Just so much - August

     

      Goodness!! Life really has a way of getting away from you. I am sorry I haven't posted anything in a while, we have been really busy and things have just been crazy lately. Right now it is 12:38 AM and I just can't sleep. Adam has been on a business trip for the past week and I just finished watching a sappy movie and feel so pathetically lonely. Talking to the dog is only good for so long, and whats the point of making food if I'm the only on eating it. He gets back tomorrow, and technically he was home Thursday, but he left again on Friday. Oh well, enough with the pity party, lets go over some things that have happened lately. 

First: VBS

The first week of August was our week for VBS, me and a bunch of the girls were in charge of the decorating. Our theme was Stories from God's Treasure Chest, and it turned out great. Last year theme was a Treasure Island theme so this year to change it up we decided to make it more of an Indiana Jones theme.  The idea was the adventurer was to go through an opening in a water falls to get to the ruin city where the treasure was. We set up a camp, a water falls and a few items to make a ruin city. The Sarah, Kelsey and Jocelyn worked really hard painting, and making a huge map for the wall, and Adam helped staple all the craft paper onto the wall to make the rocks. It was a really cheap set up, and most of it was free. I saved the cardboard from wedding presents and amazon shipments, with which we (Kelsey and I) made the pillar and the well. The lady was made and used in previous VBS sessions, so we just reused her. The rocks are just craft paper which we rolled out and sprayed with watered down tempera paint, and then scrunched and bunched and stapled. Finally the water falls was just dollar store table cloths and some tulle left from the wedding. 

PS. Sorry the pictures are just from my phone. 

Second: Sunday School Picnic 

   Directly following VBS week we have the sunday school picnic. This project wasn't my idea, it was my good friend Colleens and I just thought they were so cute that I would blog about them.  Colleen has the youngest class and wanted to make a race game that would be easy for them and fun. This turned out so cute! On evening during VBS week we went over to her house and Sarah and I helped her paint some boxes and hats to make..... the results are as follows. 

  

The race was for the kids to get in the car, put on the adorable minon hats, run to the end, grab a banana, run back. Sadly, I missed the race so I don't have pictures, but the idea was made after these pins. Personally I think hers turned out way cuter. 

                    

Thirdly: We were running Xena to the vet.

    Xena had her operation, and so we were driving her up to get her check-up, and had to wait for hours for her appointment. She is doing great and had a good nap on the way home.

Fourthly: We went to a wedding.

Me and my handsome man on the way to a wedding. 

Lastly: Baby Benson pictures

   I had a photo shoot for the first time with a newborn baby. I made a studio with my back ground stand, some vinyl flooring, and window light. I wanted to practice before the shoot so I used a monkey as my fake baby. It was sort of creepy but the actually baby pictures turned out great. The  whole shoot turned out beautiful in the end and I really enjoyed it. 

Well that's the update, and I'm really tired now so hopefully I can sleep.

Goodnight. 

Made Up Sausage & Cabbage

If you don’t like cabbage then this recipe is not for you. This isn’t one of those Pinterest recipes where “ It tastes just like chocolate cake, My Hubby couldn’t tell the difference”. No, this is cabbage and it tastes like cabbage. Adam and I happen to really enjoy cabbage, and thus really enjoyed tonight’s dinner.  I did see this dish on Pinterest, and  so if you want the official recipe 

click here to go to the blog where the recipe is. 

As some of you know, I tend to change recipes a lot. So as it happened, tonight I made Kielbasa and cabbage, but those was about the only same ingredients. Oh and salt!
 Just to clarify, I didn't change the recipe because I didn't think it would taste good, I think the original recipe looks amazing and I still want to try it.  I just didn't have those ingredients, so tonight I made it up.

Ingredients 

Sausage (Kielbasa) 

Cabbage

Salt

Pepper

Onion Powder

Chili Pepper Flakes

Sweet Chili Sauce

Butter or Oil 

First, Heat up a frying pan with a bit of butter or oil to cook your sausage, (Kielbasa is already cooked, but "browning it" produces nice flavour for the cabbage) Next, slice up your sausage and place it in the frying pan.  Fry for a few mins until the meat is brownish, then flip and cook the other side.

Xena was very interested in dinner while, I was cutting up the meat. 

Note: If you have a blog be careful how many pictures you take while cooking meat. It might get a bit too dark.

While the meat is cooking,  cut up your cabbage. I really, really wanted to add onion to this recipe but I didn't have any in the house, so as a side note, onion is worth adding.  I made my cabbage sort of a square cut, but you are more that welcome to do what ever you want. Also the bigger leafs can be saved as a garnish. 

Add the cabbage to the frying pan. Add your seasonings  For seasonings I added, onion powder, (Its a sad substitute for not having onions.) Hot pepper flakes, salt, pepper , and 2 Tbs of sweet chili sauce ( yes the kind you dip egg rolls in ) I know it might sound weird but it tasted really yummy.  I didn't really measure my seasonings, it was sort of a dash of this and that, so just make it to taste. Cook on medium heat until the cabbage becomes translucent 8-10 minutes. It will look similar to this when it is ready.

Place in a bowl or serving dish and surround with the top cabbage leaves as a garnish. 

Enjoy!

Scents of Summer

 
  Well it's Friday, and it's hot! 

What more could you ask for? ....How about some lovely scents? 

You know its the perfect house cleaning day when the sun is shining, there is a slight breeze, you can open the windows, let in the fresh air, and everything smells so clean and good. Well today is my cleaning the house day, and currently it says online that it is 88°F outside. According to my fancy thermometer in the garden is over 100° F in the sun. Now it could be wrong, but lets just agree its rather hot outside, and therefore I have the air on.  Anyways, to keep in the fresh cleaning mood I decided to try out a recipe that I saw online for Stove Top Potpourri.  You can do this with lots of different ingredients, but today I used whats listed below. 

Peppermint

Rosemary

Summer Time Potpourri

2 Limes

1 Lemon

1 tsp Vanilla Extract    

2-3 fresh sprigs Rosemary 

2-3 fresh sprigs Peppermint

2-3 cups water

Pour the water into a pot and boil on back burner. Slice up the limes and lemon, and toss all ingredients into the boiling water.  Boil for 1-2 mins then turn down the heat and let the pot simmer for as long as you want your house to smell great.  2-4 hrs is best. 

That's it, and it really does smell great. I used fresh rosemary and peppermint from our garden. 

Sunflower from our garden