Home-made Oreos, Take 1

Today I decided to make homemade Oreos. There are tons of Oreo recipes on the internet and my husband is kind of an Oreo addict. After looking at a LOT of recipes I noticed that there are basically two recipes that have been tweaked a bit in a thousand different ways. For the cookie, there are recipes that use devil's food cake mix and recipes that use dutch process cocoa. The ones that use dutch process cocoa tend to have more ingredients and form a dough that you roll out and cut with a cookie cutter. The ones that use cake mix form a dough that you roll into balls and plop on the cookie sheet. They end up looking more like whoopie pies than Oreos, but I chose to start with them anyway. I've never bought dutch process cocoa before and my baking cabinets are already overflowing with the junk food ingredients I do keep on hand. Plus, they were easy and I already had all of the ingredients. If you keep cake mixes on hand like I do, you probably have all the ingredients too. Ready?

1 box devil's food cake mix
2 eggs
3/4 C shortening

That's it. Mix together until smooth. Roll into 1" balls. The recipe I used did not say to flatten the balls, but you really should. Then bake at 350 for 10 minutes. Let cookies cool on baking sheet.

This is how the cookies turn out if you flatten them halfway.

Left pic: The left 6 cookies I flattened to about 3/16" before baking. The 6 on the right I didn't flatten at all.
Right pic: Finished "Oreo" made from the flattened cookies.

These cookies look nothing like Oreos and don't have the same crunchy texture either. They are very yummy and ridiculously easy though, so I will probably make them again. Now, for the filling:

Again, there are basically two filling recipes, and  again I chose the easier one that I didn't have to buy ingredients for. The filling I used is basically buttercream frosting. I'd give you the recipe, but frankly, it was a flop. I didn't use as much condensed milk as the recipe called for and I still needed to add a cup and a half more powdered sugar to keep it from being soup, so just use your favorite buttercream frosting recipe (or look one up) and you'll probably end up with about the same cookies I have. They are awesome. And simple. They are not Oreos. My husband may like them, but he will still make me buy Oreos. So once this batch has been eaten, I will buy dutch process cocoa and the ingredients for the other type of filling and we will try Home-made Oreos, Take 2.

Update: I ended up making them open-faced since they were so thick. I was worried that they would not be stackable, but after a few hours of letting the frosting harden, they did just fine. When my husband tried them, he said they tasted exactly like Oreo Cakesters. I think they are close, but better.

Crochet blankets

I've been fairly busy lately, but unfortunately not doing anything worth blogging about. Yesterday I planted my garden and today I worked on digging out our burn pit a little more. I was just about to sit back and relax with some crocheting (which isn't really far enough along to be exciting), when I realized that I could talk about my last crochet project, which is my favorite so far. I'm pretty new to crochet so baby blankets are my favorite thing to make. They are quicker than regular sized blankets and much easier than anything that has a specific shape or size. Plus, they make excellent gifts. I got this pattern through Pinterest and you can get it here for free. It looks a bit complicated at first, but after you do all of the steps once, you'll have it memorized. It's pretty much the same row over and over and you just shift it a few stitches every three rows.

Anyway, it's lightweight, which makes it go fairly quickly and use very little yarn. Also, it's perfect here in Florida where you need to swaddle your baby without overheating him or her. I used Loops and Threads Snuggly Wuggly Big! baby yarn from Michaels. It sells for about $10 per skein. I always go to their website on my phone and use the 40% off coupon (They will scan it right off your phone so you don't need to plan ahead and remember to print it) This blanket took about half of one skein, so this blanket only cost me about $3 to make. I will definitely make many more of these for future gifts.

Right now I am working on a granny square throw blanket for my son's bed. He loves bright colors, so I think this will be perfect when I'm done. I haven't been crocheting much lately, so who knows how long that will take though...

Easter party dishes

We had an Easter party and egg hunt yesterday at our house. As usual, we had a very small turnout. I invited  over 80 people plus six families of neighbors who I've never met before. 13 people showed up. And only 7 of those were invited by me. The others only came because I told the people I invited to PLEASE bring any friends they knew with kids. If someone is writing a blog about how to get people to show up at your party, I need to read that. If someone is writing a blog about how to get people to RSVP for a party, I need to read that  next.

Anyway, since I had no idea how many people were coming, I bought way too much food and candy just in case. The party cost us maybe $120, and we have about 15 lbs of chicken, tons of drinks and lots of snacks left over. Luckily, since we are used to throwing parties where no one shows up, we did it smart, so all of our leftovers can be used later. If you are going to throw a party where you are unsure about the turnout, I have a few tips.

