Baked French Toast

Today is cold with traces of yesterday’s sleet still on the ground. These will probably be the last cold days of winter here.  It was perfect for trying something that I’ve been wanting to try for a long time:  Baked French Toast.

Our Sunday afternoon was free after our plans were cancelled due to the weather.  We started off with our favorite cinnamon bread recipe but instead of making a loaf, we split it up into 8 equal parts and made mini loaves.  My 13 year old helped with the rolling and preparing of the dough.  These small bits of dough are a lot easier for kids to handle.

We rolled them and put them into the mini loaf tin to rise for 3 hours.

Then last night I baked the bread.  The house smelled great.  After it cooled, I poked each loaf full of holes with a toothpick and put it in an egg and milk mixture (with a little salt and sugar added – just like French Toast).  I flipped it a couple of times and let it soak all night.  *The best way to do it would have been to cut them in half and let them soak (explained below).

When I woke up this morning, the kids were waiting.  They had skipped their normal breakfast and were in the school room working, all wondering when the French Toast would be ready.  The nice thing about these recipes that take a long time is that by the time the food is done, the kids have been waiting, salivating, and waiting some more.  The anticipation makes the experience of eating that much better.

I cut open one loaf and saw that the egg mixture hadn’t penetrated through to the center of the loaf like I hoped.  I cut the loaves in half and let them soak a few more minutes cut side down.  I stuck them back in the oven for 30 minutes and they were done!  The egg mixture around the edge had cooked up nicely as well.  You can see it stuck to the bottom of the piece below.

I had 1 half loaf.  The kids each ate FIVE!  They certainly are growing boys.  So this isn’t a recipe post, but a post to encourage you to try something you haven’t tried before but have wanted to.  There are Baked French Toast recipes out there, but most of them look like bread pudding and I wanted to use my little loaves.  So I did.  And love how they turned out.  Breakfast isn’t a meal that we usually sit around the table to eat, but today we did and it was special.

Fruit Salad Quilt

Even though school has started it still feels very much like summer around here.  We’re still wearing shorts, tank tops, applying sunscreen, and staying inside during 100+ degree temps.  Summers around here mean our fruit basket is always full of nice, ripe nectarines or plums.  Our fridge is stocked with berries and there is usually a melon or papaya on the counter.  Lots of fruit means large bowls of fruit salad at dinner.  I always like a nice sweet melon to be the foundation of my fruit salad, then toss in berries to give it color.  The kids often request banana slices and peaches are a nice touch as well.

I was working on a quilt this summer that reminded me of our fruit salad.  The way I like to build a fruit salad is similar to the way I like to build a quilt.  I like using linen to tie everything together and use prints to give a splash of color.  The linen is my melon and the prints are my berries.  

This quilt turned out a lot larger than I expected, about 4 ft square.  It was intended to be a baby spit-up quilt but I’m sure can be used as a blanket when baby is well into the toddler years.  This quilt design is called “Chimney Sweep”.  This is the second one I’ve made and I’m not tired of it yet.

Admittedly the berries we get in Texas look beautiful, but don’t taste very sweet.  Not like the sweet blueberries we could get when we lived up in Michigan.  For those of you who live in a part of the world where berries grow all summer long – you are blessed!  We get to pick strawberries for about a month before it gets too hot for them to grow.  By the time the trucked-in berries make it to our grocery stores they are pricey and bland.  If you live in an area similar to mine, let me share a little trick with you (learned from my mom) for sweetening up strawberries that need a little help:  sprinkle a little vanilla pudding powder on them after slicing.  It looks nice sprinkled on blueberries too.

Brickheads

How can I call myself crafty and never have made a costume for my kids for trick-or-treatin’?  All these years of watching people do things for their kids and I’ve never had anything to show.  Well all that has changed.  The kids were supposed to have a Lego-themed costume for a trunk-or-treat.  They all had soccer games, with no time to change so these were perfect.  Brickheads!

