Mini egg “muffins”

mini egg "muffins"

We love having breakfast for supper.  It is always fun where once a week we have scrambled eggs, or crepes with egg and cheese filling.  Tonight I decided to make little Mini egg muffins.  I created them in my mini muffin tin and it took no time at all.

this recipe makes 12 small mini muffins, (feeds 2 kids and 1 adult) as a side dish.  You may want to double it.

• 4 eggs scrambled
• salt and pepper
• fresh chives chopped, about 2 tbsp
• cheese – your favorite kind, (we used Jalepeno Gouda)

Preheat oven to 425

Prepare your mini muffin tray by using some margarine to grease the tins. I only greased 12 of the tins.  I used a silicone brush to dip in the cold margarine and grease the tin.

combine eggs, salt, pepper, chives and make sure they are all mixed well.  Carefully add mixture to the tray, try to keep them all even.  Add cheese to each of the muffins.  Place in the oven and cook for apx 10 minutes.  The eggs should puff up a little but there should be no runnyness to them.  You can serve them with anything, for lunch, breakfast or dinner.

wordless wednesday

Finally organized the brewing space

I was so proud of myself today that I had to take a few pictures.  The last few months have been complete chaos downstairs in our basement.  We got the tires removed from the van and Handsome brought them downstairs in the basement.  With all the other stuff down there.  Of course most people would find a home for them in the corner or somewhere we wouldn’t trip over them.  No, not at our house.  The tires are placed right in the line of fire. Right in the path from the basement to the washing machine.  I will stop before I spiral into a rant….

My point is that we finally got down to moving stuff around and getting things sorted.  Hansome bought some brackets and installed a shelf along the stair wall so I placed all the grain buckets and kegs along the wall and on the new shelf.  It looks fantastic.  I cleaned up the area, We poured some of the bags of grain into some new buckets and sealed them up with some gamma lids.

I wish I had taken a before photo of how insane it looked down there in order to show how amazing it looks now.

A little bit of happiness for an icy cold day

This is the sight I woke up to this morning.  It made me smile so I snapped the shot with my phone.  It has been so cold, windy, and icy the last few days.  I love having a bit of sunshine like this. 

 

Today when you go outside put a little sunshine in your pocket, take it out the next time you feel a little sad or give it to someone that has too much darkness ♥

Catching the Quilting Bug Part 1

This past weekend I invited all the girls over to my house for our first “stitch n bitch”.  I had been wanting to do this for some time now.  I thought it would be a lot of fun to have some friends over and hang out, have a few drinks, a few laughs and work on one of the many projects that I have started and have never completed.  Well, that was exactly how it went down… all except I found myself taking on another project.

I thought it would be fun to use my little girls old baby clothes to make a little quilt.  Of course I have never made a quilt before, but I am never one to back down from a challenge.  Especially a crafting challenge.  The only problem I have seems to be completing these crafts.  I usually get an idea like this and run to the store, buy up all my supplies, work on it for an afternoon or two then it sits in a box or bag somewhere crying out my name every time I go into the basement.  I won’t bore you with the details of the countless crafts I have started, or relive my shame in not having come close to finishing any of these ideas.  Now I am on to something new (yet again)

I have been doing some small little hexagon patches for this baby quilt that I think will look amazing.  I am all geared up to do it on the weekend and I ask my MIL for some advice because she is an amazing quilter.  When I go over to her house she shows me all kinds of extra material I can choose from, all these beautiful patterns that I can make.  She fills my head with ideas and inspiration.  Armed with a jelly roll, some packets of fabric and a giant cutting board I am off on a new quest to make a new project.  It’s a larger quilt made up of little frames.  Looks easy enough, just follow the pattern, cut the material and sew it, right?

The pattern is calling for me to use 1 jelly roll, and a few pack of charms.  I don’t know what these charms things are but I have tons of fabric, and my MIL said I can use the fabric and cut it to the dimensions of the charms they are asking for.  5 1/2 inches squared.  Perfect. So that is just what I do.  Only when I begin to sew the pieces together things are not matching up the way they look on the pattern.  I can’t wrap my head around it. For two days.

I keep at this, because It is something that I am refusing to give up.  Finally I figure out that a “charm” is a 5 inch square and there is a misprint with the pattern I am using.  incredibly frustrating.  I am glad that I did not give up hope though.

I put all my little squares up on a fleece blanket in the basement so I can see what my pattern would look like.

Fleece blanket allowed the squares to stick like magic.

