A new house for ZB's dolls, that is. I had seen some ideas for cardboard doll houses online and after seeing some that were extreme (sliding doors, wired lighting, spiral staircases, etc), I found a simple and sturdy version that suited me much better! Here's the basic design I chose for ZB's first dollhouse:
After fitting the pieces together, I hot-glued a second level on with the scrap cardboard. We had some friends over and all the kids happily joined in making this a special play spot!
The kids and I worked for nearly 2 hours adding ribbons, curtains, coloring, making furnture, slides and stairs. They deserved a popsicle break! These are made with goat milk kefir, strawberries, bananas, grass-fed gelatin and cod liver oil. Pretty much when all that nutritious stuff is blended with strawberries and frozen on a stick, it magically tastes delicious!
After their break, I got the toddlers back to work. We went the garden and harvested peas. I sure love snow peas, but if you're like me and neglect harvesting for several days, you end up with big fat peas. Just the job for little hands.
After a while the little ones just wanted to eat and play instead of shell peas, and I had a hard time keeping any in the bowl to make lunch with!
After our friends went home, ZB finally got to settle down and help her tiny My Little Pony friends settle into their new house.
It was a good day with friends and making new toys always feels productive. Looking forward to a relaxing weekend of camping!
There's always some sort of project going on here! The weekend was pretty darn productive ... yard saling, plant swapping, beer bottling, beer brewing and of course beer drinking to round all that out :)
The mead is still bubbling during fermentation, it will be ready to rack pretty soon (transfer to smaller fermenter before bottling). I did make a Belgian Tripel this weekend, tweaking the recipe a little bit to use local honey - should be delicious! Except it is supposed to sit in bottles for 6-12 months to be at it's tastiest (we'll just see how long I can wait :) No pics of any of that, so sharing some pics from our Monday. It was muggy and overcast today, nice for being in the garden to love on the plants. Salad greens are making their way Peanuts I'm finding are pretty fun to grow, they sure sprout up quick! The Playmobil castle from a yard sale this weekend - we've got to put this together so I can get it up on ebay. It's just about a zillion teensy pieces, though, so not exactly motivating! I did have it about 1/2 way built, but the kids came and reaked havoc (hence the police helicopter and ambulance arriving on the scene): Reed and his friend deconstructed a toy cell phone and are now making some pretty funky art projects with it My sweet friend Shonna came over and was convinced (twisted her arm only slightly) to stay for ginger-pear upside-down cake! It was super delish! If anyone wants to make this special treat, here's my version of the recipe from Jeanne Lemlin's "Simple Vegetarian Pleasures" book (one of my FAVE cookbooks): CARAMELIZED PEAR AND GINGER UPSIDE-DOWN CAKE 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter 1/2 cup firmly packed light brown sugar 3-4 Tablespoons finely diced candied (crystallized) ginger 3 firm but ripe Boc pears, peeled, cored and thickly sliced The cake: 4 Tbs. unsalted buter, softened 3/4 cup sugar 2 tsp vanilla extract 2 eggs 1-1/4 cups flour (I mix whole wheat flour with a little white) 1-1/2 tsp baking powder 1/2 tsp salt 1/2 cup milk
1. Heat oven to 350. Put 4 Tbs butter in a round 9-in cake pan and put it in the heating oven to melt (but watch so it doesn't brown). Once melted, swirl it around, so it can get up on the sides of the pan. Stir in the brown sugar and spread around bottom of cake pan. 2. Sprinkly candied ginger evenly in pan, and arrange the pear slices on top of those to fill the bottom of the pan. 3. Mix all cake ingredients one by one in your mixer until very smooth. 4. Scrape batter over pears and smooth the top out. 5. Bake for 45-55 minutes until knife comes out clean from cake part. This may overflow with juices, so best to have a baking sheet on the next oven rack below the baking cake. 6. When good and deep golden brown, remove from oven and loosen edges with a knife. Place serving plate over cake, and carefully invert (tapping the bottom of the cake pan helps it come out nicely). Serve with whipped cream if you like!
I have no pics of Clay today, he did the last day of homeschool co-op this morning. He's been on the computer alot this afternoon, listening to AC/DC as well as not so classic music like this (i have no idea if this is from a tv show or something, but all the kids around here freakin love it!):
haha! that link's not really for the grown-ups, more for your kids to enjoy and for you to have stuck in your head the rest of the day (you're welcome.)
Holy global warming Batman! Two serious snows in one Winter?!? Thank goodness friends handed down to Clay some snow bibs last week ... they are put to use! It's been coming down about 2 hrs and already a couple inches accumulation. I got my work done, so now I can relax, open a homebrew and enjoy the view :)
I don't think I've posted any pictures of this new place yet - here's our sweet little house we've been in for about a month now: Looking down the road: Clay built a chilly chair: Reed making homebrew pictures in the snow (heck no, I don't let him dump out homebrew! This was the one bottle of the batch that he completely bottled and labeled himself, so he got to do as he wished with it :) Stay warm under your snowy blanket, sweet rosemary! Reed's project for the morning was using every Duplo he could find to build a tower (he took about a dozen pics of this) I'm sure as this snow continues into the night we'll have more pictures to share. Supposed to get 5-9 inches tonight.
And now the boys are inside and shivering and waiting for hot cocoa water to boil. Here's a frugal recipe for ya:
**Hot Cocoa Mix**
10 cups dry milk powder (1 8 qt package)
4 cups powdered sugar
1-3/4 cups cocoa powder (we like SaCo's Dutch Cocoa)
1-3/4 cups powder creamer (6 oz jar)
3-4 heaping Tbs. cinnamon
Mix this all up in your biggest mixing bowl. Store in glass jar or gallon ziplock bag. To use: scoop 1/4 cup mix into mug. Add enough milk to moisten mix (this isn't necessary, we just like it extra creamy). Fill to top of mug with hot water. Kids like to top with ice cream, marshmallows, or various peppermint candies if we've got 'em!
