A quick Hello-

Hi all!!
I have been trying to keep up with what you guys are all up too, but I know I missed a post or two, sorry about that.
I have been getting back into exercising and am happy to say that I am down 1 pant size!!!
I am pretty excited about that :) :) :)

I have been cooking quite a bit also and have some great recipes to share as soon as I get a chance-

Red Velvet Cake- Courtesy of Monica from Lick the Bowl Good
Flourless Dark Chocolate Cake with Ganache and Raspberry Whipped Cream
PW's Sesame Noodles
And Pretzel Baguettes- Courtesy of Kim from Stirring the Pot

I hope everyones week is going wonderful!!!! :)

Minestrone Soup, Festive Herb Spirals and the Perfect Bribe

Hi all!
Sorry I haven't been reading and commenting lately.
The weather here has been gorgeous this week and Miss M and I have been taking advantage of it by spending our days outside. I haven't driven my car once this week we have just been walking everywhere, it's been pretty awesome.

For dinner last night I made a beautiful Minestrone Soup-
I use half V-8 juice, half water and add in whatever vegies I can find, this time we had a great mixture-

carrots, yellow pepper, onion, kidney beans, cilantro, parsley, spinach, corn, green beans and ditalini noodles. Yummy.

To go with the soup I made some Festive Herb Spirals, these would also make great appetizers-

Festive Herb Spirals
Ingred;
1 pkg crescent roll dough
1 8 oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1/4c. minced fresh herbs- I used cilantro and parsley
1/2t. greek seasoning
1t. onion powder
3 minced green onions

I ran everything except for the dough through my food processor.
Unroll the crescent roll dough and seal the edges.
Spread with the herbed cream cheese and roll up.
Slice in 1 inch slices and place on a greased cookie sheet.
Bake at 350 for 15-20 minutes.

Now if you kids are like mine and you tried the usual pleading, or threats to get them to eat their dinner and that hasn't worked I have the perfect Bribe, er um reward. I am totally not above bribing, um rewarding my kiddos to get them to do what I ask. Everyone loves a reward right?

This was the one I offered my little ones for dessert after they finished their dinner-

That is my kind of reward, yum.

Chocolate Mousse Bars
Ingred;
1 pkg Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix + the ingred it calls for
1 8oz pkg cream cheese, softened
1c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1c. whipping cream, whipped
1c. semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2c. cream

Oven 350.
Prepare cookie mix and spread into the bottom of a greased 9x13 pan.
Bake for 15 minutes. Cool completely.
Beat the cream cheese, melt 1c. of the chocolate chips in the microwave, beat into the cream cheese. Fold in the whipped cream.
Spread over the cookie layer.
Melt the remaining 1c. of chocolate chips, whisk together with the 1/2c. cream.
Spread over the mousse layer and refridgerate for a couple hours.

I was told by the kiddos that they wanted me to make this everyday, because it was the BEST thing they have ever had, and that I am the BEST cook ever.
Anyone else think they were trying to butter me up for something????
A second piece maybe?????

Sparse and Few Between

I may be slow at posting for awhile I have a few things that I am trying to get straightened out, that are cutting in to my blog time, darn real life world!
Mainly car trouble, make that 'cars' trouble, also I am getting signed up to go back to college next fall when Miss M starts kindergarten. So I am getting all my paper work figured out and trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up, no matter what Peter Pan says I guess we all DO eventually have to :)

I have also been getting back into crafting and that is taking up a lot of my time, but I won't complain about that because I am enjoying it. I made the girls some t-shirt gauchos , skirts,& hair bows-

And I have also become addicted to making these little guys-

Amigurumi Pig -AKA- Pinky

Amigurumi Hippo -Aka Baby Hippo

Which are starting to take over my house, they are so cute. I will try to get some tutorials on here for these guys, maybe when I finishes the other 4 I am working on.
So between the crafting joy, and the craziness of my life right now I may not be on the computer as much. I hope everyone is having a great week, I am soooo glad tomorrow is Friday cause I am ready for a little break :)

This is me being brave

Disclaimer-
If you are one of those people on a diet do not, I repeat DO NOT
read further because the Diet Train has been derailed here
and ALL passengers got off.

