"I love.....READING!"

As a reading specialist, I'm always looking for ways to develop early literacy skills. I guess you can take the girl out of the school, but you can't take the school out of the girl!
Now don't get me wrong, I LOVE being a SAHM, but I certainly miss teaching. My poor child, family's children, and friends' kids...all they'll want is a no brainier toy and I'll be the one smiling handing them an encyclopedia! (Do they even still make those???)

My sweet nephew turned 2 this past month and I was in a stupor as of what hip fun toy to get a 2 year old boy. Then I stumbled upon www.pintsizeproductions.com. BINGO!

I was able to make a personalized repetition board book complete with my own pictures! (Ummmm, awesome isn't a good enough word to describe how this made me feel, so let's go with stupendous actually) Basically, a repetition (or repetion of phrase) book is where the order of the words is repeated making the reading very predictable and therefore easy to read. And even furthermore FUN to read!

So I made a book titled Things Daniel Loves (Daniel will be his alias) and for each page I put a picture of him with one of his favorite things with the sentence reading "I love ________"
This was done for each page and each page had a different thing/activity with its coordinating picture. I just uploaded the photos I wanted and typed in exactly what I wanted it to say.

The company was great-I had never heard of them before so I was taking a shot in the dark, you know...ordering and making it on-line (and crossing my fingers I wouldn't end up in People's Court suing them for payment of a never delivered purchase or getting someone else's book titled "My Favorite Psycho Things to Do") but it was super easy and super fun to make! They have different options to choose from and I got my order within at least a week from ordering it!

It was a big hit, and he is having a blast reading it!
God, don't you just love developing literate minds??? It's pure..........stupendousness!

Simplicity is always better

Simplicity is always better (or in my case it should read "The Lazy Way is always OKAY!")! So we needed to do some calcium clean-ups around our bathrooms at our house, but I wasn't about to unscrew every shower head, disassemble, then reassemble, and then finally figure out that I reassembled it wrong. So instead of taking the shower head to the vinegar to soak, I decided to take the vinegar to the shower head!

So as you can see from the pictures, all I did was fill a Ziploc bag with vinegar and dunk the shower head in the bag (making sure that the head was completely submerged) and tied it up using a rubberband. I did each shower head one at a time letting each one soak for several hours.

It worked great and it was so easy, there was no need for me to use the shower because I didn't even break a sweat! ;)

With or Without Pickles?

That's the big question for today. Yup! November 2nd is National Deviled Egg Day! I personally like them both ways. To celebrate this day, I thought I'd make some deviled eggs to have with lunch! Since we don't have any pickles, I guess that answered the question for me!

These don't last very long in our house...
I make my deviled eggs using the Williams-Sonoma recipe. All you need is:
4 eggs, 2 TB mayo, 1/2 teaspoon Dijon mustard, & 8 small pinches of paprika.

1) Boil eggs ( around15 min), cut, & scoop yolks out.
    Here is a good place to point out my awesome Egg Perfect Egg Timer! I LOVE IT! I just throw in the egg timer along with the eggs in the pot and it changes color as the boiling eggs move from raw to soft, medium or hard boiled! It automatically adjusts to the number of eggs and the level of water in the pot, so you can never go wrong with it! I got it at Williams-Sonoma. I HIGHLY recommend it!

Looks like my eggs are done!

2) Add mayo and mustard with yolks and mash into a paste.
3) Taste and season with salt and pepper.
4) Spoon mixture back into each egg white half and sprinkle paprika on top.

optional: add 1 TB finely chopped sweet pickle to egg yolk and omit paprika

If the eggs fall apart, just chop them up and make egg salad instead and serve on a croissant! Super yummy!

Just another reason to celebrate!

Whole Wheat Yumminess!

   I've never really worked with whole wheat flour before so I thought I'd take a crack at it and make some nutritious whole wheat pancakes for breakfast. Since it is much heavier than white flour, I've heard that using whole wheat flour can end up with disastrous results...hence my hesitation before now.
   I found out that a good rule of thumb is to mix the whole wheat flour with an appropriate amount of white flour when baking. So that is what I did to make the following breakfast:

3/4 cup all-purpose flour
3/4 cup whole wheat flour (I added an ounce or 2 more wheat flour than the white)
3 tablespoons sugar
1 1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 1/2 cup milk
1 Tablespoon vegetable oil
1 large whole egg (yolk and egg white)

   Combine both flours in a large bowl along with the sugar, baking powder & soda, and salt. Stir with a whisk.
   In a smaller bowl, whisk together the milk, oil and egg. Add the wet mixture to the flour mixture stirring until moist.

   Spray skillet or griddle with PAM and heat over medium.
   I spoon about 1/4 cup of the batter onto the skillet. Then flip over when the pancakes start to bubble.

