Pizza

Home made pizza is kind of a staple in this house. Making the dough is therapy for me, and I love to experiment with what I have on hand. Our pizza is seldom, "normal" if you will. Pizza and Quiche are the two things I consider my "leftover" dinners. I basically put in them any veggies I have on hand, and whatever sounds good at the time. In the summer we tend to make spinach, zucchini, squash, tomato, and fresh basil type of pizzas, and winter tends to have more meat.  (If you think that's weird, you should have seen the ones I made when I was pregnant with Grace!)

Anyways, since my dough recipe is my favorite it in the whole world I'll go ahead and share it. As with most other recipes it is a guide, it isn't the 10 commandments, you have to just go with it. Water and oil measurements will vary based on the flour you use, and your elevation so a good rule of thumb is to just add it till the dough is sticky and soft, but forms into a dough. Now for the recipe

3 C. Flour

1 TB. Yeast

1 tsp. Salt

3 TB. Parmesan Cheese

2-4 TB. Olive Oil (2 for white crust, 4 for whole wheat)

1 to 2 TB. Sugar

1 1/2 C. REALLY warm water

 (This is a half wheat flour, half white recipe)

Grace wanted a turn at reading the recipe

And I have no explanation for the bottom one except she just decided to kiss the recipe! She REALLY likes helping. Looks like the goof ball will be good at yoga, eh? 

Let it rise in a warm oven, with a wet cloth over it for an hour, or until about doubled, and then punch it down, roll it out and coat it with your garlic butter. I used sauteed garlic, oregano, basil, butter, a pizza blend I have, and a couple more I forget...Sorry! But use what you have on hand! Fresh is awesome, 

But I won't have any of that probably till it gets a little warmer or I buy some indoor plants. (Fyi, basil is SUPER hard to kill in a pot in the window sill, and tastes awesome!)

I decided as per usual to do one with ingredients that appeal to my husband, and one with ingredients that appeal to me. Gracie was going to make her own pizza, but she decided that her dough was best worn as a, "hat momma, hat!" 

So for my pizza I first spread half with pesto. Now fresh is SO the way to go with pesto, but I can never justify paying 14-20 dollars for pine nuts! So Classico is good too. ;) Then I dumped on all the fresh spinach I had in the house, some artichokes and olives, and I should mention for the sauce I made home made alfredo sauce. I didn't use tomato sauce for either pizzas this time.

(seemed to have failed to get a picture with the olives and artichokes)

Next was Craig's pizza, I just put some shredded chicken and BBQ sauce in a bowl, mixed it together and added sliced onion to the top.

Then I put cheese on both of them, and decided to add pepperoni to mine. (I told you, ya just go with the mood. lol)

Now let's talk about the gross yellowness going on here. I just used cheddar cheese on these, with some low end Parmesan on the top. NORMALLY, what you want for the pizza are mozzarella and blue cheese on the BBQ, and Gorgonzola, fresh Parmesan, and mozzarella on the pesto one. However, this was all I had on hand, and when I pictured in my mind going to the store for the good stuff it was accompanied by visions of my dear sweet husband saying, "you randomly went to the store out of the designated budget and spent HOW much on cheese?!" and so I decided to be frugal. (but the other kind is better, just sayin) 

So then I popped them in the oven and....

TADA! These aren't the greatest finished product photos, but the pizza was actually really yummy!

As a side note, for those of you who thought my spinach, artichoke, pesto, Alfredo concoction sounded weird, my carnivorous husband stole all of mine, and then took the leftovers to work the next day. We both liked it better than the BBQ, although that was good too.

And as for Gracie...

She thought making pizza was lots of fun, but she definitely came out of the process less clean...

Enjoy!

 

Food!

Sure love food. Or do I love making it, more? hmmm...not sure, we'll call it a draw. Here are a couple of recipes we have played with recently. We'll start with dessert first and may I add that I am all for healthy food, however the following is rather the opposite of that. It's not horrible, King size your candy bar unhealthy but yea, you'll get the picture. 

Blueberry Lemon Rolls. Just reading the name made my insides happy. I love the sweetness of blueberries, and I LOVE the flavor and tartness of lemons, not to mention they are both beautiful, so putting them together couldn't produce something ugly or gross, could it? I'll post the link to the blog I got them from at the bottom, but basically you just make your favorite sweet roll dough,

and then you create lemon sugar by mixing lemon zest with regular white sugar on a plate, until it's kinda of tacky to the touch. 

