Oh, for Pete's Sake!

Super Salsa

2012-02-10T15:04:00.000-06:00

I’m super picky about salsa. I have texture issues, which is why I first went vegetarian over 20 years ago; the texture of meat was always so gross to me and I don't like a lot of the vegan meats for that same reason. But that transfers to some other foods as well, and salsa is one of them. I don’t like it chunky at all, and it seems like most storebought varieties are chunky. Sometimes when I buy storebought, I bring it home and blend it, or only spoon out the non-chunky sauce. Every once in a while I find one I like better than others, but they’re never quite like what I want and I begin my search again. When I was in college, there was a Mexican restaurant that served the perfect salsa, they even sold it in grocery stores. If it were closer, I’d drive there and get some! I’ve been on a quest for a long time to find the perfect salsa, and I finally searched online for some recipes to make my own. I found this recipe that I thought looked like it might be what I was looking for.

So I made it this week and I’m thrilled with the results. I changed the recipe slightly. I use Rotel fairly often (in vegan queso) and know that it has a good bite to it. I decided to mix everything up and taste it before adding the jalapeno. I’m glad I did that because I chose not to add the jalapeno – it’s plenty hot without it. I don’t mind it hot, but not so hot that you don’t taste the flavor of the salsa. Mark usually likes things hotter than I do and he said it's plenty hot for him. I also skipped the cumin. Cumin can give a dry taste and I didn't want that, and I didn’t think it would be necessary in salsa. I really like the flavor without it.

It does make a fair amount, so I’m trying to figure out what else I can have with salsa. We've had burritos and hummus quesadillas so far. And obviously with just plain chips, of course. I sent some home with my parents to try too.

Overdue Update

2012-02-03T22:45:00.003-06:00

I made the roasted cauliflower lasagna from Appetite for Reduction. Yum!

After reading about how orange juice is stored in vats for a year and flavoring is added to it, I decided to make some homemade using our VitaMix. I'll never buy storebought again. This is amazing! The VitaMix recipe calls for 1 Tbs sugar and, depending on the sweetness of the oranges, it's not necessary. I've added 1 teaspoon or less of maple syrup if the oranges are too tart.

I bought a cupcake corer on clearance at Target and made some filled cupcakes. This was prompted by Sara's preschool teachers saying they'd love to try some vegan baked goods. So I brought some to them.

I sewed a little coin purse for the girls. I love making zippered pouches - so much fun and so easy.

We had stir-fry night. The kids got to fill their own bowls and we made them all individually. The sauce is just garlic and Tamari. This was so much fun and super tasty.

I made baked jo jo potatoes, using this recipe. I substituted nutritional yeast for the parmesan and did not use cayenne. My kids loved these.

I made white chocolate oreo mousse. I used the chocolate mousse recipe in Vegan Cupcakes Take Over the World, subbing vegan white chocolate chips for the chocolate chips, and then added crused oreos.

I made Vegan Dad's corndogs. Twice. My kids totally loved these! They are super easy to make.

Some non-vegan neighbor kids were over this week and had them and liked them too.

I got a block of Daiya cheddar from the buying club this past week, so I cut strips of cheese and filled some of them with cheese as well.

I made an iPad carrying case for my mom.

This picture has terrible lighting, and it looks crooked, but I almost forgot to even take a picture so it was rushed. This *just* fits, so next time I make one I'll have to make it a little bigger.

I made blonde brownies. I used the chocolate chip cookie recipe from The Joy of Vegan Baking, and baked them in a pan.

I got a lovely recovered vintage stool from one of the occasional stores downtown.

I've been looking for a while (since I picked up one for my sister) and love the fabric on this one.

I made some homemade laundry powder, using this recipe. The picture shows peppermint soap, but I used Dr Bronner's lavender soap for my first batch. I'll make peppermint next time.

We bought ice skates for the kids this past week, which makes me wonder about how smart we are. It's been such a warm winter and we hardly have any snow. The kids skated outdoors in slush. Hopefully the skates fit next year, but in the meantime they can make use of them indoors at the ice arena (even in the summer!). The girls' birthday is coming up this month - maybe we'll buy them rollerblades since it's so warm out.

I hope you had a wonderful January! I'll try to post more regularly in February.

3D Cell Projects

2012-01-17T09:15:00.002-06:00

The girls have a science project due this Friday to do cell models. If they do them in 3D, they get 10 extra credit points. We have a hectic weeknight schedule this week so they worked on them yesterday.

At first the girls just wanted to do something the teacher had talked about (a cake, cookie, etc), but then we looked up information online and found some more creative ideas. I found this great tutorial for a pillow. They were both going to do a pillow, Rachel doing an animal cell and Heidi doing a plant cell, but Heidi wasn't thrilled with doing the same thing as Rachel. We couldn't think of anything else though. It wasn't until she had everything cut out and placed and she was about to iron it all when I realized it would look great on a t-shirt (and if she's wearing it, it's 3D). Heidi was thrilled to have her own unique project so she switched to that. Luckily we just happened to have a green t-shirt in my sewing room (I bought it at the beginning of the year for them to use for gym class, and then used something else).

They used felt and Wonder Under to iron on the pieces. Heidi tacked down all of her pieces as well. They had a few different things on each, but were able to use a lot of the same templates.

When the girls had wanted to do a food item, I discouraged them thinking it would take too long, be too messy, hard to transport, etc. I still think it was wise not to do that, except that the projects they chose took a long time too. I figured it would just be a few hours, but they worked on these all day long - sewing on beads, hand sewing, etc. But they are so proud of their work and had so much fun making them, I think it was totally worth it.

Update: the girls got 100% on these projects, plus the 10 extra credit points!

The Lion King

2012-01-15T23:05:00.000-06:00

Tonight I went out with Abram and we saw The Lion King at the Orpheum Theater in Minneapolis.

Wow, I was totally blown away. It's such an amazing show and I'm so glad Abram was able to see this. I actually got choked up and teary-eyed a few times during the show, I was so overcome with emotion. I have a weird emotional trigger. I usually don't really cry at funerals and more appropriate times, yet I can't make it through reading the book Peef to my kids without breaking down in sobs.

Mark's mom took the entire family to this when it was in Minneapolis a few years ago, but Abram was only four and Sara was still a baby, so I stayed home with them. We decided when/if it came back we'd take the younger two then. Shortly before Christmas we saw that it was back again and decided we'd get a ticket for Abram. We still felt like Sara should be a little older to go, so we're hoping it comes back again. It would be nice to go as an entire family.

Saturday Fun

2012-01-14T23:38:00.001-06:00

Mark wanted to do something fun with the kids since they had an extra day off this weekend. Heidi suggested the Minneapolis Institute of Arts and we decided that was a good idea.

that's reflector tape glowing at the bottom of the kids' coats

When we left the museum, the snow was coming down pretty good. It didn't last long, but it was fun to see since we haven't had much this winter.

A strong deciding factor in going the art museum was that Evergreen is only a few blocks away and we were excited to take the kids there. I wasn't really sure what the kids would think, but it's safe to say they all now have a favorite restaurant.

They loved the hot black tea, all the food, and the vegan fortune cookies. It's just so nice to go to a restaurant and have so many vegan choices. We got spring rolls, Buddha's delight, tofu & veggie chow fun, tofu & veggie lo mein, as well as three up tofu.

look at the flower-shaped carrots!

veggie & tofu chow fun

veggie & tofu lo mein

three cup tofu

Mark and I love the three cup tofu, but the kids thought it was too garlicky (though they had some and liked it when Mark and I brought some home from our date). We all really loved the flat rice noodles in the chow fun and I think this was one of our favorite dishes. Sara loved the lo mein noodles. This was really a great place to bring the family.

Afterward we went to the Wedge Co-op, which is also just around the corner. The main reason we went there is because they have vegan coconut milk soft serve. What a treat for the kids to get an ice cream cone! The bakery case had a lot of vegan options as well, but we just got the ice cream cones and some organic oranges. I would have liked to shop more, but it was getting late and the store was really crowded.

I wish all of these places were a little closer, but I guess it makes them all the more special when they're a once in a while treat and we'll appreciate them all the more because we can't have them frequently.

Dessert Pizza & Churros!

2012-01-14T10:44:00.004-06:00

Last night Mark and Abram went to a hockey game in St. Cloud with my dad. So it was just the girls at home. My mom came over and I made pizza, and I also made a dessert pizza.

We watched some episodes of last season's Downton Abbey. I love this show and I'm so excited a new season has started.

Today, on the morning of a long weekend, I decided to make a fun treat for breakfast. I checked out Viva Vegan! from the library and was paging through it this week and thought the kids would love the churros. These were really easy to make and the kids did love them!

Here's a recipe for some pumpkin churros that look really good too.

Vegan Whoopie Pies

2012-01-13T10:09:00.004-06:00

The other day I was browsing the clearance sections at Target and saw quite a few things I was interested in. They had some really good deals. I ended up getting this treat pan because I thought it would be something I'd use. It was on clearance for $7.

The package had a recipe for whoopie pies so I veganized the recipe and made some yesterday (if you search, there are several vegan whoopie pies online as well). I thought they would be a fun treat for the girls and Mark to have at skiing last night.

The batter mixes up to a consistency between cake batter and cookie dough. I dropped the batter by spoonfuls into the pan, but it also needed to be spread out a bit. The recipe said it makes 4 dozen cookies and I didn't get nearly that many. I got almost 3 dozen, or when put together about 16 whoopie pies.

Usually I'd make homemade frosting, but I had a half-full package of storebought so I used that instead. There are several different frosting recipes online as well, some call for ricemallow cream.

The kids really liked these and I think they'd be fun for birthday parties. The pan says it's also good for making ice cream sandwiches, which would be fun. I'd also like to try making some vanilla or other flavored whoopie pies. I like the pan because it makes them all uniformly shaped, but the indentations of the funny faces didn't really show up, which is fine. They might show up better on a cookie dough.

Here's the recipe I used:

Vegan Whoopie Pies

1 cup granulated sugar
½ cup shortening (I used Spectrum)
3 tsp EnerG egg replacement powder
4 Tbs water
2 cups flour
½ cup cocoa
1 ½ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt
1 cup soy milk plus 1 tsp apple cider vinegar
1 tsp vanilla

Heat oven to 350 degrees.

Mix soy milk and apple cider vinegar and set aside.

Mix egg replacement powder with water, stir until no lumps remain. Set aside.

Cream together the sugar and shortening. Add EnerG egg mixture; blend well. Add remaining ingredients and blend on low speed.

Drop batter by spoonfuls onto cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, until no indentation remains when lightly touched. Cool 1 minute and then invert onto cooling rack to cool completely.

This recipe can make anywhere from 2 dozen to 4 dozen, depending on the size of your spoonfuls.

**********
I also finished up a few more things in my sewing room yesterday. I added fabric and trim to the rest of my old kitchen towels.

this is the fabric I was looking for to recover the green chair with - I found it yesterday (in a stack right next to my sewing machine, of course)

And I made another little fabric basket. I gave this to the girls to put in their room. It is a great size for holding hair binders and little things.

More Sewing

2012-01-12T09:50:00.005-06:00

Sara got some new striped leggings the other day and wanted a skirt to go with them. I was going to make one with a dropped waist, with the top part one color, and the bottom part a second color, but then she started listing off all the colors she wanted on the skirt. She's pretty picky about clothes and won't wear something if it's not what she likes, so I decided to do a tiered skirt with four colors.

I luckily had dotted fabric in all the colors she wanted. I didn't use a pattern for this. I cut all the tiers the same width, but in different lengths for gathering. It's a super easy skirt, but figuring out how long to cut each tier and all the gathering took quite a while. It made for kind of a crazy outfit, but she loved this skirt, probably because it's really full and twirly.

Skirts (or dresses) with leggings are pretty much all she'll wear these days, and normally she'll only wear the leggings with lace on the bottom, except these are striped so then without lace is okay. I made her headband over Christmas break, using this tutorial.

Mark was at the office yesterday so I got some time in my sewing room while Sara was at preschool. I added some fabric and trim to an old kitchen towel. I have a few more towels I'd like to do this to. The towels are kind of old and shabby, but this gives them new life. It's one of those things when I walk into my kitchen and see it, it makes me smile. I like having things like that in every room and they take such a short time to do.

I also made a little fabric basket/bin. I put it in Sara's room for headbands.

I made up the pattern for this, and it didn't work as easily as I was hoping, so I'll need to keep working on it. I cut out the sides with my rotary cutter and it should all be even, but for some reason I think one side looks higher than the other. I'd like to make more of these, there are always things around the house that need a home. I like the round version, but I also like this one so I'll try that next.

Last weekend I stopped in at some of the occasional sales (it's my guilty pleasure while the kids are at school). Most of the stores are near Sara's preschool so after I drop her off, I usually stop by. I often don't have anything to buy, but I like to look around and get ideas. It's really nice they're only open once a month so it makes for a special treat, and their merchandise changes every month so it's like going into a different store every time. More new occasional stores keep popping up every month, it seems, and it's really helped our community to have these stores in town.

As I was walking around one of my favorite stores last week I saw that they had bins of vintage buttons for sale. They were selling small fill-your-own-bags for $3 each. I had recently been looking online for buttons for crafts, for things like the button ornament I made. Buttons can be pretty expensive, just for a card of four you will spend around $2, so this seemed like a pretty good deal. As I started to fill them I thought to myself how small the bags were. But as I kept filling and filling and searching for more buttons to add, I realized how many buttons I was really getting. I felt like I was never going to fill the red bag. They had quite a few buttons in different colors and said they'd be adding more each month so I'll be sure to check back for more. They also had lots of vintage ric rac and trims in different colors than are now available so I might pick up some of those too.

More Food, More Sewing, Some Art

2012-01-08T23:48:00.007-06:00

For Christmas this year, we gave my parents the gift of food. Namely, a vegan food of the month, homemade by me. We're kind of leaving it open ended as to when during each month I'll make them food, and if they want to come to our house or have it delivered, and also if I'll make them something that I'm already making or make them something that they request. But I made up this little list to give them to open.

Today I called them up after church to see if they wanted to come over for lunch or dinner for their January meal, so they stopped over for lunch.

preparing the paninis

I made the Paninis with Lemon Basil Pesto from The Vegan Table (I made the walnut pesto from Vegan With a Vengeance though). I've blogged about these before, and they are such delicious sandwiches (we had them again for dinner).

Abram went to a birthday party the day before and I had to make a cake for him to bring a piece with him. Since this lunch for my parents was spur of the moment, it was nice I had cake on hand so they could also have dessert.