This experience has taught me that I prefer sewing to spray painting, but the kids loved them.   When I heard some kids say, “Look!  Lego heads!  Cool!”  the little kid in me had to smile.  A nice bonus is that brickheads are easy to spot in a crowd.

And now they look pretty cool up in the toy room.

Cad Bane has been trapped on a planet of giant brick mountains.
But worse, he has lost his hat…

Our First Vacation Without the Kids (as Told Through Emails)

June 29, 2011

Hi Boys!
I hope you had a good day today!  I wanted to show you this picture of an cow elk.  The COW part means that it’s a girl.  I heard this elk before I saw it.  I heard it sneeze a few times.  I was a little afraid that it might be a bear, but as we got closer, I saw it’s feet and told daddy that there was a horse in the woods.  🙂  It turned out to be an elk and she was sneezing and sneezing.  I think she had allergies so I gave her one of my allergy pills.  Just kidding!

Also, even though it gets warm here, there are still parts of the woods that have snow in them.  I’m holding a snowball in the picture.

Love,  Mommy

June 30, 2011

Hi mom do you think I would think that you gave an elk a pill? Elk can bite you know.
Anyway how are you and dad? How can snow be there in the summer? How can you hold snow without gloves?
love, Timo

I like your pictures why aren’t you wearing gloves?
love, Josh

Hi mom why are you not wearing gloves wen you are holding the snow ball?
love, nathan

June 30, 2011

Hi Guys!
So nice to hear from each of you!  The snow was cold, but I only held it for a few seconds.  After daddy took the picture, he was still looking at the camera when I threw the snowball over his head.  He got really scared because he thought it was going to hit his face!  It was funny.
Timo, do you really think elk can bite?  I’ve never actually seen their teeth.  Maybe they just chew with their lips.  Ha ha, I’m so funny.
We went rock climbing yesterday.  Here’s a picture of me on a rock.

Here is also a picture of me hiking in the snow this morning.  Daddy said I would be fine in shorts, but I wasn’t!  It was way too cold for shorts.

We’ll see you soon!
Love,
Mommy

July 1, 2011

Mom,
You are not funny !!!  Besides why trust dad?
You are an adult you can make your own decisions.
This should teach you a lesson, never wear shorts in the in the snow.
love, Timo

why did you trust daddy?!?!?!?!?!
love,  josh

why trust dad? daddy is not smart. ha! ha!
love, nathan

Ahhhh, vacation…

This was the first time Matt and I have taken a trip without the kids.  We went to Colorado, the dog stayed at home with a sitter and the kids went to Grandma and Grandpa’s.  We talked to them on the phone, but what was really special to me was that this is the first time the kids have ever sent me emails.  They were cracking us up.

We did a lot of hiking in these:

and a little bit of rock climbing in these:

Rocky Mountain National Park is beautiful

but I missed the kids and kept thinking how much they’d enjoy hiking with us.  Next time it will be a family trip.

Sweet + Salty = Kettle Corn

I love it when the kettle corn guy is at the local high school craft show.  Even if I don’t buy anything at the show, I’ll bring home some kettle corn for the family.  I’ve tried the microwavable kettle corn but it has a funky taste.  So I’ve been perfecting my non-dairy kettle corn recipe and with my sister visiting last weekend, I finally got the ratio of salt to sugar down.

Kettle Corn The Old Fashioned Way

1 Tbs Olive Oil
2 Tbs Sugar
3/8  tsp salt
1/2 Cup popcorn
Pot with lid

1.  Mix the sugar and salt together and grind with mortar and pestle until fine.  Grinding it up makes a little bit go a long way.  Less sugar = more healthy, right?

2.  Put Olive Oil in a pot with 5 kernels of popcorn and cover with lid.  Heat on medium high until you hear 1 *pop*.

3.  Quickly add Sugar/Salt combo and remaining popcorn and give a couple of good shakes to get everything mixed up well.  Shake the pot front and back over the fire while doing a little dance. Popping will pick up, then it will start to slow.  Remove from fire.

