Sad week

We lost our dog this past week. :( She would have been 14 in August. She still tried to act like a puppy but was slowing down so much. Sometimes her legs would just give out, poor girl. We'd had her since she was a puppy and the kids have had her for their entire lives-she was definitely a member of the family. She was so good with the kids, always gentle. We miss her so much. Steve buried her in the yard and we are going to make a little cross and plant lots of flowers on her grave. There have been a LOT of tears this week and I'm sure there will be more.

Nothing at all

That's what I've been doing. Nothing. Well maybe something but nothing creative. I've been doing a lot of thinking about creating something. But no action.

I am going to share a couple more recipes since I've not been sharing much of anything else.

This recipe is directly from the Kraft website (is that legal? I hope so). I changed it just a little. I used the deluxe mac & cheese (with the squeezy cheese) instead of the regular. Partly because all of our regular mac & cheese are cartoon characters and just didn't seem dinner-like. The mac & cheese was the 2% variety. I also didn't put the cheese and sour cream on at the end and I left out the kidney beans because I didn't have any. My kids liked it a lot-even my picky one. And it is incredibly easy to make.

Chuckwagon Chili Mac

1 pkg. (7-1/4 oz.) KRAFT Macaroni & Cheese Dinner
1 lb. extra lean ground beef
1 Tbsp. chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 can (14-1/2 oz.) stewed tomatoes, undrained
1 can (16 oz.) kidney beans, drained
1/3 cup BREAKSTONE'S Reduced Fat or KNUDSEN Light Sour Cream
1/3 cup KRAFT 2% Milk Reduced Fat Sharp Cheddar Cheese

PREPARE Dinner as directed on package, using Light Preparation directions.
MEANWHILE, brown meat with chili powder and cumin in large nonstick skillet on medium heat. tomatoes with their liquid and the beans; simmer 3 min., stirring occasionally.
STIR in prepared dinner; cook 3 to 5 min. or until heated through, stirring occasionally. Top with sour cream and cheese.

The next one is a low fat bread pudding. I think you're supposed to eat sauce or something over bread pudding but this one doesn't include any sauce. I have so much bread in my freezer because no one seems to want to eat the ends (bread machine bread). I had to do something with them so I found this online and changed it a bit. It didn't use up much of my bread stash but it was good.

Low Fat Bread Pudding

4 cups bread cubes (I probably used more. I filled up my 2 qt round casserole somewhat level with large (1" or so) cubes, not pressed down).
1.5 cups applesauce
2 eggs or use 1/2 cup egg beaters
2 cups 1% milk (I didn't have 1% so I used half skim and half 2%. That averages to 1%)
1/3 cup sugar (it could have used more sugar, in my opinion)
1 tsp vanilla
1 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp grated nutmeg (I buy whole ones from penzeys and grate only the amt I need)

Heat oven to 350°. Mix bread cubes with applesauce. Put in greased casserole dish. In a bowl, mix remaining ingredients with a whisk. Pour over bread cubes. Let sit 10 minutes. Bake at 350° for 40-50 minutes. If you don't want the top crispy you can put foil on it and then take it off the last 10-15 min. It still stuck to the dish so next time I might line it with foil first.

more ribbon-ack!

I was looking for something today and found 26 more rolls and 4 more loose lengths of ribbon. I hope I don't find anymore or I won't be able to fit it all in the basket!

On another note I have been cleaning out my craft room and hopefully can get some pictures taken soon. I still need to paint my desks (stamping and sewing) but that might take a while. I have decided that I have to make at least 2 cards from every new set I've bought this year so far so I'll be busy with that. I'm also going to go through my older sets and get rid of a lot of them. I have a hard time parting with older sets but they have to go!

Stampin Up demos got to see the new demo magazine today. There are going to be some amazing things in the new catalog! Some sneak peeks are...(don't read further if you don't want to know)...




scalloped punches
other new punches
chipboard clipboards
paper flowers (in a kit)
and of course, new ribbon (which I am NOT buying! I'm NOT!!)
and more!!