See I can be brave I can conquer my fear, my fear of frying that is.
Yep frying, NOT flying. That's a fear that will never be conquered.
If you are wondering what brought this on you can go here, see she frys EVERYTHING, and I was dying to try several of her recipes.
But as you may or may not Know (if not read here) but I don't do frying. I usually end of catching things on fire.
BUT if I was going to make some of these lovelies I needed to conquer my fear, Be brave little rabbit, be brave. I gathered inspiration from one of the kids favorite movies, this one-

My kiddos are always in tears at the end of this movie, they are so cute :)

On we go, to get over my frying phobia I made these-

ok, ok so the mushrooms aren't fried but the others are! I made these for an appetizer night with some friends. And.... they..... were.... YUMMY, and even better I didn't catch a single thing on fire. Nothing even burned (if we don't count my thumb that is) how good was that!


Wontons
Ingred;
1/2 pkg cream cheese
3 sliced green onions
1/4t. ginger
1/2t. soy sauce
1/4c. crab
wonton wrappers
mushroom caps

Put the cream cheese, onions, ginger and soy sauce in the Food Processor, mix until well blended. Blend in the crab, use as a filling for wontons or in mushrooms.

I placed the mushrooms upside down on a baking sheet and drizzled with olive oil then baked at 375 for about 15 minutes, then turned them over and stuffed with this mixture and put a small cube of mozzarella on top and baked at 375 for about 20 minutes. Very good.

These mushrooms were started the same way but instead of the filling I put a small scallop in each one and wrapped a 1/4 of a piece of bacon around each one. I had never had scallops before and I have to say this was my favorite of these all.

For the mozzarella slices I got my inspiration from the frying link I gave you up above, I used her recipe although not exactly. She has great pictures and instructions so you really need to go check her blog out. There is a lot of great stuff over there.

I sliced the mozzarella into about 1/2 inch slices, layed them on a plate and drizzled with a mixture of olive oil, garlic salt and minced basil. I let this set in the fridge for about 15 minutes while I assembled the other ingred.
I put 1 egg in a flat bowl, 1/2c. flour in another and a mixture of bread crumbs and panko crumbs in another bowl.
I dipped the sliced in the flour first, then the egg, then the crumbs and fried on the stove for about 1-1/2 minutes on each side. These were the BEST I have ever had, EVER I tell you.

And I didn't catch ANYTHING on fire, I was very proud of myself :) :) :)

It's Time-

To let you know who won my 200th post give-away.

And the winner is- Donna- at My Tasty Treasures!

Congrats Donna!

Please E-mail me at kbkmsmom@yahoo.com and let me know which books you want and get your address so that I can send you your prize!

Thank you to all of you who responded to my giveaway, and also a

GREAT
BIG
THANK YOU!

To those of you who read and comment regularly it makes my day :)

Comments are turned off, you can jump over to Donna's blog to congratulate her over there, I hope you all had a Wonderful Weekend :)

Bananas may be edible after all

Well as long as there is chocolate involved.
We had some Black Bottom Banana Cream Pie at a friends house last week and I was wanting to make it for Hubby, because he missed out. OK and because it was really really yummy. My friend gave me some basic instructions for it that seemed pretty simple.
She had told me to use vanilla wafers, instant vanilla pudding, banana's and chocolate, easy peasy right?
Well, I had a box of vanilla wafers stashed away and all the other required ingred, or so I thought. So this morning I went to get the goods out to make it and what did I find???
No Vanilla Wafers!!! Somebody ate my cookies, and no it wasn't me I don't eat those things, they have no chocolate in them.
So I had to settle for some chocolate chip cookies instead. I also couldn't find Instant Vanilla pudding mix in my cupboard, I had 3 others odd flavors, go figure.
So I was slowed down temporarily but it didn't stop me, I had just to be a little inventive-

This is why I don't these shots, someone is always missing!
Pretend you see some bananas,and butter in there, k :)
And I don't know why my vanilla pudding- that is what is in the red bowl-looks so odd.
Very Strange.

I missed a step, I am a bad camera person, bad, bad slacker.
Here is after I melted the chocolate chips in the microwave.
The whole pan goes in so you need to use glass, or do it in the oven :)

Look! There are my bananas!

They were MIA for a short time, now they're back and perfect- just barely ripe.

Here I am spreading the cool whip mixture over my perfect bananas :)

Does anyone know how to fix my picture?? I tried everything, then gave up, oh well.

