Buon Appetito!

Well, our Italian night dinner was a hit! While it wasn't as good as Walter's it was pretty close. The Penne Aurora was almost spot on, I think I used just a touch too much cream as it was a little too sweet. That being said, we ate it all and the kids raved on. While it wasn't the same as Regina's, it was the most authentic pasta we've had since returning to the states.

And the bruschetta tasted nothing like Walter's but it was delicious! I think I used the wrong tomatoes but it was really good....like so good that even Ryan and Logan each ate a piece and those kids HATE tomatoes. It smelled really good and the mozzarella bubbled up nice and they just couldn't refuse.

i've been slacking, i know

i've just kinda been in a blogging funk. the kids are still doing cute/gross/funny things, i just can't seem to find the time or energy to always blog about it!

peanut turning one was bittersweet; i'm glad that he is healthy, growing and learning and discovering more and more each day but i miss my ''baby''. he is still a cuddler. he would rather be worn in a carrier than pushed in a stroller. he still takes 2 naps and loves his bottle. but he is getting so big! he can now climb the stairs-completely to the top without looking back (and without needing any help). he can point, clap and stretch up his hands when you say ''so big''. he knows how to open the kitchen drawers and can walk across the entire room with his wooden wagon. his personality is really starting to show and he's starting to interact more and more with his brothers each day.

at his one year check up he weighed in at 21lbs 2 oz and 29.5 inches tall. he is perfectly healthy. we're are suppose to wean him off of the bottle but, eh we're working on it. honestly he wouldn't even take a bottle the entire time we were nursing--i think introducing it at 10 months was a mistake [in hindsight] but when he wouldn't take a sippy and i was an emotional mess we did what worked. on a normal day he only has 3 so i'm not too concerned. (okay okay, i'm not concerned at all. call it 3rd time mom syndrome but it doesn't bother me in the slightest).

bubba and pooks are doing great too. homeschooling is going pretty well, somedays are better than others. bubba's attention span is quite a big longer than pooks' so i think he's benefiting from it more but that's to be expected. (sometimes i have to really remind myself that pooks' is only 2.5!) bubba knows all of his colors and shapes. (okay we haven't yet delved into into hexagon/pentagon/trapezoid, etc). he can recognize almost every single uppercase letter of the alphabet when it's on a menu, sign, object, etc. he spelled out 'tomato' at breakfast on sunday. we're really starting to work on phonics and sounding the letters out, as well as introducing the lowercase letters.

pooks does better when it's more hands on activities. he loves painting, coloring, cutting, and gluing but he won't even attempt to write his letters. he can count to 5 all by himself and recognizes a few letters. he knows all of his shapes but not his colors. everything is either blue, pink or orange. maybe he's just being a toddler, maybe he is colorblind i guess only time will tell for now. it isn't really at problem at this age, so for now, we're just gonna keep an eye on him.

we're learning all about thanksgiving this week. turkeys and food, fall and autumn, what we are thankful for, scarecrows and farms, etc and then incorporating numbers into that as we can.

today we made turkey's from painted handprints, then talked about the turkey's 4 feathers and what we were thankful for. i explained that being thankful for something meant that you were happy to have it. it might be something that everyone has or something that no one else has. it can be a person, place or thing, etc. i didn't want to coach them too much--i knew they would have some pretty interesting things to be thankful for. so without further ado, here is what they came up with:

we'll do bubba's first-
just in case you can't read it (i scanned this btw) he is thankful for: our house, cars, Kansas City, Matt and Rachel and...bugs? hmm, okay bubba!

pooks was equally strange unique
he was thankful for family, trains, glue and carrots. he doesn't even LIKE carrots but apparently he is thankful that they are there, you know, to look at.

aren't they just the cutest? i love this age!

sneak peek!

just a small sample of the fun to come tomorrow! nanaw and i made his cake last night, using fondant for the first time and couldn't be happier with the results ;)

$1

we have always been a fairly crafty household, we like to make things. blankets, aprons, cinnamon rolls, cookies. okay i like to make things and the boys have learned to like to help. well lately i've been planning peanut's 1st birthday party. yes i know, i have 3 months until he turns one but in my defense i have 3 kids and his birthday is a week before thanksgiving. for both my sanity and our finances, i have to split it up so i don't get overwhelmed. plus, we all know that i just ♥ planning parties. and yes, i tend to go a little overboard with the decorations, (special ordering pig-shaped balloons? yeah I did that.) making my own invitations, and making sure there is always a home-made cake.

anyways, i digress.

so recently when surfing the internet for fun and cheap craft projects (i was looking for playdoh recipes) i stumbled across a mom who made chunky crayon melts using broken crayons. except unlike the one's i think we melted in 4th grade in a microwave--these were cute! and i thought to myself "wow, these would be perfect for toddlers just learning to color." i bookmarked the site and didn't think much more about it.

until i went to target and as part of the back to school sale, they had a 24 pack of Crayola crayons for $.25 a box. twenty-five cents people! this is when i had my light bulb moment and realized i could make the melts and use them as party favors for peanut's birthday. i mean yes he's turning one, but his brothers, cousins and playgroup friends are all a little older. well after realizing that target was completely sold out, we went to wal-mart (they price match, yo) and bought 16 boxes of crayons. that's 384 crayons for $4.

