love those baby legs!

the felted bag....finally

This is the bag I've been working on since Christmas and it is finally almost done. I am going to redo the handles for it because I wasn't happy with how they turned out. I also need to buy some fabric to line the inside with then it will really be done. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out. Definately can tell I'm not an expert knitter when you see it up close! :)

look what i found in my dishwasher

feather light muffins

I made these muffins for breakfast this morning. Only one is left - they are Scott's favorite! Here's the recipe -

1/3 cup butter
1/2 cup sugar
1 egg
1 1/2 cups cake flour
1 1/2 tsp. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1/2 cup milk

Topping:
1/2 cup sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 cup butter, melted

In a mixing bowl, cream shortening, sugar and egg. Combine the dry ingredients; add to creamed mixture alternately with milk. Fill greased muffin tins two-thirds full. Bake at 325 degrees for 20 to 25 minutes. Let cool for 3 to 4 minutes. Meanwhile, combine sugar and cinnamon in small bowl. Roll warm muffins in melted butter, then in sugar mixture. Serve warm.

Yields 8 to 10 muffins.

almost ready to felt

I am done with the knitting part of my bag! I am now ready to sew it all together and then throw it in the washer to felt. I put the orangey pink colored yarn in the picture because I think that I am going to knit a flower accent to pin to the bag. I'll post a picture when it is done.

my little knitter

I was given a Knifty Knitter circular loom as a gift last year and today we pulled it out and Elle used it to knit up this hat for her baby Dorothy. (She loves the Wizard of Oz!) It was so easy! I wrapped the yarn around the pegs for her. I think that she will be able to do this herself but I did not want her to get frustrated on her first project. After the yarn was wrapped around each peg she used a little hook tool to pull the bottom loop over the top loop and off of the peg. She loved it and felt like such a big girl. I was working on a pocket for my bag (I'm getting close to being done with it!) while she knitted her hat and she said, "We're knitting girls aren't we Mom?!" :) It was a fun time together.

my littlest cookie baker

Trying to snitch cookie dough? Where would she learn that from?! :)

tommy's new hat

How do you like Tommy's new Lil Mad Bomber hat?! I got one for Scott too in black. This weekend is the big ice fishing tournament right by our house so I thought it would keep him nice and warm.

Thomas is really into Daniel Boone right now and has been talking about wanting a coon skin hat. This is as close to a coon skin hat as we are going to get to wear in public! :)

pork and black bean soup

I made this soup last night for dinner and we all enjoyed it. I had put 2 small pork roasts in the crockpot on Monday for BBQ pork sandwiches and I used the leftovers for this recipe.

1 small onion, chopped
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 garlic cloves, minced
3 cups chicken broth
3 (15-ounce) cans black beans
1 (10-ounce) can diced tomatoes and green chiles
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1/2 pound shredded pork
salt to taste
juice of 1 lime

shredded cheddar cheese
sour cream
chopped cilantro
tortilla chips

Saute onion in olive oil in a dutch oven until tender; add garlic and saute for 1 minute. Stir in broth, beans and tomatoes. Bring to a boil; reduce heat and simmer, stirring often, for about 15 minutes. Process 2 cups of the bean mixture in a blender until smooth then pour it back into the dutch oven. Stir in the pork and let simmer again for 10 minutes. Before serving stir in the juice of 1 lime. Top each serving with shredded cheese and a dollop of sour cream and a little cilantro. Serve with tortilla chips as crackers.

Avacado would've been a tasty addition to each servings as well but I didn't have any. I will remember it for next time!

By the way, remember to look in the mirror to see if there is any cilantro stuck in your teeth after eating this soup before going to town. Trust me. :)

leave it to beaver

We set our tivo up to record the show Leave It To Beaver a couple of weeks ago and have enjoyed watching it in the evenings during the week. The kids really get a kick out of it!

fun in the cold

Scott spent Sunday afternoon clearing the snow off of the ice skating rink and then pulling the kids on the tube behind the 4 wheeler. They had a blast! Yes, those are helmets on their heads. I thought they were a good idea after Thomas's 2 big goose eggs from falling on the ice while skating.

ramblings

So Ava got 2 more teeth this week. The weird thing though is that she got her incisor teeth on the top.....and she doesn't have her top middle teeth yet. She only has the two in the middle on the bottom. She's going to have one silly smile for awhile! I am really hoping that those top middle ones break through soon! I did a little searching on the internet to see if this is normal and found out that most babies get teeth in the same order - bottom middle, top middle, bottom incisors, then top incisors but it is not uncommon to get them out of this order and is nothing to be concerned about. I guess she's just going to look like a little vampire baby for awhile. :) By the way, as of yesterday she is 9 months old. I just can't believe that we are only 3 months away from my baby being one year old.

