23 weeks today baby

Its like baby hit a growth spurt or I did during the holidays. Probably a good mix of both. My living room looks like my crafts exploded all over it. It gravitated all the way to the table and table with the lamp on it.

I dream about having a craft room, and a room for the baby. For now, we shall share the space.

finished soup and screen printing

I accomplished 2 goals today finally! I made weird veggie soup and it was pretty good. Evil to clean up though, being cheesy. I hate melted cheese dishes. Oh well, thats price I paid for making a veggie I hate into something I like. So first the screen printing cause its got the majority of the pictures:



That is my finished screen. I wanted to try something really simple to start and these little guys will make great valentines.

inked and ready to be squeegeed!

Ah first print! Not bad for my first one. So now to do cards...


After the clean up...yay redish pink rings around my tub. I really cant wait to try the photo emulsion screen printing as you can use way more detail and its just plain cooler than this way.


And now the soup. I had a baguette with garlic on it and that went really well with my soup. I think it shall be a good evening soup to take to school. In case you are wondering its recipe, I shall post it:

(from Jamie Olivers Food Revolution Book)

Ingredients:

-2 carrots
-2 celery stalks
-2 onions (I only used one cause I hate them)
-2 cloves of garlic
-8 cups cauliflower (I cup up a whole one for this)
-900 ml veggie or chicken stock
-8 oz cheese ( don't know how many cups this is, I used my trusty scale that I measure soap on to get it right, but it took up I think 2 - 3 cups ish).
-salt
-pepper
-1 tsp hot mustard (they call it english mustard...Jamie Oliver lol)
-2 tbsp olive oil

Peel cup up carrots, celery, onions and cauliflower into small pieces.
Peel slice garlic
Put broth in its own sauce pan to boil
Put all chopped veggies and garlic into a bigger pot with 2 tbsp olive oil
Let that cook for 10 min with a lid askew, stir every once and a while
Grate your cheese
Add boiling broth to your veggies and let that simmer for 10 min

Once its done, take the soup off the heat and add the cheese and mustard. I used my immersion blender to make it smooth, but a blender works too. Season with salt and pepper.

If you want to be all fancy, you can cook some back for a topping. I just used garlic bread.

veggie tales

My veggie I've never cooked before:


Well surprise, its not anything too weird, I just never buy it or have cooked it at home.
Its going into a soup cause I don't really like it, but I love cheese, so hopefully it turns into a nice soup that I kinda like. Cheddar cauliflower soup this afternoon!

the bunnies are back

They are blue, I couldn't find my magenta pen and that made me sad. :( Hopefully I can find it to make pink ones for valentines day or pink robot mugs. I think a trip to the craft store is in order though if I don't find it today.


I have to be patient and wait for the paint to dry and then do the other side. Same with the teapot that I am making. The teapot has little blue birds on it. Kelsey has commissioned me to make it for her, but its a surprise so I wont show pictures of it yet.

craft overload!

I've been feeling crafty, so I found a new craft website, its called dudecraft.com
Very awesome site! Masculine crafts galore, but it has such cool sculptural crafts and ideas. Its nice to find something different than the girly crafts that I'm used to.







Tony didn't get the stroller, cause he thought it was supposed to be functional and not art. That's ok though.

operation veggies

I went for Starbucks coffee yesterday with Larissa. I miss that girl! It was so nice to see her again. We are both avid lovers of the food channel and she had the great idea to try cooking a new vegetables. Like ones I've never tried. Not a bad challenge for me, I like being creative.

So that shall be my plan, cooking weird veggies. I wont be doing anything crazy strange, just a couple new ones like Kale, or parsnips or something.

I think my first plan is one of those 2. I really also want to try cooking butternut squash again. I attempted that once, and failed so bad, it sad. That will happen again, and in soup, but not yet.

I think Wednesday shall be my experimental vegetable day. Hopefully I keep this date with my mystery veggie and let you all know how it goes.

If you have any suggestions on cool veggies or recipes to try, let me know.


Evil Veggies for the WIN!

Recipe for the marshmallows

I keep forgetting to do this :P

Ingredients
• 3 packages unflavored gelatin
• 1 cup ice cold water, divided
• 12 ounces granulated sugar, approximately 1 1/2 cups
• 1 cup light corn syrup
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/4 cup confectioners' sugar
• 1/4 cup cornstarch
• Nonstick spray

Directions

Place the gelatin into the bowl of a stand mixer along with 1/2 cup of the water. Have the whisk attachment standing by.