The birthday party was for a neighbor girl across the street. We had a busy week last week and I kept forgetting about the party. I woke up on Saturday morning and realized we needed a gift. I wanted to make something, but didn't have much time so Mark ran to Target to get a gift card.

Rachel wanted to make something too we headed downstairs to sew. She made a doll skirt.

I remembered I had told our neighbor girl before that I would make her an 18" doll sleeping bag. I had made some for my girls, but wanted to do something nicer than what I had made them. I had a pattern for one with a zipper in it, but it called for a 28" zipper and the longest I had was 22".

So I modified the pattern so it just went down the side, instead of the side and bottom.

This worked great and was super easy to make. I was really happy it all came together so fast since it was so last minute.

The morning of the ski club for the girls last week, I decided to squeeze in making another bag. They leave mid-afternoon and it's always a crazy day for me trying to get everything done, like getting everything packed up and making food to send with them, but sometimes when I'm really short on time, I go crazy with ideas of more to do. Totally nuts. Mark was carrying two bags for the helmets and boots and I decided it would be nice if he could just carry one. Since the ski bag was so successful I decided to make another one, different sized, for the other equipment. I made this one shorter in length, but it's deeper.

This bag fit everything really great, but it's super heavy with all the equipment. Hopefully the bag holds up!

I've been meaning to post this cute doll that Heidi made over Christmas break. Both girls tried to make a rag doll one day from cutting out a freeform shape on fabric. It worked out for the most part for Rachel (despite uneven legs and arms, in length and width - which only add more character), but for Heidi she cut it too small and it wasn't working and she was in tears. So I showed her how to make a simple doll pattern by printing off a shape online. We found a gingerbread man shape and I elongated it to make the arms and legs narrower and enlarged it to print off onto two pages, which we taped together and used for the pattern. Then she cut it out, sewed it up and stuffed it, and made a little dress. It turned out great and she was thrilled. The girls are still really excited about their new sewing machine and I'm so glad we got one for them.

Abram and Sara have been making lots of art lately. Abram came home from school last week fascinated with Egypt. He typically has a new fascination each week that he becomes obsessed with. It's often a different animal, but not always, and it's so much fun for me too to learn more about whatever he's excited about. We check out books from the library to read (sometimes by the time they come in he's moved onto another topic) and he draws lots of pictures, and sometimes we find some great shows on Netflix. This last week we watched a couple of shows on Egypt and mummies from National Geographic. This is a picture of King Tut he drew on a cardboard box.

Sara has a really unique way of coloring. She likes to use multiple colors for things that would normally be just one color (like for hair or something similar). This is a picture she brought home from preschool.

None of my other kids colored this way so I'm fascinated by it. I love this picture she colored at home, using cray-pas.

Ski Bag

2012-01-04T23:27:00.004-06:00

Ever since Heidi and Rachel were pretty young, Mark has taken them downhill skiing in the winter. (I grew up cross country skiing and have only gone downhill once or twice, but maybe in the coming years I'll give it a try again too.) When Abram was 4 or 5, Mark started taking him too. This year will be the first year he plans to take Sara along. The last few years we've bought the kids used skis in a swap program so we've been able to purchase them pretty inexpensively and it makes it a lot cheaper to take them skiing more frequently.

This year Heidi and Rachel joined the ski club at the middle school. They go skiing once a week and Mark volunteered to chaperone the group. So far he has been the only parent chaperone on the trips, but he has enjoyed it because he's been able to get some skiing in too. The only bad part so far this year is that we've hardly had any snow, so mostly they're skiing on man-made snow, which isn't the greatest.

Since Mark and the girls have their own skis (and boots and helmets), it's a lot of equipment to lug around, in addition to a food bag that I pack. We don't own a ski bag and the first few times Mark was having a hard time juggling it all, especially with the skis. We looked into buying a ski bag, but they are fairly expensive and since we have so many pairs we'd have to buy a couple of them, so Mark wondered if I could make one. I've been thinking about this for at least a couple of weeks and I've been nervous about doing it because I've never made one before and I wasn't sure if I could do it. Ski club is tomorrow though, so I had to figure it out tonight.

Last year I was going to make the girls some gym bags for basketball and I never got them made. But I did special order some fabric (in purple, our school color) and some zippers and webbing. I also had a gym bag pattern that I bought last year. I used it as my main pattern, but modified it by making it longer. I used Green Pepper #551 and used the pattern for the large size bag, and then I made it really long. I had exactly two yards of the purple nylon so I made the bag that long.

This was super easy to sew. The only difficult part was that the fabric was slippery and because there was so much of it, it was difficult to deal with at times. This bag will easily hold all four pairs of the kids' skis, but because Mark is 6'4", his skis will not fit in this bag. It does have a two-way zipper though that extends to the sides, so he could put his skis in and let them stick out one of the ends. Now that I know how easy this was to make, I could also buy more supplies and make another longer bag for his skis. The fabric I made this out of (heavy duty water resistant nylon) I ordered from a specialty outdoor fabric company. But this could easily be made out of a heavy canvas as well.

While this wasn't difficult at all, it was really rewarding because I wasn't sure if I could actually do it and have it work out.

Chair Recovering

2012-01-02T21:58:00.000-06:00

A couple of years ago I got this green desk at one of the occasional sales in town. I am pretty sure this was from a girl's bedroom set and it was probably once white or cream colored. I love this desk, especially the green color they painted it, and it fits perfectly in the spot I have it in my kitchen. I initially used it with my laptop, but didn't like having my computer in the kitchen so now the desktop is kind of a catch-all. Sometimes it gets kind of messy, but with a family of six that's just the way it goes.

The chair that came with it is a nice ladderback chair, also painted the same green, and when I bought it, it was newly covered in a fabric that I didn't think matched the green at all (the original was a cream tapestry that was dirty and outdated). Why I didn't change the unmatched fabric right away is beyond me. One of the screws stuck through the fabric slightly and it ripped after only a couple of months. Why I didn't change it then is beyond me. Finally today, after two years, I changed it. It took about 10 minutes and I have no idea why I put it off so long. Sometimes I can be so lazy about the easiest projects.

Unmatching and ripped fabric that I took off.

I tore off the ripped and unmatched fabric and used it as a pattern for the new covering. I was hoping to use the same fabric as the curtains in my kitchen, but I must have used it for something else because I didn't have any left. I found a nice border print fabric in my stash that matches the green paint nicely.

Since I never sit at the desk anymore, I decided to move the chair out of the way and put it next to our piano.

Our piano teacher comes to our house for lessons and pulls out a chair from our kitchen table to sit on. Now she'll have her own special chair already next to the piano.

Bed: completed

2012-01-01T22:50:00.003-06:00

Yesterday we went to Home Depot to pick up a few things, and look at paint for Abram's new bed. I found some samples I liked and we were going to pick up a quart, when the guy working there told us to check in the "oops" section. What are the chances they'd have a dark olive/army green in the oops section?! Amazingly, they had the exact color I was looking for! It was only $7, compared to the regular price of $30+, or the $15 we were going to pay for a quart. We also found a gallon in the color I want to use in the girls' bedroom. We painted all of the rooms in our house about 7 years ago, and all of them are now needing new paint. So I think I'll be back checking the "oops" section for more.

Mark has a paint sprayer and we decided to go that route because it covers much nicer and faster, but he has to cover everything in the garage in order to do so. He was able to put on several coats today and get it done, and if I had handpainted it, I wouldn't have gotten it done in one day.

We got the bed moved into Abram's room tonight and I love it! In the picture it probably looks more brownish (it was hard to take a good picture!), but when the light hits it you can tell it's green.

A Few Things

2011-12-30T22:16:00.004-06:00

The weather here has been unbelievable for December in Minnesota. Yesterday we decided to go on a hike at Ney Park. The kids had fun running around and exploring and it was nice to get some fresh air.

Without even looking for one, or having coordinates and a GPS with us, Abram found a geocache box. The kids looked inside to see everything and then put it back.

Heidi took a picture of me and Mark and I'm posting it because today is our 16th wedding anniversary.

Today the girls did more sewing, and while we've been working on things inside, Mark has been building a bed in our garage. We had to move some rooms and furniture around in the past few months, and a short loft bed that Heidi and Rachel were using wasn't working for them anymore. Sara's using that now, and Rachel's been sleeping with her mattress on the floor. Mark is actually building the bed for Abram since the bed he's using is the match to the one Heidi has, which are twin beds he built for the girls when they were toddlers. Complicated, I know.

In the past few days, Abram has made more than a few trips with Mark to Menards so while Mark was building the bed, Abram was "playing Menards" with wood scraps.

Mark modifed the pattern slightly, but he used the simple bed plan from Ana White.

I'm going to paint it army green. Abram wants his room to look like a wildlife habitat and I thought the bed would look good in that color.

My parents came over tonight to watch the kids so Mark and I could go out to dinner for our anniversary. We went someplace that I had heard about - Evergreen Chinese Restaurant in Minneapolis. They have lots of vegan options and even make the vegan food using a separate cutting surface and wok. Since we hadn't been there before we didn't know what to expect, and it's sort of a hole in the wall, nothing fancy at all, but the food was really good. It was an hour's drive for us, but I would like to take the kids with us sometime.

Buddha's Delight

House Style Tofu

Three Cup Tofu

We got fried spring rolls, which I forgot to take a picture of, but they were really good. Mark got House Style Tofu, and I got Buddha's Delight and Three Cup Tofu. Mark's was so spicy, his nose was running, but he said it was really good. I really wanted to try the Three Cup Tofu, but wanted some veggies with it so I ordered the Buddha's Delight too. The Three Cup Tofu was so amazing! I've never had it before and can't wait to have it again. I found this recipe that I'd like to try making (funny since this blogger is from WI, but had Three Cup Tofu at the same restaurant we went to). We ended up taking a lot of food home because I wanted my parents and the kids to try the Three Cup Tofu, and I had at least half of the Buddha's Delight left too. Abram ended up eating all of that (he loves bok choy so I especially saved a few pieces for him), and they all loved the tofu.

Ornament Making + Kids' Sewing

2011-12-29T13:43:00.004-06:00

The girls have been sewing non-stop since they got their new sewing machine. So they both can sew, one of them uses my machine, and they like me to stay down with them in case they need help, so I've been doing some other projects to keep myself busy.

I looked around before Christmas for kids' sewing books, and didn't really find what I was looking for. Does anyone know of some good ones? There are handsewing books, but not many good books for beginner machine sewing projects that are also good for kids. We gave the girls two books last year, but there are lots of handsewing projects in them. There are probably more good books, but I like to check them out from the library before buying, and I haven't been able to find any that my library carries. So I found some simple projects for the girls to do. They started out making a couple of drawstring bags, and then doll (and sock monkey) skirts. I encouraged them to make several so that they learn different techniques and get comfortable with what they're doing.

They have had lots of fun making the skirts and started experimenting more and adding straps and making the skirts into tops.

I saw so many great handmade ornaments before Christmas, but saw them too late to make any. We thought next year it would be fun if our tree only has handmade ornaments on it, but in order to do that we need to start early, so I've been working on ornaments while the girls are using the sewing machines.

First I made a button frame ornament, using a picture of Sara and a friend (I got the idea from here). Buy buttons in bulk for this project, it takes a lot! But I think it turns out super cute, and I'd like to make more of these. I glued the photo to a piece of red cardstock, then the cardstock to a piece of felt. Then just started layering buttons on with the hot glue gun (I still have hot glue strands to pull off). I glued in a ribbon hanger between the layer of felt and cardstock.

Abram loves his gift of bird feeders and bird seed and has been out looking for birds everyday. I've seen lots of whimsical felt bird ornaments, which I really like, but wondered about making some more authentic ones. I couldn't find any tutorials or patterns, but I did find this website with pictures of birds that are kind of cartoonish, while still being accurate. I knew these would make great patterns for making birds.

I first made this cardinal.

Then Abram wanted a chickadee so I made one for him. I made it bigger than the cardinal, but it's still smaller than my hand.

I used acrylic craft felt for these. I found some great heathered craft felt at a kids' toy store last year and need to get some more of that because it looks really nice on the birds. I basically made these birds as I do other appliques, starting with a base layer and then adding the pieces on top. I hand sewed these together with just a needle and thread. Since they're smaller to work with, I used a glue stick on the pieces to hold them in place. These birds take a while to sew, but they're really fun to see take shape as you add the different pieces and colors to them.

Gifts I Made

2011-12-25T23:27:00.001-06:00

Here are the rest of the gifts I made for Christmas.

Car Garbage Bags (stocking stuffers for the adults in Mark's family)

We gave the boy nephews each a foam ball sling shot for their stockings, so I made some storage bags for them. (The sling shot pictured is Abram's.)

For our college-aged niece I made a zippered pouch.

I thought about making her a car garbage bag too, but she doesn't have a car at school. I made this slightly bigger so it's more versatile. I added some pens, pencils, gum, and lip balm to the inside. She could use it for school supplies, a makeup bag, or anything.

Mark made some Barbie beds for our three girls. I made bedding for them (3 beds, with reversible blankets).

Abram got a rubberband gun, so I made a bag for his ammunition.

And I made a bag for Abram's foam ball sling shot too.

Today my parents came over for brunch and then we went ice skating. Two of my sisters came out with their kids and one brought her extended family, so there were about 30 people at the ice rink. We had so much fun!

We were really excited about some of the gifts we got the kids this year. For Abram we got some small bird feeders and a bird book. He loves animals so much and we thought it would be fun for him to be more involved with feeding the birds. He was so excited to put them outside and has been watching for birds. This will be even more fun for him in the summer when there are more birds around.

The big excitement here today though was the sewing machine we got the girls. Last summer they took a sewing class and loved it and have wanted a sewing machine. We bought them one to share because they can also use mine and we didn't want to buy two of them when we weren't completely sure how much they'll be sewing. Also, we wanted to get a nicer one, and we don't spend that much money on gifts to buy them each their own. So if this gets lots of use, we'll eventually buy a second one so they each have their own, but it might be a while. We bought them the same one they used in their sewing class, and I'm a little jealous because I think it's a nicer machine than mine!

The other gift I'm thrilled about is that Mark made me this ribbon holder. I've wanted one for a long time and I've seen similar things at JoAnn's, but they're not as big and they're fairly expensive. Mark said this cost under $10 to make.

I've also made lots of yummy vegan food in the past few days, but nothing I haven't posted about before so I'm not going to share all that with you. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas!

