avocado and egg salad. simply hard-boiled egg mashed with avocado and a little salt (and a little jane’s krazy mixed-up salt), spread between two slices of bread and maybe some spinach leaves for crunch…
with a side salad of cherry tomatoes and crisp, tiny cucumbers (thank you, farmer’s market hoop house!)
om, nom, nom…
(and if you’d like to compare, here’s last year’s version.)
apparently, i’m not! i feel cute every time i wear it. even with the bizarro sleeves. also, i’m excited about this skirt–i’ve owned it for a long time and it’s gone in and out of seasons of fitting me. when i pulled it out of the closet and tried it on, i realized this was the closest to fitting me “right” i’ve ever been able to wear it. score! (also exciting news: the time change means that this picture was taken after work! in lovely full light! woot!)
sweater:Â sparrow (anthropologie brand)
t-shirt: gap
scarf:Â handmade (misti alpaca yarn)
skirt: united colors of benetton
belt & tights: target
necklace:Â fossil
boots:Â chaps, ralph lauren
i’ve blogged before about making graham crackers. i’m not sure what my obsession about them is, but maybe i’m just fascinated that there are so many recipes for them online? both times i’ve made them before, they were tasty, but always ended up with a more soft-cookie consistency, not so much the crunch of a cracker.
this recipe, by way of amy of angry chicken, promised “snap” and i was intrigued. i cheated on the pantry challenge just a bit to procure some barley flour and then kept putting off making them until one rainy sunday afternoon. it’s a very simple dough to put together and it helps that she compares it to pie dough. one note i will add to her instructions is to make sure that you start kneading it with your hand before you decide to put in all the milk. i kept stirring it with a spatula and ended up adding all the milk because it just wasn’t coming together at all and then, when i finally started kneading it with my hands, it was just a bit more sticky than i would have preferred.
also, her comparisons to pie dough make me wonder what this would taste like as an actual pie crust….
i had a hard time keeping bits of this dough out of my mouth as i was rolling it out. they just kept jumping in! and the taste–full of warm cinnamon, cloves and brown sugar– is heavenly both before and after baking.
i went with a simple square(ish) shape (other than the edges i cut off, which all looked like the scrambled states of america) rather than the complicated cookie cutters i’d used before and i couldn’t be bothered to prick holes in them.
i think the real secret to these is rolling them out as thinly as you can, because they do have snap! it’s such a wet day, that i may try her “put them back in the oven for five minutes” trick for some of the thicker ones, but …. these are my favorite so far. i love the flavor (although mr. happy stuff thinks they taste more like a molasses or ginger cookie. odd, since they have neither molasses (other than what’s in the brown sugar) nor ginger.), the happy little dude inhales them as fast as i do, and i think another batch may be in our not-too-distant future.
cow chicken was recently re-discovered at our house. before this most recent unearthing, cow chicken didn’t have a name or a voice or a personality, but for some reason, when he was found this time, the name “cow chicken” just popped up and he has become a household necessity. when the happy little dude doesn’t want to come to dinner because he’s too busy playing, if cow chicken asks him to come to the table, he will. when he recently slipped and fell down a few of our stairs, he cried for me first, then insisted that he needed to talk to (and re-enact the accident for) cow chicken. i am frequently asked to put cow chicken on so that the happy little dude can talk to him. and so, although it is awkward to film oneself while wearing a puppet, and completely impossible to adjust the focus manually while filming and wearing a puppet (and there’s no way the main characters will stay at the same focal length for the entire run of the movie, so auto focusing is pointless too)…. we’d like to present you with an introduction to cow chicken. our new best puppet friend. and also, flamingo–a relative who showed up a bit later.
(wrap-up. get it? p.s. these are the rolled up train games.)
so…. i didn’t quite make it to 28 posts in february (i wrote 24!), but considering that i had a big presentation and a little boy’s birthday party to plan during that last week, i think i did pretty well. i accomplished the goals i set out to achieve with the challenge and i think i managed not to just filibuster the blog with non-blog-worthy reflections (although a few of those posts would normally have been combined and not posted separately, but whatever).
what about the things i posted about? here’s a few updates:
1. happy little dude’s new dinnerware drawer is a smashing success. we all love that he can help himself to cups of water whenever he wants them and that he can set his own place at the table or get a different fork if he doesn’t like the one he has, etc. i’m also starting to add one or two thrifted ceramic pieces as i find them–inexpensive, imperfect things that i don’t really care if he breaks, but not ugly (because no one wants to eat off ugly plates). i think eating off ceramic feels nicer and it’s good practice for the future.
2. the no-shampoo thing. still going strong. still loving the fact that i can take a shower in less than 5 minutes (at least on “water-only” days, maybe not after 4 straight days of water only or nothing). although with the weather being so cold, i haven’t yet done a 5 minute shower because i tend to just stand under the warm water trying to warm my body up.
