Bake the cakes for 25-30 minutes and then ttransfer the cakes to a cooling rack for about 10 minutes.

12. While the cakes are cooling, mix 2 cups of powdered sugar with a few tablespoons of milk.  Add one tablespoon of milk at a time until a thick glaze forms (should not take more than 3-4 tablespoons of milk)

13. Drizzle the glaze over the tops of the cakes, coating liberally.  Then sprinkle the cakes with the green and purple sanding sugars. 

You can make the cake ahead of time, but it is the most amazing when it is still warm from the oven!

Silly-Face Applesauce Cups

Big-Bug is turning six this week (how did that happen?!) and so I have been spending a fair amount of time trying to think up an appropriate snack time treat to bring to his classroom on Friday.  His teacher has specifically requested NO cupcakes and no cakes.  She says anything with frosting is super messy in a room full of kindergartners (and lets not forget the sugar coma that usually follows!)  Additionally, the school district now requires ALL snacks to be store bought and packaged.  I can understand the reasoning here, but it definitely puts additional limitations on snack ideas! When I asked Big-Bug for birthday snack suggestions, he asked to take yogurt cups for all his friends. I was hesitant to go the yogurt route since it needs to be kept in a refrigerator, so I suggested applesauce cups instead.  Applesauce cups are a big deal around here because I usually just buy the big tub or make it myself in the crock pot and serve it in bowls. Big-Bug thought this was a great snack idea, so I set to work trying to make the snack presentation "fun!" 

A friend of mine had shared a cute snack idea with me that she found on pinterest where a woman had created a robot using applesauce cups, juice boxes, raisins and pretzel rods. The robot were super cute, but a little too elaborate for our needs.  I know snack time in Big-Bug's class is limited, and his teacher has told us that snack items need to be easy for the kids to manage on their own, so deconstructing a robot and opening multiple boxes/packages/straws seemed like a little much :) 

Instead I took the idea of an applesauce cup head and adapted it to make silly-face applesauce cups.  All it took was a permanent marker, wiggly eyes and a hot glue gun!   Once I decorated all 24 applesauce cups, I glued a clear plastic casserole lid to a cake board and then stacked the applesauce cups inside.  I decorated the tray with some curled ribbon to make it festive and cut six candles out of paper to glue to the back of the tray.  I attached a small paper sign to a box of plastic spoons and then topped the box with more ribbon.  Overall, I am pretty happy with the end result, and I can't wait to surprise my birthday boy in class this week!

A Valentine for the Husband!

This Valentine's Day I tried to come up with something creative to give my husband.  He normally one-ups me in the creativity department - so I was feeling pretty determined!

In the end this is what I came up with.  A homemade "classic" valentine heart with a few plays on words and accompanying gift items ;-)

The card includes phrases like "I'm nuts about you" "We're a perfect pear" "I'm lucky to have you" and "I love you a latte"  I included a soy latte from Starbucks, a bag of roasted almonds, a pear and three lottery tickets.  We have a running joke between us about Scottish oatcakes. These are something my husband absolutely loves, and I think they taste like a carboard box.  We like to tease each other about them from time to time. So, at the bottom of his card I added "now go eat some oatcakes!" and I included a take out box filled with heart-shaped oatcakes that I baked up for him.  I think it turned out pretty well :)

End of street bonus

Our house is located at the end of our dead-end street. Because of our location, we only have a neighbor on one side of our house - to the left is our one lonely neighbor, to the rear is a creek, to the right is a vacant lot/rec vehicle parking area and across the street from us is a baseball field.  One would imagine this positioning comes with the bonus of a super quite, private setting - unfortunately the neighbors two houses down are so insanely loud we had to move our boys to the bedrooms on the far side of the house so they could sleep at night during the summers (true story!)

You might think the bonus of living on the end of the street is the lack of through-traffic.  While it is true that our boys can (for the most part) ride their bikes in front of the house without concern, our neighbors in our community DO have to drive past our house to deposit and retrieve their camp trailers, boats, spare cars, etc.  So when there is traffic in front of our house, it is noisy and ties up the street for quite a while as they line up and hitch up, etc.

So what is the end of street bonus?  The ability to see people doing ridiculous things out front your living room window because they don't think anyone can see them.  Seriously, this happens ALL the time.  We are the only house with a clear view of the baseball field, we also park in our garage, so a lot of the time it looks like no one is home.  I can't count the number of times I have looked up from folding my laundry to see someone glance around, pick up a big stick and perform an elaborate javelin throw before continuing on their way.  Or a "too cool" high school boy romping around with his dog before quickly stopping and playing it cool when a car comes up the street.  Of course we also see our fair share of gross and just plain irritating things as well - the ultimate in irritation being the inconsiderate dog-walker of course.  So, so, so many times I have been tempted to stick my head out the front door and holler "I guess you must have missed this - but your dog just left a giant pile in the middle of the ball field."  So if you happen to live in our neighborhood...and you happen to have a black lab....I see you!!  ;-)

Empty Cupboard Coffee Cake

We are a strange breakfast bunch around here.  Strange because we cook/bake breafast every morning and don't use cereals, poptarts or breakfast bars.  Perhaps that is a result of my husband's British heritage, or perhaps it is just my taste preferences - who knows! 

