Vomit!

Well, my new series has gotten off to a late start.  That evening all hell broke loose.  And by hell, I meant vomit.   And vomit.  And some more vomit.  It's been really great over here!  Can you sense the sarcasm?  I did sand and  paint something, though.  I just need  to upload the photos, but a vomit incident happened on the desktop which is holding me up a little with uploading said photos.  Yeah, it was gross.  Plus, we get to buy a new keyboard!  Hopefully it will come in soon and I'l be uploading my first Sanding Sunday project.  Hope everyone is having  better week than we are!

New Series

I am starting a new series on my blog called 'Sanding Sundays'.  This is a day where I will spend my free time out in the garage sanding something.  I haven't really been  motivated to continue with any of my projects because of the winter, plus having Bean slowed me down.  BUT, now that Bean is going to be 1 YEAR OLD in another month or so, I figured it's probably time to start my beloved hobby.  I have ideas.   Lots of ideas.  Sometimes, the hubs just looks at me and rolls his eyes, cause I have so many ideas.  Well, it's spring time and spring is the time of rebirth and rejuvenation.  And I think it's time to rejuvenate some furniture.  So, here I am.  I'm gonna sand something and make it purdy!  Last year (I'm almost embarrassed to admit that) I started on my dining table.  I actually finished that...but the chairs, well, the chairs are another story.  I mostly completed one.  I sanded it down, painted, distressed, and poly'd the crap out of that chair and then recovered the seat with some awesome fabric.  Well, the seat has yet to be screwed back down.  So, if you're ever at my house, please be careful when you are sitting in the pretty chair...you just might fall through!  Anywho, I need to complete those plus a few other furniture/home decor items I've picked up along the way.  So stay tuned!  I am going to start my first Sanding Sunday project tomorrow!  Wish me luck!

Foamerator 2012!

On your mark....get set...BLOW!!!!!  Foamerator 2012 has commenced.  We had a playdate today and guess what we did?  We made giant snake bubbles!  It was totally rad!  All the kids had fun and we even had a couple of rogue parents wandering into our little area to see what was going on.  I have to say though, that I think this project was a little too old for some.  A lot of them ended up sucking the bubbles up into the bottle instead of blowing them out into a big long snake.  And let me tell you, that dish soap was NOT tasty.  After blowing in the bottles for a while and getting the soap everywhere, you couldn't help but get some of it in your mouth.  Nevertheless, it was loads of fun :)  

I think this project was the cheapest one I've done thus far with our playgroup.  It only required a water bottle (who doesn't have that in their recycling bin?), a rubber band, a wash cloth and some dish soap.  To begin, you take your clean, empty water bottle and cut off the bottom end.  Then, take your wet wash cloth and rubber band it to the bottom  of the bottle.  Next, take your bottle and dip the wash cloth end in some dish soap.  Then blow through the mouth piece.  That's it!  Depending on how hard you blow, you could have one really long snake bubble!  Since we were dealing with 3 year olds, their snakes weren't so long.  They ended up breaking off and floating into the air.  The kids didn't care though.

Turkey with his friends

 as my BIL says...Swangin'

so cute :)

Chicken Tortilla Soup

Tonight's dinner was chicken tortilla soup.   I had originally planned on this for dinner, but wanted to use a recipe that I have had for years.  Sadly, I couldn't find the recipe.  So, I had to make it up on the fly. 

Yesterday, I made chicken tacos in the crock pot.  I've mentioned this recipe before.  If you want to see it, you can find it here.  It makes quite a bit, so we had some leftovers.  I decided it would be good if I could use this up, which is why I had wanted to make chicken tortilla soup.  It was a super fast recipe, plus it tasted good (SCORE!)  

First I took chicken stock and put it in a pot.  Then I took the leftover chicken taco meat and put that in.  Next I put in a can of tomatoes.  Then I added a bit of mashed butternut or acorn squash (this idea was given to me by my friend Jessica - genius!).  I don't remember which one I used because I didn't label the bag that I put this in.  Then I added some taco seasoning, you know, the stuff from the packet, and finally I added a can of kidney beans.  That was it!  Oh!  I forgot...I baked some corn tortilla strips in the oven to put on top of the soup.  NOW, that was it!

This is what it looked like:

It was so good, Angel decided to eat the tomatoes out of the soup!  This, my friends, is a MONUMENTAL OCCASION!!!!  He NEVER eats tomatoes.  Ever.  So, of course, I had to take a picture of this rare moment.

This is Turkey showing us his 'magic' mouth.  "You see Mommy.  I put food in and it disappears!"

 And here's Bean,  'hiding' from us.  When his hands are up like that, we always say, "Where's Bean?"  and he just laughs and laughs...it's too cute.   When he lowers his hands, we then 'find' him and say, "There he is!"  He LOVES this game.  My silly Bean!

Here's the recipe written out for ya!

Chicken Tortilla Soup
5 cups chicken stock
1.5 - 2 cups chicken taco meat
1 cup mashed roasted butternut or acorn squash
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes
1 can (15 oz) kidney beans drained and rinsed
juice of 1.5 limes or to taste
1/4 cup or 1 packet of taco seasoning
tortilla strips for topping

Combine all ingredients, except tortilla strips and let simmer for about 20-30 minutes...or until  heated through.  Top with tortilla strips and serve.  It fed our family of 4 with another 2-4 bowls leftover.

Cloud dough

Today the boys and I went to a morning playdate.  It was 'cloud dough' day at the park.  If you have yet to experience this awesome, squishy, soft, sand like, cloud like mess, please do so...ASAP!  It's super cool!  All you need is 7 cups of flour and 1 cup of oil (baby, veg).  I used vegetable oil.  The kids at the park LOVED it! I had random moms, dads, grandparents coming up to our little group and asking if their kids could play with it.  It was so cool!  As my little Turkey says, "I had a great day today!"

House Hunting

We looked at a house today.  Well, I should say a manufactured home.  It was really nice.  It had 3 bedrooms, 2 baths, granite counters, stainless steel appliances, a front loader washing machine, an awesome master bath and so much more on the interior that it's making us seriously consider buying it.  Plus the fact that it's about an 1/8 of the cost of a traditional home here in the Bay area.  The only thing, is that it's a manufactured home and the resale value doesn't appear to be that great.  Plus we'd have to move a little farther than I'd like to.  I guess we'll see what happens.  It's not exactly where I thought I'd be, but it's a decent space and affordable and not a permanent thing.  If only the schools were a little better and it were a little closer to where we are now.  I think we'd jump on it in a heartbeat.  Well, like I said before, we'll see....