My thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected by Hurricane Sandy. A lot of people I know and love were affected by this storm.

I have been...absent lately. Not by choice, for sure. I think it's because my kids are finally at the ages where they are doing SO many things, I am running circles (or more appropriately DRIVING circles) to keep up/get them where they need to be. Things were so much simpler when they were young and not into many extracurricular activities.

We didn't do soccer this year (I know, weird, right?) but we are HEAVY into Taekwondo and Basketball. Oh, and Driver's Ed. I am very excited about that. I get to pick up my daughter from school at 6pm every day for two weeks. And then she gets to start DRIVING. Woo hoo. (And yes, in case you are wondering, that's a mild undercurrent of sarcasm you are detecting.)

Where has the time gone? Thing One turned fifteen a few days ago, Thing Three is about to turn 12 in December, and yes, Thing Two is already a teenager. Thing Four is in Kindergarten, and I'm Room Mom, so that's keeping me busy.

We did the "Pumpkin farm" experience today, and Thing Four had fun pulling the little wagon, as we looked for pumpkins to carve tonight. **note to self, pick them up a week earlier, and there will not be just SUPER HUGE and super small  pumpkins left.**

And now we're hunkered inside from the cold, I've got crockpot chili going, a batch of sugar cookies baking, and things are calm. For an hour more, at least!

;-) I love Fall. LOVE it.

It's SO Tempting!!!

I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG. I WILL REFRAIN FROM POSTING MY POLITICAL VIEWS ON THIS BLOG.

I can't even watch the debate tonight. Too nervous. I will just sit in my room and read Twitterfeeds on my iPad. That's good enough for me.

Best. Honey. Wheat. Bread. Ever.

We LOVE us some wheat bread at my house. Hubby and I love to try new wheat bread recipes once in a while. Yesterday, we found the PERFECT Honey Wheat Bread recipe. Am totally stealing it. Here it is. You won't go back:

“Awesomest Honey Wheat Bread Ever”

Ingredients:

1 (25 oz.) package rapid rise yeast 

1 teaspoon white sugar 

½ cup warm water (110 degrees F) 

1 (12 oz.) can evaporated milk 

¼ cup water                        

¼ cup melted shortening

¼ cup honey

2 teaspoons salt  

2 cups Whole Wheat Flour 

3 cups Bread Flour  
1 stick butter, softened

Directions:

1)   Dissolve yeast and sugar in ½ cup warm water in small bowl.

2)   Combine milk, ¼ cup water, shortening, honey, salt, yeast mix and wheat flour in bread mixer with dough hook. Mix until blended and let rest 15 minutes. Add bread flour, and process until dough forms a ball. Knead the dough by processing about 1 ½ minutes in mixer (or knead 10 minutes by hand). Place the dough in a BUTTERED bowl, turn to coat. Spray plastic wrap with PAM and cover the bowl. Let dough rise for 45 minutes, or until almost doubled.

3)   Punch down, and divide dough in half. If there are bubbles, roll dough out, pound out bubbles. If not, form into loaves and place in 2 buttered 9X5 inch bread pans.  Butter the tops of the dough, and cover loosely with plastic wrap that has been sprayed with PAM. Let rise in a warm area until doubled. Second rise should take 40 minutes-ish.

4)   While dough is rising, place a jelly roll pan half full of water on the bottom rack of the oven, and preheat oven to 375° (You will bake the bread with the jelly roll pan on the bottom.)

5)   Bake for 25 to 40 minutes or until tops are dark golden brown. (But not too dark! Gotta watch 'em!)

6)   Empty loaves onto cooling rack, butter tops immediately. Slice bread when cool.

*This recipe makes two loaves, can double easily. Total prep/baking time 2 ½ hours

My Book!!!

Hubby was in Boise this week for the BYU/Boise game, and he went to the local Deseret Bookstore, and look what he found!
My book, face out, thank you very much!

Stacked out on a table, too.

He was so proud, he bought one. Too cute.

I'm all tickled! :-)

Just a Little Bit of Paint...

...can transform things. Every DIYer knows this. I have had this nook in my house that has been bugging me for a year. We call it our "mud room," but really it's just a tiny alcove off the garage door entrance. There's a bench for backpacks and hooks for coats, etc. And it looks TACKY:

The bench was a build-it-yourself from Michaels, TWELVE years ago. The hooks were from Home Depot, and the baskets underneath from Wal-mart. It just looks...off. 
So, I got out my trusty black primer/spray paint, and went to work. I sprayed the bench first.:

The coat hooks were relatively easy. I covered the edges of the hooks with painters tape v-e-r-y carefully, and used Press n Seal (yes, really!) to cover the hooks. I love Press n Seal. You can do a million things with it. And I do.