 Roll out your dough just like you would for cinnamon rolls, cover it to the edges with melted butter and then lay down all that Lemony sugar goodness, and top with all your amazing blueberries. One trick I learned is that if you coat the blueberries with a couple TBS. of flour, it keeps them from leaking their blueberry goodness all over and making the dough a grey color. Then you roll them up and bake them like normal cinnamon rolls! They're amazing. We put a lemon glaze over the top and Craig was a huge fan. I was a little hmm...perturbed? at him when we made these however. Craig has this, "the more sweet the better" philosophy that I do not share. I like things that are sweet, but not TOO sweet.
 Anyways, I put glaze on the last batch of these and went to get Grace ready for bed, and my stinker husband went behind me and dumped ALL the rest of the glaze on them. Needless I say I went to have one the next morning and it was WAY. TOO. MUCH. Too much of a good thing is so possible. So Mr. Taylor, here is a warning to you, stay out of my kitchen! ;) 

I sent him a “hey, you better watch your back” kind of text before throwing mine away and I got one back that said, “oh no! I’m sorry, how about I make it up to you by bringing home some Ben and Jerry’s tonight?” Wow, he’s good at buttering me up. I happen to know, he doesn't even like Ben and Jerry’s. I declined. I'd had enough sugar for a while, but you just can’t stay mad after an offer like that. ;)

 http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/2012/11/blueberry-lemon-sweet-rolls/

The Ever Present Word, "No!"

I've been studying in a few of my classes about discipline for young children, and one of the most frequent discussions that comes up is concerning the word "no". There are a few experts (usually pretty old school) who feel that a very firm "NO!" is all that should be used when a child is young, and that reasoning is fruitless until they are at least 4 or 5. There are others who feel that saying the word is akin to child abuse and crushes your child's spirit and thus should never be used. I'm an in between person myself, but here is what it comes down to for me personally. I feel like for every time a child is told no, they should be given at least twice as many yes's. Now I don't mean this literally, and I certainly don't go around counting, but I have discovered with Grace that there are SO many times when I tell her no almost automatically, without thinking about whether the answer could have been yes! So I have been doing an experiment for the last week or so and trying to say yes whenever possible.  

      And so far have been extremely thrilled with the results. I've realized that much of the time she just has a huge desire to be a part of everything, (I'm not sure I had any idea before how MUCH she wants to be a part of EVERYTHING) and our days are so much more fulfilling, and have so few meltdowns when I incorporate this principle. Here are a few examples from our life. Grace has been obsessed with the refrigerator and pantry since she could crawl, and I've spent considerable times keeping her out of there.

 

Dinner constantly has this routine of me hurrying as fast as I can to get supplies out of the fridge for dinner, and Grace going as fast as she can to lodge herself in before I can shut the door. If I win, she has a melt down on the floor, if she wins...well then I worry and worry and she shouldn't be in there, right?! Wrong. Grace in the fridge is actually really fun when I take the time to monitor her and show her things. I let her taste a lemon yesterday when she asked to, and let her take down bottles and smell things etc. and soon she learned to hand me things I ask for, and she's learning the names of foods etc. I let her taste a couple things that were spicy and she frantically signed "hot" until I gave her some milk and then she giggled and giggled and wanted more! lol Another example is letting her get into the pantry. She takes down all my cans and containers of baby food and stacks them etc. She also loves to carry onions around the house peeling them, but since there is no carpet upstairs, I let her peel my onions now and after it's peeled and she's tasted it and informed me it's "bleh!" she hands it over and I make dinner. I've even discovered that doing dishes doesn't have to entail me scrubbing as fast as I can while my child clings to my legs whining. she sits on the soapy side with a plastic cup, and I do the dishes on the other side. She does laundry with me, she loves sweeping the floor, and she loves that her job is to check the mail every day after her nap .

 
She sits in her highchair on the high end of the piano while I practice and thinks it's great fun! When I grind wheat for flour I've even let play in the bucket with clean hands and feel the grain, and scoop it with little cups. Basically, I LOVE saying yes to my daughter and I don't feel like it spoils her, I feel like it helps her feel important, it helps her learn and grow and it makes my job as her Mom so much more fulfilling and fun! 

What are some things that you like to say "Yes" about? I would love to hear of some activities you enjoy doing with your kids in day to day life!

The New House

Here is a video of the place we are living in Twin Falls. I had to put it on YouTube to get it to load, but for the friends and family that have requested to know what it looks like I'll leave it up for the next couple days, and then I'm going to delete it just cause it's a little weird to me to have where we are living on YouTube. But for the next couple days enjoy! ;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e6GmARroWVg&feature=youtu.be

My Grownup Baby!