Stuffed Animal Storage Pillow

2011-12-23T22:36:00.003-06:00

I saw this cool stuffed animal storage pillow and knew I had to try to recreate one. Mostly because there's no way I'd spend over $40 for something like this, but also because sometimes I like to challenge myself to make things similar to something sold in stores. It doesn't always work out, but this time it did.

My oldest girls especially like stuffed animals and are attached to many. Abram and Sara like them, but don't get attached to them. The girls' beds are a mess of them and I've often wondered what we could do to store them and keep them all together, while still able to cuddle with them. After seeing that pillow online a few weeks ago, I've been thinking about it on and off and wondering what kind of pillow I could make. I remembered I have the Amy Butler Gum Drop Pillow pattern and thought that would work well. This pillow is like a small bean bag chair, and really should be stuffed with filling, but I thought it would also work for this project. It comes in two sizes, 18" and 24", and I thought the 18" pillow would be a good size.

Finally tonight I tackled it using different fleece fabrics and some white mesh (so you could see the toys inside). I added a zipper between two of the panels, which was the hardest part. In the first one I made, the zipper I used is too short so I'll probably have to replace that with something slightly longer. On the second one I used a longer zipper, but it didn't go in the nicest. But you can hardly tell, and I'm really happy with how easy these were and how much they store.

I used fleece scraps I already had and used two panels of three different fabrics and the mesh. I like how it looks using unmatching fabrics, but I think this would look nice with just one fabric, along with the mesh, or with two coordinating fabrics and the mesh. I also really like the fleece because it makes the pillow really cuddly.

A Few More Handmade Gifts

2011-12-22T09:16:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I got a few more things made.

Abram's teacher's gift. I really like this fabric, but Abram's teacher is young (20s) and I can't tell if it's something a younger person would like.

Hopefully she likes it. I added a Barnes and Noble gift card to the pouch.

I made another zippered pouch for Heidi's Secret Santa thing at school (Rachel's homeroom isn't doing it).

She added some pencils and candy to the inside.

Mark made this Barbie bed for a niece.

I made the bedding with a reversible blanket.

We're going to make some more of these before Christmas.

After school yesterday the kids spotted a muskrat in our yard and thought that was really cool. There are several muskrat houses on the pond behind our house, but we've never seen one in our yard before.

I've been sewing so much lately, I'm behind on things around the house - laundry, cleaning, etc. But today I just feel like snuggling up on the couch with Sara and being lazy.

Christmas Program + Egg Nog Muffins

2011-12-21T11:57:00.001-06:00

Sara had the cutest Christmas program at preschool on Monday morning. She sang loud and did all the actions, and I was so proud of her!

A few weeks ago she said she was going to be a sheep but didn't want to be. I was sort of worried that she'd throw a fit and not cooperate as a sheep. But when we got there and looked in the program she was listed as an angel with her friend and I knew it would all be great.

The program was so sweet and the kids learned so many songs. One boy, dressed as a camel, scream-sang all the songs. It was pretty hilarious. We watched the video again that night with all the kids so they could see it and Sara was totally beaming while she watched it.

Sara's all about clothes (unlike anybody else in the family), but her new outfit was all covered up by her costume. I was going to make her a skirt, but at the last minute found this red skirt on clearance at Target. Sometimes I make her things and she won't wear them because she's very picky, so it's often easier to buy her something.

I've been sewing up a storm at night, getting gifts made. I'd love to share with you what I've made but I can't post pictures since they're gifts, so I'll have to wait until after Christmas. I have a couple more things to make for Thursday, and then a few more things for Saturday and then I'll be done. We have no snow here at all, so it's been hard to get in Christmas mode. I started early so I'm pretty much ready, just having a hard time believing it's this weekend!

I made the ranch-flavored oyster crackers from Peas and Thank You earlier this week. Yum!

I have been seeing lots of recipes using vegan egg nog. When I saw that one of our local grocery stores is selling Coconut Milk nog and mint chocolate milks, I decided to give it a try and make some egg nog muffins with buttered rum frosting. These aren't overwhelmingly egg nog flavored, but just enough.

This recipe was modifed from the Bakery Style Muffins (which is my favorite muffin base) in Vegan Brunch.

Here's the recipe:

Egg Nog Muffins with Buttered Rum Frosting

2 cups all purpose flour
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbs baking powder
1 1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp salt
1 - 6 oz container vanilla soy yogurt (I used silk)
1/2 cup So Delicious Coconut Milk Egg Nog
1/2 cup canola oil
1 1/2 tsp rum extract
1/2 tsp pure vanilla extract

Preheat the oven to 375 and lightly grease a muffin tin. In a large bowl, mix flour, sugar, baking powder, nutmeg and salt. Stir in the yogurt, egg nog, canola oil, rum extract and vanilla. Stir to combine.

Using a 1/4 cup measuring cup, scoop the batter into the muffin tin. Bake for 20-25 minutes, until golden and a toothpick comes out clean.

Let cool for a few minutes in the tin, then turn out onto a cooling rack. Place right side up and frost while still warm.

Frosting:
2 Tbs melted Earth Balance
3-4 tsp soy milk creamer (plain, not flavored)
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp rum extract

Mix the ingredients until the frosting is thick enough that it won't slide off the muffin, but not too thick that it doesn't spread out. Using a spoon, place a dollop of frosting on the center top of each muffin. It will spread out over the top.

More Handmade Gifts

2011-12-18T23:13:00.001-06:00

I got some more sewing done today and felt very productive. Sara has her last day of preschool before Christmas tomorrow, along with a Christmas program (I can't wait to see it!), so I made some gifts for her teachers, a Secret Santa gift, and a gift for a friend of hers.

I stress a lot about homemade gifts because I always worry some don't like them. These days it seems like everyone just wants gift cards. So when I make something as a gift, I usually do a little extra. Sometimes I buy new fabric for projects, but I have quite a lot of fabric in my stash, so often the gifts cost next to nothing to make, I just need to find the time.

My pictures aren't the greatest, I noticed as I was uploading. There are lots of shadows. But the gifts are already wrapped, so these will have to do.

Sara has two teachers. I made them both a tote bag and a zippered pouch, and I'm tucking in a tube of hand cream in the pouches.

For Sara's Secret Santa gift, I made a small book bag and put a book inside. The gift was supposed to be $3 or less, and this was, but it's probably sort of cheating too. The teachers suggested the dollar store, but I really dislike giving anything just for the sake of giving something. $3 or less buys you junky toys that just get thrown away. So I bought the book from Abram's Scholastic flyer and it cost $3. I've had this fabric for at least a couple of years now, so I figured the bag was free to make (that's how I'm justifying it anyway!).

Sara also has a good friend in her preschool class so I made her a little zippered pouch that matches the book bag I made (maybe Sara will be her Secret Santa and she'll end up with a matching set!). I added a little notepad and pens to the inside of it.

I made all those tree ornaments last week and thought about putting one of those on all the packages, but I just don't love them enough to give them to people. So I have no clue what I'll do with all of them.

Sewing Gifts

2011-12-15T22:54:00.005-06:00

I've been busy making lots of gifts, and I have many more to make. We had to move my sewing room in with Mark's office last year, and since he works from home I can't go down and sew until he's done working. He went into the office two days this week though and I sewed up a storm. It was really nice being so productive since usually during the day I am itching to do some sewing, but by nighttime my energy for it has disappeared. Besides a couple of hours of preschool, Sara was home all day with me both days, but I told her I had to make some gifts and she was awesome and just entertained herself.

A friend of mine had her big 40th today, so I made a few things for her. I was going to just buy her a gift, but came up with a bunch of ideas and decided to make mostly everything (I also put some chocolate and tea in the gift bag). I also made her some muffins and had her over this morning for a smoothie. Here is what I made her:

I bought a kitchen towel at Target and then added this pieced/quilted fabric to it. Her kitchen is orange.

I made this market bag, using this tutorial. This was my first time making this bag and I really liked how it went together and turned out and plan on making more of these.

I also appliqued and embroidered a dish towel for her (most dish towels in stores are pretty thin and junky, so I used muslin and made one). She is Finnish so I embroidered "tervetuloa" on it, which means welcome. I should have divided my floss though so it wasn't so hard to read. The house applique pattern I used came from Scandinavian Stitches, which is written by a Finnish author. This book has some really cute projects in it. My friend said the house looks like a sauna (read: sowna, the correct Finnish pronunciation), which I thought was a great idea.

I also made her a car garbage bag out of the same fabric as the tote.

And a matching zippered pouch (the chocolate went in here).

I wasn't planning on making everything matching, but when it turned out that two things would be, I just kept going with the theme.

While I was at it, I decided to finish up some other things and try some new things out.

I made these pieced/quilted coasters. I had pieced and quilted them together a while ago, but this week I added the backing to them. They are backed with brown duck cloth.

I had also quilted some squares together a while ago and wasn't sure what to do with them, so I cut them in half and made them into zippered pouches. These are both lined with the same pink dot fabric.

Sara has a $3 gift exchange at preschool so I'm going to make another one similar to these and put a notepad and pencils inside. I love making these zippered pouches.

I saw these ornaments online and decided to try making some. There is no tutorial so I just made what I thought they were. I took a piece of felt (regular rectangular craft felt) and sewed on strips of fabric and ribbon. Then I cut tree shapes and topstitched around the edges and added a ribbon hanger.

I don't think mine look as good as the picture I found, but they were fun to make.

Heidi came home from school that night and wanted to make one for her secret santa at school. She made hers out of yellows and cut it into a star shape.

I plan on making some of these things (I'm debating between the tote bags, zippered pouches, the kitchen towel or dish towel) for teacher gifts as well, so I have a busy weekend ahead of me.

St Nicholas Day

2011-12-07T15:12:00.000-06:00

Happy St Nicholas Day (yesterday)! When we were growing up we celebrated this day with my family, and we have continued the tradition with our kids. They love this!

I really wanted to make all of my kids some lap quilts for our family room. It's on a walkout level of our basement and it gets pretty chilly down there. I wanted each of the kids to have their own blanket for cuddling up in, but I sadly realized making four quilts wasn't going to happen. I need to start Christmas projects in the summer. Last weekend I was at JoAnns and looked at their fleece in the remnant bin and realized they had enough there so I could make each of the kids a fleece blanket. I bought two remnants of fleece for each of the kids so I could make the blankets double sided and double the thickness so they'd be warm. The remnants were all at least 1 yard and since fleece is 54" wide, it makes for a nice size rectangular-sized blanket (roughly 36x54). The fleece was 50% off, plus another 50% off as a remnant, so these were really inexpensive to make. I bound them with satin blanket binding, which has gotten quite expensive. I only had to buy binding for one of the blankets though, the rest I had at home in my stash.

We put these under the tree for the kids this morning for St Nicholas day and they were so excited to each have their own blanket.

On a side note, I recently came across the book A True Gift: A Christmas Story. I checked out a copy of it from the library after reading a review of it, and it's a great book. The two kids in the story not only want to make a cow happy and unlonely, but they also save another cow in the process. It's a wonderfully compassionate story.

Vegan Cheese & Sewing

2011-12-02T10:13:00.001-06:00

Vegan Essentials had a sale last weekend and they had in a new shipment of Ste. Martaen cheese, so I decided to give it a try and order some. My girls, especially, used to like eating crackers and cheese and with not many sliceable vegan cheeses, they've gone without and have missed it. This is a real treat for them. I actually haven't had any of it yet, but the girls and Mark really liked it. We got the olive, colby, and smoked gouda varieties. The smoked gouda was their least favorite.

Because this cheese is made with cashews and Abram is allergic, he couldn't have any and that always makes me feel bad. So I opened up Vegan Diner (by Julie Hasson) and made some of the Great Smoky Mountain Cheeze. I've been wanting to try this out anyway, and it was really quick and easy to make.

Last night we had this on grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches and I have to say it was amazing! I can't wait to have another one today for lunch. It's also good on crackers.

A friend of my sister's is having a baby so I made a blanket and pouch for her. I'm always trying to find a simple method to do this that doesn't involve lots of different fabrics that I have to match up. This quilt inspired me to try using just two fabrics with an applique on the solid side.

I'm happy with how it turned out and it was simple to make, but I should have pressed it better for the picture.

Thanksgiving Weekend

2011-11-29T14:59:00.002-06:00

We spent a quiet Thanksgiving at home. Mark and I talked about just making something to eat that we knew everyone liked, but we ended up going the traditional route. Turns out, everyone loved that food so I'm glad I made it all.

I made salt and pepper tofu

minus the pepper seasoning for the kids

mashed potatoes

stuffing (I went simple and just used a Whole Foods Organic/Vegan mix)

green bean casserole (I used the concentrated cream of mushroom soup from Fat Free Vegan Kitchen)

candied sweet potatoes with Dandies and Sweet and Sara coconut marshmallows

I also made chocolate pie

and pumpkin cheesecake (Robin Robertson's recipe)

After supper some of my family came out and we headed over to the ice arena to go skating. Lots of cousins were there and this was so much fun!

The kids had the most fun pushing each other around in a chair, and then Abram decided to put some wheels on it and pretend it was a zamboni. He likes to put on the shin/knee guards and skate like crazy and wipe out on the ice. See how red his face is? He got so hot he had to take his coat off.

Vegan Egg McMuffin

2011-11-20T14:36:00.000-06:00

Two things we really like are Your Vegan Mom's tofu seasoning blend, and this Italian flavored tempeh. So I combined the two and made vegan egg mcmuffins today.

I cut the tofu and tempeh into squares, but I think next time I'll use a circle cookie cutter for them. I used storebought English muffins, but I have made homemade before (using the Vegan Brunch recipe) and they were pretty easy to make, and super tasty. I also added a small amount of Daiya cheddar. I'm not even sure if I ever had a regular egg mcmuffin, so I can't compare, but these were delicious.

We got our first snow of the season yesterday and the kids were thrilled to go outside and play, even though we didn't get much. They are out again today, but the snow is rapidly melting.

Baked Spaghetti Pie

2011-11-19T13:20:00.003-06:00

Tucci Benucch is a restaurant at the Mall of America. Before becoming vegan I only ate there a few times, but I remember they had a really good baked spaghetti. It was like a pie of spaghetti, held together with eggs and cheese, then topped with marinara or alfredo - or even better, both. When Abram was baptized I made a similar recipe, but since going vegan I haven't made it again. I've been thinking about it lately and wondering about trying to veganize it so last night I finally did. My parents came over to watch the kids so we could run out and get a Christmas present and it's always fun to experiment on guests. Good thing it worked out! We all really liked this, and it's even better the next day.