Serve with butter and syrup (optional) and you are done! It was so easy that I was able to do this and brew coffee at the same time...not always an easy task for me at 6 in the morning. Here's to healthier eating! 

   Oh, and I will say that YES, they did taste "HEALTHIER" if healthier has a taste, but they were still yummy and my picky eater son gobbled them up...along with my husband!

Beer Punch

I hope everyone had a happy Halloween! We had a great time Trick or Treating and passing out candy!
We did the Wizard of Oz theme this year and we had our own Cowardly Lion!

While the kiddos got some candy, the adults had an adult beverage of their own! We went over to my neighbor's and it was my first time for Beer Punch. It was so good, I thought I'd share the recipe! It's super easy.

1 large can pink lemonade
3 beers (we used Bud Lite Lime)
3/4 cup vodka

Mix well until lemonade is dissolved. Serve over ice.

Let the fun begin!

Choc-"boo!"-late Munch

Okay, so I got the "baking" bug tonight and since tomorrow is Halloween, I decided to whip up some Halloween inspired munchy stuff! So here is what I threw together that I had around my house to create my Choc-"boo!"-late Munch!

3 cups of mini pretzels
2 cups honey nut Chex
1 cup dry roasted peanuts
8 oz semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 1/2 cups of Reese's Pieces

1. Lay out the pretzels, Chex, and peanuts.

 2. Melt the chocolate on low heat. (I also added a couple tablespoons of water to thin out the chocolate.)

 3. Mix the chocolate and pretzel mix together. I just went simple and used my hands.

4. Mix in the Reese's Pieces. (I used 1.5 cups, but you can use more if you'd like. That was all I had, but it turned out to be enough I think!)

To get in the spirit, I got some Blood Orange sparkling -ade to go with for a little late night snack, and as far as the rest goes...I needed to get it out of my house as soon as possible before I ate the whole batch!

 So I packaged it up to send it to work with Q. And PRESTO! It's vanished! No more temptation!

This would be great to do with left-over Halloween candy too!

Cheap Expensive Coffee

I decided I’d start this week with a little indulgence. Since we are now on only one income, the habit 

of shelling out $4 for a cup of coffee from Starbucks was quickly out of the question. However, lately 

I’ve been hearing all the hoopla about the return of the Pumpkin Spice Latte that I haven’t even tried 

yet. So I ran to Starbucks to partake and decided that it was definitely worth trying to repeat at home! 

What’s a girl on a budget to do???

   So here is the recipe I used for a Pumpkin Spice Latte - IN A CROCKPOT! Basically, this recipe is 

equivalent to a little more than a Grande at Starbucks (I’m estimating here).  I programmed a pot of 

coffee to be brewed at 6 this morning so my coffee would be ready by 8.

Here is the recipe I stole: 

-2 cups milk

-2 T canned pumpkin

-2 T white sugar

-2 T vanilla

-1/2 tsp pumpkin pie spice (if you don’t have this on hand, you can easily make it by combining 1/4 tsp cinnamon, 1/8 tsp cloves, 1/8 tsp nutmeg, and a tiny pinch of ground ginger)

-3/4 cup strong brewed coffee

Put coffee & milk into crockpot. Whisk in everything else. Cover and cook on high for 2 hours and you’re done!!

It was definitely sweet, but all in all definitely comparable to my much missed Starbucks and definitely cheaper!

The only problem I had this morning was, What am I going to do with all this left over pumpkin? 

I only used 2 T out of the whole can for the latte! (as pictured below)

So while my coffee was “cooking”, I decided to bake some pumpkin bread using a recipe courtesy of my friend, Alissa, to finish off the left overs!

Here’s the recipe for one 9x5 loaf:

-1 cup pure pumpkin

-1/2 cup vegetable oil

-1 1/3 cup sugar

-2 eggs

-1 1/2 cup flour

-1/2 tsp baking soda

-1/2 tsp baking powder

-1/2 tsp salt

-1/2 tsp cinnamon

-1/2 tsp nutmeg

-1/2 tsp ground cloves

          1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease & flour one 9x5 inch loaf pan.

1. 2.Mix the pumpkin, oil, sugar, and eggs together in a large bowl.
 

1. 3.Combine everything else together and then stir that into the pumpkin mixture. Stir well.

    

             

    

1.        4. Spread batter into loaf pan.
   
   5. Bake in preheated oven for 45 minutes to an hour. (I have a convectional oven for baking and it took the whole hour for it to completely bake through for me.)
   1. 
      
   
   
   

   It was a successful morning. I got my coveted coffee, Clark got some fresh baked pumpkin bread for breakfast, and I felt somewhat productive...which doesn't always happen as often as I would like for some reason...