4.  Continue to shake for a few more seconds and enjoy!

Mmmmmmmm!

Notes:

* Burned sugar is bad – very bad.  Do not overcook!
*I use a gas stove.  I imagine that an electric stove could get too hot and burn the sugar – be careful here and experiment to find the right setting on your stove.

Pop! goes the brain.

Ah, vacation – it really is lovely.  This year our family went to visit my sister’s family in Seattle. 

After a couple of days away from the house and the sewing machine, I started to feel my brain relax.

Really.  It actually popped like my ears pop during the plane’s descent – free from the tight wadded up, stressed out ball of neurons it had become.  I slowed down and started looking around.

I was seeing beauty everywhere – especially on the trail we hiked on our last day.

And this beautifully symmetrical weed-looking-celery-looking-leafy thing?  I can’t explain why I like the shape so much, but I do!

I spent the flight home sketching and taking notes on design ideas.  Then, when we came home, I started focusing on  all the things I had to get done, and I could see myself rapidly returning to the stressed out crafter I was before we left.  Not a good feeling.  So today I shipped off pattern orders and spent time throwing stuff out.  That’s the plan for this week – the last week of summer.

Amazingly, Joanna and I didn’t get a chance to sew together.  With 6 young boys between us I don’t know why I thought we could.  Maybe a sew-along is in order.  :o)  Thanks for a great week, Joanna!

Shaving Fuzzies

I have this sweater.  It’s not particularly beautiful, but it’s so cozy and has warm pockets.  It looked great when I bought it, but after the first wear it started to pill up and it only got worse until I was embarrased to be wearing it.  But I still did, ‘cuz it was SO COZY!  I tried everything – a DFuzzIt, a Sweater Stone…they all failed me even after hours of defuzzing or rubbing with the stone.

Did you know that fuzzies are really hard to capture in a picture?   After some brainstorming, I decided what I needed was clippers like what I buzz the boy’s heads with.  And then it hit me – I HAVE clippers that I buzz the boy’s heads with!  I got it out, took off the guard and started buzzing.  And buzzing.  And buzzing.  Carefully.  Can you see the difference? 

It was really fun.  And addicting.  It was WAY  past time to start school when I looked at the clock, but we managed to finish our school for the day anyway.  And now I get to wear my cozy sweater – fuzz-free!

Disclaimer:  This worked really well for me, BUT you have to be careful because although I didn’t tear my sweater, I could see it happening if I were careless.

Post Ventral Hernia Repair Post: a discussion of buttons, gratitude, and clothing size.

I am SO glad to be home! The surgery went as planned. Well, not as I planned. I would have wished that it was somehow painless. But it went as the doctor planned, mostly. She made a last-minute decision to remove skin. Lots of skin. Lots and lots of skin. So much skin that 3 people who were in the OR separately referred to my tummy as “tight”. When the swelling goes down, we’ll see. Right now I have my doubts. And, I no longer have a belly button. Yup. No.  Belly. Button.  Me and Mr. Lunt. (If you can last through the first few seconds of dialogue, you will be kindly rewarded with a few laughs.) So far I haven’t missed it. It was ugly anyway. And now it’s incinerated. Something that has been with me since before I was born…up in smoke.

I am grateful for my MIL who has played tirelessly with the kids. So much so that they admitted that they had so much fun with Grandma they didn’t think about me much. 🙂 I am grateful for the delicious meals that have been provided by our church family. And I am grateful for well-wishes from people I have never met. Thank you for your thoughts and prayers.

For the 3 days I was in the hospital, I must have been called “little” 100 times. Yes, I’m short, but people don’t call me little very often. It took me a while to realize why they were all saying, “You’re so little!” It’s because the hospital I was at only carries one size of gown. And what size would that be??? The largest size possible, of course! Pathetic, isn’t it – that a hospital in this day and age would only carry one gown size? So here I sit wearing my universally-sized binder (yep, it’s also huge), keeping on top of my pain meds and resting up. If all goes well and the tummy does indeed turn out to be “tight”, I think I’ll try making myself a skirt to celebrate.