I made the alfredo sauce that Vegan Dad posted. Although I preferred it with just marinara sauce. For the eggy mixture, I used the base that Your Vegan Mom uses for her mac 'n cheese bites, but with added ingredients.

Here's the complete recipe:

Vegan Baked Spaghetti

2/3 package spaghetti (16 oz size), boiled and drained
1 package firm silken tofu
1/4 cup plain, unsweetened soy milk
2 Tbs nutritional yeast
1 Tbs corn starch
1 Tbs Earth Balance
1/2 tsp salt
1 clove garlic, minced
1/2 cup Daiya mozzarella cheese
1 tsp basil (or try chopped fresh basil)
1/2 tsp oregano

Heat the oven to 350. Prepare a springform pan* with cooking spray. Bring large pot of water to boil on stovetop. Once boiling, add spaghetti and cook according to package directions.

Meanwhile in a blender, mix the tofu through the garlic. Blend until smooth. Scrape out of container into a medium-sized bowl and add basil and oregano and Daiya cheese. Stir until combined.

Add the cooked and drained spaghetti to this mixture and stir until evenly coated.

Spread out into prepared springform pan and baked for 30 minutes. Remove from oven and let sit for 5 minutes. Release the sides of the springform pan and cut into slices. Top with warmed marinara and alfredo sauce.

*I used a 10" springform pan. If you want it to be thicker, you can use a smaller springform pan, and I think this would also work in a square cake pan.

The Best Ginger Cookies

2011-11-17T15:28:00.000-06:00

These cookies are a family favorite. I think the first time I made them was around the time I was pregnant with my oldest girls and a few years back I veganized them so we could enjoy them again.

The original recipe is posted here, but it makes an incredible amount of cookies (unless you make them giant, like they say to). I've adapted the recipe with vegan ingredients and to make a smaller amount.

Ginger Cookies
• 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 1 teaspoons baking soda
• 3/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/8 teaspoon salt
• 3/4 cups shortening
• 1 cup granulated sugar
• 1/4 cup non-dairy milk (I used vanilla coconut milk)
• 1/4 cup molasses
coarse sugar or granulated sugar

Directions :

1. In a medium mixing bowl stir together flour, ginger, baking soda, cinnamon, cloves, and salt; set aside.
2. In a large mixing bowl beat shortening with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds to soften. Gradually add the 1 cup granulated sugar. Beat until combined, scraping sides of bowl occasionally. Beat in non-dairy milk and molasses. Beat in the flour mixture with the mixer.
3. Scoop out dough using a cookie dough scoop and shape into balls. Roll balls in the coarse or granulated sugar. Place about 2-1/2 inches apart on an ungreased cookie sheet.
4. Bake in a 350 degree F oven for 10minutes or until cookies are light brown and puffed. (Do not overbake or cookies will not be chewy.) Cool on cookie sheet for 2 minutes. Transfer cookies to a wire rack to cool. Store in a tightly covered container at room temperature for up to 3 days or in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Makes 26-30 cookies.

Many Things

2011-11-16T11:09:00.003-06:00

I've been making lots of roasted veggie dinners. They're a favorite at our house, thankfully. I usually do roasted cauliflower and a green veggie (asparagus, green beans, or brussels sprouts, for example). And I typically do some sort of potato too, usually just diced and roasted. But I've been adding different things lately to the meal and the kids are loving it even more. They've been asking me to put the leftovers in their lunches.

Last week I made some roasted smashed potatoes. I saw these in the Costco magazine and knew I had to try them. They were delicious. The recipe is posted here.

I used to make long grain & wild rice, using Uncle Ben's, but when I found out it wasn't vegan I stopped making that. I found a homemade recipe for it online and made that a couple of weeks ago. It's been so long since we had it, my kids had forgotten about this rice and they were thrilled to have it again!

I also made some browned rice one night. This recipe is from my friend Paul, who passed away last summer from Cystic Fibrosis complications. It was nice to smile and think of him as I was making this. We love this recipe so I'm going to share it with you (at the bottom of this post).

We made one last visit to a local apple orchard so I made some apple crisp (I like the recipe from King Arthur, subbing Earth Balance). And I made some homemade ice cream and caramel sauce. Yum, I love apple season.

Did you see the chocolate pumpkin loaf recipe Isa posted on the PPK blog? I made the recipe as muffins. Yum, they're SO good.

My dolphin-loving niece had a birthday so I appliqued her a dolphin shirt. She can be fairly picky and my sister said the dolphin should be out of a solid fabric, in gray or blue. She also likes pink, so I used a pink striped shirt and topstitched the dolphin with pink to add a little more to it.

I can't believe Thanksgiving is next week already. Are you ready? I've already started Christmas shopping and thinking about what I can make for my kids. I don't really enjoy shopping so I try to get it done early. I'm really excited to make them some lap quilts and I'll share more about that, and maybe even a tutorial, in an upcoming post.

Oh, and I also want to shamelessly brag about my recent DR visit. My numbers were the lowest ever: cholesterol-117, blood pressure-100/54. I was so excited! I've been a vegetarian for more than half my life and now a vegan going on 8 years, and my numbers have always been good, but it's always exciting to find out what they are and have good numbers. Yay plant-based diet! The only concern is that my vitamin D is a little low. It's been low for a year and I've been taking 4000 mg/day of vitamin D and it's come up some, but it's still too low. It should be between 30-80 and I'm at 28. I wonder if any of those new vegan vitamin Ds would work better. Any advice or suggestions?

***

Paul's Browned Rice Extravaganza

1 cup long-grain converted rice (I just used white rice)
1 Tbs Earth Balance
pinch of salt
pepper, to taste
2 cups vegetable broth (I used water with Frontier Vegetarian Chicken broth powder, you could also use bouillon)
vegetables of your choice

Prepare a baking dish by adding the broth or water/bouillon mixture. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Heat up a skillet over medium heat and melt Earth Balance. Add the rice and saute until the rice is coated with Earth Balance and starts to brown, stirring frequently.

After the rice is lightly browned, turn off the burner. Add the salt and pepper and stir.

Pour the rice into the prepared baking dish. It will make a cool sizzling sound. If you want, add some vegetables at this point.

Put in the oven, covered, for 1 hour. Remove from oven and serve immediately, or leave covered until ready to eat.

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T21:54:00.005-05:00

For tonight’s dinner I made pumpkin pancakes (Vegan Brunch), latkes (Vegan Table), and scrambled tofu (Vegan Mom’s seasoning mix). It doesn't photograph well, all that brownish food, but it was really tasty. This is a really quick and easy meal and my kids love it. I made the latkes ahead of time and then warmed them up in the oven while I was making the pancakes and scramble.

We got lots of last minute Halloween things done this weekend. We carved pumpkins on Sunday and I finished sewing the costumes. Because my firstborn are twins, I came up with a rule for Halloween costumes: only simple costumes - no zippers or anything fitted. Sara’s costume is pretty long and roomy, but I like to make them that way because we live in Minnesota and usually have to bundle under costumes, and I want her to wear it for more than 6 months.

Sara knew long ago that she wanted to be a pink princess. Which was perfect since I sewed her that pink velour cape earlier this fall.

I made a pink gown to go with it and then made an elasticized belt so that I could pull up the long length. I added a separate tie to the belt.

Abram took a lot longer to decide what he wanted to be, which is typical for him. Finally a couple of weeks ago he said he wanted to be a ninja, specifically Cole from Ninjago, so I set out to recreate that costume.

I used a karate costume pattern for the top, which is a sleeveless karate jacket and he is wearing a black sweatshirt underneath it. For his mask we used a balaklava and added a bandana over that. For the pants I could have just used the karate pattern, but instead I used a different pattern (PJ pants) that I knew fit him well.

We added some black eyebrow paint just before he went out.

The girls are in middle school this year and I told them last year that it was their final year of trick or treating. For a couple of reasons – they’re getting older and can't eat most of the candy anyway, sewing four costumes is really time consuming (and usually expensive too), and I always get sick every October trying to get it all done. But for the last month they’ve been bugging me and trying to figure out how they could dress up one last year. So yesterday they looked through my fabric and decided they could be Robin Hood’s sisters. I made them each a vest, cape and skirt, using only fabrics (faux suedcloth, fleece, felt) that I didn't need to finish the seams, or even hem, so they were ridiculously easy. These costumes were entirely free, except for the bow and arrow set. We stopped by a local apple orchard last night and picked up those, but they were a very inexpensive prop.

I’m super excited about the candy buyback our local hospital is promoting. We’ve never let our kids eat all the candy anyway, but most of it they can’t eat so we end up giving it away or throwing it away. This year the hospital in town will take back the candy and donate $1/per pound of candy to the local food shelf. And they have some fun things for the kids in exchange for the candy.

Two of My Favorite Things

2011-10-28T23:44:00.001-05:00

When we went vegan almost 8 years ago, the two things I missed most were pizza and caramel. The vegan world has changed a lot since that time and now I don’t have to miss my two favorite things anymore.

Last week we were in the Cities and we ate at zpizza. The kids got a vegan cheese pizza (with Daiya) and Mark got the Berkeley Vegan. After not having cheese for so long and finding I didn’t miss it, I haven’t really been trying any of the vegan cheeses (although my kids love Daiya). But I tried the kids’ pizza and liked it, and I decided having a pizza with red sauce and cheese again might be kind of good.

So tonight for supper I made cheesy pizza for all. I tried out a new crust recipe too. I really like the artisan crust zpizza uses. I have thought about getting the new pizza and flatbread cookbook from the “artisan bread in five” authors and saw that they posted a pizza crust recipe, so I used that one. I really liked how the crust turned out, but I think it would be even better with a pizza stone.

For Mark’s pizza I made one similar to the one from zpizza but we couldn’t find any premade vegan sausage, so I made Italian tempeh sausage. We kept eating pieces off the plate before I made the pizza, it is really delicious!

When I baked the pizza, the tempeh sausage got really dark, so maybe next time I’ll add that at the last minute or even after the pizza comes out of the oven.

before baking

I made mine with my regular pizza toppings of mushrooms and black olives, and thought I added just a little bit of Daiya, but I think next time I’ll add even less.

For the sauce on all the pizzas, I just used crushed tomatoes. The kids loved the pizza and said it was even better than zpizza.

There are plenty of recipes out there for caramel, even vegan caramel, but I’ve found few to be what I’m looking for. Lots of vegan caramel sauces I’ve made turn out runny, or when adding cornstarch to thicken it, the caramel gets little globs in it. I want something thick, like the jarred ice cream topping caramel. I’ve made homemade chewy caramel candies, which turn out unbelievable, but I have to make a vegan sweetened condensed milk first and let it refrigerate overnight, and then spend half the day stirring caramel over the stove. Don’t get me wrong – they’re totally worth it – but it’s something I only do once a year. I’ve thought about using that same recipe and not cooking it as long for a thicker sauce instead of chewy candies, but with all the steps involved, I wanted something easier. So yesterday I came across a non-vegan recipe for something called buttermilk caramel syrup. At closer look, it’s really just a thick caramel sauce. I was intrigued enough to give it a try – even though the recipe said there was no substitution for using real butter. My substitutions: I used Earth Balance and made a soymilk/apple cider vinegar buttermilk.

When it was first done cooking I wasn’t sure if it was what I wanted or not because it still wasn’t super thick. But as it cooled, it thickened up a lot more. And finally after eight years I can say that this is exactly what I’ve been looking for! I tried it over some honeycrisp apples and it was delicious.

In the original recipe they show the caramel being used like a syrup over French toast, and I can’t imagine ever eating it like that, but I would definitely eat it with a spoon.

Questions of the day:

When I change or veganize recipes, is it okay to post the recipe with the new ingredients? I do that to lots of recipes, but I never post them (I insert links to the original recipe instead) because I wasn’t sure.

When I add apple cider vinegar to soymilk it curdles, but when I add it to coconut milk (not the canned variety) or soymilk creamer, it doesn’t. Any ideas why?

Sewing & Baking

2011-10-26T13:30:00.000-05:00

The kids were home most of last week on a school break. Mark took the time off and we had all sorts of plans for things around the house and yard, but we ran out of energy. And anyway it was really nice just hanging out with the kids and relaxing.

Before break started, I appliqued a couple more shirts for the girls.

A dog for Rachel.

An owl for Heidi.

The weather was pretty cool and crisp when they were home, and the girls often sat outside and crocheted. I took a class a couple of years ago and never really worked on it and don't remember anything. The girls were really interested in it when I took the class so I bought them some yarn and books, but then didn't really do anything with it. Something sparked an interest again though and Rachel looked up some youtube videos and figured out for herself how to do it. She keeps getting better and better and I can't believe what she's done. She still needs to work on it, but I'm so proud how much she's improving and figuring out how to do things completely on her own.

She started with just a chain and adding onto it for a scarf. And then she started making different things with more shape.

She made some little stuffed pumpkins for Abram, and she also made a hat with a scalloped edge. It turned out too big, but I'm still totally impressed! Heidi's doing it a little bit, but isn't as interested as Rachel. The instructor who taught the class I took said she'd meet the three of us at a restaurant and she'd teach the girls more - super nice!

I made my sister a car garbage bag. She saw the one I made my other sister and liked it, so I made her one for a housewarming gift. Kind of a weird housewarming gift, but she didn't mind.

I also made this deep dish cookie that doesn't have any flour in it - it's made from beans. I halved the recipe.

The kids thought this was really good, so I'll definitely make it again!

I've been working on Halloween costumes and hope to finish them in the next couple of days.

Some Weekend Sewing

2011-10-16T12:21:00.001-05:00

I got some sewing done this weekend that was on my to-do list.

First, I made a skirt for Sara using this pattern. I saw this skirt and loved the fabrics they chose, and the reversible apron, and knew I had to make it. I ordered the pattern a while ago when it was on sale, and finally got around to making it. It was really easy to make.

I used a mix of bright printed fabrics, but I think it would be equally cute with simpler fabrics.

this shows the other side of the apron

Then I made Abram some PJ pants out of fish flannel. I bought this quite a while ago when he was into fish (now he's into space). But he was still really happy with them. I bought a long-sleeved shirt from Target and appliqued one of the fish onto that.

And lastly, I appliqued a turkey shirt for Sara.

I saw this tutorial and loved it. Sara wanted an aqua shirt so I chose bright fabrics to go with that, and then went with a pink body too. I think it probably looks more like a peacock than a turkey, but that's okay. In her tutorial she doesn't sew each "feather" down all the way but I did. It's more time-consuming to do it this way, but I prefer it because then the backstitching doesn't show. I think this turkey would look really cute on a throw pillow or even a dishtowel, and probably lots of other things.