First, only make things that you personally will eat later. I love deviled eggs, and they are always a hit at parties. They were the first thing I decided to make- partially because it's Easter and partially because I knew I wouldn't have a bunch of leftovers to throw away. After I cut the eggs in half, I put them in water with a few drops of food coloring for a minute to make them more festive. I used yellow, pink, blue, and green, and left about a third of the eggs white. The yellow didn't show up very well, and the green and blue look about the same, so I think next time I will only do pink and blue. I deviled 18 eggs (36 pieces) and only had 2 pieces left over.

I made a vegetable tray because vegetables are cheap and they are something I will eat as a snack in the evenings (and should eat more often instead of cookies and ice cream). I also made chocolate covered strawberries with white chocolate dyed orange so that they looked like carrots. They were kind of cute, but white chocolate isn't as well-liked as regular chocolate, so ended up with more leftovers than I expected, but again, they are something I will have no problem finishing off by myself. Also, nobody is really used to orange chocolate, so most people asked what they were before trying them and a lot of the kids didn't like them. Next time I will just do regular chocolate and they won't be as cute. If you decide to make these -especially for a large party- I suggest making some kind of label for them.

Lastly, I made cupcakes, because what event is complete without some sort of cake? I used a chocolate buttercream recipe that I found on the internet, and I thought it was a little bitter. I will have to try another recipe next time. I used the frosting to make birds nests for my jelly bean "eggs" and as a base for my marshmallow flowers (cut a marshmallow into 4 slices with scissors and dip the cut end in colored sugar for the petals). I also frosted some and put pre-made frosting flowers or carrots on them. If you've read my blog before, these are the frosting flowers and carrots I had leftover from the panoramic sugar eggs I made last week. At the end of the party, we had 11 cupcakes left. I'm not sure if I will eat all of those before they go bad (My husband won't help- he hates chocolate), but if a few of them go bad, at least cupcakes are cheap.

We bought canned soda because we rarely drink soda, so this way we wouldn't have a bunch of partial 2-liters going to waste. Cans are more expensive, but will store for a long time and we can drink them slowly or use them for my sons birthday party in two months. 

We grilled chicken for lunch. I bought about 20 lbs of chicken just in case we did have a big turnout. I checked around and found chicken quarters for $1.49/lb and drumsticks for $1.00/lb. We waited until after everyone had arrived to start up the grill so that more of the appetizers would get eaten. Then my husband grilled enough food to feed everyone times three. After the party, I cut up all of the cooked chicken and put it in Ziploc bags in approximately 1 lb portions. Then I froze it for future use in chicken alfredo, chicken salad, and other dishes calling for cooked chicken pieces. The uncooked chicken was also split into single serving bags and frozen for later use. I like buying my meat in bulk, but unless I portion it up before I freeze it, it never gets used. After all, if you are cooking for a family of three, what do you do with a frozen block of 20 drumsticks or 4 chicken quarters, or a 5 lb roast?

Anyway, I had a party planned for at least 50 people. Even though only 13 came, I will be throwing out no more than a few cupcakes, I have plenty of meat stored for future meals, and everyone had a good time. To me, that is a success. 

Panoramic Easter Eggs - Part 3 of 3 - Putting it all together

In case you missed parts 1 and 2:
Panoramic Easter Eggs - Part 1 of 3 - Making frosting flowers
Panoramic Easter Eggs - Part 2 of 3 - Making the sugar eggs

We finished making our panoramic Easter eggs yesterday. I was very impressed with how well my son did with his. He's not quite 2 years old, so I wasn't sure if he'd really get it or if I'd basically just be making them myself while constantly trying to keep him from eating the frosting flowers. Anyhow... I started out by figuring out what scenes I was going to make inside the eggs. My husband helped since I have very little imagination. This one was his idea:

When I was growing up, we always used plastic Easter grass and just glued it down with white frosting. I don't buy plastic Easter grass because I'm afraid my cat will eat it, so we just used green frosting. I actually liked doing it this way much better. It wasn't unruly like the plastic grass, and the frosting grass can be used to hold the figurines in place. Just pipe it in (I used a #4 tip), and then press the figurines down where you want them. I did have to put a little bit of extra frosting behind the chicks in the top photo to hold them in place, but everything else just stuck where I set it.

After your scenes are finished, it's time to glue the top half of the egg on. You want to use a fairly thick line of frosting. I used a #7 tip to squeeze a wide line. Then press the top of egg on. It probably won't line up perfectly, but as long as they are close you won't be able to tell once you put the flowers on.