I then began to sew all the frames around the squares.  I scrapped the idea of using the fleece blanket and i just looked at the picture on my phone to see where everything goes.  Two reasons.  I like to do things as I go, and I was done with going up and down the stairs every time I needed a new block to work on.

after I started to get going, sewing these frames around these squares was pretty easy.

Then all I have to do is just sew the squares in a strip, ensuring that I match up the center charm on each and there we will have it.

frames quilt that I started for stitch n bitch

This is where I am at now, once I am done I will post a follow-up.  I am hoping that by posting this blog it will give me some extra accountability for actually finishing this project.  I am sure it will.  I have already talked about my next 3 quilts I plan on making.

♥

“where do babies come from?”

I was sitting at my neighbour’s house, laughing away enjoying a little mommy time, when I get this crazy text.

Loveliness just asked me “how do babies get inside people” I told her to ask you.  The she asked how they come out. And i said they come out through the boon boon.  And she laughed and said ” Are you Serious?” and I said Ya im serious. And she said you have a boon boon. And i said babies only come out of ladies boon boons and she said “im a lady” and i said you will be when you grow up and she said *raising fist up in the air* “YES!!!”

I was left with my mouth gasping, saying WHAT?  funny too because this is probably the MOST handsome has ever said in one text.  Usually he keeps it simple.  One sentence, no punctuation.  But this! This was epic.

Now I have always been pretty honest with Loveliness (4 years old).  I try my best to explain everything to her.  I know it sounds weird that she refers to her boon boon, but it was a name she has always called it and it has always stuck.  We have always thought it was cute.  It was funny and embarrassing when she would say that Daddy has a boon boon but it looks like a tail.  We would just tell her that boys and girls had different kinds of boon boons.  I thought it was ok because I would never have to face the embarrassing ”my kid kept talking about (penis/vagina) at the restaurant last night” – now I am second guessing myself.

So far the question has not come up today.  I am trying to prepare myself though, in case it does.  Yesterday she was telling me that she wanted to be a mommy when she grows up, she wanted to have babies.  I know this is a stage that all little girls go through, It is necessary.  It just took me by surprise, that is all.  I think it took my husband by surprise even more.  Glad he was there to explain some of it, but not too happy about the “ask your mother” part.  I guess it is a good way to handle it though until we are both able to come up with a way to explain it properly.  Maybe this discussion will come up at a restaurant or grocery store line one day.  I am hoping that I will be that mom who knows exactly what to say.

Wii U Draw and Disney Princess: Enchanted Storybooks

This year for Christmas, Santa gave our family a wii u draw.  He also included an extra game he thought would be extra exciting for Loveliness.  “Disney Princess: Enchanted Storybooks”

The U draw tablet itself was pretty neat.  My husband and I sat on the couch and had fun colouring the different colouring pages it offered.  We were able to create a picture on a blank page and take turns adding different colours to it.  There was even a play back feature that let us see our picture as it was drawn out.  It was pretty fun.I think Santa got it for us because our little girls are always taking our phones and trying to colour on the draw app.

The Wii has lots of interesting titles to come to the tablet as well.  I am particularly interested in the “pictionary” game.  I am not sure if it is out yet, but it looks like tablet will also be offered to the other PS3 and xBox platforms.

The big hit with this tablet has been the Disney Princess game.  It has been providing Loveliness with hours of fun so far.  This game is a story book style game.  Basically your job is to restore colour back to the kingdom by solving all the puzzles and games within the story books at the library.  There is a story book for each of the princesses.  You complete chapters in the story that become progressively harder.  Players use the colouring pen to touch items on the page, dress characters in the story by applying stickers to the scene. You can connect the dots and colour by number too.  I enjoy watching my little girl navigate the maze by tilting the udraw board.

She is able to do all the activities in the game with out much difficulty,  and very little frustrations.  The games are set up with clear instructions and the instructions are repeated often so the child can keep trying to do it correctly.  Over all I was very impressed with this game.  I thought it would be just some picture game where she colours the scenes but it is not that at all. It is something that she doesn’t bore of very easily and she wants to play it over and over again.  Thanks Santa!   Definitely a fun gift that the girls really love. and here is another review of it, if you need more convincing.

BTW- all opinions expressed are always my own, and I have never been paid, bribed or coerced to say anything.

Maple Glazed Salmon

Both my little girls can be picky when it comes to eating certain foods.  With the older child I have always told her three important things.  The first being that she has to at least try everything on her plate.  Trying is very important because of the second reason : I try very hard to change what I make for her every time I cook it.  If she doesn’t like it this time next time I will change the recipe and hope that she does like it.  The last thing I tell her is that as we change and we grow our taste buds change and grow too.  Something that we do not like when we were 2 may taste delicious when we are 3.  This holds true for me aswell.  When I first met my husband I was a very picky eater.  My food couldn’t even touch on the plate.  I eventually started to come around and now I eat all kinds of things.  Even Salmon!