Now that I sewed so much yesterday, I'm way behind on laundry. I'll be folding all day.

Apple Dumplings

2011-10-15T14:06:00.002-05:00

Sara and I went to another apple orchard this week during the day with some friends. We had a blast and there were hardly any other people there.

I picked up some haralson apples because I wanted to make some apple dumplings. I made some a couple of years ago that were delicious, and thought it was time to make them again. I used the same recipe as last time because it's really simple to make. I highly recommend this recipe!

I have one of those contraptions that peels, slices, and cores the apple all at the same time and I really like using it for this recipe.

For my birthday last week, my parents bought me a rosmaling letter "P" to hang in our house. It's from this shop on etsy. I got it this week and I'm thrilled with it. They did a great job! I hung it right by our front door.

Last night we went to the new Whole Foods that opened this week in Minnetonka. We all got food from the salad bar and ate dinner there, and then shopped a little. It's still a bit of a trip for us, but this store is closer to us than any of the others in the Cities, and there's a Trader Joe's and Costco nearby too. My kids, especially the older ones, love shopping at Whole Foods and health food stores where there's plenty of vegan options. It will be nice to have this one a little closer to us.

Things I've Made

2011-10-09T13:07:00.003-05:00

Ugh, I've been so bad about blogging lately and even thinking about it sometimes stresses me out. I've made things and done things, and taken pictures, but sitting down to write about it and post the pictures takes more time than I've had. So I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures of things I've sewn in the last month. One of these days I'll get caught up on things.

I made a blanket and diaper pouch for a friend to give as a gift for a baby shower:

My parents asked me to make a diaper pouch and hooded towel for a neighbor of theirs who had a baby:

A school pencil pouch for my niece:

An appliqued shirt for a friend of Sara's (birthday gift):

A bag for my dad's tiffin:

This was a pain to make. I had to make my own pattern and just figuring it all out was more complicated than I expected. My seam ripper was used a lot. But he's told me a couple of times that he really likes it.

Some birthday gifts for my sister. What do you get for the person who has everything? I made some homemade napkins (some for adults, and some fun ones for the kids):

And I made her a car garbage bag like the one I made for myself:

I made hers with a drawstring and toggle and like that better than mine, but I still love mine too. Way better than the store-bought versions.

And I made her an oil cloth bag (sized for groceries or kids' swimming stuff):

I also added some of our favorite tea to the gift:

My sewing machine is going to be busy this month with more gifts, bags, Halloween costumes, and some prizes I'm making for a party I'm having. It's really good for me to spend time sewing. It makes me feel good and I need to do it, but sure wish I had more time for it.

Mini Cakes

2011-10-03T14:43:00.003-05:00

It's Vegan Mofo month, and I totally forgot to sign up (was it in November last year?!). It's probably for the best anyway, because last year I struggled with blogging every day and lately I can barely blog once a week. Since school started back up, our schedule has been crazy. Last year I had three kids at the same school and one at home; this year I have four kids in three different schools. Keeping track of everything has been a bit overwhelming.

On Friday evening there was an apple fest at Abram's school. Mark was working so I took the four kids alone, but Heidi wasn't feeling well so we only went for a very short time. They had a bake sale so I spent the day on Friday baking things.

My birthday is this week and I got an early birthday present that day so I could use it for the bake sale - a quadruple mini bundt pan (from Target). I think it would be fun for special occasions to use this pan and the kids can all pick out their own cake flavor.

I made two oreo and two chocolate chip cakes in it. I made the fluffy white cake recipe from Vegan LunchBox, which is exactly the amount of batter needed for this pan. Then I divided up the batter, added crushed oreos to half, and chocolate chips to the other half. Each half made two mini cakes. I also added a glaze when they were done baking. I was planning on making mini caramel cakes too, but I ran out of time. But I'm definitely making those for my birthday!

I also made chocolate chip muffins, pumpkin muffins, and cinnamon rolls. With four kids, it's not always easy for me to put in all kinds of volunteer hours at school, but this is an easy and fun way for me to contribute.

Fall Food

2011-09-25T21:55:00.001-05:00

With the crisp air, I've been thinking about fall things this past week. We're not big football fans, but I've been hearing people talking about football and it makes me think of football parties and food (let's face it, anything makes me think of food!). For whatever reason, I was thinking back to some appetizers that one of my sisters and sister-in-law have made in the past, and I started thinking about veganizing them.

The first is a chili cheese dip that my sister used to make when we were growing up. The original recipe was melted velveeta cheese and canned chili. So today I made a batch of homemade black bean chili, and then I made a cheese sauce (nutritional yeast, flour, paprika, garlic powder, water, Earth Balance, and mustard.) I mixed one cup of the chili with the cheese sauce and we dipped chips in it.

The second dip is one my sister-in-law often makes for get-togethers. This one calls for cream cheese, salsa, and shredded cheese. It's a really simple recipe, but I've never veganized it before. To make this, I spread vegan cream cheese on a plate, topped it with salsa, and then Daiya cheese. This was realy good and the kids liked it too.

I also veganized the potato soup in The Rhythm of Family. The soup calls for 1 cup of milk, and 1/2 cup of cheddar cheese. I replaced that with unsweetened plain soymilk and Daiya cheese. This is a pureed soup (it gets most of its creaminess from the pureed potatoes), but I decided to leave some of it unpureed so we'd have some potato chunks. We all really liked this soup and it was really easy to make.

After lunch we went to a nearby apple orchard. We have several orchards in our community and in nearby towns. We were surprised when we drove up how busy it was! This is the same place we picked strawberries earlier this summer, but we didn't pick the apples, just bought them in the store. The orchard is right on the Crow River and the kids liked walking around and there were lots of fun things for the kids to do.

When we got home the kids had cut up apples with caramel sauce. I made homemade caramel sauce before we left so it would be cooled off when we got back.

We also stopped by Menards on our way home to get a post for an owl house. Last fall Abram and Mark built this house together, but they never got around to getting a post. Abram's been reading a book about owls, which reminded me of the house so Mark got that put up in our backyard today too. We often hear owls, now I hope we see some! The house is specifically built for saw-whet owls.

Caramel Cake

2011-09-23T20:15:00.001-05:00

I’m probably the last person to read The Help. I’ve been on the waiting list forever at the library. I looked the other day and I’m number 155. I couldn’t stand waiting anymore so I picked up the book when I was at Costco yesterday.

I’m about halfway through, and so far it’s great, but all I can think about is that darn caramel cake. I love caramel and every time I pick up the book to read I wonder about making a vegan caramel cake (even when caramel cake isn’t mentioned!). Finally tonight I googled it. I found a couple of vegan versions, but they were all spice cakes and I didn’t think I wanted that. Then I found this recipe that I thought would be easily veganized so I made that instead.

The cake is basically a vanilla cake, but the batter was really thick. I thought about thinning it out, but decided to try it as it was. I used flax eggs in place of the eggs in the recipe. While the cake was baking, I made the caramel sauce. I used soymilk creamer instead of the heavy cream.

I wasn’t sure if my experiment would turn out, but I have to say, this cake turned out way better than I hoped for. It was delicious! The caramel sauce would also be super good for apples, and I like that it doesn’t make a ton.

Hopefully I can enjoy the rest of the book and not daydream about caramel cake now that I’ve satisfied my curiosity.

Photo Book

2011-09-20T18:26:00.002-05:00

I had a free photo book offer from Shutterfly (that expires today!). So the kids and I quickly put together a book about the turtle. I don't scrapbook, but I love these photo books.

Click here to view this photo book larger

Renaissance Festival

2011-09-19T21:15:00.003-05:00

We had some half-price tickets and went to the Renaissance with the kids over the weekend. I took the girls a number of years ago, and I had been with my parents before I met Mark, but Mark has never gone before.

We couldn't go until later in the afternoon, and a lot of the activities were done. When the girls and I went previously they got knighted, but that was done earlier in the day and we were too late, which was a bummer. The weather was cool so it was pretty crowded.

The kids loved the Secret Garden. It was really cool.

Lots of people dress up so the kids all wore capes I made them. I just made Sara's recently, and all of the kids’ capes were at one time as long as hers, but they’ve all grown so much since I first made them, they’re now quite a bit shorter.

And they loved Twig the Fairy. She has a new book out that I looked through and thought it was really cute.

She gave them all a fairy stone.

The kids liked it because it’s like being in a fantasy, and they love pretending and dressing up. We should have planned the timing better so they could have seen more activities. I think if we go another year, I’d just go with the older kids, because it was pretty overwhelming for Sara.

The food is more unique here, but there’s really no vegan food to speak of, so we stopped at Chipotle on our way home. One thing I saw at the festival that I haven’t had in ages was potato skins – carved out potato halves with cheese, bacon, sour cream and lettuce. Actually, I don't know if I've ever had these because they always premade them with the bacon. They looked so good though so I decided to make a vegan version tonight for supper.

I baked the potatoes this morning and let them cool all afternoon. Then I cut them in half and scooped out some of the potato. Then I topped them with some Daiya cheese and tempeh bacon crumbles, that I made earlier in the day, and baked them at 400 degrees until the cheese was melted. Then we topped them with Sour Supreme, green onion, and lettuce. These were really good! I served these with steamed broccoli and Honeycrisp apple slices. With the leftover potato that I scooped out, I made a small batch of mashed potatoes.

Baby Turtles!

2011-09-17T12:35:00.010-05:00

Sometimes the coolest things happen in your own backyard. Remember when school got out and a big turtle laid eggs in our sandbox?

The kids were so excited about it so Mark built a protective barrier around where he thought the eggs were. I emailed the DNR and they confirmed from my picture that it was a snapping turtle and that the eggs would hatch anywhere from 13-19 weeks. They said it would be on the earlier end if it was a warm summer. It was a really warm summer and just last Tuesday was 13 weeks so we've been checking outside daily to see if anything was happening. I was a little skeptical that there were any surviving eggs. We weren't even sure if we had covered the right spot.

Today we were having a lazy morning and didn't check. I was downstairs and heard a loud noise upstairs and went up to see what it was and saw that the back door was wide open. I went out to see what was going on and to tell whoever was outside to shut the door when I saw Rachel still in her PJs by the turtle nest (is it a nest?). There were little baby turtles everywhere!

I started running and yelling frantically that the turtles are here - the rest of the kids thought I was nuts. Of course we were totally unprepared - our video camera tape was full and I couldn't find any new ones. It would have been great to capture this on video for the kids. But at least I had my regular camera.

Some of the turtles were crawling up the sides of the mesh barrier, which was surprising to see.

And then as we were looking around we saw some of them had even gotten out and were in our yard.

We counted at least 25 turtles. There are at least four more eggs that haven't hatched yet and we found a couple of dead turtles in crushed eggs. There was only one that hatched that wasn't alive, but it looked like most of them were doing well. We think there was a total of around 35 turtle eggs laid.

We took out the protective barrier, put the baby turtles in a child-sized wheelbarrow, and went into our neighbor's yard where we had closer access to the pond and put them near the water. They crawled toward the water and swam away.

I read online that baby turtles have many predators that eat them before they hatch. So, yay! We saved the baby turtles! We are so lucky they hatched on a Saturday and not a day when all the kids were at school. What a great experience this was for our kids. This might end Abram's fascination with fish.

New Photos

2011-09-08T22:56:00.002-05:00

I've neglected to post a lot of things this past week or so. I've been busy sewing and I've taken pictures of what I made, my kids started school and I have first day of school photos too - I just haven't gotten around to posting. I was really stressed out before school started, mostly nerves from having my oldest girls going to middle school, and my youngest going to preschool. My stomach was in knots for weeks. Now that it's finally started, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I'll get around to posting those pictures another time, but today in the mail I got the disk with the pictures from our kids' recent photo session. I'm so thrilled with the results, I want to share a few (or a few too many) with you.

Rachel - 11

Heidi - 11

Abram - 7

Sara - 4

Zucchini

2011-09-03T19:30:00.000-05:00

Remember those really big zucchini I picked from my garden? I made some really delicious breaded and baked zucchini medallions with them.

I used this recipe. I could eat these every day. I substituted nutritional yeast for the vegan parmesan, and I cut them into medallions instead of sticks.

I also made the marinara recipe from Veganomicon to go with them. The recipe was really easy and very good. I've always bought it in a jar, but I liked this so much I think I'll just make it from now on.

Forks Over Knives

2011-08-31T18:52:00.004-05:00

Last spring when Forks Over Knives played at the Lagoon Theater in Minneapolis, I took my girls to it. The movie was so inspiring and it was great to meet Rip. I was really excited to eat healthier, but Mark didn’t see the movie and it was hard to relay everything to him. So I ended up not really doing anything with the information.

Well, Forks Over Knives is now available for instant streaming over Netflix (yay!). So Mark watched it last night. He was expecting to fall asleep within 10 minutes, but he was engrossed from the start. Seriously, for people who want to eat better and change their lives, the documentary is a series of one piece of exciting information after another. By the end of the movie you're exploding with excitement. Even though it would be totally annoying to do so, you want to tell everyone about it. When it was all done, Mark said he wants to eat healthier and that he wants to help me prepare and shop for meals. How could I say no?

So we decided we’re going to follow the Engine 2 plan, but not just stick to Engine 2 recipes. We did Engine 2 a couple of years ago and felt awesome after doing it for 28 days, but the recipes got a little old (mostly southwestern inspired foods) and we eventually started incorporating unhealthy foods again. So we decided we’d compile a big list of recipes we want to make using Engine 2 as well as other books (Appetite for Reduction, Peas and Thank You, Clean Food, to name a few) as well as recipes from online plant-based bloggers, such as Fat Free Vegan Kitchen.

My sister’s going to do it with us, and my parents might join in too. My mom is in a nursing home rehabbing from knee replacement surgery so she’s not able to make the recipes, but I’ve been bringing her dinner most nights so she can participate that way. We’re hoping to also have monthly potlucks between us, using recipes that follow the plan. I'm super excited to do it as a group and that we'll all have each other for support. Since my blog is about many things, I don't plan on only posting about this topic, but when I find great recipes or have things to share about it, I will.

So today I had to meet my sister to pick up Heidi and Rachel and I stopped at Costco and Trader Joe’s and stocked up on fruits and vegetables. Tonight’s dinner wasn’t from any cookbook, just simple veggies and tofu. I didn't use any oil to make this, but used two quick sprays of cooking spray on the pan for the tofu so it wouldn't stick.

