Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Our Week in Pictures

My Mom and I spent one afternoon having tea with friends at their house while Mark watched the kids.  We had a great time!

It was wonderful to catch up on all the news!  We have been friends for a LONG time...

The plan is to start school next week so I have been working like mad trying to get everything ready.

More school prep...

Mark and Elijah working on a model car while Emmaline and Josiah look on.

"Sharing" tea! :-)

Craft project.  It was supposed to be a puzzle but Emmaline painted each of the boards individually.  Oh well!

Emmaline and Jeremiah, hanging out together

Fishing with Papa

This past week Elijah went fishing with Mark's Dad.  They were gone for the whole day (8:30 a.m. - 7 p.m.).  Elijah had a wonderful time!  He caught one fish, which he was so proud about.  He also came home with wild flowers that he had picked for me, so sweet!

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

How I freeze strawberries

I have seen several "how-to" blog posts around and thought I would share one of my own.  This past week my mom picked up 8lbs of strawberries for me for $1 a pound, a great deal here!  This is what I did with all those berries to keep them from going bad.


 The first think I did was dump them in a sink full of cold water to wash off all the dirt.  I just left them floating in the water.


Then I went through them while still in the sink and sorted out all the moldy berries.  You could probably cut off the mold and use the rest of the berry but that makes me a bit uncomfortable so I just throw out the "bad"ones.  You can also pull out the soft berries and use them to make jam or some other thing but I just cut them up along with the rest of them.



 Then I took the remaining good berries and cut them up.  First I cut off the green top...


and threw it into a bowl that I had handy for all the moldy berries and green tops.  This is much easier than making a trip to the trash can after cutting every berry and less messy than just having the trash can next to you. 



Then take the berries and slice them.



I cut up 8 cups of strawberries, then added 1 cup sugar.


Stirred it in well...


And packaged it up in small freezer bags in 2 cup portions.  Make sure to label your bags!  Once in the freezer everything starts to look the same and it can be hard to guess what it is and how long it's been in there.


Lay these bags out flat on the shelf of your freezer and when frozen stack up.  If you just stick the stack of bags in your freezer they stick together, not fun.

These bags of strawberries can be substituted in any recipe that calls for a bag of frozen strawberries.  A word of warning: these are somewhat mushy when thawed so don't expect to eat them plain!

I have never frozen them without the sugar, if any of you have let me know how it worked!  :-)

A BIG Thank you to my Mom for teaching me how to do this when I was growing up and for always showing me how to live frugally! 

And finally, here is the recipe:

Freezing Strawberries
8 cups strawberries
1 cup sugar

Wash all your berries and sort out the moldy ones.  Cut off the green tops.  Slice your berries.  Add sugar; stir.  Package up in 2 cup portions in freezer bags.  Freeze.  Good for 1 year.

Vacation Bible School!

Last week was our church's vacation bible school.  The older kids participated and I worked in the kitchen making snacks.  Because I was in the kitchen I only got shots of the work in there and none of my kids :-(.  It was a crazy week but lots of fun!  The kids had a blast and are already counting down the days till next year!   :-)


The theme for this years VBS was New York City.  We had lots of fun in the kitchen making themed snacks.  We had around 96 kids everyday plus 30 some workers so we had to make a lot of snacks!
Our snack one day was these cute taxi cabs.


Here, two of the kitchen helpers make some of the snacks.  It's a great chance to chat and get caught up on all the news while assembling all the snacks!


I dipped all of the graham crackers for these stoplight cookies.  Yum!  They were my favorite snack!


And these were the snacks for the last day, lady liberty torches.  Aka: cupcakes made in ice cream cones and frosted.  These were lots of fun to make!




We also made several other snacks which I didn't get a chance to photograph.  And a big lunch for all the kids and their families on the last day, that was an experience!

If I come across some pictures of the kids I will be sure to post them.  :-)

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Trim and miscellanous other

I spent some time working on the dollhouse this week.  Lots of little projects...

First I glued this wall on the first floor into place.  Nothing exciting but it needed to be done.  


However, when I put the wall in place I discovered that it was just slightly too long, as seen in this picture.


So, I took some sandpaper to it and sanded it down till the edges were flush.  It's hard to tell in the picture but it actually looks quite a bit better.


I have also been working on the trim for the outside of the house.  Mark has done all the cutting of the trim pieces because I can't seem to get the hang of cutting all those angles!  After they are cut then I paint them and put them in place.  Here is the first layer of trim on the side of the house.  I also shingled the false eaves.


And here is the front of the house with the first layer of trim glued on and the second layer of trim in place to check the fit.


Mark also cut the boards for the front porch.  Now I just need to stain them and glue them in place.  I stained the bare wood underneath the boards so that any wood showing through will be less obvious.


Here is the front half of the deck, with the boards all stained and put in place.  The post is just in place because it looks nice, it is not anywhere near ready to be installed yet!


 Progress is slow but steady!  I'm having so much fun putting it all together!

New Bug!!!

Mark found a new bug on Craigslist!  We went to look at it Saturday, it was all the way up in Denver, a long drive with all the kids.  As soon as we pulled up we both knew that this was the bug for us!  It just seems to say Mark all over it.  It's a little newer than the other bug and a LOT nicer!

Here are the two bugs together:


And here's a closer shot of the new one.  I love the bright yellow!  It's so bright that you almost need sunglasses to look at it when it's directly in the sun.  So cute!


Mark is loving having a nice car to drive!

Breakfast!

Elijah made breakfast for us all by himself on Saturday!  He choose what to make, pancakes, and then proceeded to make them with minimal help from me!  I'm so proud of him!


 They were so yummy!  What a special treat to not have to cook!  All that training is finally paying off! :-)

Thursday, July 7, 2011

4th of July Weekend


We spent the Fourth of July weekend with family, both mine and Mark's.  On Sunday, we went out to my parents house after church.  We had a lovely barbeque with lots of good food. Both of my brothers were there and one of our family friends, so it was almost all of us together, so nice!  Mom and Dad set up a large table in the family room for all of us so we could all eat together.