Garage Re-Do

It seems like this time of year is just conducive to getting organized.  We don't have kids in school yet, but all the kids are headed back to school and cooler weather is approaching, which always seems to give me more energy to get things accomplished.  Plus, you can't beat all the sales on back to school/office supplies, so there's almost no excuse not to at least get SOMETHING organized!

    Our first project was the garage.  I know I posted a garage clean out post a while back, but with summer toys and bikes and random STUFF, our garage had gotten back to worse than before.  So we went out and bought some heavy duty shelves and actually put some thought into where to put things so that they would get put away and not just thrown somewhere when we were done using them. 

 I just printed the labels on some yellow card stock and taped them to the containers.  These containers have been great for getting stuff separated and categorized, so that I don't have 15 different piles of Christmas decorations floating around.

    At some point during this process, I had an "AHA" moment.  Maybe it was after I picked up the fourth t-shirt or the ninth sock, but I realized that we needed a laundry basket in the garage.  That might sound stupid to some or common sense to others, but I realized that a lot of times when Marcus comes in from working outside or fishing or working out, he is dirty.  And it would save me from having to pick up dirty, muddy, sweaty clothes off the garage floor if I just put a hamper by the door to the house!  So I got a laundry sorter for about $3 from Wal-Mart and stuck it right by the door on the way in.  So far, so good!

 

    Along those same lines, we had about 12 pairs of shoes strewn in various places around the garage, all with various (outdoor) uses, like old, ratty tennis shoes for mowing grass or boots for fishing.  So I got a cheapo shoe organizer to get them all in one place and off the floor.  Again, DUH! I seriously don't know why I didn't think of this sooner!

Things are much improved from where we started, but we've still got a long way to go.  I think the garage is going to end up being my nemesis since I am a minimalist by nature.  There are just some things that have to be stored though, and as much as I'd like to get rid of all of it, I know that it's handy to have on hand when we have a project come up.  I plan on taking the garage organization pretty slow and instead of running out and buying a billion cheap containers, getting the good storage boxes once I find a need for them.  I'm sure that means that there will be many more garage organization posts in the seasons to come, but I guess that's life, right? :)

Catching Up!

Wow, it feels like it's been forever since I've posted anything!  A lot can happen in four months!  Here's a recap:

-paid off our last debt besides the house (my SUV)!
-found out baby number 3 is on the way!
-had a wreck and totaled the SUV :(
-bought a Suburban so that we'd have enough room for three car seats!
-took a two week trip to Idaho to visit Marcus's side of the family

Phew, I'm exhausted just from reviewing everything that's gone on!  (Besides the fact that I'm exhausted all the time anyways since I'm pregnant, lol!)

I've done several projects and tried several new recipes and baking endeavors that I want to share, so those will (God-willing!) be posted within the next few weeks or so!  With football season starting and fall coming quickly, I'm sure there will be many more projects that I come across that I want to try. :)  Not to mention that fall starts the birthday season for us, matter of fact, we had Marcus's on the 29th and Hunter's 2nd birthday is TOMORROW!  I can't believe my little man is getting so big!

Anyways, more posts and pictures to come soon!  :)

Sausage, Spinach, Mushroom Calzones

Do you know the difference between a calzone and a stromboli?  A stromboli has the pizza sauce baked into it, kinda like a Hot Pocket.  A calzone however, only contains the "toppings" minus the sauce.  The sauce is usually served on the side for dipping.

I found a recipe from a FB friend of mine for calzones and they sounded delicious!  Here's her original recipe.  I didn't have quite the same ingredients that she used in my pantry at the time, so I improvised.  I mean, calzones are pretty much the same as pizza in their versatility.  So I used pizza dough that I made previously in the bread maker and frozen.  I also heated up some frozen sausage patties and cut them into chunks, thawed and drained some spinach, and threw in a can of mushrooms, along with some ricotta, mozzarella, and a little fresh Parmesan cheese!

I started by thawing the dough and rolling it out into a big square(ish) shape, haha. I mixed all my toppings together in a bowl and then spooned them onto half of the dough, leaving a few inches on the three sides that will have seams.

I just added sausage, mushrooms, and cheese to the kids' calzones, only because I didn't want Taylor to decide not to eat the whole thing, just because she saw something green inside.  She's going through a phase lately where she doesn't like broccoli or spinach.  Strange, huh? :)  Let's just hope it doesn't last until she's an adult!

