Oh Mr. Coffee!

Why hello there Mr. Coffee!

I'm working on a couple new projects to put on my etsy shop!  This is my newest coffee cup cozy design.  I love him...  Kind of 007 esq?  Or for when you want to bring your coffee to a black tie affair?  

Sure wish it was full of coffee and not just my demo cup full of scrap yarn...

Have a great day!  Thanks for stopping by!

  

Cupcakes!

Yesterday I was in the mood for something sweet.  So I hit up etsy.  Keywords: crochet, baby, hats.

AWWWW, so sweet!!  (except for the ones that use creepy dolls as their models, Yikes!!)

I stumbled upon a super cute cupcake hat and knew that Little Bear NEEDED one. I don't know why I couldn't have found it before his birthday.  It would have been an awesome first birthday photo prop.  Oh well...

So I started crocheting, a pattern forming in my mind.  Had to rip it out a bunch of times.  It got later and later, but I had to finish, because if I didn't I might not remember where I was going with it, and it might not turn out right, or I might not finish it at all.

1:30 am.  DONE.  Tired, but excited that it looks so adorable.  (Maybe a little girly...) Tiptoe up to bed, lay head on pillow, cue crying baby... Of course.  Ha!

Please enjoy the pictures of our photo shoot!  It was so hard to choose just one!

The Cupcake hat

Top view

My hat model

A funny blooper pic!  Looks like Ari is trying to eat the cupcake!

Had to make a chocolate chip cookie to go with the cupcake,
gave it to Little Bear so he wouldn't rip the hat off his head, but
he wanted nothing to do with it...  

The hat would look so adorable with pink "Frosting" and bright pink sprinkles, maybe a cherry on top?!  So many possibilities!!

Petition

Hoping you all can help my husband out by signing this petition.  He has worked in  a Title One school for the past 5 years, this means it is a low income school.  By working for a low income school he was led to believe he would qualify for the Stafford Loan Forgiveness Program for Teachers.  He met all the criteria for the Program except that he started schools before October 1998, meaning that he does not qualify for the Loan Forgiveness.

By drawing up this petition we would like to bring attention to what we believe is an injustice, not only to my husband, but also to the countless other teachers who did not qualify for this program based on when they started school.

The link for the petition is here. Thank you so much for your help!!

Olympic Stitches

I LOVE watching the Olympics.  I enjoy hearing the stories of all the different athletes.  And as a newish Mom I am enjoying hearing about the Mom's of the Olympians.

I especially love watching the swimming competition.  Probably because I swam in High School and I actually understand the sport.

While watching I will be working on various projects as I try to build up my shop on etsy.  I do however get nervous for the athletes while they race, and have been known to hold my breath as they complete their final lap.  I noticed this morning during the time trials that as they got closer to the finish, my stitches got tighter and tighter.  (If you crochet/knit you know that if your stitches aren't mostly uniform, the end product could look really wronky...)

Needless to say I had to rip out a couple rows.  I may want to put down my crocheting during the Phelps/Lochte 400 IM tonight!!

Lotion Headaches

I want to write about something that has irked me for a couple of weeks.  Maybe by writing about it I may not be so annoyed anymore.

Two weekends ago I got a coupon for a free 2 oz lotion at Bath and Body Works.  As someone who is trying to live more frugally it is not a store I hit up often anymore.  I had been out to the mall to visit the yarn at Michael's, so I figured I would stop over and get my free lotion.

I get up the counter, with my coupon, and of course the woman wants to sell me something else.  I politely decline. (I understand that the store uses those coupons to get people in the store so they buy more than just the free lotion.  They don't figure there will be people like me who will just get the freebie.)  Then the girl looks me up and down and asks rather harshly 'haven't you been in here earlier today?'  Here manager who was standing right there said. 'No she hasn't.'

I was so embarrassed, I took my lotion and left.  I think it bothered me because I generally consider myself a decent person.  When someone insinuates otherwise it hurts my feelings.

Eh, maybe I'm just too thin skinned and taking it too personally.  What do you think?

I will definitely think twice about going there again, coupon or no.

The worst part?  The lotion's scent makes my head hurt....  

Brownie Mistakes...

I am so mad at myself right now.  I fear I have made a huge rookie baking mistake, and I broke one of my dieting rules.

My husband's work is having a picnic tomorrow, and he asked me to make something for it.  I didn't know what I was going to make until I looked in my cabinet and saw brownie mix, I had seen this recipe for Brownie Mix cookies on Allrecipes.com and thought they looked perfect.