And when everything was dry...CHECK IT OUT!!!:

New Baskets:

The hooks turned out great:

After all was said and done, the whole re-do was $30 with new baskets and paint. I'm pretty happy with it!

 

Homemade Laundry Detergent??? No Way!!

Well, actually, way.
I took the plunge.  After reading about so many people exclaiming on Pinterest and other places about saving bazillions of dollars with their own homemade laundry detergent, I decided to try it. Hey, I'm all for saving money!

Let me preface this by saying I do laundry for a family of six. I have one girl and THREE boys. Which basically means I do a few loads of laundry every day, or it would be BAD. (Want to know what I mean by "bad?" Look up a picture of Mt. McKinley online, and that would be about right.) And my detergent of choice? Tide. At $17 on average for a bottle, which I buy twice a month, that's $32 a month. $384 spent on laundry soap in a year. Yowza.

Anyway, here is the recipe for homemade laundry detergent, and no, it's not my own, I totally copied it from someone else, who copied it from someone else, and so on, and so on. It is for POWDER. So if you use liquid and have an aversion to POWDER laundry detergent, this isn't for you. I used to have an aversion, but I got over it.

Here are the ingredients you need (I found every single one at the local Super Wal-Mart):

--> 4lb box of Baking Soda (I could only find 2lb boxes so I used two of them)
4lb Box of Borax (You can find this in the laundry aisle)
4lb Box of Super Washing Soda (it was right smack dab next to the Borax)
Oxi Clean Powder (I used the 1.3 lb size. *This is optional*)
3 bars of Fels-naptha soap (I found the this right next to the Borax too, I imagine a lot of people make their own laundry soap so they merchandise them together.)

I would also have on-hand a medical mask and some hand protectors. Or you can tie a scarf around your nose and mouth and wear dishwashing gloves. Because you can breathe in the powder and soap, and get it on your skin, which wouldn't be fabulous.

Once you have all the ingredients, grate the 3 bars of Fels-naptha soap. I used a hand cheese grater, it took about ten minutes. Some people use a food processor, but I am thinking unless you SUPER clean it, your food will taste like soap for a while. YUCK.

Now, take a large contractor-strength black trash bag and line a small garbage can with it. Then dump all the ingredients into it. (I did this outside my garage, I'm sure the neighbors wondered what I was up to, mixing a bunch of household chemicals together, but oh well.)

Then take the bag out of the garbage can, twist it up really good midway and shakeshakeshake that puppy to mix everything together.
Next, snip one corner with scissors and let it funnel into your container of choice. I chose this one (it made so much it actually filled up two of these big containers but I'm only showing one:

And voila! There you have it! Homemade laundry detergent! Now as far as use, I have tried it. I use 1/8 cup of detergent (yes, really that's it!) for my front-load washer, and I've washed in cold and hot and warm, and the clothes are CLEAN. I almost think it's better for HE washers because this detergent is extremely low-sudsing. And my clothes don't smell perfumey or anything like that. They just smell clean. Which I like. Because I love my fabric softener sheets and I'd much rather my clothes smelled like those. ;-)

So, this batch cost me around $20 to make when all was said and done. Since I only use 1/8 cup per use, it lasts forever. Let's say I make it only twice a year. That's $40. Compared to the $384 I normally spend?

SOLD.


 

You Could Hear a Pin Drop...

The house is soooo quiet! Today was the first real day that all my kids were in school (Thing Four had staggered start kindergarten last week so this week is his first normal week). I have to be honest, it feels weird to not have someone around all the time.  Just me and Maggie, my maltipoo puppy. She's a whopping four pounds, now, by the way. I think if she ever got to five it would be a miracle. She's one dainty dog! But that's perfect for our family, because I like small poops. ;-)

ANYWAY, I have so many lists and lists of things I need to do, it's a little overwhelming. Now that my 5-year old is in school and  I don't have to worry as far as what he's getting into/how he could endanger his life in the house, I can immerse myself in projects, writing and home. I have a feeling the days will pass pretty quickly!