Here are my cookies pre-crumb, it looks fine- just tilt your head to the right :)

Sprinkle the yummy crumbs over top, and make 'er pretty

Black-Bottomed Banana Cream Pie My Way


Ingred;
1 pkg chocolate chip cookies
1 reg sized container cool whip
1 small pkg cook and serve vanilla pudding mix
1c. milk
3T. butter, melted
1c. mini chocolate chips
2 bananas

Prepare the pudding as the box instructs but only use 1c. of milk instead of the 2 it calls for. Chill in the fridge until cooled, fold together with the cool whip, save a little cool whip to decorate with. Place half of the cookies in the food processor and turn into fine crumbs. Spread in the bottom of a 8x8 glass pan. Mix with the melted butter and pat down to make crust. Sprinkle the chocolate chips over the crust, place in microwave and heat for 30 sec. to 1 minute. Until the chocolate starts to melt. Slice bananas and place over the chocolate layer, save a few slices. Spread you cool whip mixture over that. Saving out half a cookie, make the rest into fine crumbs and sprinkle over the top. Decorate with the reserved cool whip, banana and crumbled cookie, a few chocolate chips won't hurt either. Chill for at least an hour.

Beef, it's what's for Dinner

We have been having some pretty cold weather here so it seemed like a stew day yesterday, I saw a stew recipe a while back that had red potatoes in it. They looked so pretty, and they were totally my inspiration for this simple stew.
Also when I went to get the meat for this I had an interesting talk with one of the butchers, apparently if you buy your stew meat already all cut up instead of a piece of steak and doing it yourself it's a least a dollar extra. I never really thought about it before to wonder if I was paying more, sometimes I grab them all ready cut, usually I just buy what's on sale or in bulk and divide it and cut it myself. I don't think I will ever buy it pre-sliced again, while 1$ isn't a huge amount it is 1$ spent on nothing.

Beautifully Simple Beef Stew
Ingred;
1 lb beef stew meat
2T.olive oil
2T. onion powder
1/2t. pepper
1t. salt
2 qts of water
4c. quartered red potatoes
2c. sliced carrots
1 can corn, drained
1T. dried parsley
1/2t. celery salt
1pkt onion gravy mix
1pkt brown gravy mix

Heat the oil in a large pot, add and brown the beef seasoning with the salt, pepper and onion powder. Add in the water, then the vegetables. Sprinkle in the parsley and celery salt. Cook until the vegies are tender. Mix the gravy mixes together with 1/2c. cold water, then stir into the soup. Simmer, stirring often for about 10 minutes. (If you want it thicker add another gravy pkt).

I would have liked this to be a tiny bit thicker, but when I mess with that too much I always end up with it too thick and this was darn near close to perfect. Hubby and the kids gobbled it down and declared it delicious.

From T-shirt to Pants in 30 Minutes or Less

I found this cute idea, how to make gaucho pants from a t-shirt on 2 different blogs-
Live Journal
and
Lil Blue Boo

Their instructions are a bit different from each other but the basic idea is the same. I used a serger sewing machine to make mine, it makes things so easy. My Mommer gave me hers, THANK YOU MOMMER!
It makes this project super super easy, it took me less than 30 minutes to make these-

Here we have our T-shirt, it's an Adult size x-small.
It turned into size 5/6 child pants

I have the sleeves and neck cut off


Then fold it in half and cut down the middle of the shirt.


Open them up, place right side together and match up your edges.
Stitch the V in the middle, that will be the crotch of the pants.


I opened it up flat so you could see what it looked like, it's always at this point where I have to look at what I'm sewing and wonder what I did wrong, so far nothing- it just looked weird.


Now right here at this point, if I was smart, I would have added the extra piece to the waist band. Cut 2- 4 to 6 inch wide strips, the length needs to match the paints waistband, match right sides together and sew to the waist of the paints Like this next picture-


Sorry, that one is out of order, but if you do it earlier than I did it will make it a lot easier.


Turn inside out and match up and pin your leg seams, the inside seams will be intact from the t-shirt, stitch the outside leg seams.


Here they are right side out


If you use a serger you need to trim all the ends and use some fray check glue,
so the seams don't unravel. Now you need to fold back the waist about 1/2 inch and sew it so that you can run some elastic, ribbon or cord through the waist to hold the pants up. I used the bottom of another t-shirt for my waistband so it was already finished and I was able to cut a hole in the existing hem then run my ribbon through there.

Here they are, all done and turned inside out so you can see all the seams.

And here we have our little Gaucho Pants model-

I can't wait to make more of these, they were so easy and so cute. I got the t-shirt at Goodwill for 1$, I found quite a few t-shirts that I am going to be re-purposing, we are saving the Planet here 1 t-shirt at a time :)

Layered Italian Spread

I needed an appetizer to take to a gathering the other night, so I shuffled through some recipes I had saved trying to find something I could make with what I already had because I didn't want to go to the store. I found this one at the Pillsbury site. I changed this up quite a bit and can't really tell you how the original one would be, it was very inspirational though.