3. pantry challenge: um, well, i fell off the wagon for the birthday party (yeah, i’m not going to just serve stuff i dug out of the “i think this is probably still good??” stash for a birthday party*) and i sort of accidentally bought more freeze-dried mangoes when i saw that target now carries them and i also made exceptions for butter, cheddar, canned garlic (i still haven’t replaced my broken garlic press), soy sauce and sesame oil today and i’ll probably make an exception for chili powder the next time i’m at the co-op. there are certain key ingredients that i don’t buy often and for which there are no good substitutes. and i don’t think we can go for a month without cheddar. and the birthday used up all my butter. however, i did create a three-week menu plan today and although i needed to get some milk, eggs & produce, i did manage to 1) fit all my groceries into one bag and 2) plan meals that will use up some of the freezer stash and 3) purchase only groceries from the outside edges of the store (i.e. the refrigerated and fresh sections, not boxes or cans) other than the aforementioned soy and sesame stuff. i resisted buying salsa, chocolate chips, cereal or any convenience foods or snacks. i’m hoping to make homemade tortillas, granola and ricotta (my first time! should i blog it? are you curious?) sometime this week…. *edited to add: i actually composed this post about a week ago and in the meantime, i have made granola, tortillas, ricotta (it works! and it’s delicious! apparently, the secret to liking ricotta is, don’t try to eat it plain, let it melt into something hot and it’s amazing! also, use full-fat dairy products. yeah, it’s probably mostly that last thing.) as well as a batch of homemade graham crackers (a new recipe to me) which i will blog about later this week (sneak peek photo above).
4. jeggings: i did wear them one more time this month (after washing them, which since i’d bought them with original tags still on made me nervous) and while i think they look okaaaayyyy… i really hate having to hitch them up all day (just like badly fitting tights) and if i don’t hitch them up, muffin top happens, so…. hmmm… jury’s still out. it is nice to be able to just slip into boots and not have to worry about shoving a whole bunch of pantleg in the boot and trying to make it look sleek….
5. celebrate the boy: i made the train game for my boy’s birthday party and a pair of pants which i might eventually blog. also, i made this firehose scarf for my nephew’s birthday (he requested a “soft, warm scarf” and also apparently he’s currently into firefighters. hello, obvious design idea!). it’s made from a single sleeve of a cashmere sweater (cut in half lengthwise, then stitched together at the shoulder seam to make a long, single layer with cuffs at both ends) with other shrunken sweater parts pieced together to make the nozzle and the spray of water.
finally, a big thank you to all my readers who commented on my posts. your feedback (whether chatty, complimentary, asking questions or just saying hello) is what keeps me writing and motivates me to tweak my projects just enough to make them blog worthy (and in so doing, create an end-product that i can be really proud of). thank you for giving me that little nudge. even if you didn’t know that’s what you were doing. thank you for reading.
*oh, except for the frozen sugared strawberries my wonderful mr. happy stuff reminded me that we had in the freezer and which went perfectly with the vanilla train cake** and vanilla ice cream. we didn’t mention to the party attendees that the label said they were from 2008.
**i don’t normally purchase novelty cake pans, but when i saw this one at the thrift store, looking brand new, i checked the ratings online and saw lots of positive comments, so i decided to try it out. i haven’t quite perfected the technique yet, but it was fun to make little train-shaped cakes and nice to not have to frost anything!
i thought i had written a review here for pettson’s inventions long ago, but i can’t seem to find it, so i’m fixing that now.
we discovered this game last fall and although i was initially concerned that it looked too challenging for the happy little dude, i figured that for free it was worth trying out. what a great app! although it’s challenging enough to keep me entertained, the premise is fairly simple: use the gadgets and pieces in the sidebar to build a (pre-determined) “invention” that will perform a hilarious animation when it’s all put together (like, “help the old woman wake the old man” becomes creating a simple machine that will roll a ball towards her, make her jump & hit her head on a lever that rings a bell that wakes up the sleeping old man–very rube goldberg-esque). the machines start out simple and get increasingly complex as you progress through the games (completing one unlocks the next one, so you can’t do them out of order the first time). the components of the machine also build upon knowledge that you’ve learned in past puzzles, so in one puzzle you might discover that some odd-shaped thing is actually a water pump and it goes into a wooden barrel (full of water), so the next time you see that same odd-shaped thing, you can immediately check the puzzle for a water barrel.
we started out working on these puzzles together, but after the first dozen or so, he started being able to figure them out (at least mostly) without my help. the illustrations, music and spoken accents are charming. there’s no time limit or scores to stress out about (rare in a game obviously aimed at older players). if you want to make it more challenging, you can choose (in the full version) to add “red herrings” to the sidebar–gadgets that do not belong in the finished invention–to throw you off track. the characters in this app are based on a series of swedish children’s books (and animated films). pettson’s inventions comes in both a lite and full version and there is a sequel (pettson’s inventions 2) that we haven’t even fully explored yet. the full version of the app has 25 mini-puzzles and the lite version is the first seven of those puzzles (a pretty generous freebie, if you ask me). my only wish is that there were some way to build your own inventions with the gadgets (instead of pre-designed ones), but i can’t even imagine how complicated that would be to write that program.
