halloween or harvest?

Some Halloween fun from my new favorite ‘internetainers’…

for more go to http://rhettandlink.com/

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get your kleenex

So my good friend posted this on facebook yesterday and it had me in tears immediately.  I’m sure it was in part due to hormones, however it is a powerful video.  You may have seen it on Oprah but take a few minutes to see how EVERY child is a gift from God…

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cheerio!

If anyone is still out there reading my blog… I’m sorry that I have been away for so long!  Erik and I just returned from a business trip in Ireland but now we are back and getting into our routine so hopefully I will be posting much more. 

Here are a few pics of our weekend in Dublin (before the business portion of the trip in Belfast):

our ‘gansta’ poses (inspired by our super high end headphones)

we saw two different rainbows in Ireland

we visited the Guinness Brewery…

and viewed the Book of Kells…

… and went on a ‘musical pub crawl’

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question entertainment

Some friends of mine recently posted their video review of The Dark Knight on the blog Question Entertainment.  Check it out!

http://questionentertainment.wordpress.com/2008/10/12/the-dark-knight-video-review/ 

Question Entertainment is a great site to get an intellectual review of current media from people who have a Christian worldview and who put a lot of thought into what our children should be watching.

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my weekend…

Our weekend started out with a lady bug infestation (only to find out that they are really Asian Lady Beetles).  They were crawling all over the outside of the front of our house, basking in the afternoon sun and searching for ways to get inside… which they unfortunately did.  Erik discovered the best way for him to capture them is with duct tape… however they are coming in faster than we can keep up with!

Friday night, after attending Uncle Phil’s at church, I went to see Jimmy Fallon at UNH with a friend.  I was impressed… I’ve always enjoyed Jimmy Fallon on SNL but I wasn’t sure what his stand up was like.  I was afraid that it would be like other stand up acts I have seen… crude and vulgar… but it wasn’t at all.  He was creative and interactive with the audience and I really enjoyed it.  He brought out a guitar and and did a lot with music and parodies (including an 80’s medly all to the tune of ‘Can’t Touch This’).  I also learned that he was going to be taking over for Conan on “Late Night” in March when Conan moves to the Tonight Show… apparantly this is old news but I hadn’t heard yet.   

My sister and her family arrived on Friday night for the weekend and Erik and Dave (bil) immediatly set up the new smoker and started to smoke a pork shoulder.  Dave had spent all week preparing his ‘secret rub’ for the meat.  They set their alarms so that they could get up through the night and ‘tend to the meat’.

The smoked pork was to be the reward to the projects on Saturday.  The boys worked on clearing the brush from our wooded area in the back yard all day on Saturday.  Our goal is to have that area cleared to make the yard bigger and to have a sunny space for a garden. 

Sunday was church and down time… Moe’s subs for lunch, and we used the leftover ‘secret rub’ to grill a beer can chicken for dinner.  They guys worked on the cars and did various other projects and the girls watched TV and took naps.  I love naps on Sunday afternoon. *sigh*

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new favorite snack

my new favorite snack:

and

mix and enjoy!

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bread day

Yesterday was a day for bread… I went to the new Panera Bread in Dover for lunch and I made homemade bread last night.

Panera Bread was super crowded but the food was great!  I used to go to the Portsmouth Panera all the time because it is my dad’s favorite place for lunch and we would often meet there.  In fact he has most of his meetings there… we joke about how Panera is his Portsmouth office.  Erik even met my parents at Panera to ask for their blessing to propose (to which my dad responded – do you realize she is really messy?… another story for another day).  Yesterday lunch was good and I even splurged for a cookie.  I also saw my friend from What did she do today? who I haven’t seen in a long time so that was an added bonus.

Panera is also donating their day old item to our church food pantry on Wednesdays and Sundays.  They give us a TON of bread each time that we can’t give it away fast enough before it goes stale and hard as a rock so there is always an extra loaf for me to grab and stick in the freezer.

Last night I felt inspired (don’t ask me why) to make bread in the bread machine.  I think that I might start making our bread this way instead of buying it.  I can make whole wheat bread for about $1 per loaf and it is not loaded with extra junk like the $1 bread in the store is.  Just whole wheat flour, brown sugar, salt, yeast, and water.  Since my bread machine did all the work is was pretty low maintenance and it made my kitchen smell delicious.

Question: Do you think homemade bread (even in a bread machine) is better than buying it from the store?

