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Seeing Red

April 16, 2012 By

One of the rooms in our new on-base townhouse that definitely needed some spicing up was our kitchen. It is a long galley-style kitchen with a small eat-in area. The cabinets are honey, the floor is grey, and behind the counter, the “backspalsh” is this grey plastic sheeting (which also happens to cover all our bathroom walls-eek). The combination of grey, white, and honey make the room look very “bleh”. I knew I needed to spice it up a bit, so I busted out my red accents–canisters, tea towels, salt and pepper shakers, and brainstormed on what to do with that backsplash area.

At first I thought I would get some decals, but all the ones that I liked were repeating patterns, and it was going to cost me $200+ to cover the whole area. Then I thought back to the Halloween party we host every year. For the party, I used red tempera paint to write in “blood” on the glass of many of our family portraits. It looks great, and washes right off with a little windex on November 1st.

 

Tempera paint dries to a matte finish that holds up pretty well, but then easily washes off, so it was the perfect solution. So I ordered some red tempera paint and an inexpensive wall stencil and I took this:

to this!

 

I love how it turned out! It’s not perfect…ideally you should paint a matte base coat behind the stenciled area first (obviously not an option for me with the glossy plastic sheets). This base coat keeps the paint you stencil on from running. So if you get up close, it’s far from perfect. But overall, I think the effect is great! And I love  it a heck of a lot more than the bleh grey! What do you think?

3 Comments Filed Under: Crafting and Decorating

Just one of those days

April 2, 2012 By

Today was one of those days that just didn’t go quite as planned. I wouldn’t call it a bad day because a lot of good things happened, but there were definitely a few bumps in the road!

Bump 1: Nursing Issues

This may totally be TMI, so if you don’t care to read about my nursing issues, feel free to skip down to Bump 2. Yes, I’m still nursing. I’m very proud that I made it to 1 year! I didn’t even know if I’d be able to nurse the boys at all, so the fact that I’ve nursed them 1 whole year is pretty exciting for me. We’re down to three sessions a day, first thing in the morning, 3:00 or so in the afternoon, and right before bed. I’ve been lamenting the fact that I’m going to start weaning them soon, but Miles has started to wean himself…by biting. Ouch. I’ve done all the things I’ve read to do to counteract this, and he’s still doing it. Subsequently, today, he skipped both his afternoon and evening nursing sessions (my little chunk, Ollie, however, shows no signs of giving up). I know that Miles is still getting plenty of calories, so I’m not worried about him, but I just wasn’t quite ready for him to move on yet! Oh well…the kid is independent, what can I say?

Bump 2: Open Flames

I invited a couple over tonight who just moved to Japan. Because they were to arrive right after the boys went down for the night, I decided to make a chicken with veggies in the crock pot (my go-to company meal these days) and make some bread in my bread machine–then it would all be done right when they arrived. Genius right? Well, I had just started the crock pot  and the bread machine and put some squash on the stove to steam for the boys’ dinner. I went in the living room for just  a second and I thought I smelled something burning. I thought to myself–crock pot? no. bread machine? no. squash? no…I just put it on. But there was DEFINITELY a burning smell, so I went back into the kitchen to investigate. And saw this potholder in flames on the stove! Ack!

When I thought I had turned on the back burner where the pot of squash was, I had accidentally turned on the front burner. Oops. And guess what was sitting on the front burner? Lucking I easily smothered the fire and not even a smoke alarm went off (which now that I think about it kind of concerns me, because there was quite a bit of smoke–maybe I should investigate that tomorrow…).

Bump 3: Nearly Causing My Child to Choke

In the evenings as I sweep up after the boys’ dinner, I let them crawl around the kitchen. Tonight, I noticed Miles was being very quiet–which as you moms know, usually means trouble. I look over and see that he is sitting there sucking on a little candy egg. I keep a dish of  these candy eggs on my side table in the living room, and when I was opening the bag yesterday it spilled…

I thought I had cleaned up all of them, but apparently I hadn’t! And they are the perfect choking hazard size–and are pretty hard. Luckily, he was fine, but by the amount of color already gone from the candy shell, it looked as though it had been in his mouth for 30 seconds or so–made me feel like a stellar mom!

Bump 4: Dinner

Finally the boys were in bed, the couple had arrived, and I was ready to serve dinner. As I said before, I had timed it so that  everything would be done right around 7:0opm, when I had told them to come over. Well, 7:00pm came, and the whole chicken in the crock pot didn’t look quite done. I have made a whole chicken 4 or 5 times since I’ve moved to Japan, but I always get 3 pound chickens…this was a 5 pound chicken and of course I knew it would take longer, but it is taking a LOT longer. I saw is (not *WAS*) because it is 10:20 as I type this and that darn chicken is STILL not done! Seriously… No, the couple is not still here waiting for me to feed them. Luckily, I had made a huge salad with lots of goodies (including some nuts for protein!) and I had that loaf of freshly baked bread, so there was plenty of food to just have salads and bread for dinner and then yummy peanut butter brownies for dessert. I do want the chicken to be done soon though, because I need to go to sleep!

