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Check out the delicious chocolate layer cake Hubby and the kids made and decorated! (Princess took the picture--not bad!)
The blue candles represent the 3 and 1. The others were strategically placed by Hubby so I couldn't blow them all out easily with one breath. But I had plenty of helpers, so it was no problem!

I've had a good birthday, two birthday meals, a bunch of Honey Bunches of Oats (my favorite!) Princess and Honey helped me make a birthday cookie for tonight. Here's the recipe--it is gluten-free, super quick, only 4 ingredients (PB, brown sugar, egg, chocolate chips) and tastes like reese's pieces. :) (yeah, I don't know how it works with no flour, but it does!)

I think Snuggle-Bug is getting tired of getting her picture taken. Here are some from this week:

No-fry potato doughnuts

These are very yummy, and the hardest part is having some extra mashed potatoes ready to use. This is how easy the dough is to work with:
Princess rolled and cut out a whole pan by herself while I was feeding Snuggle-bug!

Speedy helped, too. :) Honey had to be distracted from snitching dough.

Let me know if you'd like the recipe, and maybe I can get it added later.

What Motivates You...

...to vacuum under your fridge?

For me, it was some interesting squeaking I heard Wednesday night at bedtime. I'd convinced myself a belt or something on the fridge was making the noise. Then this weekend I started to catch a whiff of a suspicious odor as I walked through the kitchen. This morning I finally decided to get brave and investigate. With my flashlight in hand, and three little helpers also on hands and knees to check it out--I found a forgotten glue trap, complete with dead mouse. We fished it out and put it in the dumpster. I decided to vacuum under there and make sure the fuzzy piles were actually lint and not other members of the family. :) We haven't seen any mouse evidence, so now my question is: how many other mice are lurking around, unbeknownst to me? Guess I'd better buy some more glue traps.

A Bunch of Tidbits

I just had to take a picture of Honey having a snack at the 'big' table, I just feel like all of a sudden my baby is gone, and there's this little girl who's getting so big, and doing big things! It's so fun, when they start saying more words, getting more personality (even though hers seems to be pretty determined and strong-willed!), and communicating with actions! After the crib climbing incident(s) we moved her to the full-size bed in the girls room; tonight Princess moved back from the top bunk in Speedy's room to the full-size bed, and used her motherly ways to help Honey fall asleep without mom or dad. Aww. On the down side, Princess is starting to treat her kind of like a doll, carrying her around, etc.

Here's the big girl with Daddy on a pony ride at a PAT event. She cried when it was time to get off.
Princess cried when Daddy tried to put her on the pony. Screamed and kicked, to be more exact. She went back and forth all afternoon and evening about the pony ride--wanted to do it this year; then didn't want to wear pants because then she'd HAVE to ride the pony; wore her cowgirl boots so she could ride the pony; etc. etc. Something about getting up close to animals just scares her, I guess. Though she didn't mind feeding the smaller animals, through the fence.
Speedy was WAY more interested in feeding the animals than riding, but he did eventually hop on. I missed the photo op, so here he is cheesing for me.
Yummy--here's a new apple recipe I tried tonight. There seem to be as many different ways to make a kolache as there are to spell a kolacky--these are more like cookies (well, circle pies, according to Hubby); whereas the ones I grew up with were more like a fruity roll. Hubby even approved of these without glaze frosting, which says a lot!
The recipe called for apple pie filling, but I have so many apples, I peeled and chopped about 2-1/2 cups and made my own pie filling, with some water, cornstarch, sugar, and cinnamon. (just threw some in and boiled it for a while.) It's really a pretty simple recipe; but next time I think I'll let my butter soften a little longer before cutting it into my softened cream cheese and bending my pastry thingy all out of whack.

We also attempted apple fritters on Saturday, I think it was. Hubby had been craving apple fritters ever since we brought home the boxes of apples. I found out his scrumptious experience with fritters dated back to 5th grade when they made some at school. :) Needless to say, ours did not measure up!

Here's a shot of our apple print placemats (I just can't resist doing them again this year, it's such a FALL thing to do!) Some purple flowers from the backyard that the kiddos brought in for me; and some random artwork--glue and a tub of misc fuzzies, eyeballs, sticks, string, foam thingys. Hey, it got me a few minutes of quiet!

And if you've persevered this far in reading this long post, here's a funny from Princess today: "Mommy, do you have your leg up because your brains are hurting?"

It took me a minute to ponder, then I replied, "Yes, my VEINS are hurting." (Varicose veins--horrible this 4th time around!)

Applesauce

Well, I'm still working on using up all those apples. We have had lot of apple crisp the last week! My latest venture was trying another batch of applesauce, doesn't it look pretty in the jars? I think that's the biggest draw of canning for me--everything looks so neat in the jars. And we don't have much freezer space. Anyway,

Earlier this summer I made the more 'traditional' applesauce: quarter apples without peeling or coring into a big pot, and cook till tender. Put them a little at a time into a cone-shaped sieve (i.e. smusher) and mush it around with a wooden thing. (sorry for the blurry picture, I found it on ebay.)