 



Your next step is to pipe frosting around the seam and opening and press your frosting flowers and leaves into place. Once this is done, you can decorate the top of your eggs, again piping on frosting and pressing on your pre-made frosting flowers.

This is a very fun Easter activity for kids, though it is a lot of work for Mom. I feel it is worth it because the eggs make a good Easter decoration and can be eaten or stored to display next year. My mom has 20 year old sugar eggs that she displays every year and they still look the same as they did when we made them as kids. If you decide to make them with your kids, make sure you don't expect too much, and (especially if you let them hold the frosting bag) don't expect everything to stay clean. If your child isn't old enough to help make the frosting flowers, he probably shouldn't be expected to pipe on his own frosting. Even young children can place frosting flowers on the eggs if you put the frosting on the egg first. My son will be two years old in two months and he told me what color flowers he wanted and pressed them into place. For the top of the egg, he also pointed to where he wanted me to put the dots of frosting that he would press his flowers into. He did try to eat a few of the flowers, but after I stopped him he started asking "eat?" every time he picked up a flower. When I told him no, he would put it in place instead. After he was done, I let him eat a couple of flowers since he was so good.

South Florida Pet Expo

So I haven't posted anything in a while because I've been drained by the weekend's events and am still catching up on needed sleep/rest. On Saturday, I attended the South Florida Pet Expo as a vendor for Molly and Friends Cat Furniture. I used to manage the company, and now that I'm a stay at home mom I love that they still let me do events. It gives me a chance to get out of the house, meet new people, and maybe even make a little money. But at this expo, everything went wrong. First, my friend who was going to go with me hurt his back and had cancel last minute. I don't like driving, have never driven a box truck (we take a 24' truck to events), and the expo was 4 1/2 hours away. The manager at Molly's did end up finding someone to drive me, so while I would have had more fun going with a friend, that part wasn't a total disaster. But then when we got there we found out that the person who loaded the truck, didn't realize how much furniture I needed and loaded almost nothing. We ended up turning around, driving all the way back, loading our truck, and then driving there again. We got back at 3 am only to find that there were no open hotels within 30 miles of the event. We ended up sleeping for 2 1/2 hours in the truck in a Wal-Mart parking lot and then getting up and going to the show. After the show was done, we did some deliveries and headed home, but because we were sleep deprived, we didn't make it all the way. We ended up stopping at two different rest stops to sleep and didn't get home until around 10 am the following day. My husband let me sleep for about 4 hours while he watched our son, but after that I had to get to up and be Mom again. And Mom just doesn't get enough sleep.

I was planning to do a blog post on the expo, but sleep deprived and discombobulated as I was, I forgot to take any pictures, so the ones on this page were taken from The South Florida Pet Expo's Facebook page. (The picture above does actually have our booth in the background- That carpeted house next to the girl selling brightly-colored cupcakes is ours.) The expo's claim to fame is that Shorti Rossi, from the Animal Planet show "Pit Boss" always attends. Now, I don't have cable, have never seen Pit Boss, and in general pit-bull owners have no use for cat furniture, so I wasn't exactly expecting this to be the most exciting show ever. Financially, it was awful. And two dogs tried to mark our booth (luckily missing the cat furniture both times). And there was an unusually large number of semi-creepy men that wanted to strike up random conversations with me. BUT the  actual show was pretty interesting, especially considering that all I saw of it was the one isle I could view from our booth. I saw dogs in tutus, hats, jeans, one with a pink mohawk, and quite a few with interesting shave jobs, including one that really did look like a miniature lion. There was also a large variety of animals there: a saw a ball python, a macaw, a guinea pig, a skunk, an entire booth full of baby alligators, and apparently I missed an alpaca and at least one donkey. There were also dog agility shows, a pet dress-up contest, and a reptile show, none of which I got to see, but I got the impression that the people who attended were really enjoying the entertainment. If you live in the West Palm Beach area, I suggest you check it out next year. Admission is free, so what do you have to lose? Also, if you don't live nearby and decide to go anyway, I suggest you book your hotel in advance :-)

I didn't see this dog at the event, though I don't doubt he was there. I saw plenty of dogs dressed up in just as interesting of outfits. The thing I find most interesting about this one? ...The fact that they knitted him a tail.