so after the kiddos went to bed i painstakingly peeled the wrappers off of 4 boxs of crayons. (and FYI, those things have adhesive on them now...i had to use a box cutter exacto knife thingy, to help). then when the kids woke up we started our project.
first we took the bag of naked crayons and broke them into small pieces, about 1/2 inch-1inch in length. the kids loved this! then we dropped these into a non-stick mini muffin pan, matching colors. sorta matching colors. they are 2 and 3, and i just went with it. i preheated the oven to 265 degrees.after each little tin was about halfway full, i popped the pan in the oven. you want to ''cook'' the crayons just until they are mostly melted, you don't want them too soupy. for us, this took about 8 minutes. remove them from the oven and let cool another 8 minutes or so, then place (the now cooled) pan into the freezer. freeze for about 20 minutes

turn your pan over and they should fall right out. viola!
4 boxes of 24 crayons, made 24 melts. total cost? one dollar.

we made 2 batches so each little party guest will get 5 melts and a small memo notepad. i think that the kids will love it and mom can keep it in the diaper bag to whip out anywhere where a bit of distraction may be needed. i plan on buying the notepads in another week or two (when they will be on clearance), jazzing them up with a few robot stickers and we should have goody bags for about a $1 each!

are you jealous?

mmm....apple pie made from scratch by ME! don't mind the cell phone picture, it was all i had. but i have this list i made when i was like...18? i don't know for sure, heck i'm not even sure where it's at. (although now i want to go find it!) a sort of 'bucket list' if you will. well one of the items on there was "learn how to make an apple pie from scratch''. so that's just what i did. the kids and i went to store yesterday and bought 6 huge granny smith apples and today while they were napping i made the crusts. (which was extremely easy btw) when they woke up, they watched me peel them, slice them, and then coat them. afterwards we took it over to nanaw's house to bake since we were having dinner over there. it was delish!

Babyfood tutorial

last time when i blogged about making peanut's baby food, i had a lot of feedback. some of you were interested in the how-to since you are pregnant or have little ones yourself. well, for that reason tonight while on a baby food making marathon i made sure to photograph each step. i myself am a visual learner so i thought photos might help someone out there. keep in mind that i made 4 different ''flavors'' and start to finish took 2 hours (including cleaning, peeling, dicing, steaming/mashing, and clean up). to me, that's not bad. i wait til the kids are in bed, put on my ipod, and jam out.

since peanut is *gasp* almost 8 months old, we are now combining foods. tonight i made plums & apples, peaches w/apple & banana, butternut squash w/pears and blueberries w/ pears. personally i usually add a familiar fruit (apples/pears are his fav) to a new food (in this case plums and blueberries) so he's more apt to enjoy it.

first up, plums with apple using the steamer. now normally i make enough of something to freeze and have multiple servings. but as i was going through our fruit, there was a plum that was starting to get soft so i wanted to use it before it had to be tossed.

step 1: rinse your fruit and peel it. then dice into small pieces and set in steamer basket.
step 2: once soft, remove fruit to either a food processor, blender or in this case a mini-chopper. (since i was making so little, i went with the mini chopper)
Step 3: blend until you reach the desired consistency. if you want it thinner/runnier add some of the leftover water that the fruit was steamed in (it's chalked full of nutrients). for thicker consistency, add little to no water and don't puree for as long.
okay, so that made 2 good size servings. in all honesty it probably could have been split into 3 servings but i wanted to conserve my little containers.

then i did peaches with apples and bananas using the steamer, mashing by hand and the blender.

Step 1: peel, clean and dice your peaches and apples. cut them up and place in steamer.
step 2: while the peaches and apples are steaming, mash a banana (or 2 in this case) by hand. cut each one into chunks, then mash with a fork. if you need to soften the banana some, you can pop them in the microwave for 20 seconds. then mash.
step 3: add your apples, peaches and bananas to the blender.
step 4: blend. i usually use the pulse button so that it doesn't puree too much. this is when i sneak a taste...i sneak a taste of everything i make him. surprisingly this flavor is really good, even though it's nothing i would normally eat all together.
step 5: scoop out into ice cube trays, then freeze. once frozen solid, pop them out and put them in a ziploc baggie. you can thaw them in the microwave, or just set them out an hour before you plan on feeding the kiddo.
for this batch i used 2 small bananas, 2 organic peaches and 1 apple. it made 16 cubes, and peanut eats 2 cubes at a time. so for less than $2 we have 8 servings of fresh, healthy, preservative-free baby food. one jar of a stage 2 "earth's best" baby food is $.70/jar. hmm....less than $2 or $5.60? that's a hard choice. not!

now for the butternut squash with pears, i chose to buy frozen organic butternut squash for 2 reasons. 1) being we live in kansas, squash isn't really plentiful in july and 2) this is easier, just as healthy and was on sale for $1.89 for 10oz.
step 2: steam the butternut squash for about 3 minutes, then add the pears. steam for another minute or two, just until soft. it really doesn't take but 5 minutes because pears are pretty soft already.
step 3: drop in blender and puree. easy-peasy and you're done.

lastly, i whipped up the blueberries. they were $2 for 1/2 a pint and i used the entire container.

step 1: start about 5 cups of water boiling in a saucepan. (no steamer) while that's going, rinse and clean your blueberries. make sure you remove all the stems and yucky bits.
step 2: drop the blueberries into the boiling water and decrease the heat. let the berries simmer until they soften. for me, this took about 7 minutes. using a slotted spoon, move berries to the blender. then puree with cut and diced pears. (in this case, i didn't steam the pears first...the berries were hot enough to blend up nicely with the pears) see how purple real, fresh blueberries are? doesn't quite compare to the jarred blueberries now does it?
tonight or tomorrow i'll make veggies. he'll be having white potatoes with broccoli, peas and carrots, and green beans. for more ideas, check out wholesomebabyfood.com. it's an awesome site!