Cute girl hairstyles!

My sister told me about this website  that she uses a lot to come up with cute hairstyles for her daugther.  i thought those who were at the Super Saturday and were interested in the hair class might be interested in this.  I am probably talking to myself since nobody gets on the site anymore.

Fabric choices for Super Saturday

Here are the fabric choices for the aprons, trivits, hot pads and towels.

Here is a reminder of how the aprons look.

Spelling city

I found a neat website that helps your kids with your spelling and vocab word lists. You can enter their words and they can play games, take practice tests etc. throughout the week to help them learn their words.  Spellingcity.com

Interesting article

I thought this article was interesting. You can read it here.  

Reminder!

Don't forget Bountiful Baskets! 8 pm!

My Attempts At A Menu...

Let's see how well we do... Some repeats of super easies on the nights I have class and Dave is making dinner. I don't know if you can even read this!

Menu

Alrighty! I've soooo got to be better at making menus. It's not hard, really. I don't know why I struggle with it. Hopefully with the kids back in school I can make it happen.

Here's what I've come up with for the upcoming week. I'm trying hard to use what we have and shop sparingly.

Sunday- Pot roast, carrots, mashed potatoes, homemade rolls
Monday- Pork chops, spaghetti squash, rolls (hopefully there are some left!)
Tuesday- Taco salad
Wednesday- Kabobs, rice
Thursday- Teriyaki chicken and rice
Friday- Pizza, salad, breadstix
Saturday- Hot dogs

Nothing too exciting, but I have almost everything on hand. It already feels good to have a plan!

So whatcha fixin?

For anyone interested there is a lady that is bringing apples, pears and peaches down from Washington state on Monday here is the stats if you want to get in on it:::

Call Christy Roberts 884-0658 or email christyroberts88@yahoo.com
or acjj@qwest.net BEFORE Saturday (TOMORROW) afternoon and let her know you want any of the following:

Apples 20 lb case for $15 (gala, Golden Supreme, Jonothan)
Pears 20 lb for $17 not sure of variety
Peaches 20 lb for $17 (john henry variety)

Cherry/Apple fresh squeezed juice $5.50 a gallon -- $3.50 a half gallon
Apple juice $3.50 half gallon
Dried sweetened pie cherries 7 oz $3.50 -- 5 lbs $35.00

Sounds like you will just pay at pick up call Christy for further info :)

Pressure cooker

So I am embarressed to say that I had never used a pressure cooker in my whole adult life until yesterday!  My mom bought me one a few years ago and I did not even open the box until yesterday.  My mom used one a lot while I was growing up, but I had it in my mind that you used it only for canning and cooking beans etc. and it seemed like it was too complicated to use, but I ran across this article  and after reading it I realized that I never really understood the true function of a pressure cooker.  I decided to finally pull mine out of storage and literally blow the dust off the top of the still sealed box.  I looked up pressure cooker recipes online and found that there were tons of things you can make with a pressure cooker.  I finally decided on a simple recipe for pot roast.  I pulled a pot roast out of my deep freezer around noon and let it thaw out.  by the time I decided to start cooking it around 5:00 pm  It was still a little frozen so I was unsure if it would work out, but within 1 hour I had a fully cooked super tender pot roast :-) I was in shock!  It was tender like it had been in a crock pot all day, but in a fraction of the time!  I've decided that my pressure cooker is my new best friend in the kitchen!  Here is another good website to get recipes and info on how to use a pressure cooker

Michelle

Mother Earth news

Valerie,
I thought you might interested in this article on the Mother Earth News website.  It  reminded me of  the challenge that you are doing.
Michelle

Bountiful Baskets!

FRIENDLY REMINDER TO ORDER YOUR BOUNTIFUL BASKET RIGHT NOW!

Sneak peek at one of our Super Saturday crafts

Check out the cute bow/flower holder I made today that we will be making on Super Saturday as one of the crafts :-)  I am pretty pleased at how it turned out!
Valerie, I hope it is ok that I am giving people a pre-peek :-)

Eggs!

So I now have 4 chickens laying eggs now!  My Road Island reds started laying the last couple of days so now I am getting the pretty brown eggs too :-) If I still had a question in my mind that I might be turning a little bit crazy by having my own laying hens it was pushed out with this recent egg recall that is in the news.
We had eggs and toast this morning and it was comforting to know that our eggs are safe and that they came from happy chickens that have a enough space to move and graze around and that they are not being pumped up full of hormones and antibiotics.
Another crazy idea I have been thinking of lately is edible landscaping.  Shauna Colvin (my hero) got me started on this idea and I have been reading up on it and there are people out there who utilize their whole yard by mixing edible plants with decorative plants in the front and back.  Like that grass strip that everyone has in front  of their houses that usually has grass that has no purpose and so water is wasted keeping it green.  You can instead plant an edible ground cover like strawberries or put in small fruit bushes like currant bushes etc.  I am thinking about making some small changes in that direction next spring.