Panoramic Easter Eggs - Part 2 of 3 - Making the egg shells

Making the sugar egg shells got off to a very rocky start this morning. I broke the first three halves that I made. The next four stayed intact and I was finally thinking I was getting the hang of a very delicate process. Then I talked to my mom on the phone and found out that the reason I was having so much trouble is that I was using the wrong size mold. Apparently, the large sugar eggs I remember from when I was little only looked as big as they did because I was so little. Now that I am using the right mold, everything is going much easier. So, when you try this, make sure you use a 4 1/2 x 3 x 3 1/4 in mold. If you would like to use a different size, you will have to adjust the cooking time as well, so I suggest that you at least start with this mold until you get the hang of how it should feel. The mold I used came from Wilton and is the medium sized mold in this three piece set.

To make sugar eggs, you will need:

4 1/2 x 3 x 3 1/4 in egg shaped candy mold
aluminum foil
tape
thick piece of cardboard
thin piece of cardboard (cereal and cake mix boxes work well)
metal spoon
mixing bowl
1 C sugar (per egg)
1/2 tsp water (per egg)
small amount of extra water

Start out by taping the aluminum foil around the thick piece of cardboard. This will be your cookie sheet. DO NOT use an actual cookie sheet for this recipe. It will make the bottom of your egg harden too quickly. Mix the sugar and water together with your hands, breaking up any clumps as you mix. The sugar will stick to your hands, but not actually feel wet. When you are finished, it will look like you have a bowl full of snow.

Firmly pack the sugar into your mold. You will have enough sugar to do half as many eggs as the recipe stated. After you hollow out the centers, you will reuse that sugar for the other half. Once the sugar is packed and smoothed flat, put your thin piece of cardboard over the mold, and flip the mold over while keeping pressure on the sugar through the thin cardboard. Place the thin cardboard on top of your homemade cookie sheet and slide the mold off onto it. If the egg breaks while you are doing this, you are probably using too thick of cardboard. Use a knife to cut the nose off of your egg. You can cut off as much or little as you like, just remember that the less you cut off, the smaller your peep hole will be. And make sure you cut about the same amount off of the top and bottom molds.

Use the knife to push the sugar you cut off back into your mixing bowl. Then put your cookie sheet in a preheated 200 degree oven for 15 minutes. When you pull the eggs out, let them cool for a few minutes. They do not have to be completely cool. Flip one over and use your metal spoon to hollow out the inside, scooping the sugar you remove back into the mixing bowl. You want the remaining shell to be about the thickness of a pencil. When you have hollowed out all of the soft sugar, you will need to hollow out the nose of the egg. To do this, dab a small amount of water on the area you want to remove and then scoop gently with your spoon. Make sure you don't use too much water - the softened sugar will fall apart easily and if you remove too much by accident, you will have to start all over again. You can always dab on more water later if you don't soften enough of the opening the first time. Repeat for all remaining eggs.

 Put the eggs back on the cookie sheet (hollowed side down) and bake for another 15 minutes. Allow to cool completely. Repeat for other half of eggs. You might need to add a bit more water to the sugar mixture if it seems dry. Just remember that you didn't add much water in the first place and some of that is still in the mixture.

You are now ready to decorate! Your egg(s) may not line up exactly, but once they are decorated, no one will ever be able to tell...

Panoramic Easter Eggs - Part 1 of 3 - Making frosting flowers and leaves

Last night I decided that this Easter we would make panoramic Easter eggs. We used to make them when I was little, but I've never made them by myself before. So we'll see how that goes, but as I started to get everything ready, I realized that I can't just make a blog post about panoramic Easter eggs, because they are actually the last step in a fairly lengthy process. So this post is about the first step: Making royal frosting flowers and leaves.

First step- The recipe:

1/4 C meringue powder
1/2 C water
Mix together (you will need an electric mixer) until fully blended. Mixture will be frothy. Then add:
4 1/2 C powdered sugar
Beat to desired consistency.


I decided I wanted to make six different colors, but I'm cheap and lazy. I don't usually use reusable frosting bags because they are a pain to wash, but I don't like buying disposable ones either because they are kind of expensive. I've heard that you can use plastic bags instead, but I've tried twice and both times the seams busted and I ended up with more cleaning to do. So, I tried a trick I found on Pinterest a long time ago (Sorry, I have no idea who the original poster was). You put the frosting in the center of a piece of plastic wrap, roll it up, and twist the ends. Put the inside piece of the coupler in the bag. Then drop the frosting log in. Pull the bottom twist through the hole in the bag until you can pull it anymore (using reasonable pressure). Then cut off the excess, and put on the tip and outside piece of the coupler as usual. Make sure the top twist of the plastic wrap is pointed up, otherwise you'll end up breaking through the plastic wrap while you are squeezing the frosting bag. Now since I'm lazy, I mixed my colors on the plastic wrap instead of having to wash extra bowls. If you decide to do that too, make sure you mix it with something that won't tear the plastic wrap. I used a children's knife (thick plastic, no serration), but I imagine a Popsicle stick would work as well. No matter what you use, make sure to check the plastic after you twist it up to make sure there aren't any holes. If there are, just add a second piece of plastic wrap on the outside.