Ribbon storage

I've been working on a top secret project, so that's why I haven't been doing much else. I'll post about that eventually but not for a while. I did almost finish one curtain top so I'll post that when it's done. The last couple of days I've been working on getting all of my ribbon stored in one place. Before, I had it stored in no less than 4 different places. I didn't even remember all the ribbon I had because I couldn't look at all of it at once. I tried several different methods but none worked. Either it didn't all fit, or it wasn't practical (aka easy to get at). I saw this idea on the 2peas message board so I thought I'd give it a try. ALL of my ribbon (except for my doodlebug ric rac and all of the pieces of ribbon shorter than 15" or so) is on these cards. The cards are made from foam core board and the ribbon is wrapped around and then pinned to the card. I bought a pack of 300 pins to do this project and it wasn't enough. I have too much ribbon. My only beef with this method is that my ribbon might get more creases in it due to being around the foam core. If that happens I can use my chi (straight iron) to smooth it or if it's sensitive to heat I can use a warm-ish iron or my little mini iron (that I had to have but never even use). Here's a pic of it. I sorted it all according to the rainbow with the brown/black/gray/metallic/white/cream in the back along with the multicolor stuff. I put it in a cute basket I bought at Alco.

So...anyone have any ideas for using up lots of ribbon?

New blog to share

Since I have nothing else to share I'll share this site I found. I have been working on my stuff, but only sporadically. We had a pretty busy week. We did go shopping yesterday which was nice-the kids all behaved pretty well, considering. We went to find dance shoes for Sammy. We didn't find any-the store didn't have the right color ballet shoes and they didn't have the right size tap shoes. Suprisingly Sammy didn't cry-she was really looking forward to getting those shoes. Maybe it was because she got a brand new Arielle swimsuit from the disney store, complete with matching towel. She's been wearing that suit since we got home yesterday and no, we don't have a pool set up. She has barely even been outside. She just simply loves the suit. I also got a new swivel sweeper, which works great.

Anyway I wanted to share this blog. I found it a long time ago through an email or something, and downloaded one of the free patterns. I never really explored it much and never went back to it until tonight, when I was looking for the address for someone else. After looking through the tutorials and a few of the posts I bookmarked it. The lady who owns this blog designs fabric for Free Spirit Fabrics. She has some really cute pincushion patterns in the current issue of Quilts and More that I'm going to try to make. Here is the site: Heather Bailey Designs. Once I'm allowed to buy fabric again, I think I'm going to get some of her Fresh Cut line.

Trip to the zoo

We went to the zoo today-in the past year or so, they've been renovating their waters building (which housed all the watery animals like fish, penguins, etc) and renamed it the Oceans. Today they were having a special preview for zoo members only so we went. We figured it would be a lot more crowded when it was open to the public. They really did improve it as well as adding some neat stuff. They have these cute (??) little hammerhead sharks. I'm not sure if they're babies or just small but they were probably no more than 2 feet long. More like 18 inches. Plus they have a petting pool with dogfish sharks. They added jellyfish, plus some touchable creatures like urchins and starfish (and snails, hermit crabs...that might have been all). They kept some of the old stuff but put it in better tanks. They added a bunch of eels-they had one and now they have too many to count. They're ugly (no pics-I took some but didn't post them). They made the floor between the penguin enclosures clear so that you can see the penguins swimming from one side to the other. Here are some pictures. If you can't tell, my favorite part of the zoo is the marine part and when it wasn't open (when they were renovating) I didn't even want to go to the zoo. I do have some pictures of land dwelling animals too.

Camera info: Most of the Oceans pictures were taken with my 50mm F1.8 lens with an ISO of 1600 and aperture of 1.8. I thought they came out pretty nice for such a high ISO and short focus depth. The first picture (the hammerhead) was taken with my 28-105 and flash. That was before I switched lenses. The outdoor pics were taken with my 28-105 lens on ISO 200 on the TV setting at 1/200 second. I used Auto White Balance for all of them. I always forget to change that for the different conditions so I find that leaving it on Auto works best for me.

This is a picture of the hammerhead sharks. There were a lot of them in the tank and the swam pretty quickly so I was lucky to get a decent shot.