I am finally pneumonia free! It CAME BACK last week--apparently the first course of antibiotics didn't kill it, and I started feeling yucky again on Friday. So apparently I am now on the Mother Of All Antibiotics and apparently they are working because I feel SO much better than I have the last ten days!

Well, it's off to the vet and a half dozen other places. I am feeling good. As long as I can stay on top of things, (he he let's see how long that lasts) I won't get overwhelmed.

Just a bit of irony: when I have no time I want to write so badly, and when I DO have the time I am completely blank. How is that fair?

;-)

Pneumonia.

Such an ugly word. And can I just say, an U-G-L-Y sickness to have? Apparently I had "walking pneumonia," and when my body finally couldn't take it any more it said I QUIT THIS and I instantly had a high fever and chills and aches that made me insane. In fact, I spent the better part of three days curled up in bed in a fetal position, wishing the monsters would go away.

I run a household of six. You can imagine how this all went down, with ME being the sick one, for once. Thank heaven school wasn't in yet and I have a 14-year old daughter who can cook and clean. And Hubby came home from work and stayed home and took care of me and the kids. He took them school shopping. He even spent a day taking our teenage daughter school shopping, which was a bit of a debacle but I took her last night after the first day of school so it all worked out in the end.

I am feeling much better--after seeing my chest x-rays on Thursday they wanted to give me a shot to "jump start" things, but I was allergic. So I got probably the dose of antibiotics they usually reserve for elephants and horses, because twenty-four hours later, my fever broke and I was MUCH better. 48-hours later I could breathe easier. Today, I'm glad to have all of it behind me, except for being really weak and tired.

Crazy, huh? I haven't been sick like that, EVER, I think. But no one else got it and the kids all started school yesterday without problems and life is better.

Although, can I just say, the high school here has it wrong? They don't give out school supply lists until the first day of school, and they HAVE to know that every binder and dry-erase marker and pair of notebook dividers has been sold out for a few days! Grrrr. We had to go to three stores, and finally got ONE binder from Target (it was accidentally in the photo album section and had a mark on it but we snatched it up) and got the other stuff at CVS. Yes, CVS.

Thing Four has staggered start Kindergarten so he doesn't start until Thursday. I will be an emotional wreck most of that day. Ugh.

Sorry I don't have anything funny to say, the pneumonia temporarily disabled my sense of humor.

Why I Should Never go to Hobby Lobby.

Love crafting? Love DIY projects? Love to decorate your house? Hobby Lobby has everything you could possibly want. And I mean pretty much everything.

I went there yesterday, just looking for some cute scrapbook paper to make tags. All innocent and everything. What did I come out with? Wall art, a ton of cute fabric (don't worry I don't sew), craft tools, three HUGE books of the most adorable/expensive scrapbook paper ever, and about nine spools of ribbon. Don't ask me how much I spent. Because you'll gasp and shake your head at me.

This is why I must NOT go to Hobby Lobby. A) It's like CRACK for the crafter, and B) All those little things add up and you end up spending about 600% more than you anticipated.

If you are someone with unlimited funds, by all means, live there and knock yourself out. But I certainly will only be going to Hobby Lobby a few times a year. Because my house really doesn't need another knick-knack. I think.

MUST. RESIST.

Is it REALLY Almost Fall???

Dear 2012: CAN YOU JUST SLOW DOWN ALREADY???

Love and Kisses, 

Me

Yep, that's about how I'm feeling lately. August is in two days. AUGUST. Sorry I'm a little caps heavy today, but honestly? We are in AUGUST? This means Back To School. This means the craziness of homework and schedules and soccer and other sports and running from one activity to the next and homework and the headache of buying cool school clothes and expensive calculators and HOMEWORK etc. etc. etc. (And now that I mention it-- is it me, or are calculators getting more pricey the older my kids get? Pretty soon the required calculator will be $500 and possessing artificial Intelligence, I swear.)

ANYWAY, as I was shaking my head at the calendar this morning, I was trying to think of what I've done this year so far, and answering the questions of A) have I met any of my goals? And B) have I done any of the things I wanted/needed to do? The answers: Not Really and Kinda Sorta.

That's what I get for having four kids and having to juggle my time evenly between them. Which is a virtual IMPOSSIBILITY, let me assure you. There's only one of me. Maybe when I'm at Staples in a few weeks buying my super-expensive calculator I can look at the prices of CLONE-ME machines. Because they have those in stock, right? How do women with more kids than me do it all?

;-)

Breathe, Lara. Just breathe.