Maple Glazed  Salmon

• Salmon – boneless with skin
• salt and pepper
• 1 tbsp brown sugar
• 2 tbsp soya sauce
• 2 tbsp maple syrup
• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 clove garlic (minced)

Place salmon in a casserole dish.  sprinkle with salt and pepper, In a bowl add soya sauce, maple syrup,olive oil, and chopped garlic.  Mix and drizzle over salmon.  Sprinkle with Brown sugar Bake in oven at 400 degrees for 20 minutes

What’s Brewing on our Back Porch

I have been meaning to post a follow-up on this for quite sometime now. We have gotten our brewing off the ground and we have had quite a few successful brewing sessions so far.

So for those that do not know….

I have teamed up with Handsome and my Brother In-law. Lets just call him Bill (BIL), because his name is nowhere close to being Bill. We have taken the full plunge into All-grain brewing. We make  10 gallon batches of beer every other weekend. It is usually a full day event. We start at 9 am and the water is on the boil. We use a 60 000 btu propane burner similar to the one shown here.  and a gigantic pot.  It’s a long day but we really enjoy doing it. It is a hobby and best of all it is one that we can do together.

A normal family fills their basement with summer tires, kids bikes, christmas decorations and camping gear.  We have all that junk, plus hundreds of pounds of grain, and buckets (lots of buckets!) Kegs and brewing equipment. There isn’t a lot of room down there, but we have some old kitchen cupboards that Bil and Handsome installed.  So its starting to look a little less chaotic down there.

Not only is there a lot of grain down there, but there are so many different varieties.  We can make practically any beer we want.  The temperature is right to make ales (lucky that is what we like most!)  If we want to make Lager we need to build a cold box to chill the beer while it is fermenting.  So far we have made some really delicious British bitter style ales, a golden ale, a unbeleivable Stout, an Irish Red and a Pumpkin Ale (from fresh roasted pumpkins) . We have also made a few different types of Cider from fresh apple cider that we purchased from a nearby orchard.  Each time we brew we work on our process, and every brew experience is a new learning experience. We are hoping to bump up our production to 20 gallon batches for the summer.

weighing grain before it is ready to be milled

 

Grain that is in the grain mill (barley crusher)

From milling the grain to pitching the yeast the entire family is involved in some part of the process. Last brew Loveliness and her cousins got to add the hops to the boil. Sometimes she helps with adding the yeast. When she is older maybe she can mill the grain.  Until then she just watches and takes it all in.  I know that she has the makings of a great brew master because I have seen her making “peanut butter beer” on the slide at the park.  Mixing the mud and adding the hops (leaves).  I don’t have the heart to tell her that it will probably have terrible “head retention”- but then again who knows?  maybe she knows something I don’t

mash tuns that are draining into boil pot

this will be boiled and hops will be added

Grass Head Elves

When December came along we thought we would be getting tons of snow.  As we went on our nature walks and saw all the leaves that had disappeared from the trees and the grass had turned brown and patchy   we wanted to make a craft that would bring some “”life” indoors.  What better idea than a little Green elf with grass hair.

What you will need:

• 1 old baby sock for the head (Not too thick)
• 2-3 tbsp grass seed
• 1 “yop” beverage container, or plastic juice bottle works well too.
• some dirt
• sharpie marker or waterproof marker
• bits of coloured paper to make clothes
• ‘elastic band

First step is to  give the  baby sock a good stretch.  You want to pull at the foot to make sure that there is enough space in the sock for the green grass to grow out of.  I just used a regular sock.  Fill the sock with the grass seed and top it off with dirt.  Shape the end of the sock in a ball and fasten it with an elastic band (or one of the hundreads of “silly bands” that you keep finding around the house).  There should be a long tail of sock hanging down.  This will be inserted into the bottle and act like a wick to draw up moisture into the elfs’ head.  Next use your scrap paper to design the clothes for the elf.  We used some shiny craft paper.  Tape the paper on to the bottle Have your child draw a cute face onto the head with a sharpie marker, or use fabric/ water-resistant glue to fasten google eyes on to head.

Fill the container up and  water the head of the elf.  Insert the sock end into the container and place the little elf in a sunny window.  After a week the “hair” will start to sprout.  Water the head and change the water in the container when the elf feels a bit dry.  (every few days)  After your elf has grown a nice lush head of hair, your little one can have fun creating a cool funky style.