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applesauce maverick

This weekend I peeled a 1/2 bushel of apples (by hand, no fancy apple peeler gizmo), and one of the things I made with them was applesauce.  I wanted to make a no-sugar applesauce but I couldn’t really find a recipe that would work for me.  I found several recipes but they called for things like “3 pounds of apples”.  This didn’t quite work for me because I had no idea how to figure out how many pounds of apples I was working with at the time.  How was I supposed to do that?  So I just kind of gleaned what I could from recipes that I found and things friends and my mom had told me and I made it up as I went along.  My biggest fear was that I wasn’t quite sure what the water to apple ratio should be when I was cooking them.

This tends to happen to me a lot.  Especially when it comes to cooking and crafting.  I want to make or create something but I don’t always have exactly everything I need so I change the recipe or pattern.  My mom would say it is the ‘artist’ in me but I wonder if it is just the ‘lazy’ in me… or maybe I’m just being a ‘maverick’ when it comes to this stuff.  Is it that I’m rebellious and don’t want to follow the rules?  I usually end up trying to do it my way by substituting items or just making it up as I go along.  I made pesto with almonds instead of pine nuts (creative?), I have attempted endless knitting projects with the wrong needles and never checked my gauge (lazy), and I combined about 5 recipes for butternut squash soup because none of them seemed just right (maverick).

Often this routine works out ok for me… but there are times that it is just a disaster and I renew my commitment to following the rules.  I think that the applesauce turned out ok, it didn’t seem too watery to me and I just ended up tasting it until I liked the spices… and I didn’t have to use any sugar (yay!). 

Here’s my recipe (could it be more vague?):
-a pot full of peeled & cored apple slices
-about a 1/4 pot full of water
-shake in cinnamon, nutmeg, and pumkin pie spice until you like the taste
-bring to a boil for a while and then mush with a potato masher

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what’s been going on…

I know I have been behind in posting… so I’ll see if I can catch up a little today.

Last weekend we had my sister and her family stay with us while she worked her Arbonne magic in NH.  It was a treat and involved lots of family time since we also celebrated my dad’s birthday.  It also involve lots of time with my neice Alexi who is now five months old! (and looks adorable in her new pumpkin hat… I need her mom to take a picture of that)

My sil also stopped by so my other nieces and nephew got to hang with the new baby also… they were just precious!

In other news… the front of our house got torn apart this week.  Unfortunately, I don’t have any pics but the folks at Caledonian Carpentry replaced our front first floor windows (an effort to save on heating this winter) and in the process found that there was a ton of water damage… so we ended up replacing the siding on the first level and a few other things that I don’t exactly understand. Hopefully our house is one step closer to being energy efficient.  We now have a 2-tone house since the new siding is a gray (needs to be painted) and the original on the second level is still pinkish (which needs to be painted also).  I don’t have high hopes for the house being painted before winter since we have some other pressing projects to do before the snow comes including, cutting trees, clearing land, and splitting all that wood… and the weekends are just disappearing away.

We also had our monthly home group potluck this week… with our favorite theme “breakfast for dinner”.  It was amazingly yummy and included pumpkin pancakes, breakfast pizza, smothered homefries, sausage, and Shelley’s famous scrambled eggs.  As you can see the kids loved it.

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labor of love

Yesterday I picked a million apples.  Ok, I only picked 1/2 a bushel of drops and 2 pecks for eating.  I spent the afternoon peeling half of the drops and making an apple pie for my dh.  Apple pie is one of his few desserts of choice (when he is not eating lettuce).  Let me tell you… it is an ordeal!

I planned on making a one crust apple crumb pie but as I was making crust (originally from a tutorial I found at Musings of a Houswife but later found in my Betty Crocker cookbook), I added too much salt because I was looking at the recipe for 2 crusts.  Anyway, I switched to making a traditional 2 crust apple pie.

It took forever!  Peeling all the apples (I used the rest to make applesauce..another story), rolling out the crust, etc.  My kitchen was a disaster when I was done.  But I survived (and did the dishes before Erik got home) and as you can see I think it came out looking ok in the end.  And I think it tasted ok, too.  However, when I had my piece, I wanted ice cream with it but we only had chocolate ice cream… and I learned that chocolate ice cream doesn’t really go all that well with apple pie.  Maybe I’ll pick up some vanilla today and do another taste test.

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