Belle Bag and Birthday Boy

I used to coach gymnastics.  When the end of the school year came, a few of my kiddos would include me in their end-of-year gift giving and it always meant a lot to me that they would give gifts to their other “teachers” at the end of the year.  After coaching for a while, I was an occupational therapist in the school system, and again, a few of my kiddos would include me on their gift list.  I made a mental note that when I had kids, I would try to remember not just their teacher, but also the other people in their lives that had guided them in some way.  I didn’t know at the time that I would homeschool and therefore I would have to buy myself Christmas and end-of-year gifts – he he.  So when the kids took swimming lessons all summer and had the same 2 teachers, I decided this was my chance to do something nice for them.  It was a great excuse to turn my new Belle fabric into (what else?) a purse!

This is Amy Butler’s smart bag.  The matching grosgrain ribbon across the front, was inspired by this talented bag-maker.

The only other differences from the pattern were in interfacing all fabrics before sewing and making the pockets 2 layers with interfacing.  Included in this gift were cards from the kiddos, a picture of the kids with their teacher, and a gift card to Starbucks.  (Thanks for the Starbucks idea, blogging friends.)  She really seemed to appreciate it, but with all gifts, it’s hard to know.  This purse went to the other teacher who was out sick today.

In addition to being the last day for summer swimming, it was also my second son’s birthday.  He’s four today!  The theme of his gifts was “dress up” and he has been changing between each of his new outfits all day.  Instead of birthday parties, the kids pick any family they want to come and have dinner on their birthday.  Josh picked the biggest family we know.  So with 15 people eating dinner, cake and playing together afterward, it was just like a party.  What fun!

I just have to mention one of my sweetest thoughts about his little guy.  He likes taking showers in Mommy and Daddy’s bathroom and when I go to get him out, the shower always smells so nice – he uses a little bit of every shampoo, conditioner soap, and body wash in sight and comes out smelling so sweet!  I love you big boy!

A Boyish Collage, the Birthday Boy, and his Book

                                  

Inspired by the collage that Beki’s daughter did, I got together some of my boyish fabric (there isn’t much) and the boys and I put this fabric collage together.  Let me first say that 2 1/2 years old is TOOOO young in my book to be working with Mod Podge, but we survived (I, just barely) and now the boys have this piece of art that they want to hang up in their room.  They are so proud of it, and I’d love to see it on their wall just as soon as I can figure out how to hang it – it’s a flat canvas. 

And tomorrow, my oldest is turning 5!!!  Every year we put together a book for him called The Timo Story. (His name is pronounced TEE-moe)  Here are a few pages from the first one I made for him when he was 2.  Sorry about the glossy plastic page covers.

                        

The story goes something like this:

My name is Timo blah blah.  My Daddy’s name is blah blah.  He is 32 years old.  My Mommy’s name is blah blah.  She is blah blah years old.  My brother’s name is blah blah.  He is 1 year old.  I live at blah blah, blah blah, Texas, blah.  My telephone number is blah-blah-blah.  My favorite color is blah, I mean, blue.  These are my hands.  I like my bear.  My favorite animal is a gorilla.  I like going to the park and sliding down the yellow slide.  My favorite machine is a giant excavator.  I like going to the zoo and looking at all the animals.  The end.

This really helped him to learn his address and phone number when he was little.  And his favorite animal changes frequently.  I finally had to say that we couldn’t change his favorite animal anymore until his next Timo story.

I can’t believe you are 5 little boy.  You are a generous, responsible older brother, with a sweet heart.  I still remember how I would stand you on my lap and we would sing together for hours when you couldn’t even sit up yet.  You were an only child then, and boy have things changed!  Now you are busy with your brothers and I am as tired as ever.

Can you tell I’m tired?  My littlest one is well on his way to not napping anymore and Mommy is having a hard time adjusting.