In a small saucepan combine the remaining 1/2 cup water, granulated sugar, corn syrup and salt. Place over medium high heat, cover and allow to cook for 3 to 4 minutes.

Uncover, clip a candy thermometer onto the side of the pan and continue to cook until the mixture reaches 240 degrees F, approximately 7 to 8 minutes. Once the mixture reaches this temperature, immediately remove from the heat.

Turn the mixer on low speed and, while running, slowly pour the sugar syrup down the side of the bowl into the gelatin mixture. Once you have added all of the syrup, increase the speed to high.

Continue to whip until the mixture becomes very thick and is lukewarm, approximately 12 to 15 minutes. Add the vanilla during the last minute of whipping. While the mixture is whipping prepare the pans as follows.

For regular marshmallows:
Combine the confectioners' sugar and cornstarch in a small bowl. Lightly spray a 13 by 9-inch metal baking pan with nonstick cooking spray. Add the sugar and cornstarch mixture and move around to completely coat the bottom and sides of the pan. Return the remaining mixture to the bowl for later use.

When ready, pour the mixture into the prepared pan, using a lightly oiled spatula for spreading evenly into the pan. Dust the top with enough of the remaining sugar and cornstarch mixture to lightly cover. Reserve the rest for later. Allow the marshmallows to sit uncovered for at least 4 hours and up to overnight.

Turn the marshmallows out onto a cutting board and cut into 1-inch squares using a pizza wheel dusted with the confectioners' sugar mixture. Once cut, lightly dust all sides of each marshmallow with the remaining mixture, using additional if necessary. Store in an airtight container for up to 3 weeks.

http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/alton-brown/homemade-marshmallows-recipe/index.html

homemade marshmallows

Every craft blog and food thing I saw this Christmas was touting the ideas of making marshmallows. I even saw them with their own devoted episode on "Good Eats". Awesome show by the way if you want to learn the science behind making food. Alton Brown gets 2 thumbs up.


So I caved today. I didn't have anything really to do, and I was not about to fold the 2 huge loads of clean laundry in my hallway. I despise folding laundry. I think its the folding of small socks and finding exact matches. I never get the socks with their exact matches unless they are patterned or colourful, but white socks with grey soles and white socks with white soles match just fine to me.


I found that all I needed was gelatin and that was super easy to find. Now the recipe said to use a stand up mixer, but all I had was my hand mixer. It will be just fine...


So I boiled some ingredients and got gelatin ready, and then Tony my kitchen assistant, helped mix while I poured sugary stuff into the gelatin.


Things were going great until the stuff got thick. Really thick. Then it started creeping up my beaters. It got so high it almost hit the motor part. It was really puffy, like that marshmallow fluff in a jar. mmmm fluff


Way better than store bought stuff and awesome in our hot chocolates.

tea

I'm trying to be good about not having too much caffeine. One of my weird cravings after finding out I was pregnant was tea. I have oodles of tea here like Darjeeling tea from Arias India trip, British Corrination tea from my momma, Yorkshire tea from England, and so many more. I don't think I drank as much tea in the summer/fall, but once winter hit, it was all I really wanted to drink.

Right now if I could, I would drink 2-3 cups a day. So I save my 1 cup caffeine allotment for one of my special black teas. Right now the "Unbirthday" tea takes precedent. Its my treat for me and Tony from Disneyland. He will usually only drink it if I make it for him. Unbirthday tea has hints of peach and apricot in it and is so smooth. Way better than the decaf orange pekoe tea that I bought.

I had the doll hands on my desk after cleaning up crafting stuff. I feel good about making things only if its clean around me.

feeling creative again

Well kinda creative. I'm more in the mood to start selling on etsy. I've been feeling kinda in a rut so the shop has been empty since I started school. Sad times.

For now there are 4 soaps in there that I've made a while back but never did anything with. Its something different than mugs and dishes.

We shall see what happens. I have one more to list, a yellow one and I might make a white one today.

Disneyland part 4, the last of the pictures that I have

Mik and I hung out for a bit, rode on a rocket ship ride, it was cute. Got to see the california theme park from up high. She looks so cute here.



When we were done our ride, we headed over to this one, the raft ride. Mom, Dad, Aria and Tony did that one. There were people dressed in rain gear. Too bad thats not gonna work. Everyone got really wet, especially their feet.


Mom and I waited for the 4 to do the screaming california roller coaster. Mom was done riding and we were almost ready to head home when Mik saw that the wait time was like nothing! SCORE! So they did her favourite ride.


This is the one I took where I was watching them all do that same ride. They loved it so much. I loved watching this roller coaster take off and hearing the screams.





