Correction on the Muffin Recipe

Harvest Crunch Muffins

*I forgot to put in the amount of milk that is need, 3/4 cup *

Feed your Diaper Stash Giveaway

My night perusing has turned up another great site with diaper freebies and lots of other interesting stuff. Go check them out!!

Harvest Crunch Muffins

This is a recipe from my sister,who got it from her friend Krisanne, they are chalked full of good stuff and taste great, I have listed the ingredients by the amount of ingredient needed so read the whole recipe before you start to make sure you have everything. Bon Appite

*oven at 350 degrees*

1 cup white flour (I use golden wheat n' white flour, cooks just like white with the goodness of wheat)

1 1/2 cups shredded carrots

2 apples, peeled and shredded (I'm lazy and usually don't peel apples, you get more nutrients anyway)

1 cup chopped nuts

1 cup honey

3/4 cup flax seed meal

3/4 oat bran

1/2 cup raisins

1/4 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup wheat germ

2 eggs, beaten

2 tsp baking soda

2 tsp cinnamon

1 tsp baking powder (aluminum free preferably)

1 tsp vanilla

1/2 tsp salt

mix dry ingredients, stir in carrots, apples, raisins, and nuts. combine milk, eggs, honey, and vanilla. pour liquids into dry ingredients and stir only till moistened. fill muffin cups 3/4 full and make for 15 to 20 minutes. makes about 18 to 24 muffins

Today's Give Away

Another great give away from Today's Give Away. Some gorgeous jewelry from Rose Maries Bijouterie Jewelry, she has really, really fun stuff, go check it out!!

http://www.todaysgiveaway.net/2009/08/rose-maries-bijouterie-jewelry-free.html

Bean Bags for Micah

My nephew Micah turned three today and we are going to his party tonight and I needed to whip up a last minute present. As I was talking to his dad he was throwing Lincoln logs and that's when the idea hit me, bean bags, something constructive to throw. Four bean bags, sidewalk chalk(to draw a target) and a bag to hold it all. If I would have had more time I would have made a better bag and done some applique on the bean bags. I free handed an embroider "M" on one of them, it turned out pretty good

Raw Granola Bars

I wanted to post this recipe and them realized that I gave the magazine that the recipe was in to my mom I will get it back from her and post it late tonight, we have a birthday party to go to.

Honey Peanut Butter Balls

6 Tbsp cocoa powder
6 Tbsp powdered milk
6 Tbsp wheat germ
6 Tbsp real peanut butter (peanuts and salt, that's it)
6 Tbsp honey (raw is the most nutritious)

mix the dough with your hands until well mixed. Form small balls, and roll each ball in some coconut flakes or raw sunflower seeds if desired, they are great all by them self. Put in the fridge to let harden a bit.

You can use dark cocoa and after they have hardened, dip them in some melted dark chocolate, they make a great truffle (that is good for you), proceed to hide in the fridge in a brown paper bag labeled tofu because if your kids find these they will be gone!!

Will post a picture when they are done hardening in the fridge.

Marshmallows From Hell

If you know me, you know that I don't cuss, so for me to describe something as hell, let me tell you people it wasn't pretty. My kids are allergic to corn, that includes corn syrup, which is in everything including marshmallows. We are going camping this weekend and what is a cookout with s'mores.

Step 1: find a recipe without corn syrup. Found one, looks good, all systems go
Step 2: make marshmallows ha!!

I used agar-agar flakes instead of gelatin, recipes says "place flakes in cold water in cold mixing bowl, the hot sugar mix will dissolve the gelatin. NOT!! But I didn't know that till about an hour of mix the stuff and finally concluding that it wasn't going to thicken. I used really good organic ingredients ($$$) so I wasn't going to throw it away, oh no. I strained my sugar mixture and got about a half of cup of undissolved agar-agar flakes(next time I will try the powder). Put the sugar mixture back in the pan and reheated it to soft ball stage. Got the mixing bowl out of the freezer and used regular gelatin, add reheated sugar mix and mix on high for about 15 minutes and got nice fluffy marshmallow, I wish I would have taken a picture of the marshmallow cream, it was so yummy looking I could have taken a swim in it. Here is the finished product, we will cut them in squares and roast them to perfection(those of us who have the patients for that kind of
thing) I will post the recipe later for out Smarshmallows.

Instead of Graham crackers (which I haven't been able to find without corn syrup or hydrogenated oils) I made monster oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I have tweaked my recipe so that it is relatively low in sugar compared to other recipes. I do have a recipe for the crackers but they are really hard to get really thin and I thought the change of pace would be fun. I will put both recipes in another post, lcause lunch time is here and the natives are restless.

A Giant Magnetic Board!

okay, so its just the upright freezer shoved into my studio space in the basement but it doubles as a giant magnetic board. Most of my projects that I would like to do or my own variation of are stored on my computer and there are now to many of them to keep track of . Problem solved, I am going to print out the pictures and put them on the freezer, I mean magnet board so that they are visible.



I also have the perfect magnets to go on my new super size board, are these babies cute or what. Handmade by DiEtte, a friend of a friend. She has tons of neat photos that brings nature to life and really fun whimsy acrylic paintings for a childs room. She has really neat stuff and will make you a custom order if you wish, go check it out.

