Happy Birthday and a Giveaway

Guess who turned seven? That's right Nature Girl is seven. Can you even believe it? I can't, she's growing up so fast!! At our house we have several birthday traditions. Our first birthday tradition is going to your favorite restaurant for dinner. The second tradition is choosing a birthday dessert that the rest of the family makes for the birthday person.
Nature Girl celebrated her 7th birthday with Boston cream donuts for breakfast and dinner at the Outback. She chose the restaurant and for her birthday dessert she wanted cheesecake. We baked it at night and placed it in the fridge to cool. The next morning she woke up and asked for cheesecake for breakfast. We served it up on our birthday plate.

This year we took a few of Nature Girl's friends to the Rainforest Cafe for lunch. Here she is wearing her new pink 7 shirt. The photo is a little dark as the resturant is somewhat dark inside. It was her first visit to the Rainforest Cafe. She loved it!

Here we are outside the Rainforst Cafe. These two girls have been friends with Nature Girl since they were all babies. It's fun watching them all grow up together. They're sweet girls! They had fun looking at all of the animals and watching it rain inside the restaurant. It was a great afternoon. All three declared "This is the best birthday party ever!"


This is Nature's Girl's latest self portrait. It seems appropriate to share along with her 7th birthday post. By the way, not only are we celebrating Nature Girl's 7th birthday with this post, but it marks our 200th blog post as well! Thanks to all of you that have shared our adventures with us over the last 200 posts.
With so much to celebrate, it seems only right to have a give away. I'm going to borrow an idea I saw posted over Sew Much 2 Luv. We'll choose three comments at random then send a special handmade surprise to the three lucky commentors sometime this year. Who doesn't love random surprise mail?! We'll choose our winners on February 2oth. Good luck!

Sweet Things!

My school got a grant to serve fresh fruit for snack this year. Last week, I sent one of my students to the cafeteria. My student brought what we needed and also brought back this bag of oranges. He handed it to me and said "Here's Mrs. Tacy, these are for you for all the nice things you do for us." I tell you, my heart melted right there! See I'm easy to please . . . a few kind words, some fruit and I'm happy! I thought it was very sweet!!!

Speaking of sweet things, here's my sweet little Nature Girl. She was bored the other day and asked to pull out the playdoh. She played for a couple of hours setting up a playdoh town. She got to wear the playdough apron her Mimi got her for Christmas.

These are her playdoh people sitting under a tree she devised. I love to watch her play and create!

Lists of Good Things to Do!

The new year is underway. What is it about the new year that makes us reflect on the past and plan for a better future? I'm not really one for making resolutions. I try to live my life a little better each year. So I don't have any resolutions but instead I have a focus for this year. My plan is to focus on taking better care of myself. This includes maintaining my weight loss(25 lbs,) organizing my life and materials (to decrease the chaos and stress,) taking better care of my family by focusing more on them(after all they are an extension of me,) and I want to set aside more time to be creative as this recharges my batteries. I've been thinking that some daily doodles, musings or crafting would help accomplish this. I sat down with Nature Girl to doodle for a bit today and this is what I created! I had a very enjoyable time and was happy with my results. I just love my crayola twist-able colored pencils. I bought myself a sketchpad about 6 months ago so I would have a place to doodle but I haven't been able to make myself draw in it. my reasoning behind not drawing in it is this, what if the doodles are horrible or messy? I haven't wanted to ruin the sketchpad. No worries I devised a new plan to get around this . . . I can doodle on paper then paste it into my sketchbook. I've decided to add my new year's mouse and my owl as my first doodles in my sketchpad. Best of all I spent quality time with Nature Girl and produced a doodle at the same time. See I'm starting the new year on the right foot.
Here's hoping 2011 is filled with good things for you and lots of time to create and enjoy life!

Pumpkin Bread

We had another snow day, so Nature Girl and I baked pumpkin bread together. We made three batches of batter so we ended up with five mini loaves and two big loaves. I haven't made pumpkin bread in a very long time. As a matter of fact, I probably haven't made it since I was pregnant with Nature Girl. Needless to say I had forgotten how delicious it is!!! I'm including the recipe if you want to try it. It's yummy with some butter spread on it.

Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients:

1 ½ cup sugar

½ cup vegetable oil

2 eggs

1 cup pumpkin pie filling

1 ¼ cup flour

1 tsp. baking soda

½ tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. salt

¼ tsp. cloves

¼ tsp. cinnamon

½ tsp. nutmeg

½ tsp. allspice

1/3 cup water

½ tsp. vanilla

Directions:

1. Mix together sugar, oil and eggs. Then add pumpkin.

2. Sift together flour, baking powder and soda, salt, cloves, cinnamon, nutmeg and allspice. Add to mixture.

3. Add water and vanilla. Mix well.

4. Bake at 350 in greased loaf pan for approximately 50 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean.

Yield: This recipe makes one large loaf.

A Belated Happy New Year!

True to form our Christmas cards went out late this year and now our New Years greeting is being posted late as well. Of course I guess it's better late than never. So Happy New Year to all of you! I hope 2011 is your year!
Nature Girl drew this picture of Jingle the huskie to ring in the new year. She received Jingle the huskie pup and his interactive story from Ann. Thanks Ann! Nature Girl loves him as huskies have a new place in her heart, a place right next to orange kitties. In her book orange kitties are right at the top.
This is my new year's doodle. So Happy New Year to all of you from Nature Girl and I!

Warm Woolen Mittens

From itchy ugly wool sweaters to warm woolen mittens is a snap. I've been collecting wool sweaters from thrift stores and family members this past year. I've washed and felted them and finally started turning them into warm woolen mittens over vacation. My photos are a little dark but I think you can still see what I've been up to.


I've made a couple of pairs so far. I used this tutorial and pattern here and my husband sent me a link for another video and pattern here. This video is kind of long but she shows you how to ensure that you end up with a right and a left mitten. Seems obvious but it's easy to end up with two left handed mittens so the videos are helpful. Before I watched the second video I ended up with two left handed mittens. Not to worry I used the same sweater to make the right handed mittens for my two lefties but I'm sad to say I now have four left handed mittens instead of two. Ha, ha! Thankfully it was an ugly sweater that my brother in law gave me. He's living in Hawaii and doesn't need the sweater or the mittens so nothing lost.


I made this pair of mittens for myself. I'd like to try making a matching hat for my mittens. Or maybe I could create some slippers or something else with my left over felted sweaters. I've spent some time looking around Etsy for some inspiration. Looking for some cute felt slippers? Check out these rabbit slippers on Etsy, aren't they amazing?!!

Lastly I wrapped a pair of my homemade warm woolen mittens for my mom. I thought the packaging was ingenious but when I asked my husband if he got it he said "What, is it packaging for poor people?" I explained that it was warm woolen mittens in brown paper packages tied up with string . . . these are a few of my favorite things. I told him my mom would get it as we watched the Sound of Music together lots of times when I was a child. He laughed when she opened it and I asked if she got the packaging. It turns out it wasn't as ingenious as I thought, I had to explain it to her too. She did love the mittens though!

Creative Juices

Here's a little something to get your creative juices flowing. Just before vacation began I got the greatest gift from one of the 4th grade teachers I work with. She's incredibly creative and talented and likes to draw, create and cook just like I do. She knew I've been eating healthy and trying to keep the weight I've lost off so she instead of giving me chocolate for Christmas she zentangled this orange for me. I love it! She also zentangled these postcards for me. I love them so much that I know I'm going to have a hard time sending them. Then again they're too beautiful to keep all to myself!

I've tried to get my creative juices flowing too. I created some zentangle Christmas bulb tags that I attached to the gifts I gave this year. I just love how relaxing it is to draw these. I've also finally gotten smart and started using my scanner to create/duplicate the designs I've made instead of redrawing each one.

I baked some biscotti then attached a zentangled bulb and a Dunkin' Donuts card so people could enjoy some coffee with their biscotti. I've had a new biscotti idea floating around in my head for about a year so I finally tried it. I usually make my favorite Almond Pecan Toffee biscotti but this year I finally tried making a lemon poppyseed biscotti too. I still like my almond pecan toffee biscotti the best but my mom and my husband really liked the lemon poppyseed biscotti so I'll have to try making it again.


I also made this tote bag for Ann, the teacher I share a room with. I tried to make a second one for another coworker but at 11:00 at night when I finally turned it rightside out the lining was about 6 inches too short. I guess at that hour of the night my creative juices had stopped flowing. I haven't ripped it apart yet to fix it. It's in the large stack of UFOs waiting for me to get back to it.