HellOo! (Oooh! Oooh! Oooh!)

Hi-Ho, Hi-Ho! We sent them off to school!

And so???

How DID your MORNING go???

Don'tcha just LOVE trying to figure out the new norm?

Which way is up? Anyhow???

What's your "TOMORROW I'll know to do __________ differently" story???
What are your best "Things went well today because I remembered to __________" hints???

And last but not least, did you remember to purchase Bon-Bons so you could sit around on the couch eating them with your naked-toes up on the coffee table once those kiddos were gone?

Menu Planning Spreadsheet!

This morning I found a LOVELY jewel of a download that I just had to share! It's a monthly menu-planner spreadsheet with a page for shopping lists etc.! You can find it HERE by scrolling down to the rectangle toward the bottom- it's the last one but the others are good, too!

I'm a little sad that none of you took on my CHALLENGE. (Boo-hooo!!!!)

Oh well! I'm off for my final shopping trip to last me a MONTH! I'm excited to save time AND money! And I LOVE a challenge!

CHALLENGE- (pay attention, there's PRIZES!)

Okay- so I'm challenging you ALL to go to my BLOG and sign up for my challenge! THERE'S PRIZES! (You know you want to!)

Bountiful Baskets!

Just a reminder- Bountiful Basket orders open up at 8 pm tonight for Saturday pick-up in Grantsville at 7 am.

Dinner Rolls & Yummy Pull-Aparts!

Much apologies for not posting this sooner! These are SOOO yummy and SOOO easy!

Shauna Colvin’s Dinner Rolls

2 cups scalded milk (or better yet, 1 cup evaporated milk and 1 cup hottest tap water!)

¾ cup warm water

1 cube margarine, melted

***(you want the temperature of all the above liquids to be 90°-100° or about baby bottle temperature. So if you scald the milk or overheat the margarine, use cold water instead of warm water etc.)***

2 large eggs

½ cup sugar

2 tsp. salt

4 cups flour

2 Tbs. yeast

Add the ingredients in the order listed above, whisking in the eggs and adding the yeast on TOP of the flour (to shield it from the salt). Add 3-4 more cups flour, a ½ cup at a time until the dough cleans the sides and bottom of the bowl. Knead for 7 minutes. Turn out onto lightly floured surface. Squeeze off balls of dough about 2 ¼ inches in diameter. Place about ½ inch apart on a greased baking sheet. Preheat oven to 400°. Cover dough with warm wet towel and let rise about 20 minutes or until double. Bake 15-18 minutes or until golden brown. Brush with butter and cover with a towel until serving. Here's a little video to show you how Shauna shaped the dough balls!

Shauna’s Sticky Pull-Apart Ring

Make Shauna’s dinner roll dough above. Preheat oven to 400°. Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray. Place a ring of 2 ¼ inch balls of dough in the Bundt pan (usually there is a wider section every inch or so). Next place a second ring of dough balls in between each ball from the original ring. Sprinkle ½ of a small package of cook and serve butterscotch pudding mix evenly over the dough. Melt ¾ cube of margarine in the microwave. Mix ½ cup light brown sugar in with margarine. Pour the mixture over the roll dough. Cover with a warm damp towel and let rise about 15 minutes or until double. Bake about 20 minutes in 400° oven. Dump out immediately onto a serving plate and serve!

Shauna’s Italian Pull-Apart Ring

1 cube butter

1/8 tsp. dried minced garlic OR one clove fresh garlic

Make Shauna’s dinner roll dough above. Preheat oven to 400°. Spray a Bundt pan with cooking spray. Sprinkle pan with parmesan cheese. Dip 2 ¼ inch balls of dough in melted garlic butter and place in a ring around the bottom of the Bundt pan (usually there is a wider section every inch or so). Next place a second ring of buttered dough balls in between each ball from the original ring. Sprinkle more parmesan cheese evenly over top of dough balls. Pour remaining garlic butter evenly over top. Cover with a warm damp towel and let rise about 15 minutes or until double. Bake about 20 minutes in 400° oven. Dump out immediately onto a serving plate and serve!

Eggs finally!