Here is where things went south.  I usually replace the oil in recipes with apple sauce so I used some of my homemade sauce.  I have a ton of ripe bananas and I had heard you can use 1 banana/1 egg in baking.  The recipe calls for two eggs so I mashed up two bananas and mixed everything together, dropped them onto cookie sheets, and baked them up.

They needed to be baked a lot longer than the 9 minutes the recipe said, and getting them off of the pan was a nightmare.  They all got scrunched up and crumbly.  I am not even going to show you a picture of them they are that ugly.

I ate two of them because I didn't want them to feel bad, which is how I broke my dieting rule to not eat when I am by myself.  The idea is that if I have to wait to eat with someone like my son and/or my husband, then I won't mindlessly snack.  I will also be more likely to make healthier choices because I want to model healthy choices for my son.

Ugh, my husband just got home and he didn't even like the cookies.  (and he will pretty much eat anything...) He's just going to have to bring a bag of tortilla chips and salsa, cause this chick is done with baking for the night.

Anyone have any ideas on what went wrong?  Shouldn't have mixed the applesauce and banana?  Not a good idea making cookies out of brownie mix?  Let me know what you think!

        

Peace, Love And Coffee

I have been trying to get better about planning out our family meals for the week.  I do write it down, but I always end up losing that piece of paper, or it is accidentally thrown away.

I saw this neat idea on Pinterest.  Can't find the pin that I saw originally, must not have pinned it myself.  Darn!  But the idea was to use an eight picture frame as a dry erase surface for the purpose of hanging in your kitchen so you can write down what you are having for dinner each night of the week (and a spot for notes!)

Instead of using scrap book paper, I wanted to take my own photos.  I started making shapes as I was cutting up some fruits and veggies, and thought that it would make an awesome photo.  Then I went even more wacky and wrote out words with different foods.  Peace - Peas of course!  Love - toasted oats and strawberries.  And - chocolate syrup and raspberries. Coffee - chocolate chips and a Gerber Arrowroot cookie.

I found the eight picture frame on sale at Jo Ann Fabrics (plus I had a 25% off coupon!!)  It came out to be over 50% off and cost me less than $14!

I got all the pictures together, and stuck them in the frame and fell in love.  I think it turned out pretty sweet.  I think that it looks way to cool to write on, which was the whole purpose of the project!



      

Peace Love and Coffee <3

Frame with the dry erase.

I think that I won't be using it as a dry erase board.  The writing is to hard to see and it is covering up my photos!  I'll just have to think of something else!  

Let me know what you think!      

Northern Lights and Fireflies

Did you hear about the solar flare the other day?  I don't really know the ins and outs of it but apparently because of that flare it could have been possible to see the Northern Lights/Aurora Borealis right here in Upstate NY.  I have always been intrigued by them and wanted to see them first hand.

So last night we packed up our car and headed up to Lake Ontario.  We sat under the stars, listening to the peaceful sound of the waves lapping the rocks in front of us.  Fireflies made the trees look like they were sparkling.  It was a beautiful star filled night, my baby all cozy wrapped in a blanket, sleeping in my arms.  I tried to take a picture of the stars, but it just wasn't working, so I put the camera away and just LIVED it.

The only down side to our peaceful evening was the mosquitoes.  I have a ton of rather large welts all over my body, and apparently, my shirt wasn't long enough and my pants weren't high enough because I have five or six bites in a row on my lower back/butt area.  Awesome.

I am happy to report Little Bear did not get any bug bites!

We didn't get to see the Northern lights.  A little too cloudy?  Too many lights from the neighboring town?  Not late enough?  Dunno.  I do know that I will continue my quest to see the elusive Aurora Borealis.  Maybe in a couple years (or twenty) I'll head up to Alaska.  Something to dream about!  

Coffee and Bows...

I've been a pretty cool cucumber the last couple of days with everything that has been going on.    Part of my lets not get too worked up around the baby plan.  It's been an inconvenience but manageable.  But this morning when I thought that the coffee maker wasn't working, I was on the verge of tears...  Turns out it was user error.  THANK HEAVENS!!  

Ari our dog wanted to say good morning!  He's all dressed up with no where to go.

What a good boy!  

I hope everyone has a great Saturday!

Strawberry Daiquiri and Yarn....

Yup that's what I'm doing on my Friday night after little Bear went to bed.  Only posting about it because I downloaded the Blogger app to my phone and I wanted to see how it worked!!
Happy Friday everyone! Cheers!!