And that, folks, was my day…and why I may be up cooking a whole chicken in the middle of the night!

1 Comment Filed Under: Musings

Happy Birthday Boys!

March 31, 2012 By

I  still can’t believe that as of yesterday, the boys are a year old! Where has the time gone?  On one hand that crazy day seems like just yesterday, but I can’t seem to remember what my life was like before these little monkeys!

One year ago here’s where I was:

 

And the boys were so teeny tiny! Here’s Miles in the NICU (for breathing/eating issues–he was discharged a little over a week later).  Just look at all that hair!

And Ollie. Just feeding issues for him, but he was also in the NICU for a little over a week. It’s hard to believe that my little men who now devour everything put in front of them were hospitalized a year ago because they couldn’t eat!

And here they were yesterday. Aren’t these shirts adorable? They are from Touch of Gray Designs on Etsy. Love them (the boys and the shirts)!

 

The Hubby is off training again, so we just had a few baby friends (and their moms!) over for cupcakes, presents, and some playtime (and skyped the Hubby in). The boys LOVE Baby Einstein’s Old MacDonald video, so I went with that theme. These are just plain cupcakes (Betty Crocker yellow cake super moist from a box–soo yummy!), iced with homemade buttercream frosting (all in white except the piggies which were pink). And decorated with candy.

1. Sheep: mini marshmallows, a dab of pink frosting for the snout, a red hot for the nose, and chocolate chips for the eyes.

2. Cows: Strawberry marshmallows for the snout with daps of melted chocolate, chocolate chip eyes, piped melted chocolate for spots, and Hershey’s drops for the ears.

3. Chicks: Coconut shaken in a bag with yellow food coloring, chocolate chip eyes, 1/4 of an orange starburst for the beak.

4. Piggies: Strawberry marshmallow snout with dabs of melted chocolate, chocolate chip eyes, 1/4 of a strawberry starburst for the ears (These were my favorite!)

The boys each ate a whole cupcake!

What a wonderful year it has been! Happy Birthday to my little men!

3 Comments Filed Under: Babies

Chicken or Egg?

March 28, 2012 By

My friends sometime give me sh** and call me “Martha”. Well, first of all, I don’t think Ms.Stewart would use the word sh** in any of her publications, but secondly I think she can boil an egg. Yes folks, that’s right, I struggle to boil eggs. I love egg salad sandwiches. I love deviled eggs. I love crumble up hard boiled eggs on my salad. But more than once I’ve googled directions, followed them religiously, only to end up with…soft boiled eggs (and I know some people like these, but they just give me the heebie jeebies, plus they would make very goopy deviled eggs).

Now that I have two almost one-year-olds (Ack!) who LOVE scrambled eggs, I decided it was time to introduce them to hard boiled eggs. That’s right. Yesterday afternoon I decided it was time to conquer my fear. I hadn’t tried to make a hard boiled egg in over three years (SERIOUSLY!). And I’ve done many things I’m very proud of in the past three years, so I decided it was time to try again. I googled directions. I followed them religiously and 25 minutes later–8 soft boiled eggs.

So, what did I do? I broke out the leftovers and I made some kick-a** chicken salad from a roast chicken I made on Monday (I doubt Martha wouldn use a** in her recipes either). Seriously folks, this chicken salad is A-MAZ-ING. It’s just chicken, non-fat plain yogurt, a smidge of mayo, grapes, celery, chopped pecans, a dash of salt and a tsp. or so of curry powder. I was going to have half of it for dinner last night and half of it for lunch today. But after I made a few lettuce wraps with the first half, I decided I needed all of it in my belly ASAP. I encourage you to make this now. Especially if you’ve just thrown out a bunch of soft boiled eggs.

After making that amazing chicken salad, I decided it was time to try again. I told myself “I can make soufflés! I can make crepes! I can hold a Thanksgiving dinner! Of course I can boil eggs.”

This time, I broke out my trusty Better Homes and Gardens cookbook and read the “recipe” for hard boiled eggs. They recommended letting the eggs sit in the pot for 3 minutes longer than my google recipe. And it turns out that those 3 minutes are essential to the success of my eggs. Because 28 minutes later–four perfect hard boiled eggs! Woo hoo!

In case you are wondering, this is how you properly make hard boiled eggs.

1. Put eggs in a pot and fill with cold water until the eggs are completely covered.

2. Put pot on stove and turn to bigh until the water boils.

3. Once the water boils, remove the pot from the burner, put on the lid, and let it sit for 15 minutes.

4. Once the 15 minutes are over (and don’t you let anyone tell you it’s 12!) plunge the eggs into ice water until they cool.

5. Peel and enjoy!

2 Comments Filed Under: Kitchen Adventures
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