This one is a pretty pink anemone. They are so neat to watch.


This is a jellyfish. According to my kids, they have no brain (the jellyfish, that is).


This is a starfish that they were letting kids touch (gently). That is Jake's hand touching it. They also touched a sea urchin but I didn't get a picture of that.


This is the dogfish shark-one of the ones the kids were able to pet. It took a while to get them to come close enough, and it was really crowded. I didn't get any pictures of the kids actually petting one because I had to be watching so that I could yell "here it comes-pet it!". Notice how big the eye is. They looked like human eyes.


This is a baby giraffe that was born about a month ago. It was hard to get a picture of it because it stayed over by that fence. I think they just recently put the mom and baby in with the bigger giraffes and it was probably wanting back into the nice little safe pen. You can sort of see the size of the baby by looking at the part of the mom giraffe in the corner of the picture. At least I think that was the mom-it was staying with the baby the entire time.


This is a meerkat. They look like big rodents so we (Steve and I-the kids don't know this) call them meer-rats.


There was another amazing thing about this trip to the zoo. Jake didn't have a meltdown. It was so amazing that I wasn't quite sure if someone had swapped my kid. And we didn't even go into the gift shop which makes it doubly amazing. Jenny did look mad all the way home, so I have a feeling that was all about not going into the gift shop (which she was warned about before we went).

doing absolutely nothing...

...in the crafts department. I'm working on my curtains, but there's really nothing to show or report. Only that I'm bored to death with them. I wonder if the assembly line method is really a good idea. I seem to get really bored sewing the same seam dozens of times and pressing the same shape pieces over and over. I'm pluggin' away at them though, because this summer I really need to have some curtains up in my craft room.

Even though I'm doing nothing, I did buy some stamps. Yes, even though I do nothing, I still buy. I bought some of the clear doodlebug stamps at my friend's webstore, A Walk Down Memory Lane. I ordered them on the 21st and they arrived today, the 23rd (yes I know it's actually the 24th-it's late). That is probably the fastest service ever (and I'm pretty sure it's not just because we're friends). Anyway I recommend checking out her store-she has a ton of neat new stuff. She also sells the Bind-it-All that I posted about before.

Even though I'm not making any craft stuff, I'm still cooking just about every day. So here is my easy peasy spaghetti recipe, which is what we had tonight:

Easy Spaghetti (yes, I realize a jar is easier. But this is better °Ü°)

note: all herbs/spices are dried. If you use fresh, I think it's 3 times the amount. I don't use fresh-I'm not that good of a cook.

1 lb ground beef
1 onion, chopped
1/2 tsp rosemary
2 tsp oregano
1 tsp thyme
2 tsp basil
2 tsp parsley
1/2 tsp garlic powder (I reconstitute it with water before adding it to the sauce. If you want, use real garlic.)
1/2 to 1 tsp salt
1 tbs sugar
2 cans (I think 14 oz or so) diced tomatoes
1 can (same size) tomato sauce
1 small can tomato paste (those really skinny cans)
3 bay leaves

Brown beef w/ onion. Drain well. Add everything else except the bay leaves. Stir well. Add bay leaves and stir gently. If you break a bay leaf, it might be a pain to find all the pieces, so I add them last and stir gently. I haven't broken any yet so I can't say for sure if it's a pain. But it's a pain just to find the whole ones so I'm assuming it's a bigger pain to find pieces of them. Anyway, once it's all combined, bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat to a simmer. Let it simmer until the noodles are done cooking. I cover it because otherwise, it pops little spots of sauce all over the place.

Serve the sauce over spaghetti noodles. We use Hodgson Mills whole wheat spaghetti. I love whole wheat pasta-it's yummy. If you want to, sprinkle on some parmesan cheese. We just started using the Kraft kind that you grate yourself. It's in a neat grater type container. I think it's probably not as good as the real parmesan cheese in the blocks but we haven't found one locally that is considered safe for Jenny's nut allergies (who would think parmesan cheese could have nut traces in it. Anyway that's what the companies have told me-that we should avoid it).