After I folded the top over the rest of the dough, I sealed the seams with a fork and poked a few holes in the top to vent.  I also brushed the tops with a little butter before baking.  I think that a little bit of Italian seasoning and/or garlic powder and onion powder would have been great to sprinkle on the top, but alas, I didn't even think about that until just now as I am typing this... :)

They may not be perfectly square, but that's one of the things I like about these.  You can tell they're homemade.  And please disregard the wax paper, apparently I have trouble reading sometimes and instead of using parchment paper, I grabbed wax paper.  Oh well, it didn't catch on fire and it didn't stick to the food, so all's well that ends well. :)

 Here's the final product.  Don't you like the awesome food positioning?  With just a little bit of cheese oozing out of the warm, doughy shell?  Yeah, that was Marcus's idea. Hopefully it makes you hungry and you go try these!! ;)

Easter!

This year the kids were actually old enough to take part in some of the traditional Easter activities like dyeing eggs, Easter egg hunts, and helping me make Easter-themed cupcakes.  Saturday our church had an Easter carnival with puppet shows, bouncy houses, a hot dog lunch, and an egg hunt.  Which turned out to be more like an egg stampede, haha.  There wasn't a whole lotta huntin' goin on. :)

After the kids naps on Saturday, I boiled a dozen eggs and we bravely decided to let the kids help dye them.  Although, we realized that they, especially Hunter, were probably going to make a mess, so we took all our supplies out to the driveway and dyed the eggs there.  They had a blast, until they realized there were no more eggs, so they took to re-dyeing the ones they had already done. :)

Notice there are only 10 "finished" eggs.  I'm sure you can imagine how we managed to have a couple casualties along the way. :)

Once the eggs dried, Marcus took them upstairs to the playroom and we hid them and let the kids hunt them four different times.  Don't worry, we made sure to count the eggs each time so we didn't wind up with a stink bomb in a few days!

After dinner Saturday night, Taylor helped me bake cupcakes and I made a big batch of butter frosting that I  colored four different colors.  

I put the frosting in Ziploc bags and snipped the corner to do the base color.  Then I used alternating colors to draw designs and Easter eggs.  I think they turned out pretty cute (and yummy!).

On Easter Sunday, we got up and the Easter bunny had come to our house to visit!

After breakfast, we got dressed and went to church. 

Don't they look so precious? Little blondies  :)  Here's Marcus with the kids:

So handsome! :)  And here's me with the munchkins:

I hope ya'lls Easter was as fun-filled and blessed as ours! He is risen!

Sidewalk chalk

Last Saturday, Marcus had duty and was gone all day, so I figured I'd get a chance to "practice" what it would be like as a stay at home mom. :)  So I planned our day out, bought some sidewalk chalk, and prayed the weather was nice. 

Once the kids got up and had breakfast, we went outside on the driveway to color up the sidewalk.  I hoped that the drawings would stay there overnight so that Daddy would be able to see them in the mornning when he got home from duty.  (No such luck, it ended up raining that evening.) 

We started out with some Easter decorations:

Then we moved on to our initials and a message for Daddy:  

It says T  H  L  (heart)  M :

Then Taylor decided that she wanted to trace Hunter while he was laying on the ground:

Then it was Tay's turn:

She almost laid still for the whole thing.  Tay then decided that she wanted to draw my outline, so I humored her.  However, the shirt I was wearing was about 10 sizes too big, so I had to draw in my "real" waistline.  Realistic, don't you think?

If only it were that easy in real life... :)

Good Eats!

Good Eats is my new TV obsession.  I love, love this show!  And Marcus just happened to overhear me raving about it and bought me the whole first season!!  I can't wait to watch all of them.  It reminds me of watching Bill Nye as a kid because it was science, but interesting.  This is the same way, but with food science.  Alton Brown has a way of making you think about cooking in a more abstract, fluid way than just following a recipe.  It gets to the bottom of how foods react when heated, why certain cooking methods are preferred to achieve a desired result, and what type of heat to use to attain a specific texture, just to name a few things I've learned.

One of the biggest things I've noticed is that Alton uses the freshest, rawest ingredients possible to get the best flavor.  Which seems obvious when you think about it, but then again, look at how many "convenience" foods you find in the grocery store.  I get it, we're busy.  But seriously people, are we too "busy" to grate our own cheese these days?  (Not to mention the price difference in block cheese and pre-shredded.)  That's just one example off the top of my head, but I agree with Alton, if you want the freshest taste, you gotta use the freshest ingredients. 

Ok, now that I've stepped down off my soapbox, I have recipes! And pictures!  :)

The first thing I made from Good Eats was the Overnight Cinnamon Rolls (yes, from scratch!).  They are delicious.  Please try them because they're not hard to make and who doesn't like to wake up to freshly baked cinnamon rolls on a Saturday morning? Or a Tuesday for that matter? :)  So, here's the recipe from Food Network. 

