Random

Last week Avery was begging to play out in the snow again, Jack was asleep and honestly Andy and I didn't feel like going out in the cold. So I bundled Avery up and let him play on the deck. He loved it, and I could watch him from the warm comfort of the kitchen. Eventually Jack woke up and Andy took him to the store with him, so I ventured out onto the deck with Avery. Avery thought it was pretty funny playing in the snow on the deck, and keeps asking to do it again!

The other day my sister in law came over with her kids to play, along with some yummy banana bread.
After they left to go back home I came back upstairs and couldn't hear Jack anywhere, so when I called his name I heard a muffled "I'm in here" coming from the kitchen. I found him with the extra big heel of banana bread hiding under the computer desk. He doesn't quite get that when you're hiding doing something you shouldn't be doing you don't give yourself up! I'm sure he'll learn all too soon.

For now I still think he's cute when he steals food and hides!

Faux Great Harvest Bread

Andy and I have fond memories of walking around the Thanksgiving Point farmers market eating samples (which were really not sample sized at all, we're talking fat slices of deliciousness) of Great Harvest Bread. One of our favorites is the White Chocolate Raspberry bread.(Sadly for us there's not Great Harvest near us)

Last week I formed my bread loaf by rolling it out in a rectangle then and rolling it, instead of just forming it into a loafy blob. When I told Andy about my new loaf technique (which makes beautiful loafs, btw) he was a little excited saying that this opens up so many bread possibilities. Enter Great Harvest Bread inspiration.

 So today we experimented with some bread of our own. I used my regular bread recipe (found here). When it was rolled out we spread some cream cheese mixture on it (cream cheese softened and mixed with a little powdered sugar to taste), and we were really crazy and did half the loaf with cinnamon and the other half spread with homemade strawberry jam.

I baked it for about 5 minutes longer than my recipe called for, I was worried with all the goo that the bread dough would take longer to cook. Not sure if it really needed the extra 5 minutes, but it was cooked all the way through.

In the end, the loaf didn't last long. We loved it and between the 4 of us we gobbled it up in an afternoon.

We're excited (and a little scared for our waist lines) for all the different flavors we can try!

Lego loving

We've tossed around the idea of buying legos for a couple of years. I had nightmares of Jack going ballistic (not too much of a stretch there) and throwing them all over the house, or eating them, or worse...

We've (I've) never been brave enough to see what would happen.

This Christmas the boys got a box of Legos for Andy's parents. And the boys have done surprisingly well! They play with them almost every morning and Jack hasn't done anything bad with them!! Yay!

They sit and play with them for at least an hour, with no fighting, no throwing, and they even keep them where I ask them to. Awesome. 

Andy and I have had fun playing with the Legos too and plan to add to our collection.

Coming soon....CSN Stores Review

I'm excited to be able to review a product from CSN stores!

CSN stores has 200 online stores that carry everything from swing sets to home decor items, and so much more!

So, thanks CSN, I'm off to pick my new "toy"!

...to be continued...

Pasta

I'm taking a little break from dinner prep to post this, because it makes me happy.

Tonight I'm making fettuccini alfredo with homemade pasta and sauce. Fancy, right? :)

While I was making the pasta with my pasta machine it made me think of all the times I remember making pasta with my mom and siblings when I was younger. (maybe we didn't do that often, I just liked it so I remember it more? not sure)
I remember taking turns turning the crank to roll out and cut the pasta. For some reason turning that handle was worth waiting for several other kids to get through taking their turn. It's not really that exciting, but I suppose the finished product is pretty great.

(I don't know what's going on with his smile or eyes in this picture, he's crazy)

So today, while I was turning the crank all by myself, not having to wait to take my turn, I decided to let my little boys come and help me. I have issues with messes, so I'll confess that I had the thought long before I actually followed through with it.

 They were thrilled when I let them pull over chairs to turn the pasta machine handle. They waited (impatiently, if you can imagine) to take turns, and squealed with delight at the finished product of their very own pasta.

It made me happy.

Dinner tonight is going to taste extra good. :)

Snow day

It's been snowing all day, so even though the boys and I had nothing else to do today anyway we decided to make it a lazy snow day. we hung out and watched movies, and read, and after naps we headed outside to play in the snow.

Silly me I thought the boys would both love it and be excited to go out! Avery was thrilled, Jack was not. As soon as I told him my idea he ran back into his room cry and saying he didn't want to go out. Maybe I'm mean but I made him come out with us, I don't trust him inside by himself.

We made it outside, and Avery had a blast, he threw snowballs at me, slid down our "hill" in a laundry basket, made snow angels and had fun making foot prints in the snow.


 

Jack kept crying, I offered to let him go in and watch us through the door, but he wasn't interested in that. We only ended up being out there for 15 minutes or so, and after coming in and shedding all our snowy clothes we had some yummy hot cocoa, which cheered Jack right up.

 Here's to hoping the next time playing in the snow won't be so sad! :)

The House

So, we signed papers on our house and moved in on Dec. 15th. We love it. We love the space, the layout, the location, the yard, the garage, and we love that the paint colors are nice and we didn't need to do any work before moving it.

Sometimes it still seems weird that we bought a house. I'm not old enough for that am I? :)
Here are just a few pictures of the main areas of the house, because lets face it, the bedrooms are too messy right now.

 We're willing to admit that it's not the best looking house on the block...we have plans to upgrade in the future, but we have plenty of time for that.

 The kitchen and dining room are nice and roomy, some time soon I'd like to get a table that's a little bigger, you know that we can sit around and fit our food on it at the same time.  And maybe a Kitchen island.

 I absolutely love having a "formal" living room. It's easy to keep clean, there are no toys in it, I love it. We also hope to use the fire place in the near (?) future.

 The family room is a work in progress, we need to get some storage in there, and Andy is happily working on making it his domain. He's started setting up his star wars things and has plans to do more. With the help of my cricut and an awesome program Andy got me for Christmas I was able to make him some vinyl tie-fighters to accent his...decorations.

 The toy room (which is right off the family room) is possibly one of the best features of the house. I love that all the toy mess stays in there. And honestly it pretty much always looks this way, and I don't care! It's great. Some day we plan on closing it off to create a 4th bedroom/bonus room. It will remain the toy room, but with more privacy for guests.

 The boys love the big tub, even if the jets freak them out some times. It's nice and roomy for them.

So, there it is. Mostly. We have 3 bedrooms, one will be used as my sewing room. I'm very excited about that. We also have 3 bathrooms and a garage. We LOVE the garage, it's awesome for avoiding cold temperatures, frost and snow. Love it.

When I uploaded these pictures I realized that Avery must have pushed some buttons on the camera...the quality is not great. I guess that's what I get for letting a 4 year old take pictures. He takes some interesting pictures. :)