My little one just looks so big lately! she is walking everywhere now, and talking up a storm about everything. She is obsessed with books,(we seriously read them ALL day) and she can repeat most things now. Some of my favorite new phrases are, "uh oh! ou-side, don-tairs, bye bye, mommy, cacker, dink, mmmmmm, Gacie (she repeats when we say her name, and has just realized who the girl in the mirror is), git-it, Daddy, bow, and the biggest shocker was when she dropped her puppy and started climbing off the couch to get him. I said, "Gracie where are you going?!" She replied clear as a bell, "downdar, git-im. ruff ruuf!" (down there to get him. and "ruff ruff" is her sound for dog obviously) Such a word explosion it has been so fun! Here are some random fun pictures of her drinking a juice box (she's gotten 2 of them now as a special treat, and boy are they the favorite thing!). The other pictures are Grace helping me to make my birthday cake which was also a big hit. 

Her First Juice Box

"Wow Mom, this stuff isn't even watered down!"

Helping with the cake

Stirring stirring!

She kept stopping throughout to give her bear some love and kisses

No idea how this last one ended up down here.

Enjoying the Sunshine!

     It got up to a whopping 40 degrees yesterday, and boy were we happy about it! All of the snow finally melted and we were able to see what the garden and yards look like when they aren't blanketed in white.

Craig, being the ever busy, hard working boy that he is, took the opportunity to rake up all of the large seed pods that our front tree deposited on the ground through fall. They have been sticking up through the snow since we got here and it has been a square pebble in that boys shoe almost since day one. "I need to rake up that front yard! All I need is 1 day of no snow and I could get it done in an hour!" He filled our whole recycle bin (there goes my chance to get rid of our boxes this Thursday) AND our neighbors bin (she nicely volunteered it for us) all the way up, and that was after I was used as a human compactor to smash them all down.

Gracie LOVED being outside!!! The grass was soaking wet, and she'd had a bath by the time she was done, but she didn't care she loved it. When I finally had to bring her in she pouted by the front door saying, "side, ou-side" for quite a while. :( Poor baby, I feel your pain! When we woke up this morning it was chilly again and there was a fresh sheet of white on everything again. Oh well, we sure enjoyed it for the day!

Hurray for Sunshine!

Walking outside was a little bit difficult

What is this Mom, can I eat it?

Wondering about every stick, seed, piece of ice or dirt.

Someone make this girl put on some makeup!

Very soggy baby

My hardworking husband

Sure love him!

Gracie's First Time Walking in Shoes(sorry if it's sideways, that's my bad)

BABY MISCHIEF 

So Gracie is officially in her destructive stage. Actually she has been for quite some time but it's peak seems to now go up more every. single. day.

Yesterday Craig was talking on the phone to his Mom and watching Grace while I did some homework in the other room. Well pretty soon I see Grace streak out of the bedroom and crawl into the kitchen with Craig not far behind. Then I hear Craig talking to his Mom on the phone, "Grace is being so funny right now, she's totally hiding from me! Every time I find her, she runs to another spot and hides again. Right now she's under the kitchen table. I'm thinking in my head, surely he knows what that means! Silly me, of course he doesn't know what that means, he is at work from 6:30am - 8:00pm sometimes (grrr Salaried jobs!) and sees her for an hour each night tops. So I yell from the other room "Craig you need to check her mouth, if there is nothing in her hands and she's hiding, it's got to be in her mouth." Craig still talking to his Mom, "Oh, Dorth says it means something's in her mouth (pause) OH MY GOSH, SHE WAS EATING A TON OF PAPER!!!!" lol Yea, our house is like that lately.

Another one was the other day while I was doing the dishes. I saw Grace crawl into our room (dragging the dust pan you see in this picture) but honestly couldn't think of anything for her to get into so I kept doing dishes. Well it got too quiet as usually happens to I decided to go check and boy had she been busy...

That is the culprit running to hide as soon as she saw me. I hadn't said one word but she knew she was being naughty so she ran as soon as I came into the room. lol It's all good though, I finally cleaned all those random papers out of my purse! ;)

silly girl hiding from me. She stole those socks from the laundry basket, don't worry they are clean.

A Birthday Story For Cousin Sennia

So Gracie was trying to think what she wanted to do today to wish her cousin Sennia a very Happy Birthday. She decided since she just had HER first birthday that maybe in honor of the day she should show cousin Sennia how it's done in the party world.She decided she had better start with a card or poster...

Hmmm....But what to write...

But then she had it! So she scribbled...

And examined her work...

And thought some more...

And then added the final touches.

"Now for the rest of the party preparations Mom!"

Next Gracie decided to get out her party things.

"I'm not ready yet, Mom!"

Next she moved some things...

And of course she put on her party hat!

And then she was ready! TaDA!

Happy Birthday Sennia!!!!