I started with all my ingredients, since if I ever happen to have my own cooking show, that's how they do it (except I'd have prettier measuring cups on TV):

Cream the butter and sugar with the whisk attachment:

Add the dry ingredients:

Once it forms dough, knead on a floured surface, then cover with plastic wrap in a bowl to rise:

Once it rises, roll it out into a 12 x 18 inch rectangle, brush with melted butter, and add the cinnamon/sugar mixture, leaving the top inch or so empty to help prevent spillage.  I added pecans and raisins to mine:

Slowly roll the dough into a tight cylinder:

Then cut the dough into thirds, then each one of the three in half and then each one of those in half.  That should give you 12 rolls.  Put in a 9x13 pan and chill in the fridge ovenight:

Don't those look yummy?  Good, because that's the last picture I have of them.  The next morning, I got up, put them in the oven and realized when they didn't get big and puffy like the ones on TV that my yeast was probably a little past its prime.  Not a huge deal taste wise, they just stayed about the same size as the previous picture once they were baked.  I drizzled them (or swizzled, if you're my dad) with a powdered sugar/milk icing and we ate them up.  They were really good and I will definitely be making these again (with fresh yeast)!  :)

I am almost 100% positive that the more I watch Good Eats, the more posts you will see with me trying to recreate something I saw on the show.  So stay tuned! :)

First Beach Day of the Year

You would think that St. Patrick's Day would be too cold to go to the beach, seeing as it's in the middle of March.  But this year, you'd be wrong.  It was almost 85 degrees here on the lovely South Carolina coast, so we took advantage of it and took the kiddos to the beach.  We had to make a stop by Wal Mart first because I had yet to buy Taylor a bathing suit for this year and both kids needed some beach shoes so their feet didn't get cut up on the shells.  There is a really beautiful beach about 40 minutes away from our house, but we didn't really want to drive that far because we didn't know how long we'd be able to stay.  So we chose to go to the other beach that's only about 10 minutes away.  The only downside to that beach is that it is muddy when the tide is out and there are lots and lots of shells, so it makes it difficult for the kids to walk around barefoot without worrying that they're going to cut their feet on one.

Last year, Hunter was only 6 months old at the start of beach season, so I honestly had no idea how he would like the water this year.  It became clear about a minute after we got there because he trotted right out into the water after his sister and sat down and played for almost 2 hours! 

Taylor kept wanting Daddy to walk with her out into the water along the shore:

Hunter decided he wanted to help Daddy fish:

Taylor kept filling her bucket with water and sand, but by that point it was too heavy for her to lift, so we had to help her dump it out and start over again, haha:

Hunter chilling out with Mommy for a little while.  I think he got a little chilly sitting in the water for so long, haha:

Me and Marcus:

Hunter finally gave it up at almost 3 pm, only 2 hours past his normal naptime, haha:

I can't wait to post more pics of these silly kiddos playing at the beach this summer!  Hopefully this warm weather is here to stay!!  :)

Homemade pizza and movie night!

Yesterday we told Taylor that if she was good at daycare, we would have pizza and a movie night last night.  I got a good report when I picked her up, so movie night it was! 

I started making homemade pizza dough after I got my bread machine (used from a friend for $20!) and I think I've gotten better at it with a little practice.  Don't get me wrong, my first batch tasted good, it just was kinda plain and not shaped very well.  Since then, I convinced myself to spend the $7 to buy a rolling pin and I've learned to season the dough after I roll it out.  I think this makes all the difference in the taste of the final pizza.

I'm getting better at making a circle, yay!  :)  Anyways, before I put the dough on the pan, I sprayed the pan with Pam and sprinkled some cornmeal on top of that to keep the dough from sticking to the pan.   I seasoned the dough with a sprinkle of Italian seasoning blend, garlic powder, and onion powder.  Then I poked a few holes in the dough with a fork to keep an air bubble from forming and baked it for about 5-7 minutes on 400 degrees.  I learned to pre-bake the dough by trial and error because several pizzas I've made in the past were baked perfectly around the crust, but still tasted doughy in the middle.  Pre-baking the crust fixes that beautifully. 

Anyways, I made the pizza half with pepperoni and half with leftover taco meat and it was delicious!  We only had two slices left over, so I guess Marcus and the kids enjoyed it too! :)  And to make it feel more like delivery pizza, I heated up half a loaf of store-bought frozen cheesy garlic bread, cut it into 6 breadsticks, and served it with some marinara sauce for dipping.  Yum!

After Hunter went to bed, we snuggled up on the couch with popcorn (for me) and Cheetos (for Tay) to watch the movie Up.  Can you believe neither Marcus or I had seen it yet?  How this movie escaped our notice, I have no idea because it was great!  So cute and so sweet. :)  Marcus and I were laughing more than Tay was, especially at those silly, talking dogs.  Tay seemed to be completely enthralled with it and she actually sat and watched the entire movie.  :)

So we had a great Friday night!  Good food and a good movie and good family cuddle time!  :)