Another Great Contest

The Dress-Up Drawer is having a great give away with tons and tons of stuff, there is still time to get in on the action, check out the button on the side of my blog.

Let's Crochet

In the past when I have thought about crochet it has seemed douty, the hours sitting on the couch making granny squares and then assembling the granny squares into the whatever it was that your are making. But this lovely lady has given me a whole new outlook. She makes some of the neatest jewelry out of yarn, yes yarn, that I have ever seen. Check out her headbands, I am making one for Grace, I just have to do some math(yuk!!) to make it smaller for her little head. Have fun and try something new today

Oh, the things I would like to do...

...it has been gray here for the last two days so taking pictures of my recent projects has been a no go. I wanted to upload some photos but that also proved daunting to this sleep deprived mama. Grace had a temp of 102 most of the night, she slept well and by morning her fever was gone. God designed are bodies so wonderfully, her fever burned up all the virus in her system that was trying to make her sick. She was right as rain this morning, happy little camper, makes the day go so much better. We have a Thomas the Tank Engine DVD were all the lilies on the Island of Sodor are telephones, so Grace is talking on a "Lily Phone" and having quite the conversation it seems.

I fooled around with my blog and changed the backround. It is kind of whimsical fall, back to school sort of feel. We have been trying to get everyone back on our homeschool schedule and doing pretty good I might add. My hubby most likely will be working second shift by Sep. 1, as the lead man, way to go honey, which means we get the best hours of the day with him. We will be able to get school done on two hours flat if I have help with the other kids and we will get to do way more cool things this year which will be awesome since the boys are getting bigger. This is Zach on his first day of kindergarden last year, he has known the alphabet since he was two and a half but he thought this puzzle was so cool. He read a whole reader to his dad the other night, they grow up so fast.



Hopefully tomorrow will be sunshiny and bright so I can take some good pics. I have been looking at past post and I don't know how many times I have promised you all pictures of a current project and then didn't get them up, sorry. Will work on that, sometimes it is more fun to work on the projects and I get going and don't stop to take a breath and share. Now I can upload pictures just fine, don't know what my problem was before, oh well, there is always tomorrow.

Flowers from Mums' Garden

Fabric Giveaway!!!!!!!!!!!!

Run on over to http://todaysgiveaway.blogspot.com/ for an awesome giveaway, you can win a kit for a ruffled apron or a kit for a quilt top, all in really cool, bright fabrics from Two Birds Fabric Shop, link below.

http://www.etsy.com/shop.php?user_id=7374013

(i haven't figured out how to do a "cool" link yet, ya know, where the word is highlighted and you click on it and it brings you somewhere else, still working on that)

I Love Give Aways

I found another site with free giveaways, great stuff. Check out their button on the side of my blog.

Oh Sweet Sleep

It is 11:51 and I want to go to bed. Why, you ask, don't you just go? My answer, the two year old who took a nap at 4:30 and didn't wake up until 7:30 is not quite ready. She is watching Cliffard and then we are going to bed, hopefully she will just lay still and not figit. I can't stand it when they figit, I would rather stay up than lay down with a figity kid. I can't wait till I have a few moments to blog, I have all kinds of fun things to show and tell.

Girls Night Out

I went out with girls from church tonight, we celebrated July birthdays. We went for a boat ride and out to dinner, it was lots of fun. I made this little bag for my friend Sara, I even took the time to do french seams, I love french seams. Next time I will fuse to pieces of fabric together so that it is a little more sturdy, it was a little flimsy for my taste. I stuffed a plastic bag in it to get the pictures.

This is a french seam. You sew wrong sides together, then right sides together, so your first seam is sandwiched in between the second seam.

Not the best picture, but as you can see it is shaped like a box.
I made a little charm for the zipper pull. It was lots of fun. I found the tutorial here.
http://threebears.wordpress.com/2007/10/15/little-boxy-pouch-tutorial/

Chicken update

It is amazing how fast chickens grow in just a few short weeks. We have some meat birds and some laying hens. The meat birds are only here for a couple more weeks.

This is one of our laying hens, I wish I could have gotten a side view, she is going to have really pretty coloring.

This is our turken, she is a naked necked chicken.

This is one of the meat birds. It is hard to tell how big they really are, but when all said and done they will weigh almost 12 pounds.

This little guy or gal is a Black Tailed Buff. They are teeny tiny bantams. We have three of them, their names are Snap, Crackle, and Pop. We got them for the boys for 4H but decided that we didn't have enough time this year. They are definitely a favorite of every ones, and everyone is hoping that their will be males and females so that they can have babies next year. They are really pretty birds being that both the male and female have large upright tails, the males have some extra tail feathers so we are waiting till all their feathers to come in before we declare the gender.

Sweet, Sweet Bonnets

When we lived in the city we watched Little House on the Prairie every day. I have always loved the bonnets that they would wear and would have loved to have one for Grace. I looked for a pattern but couldn't find one. I am a bit more adventurous in my sewing now so this is what we came up with. I need to do some tweaking, hopefully I can have a few done for the crafters market, next week. Side view was the only shot I got before she was off and running again.