our newest favorite app is called “endless alphabet” by callaway digital arts. players choose a word from the monster’s mouth and the word is pronounced before a crowd of rowdy (but endearingly cute) monsters runs across the screen, scattering the letters (but leaving their shadows). players must then put the letters back in their spots. when you touch a letter to move it, a voiceover says the name of the letter and the letter itself says its sound (i.e. the letter ‘s’ hisses, etc.) until you drop it.
once all the letters are back in place, the word is pronounced again and players are treated to a short animation where the monsters demonstrate the word and then the voiceover gives a simple definition of the word. what i especially love, for my language-sponge of a boy, is that although some of the words are ones he’s heard before (scary, sticky, zipper), there are many “fifty-cent words” (demolish, quarrel, gargantuan, bellow) that, because they are introduced in this same simple manner, easily work their way into his everyday vocabulary. just the other day, we saw a mural on the side of a building that depicted a bunch of flowing hair and he looked at it and said, “tangle.” and then proceeded to define the word, just like they do on the app. swoon! the reason it’s called “endless” is that they are constantly issuing (free) updates with more new words added! i am amazed that this app is free. free! although you can choose to pay 99 cents to get rid of the occasional in-app ads (for other high-quality apps from the same developer, but pop-up ads, nonetheless). i’m actually tempted to pay the 99 cents just to support the development of more games like this one! read another review of this app at horn book.
here’s one especially for grandmas and other #1 fans of my happy little dude. (everyone else can feel free to watch just the first minute or two. you’ll get the idea.) this is a book we found at the library and i’d read it …. maybe a dozen times? …. before he started being able to recite most of these on his own. this isn’t even all of them. this book includes 22 rhymes. the only downside is that i’m not sure he actually knows the original versions of most of these (except “pop goes the weasel” which he discusses in the movie, and, of course, “twinkle, twinkle little star”) and my librarian mind wonders how that will affect his future understanding of other spoofs of these same rhymes. and also wonders how i managed to not introduce him to more traditional nursery rhymes sooner? anyway, i hope some of you enjoy this!
happy little dude’s 3rd birthday was this week. we had a party with three of his friends from daycare today and i created this game as a take-home party favor. it was inspired by the book freight train by donald crews (for the visuals) and by the math-at-play website (for game concept–it’s a combination of the short path game and the number line game. go read those links for an excellent explanation of why this simple game can be so helpful!)
i thought i’d share a little tutorial with you in case anyone would like to make their own version of this game!
although there are infinite variations of ways to make this game (felt! paper! stickers! two layers of fabric and forget the seam binding!), to make the version pictured above, i used a piece of canvas, seam binding, a velcro cable tie (one of my new favorite craft supplies!), one wooden cube, two wooden “gingerbread men,” fabric paint, brushes, scraps of foam sheets, a fine-tip permanent marker and gluestick.
first, cut a piece of canvas (mine was approximately 10′ x 15′) and finish all four sides with bias tape.
second, fold over one of the short edges to create a pocket deep enough to store the gingerbread men and sew along the sides. 
third, fold/roll the game the way you’d like to store it and figure out the best place to add the velcro cable tie. i recommend sewing it so that the soft side of the velcro is facing out when the game is rolled up.
using the #1 method described in this post, i created stamps for these trains (for some, i just used some cubes of sponge dipped directly into the paint). i used rainbow colors, but you could also paint them all the same color to save time, just make sure there are 10 cars total.
then i used paintbrushes to add wheels and to couple the cars together.
then, paint numbers on one set of the train cars.
and add dots (3 sides with one dot, 3 sides with two dots) with a permanent marker on the wooden cube.
each game (once the paint is dry) gets two “gingerbread men” and one die tucked into the pocket, then rolled so that the paint is on the inside.
click the link below to print off a copy of the instructions to tuck into the game (if desired)
this game made a fun birthday party favor (although we only had four little boys here, including the happy little dude. i might balk at making 15 of these…). it would also make good travel entertainment or restaurant distraction because it’s easy to tuck into your purse. i made this game with trains because a certain little someone is obsessed with trains, but you could easily personalize this for whatever kid you’re giving it to.
it’s that time of year again…. one my favorite sewing-blog-fest events of the year… celebrate the boy! i’m hoping to participate, but i’m feeling a bit behind since i haven’t started anything yet and don’t have solid plans in place yet for what i want to make and it started…. today! imagine my delight when i saw my sweet boy’s face in a round-up post on made by rae today! (can you spot him? his face is oddly purple….) his birthday is this week, so maybe i can come up with a good sewn birthday gift?
