Refreshing cocktail, a reminder of relaxing spa time

Cucumber water, cool, simple, light a great spa refresher.  How to bring it home to an equally described drink in cocktail form?

Muddle (squish up w/back of the spoon) 2 slices of cucumber
1 shot of HENDRICK'S Gin
Tonic

over ice and voila, seriously I'm not a G&T girl but I LOVE these Cucumber Gin & Tonics, so delicious!

Easy, edible thank you

I love my 'I'm so brilliant' moments. Our landlady helped watch over our two cats while we were on vacation last week and we were at a loss as how to thank her. She's older and has her own business and done well for her self, translate has everything she wants/needs and doesn't need some silly souvenir from our vacation.  The sun is shining, finally, and it is a beautiful summer day so I decided to bring a little taste of summer to her and made an Edible Fruit Bouquet.


 

It was super easy to put together.  I ran by the Dollar store and bought a really cute painted, terracotta pot and some wood skewer sticks then on to the grocery store for fruit.  Admittedly, I did buy canned pineapple as I thought it would help me get it done faster since it would already be in a nice round shape but they were too thinly sliced and hard to work with.  Also, the raspberries & kiwi didn't hold up well, they were too fragile.  What did work was cantaloupe for adding bulk, mainly in the middle of the bouquet, strawberries, orange slices & blueberries. 

I ran cling wrap over the top of the pot and secured it with a rubber band which I then tied a pretty bow around it to cover it up.  Poking the skewers through the cling wrap worked well and added a little security to hold everything together.  I'm not sure how to change this for the future if I make another.  Also, the flower pot I bought was great since it was a pot & saucer in one so it added weight to the base, I imagine just a pot might tip over easy.

Kale Chips for the kids

The buzz in our toddler classes, when talk of healthy snacks comes up, has been Kale Chips.  The moms have been bragging about just how easy to make and healthy they are.  The idea of Kale chips intrigued me, not because my kids aren't great eaters but I find it hard to find snacks with crunch that are healthy.  Also my first and last run in with Kale was when it showed up in an organic vegetable delivery box.  I could not seem to wash away the grit enough and so it was like eating spinach with sand and the taste was not impressive.

The most basic and quick recipe I heard was after washing, toss with a little olive oil, put them on a cookie sheet in a single layer, sprinkle with salt and bake at 400°F for 5min*.
*ok, so this really, fast 5min cooking did not work, at least with our oven.  In the end it took 25min before they were crisp

The chips were only o.k. partially because I skipped on the salt on half of them but honestly they need a little salt.  The best was when my husband added his touch to the unsalted chips by sprinkling a bit of soy sauce, yum!  The kids enjoyed them quite a bit but warning!  they are super messy and crumble into tiny, green specks.

As I like to involve the kids in food prep as much as possible there contribution was to tear up the kale and they even instinctively knew to separate the leaves from the stems.

Peas & Carrots for our outdoor kitchen

We collected small stones that were the perfect size to paint up some peas & carrots for outside play.  I had no idea what a great time consumption this would be, it kept the kids busy for a nice chunk of time.  They took the job pretty serious and seemed to enjoy having something other than a paper to paint on.

Our first home made I Spy books

The kids had fun with this activity, it was only because I ran out of contact paper that we didn't do more pages.  I spent a lot of time scouring weekly sales flyers and clipping pictures that the kids could relate to, ladders, fruits, vegetables, wheelbarrows, tents, flowers and the list goes on.

   
 
Clear contact paper from the Dollar store that I cut into little book sizes worked perfect as I knew sticking the pictures to the sticky paper would be easy for the kids.  Also, using contact paper avoided any glue mess.  I taped the pages to the table sticky side, put the clippings in reach of the three kids and added kids! 
During nap time, I covered each page with another sheet of contact paper and added color backs with double sided tape.  The kids love their 'I spy' books!  We'll continue to add more pages as time goes on but for now everyone is happy with their two page books because they made them all by themselves.

Spot Like - eMeals

I can't save enough about eMeals, it saves me time, money and my marriage!  What is eMeals?  It is an online meal planning resource.  If you are  a savvy a cook and have time then it is probably not for you.  I am not a cook and I have had little time to learn with the arrival of our triplets 2.5yrs ago.  This website offers weekly MENUS and a SHOPPING LIST and it gets better....they scour the sales flyers at a number of stores so the plan you pick is based on the weeks CURRENT SALES!

The meals are easy to prep and after you have been a regular customer as myself, you learn how to move the menus around for more variety and what ingredients to have on hand when you do find a good deal or if you belong to one of the wholesale stores.  It only costs $5 per month if you buy the 12 month plan for someone to tell you what to cook and what you need to buy!

My husband was pretty unimpressed with my cooking prior to this discovery so when I became a stay at home mom I figured it was the least I could do to provide a nice warm meal for him.  I feel like an amazing chef now days and have stashed away some of my favorite meals for future dinner parties.  My husband is also very happy about having a wife that cooks!

Love, love, love eMeals!

eMeals Easy Meals for Busy and Frugal Families

Making colored pastas, pass or fail?

This blogger made some really pretty colored pasta, so I thought fantastic, I'll give it a go.  Thank goodness my kids are forgiving as mine did not turn out as pretty.

We try the best we can to do things with as little impact on earth as possible so I decided to use a glass pasta jar instead of a plastic bag to do the dyeing.  I figured red would be a good solid color to do the test run with. After a half day of dyeing this was the result using vinegar & food coloring in a glass jar, shaking it variously and letting the kids shake it up as well.

I added more food coloring and let the noodles soak but honestly things didn't change much so I had to dig up a plastic bag.  As you can see by the picture above the results were well, disappointing.  Too much vinegar?  Glass jar not a suffocating enough seal?

I poured out the liquid and started with a lot less vinegar and more food coloring now in a plastic bag.

I'm not sure what happens when I get excited about little projects like this but here are the results and they are for me a bit of a let down -

I know it is very hard to tell but from left to right, Green, Red, Turquoise, attempt at Purple that came out Black and in spot #5 Orange.....  The beauty of being a mom of 2.5 yr olds is that they think these noodles are super! They love them and have had the best time sorting the colors and stringing them but their favorite activity is to pour them from cup to cup.

I would say for the finished product mom failed, I won't be selling my pasta jewelry any time soon.
From the triplets perspective it is a pass, they have no idea what they are suppose to look like and they are entertained, double bonus!