Raining Lemons... And When it rains it pours.

Over the past couple of days life has handed us some lemons.  Most specifically the spring on my garage door, and our water heater.

On Wednesday afternoon I heard a huge loud noise coming from somewhere in our house.  I was slightly freaked out (okay I freaked out a lot.)  Did a check of our house and found nothing amiss, so I just mentioned it to my husband when he got home.  The problem became apparent when my Father in Law came over to get something from my side of the garage, but he was able to fix it with out much of a problem.  I am thanking my lucky stars it did not break earlier in the day our I would not have been able to get my car out of the garage and I would have missed a meeting.

Then yesterday I ran down to the basement to do a load of laundry.  I noticed the floor was wet and when I looked back I saw a trail of my wet foot prints in the carpet.  YIKES!!!  I quick moved everything to the other side of the basement and then called my Father in Law.  The diagnosis?  Our 21 year old water heater is kaput...  Another one was bought and will be installed today, but until then, no hot water.  Meaning cold showers....

I told my husband this morning that cold showers are supposed to rev your metabolism.  He just grumbled at me.

As for me, I am not hopping into a cold anything, or my toes will turn purple (darn you Reynouds Syndrome!)  I will take a proper shower later when the new heater is installed.

Boy I could use a glass of lemonade right about now.  Or another slice of this Frozen Lemonade Pie, from Foodnetwork.com.  I made this recipe for the Fourth of July, and it was delicious and refreshing.  I did make a small change and used a store bought graham cracker crust.  It made a ton of filling , so I put what I couldn't fit in the pie crust into a glass bowl and froze that too.  The pie was a hit, and we just finished the extra filling last night, with some crumbled graham cracker on top.    Yum!!!

I only had a couple rasberries from our bush, but I made sure everyone who wanted one got one!  

Almost Stuffed Red Peppers

I LOVE stuffed peppers! I have only made them a couple of times because they are kind of a pain to make and they take FOREVER.  I saw this recipe on Allrecipes.com.  and thought, YUM!  It is essentially a deconstructed version of stuffed peppers!  (Why didn't I have think of that?)

Of course I am terrible at following directions, so here's my version of the recipe. (Husband and Baby approved!)

1 lb of lean ground beef, browned and drained.

2 Red Bell Peppers diced (Red peppers are my favorite, but you can use what ever pepper you have on hand!)

(I also chopped up a scallion, mainly to outline the heart, but I threw it in anyways.) 

As you are dicing the peppers, prepare 1 cup of uncooked long grain brown rice, as per package instructions. (This takes about 40 minutes...  I know, I know, instant is so quick and easy.  But I really like the texture of long grain so much better.)

Sautee the peppers in the meat until slightly tender.

Then I added a whole bunch of my homemade sauce. (it has the onions and the seasoning, and is slightly spicy.) I probably used the equivalent to a 32 oz jar of sauce, maybe more.  (My husband likes things saucy, I guess that's why he married me??)

Heat the sauce through, then add the prepared rice.

Mmmmm, stuffed red pepper skillet! 

I sprinkled mine with some shredded mozzarella cheese, and I tore a couple basil leaves over the top.

Delish!  

Red, White and Blue

Happy Fourth of July!

"Mommy it's wicked hot out here!" 

Wanted to quick show you the super cute top hat I made for Little Bear!  I crocheted it with Red Heart Super Saver.  It was already really hot out so our photo shoot didn't last too long and he did not want to keep it on his head.  

Top Hat!  And Mommy's matching head band! 

Our Dog Rocking the top hat! 

Coffee in the Garden?

For the past couple months I've been working on my little garden.  I've had a couple brilliant ideas for my garden (well, I think they are brilliant anyways...) I'll share one with you today.

I love the Keurig, but it seems wasteful to toss out the plastic k-cups.  I decided they would be perfect as seed starters.  They are the perfect size and they already have the little drainage holes.  Also they are plastic so when you are ready to transplant to a larger pot or the ground the plant comes out with out much of a struggle.

After my morning cup of coffee (and it cooled!) I took the k-cup and a knife and removed the foil, dumped out the coffee and removed the filter.

Mmmm - Caramel drizzle, one of my favorites

I rinsed these, but I did some other ones outside that I didn't rinse.
(I had heard that coffee is a good fertilizer!)

Later, when I had a whole bunch, I filled them with a little moistened potting soil, planted a seed and placed them in a sunny spot!

Watch them grow!

Best of all I will save these and be able to use these again next year!  

Anybody else have some really great gardening ideas?