Add sugar, put in containers, and freeze. This method was fine, just messy with the sieve, and all the apple discard working its way around and needing cleaned up. I also ended up with enough leftover juice for two batches of apple jelly.

This week's method: (mostly from here) Peel, core, cut apples into water with ascorbic acid (i.e. Fruit Fresh) to keep from browning. Cook apples, till tender, then throw them in the blender and in about 5 minutes all the applesauce is mushed! Fill jars, process in boiling-water canner. I guess it just depends which end of the process you want to spend all your time: Method 1--quick start, mushing takes forever. Method 2--cutting the apples takes forever (they were too small to use my 'spinner' (apple peeler/corer/slicer), but the blender part is SO fast!

I think I prefer the fast blending at the end. But not enough to make 77 quarts of applesauce, like one blogger I read. Seventy-seven. I was pleased with my 3 and a half quarts! :)

And my house had the most scrumptious smell...until the funnel cake episode.

My House Smells Like the State Fair

If you're not associated with MOPs, this year's theme is 'Adventures in Mothering.' Like a carnival or circus. So I won a door prize this morning with some carnival snacks, including Funnel Cake mix. I am always craving funnel cake, but don't want to shell out the bucks for it, so I made some for after lunch. It WAS yummy, but...there's a fine line between 'done cooking' and 'setting off the fire alarm.'

Speedy drug the covers off my bed into the closet again, and is taking his nap under hubby's hanging clothes again. I'm still not sure what draws him to the closet.

An Apple a Day

...Won't get me very far in using up all these yummy apples we picked at my parents' place over the weekend! We have about four boxes of galas and one box of jonathans. My mom told Hubby that jonathans are good pie apples, and his mouth has been watering ever since. He cracks me up!
Honey is not sure about reaching in to grab an apple...
Princess and Speedy are looking for 'good ones.' They lasted about 10 minutes picking, and then were off to explore other things. Can't blame them, I thought it was pretty warm out and the mosquitos were swarming me. (but not Hubby. not fair.)
Today was a gorgeous, cool, rainy, fallish day, and the kids helped me 'spin' (use the corer/peeler/slicer) apples for a batch of pie or crisp filling. I of course, didn't feel like six quarts was much to show for our work, but Hubby was thrilled to see it when he got home after practice.
I'm glad I can impress him--this year I've done more canning/freezing than I have ever attempted on my own before. (I used to get roped into helping some growing up, but I don't remember being as willing as my kiddos are!) I've gotten a lot of good info from family, this blog, and this blog, and the county extension website.

Love to Read

I've always loved reading, hopefully that is trickling down to my kiddos. Here they are, 'reading' chapter books. Honey had to have one, also, but of course looked up to say 'cheese!'

I hope this translates to lots of actual reading once they can read the words and not just the pictures! :)
So I haven't been that happy with how 'school' is going for us--Princess gets frustrated if things are too hard, and I think she's not quite ready for what we're doing. Then there is Speedy, who REALLY wants to be involved, but completely on his own terms. I mean, I want it to be fun, not frustrating, so I'm researching online to see if I can find some free resources that are literature-based (where the activities are kind of based on a book of the week or something). I'll keep you posted. Or maybe I just need to set aside the same undivided time just to play games, do puzzles, art, sing songs and read. More relaxed. But I always feel like somewhat of a failure if I quit something in the middle. Which is silly--if it's not working for us, it's not working.

On a completely random note, I finally finished up two batches of apple jelly. Sure-Jell makes it pretty easy, but it was still kind of intimidating to try.

In the kitchen

I don't know if it's the time of year, or 2nd trimester nesting, or just feeling better after my sinus/ear infection, but we've been spending a lot of time in the kitchen! Here are my three little helpers, ready to help roll out pie crust. First there was one, then two, then the littlest one carried a chair over to stand on as well. Cute, but where am I supposed to stand?? Here was our finished cherry pie--there wasn't quite enough dough for a top and bottom crust, and I didn't feel like making more, so I used a play-do cutter to make these shapes. Not blue-ribbon worthy, but I thought it worked out pretty well!
We've also made apricot jam (with apricot pulp ready to go from my Grandma); salsa; and today tackled crabapple jelly. I've never made it before, thankfully the crabapples were the biggest I've ever seen, so it wasn't too bad. I didn't have any cheesecloth to squeeze the juice from, so used an old clean T-shirt cut into a square. Then for the first time, I tried a hot water bath to seal the jars so I wouldn't have to put them all in the freezer...and it worked! Yeah! Now I have a 5-gallon bucket of apples and some pears to mess with...