We are working hard to eliminate sugar from our diets, but once in a while I run into a situation where I can't quite figure out how to eliminate the sugar completely (*see last week's post on cinnamon rolls!* haha)  Today was one of those days.  I woke up this morning to the reality that I should have grocery shopped three days ago.  I have been putting it off for days and it finally came back to bite me! We were out of milk and we were out of eggs so the breakfast pickings were instantly slim.  Waffles? nope.  Pancakes? nope.  French toast? nope.  Coffee cake? maybe......  Since my choices were limited to 1) come up with a desperate variation on coffee cake or 2) go grocery shopping first thing in the morning, I opted to try my hand at coffee cake.  And that is how this coffee cake receipe came to be!  I thought I would share it here in case any of you find youselves in a poorly stocked kitchen at some time in your future ;-)

Empty Cupboard Coffee Cake

Topping

1/2 c brown sugar
1/4c flour
1 cinnamon stick
2 tbsp butter
1/4c oats

Cake

1 1/2 c water
1/3 c dairy powder
1 Tbsp apple cider vinegar
2 tsp vanilla
1 c vegetable oil
2 1/2 c flour
2/3c sugar
4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt

Directions

1- Preheat oven to 375 F
2- Mix the water, dairy powder and vinegar in a bowl and leave to curdle
3- Mix the brown sugar and flour in a small bowl, grate in about 1/3" cinnamon stick and then cut in butter until "crumbs" form.  Mix in oats.
4- Add oil and vanilla to milk mixture
5- Add flour, sugar, baking powder and salt to milk mixture
6- Mix batter well and pour into 9x13 baking dish
7- Sprinkle cinnamon sugar topping over batter
8- Bake for 35-40 minutes

It turned out pretty good if I do say so myself! And as an added bonus, when Big-Bug came to the kitchen to find out what we were having for breakfast and heard it was coffee cake he ran down the hall hollering "YAY!! We're having COFFEE CAKE!!"  Haha.

Flooding in the Valley

Yesterday morning we woke up to find this outside our window.

Yes, that is the creek that runs on the far side of the lot next to ours.  It overran its banks during the night and over took our street!  Since our house is on a hump, we luckily stayed dry, but we were a little worried there for a while.  I walked across the field to see the extent of the flooding and saw that the water level of the creek was about 4-5 feet higher than normal. 

Our neighbors who sit at a lower elevation than us have sandbagged their houses as you can see from the photo. 

I also walked around to the back of our lot to check the level of the second creek (the one that runs behind our fence) and saw that the water level was about twice as high as ususal, but it had not yet escaped its banks.  The nutria (an invasive water rodent that lives in the streams) were having a hay day and were swimming back and forth up the stream while I watched. 

We were able to get out of our street to take Big-Bug to school, but the district called families halfway through the day and asked everyone to come get their children due to the rising water levels (I had already picked Big-Bug up at that time since he is in the am kindergarten class.)  When I drove up to the school for pick up the school grounds were (relatively) dry, but the storm drains were erupting like fountains in the intersections! It was pretty crazy.

Around our town, other families have not been as lucky.  An entire town to the south east of us was evacuated yesterday as water levels rose.  A town to the east of us has a lot of water over their roadways (although I read it is receding today) and our downtown area has been expriencing a lot of flooding.  The city has been updating a google map documenting road closures and there were 35+ noted in town last night. All of this flooding has been the result of heavy rain, runoff and overfilled creek beds.  Today it is forecasted to rain another inch and the Willamette River is predicted to breach its banks and reach 100 year flood levels by 4pm today.  This will result in a lot more flooding throughout down town and the surrounding areas.  A 100 year flood map was published this morning in the newpaper and I was nervous to see a few close friends of mine live in areas that are expected to be impacted by the Willamette today. 

On a side note -something I have been seeing a lot of on the news sites is a misunderstanding of the term 100 year flood.  A lot of people seem to think it means a level of flooding that has not occured for 100 years.  This term actually refers to a flood with a water level that only has a 1% chance of being equalled or exceeded in a single year.  So if you are reading this, please give the police officers and the reporters a break - they actually DO know what they are talking about ;-)  (see, my natural resources degree DOES pay off every now and then! haha)