Now that you have your frosting ready, it's time to make your flowers and leaves. I started with the leaves because historically I'm terrible at them. Today, however, they went very well and while the flowers...didn't. Start out by taping wax paper to the table (or to the back of cookie sheets if you will need to use your table for dinner).

I made an assortment of flat and ruffly leaves because sometimes I love the flat ones, but sometimes I like a little more flair. If you've never made frosting leaves before, you are in for an aggravating time. They take a little while to figure out, and oddly, the ruffly ones are easier. I like to do two or three ruffles. You are going to make your leaves from left to right (assuming you are right-handed), holding the frosting bag at a 45 degree angle. I used a Wilton #67 tip for my leaves. Start with the frosting tip touching the wax paper. Then lift the tip about 1/16 -1/8" off the paper for the rest of the leaf. To make a ruffle, squeeze the tube without moving the bag to the right. It helps if you move the bag slightly up and down, but it isn't necessary. When you finish with the last ruffle, stop squeezing the tube and pull it the right until the frosting breaks. DO NOT touch the wax paper with the frosting tip in order to end your leaf. If you want to make flat leaves, start your leaf and lift the bag while moving it about 3/8" to the left squeezing with gentle pressure. Then move the bag back to the right continuing to squeeze with gentle pressure until you cover the bottom layer of frosting. Then stop squeezing and pull to the right until the frosting breaks. 

Flowers tend to be easier. I just made drop flowers because I've never been able to do twist flowers and more difficult flowers like roses and lilacs are just too large for panoramic Easter eggs. I used three different tips for my flowers so that I would have a bit of variety. 

 Wilton tip #107

Wilton tip #16 

Wilton tip #30






For the flowers, you are just going to put the tip slightly above the wax paper, squeeze the frosting bag until your flower is the desired size. Then push the tip slightly into the flower and pull up without squeezing the bag. Make sure you put the center on the flower (Wilton tip #2) on right away. If the outside of the flower starts to harden, the center will be much harder to put on AND you may damage the rest of the flower in the process.

The last thing I made was a bunch of carrots. I was originally planning on putting greens on the carrots, but when I made the leaves I forgot I was making carrots and used up all the green frosting. So I'll have to do the carrot tops later. For the carrots, I used a Wilton #7 tip and just made a blob of orange frosting. Move the tip left and right to create texture so they look more like carrots. Then just like leaves, stop squeezing the bag and pull to the right to form the tip of the carrot.

This is all of the leaves, flowers, and carrots I was able to make from one batch of frosting:

Now, they have to dry for 24 hours before they can be peeled off of the wax paper. Once they are dry, you can put them in ziploc bags and store them at room temperature for practically forever. They can then be used to decorate cakes, cupcakes, cookies, or the panoramic Easter eggs that I will be showing you how to make tomorrow. 

Inexpensive Easter Crafts

So today I figured I'd write about the crafts I did yesterday. Partially because they were very simple and were the beginning of my Easter decorating (I know I'm starting very late) but mainly because I'm having minor outpatient surgery today and I'm not allowed to eat or drink anything this morning, and I'm VERY thirsty. So I figured that sitting in front of the computer typing would be a way to get my mind of my thirst- or at least get me to stay out of the kitchen.

Anyway, yesterday I did two of the simplest Easter crafts ever thought up. I made an egg tree and string eggs. I liked both of these "crafts" because they were quick and simple and used only materials I had already lying around.

I did the string eggs first. If you've never made them before, all you need is a few small balloons, Elmer's glue, and assorted colors of yarn. Start out by blowing up some small balloons. Mine were 7" balloons, and I feel that they were too large. You can't use a large balloon and just put a little bit of air in it because it won't make the right shape. Once your balloons are blown up, cut of a piece of yarn whatever length you want to use. Mine were about 6 ft long, but you'll need to adjust that if your balloons are blown to a different size. Next, squeeze a blob of Elmer's glue into a small bowl (I used a dip cup) and push the entire length of yarn into the bowl, being careful to keep track of one of the ends. You want to make sure that all of the yarn is at least mostly coated in glue, adding more glue if necessary. Then simply pull the yarn out of the glue, running it between your thumb and index finger to squeeze out any excess glue. Wind it around the balloon as you pull it from the bowl. When you get to the end, try to make sure that it touches another piece. Let dry overnight, then pop the balloons. You may want to make several holes in the balloons or even cut off the knot to make them deflate more quickly.