I had checked the Chickens laying box a few days ago a little hopful that there would be eggs in there, but   the box was empty so I figured it would not be until the end of August before the chickens would start laying eggs.  Then yesterday my nephew Logan discovered  3 white eggs in the laying box!     This morning after hearing a bunch of load cackling  we checked the box again and there was another one in there :-)  I know it is my white chicken doing it because the red ones are supposed to lay brown eggs.  They are supposed to lay about one egg a day so I figure she has been laying for 4 days now. Yay! I am so excited!  The kids and I wanted to try them out so we had yummy fried eggs and toast this morning and they were sure good!
 I was thinking I have 7 chickens and once they all start laying eggs if they lay one egg a day that will be a lot of eggs!  I might be selling fresh eggs soon if it gets out of control :-)

Garden Recipes

All the gardens look beautiful - and delicious! Since we moved in early summer, I wasn't able to do a garden this year (we do have a random stalk of corn growing), but one of the Orem Bountiful Baskets stops is five blocks from my house so I get an order every week. I am always looking for good summer recipes. I thought maybe we could post some of our favorite recipes for things out of our gardens/farmer's market/Bountiful Baskets, etc. Mine is zucchini fritters. What is yours?

Garden pics!

I finally am getting around to taking some pics of my kiddie pool gardens!  I had peas and carrots that have already been grown and eaten.  I have dwarf romaine lettuce that has done beautifully and I have enjoyed that starting in June( besides the times my chickens got to it before I did).  Lucily it grows back over and over.  My Zucchini plants, tomatoes and peppers grew into big bushy plants a while ago, but have only just started producing the last 2 weeks.  It has been a strange year for gardening!  I am used to eating and enjoying my veggies before August.  Hopfully we will have a longer summer to off set the longer winter we had. Oh by the way all my cucumbers died.  That is two years in a row that has happened!

So as I was taking pictures of my garden Dani said "Mommy"  and I looked up and there she was holding our chicken "Daisy"! I don't know how she was able to pick her up because those chickens are fast and don't usually like to be picked up! And the other strange thing was I did not hear any noise to indicate that the chicken had been picked up.  Usually they will complain a little bit when you first pick them up.   As you can tell from the pic Danielle was very proud of herself and I think the chicken does not quite know what to think  LOL!   I was glad I had my camera in hand to capture the moment :-)

Bountiful Baskets!

Don't forget to order your Bountiful Basket! I just placed my order and there are 49 shares still available!
V

Finally Taking My Own Photo Challenge!

I'm finally posting pics of my garden... I know- it's about time! Let me tell you a few interesting things about my garden!

• Paxton dumped a pack of seeds, I think, on the corner there closest to the camera in the first picture. Pretty sure I didn't plant cantaloupe there! But luckily for the seeds, the connection rounding that corner leaks a little!
• I have some underground friends that like to eat tomato plants. They're probably eating my potatoes as well!
  
• I planted BUSH beans along the fence, not knowing for sure whether bush beans would climb or not. Apparently there was ONE pole bean in that seed packet, because I have one bean plant that has climbed to the TOP of my fence!
• Our family celebrates Zucchini Day OFTEN. In other words, don't forget to lock your car at church!
  

THIS is a picture of WHAT SUMMER tastes like! Fresh Sun-Sugar tomatoes,
fresh from the garden!

Didja see this?

Anybody see this news story?

Backyard chickens, bees cutting edge of growing local food movement

(I think that guy might be growing marijuana, too! Maybe the newzzz story will lead to a bust!)

Breads Class 7-20-2010

Shauna Colvin’s 100% Whole Wheat Muffins

1/2 c. margarine

1/2 c. light brown sugar

1 large egg

Cream above ingredients together like cookie dough.

I c. milk

2 c. whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking soda

¼ tsp. vanilla

Mix again.

Fill muffin tins about ½ full.

Bake at 425° for 12 minutes or until lightly brown. Dump out to cool.

Shauna Colvin’s Beehive Biscuits

2 c. flour

4 tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. cream of tarter

½ tsp. salt

2 Tbsp. sugar

Blend together with fork. Then, using a pastry blender, cut in:

½ c. shortening

Make a well. Add the following to the well:

2/3 c. milk

1 large egg

Mix the liquids together in the well first, then mix into the dry ingredients just until moist. DON’T OVERMIX! Dump out onto lightly floured surface and knead lightly (basically coating with flour) SEVEN times. Roll out about ½ inch thick. Cut into circles. Place on cookie sheet with circles just barely touching each other and just barely touching sides of pan. Carefully put extra pieces back together to re-cut without overworking. Bake at 450° for 10-15 minutes, or until lightly brown.

Freezer Idea

I saw this idea in a Parent's magazine. I have used it and love it. I thought I would share.

You can do it with anything(soup, chicken, shredded cheese, onions) but I mostly do it with ground beef.

When you buy in bulk and store in freezer bags...

Here is the idea...smash the bags flat so they stack in the freezer.  

You can also get a basket and store all sorts of things like a filing cabinet.

Well, I thought this idea was brilliant and have been using it. It helps so things don't fall out every time I open the freezer. :)

Thred up!