I haven't put new pictures of the kids up here this week because the batteries in the camera are dead and I do not have any of the correct size here at home. We need to get the rechargeable kind because regular batteries do not last very long in the camera.

Also, I just thought you'd like to know that it is -3 degrees outside as I type this right now. This is the time of year that I wish I was Bahama Mama instead of Minnesota Mama! :) In a couple of weeks Scott is going to be traveling to Atlanta, San Diego and Zug, Switzerland. Those all sound like nice places to go when we are smack dab in the middle of winter here!

happy birthday jan

We love you lots and hope that you have a great day!

our weekend

We've had a nice weekend. Yesterday afternoon my friend Lisa and I went out for appetizers and then to the movie, The Pursuit of Happyness. Scott watched all the kids, including her kids, Jack and Eden (Thomas and Elle's good friends). Is he great?! :) The movie was so good. It's is one that I will watch again for sure.

This morning we went to church. We are still taking Ava into the service with us rather than putting her in the nursery. It's getting pretty challenging though. She likes to look at all of the people that sit behind us and smile at them and when she plays with toys she makes too much noise. Scott had to take her out into the foyer for most of the sermon today. We do have screens out there so that he can still hear the sermon but we are thinking that it might be time to start considering the nursery.

When we got home from church we made a bruch of pancakes, maple sausage links, fried eggs and hot apple cider for kids to drink and coffee for us. I was in charge of the pancakes and Scott took care of everything else. It was tasty!

This afternoon I ran up to a yarn shop in Nisswa and bought a different color of yarn for the pockets on my bag. It's a muted olive green color. I thought it looked better with the dark brown than the blue I had bought. I have another project in mind for the blue yarn I just have to get this bag done first!

Now, Scott and Thomas are over at our friend Bob's house ice fishing.

One other bit of news around here is that our neighbor Molly, had a baby girl on Friday. They named her Hannah. Ava and Hannah will have lots of fun together some day!

canning jam

Yesterday I canned 9 pints of strawberry jam. Yes, in January! This last summer I picked several pounds of strawberries from our local strawberry farmer's patch but didn't have time to get them canned into jam so I measured out the exact amount of mashed berries that I needed for each recipe of jam and put them in a labeled freezer bag. This week when I went to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids we were out of jelly so I pulled 2 of those bags out of the freezer and let them defrost in the fridge and made them into jelly yesterday afternoon. It worked just the same and tasted just as good. I think I'll have to use this trick again next summer if the days I should be canning turn out to be good boating days instead! :)

the princess and the pea

Today I was making a casserole for dinner that called for peas. I gave Ava a few after they were cooked and she loved them.

mama

My Baby said Mama today! Of course she wasn't calling me mama she was just saying it while crawling around but it won't be long and she'll say it when she sees me....she's just practicing until then. :) She thinks she's pretty big since learning to pull herself up to stand by things. She's discoving all kinds of new and exciting things now. One of these times she's finally going to get her hands on all of the big kid books on the bookshelf in the play area. So far we've caught her each time she stands up next to those shelves and starts to reach for the books but she'll figure out a way I'm sure.

This picture of her was taken by Jan on Christmas Eve. It's one of my favorites!

hand felting

I'm still working on my bag that I was knitting at Christmas. I realized today that the first pocket I made for it was going to be too small to use so I decided to just hand felt it instead of undo it. I can cut it out for a flower to pin onto the bag or something. That was hard work hand felting! The way it is done is you take your knitting and submerge it in extremely hot water (I used my teapot to heat the water on the stove) then you use a little soap and the rest is elbow grease rubbing the wool together to create friction and continuing to dip it into the hot water. You do that for 5 minutes or so and then you rinse it in cold water to lock the fibers in place then start the process over again. I did the process 5 times and am very happy with how it turned out. When I go to do the bag I'll be using my washing machine instead of doing it by hand but I'm glad that I did it at least once so that I could see the process from start to finish. It was pretty interesting.

nebraska's cheering section in minnesota

happy new year!

We had a fun time at our New Year's party last night. Thomas and Elle even made it until midnight. Today we are cheering on the Huskers!