Layered Italian Spread
Ingred;
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
1pkt of Italian dressing mix
1c. chopped marinated artichoke hearts
1c. Parmesan cheese
1c. chopped Genoa salami
2c. shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4c. sliced green olives
1/4c. sliced black olives

Heat oven to 375

Process the beans, 1/4c. parm cheese, and 1T. of the dressing mix in food processor until smooth.
Spread in the bottom of a 4c. baking dish.
Sprinkle 1/4c. parm cheese over that.
Layer on the artichokes, then the salami.
Sprinkle with the remaining parm cheese, then the mozzarella cheese. Sprinkle 1T. of the dressing mix over the top.
Bake uncovered for 25 min. turn oven down to 350 and continue baking for 10 more minutes.
Remove from oven and sprinkle the 2 kinds of olives on top. Serve hot with baguette slices.

This was pretty thick so I don't think the wonton chips would have cut it. But it was TASTY, everyone loved it and I know I will be making it again.


Now for a good dose of chocolate, I got the recipe for these brownies over on My Tasty Treasures. These quick easy from scratch brownies, were so GOOD, I will never use a box mix again, EVER. I changed them up by adding mint flavoring instead of vanilla then drizzled with a green mint glaze. If you want the recipe you need to go over the Donna's Blog, she has it. And trust me when I tell you that you really need to make these, they are the perfect brownie.

Need another Blog to Follow?

I keep finding more and more really neat blogs, I follow quite a few and then I have quite a few bookmarked that I like to check in with every now and then.
And I thought I would share them with you.

Cooking Blogs-

Contemporary Confections

Confessions of a Tart

No Lemon Juice

La Fuji Mama

Cook the Books

Joy the Baker

My Own Sweet Thyme

Mermaid Sweets

Tex-Mex Recipes

A Year of Slow Cooking

Fun Snacks 4 Kids

Food Gourmand

Sourbonk's Cookbook

The Sisters' Cafe

Domestication in Progress

Chicago's Cookbook

A Fork and Spoon

Krista's Kitchen

Vanilla Sugar

Picky Cook

cookies and cups


Crafting Blogs-

Creative Holiday Gift Ideas

A Little Space of My Own

Today's Creative Blog

Living with Lindsay

Mad Maggie Designs

Sew, Mama, Sew!

The Homespun Heart

Krafty Katrina

Just For Fun

Family, Friends, and Fun!

Be Different..... Act Normal

Beyond The Picket Fence



Misc. great reading Blogs-

Funky Junk Interiors

mommy holly

Serene is my name, Not my life!

A CHELSEA MORNING

Jane's Garden

by the hair of my chinny chin chin

Primm Pages

Hairstyles for Girls

The Princess and The Frog Blog

Serenity Now

Balancing Beauty and Bedlam

The Round Robin Photo Challenges




Site/Blogs for help with blogging-

Mama of 3 Munchkins

The Cutest Blog on the Block

Its 200!!!!!!

This is my 200th post, I am pretty excited about that :) :) :)
I have been blogging for over a year now and have done 200 posts in that time, Woo hoo!!

So for my 200th post giveaway I have decided to give-

1- 7x7 Christmas (or Holiday of your choice) mini Scrapbook
1- 7x7 Themed mini Scrapbook of your choice
And a pkg of 5 assorted homemade Birthday Cards

All homemade by me, so-
To enter my giveaway please leave me a comment telling me how you first found my blog and, if you can remember, the first post you read on it. Thanks to all of you for following, commenting and for being such great blog Buddies. You have all made it wonderful :)
I will have 1 of the Kiddos draw a Winner on Sunday, Jan. 10, 2010.

I am sharing my very first blog post with you, I received exactly 0 comments on it so that shouldn't be hard to top should it :) :) :)






Some of my Favorite Quotes- November 18, 2008

Dont cry because its over. smile because it happened -- Dr. Seuss

"You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body."C.S. Lewis quote

"Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a more clever devil."C.S. Lewis quote

"Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again."C.S. Lewis quote


There is nothing like staying at home for real comfort.

Life seems but a quick succession of busy nothings.

If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.

Jane Austen


"Don't worry that children never listen to you; worry that they are always watching you." -Robert Fulghum

"Remember this - that very little is needed to make a happy life." -Marcus Aurelius

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple. Dr. Seuss