I made tofu scramble and used the seasoning blend from Your Vegan Mom. I love this seasoning blend. Then I steamed broccoli and added roasted red potatoes to it, along with mushrooms, tomatoes and a small amount of salt and pepper, and more of Your Vegan Mom's seasoning blend. It looks like it wouldn’t be anything special, but it was very flavorful and super tasty. It would also be good the next day as a filling for a wrap…IF you have any leftovers (we didn't).

If you want to watch the documentary, but don't have Netflix instant streaming, check with your local library. If they don't have it, ask that they get it!

Today from my garden I also picked a bunch of tomatoes (roma and San Marzano).

And zucchini (these are huge!). I used some tomatoes tonight, and I’m excited to make something with the zucchini.

The Great Minnesota Get-Together

2011-08-30T22:43:00.005-05:00

Today the kids and I went to the MN State Fair. I'm not a big fair-lover and we rarely go. My sister lives walking distance from the fair and she called on Monday to tell me that they were going to go today and that their daughter wanted Heidi and Rachel to go. The thing is that I had to bring them over there (an hour's drive from us) early in the morning. I didn't really feel like waking up Abram and Sara to bring the girls there, just to turn around and go back home. So I wondered about staying and bringing all the kids to the fair. But did I really feel like bringing four kids by myself (Mark had to work)? In the end I decided it would be a fun thing to do before school starting back up next week, and I have to say we had a really good time.

We headed out from my sister's shortly after 9am and walked the four blocks to the fair. Sure was nice not to have to deal with parking. The weather was perfect - cool and overcast, although we did get rained on a bit. When we first got there it was barely crowded at all, but when we left for home, there was a good-sized crowd.

We started out doing a farm activity with the kids.

After this we stopped for some food. There isn't much vegan food at the fair, but there are some options that are good and it's nice there aren't endless options because it saves us money. First we stopped for some roasted corn. Normally they dip it in butter, but we asked for it without and just sprinkled on some pepper. Yum, this was so tasty!

Right by the roasted corn was the giant slide so some of the kids went down that.

My girls were really excited to do this, until they climed all the way to the top. I realized they were scared when other people were going in front of them. But they eventually came down. Rachel had to hold her uncle's hand the whole way! I figured they'd be fine after they got down, but when they came over to me they still looked pretty scared.

And then we headed to the DNR building. This was one of the biggest reasons I decided we'd go to the fair. Abram has been obsessed with fish all summer long.

I knew he'd get a kick out of seeing all the fish at the DNR building...and he did.

The kids also did archery there and enjoyed that.

I remember doing archery in junior high and thought it was fun.

Then we got french fries - all 9 of us shared a big bucket.

And then we went to the International Bazaar and got some falafel and hummus from Holyland. Yum, this was so good. All of my kids loved this too. I need to make some falafel at home soon...or else go to the Holyland store.

Just outside the International Bazaar is the Midtown Global Market where they sell amazing organic fruits that they'll wash for you. We got two jumbo peaches and two nectarines.

Oh my goodness, these were the best ever.

Then we went to the Miracle of Birth building. I found this both fascinating and disturbing. Of couse any birth is fascinating and we were able to see both the birth of a pig and a lamb, which was really exciting for the kids. Abram had a front row seat when the lamb was born. But it was also disturbing because it seems sad and depressing how confined they are.

There was a cow in labor too, who was going to give birth at anytime, but we couldn't stay for it. Did you know that a calf is removed from the mother cow shortly following its birth and they are separated from there on out? The reason is because the milk the dairy cow produces is for humans, not for her baby calf. This totally baffles me. I guess the dairy industry has done a great job convincing us that cow milk really is made for people. Weird.

After that the kids went on some kiddie rides and we headed home. We got back to my sister's around 3pm and had to leave right away because Abram had his open house at school tonight. We were so exhausted from walking around for almost 5 hours. My sister had a stroller with her, but Sara walked the entire time - I couldn't believe it. As soon as we pulled away from my sister's to head for home, she conked out. What a great day!

Sewing and a Stage

2011-08-29T09:45:00.000-05:00

I made a trash bag for our car.

I used this tutorial, but did a few things differently. I lined it with nylon so it would be easy to clean, but I like how they used an old vinyl tablecloth in the tutorial.

The bottom rolls up and closes with velcro; then when it's time to empty the bag, you just pull apart the velcro, unroll and open up the bottom.

We had a platform in our garage right by the door going into our house. It was really nice to store things under and made for a nice way to go in and out of the house, but it was too big and bulky and we had to take it out. I told Mark the kids would love it for a stage in our backyard.

I was pretty sure he'd think that was a crazy idea, but while I was out running an errand, he put it in the backyard for the kids and they quickly got to work creating a play.

They used the shed for "back stage."

And then the kids ate dinner on the stage.

It's untreated lumber so we'll have to do something with it and then we can store it under our deck.

Double Cherry Dump Cake

2011-08-26T13:23:00.001-05:00

Remember those dump cakes that were popular in the 80s? Last night we had company over and I wanted a quick and easy dessert. This was perfect.

Dump cakes often call for pineapple, but I used this double cherry recipe because Mark hates pineapple. I used a Duncan Hines cake mix (accidentally vegan) and replaced the butter with Earth Balance. This was really really good (even thought it's completely processed).

Some Sewing & Cheesy Sauce

2011-08-24T23:40:00.003-05:00

Abram has been obsessed with fish all summer long. A couple of weeks ago, I appliqued a fish on a shirt for him. I really like using batiks for appliques because the different colors add a lot of interest.

As he was wearing it though, I kept thinking something was missing. So that night I added some blue batik waves to the shirt. I think I like it better this way.

I made some more pencil pouches today. Two of them have eyelets for 3-ring binders, the other one is for Abram and has a flat bottom so it will hold more.

I made these two 1" longer, as I was thinking I might. They are a nice size for in the binders.

Of course I used fish fabric for Abram's.

I also made a shopping bag tonight, using my own pattern.

I decided not to line it so it wasn't so bulky. I have several purchased nylon shopping bags that aren't lined and they seem durable. I made this bag because I'm thinking again about making some things to sell locally, and I'm just trying to figure out what kinds of things would be good to sell. I'll think more seriously about this once school starts.

When we first went vegan, there were no good vegan cheeses and my kids really missed mac and cheese. There are tons of mac and cheese recipes out there that don't actually call for vegan cheese, but they often have cashews in them (Abram is allergic) or they have all kinds of spices that I know my kids wouldn't like. Since vegan cheeses are now available, it makes it so much easier for me to make them mac and cheese. My kids love the simple cheese sauce that I make, which is also good on steamed veggies.

The other day when I made it for them, I didn't have quite enough unsweetened plain soymilk and it turned out really thick. After it sat in the refrigerator overnight, I realized it makes for a really nice spreadable cheese.

So if you want it to top noodles or veggies, you can thin it out with more soymilk, but if you want a spreadable cheese, add less soymilk.

Simple Vegan Cheesy Sauce for Mac and Cheese (or anything!)

2 Tablespoons Earth Balance
2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
1 1/4 - 2 cups unsweetened plain soymilk
kosher salt and freshly-ground black pepper
2 cups vegan cheese (I used one package of Daiya cheddar, but you could mix flavors for a different taste, or I think Teese would work really well in this recipe too)

Heat the Earth Balance in a medium saucepan over medium heat. When it has melted, whisk in the flour. Cook, stirring, for 1 minute. Add the 1 1/4 cups soymilk, whisking to make sure there are no lumps. Stir in the cheese, and constantly stir until melted. If you want a thick cheese, remove from heat once it has melted. If you want it thinner, add more soymilk at this point, 1/4 cup at a time until desired consistency.

3-Ring Binder Pencil Pouch

2011-08-22T23:24:00.003-05:00

Whenever I can, I make things for my kids instead of buying them. Some things just aren’t worth making, some things aren’t worth buying, and sometimes I just don’t know until I try.

My girls need 3-ring binders for school this year (middle school - yikes!) so we picked up some 3-ring binder pouches at Target to go in them. They were inexpensive, but seemed really cheap and flimsy. I wondered about making them myself and figured those zippered pouches I’ve made in the past are easy enough, this seems like it would be just as easy. I looked online for some free tutorials, but none were really what I was thinking – they had extra steps I didn’t think necessary. I found this pattern on etsy and decided to buy it. I think, or know, I could have figured this out on my own but sometimes I just like to have the reassurance of a pattern.

This was super simple to sew. My grommets/eyelets aren’t the greatest though – they look a little rough, but I think they’ll hold okay. I just need to practice more!

I bought the pliers with eyelets tool from JoAnn’s (with a coupon) because I didn’t want to hammer them in. This tool also makes the hole in the fabric, which is nice. I lined mine, but the ones from Target are unlined, and these could be made unlined as well.

So my final opinion is that this is simple to make and even though they’re inexpensive to buy, they’re also pretty cheap to make and the quality is way better. Plus I like making things that can be more personalized - the kids can pick out the fabric they want and it makes it a little more fun. You could even embroider or appliqué something on one. I plan on making more of these and I might make the next one a little bigger, but at times I'll probably just buy some of the cheap ones from Target too. I think these would make great gifts for both boys and girls, and it’s always nice to come across a homemade gift that will work for boys too.

Gnocchi Perfection

2011-08-21T20:53:00.005-05:00

When I was in high school we moved from WI to MN (5 days before my junior year). The new school I attended was twice the size and it was overwhelming, to say the least. I don’t have the greatest memories of high school (but then, who does?!). One of the best things about the new place we moved to was a local Italian restaurant. While we lived there, I enjoyed lots of tasty food from that place - pizza turnovers (calzones), hodge podge (deep fried veggies with sauce), garlic bread and breadsticks, to name a few. But it wasn’t until I was in my 20s that a friend encouraged me to try the gnocchi. Once I did, I was hooked.

At the restaurant the gnocchi came in the dish it was baked in – dense and chewy gnocchi, smothered in marinara and topped with melted cheese. We haven’t lived near the restaurant for years and there’s nothing vegan there anyway, but I’ve tried making a vegan version of this dish at home with less than stellar results. Storebought or homemade gnocchi always resembled gelatinous blobs of dough - nothing at all like what I remembered. Until today.

I went on a mission to recreate that dish and tried to figure out how they achieved a more dense gnocchi that wasn’t so mushy. I made the gnocchi dough recipe from Vegan With a Vengeance today and as I was rolling it out, I realized that the boiling is probably what messes it up. So I thought I'd skip the boiling and just bake the noodles in the sauce.

rolling out the dough into ropes

I went to the internet to find out more and found some information on baking the gnocchi on its own ahead of time, so I decided to do that too. After I cut the noodles, I put them in the oven on a parchment paper lined baking sheet for about 15 minutes at 400 degrees. Then I let the noodles cool completely before using them.

Picture: after baking the gnocchi. The brown spots on the gnocchi are from the potatoes. I peeled them, but there were brown spots directly under the peelings that I didn't remove.

After cooling, I placed them in a glass 9x13 pan and tossed with marinara sauce (I like Paul Newman’s). I topped half with some Daiya mozzarella (the kids’ side), and sprinkled a tiny amount on the other half. I baked this at 400 until the sauce was bubbly.

When I took the pan out of the oven, it looked like what I wanted, but I still wasn’t sure until I tasted it and then I knew I had achieved my goal! MMM, this was so good. The whole family loved this too. I served it with a side of steamed cauliflower and toasted slices of French bread, which I topped with Earth Balance and nutritional yeast (I love how cheesy this tastes!).

I made the dough in my Kitchen Aid mixer, and it’s a little time intensive rolling the dough out, but it’s totally worth it. I think next time I’ll bake some individual servings in ramekins.

A Bunch of Stuff

2011-08-15T00:13:00.003-05:00

On the way home from the Twins Festival last weekend, I told the girls we'd stop in Chicago at a vegan restaurant. Before we left from home, I made up a list of restaurants to choose from. I would have really liked to have gone to Native Foods, which just opened up that weekend, but it wasn't completely open to the public until the day we were leaving Chicago. We decided to go to Chicago Diner.

I've never driven in Chicago in my life and I was warned about hard to find and expensive parking. It was a Sunday so traffic wasn't too bad, but as we drove into Chicago, we encountered heavy rains, which made things a little more stressful. But thank goodness for GPS, because there's no way I could have ever found anything without that thing.

As we approached the restaurant there wasn't a parking spot in sight. We drove around for 20 minutes and I was really frustrated and not sure what we'd do. And then I realized there was a side alley parking lot. Duh! We parked and went into the restaurant, which was totally packed and had a 30 minute wait. Darn, we couldn't wait that long and we turned to leave. Then I noticed the girls' completely crestfallen looks. They were so looking forward to eating out (we'd been eating cold Tofurky sandwiches all weekend). We really didn't have the time, so we ordered food to go.

The girls got a grilled Daiya cheese with sweet potato fries, Teese mozzarella sticks, and a peanut butter cookie dough shake. I got a black bean burger (the black mamba) with sweet potato fries and a slice of cookies and cream cake. I loved the coleslaw on the burger! The cake was good, but dry, and I've noticed that most storebought vegan baked goods tend to be dry. I wonder why, because whenever I bake things at home they're really moist.

Inspired by my meal, tonight for dinner I made black bean burgers and topped them with coleslaw. They used a thousand island-type dressing in their coleslaw so I did the same (Vegenaise & ketchup).

I think this is my new way to eat black bean burgers (I always use the recipe from Veganomicon) - so good!

It's been a crazy week recovering from last weekend's long drive. I feel like I'll never catch up on sleep...or laundry. I'm lazy about blogging and I'm lumping everything in this post.

So, in other news, Sara turned four last week! We had a fun day at home. A friend of hers came over for cake and then we went swimming later as a family.

My neighbor's mom asked me if I'd make a baby gift set for her new grandson. She asked me just before our trip and I actually totally forgot about it until I saw her on Friday night. So I got this done on Saturday morning.

inside view

side view, so you can see the different fabrics

I made a travel wipes/diaper pouch that has different fabrics on each side, and a baby blanket.

This is my new favorite smoothie:

(banana, carrots, pineapple, cantaloupe, spinach, orange, grapes, apple, strawberries, kiwi) We stopped by Costco on Friday and they were doing a Vitamix demo so the kids tried the smoothies. They were so good, so I found out what was in them, bought all the ingredients and have been making these every day. After this is blended and not as full, I add some ice to the Vitamix and blend again. Yum, yum.