In this economy this is a cool idea on how to swap clothes. Check it out at Thred up.

Bread Class- FABULOUS!

Shauna Colvin’s Fabulous 50/50 Bread Recipe

(With science notes added along the way!)

2/3 c. oil (Shauna prefers canola oil. Vegetable oil is okay. DON’T use olive oil as it has a different flavor that many might not like.)

2/3 c. honey OR light brown sugar. (If you use the same cup to measure the honey as you did for the oil, it will be easier to pour out!)

2 TBS. salt (be sure to add flour BEFORE adding yeast so the flour can shield the yeast from the salt!)

5 ½ c. warm water (90°-100° is OPTIMAL for yeast growth. Yeast begins to die at 104°) Shauna doesn’t use a thermometer, she recommends just about the temperature you would use for making a baby bottle, maybe a touch hotter.

7 c. whole wheat flour. Mix in well!

2 TBS. instant yeast (Shauna uses Fleishman's or SAF purchased bulk)

Mix well in bread mixer. Can mix by hand, too!

ABOUT 7 c. unbleached white flour, about ½ cup at a time, allowing it to be completely mixed in well between additions. When the dough cleans the sides and bottom of the mixing bowl WELL and the dough FEELS like it is a good consistency (elastic, a little bit sticky still), enough flour has been added. If you don’t have a bread mixer, you will need to mix the 7 cups white flour in by hand, a little at a time because it will be too heavy for a hand mixer.

Knead for 7 minutes. Shauna puts the lid on her BOSCH™ and lets it knead on the 1 setting.

Turn out onto lightly floured surface for shaping. Shauna flours the surface of her hands and the surface of the dough to make it more manageable. She flattens it a little into an oval about 1 foot by 2 feet and 3-4 inches thick. She cuts it using a dough cutter into 5 visually equal portions. To shape the loaves, Shauna puts the smooth side of each portion face down, folds all the edges in a little, then rolls like a 3 inch thick burrito, placing the seam on the bottom and, again like a burrito, tucking the ends underneath. She places them in the loaf pan with the pretty side up. Then she tucks her little loaf babies in all around the edges using her fingers to help remove air bubbles and prevent cracking.

Preheat oven to 350° so it can heat while dough is rising. If using a convection oven (not Shauna’s favorite!) heat to 335° and use a bread setting if you have one.

Cover loaves with warm damp towels and allow to rise until about double, approximately 25 minutes, give or take with temperature of the room.

Bake! About 30 minutes in an electric oven, 35 minutes in gas oven, 25 minutes in convection oven.

COOL! Shauna removes her loaves from the pans and brushes them with butter for a soft crust. She places a dry towel over them while they cool. Make sure the loaves are completely cool before storing.

Store! Shauna uses Western Family™ food and bread bags with twist-ties, even for in the freezer. Freeze bread that isn’t going to be used within 3 or 4 days. Use frozen bread within a month or so.

Notes From 7-13-2010 Breads Class Taught By Shauna Colvin

(Taken by Valerie Anderson. Blame her for the screw-ups!☺!)

Some tips on purchasing, grinding, and storing wheat.

Wheat should be stored in a cool dry place, protected from moisture and bugs. Buckets with tight sealing lids are a good plan. Make sure your wheat is pre-cleaned. Sometimes it is less expensive to purchase wheat that hasn’t been, but it is likely not a very good deal because cleaning can be a lot of trouble. Shauna prefers hard red wheat. Shauna says that Walton Feed is well priced. http://waltonfeed.com/category/38). Others have purchased from Honeyville Grains in SLC (http://www.honeyvillegrain.com/) I phoned Macey’s to get pricing from them- They currently have 5 gallon buckets for $ 17.99 or 50 lb. bags for $17.99. This is a STEAL over what it was a year ago, and might be a lot cheaper than paying freight. I have purchased white wheat at Macey’s and been very happy with cleanliness.

Wheat grinders range in price from about $10 (hand-grinder) on up to $1000 (industrial). Shauna owns a Nutrimill™ and she LOVES it (http://www.pleasanthillgrain.com/index.aspx#Nutrimill).

I (Valerie) own a Wondermill™ (http://www.kitchenkneads.com/index.php?module=store_listings&action=view_listing&listing=14) and I have LOVED it. They both happen to be $240ish right now.

Shauna uses a BOSCH™ mixer, but has owned a K-Tech™ mixer in the past and really liked it as well.

Shauna uses metal bread pans that her mother gave her and LOVES them. If breaking in a new bread pan, Shauna recommends brushing it with shortening and baking it at 350° to season it, much the way you would season a Dutch-oven. Shauna DOES use regular dish soap and water when washing her bread pans.