My weekend of gluttony AKA My Birthday

Another year gone by, or as L likes to say, another trip around the sun. For me my birthday means doughnuts, presents, and cake. (I have a little bit of a sweet tooth.) I ate so badly over my birthday weekend it took me 3 days to recover.

My boys all treated me very well. The week before the three of them toiled away in the workshop. K made me this beautiful thread holder. You can't really see it here but the main post bulges in and out which gives it this nice organic feel. Liam made me this wooden guy. He told me that it's meant to hold my pony tail holders. Which is perfect, they are always raining down on me when I open my medicine cabinet. Not pictured here, H made me a beautiful ball out of wrapping paper. His love of balls just reaches out into all aspects of his life, and I love him for it!

What's For Dinner? Pizza Planet!

It's really hard to come up with ideas to make for dinner, and yes, I admit, I ask my 4 year old sometimes. Well L told me that we should have Pizza Planet! (The pizza restaurant in Toy Story.) So I asked, "Well, what does that mean? You want to eat a pizza that looks like a planet?" To which he replied, "Pluto!"

We've been reading lots of books about the solar system lately including one called, "Why Isn't Pluto A Planet?". So of course Pluto is his favorite planet, to which he will sometimes amend, dwarf planet.

This idea snowballed in to the idea that we should make the solar system in pizza. We each drew a picture of the solar system and decided what toppings each planet would have.

And to answer your question, yes, I cook all my meals with a pirate and Robin Hood!

Mercury: cheese on the bottom sauce on top
Venus: meatball pizza
Earth: Blue Cheese and Basil
Mars: Pepperoni Pizza
Jupiter: Cheese pizza with a colby jack hurricane
Saturn: Cheese pizza with a pepperoni ring

Uranus: Pesto Pizza with a Parmesan ring

Neptune: Blueberry dessert Pizza
Pluto: (dwarf Planet) Meatball pizza

What's For Dinner?

Just before Christmas we got this great cookbook from the library called "The Best New Recipe." It's written by Cook's Magazine and the show America's Test Kitchen, so each recipe is accompanied by the reason why they chose the ingredients they did and what the ingredients do. You need to give yourself a good half hour to read all their reasonings and then read the recipe, but it's totally worth it. I've learned that instead of using buttermilk you can use regular milk and just add a tablespoon of lemon juice. Although I don't remember why that works.

We've made and loved; black beans with lime and cilantro, beef and broccoli, fried rice, french toast, and the greatest pancakes ever (you don't even need syrup!). The only thing that wasn't the best ever was their thick and chewy chocolate chip cookies, they still don't touch the Tollhouse recipe.

We couldn't keep this gem to ourselves so we bought it for Christmas for ourselves, my dad, my sister, and my father in-law. I'd love it if you all shared your favorite recipes from the book!

Dino Day

About a month ago L had dinosaur week at preschool. The school had
borrowed a trunk full of dinosaur fossils from the Burke Museum at
the UW. His teachers told me it was a great museum so I checked out
the site.

On the site I saw an ad for Dino Day. A one day event where they take out everything they have on dinosaurs. It sounded perfect for the boys.

Today we braved some late season snow, or grouple as some would
say, and waited in line outside with the masses for Dino Day. We
headed over to the fossil dig first. The boys got to chisel some
shale looking for some fossils. We didn't find anything but they had
a table of fossils and each boy got to have one.

L chose the redwood fossil on top. H chose the alder leaf on the bottom. They were taken from a lake that was covered in volcanic ash in Republic, WA.

The museum was packed to the gills. The place should have a dino week, not just a day. There was a line waiting to get into the museum when we left.

I think we would have gotten a lot more out of it if it hadn't been so crowded.

Am I ready to start another blog??

I had a blog going for a good 3 years, but when I had a second child there didn't seem to be the time to do it justice. My biggest hang-up was uploading pictures from my camera. But my DH just told me that I can email them directly from my phone!! I can post everything on the go. Well, this just changes everything!

This past year I've been getting extremely crafty. Last February I got a sewing machine for my birthday (a month early) and I've been pumping out projects ever since. I should start a little slideshow of all my projects. This blog will be about me, my family, and my crafts!

Well here we go again, wish me luck!