Twins Festival

2011-08-09T17:47:00.012-05:00

Last weekend when we were at the concert, waiting for it to start, something interesting happened. Two guys approached me and asked about our girls – if they’re twins. When I said yes, they handed me a card. I was thinking it would be about research, but it was for the twins festival in Twinsburg, Ohio. I had heard of this before and wondered about going, but it’s a 14-hour drive and we’ve just never made the time to go. The guys turned out to be identical twins who have gone for 21 consecutive years and said how great it is – about 5000 people attend (twins and their families) and it’s like a weekend fair. Mark and I started thinking about it…and couldn’t stop thinking about it! The problem is, when they talked to us, the festival was only a week away!

When we got home we started trying to figure out how I could take the girls there on a shoestring budget. This wasn’t something we budgeted for this summer, so we wondered if we could fit it in and thought waiting another year might be better. We also thought, with them going to middle school next year, the timing would be good to go this year.

So last Thursday night the girls and I left for the festival. I have never done anything like this before, other than driving with the kids to IL when my parents lived there, so I'm surprised I decided to do it! We stopped in Chicago that night at my sister's in-laws, who kindly let us spend a night on the way down and the way back. Then early Friday morning we headed to Ohio. We got to Twinsburg on Friday afternoon and checked in at our hotel first.

It was so weird when we first got to the hotel - twins everywhere, and for the weekend all the twins dress alike. The most surprising part of that to me is that even the guys dress alike. It seems like the teenage to early 20-year-old guys, as well as the 30-40 age group of men, would think it was hokey and not do it, but I guess the festival is that one time every year where twins can celebrate their likeness (although I have a feeling that some of the twins celebrate their likeness all year long). Twins come from all over for this festival. Here are the girls with a set of twins from Finland!

After we checked in we went to register and attend the raffle and weiner roast (we obviously skipped the weiners and had food we brought with us - Tofurky sandwiches). We met several sets of twins from MN while we were there, and sitting next to us at the raffle were some twins (the guys below) who live near us in MN.

We stayed at the main hotel for the festival (totally lucked out in getting a last-minute cancellation - the hotel was totally booked), which had a dance party every night. So after the raffle we went back to the hotel and the girls swam and then we went to the party. This was the most amazing thing to me. All these dressed-alike twins out dancing and mingling and having a great time.

The singletons in the mix (like me) were definitely the oddballs! I can't imagine what it must feel like to be a twin at the festival - to be like everyone else for a change. My girls loved this party and they danced until midnight.

Yes, those yellow dresses were SUPER short!

The next morning the girls and I walked in the "look alike" parade. Some twins choose to watch and not walk, but most participate, and it appeared that the whole town comes out to line the streets and watch the twins parade. Totally weird, but fun.

The theme for this year's festival was circus and twins were encouraged to dress up for the parade according to that theme.

The girls wore really simple costumes of strong girls, but some people went all out and others didn't dress up at all. We weren't sure what to do and next year we'll prepare better or not dress up at all.

The parade was fun, but the weather was awful - super humid.

We were sweaty and exhausted after it and we were going to go back to the hotel to swim, but I asked the girls if we could find the health food store instead. I knew there was one there that I found online (Mustard Seed Market), but knew nothing about it. I was afraid it would be really small and not have much, but it turned out to be a beautiful store the size of a Whole Foods. But it was way better because they had tons of vegan foods in their deli (more than I've ever seen at the Minneapolis Whole Foods), and it was only 5 miles from our hotel. The girls loved this store too and even bought some t-shirts (we vegans get excited about things like a good health food store). We decided we'd go back and get dinner there.

That's Rachel doing a backflip into the pool - the little girl showed them how to do it.

Then we went back to the hotel and had some lunch and the girls swam for a few hours. We finally went to the festival grounds mid-afternoon, but it was still really humid out. Just standing around we'd start to sweat. We walked around for quite a while and the girls participated in some research and then they did a look-alike contest with 15 other twins.

My girls are at an age where they don't really look as identical as they have in the past, but they had fun participating in the contest. I was really surprised how many of the older twins still looked alike, so maybe in the tween years they start to look different and then as they get older start looking the same again.

And then they took a huge group picture. I can't wait to get this picture in the mail because they took it from a lift to fit everyone in. My pictures just don't show how big the group really is.

This sesame tofu was so good - I need to figure out this recipe!

Then we went back to the hotel for more swimming, and then Mustard Seed Market for dinner, and then we went to that night's party.

With the 14-hour drive, late-night dance party the night before, early parade, and humidity, the girls were exhausted and around 10pm they were ready to be done for the night.

My photos don't relay how crazy it is to see all these pairs of people walking around dressed alike. It's funny how a lot of the things at the festival are things twins would never do in "real life" - like dressing alike, wearing buttons designating who is Twin A or B, walking in a twin parade, and letting others take photos of them - but I guess it was a way to celebrate who they are without being criticized for doing so. The festival is open to all types of twins and multiples, but the identical twins stand out the most because it's like seeing double.

The girls loved the festival and it was really fun spending a long weekend alone with them. Since they're quiet, they didn't really talk to other kids, but they thought it was great and want to do it every year.

Bags, Bags, and More Bags

2011-08-02T14:21:00.001-05:00

I love bags! I think I've even posted about my love for them before. It's always been hard for me to find the exact purse that has everything I want, so lately I've been making my own. But after a while I get sick of them and want something else. So I made a new one yesterday morning. I used this pattern (I have made the grocery bag by this person too - here, here, and here).

Sara woke me up early and she went back to bed, but I couldn't fall back asleep. So I got up before everyone else and started cutting out and sewing. This only took 2 hours, including the cutting out time.

I added some inside pockets and a hook for keys. This is not a cross-body design, but the strap could easily be made longer.

The pockets on the inside aren't very big and I needed another little bag inside the purse, so I made a zippered pouch.

As I sewed the first side together I wasn't even paying attention (lack of sleep) and accidentally sewed the orange fabric so it would be on the outside and I wanted the gnome fabric on the outside. Instead of fixing it, I decided it would be just as cute with both fabrics showing on the outside, so both sides are out of different fabrics, just as the lining is.

I also made the same bags for my girls.

They are going to use these for sunglasses so I quilted them, but they could be used for anything - pencils, lip balm, money, etc.

I added a loop to the side so they could hook on a caribener if they want.

I cut this out in a square and quilted in a circle pattern, starting in the middle. After I had quilted all the way around, I cut the fabric in half for the bag.

I love sewing these little zippered pouches. They are fun to make and go together really quickly.

I also made a birthday gift for a friend of Sara's. This skirt I actually have had cut out since Heidi and Rachel were Sara's age...and I never sewed it together!

So I finally did, and I also added some light blue ric rac on each tier.

Then I made a matching appliqued shirt to go with it.

Because I love bags so much, I picked this one up from Whole Foods. It's a cooler bag. I've wanted this for a while and last year they had it in orange. I saw this again over the weekend, and then asked my sister to pick it up for me. We have two similar bags - one huge one and a smaller one. We use both of them often when we go to Costco and Trader Joe's and I really liked the size of this one and thought it would also work well for picnics. It was $9.99.

Fun Stuff

2011-07-30T16:07:00.001-05:00

Last spring we bought some Groupon and Living Social coupons. I really like these because with a family of 6 some activities are really expensive. But they also stress me out, because all of a sudden it’s almost August and we haven’t used the coupons and need to find time to get them used. Mark took Thursday and Friday off from work and we used all of our coupons and had a great time.

On Thursday we used a Groupon and went to Clear Waters Outfitting Company and kayaked down the Mississippi River.

Last year I kayaked in the Mississippi River Challenge (which is going on right now, this weekend), and our vacation last year was in Ely where the kids kayaked every day. So we were really excited when we saw the coupon for this place near us.

I don’t normally like the sit on top style of kayaks, but that’s all they had for the tandems, and they actually turned out to be okay.

Our trip was 8 miles down the river and then they picked us up and brought us back. The kayaking took about two hours.

It was so much fun and that part of the river is really beautiful and peaceful, we didn't encounter any other boats. We had beautiful weather.

Groupon or not, this is something we'd like to do again.

That evening one of our favorite bands (The Twilight Hours) was playing downtown St Paul at Mears Park. So we came home from kayaking, had a late lunch, took showers, and headed for the concert. It was really fun to see all the different people and I love doing stuff like this with the family. The concert was great but we didn’t stay for the whole thing because we had a full day and the kids were getting tired.

Then yesterday we used some Living Social coupons and went to the outdoor swimming park at the Anoka Aquatic Center. It wasn’t very crowded when we got there, which was really nice.

There were a lot of things for the kids to do, with different areas appropriate for all ages. And yet it wasn't huge where you lost track of your kids, it was easy to keep them all in sight.

The kids loved this place! We stayed two hours and they didn’t want to leave.

We got a big dose of vitamin D with all our outdoor activities this weekend.

We got a new camera last week to use just for activities like this. My regular camera is a Nikon D3000 and is too big to haul with me for activities like this, plus it’s not safe to bring near water or to let the kids use. We wanted something smaller and tough, so we got the Olympus TG310.

underwater photo with our new camera

It’s waterproof and drop-proof, things we thought necessary with kids. It was really fun to be kayaking and taking pictures and passing the camera back and forth, as well as walking around a pool with a camera. It will also be nice as a small camera that fits in my purse and I can take with all the time for everyday use.

Gooey Cinnamon Roll Biscuits

2011-07-27T16:46:00.006-05:00

It's no secret that my family loves cinnamon rolls. I always make the recipe from Vegan Brunch. I like to make them when we have company too, but I always have to make them the night before and sometimes it would be nice to have something right out of the oven. My sister sent me this link today and it inspired me to veganize the recipe. Yum, these were good!

For the light cream in the recipe, I substituted soy milk creamer. The recipe calls for cinnamon chips to be sandwiched between the dough layers and also on top. Cinnamon chips have dairy in them though so I needed to figure out something else.

My alternative for that was to blend together 1 tsp cinnamon, 1/2 cup brown sugar, 1/2 cup Earth Balance.

After the dough is mixed, the recipe says to dump it out and spread it into a rectangle and cut it into 8 equal pieces. My dough was really wet and I wasn't sure how that would work. I added more flour to the recipe (about 1/4 cup) and then followed their steps.

I think next time I make this I will not precut the dough. I will just press half the dough into the pan, top it with half of the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture, then press the remaining dough on top of that and and finish with the remaining brown sugar/cinnamon mixture on top of that. Precut into four biscuits they're huge and I cut them much smaller, so precutting the dough doesn't seem necessary to me. Here is how it looked as I was preparing the recipe:

My first thought when I took the pan out of the oven was that I used too much Earth Balance in the filling mixture and that the next time I make the recipe I'd lessen that amount. But this tasted so good so maybe I won't change anything.

This turns out a lot like a coffee cake, and is really moist. Without using cinnamon chips and using my substitution, I think this recipe turns out even gooier than the original. So if gooey isn't your thing, add less Earth Balance to the brown sugar/cinnamon mixture.

Lots of Stuff

2011-07-26T23:14:00.004-05:00

I mean to post more often, but it gets busy and my posts build up. So here are a few things from the past week and weekend.

I made another mermaid appliqued shirt.

This was a gift for our niece's birthday.

Last week and weekend we had some of the kids' cousins staying with us. They saw the girls' monsters and wanted some for themselves so I made them each one.

I also had a pillow case that I had cut out quite a while ago for one of my nieces, but never sewed it up, so I finally did that too.

One of the girls had half of her stuff in a garbage bag, so I made her a large tote bag to put things in.

I added a pocket on the inside of the bag.

I saw this rainbow shirt on mini Boden that I really liked so I appliqued a rainbow on a Target clearance shirt for Sara.

I thought it might be really cute with a four-tiered skirt, using the same four fabrics from the rainbow. And if that's too busy, maybe it would be cute with a skirt using just one of the fabrics from the rainbow. I might try it out. I also have a bunch more shirts that I want to applique for the kids.

When the cousins were here I made vegan aebleskiver one morning. I sprinkled some with powdered sugar and made a glaze for others.

My garden is exploding right now. We've picked quite a bit of lettuce and it's started to flower out now so I may try planting more. But we have green tomatoes and some beans and peas coming in, and the zucchini is flowering. There's not a lot to actually pick and eat yet, but in the coming weeks I think we'll have a lot.

I also have tons of daylilies in my yard and in the last week most of them were blooming. These are some of my favorites from my yard:

I love the variety of these flowers, but most of them will need dividing in the fall and I'm not sure what I'll do with the portion I take out. I hope I can find someone to give them to.

Staying Cool

2011-07-19T19:46:00.008-05:00

It’s super hot here, in the upper 90s, and over 100 with the heat index. Tomorrow is supposed to be the hottest day yet. The humidity is supposed to go down by Thursday, but it’s still supposed to be in the 90s. I love spending time outside, but it’s hard to spend any length of time outside with it so hot so we’ve been indoors a lot. We’ve all been tired from the heat and a little bored. Minnesota winters are so long, it’s really disappointing to be indoors in the summer too.

I haven’t wanted to turn on the stove or oven all week so we’ve been having smoothies, salads, and cold sandwiches. And we’ve come up with some other things to stay cool and occupied too.

The girls have done some monster sewing using McCalls 5826. This is a really fun and easy pattern and allows for some creativity because the body of the pattern has different options that you can switch out. You pin the pieces together when cutting out so there are no extra seams except the outer seams, which makes for an easy-to-sew project.

Last night I made more ice cream. Mark loves anything mint, so I made the cake batter ice cream again, but instead of vanilla, I added peppermint extract. And I added crushed chocolate chips at the end. Mark loved this and said we should never buy vegan ice cream from a store again. It really is so good and creamy, and it’s super quick to make. I want to experiment with other flavors and mix-ins.

The girls wanted to make cookies today, but they made Cookie Dough Scoops (from Vegan Cookies Invade Your Cookie Jar) instead since this recipe doesn’t require any baking.

Kids love cookie dough and since vegan cookie dough doesn’t have any eggs, it’s totally safe. And with no baking powder or soda, there's no bitter taste to the dough. This is a great recipe for kids to make. You could also freeze little chunks of it and add it to ice cream for a tasty treat.

I made an appliquéd shirt for Sara today. I used an old plain shirt of hers that needed the hem fixed and I decided to use it to practice making a mermaid appliqué that I plan to use on a gift. I'm happy with how it turned out.