This is one of the Baby's presents from us. The others still need pictures and are a little big for it, but when it gets bigger it will have them all. :)


We did the Christmas Parade and Pixar Parade as well as the fireworks on our last night. Fireworks were awesome and really blow the symphony of fire out of the water. But they do them every night and there was Christmas music and it was the night before Christmas so it made it better.

We did quick shopping and took advantage of some of the clearance stuff there. I would defiantly do this again, but not pregnant and maybe with a toddler. That was one thing that kept me smiling throughout the trip, seeing all the little girls with the princess dresses on and the boys with cute hats. If I had the money, I would drop it on a princess dress if baby was a girl. Even the Alice in Wonderland dress was awesome, but I preferred the sleeping beauty or belle ones.

It looks like we shall have to plan another drive down in a few years.

Christmas Day we went to Medieval Times. The Medieval dinner theater thing. It was the only show that day and we got there early.

Once you get there you are assigned a coloured crown which is the colour of your knight and seating section. If you get there early, you get better seats. Well, we got there super early and got awesome front row seats for our knight, the blue knight! We had no utensils and got metal plates and cups and things. It was dark, and there was jousting and a princess and an evil knight.

Its a something you have to do if you are in Anaheim. Tony loved it, he said it was like every little boys dream to go. We got to be all rowdy and eat a lot of meat and things. It was a good Christmas thing to do away from home.

And now that I have had my breakfast and my hair is dry, it is time to work out a bit and then get a coffee from somewhere that has peppermint mochas.

Disneyland Part 3

For part of the day, Mom, Aria, Dad and Tony were doing crazy rides that dont allow babies, or scared girls like Mikaela. We got to hang out at the park and take pictures, eat snacks out of the backpack (momma packed granola bars and things) and also ride the tamer rides.


This is the silly on one of the flying rides with me.

I did this ride, it was terrifying! I am not a keen fan of heights and thought it would be my "extreme" ride. The car we were in was tilty and swayed a lot and it was sooo high up. Not cool.


Oh the castle. I loved seeing that all the time. I kinda wished I could be a fairy princess and live in the top tower.


We did a lot of walking all day long. We tried to keep in either one park or the other for half the day cause its pretty far. My poor legs hurt so bad when we got back to the hotel. At the hotel, they had the "Managers Special" from 5:30 tp 7:30 ish they would serve free drinks and pop and snacks. I totally wished I could have had a drink after walking all day. Instead I drank pop. The bartender was very generous with the alcohol and most of the time the mixed drinks Aria and Tony had were crazy strong. Not my thing anways.


My dad on the train. Train saved my legs so that we could travel around the park easier.

I ask them for a picture and to smile and this is what I get. Crazy clenched smiles.

We had to make Tony laugh to get this shot of him. Hes such a cutie.


Haunted house all Christmasy. I rode in that one too. Not bad, but apparently the non Christmas style is better.

Disneyland part 2

The first day at Disneyland, we got into the park and right away headed over to a hat shop to get our free lanyards and test out the hats. Tony really wanted a macho looking hat and this was the best he got. He also snapped the elastic around his face right before this picture. Perhaps this is also why hes looking not too happy.



I like the peter pan look on Aria, but she didnt buy any hats.


Totally should have gotten pink sequins for my hat, but I also didnt buy a hat or ears the first day.

Wizard!

The first part of the park we hit up was a Bugs Life. Its more for the little kids, but had some awesome things to look at and a ride that we could all get in on. I didnt realize that Disney was all into the details, but they so are. These bug lights were just one of those details, same as all the other things going on.


It was a cute ride, I got to sit in a cookie box with Tony and Aria.



This was lunch one day. Its a giant turkey leg. It cost like 8 dollars, but was awesome in the beginning. After a while, it was getting hard to eat all that meat. Tony and I shared cause its just too big. He noticed that it started tasting more like ham after a while. That turned Aria right off. I swear she could have gagged or thrown up if she ate too much of hers.


We saw little kids eating these, their parents buying each small child (of like 6 years old) their own. Waste!

Happy New Year!

things that happened in 2009:

I started painting dishes and things, and sold my creations on etsy and learned how to start an online business (even though I've let it slide).
Made many crafts for the first time and so enjoyed it.
Planted a garden and kept it alive for a long time.
Celebrated 2 years of being married to my wonderful husband.
Started school again and love it.
Created a baby that I've wanted for so long and cant wait to see in the new year!
Got to squeeze in a vacation right before 2010 that is very needed and was tons of fun.

This new year shall be very exciting