The egg tree was even simpler. I just went into the back yard and cut some small branches off the trees. Then I put them in a vase and trimmed them so that they weren't SO big and wild looking. I threaded ribbon through the holes in the plastic eggs and hung them on the branches. This was pretty fun because my son helped me hang them, and since he's not quite 2 yrs old, he had difficulty. It was cute.

More cheap and easy Easter decor to come!

New fire pit - Part 1 of 2

Over the past few days, I've been working on digging out a new burn pit and filling in our old one. The old one was there when we moved in and was a 20' or so oval in the center of our back yard. It was huge and ugly and I would have filled it in a long time ago, but my husband and I couldn't agree on where the new burn area should be. I wanted it out of the way in a corner of the yard; he wanted it somewhere where there were no overhanging trees and it could be seen from the house - basically, exactly where it was. So, I'm filling in the western half of it and digging out a 10' circle in the eastern half. It will be slightly less in the way and the whole circle can be seen from the house. I'm happy with the exercise it has provided, but increasingly annoyed with the people that used to live here.

When we moved in, there was a pile of chicken wire in one corner of the yard, an engine block against the back fence, and random cinder blocks pretty much everywhere, along with other random trash and small car parts. I assumed once that was cleaned up, I'd be done with other people's trash. Then we decided to expand the garden a few years ago and I dug up another engine block, nails, broken dishes, carpet and fabric scraps, and MORE random car parts! The dirt was so littered with garbage that we decided maybe we shouldn't expand the garden. I spent days sifting through the dirt pulling out all the trash I could, but the pile seemed endless, and I wasn't about to grow vegetables in all that crap. So, now I'm digging out our burn pit, which is good 50 ft from the trash heap that was supposed to become a garden, and what do I find? Well, so far I've found LOTS of beer cans, bottles, car parts, metal pipes and rods, broken glass, pieces of a lawn chair, sandals, a badminton racket, cinder block pieces, toys, a mostly burned counter top, and a bicycle - yes, a bicycle.

So again, I am sorting through the dirt trying to get all of the junk out, and already knowing that's not going to happen. So instead we will be buying a truckload or two of dirt to dump on top of it all so at least I wont have to worry about my kids cutting themselves on broken glass and metal poking up through the grass.

I'd like to line the edges of the new burn pit with something to keep the surrounding dirt from falling in and to make it look more intentional than just a hole in the ground. Ideally, I'd like to do patio bricks (the tall slightly rounded ones), but for this size of project, that would get pretty expensive. I haven't decided exactly what I'm going to use, but I'm thinking of checking craigslist for free broken concrete. I've seen it posted quite a few times and I think it would serve my purpose. It would be a lot more time consuming to break into appropriate sized pieces and stack than patio bricks, but I like the idea of using recycled materials and free is a good number. I'll post pictures more pictures as I get further along. 

Why I started my blog

When blogging first became popular, my thought was WHY?!? After all of things you have to cram into the day, why would anyone want to spend their extra time writing down their thoughts for all the world to see? And who, after a busy day at the office, has the motivation to write a blog instead of just crashing on the couch in front of the TV? Also, who reads all of these blogs?

Well, after a year of being a stay-at-home mom, I finally have my answer. Not THE answer, just mine personally. I'm not starting this blog because I suddenly find myself overcome with motivation, but because I have very little motivation and an overabundance of time. Its easy sink into the TV trap, but much harder to yank yourself back away from it. I used to have things to talk about - now my husband comes home and tells me about what he did at work, and I want to have fun stories too, but I don't. I have nothing exciting to say about the laundry, the dishes, or whatever DVDs I watched that day (We don't have cable), and since I quit working, I no longer have stories involving other people. I haven't been motivated to try new recipes, make crafts, or find activities to do with my son. So... the blog. I already established that I have nothing to talk about, so if I'm going to write a blog, I'm going to have to find things to DO so that I have things to talk about. I'd like to use this blog to talk about recipes and baking, crafts for kids (and some for adults), holiday how-to's, and other things of that sort, however, we'll see how it goes...