I really like fun appliquéd shirts for kids and they’re really simple to make. I often look at mini Boden for inspiration (because at $28 a shirt, I’ll never actually buy one!), but an easy way to make your own appliqués is to look at coloring pages. You can look in coloring books, but I usually just google whatever picture I want to do (ie, mermaids). You want to find a really simple outline or design, nothing with lots of detail. It can be a super simple design that only requires one piece of fabric, but for this one I had to use three and also do some layering. Sometimes I finish the edges with a zigzag stitch, but I like using a straight stitch (as I did here) so that when I wash it, it frays a little. I embroidered the eyes and mouth.

Right now Target has some short-sleeved t-shirts on clearance for $3.48, and appliquéing on them is an inexpensive way to make the shirt more fun. Here's a link to other shirts I've appliquéd.

7 Years

2011-07-16T23:30:00.003-05:00

I can't believe it, but my boy is turning 7 tomorrow (July 17). Tonight we had grandparents over for pizza and cake.

The other night Mark took the three older kids to a Twins game. So now Abram is really into baseball and the Twins. He requested a baseball cake. I'm not a great cake decorator but I did the best I could.

I also made ice cream using my cake batter ice cream recipe and added some crushed Oreos to it. Yum, this was so good!

Last year on Abram's birthday, Mark built an air-powered rocket for the kids to have fun with. This year Abram got a model rocket. Mark and the kids put it together at home.

And then we went to the park to set it off.

The kids loved this, but it only had enough engines to set off three times so we'll need to get more.

New Craft Table

2011-07-15T21:59:00.003-05:00

We have always had a space in our house for the kids to draw and make crafts. Since we moved here 8 years ago, it’s always been in the basement. Due to the necessity of Mark moving his home office into a bigger space, and having to separate Abram and Sara from sharing a room, the kids lost their craft space this past year. And I’ve really noticed it. We have had supplies in our kitchen and the kids would sit at the table and use them sometimes, but often forgot about them, and it was hard sharing space in an area that’s used frequently for other things (like eating). Abram got an art desk from Craigslist for his room and he uses it sometimes, but doesn’t always want to sit by himself to draw. I loved how creative my kids were when we had a space set up for all of them and have really wanted to have that space for them again.

So a couple of weeks ago I went on a mission to find a table and chairs set that we could put in our family room (something nicer than the white utility table and folding chairs we used in the basement) for our kids to do art, puzzles, play games, and even homework. I checked Craiglist every day and they were either way out of our price range (I was hoping to find something around $50), or they were total junk. We went to our local thrift store and found the same thing there. Our downtown is having crazy days sales this weekend and some of the occasional stores that are open every weekend were participating in the sales. Mark had the day off and we weren’t really planning on even going to look, but while running some other errands we decided to swing by the stores.

We went to the first store and I saw several tables that I thought would work and that I really liked. None of them were marked down though and were $75 or more, plus didn’t come with chairs. I was beginning to feel as though we’d be looking for a long time before we found the right set, or that we’d be spending a lot more than I had hoped. Then we went into another store and within 25 steps of the front door, the table and chairs I had been looking for was sitting right there. And it was marked 50% off - $64.50 for the whole set.

I didn’t have a huge list of requirements for the table (basically a round table with four legs - not a pedestal - and chairs), and the set I found is way better than I ever expected. I love the green paint! It fits perfectly in the spot we have and I think it will be a great addition for the kids.

Inspiration Books

2011-07-14T16:10:00.003-05:00

I enjoy reading books a lot, and in the summer I also like looking through craft books for ideas. Here are some of the books I have at home with me now.

I checked all of these out from the library. I'm lucky enough to live in a community that's part of a much larger library system, so the choices are endless. I usually find books on Amazon or other blogs and then search my library online for them. Sometimes the books will have many ideas, sometimes none, and other times only one good idea. But I like looking through them for inspiration. How do you get inspired?

More Bread

2011-07-12T09:16:00.003-05:00

I did make French toast using the cinnamon bread and it was really tasty. I used the basic recipe from The Vegan Table, but omitted the spices since there's already cinnamon in the bread.

Last night I made another batch of the bread dough and made it into buns instead. We like having buns for sandwiches and I thought it would be nice to start making them from scratch instead of buying them in the store. I have a large Kitchen Aid mixer with a dough hook so making bread is really very simple and I don't have any excuses for not making it more regularly.

This recipe worked really well for buns. I typically don't buy white breads, but I need to experiment more with making whole wheat breads and find a recipe that isn't so dense and heavy. And one that I can make as a bread or buns. Vegan Dad makes lots of bread and has a whole wheat recipe that I'll have to try. If you know of any great whole wheat bread recipes, let me know!

Being Productive

2011-07-10T19:51:00.006-05:00

After the kids went to bed last night, I spent a big portion of time organizing things in the house. I'm on a mission to declutter our house and get rid of things we no longer need and organize better. We have a room in our basement full of dress-up clothes, essentially 11 years of Halloween costumes (and a couple of bookshelves full of extra books). **I should add, this is stuff I want to keep and not get rid of - just organize better. The books are from the girls and I'm keeping them for Abram and Sara (though I've thought of selling them and just using the library), and the dress up clothes are a good creative outlet for the kids so I've kept all of them for that reason.

This is a very small room, and actually it was at one time Mark's office. I'm not sure how he worked in there because it's really the size of a large closet. It's so small it's hard to even get a good picture.

I've tried various methods for storing the clothes and most recently the room had a clothes rod that the dress-up clothes were hung up on with hangers. I thought this was better than digging through crates, which was the previous method, but every time the kids would put something on (pretty much daily) the clothes would end up on the floor. I was constantly sending them back down to pick up the room.

I wanted something easier so I wasn't nagging them all the time and decided hooks lining the walls would work. So I picked up a bunch from Ikea and Mark got them up last night. I think these will work great!

The girls used to have all their doll clothes stuffed in plastic storage crates and it was a mess! Which is why I am so excited about the wardrobe I picked up yesterday. Today I made some wire doll hangers using coated electrical wire Mark had in the garage (because these hangers are too expensive to buy) and I used this tutorial to make them.

This worked great, even though mine aren't as nice looking as the tutorial.

Now their doll closet looks great!

I really like painted furniture, but sometimes it can get marked up easily or chip, and when it's really hot and humid things can stick to it. So I made a quilted runner to put on top of the girls' doll wardrobe.

I don't have a rotary cutter or mat and think that would really make it much easier to have a straighter finished product, but I made-do. I used fabric scraps to make this and didn't measure when cutting them out, not worrying if some were crooked. I picked colors from their quilts - pink, green, yellow. I also didn't worry about matching the colors exactly, I wanted a variety.

I still need to take off the wall stickers in their room and paint over their pink and orange striped walls, but that's for another day.

Remember that bread I made the other day from Vegan Dad? I made it again today, but this time rolled it out and put a brown sugar/cinnamon mixture in it, then rolled it back up. Yummy cinnamon bread! I plan on using it to make French toast (if it doesn't get eaten up before then!).

Most days around here are filled up just getting the regular things done, with no spare time to accomplish anything else. It feels good to have such a productive day!

Fun Saturday

2011-07-09T22:44:00.005-05:00

Yesterday afternoon I went to some occasional sales with my girls. I posted about this last year, but we have many stores in our town that are only open one weekend every month. They have mostly furniture items that have been refurbished, but there are other vintage things too, like linens, home decor, tablecloths, etc. It's really fun to go and just get ideas, but yesterday when I went I brought money that I had saved up so I could get some things for our house. Most of the stores are super reasonable and the prices are way cheaper than things you'd find at other furniture stores, but some of the stores are pricier. I found several things that I wanted yesterday, but couldn't decide so I went home empty-handed and asked Mark if he'd go with me this morning. Sometimes things I've wanted have been gone the second day, but I was lucky enough that didn't happen.

I thought Mark would be the voice of reason this morning and talk me out of everything, but I got the two items that I wanted, plus one other item that I was admiring. I love the unique character of every piece.

I got this cute pink dresser for Sara's room for $36. All of our kids have closet organizers so she doesn't need a dresser, and I was actually looking for a bedside table for her, but this works perfectly next to her bed and is more useful for storage than a regular bedside table.

When I started filling the drawers, I noticed writing on the sides. Too funny! Hopefully this person knows how to spell "loser" now.

Then I got a bedside table for our room for $28. Abram needed one too, but we had a too-small one next to Mark's side of the bed that we moved to his room, and I got to put this lovely piece next to my side of the bed. I was looking at one for $22, but then Mark actually found this one back in a corner. I like the yellow drawers.

So I paid for these two items and we left. As we were driving away, I told Mark how much I loved the child-sized armoire/wardrobe I had showed him. I thought it would be perfect in the girls' room for doll clothes and accessories, and when they're too old for dolls it will be great for something else. He agreed and told me to go back and get it. And it fits perfectly in their room. This piece was a lot more, $89, but also much bigger than the other two pieces and I felt like it was a good price.

I love that our town has these stores, I think there are at least 7 of them (plus more than a few antique shops), with new ones being added all the time. And now a lot of surrounding communities are doing the same thing. Women from the Cities come in groups and go shopping at the stores when they're open and our downtown gets pretty busy. And the great thing about them is that they're all using existing items and recycling them in a new way. I think a lot of people talk down the prices, but I'm not good at doing that sort of thing so I just pay the price they ask (some tickets are marked "firm" and they won't do any discounting on those).

We spent the afternoon moving furniture and filling drawers and then spur-of-the-moment decided to go on a family bike ride at a nearby trail. It is really hot and humid here, but we decided to give it a try anyway. We ended up going 7 miles and had a great time. Sara can bike, but I'm not sure she could go that far so I pulled her in the Burley. It was really a beautiful trail. There are lots of trees so it was cooler on the path and it was a really nice ride. We hope to do this a lot more this summer.

We saw a bunch of little tiny frogs, and then on the way back we saw a huge toad, so Abram was thrilled with that.

I'm not a very spontaneous person, I like to plan things out (and sometimes suck all the fun out of things). We've already done several spur-of-the-moment things this summer and they've all turned out to be a blast. I know that won't always happen and I think sometimes planning is a good thing, but sometimes it also holds me back and when I don't have time to worry about all the details, it can be a lot of fun.

Laundry Bag

2011-07-07T09:41:00.001-05:00

My niece's birthday is this weekend and I was trying to figure out something useful I could make for her. She's going to college in the fall and I thought maybe a laundry bag would be nice for bringing home on weekends. I searched online for some downloadable patterns or tutorials and didn't really find anything, but did see this picture of one that I really liked.

I used that general idea and made a bag without a pattern. As with the one in the picture, I made a bottom to it so that it would open up more and hold more laundry. And I fully lined it to make it more durable. The one I made is bigger though, 29x22.

I love bags and love making bags, so this was lots of fun. The hardest part was deciding on the fabrics. I decided to go with the green dots on the bottom to make it stand out and be different, instead of going with the more obvious red or blue (and there are small green leaves on the flowered fabric). I wish I would have thought of doing this earlier and picked up a good Amy Butler print, or something similar, but I had to go with what I had with the time available.

Strawberries!

2011-07-05T09:18:00.002-05:00

I've wanted to go strawberry picking for years, but with such a short picking season, we've never done it. We woke up yesterday morning and decided to go since they were open. Strawberries are one of the most heavily sprayed crops, so it's a good idea to only buy organic strawberries. We don't have any nearby organic strawberry farms, but the place we went to doesn't spray their crops (they just aren't certified organic).

It was pretty warm out yesterday, but it was a fun activity for the kids and with everyone helping out it doesn't take long to get lots of berries.

My plan was to make some homemade freezer jam, which I remember loving as a kid. My sister decided to come out and help make it so she could take some home with her.

When we got home we washed the strawberries and started to process them - destemming and mashing.

I used this recipe for making the jam, but there are recipes on the back of the pectin packages as well.

It's really amazing how easy this is to make and it only has three ingredients - strawberries, sugar, pectin.

After mixing, you put it in the jars and let sit for 30 minutes. Then you can put it in the freezer (for up to 1 year) or in the fridge (for up to 3 weeks).

And what's better with homemade freezer jam, than a big slice of homemade bread? I made Vegan Dad's Country-Style bread.

How come fresh-picked strawberries taste unlike any berry I've ever bought from a grocery store? They are amazing!

More Sewing

2011-07-03T10:07:00.000-05:00

After the kids went to bed last night, I was itching to get working on that tablerunner I mentioned I wanted to make. I ended up making the whole thing last night (because I tend to get obsessed like that...I need to work on that).

It's a simple piece, but with all the quilting it took over 2 hours to make. I'm really happy with how it turned out. I wasn't sure I liked the stark white of this furniture piece in our living room, but I think with the brown fabric bins I'm going to make, along with this colorful tablerunner, the white won't stand out so much.

Last night for dinner we had one of our favorite meals. I made seasoned black beans and then put them on top of tortilla chips and baked them (for the kids I added some Daiya cheddar before baking). Then we put some on our plate and topped it with letuce, avocado, tomato, salsa, etc. I don't know if it's taco salad or nachos, but either way it's really good.

There was still some homemade ice cream left so I picked up some root beer and made root beer floats for the kids. This is something the kids never have, I'm pretty sure Abram and Sara have never had it, so it was a fun and tasty treat for them.

Some Sewing

2011-07-02T12:37:00.001-05:00

I've finally been sewing again. I think I was inspired by the pillow the girls made in sewing class because I made a similar one.

I used the directions for doing a quilt along in the book Patchwork Style. SouleMama has made quilts (something I want to tackle as well) using this method so I checked out the book from the library. Making this pillow cover was so much fun and easy and I'm excited to make more things using this method. I have been saving fabric scraps and this is a great project for using them up. I made an envelope closure for the back.

I have a cubed bookshelf that my sister gave me, but the cubes are odd-shaped and I haven't been able to find anything to fit it just right. I've tried some things I already have at home and none of them are right. I've looked online and also at Ikea and they have something that's sort of close, but after buying 6 of them it would cost at least $50.

So I finally made a fabric bin. This was just my test so it's not perfect. I didn't have the right interfacing so it's a little floppy and I think next time I'll cut the lining a little smaller so it's not so loose on the inside. But I think these bins will be perfect. And they were super easy to make, the most time consuming part was measuring for the pattern. With the size of these (11x12x10) these won't be very cheap either because I need about a yard for each, but at least they'll fit as I want them to. I used this tutorial for making them.

I also plan to make a table runner using the quilt along method to top this bookshelf.

Mark came home last night and the kids and I couldn't be more thrilled. He even brought us some Dillos from Cakewalk (he even got me one of those great t-shirts!), in both vanilla and chocolate.

Wow, these are so good! And you can get them yourself from Vegan Essentials.