Charades a game for the toddler in your world. This is pretty genius actually, in our house most of the games are geared toward our 5 year old … so having something that really works with where our toddler is in life sounds perfect.

A-MAZE-ING! Corny, I know! But accurate none the less. Speaking of games and kids – my daughter is a maze freak so this is great. I’m thinking these would be good to pull out on our way home from school. Get her mind unwound from the day, maybe loosen up some of the stories I’ll be dying to hear but she’s not entirely ready to share ?? It’s a process, I know. (Also check out these other kid mazes, a little easier)

Penguin family super fun and free printable for your wall. The entry way? Your office? They need these penguins.

Baby Shower invites Ok really, I just love the ABC design and color of these. I might forgo the invitation and frame one for a craft room or even my office. Having varying sizes of things to look at in colors that inspire you is always a good idea.

Passwords are hard to keep straight.

Shapes! Dinosaurs! Adorable!

Money Bingo I printed these off this week because I was tired of hearing “I’m bored!” and we’re working on a no-nap schedule for the 5 year old in preparation for school. Yes, she still naps … every single day. What I loved about this game was two-fold. It was sneaky because she was learning something (which she loves to do), it was a game, it was time together. The best part? watching her light go on as she put two-and-two together and seeing her eyes sparkle as she looked at me with pure delight in herself. I also liked how this game provided an easy way to talk about money values. Pennies, nickels, dimes … their sizes vary as do their values and she really seemed to understand that in the perimeters of this game.

Free Save The Date with a vintage twist. So pretty!

Make Stuff

A clock with paper and clockworks. Love this.

Build some shelves which I plan to do for the apartment because school paper is about to take over every square foot in this space and I’m not about to let it win.

ReBeautify that bronze thing in the corner… oh! It IS a lamp! How lovely.

Make rubber stamps the adorable potential is all over the place on this one.

Pine cone runner. There’s something about woodsy elements to this time of year that really makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Plus, this is stunning.

Homemade Bug repellent You’re welcome.

Oh Martha, you never steer us wrong Map Coasters!

Outdoor games Please make this, someone. This looks like ridiculous fun.

Shelves for that wasted space I have the building bug right now.

CUTE! Paint chip bag. Love love love.

More shelves – these I’ll be making for our new kitchen. Yay!!

In my rabid searching of the Internet for fun DIY projects and inspiring projects I came across Bethany Actually’s tutorial on homemade vanilla which looked super easy and completely worth the effort.

I looked into the suggested link from Bethany’s blog about where to buy the bottles and decided to ask friends on facebook if anyone might be interested in ordering with me. Shipping was quite expensive for only 12 bottles so I figured if we could order a few more and disburse the cost we might be ahead before we even begin.

Thankfully I got 3 other friends, Donielle, Jill and Katie to combine efforts and order bottles together.

Then I found the vanilla beans on amazon and Katie and I ordered them to split since we only needed 20 beans for the vanilla recipe. We ended up getting 60 which left us each with 10 extra beans to use however we wanted … I added some into a cookie recipe, used them in my Raspberry Charlotte and still have some left over to use in baking. Yum!

SO … now that we have everything we need … let’s make some vanilla!

Gather your beans, vodka, and bottles.

And have a funnel and glass measuring cup near by.

I started by cutting all 20 of my beans into 3 parts each, then made 12 piles with the vanilla bean pieces for each bottle.

Put the beans into the bottles until all the bottles have their beans!

Measure 1/2 Cup Vodka into the glass meassuring cup and pour through funnel into each bottle, repeat until all bottles are full. Close with caps.

Place in a sunny sill to distill for up to 4 months.

Enjoy!

**A few notes: Mine have been sitting in the sunniest sill of our apartment for about 2 1/2 weeks and are very amber in color already. They also have a small amount of film at the top and I’m really hoping that it’s just because of the denseness of the distilling vanilla in the sun and not because something green and unfriendly is growing. Right now, I’m going with it’s part of the process. I’ll let you know.**

A few Sunday’s ago we hosted our first Cocktail Party at our new apartment. It was a way for our friends to see the new place but also a wonderful way to have friends over and finally use some of my ideas for decorating and enjoying a fun evening.

We made super fun use of the mustaches.

I tried a few new recipes and made some yummy treats.

And we even had games to play.

Getting together with our friends there usually is never a lack of conversation, but since this evening was specifically for adults only I decided to try to steer the conversation in a direction that would make everyone think of something other than where soandso’s kids were for the evening. Not everyone has children and it can be pretty difficult to sit in a circle and only ever hear myself talk about my kids. So the Conversation Game was a way for me to practice using other parts of my brain and to keep it interesting.

The first question we pulled out of the jar was “What are your thoughts on the oil spill and BP’s current reaction to the problem?”

Wowza! We hadn’t had enough PomTini’s to answer that one yet … so we skipped it. I had a blast going through the questions and hearing everyone’s answers. After 10 years of knowing and hanging out with these guys, I still learned something new about them … which was refreshing and fantastic.

The last slip I pulled from the jar as people were getting ready to head out was “Refill your drinks!” … ha! A little late in the evening for that one, but a perfect ending nonetheless.

Unfortunately I failed to get the invites in the mail early enough for an RSVP but I did print them! I chose a template from Download and Print and customized them with this invitational message:

join us for a

Cocktail Hour @ Schaap’s New Roost
sunday, august twenty-second
at
seven o’clock in the evening

address street, holland

rsvp is requested by august eighteenth 

adults only, childcare not provided

Next time we host a party it’ll be my first goal to get the invites in the mail 14 days prior to the event.

It was a blast! We can’t wait to do it again, have you hosted any fun parties lately? For a birthday? A friend or family member? A wedding or even a graduation or retirement bash? I’d love to hear how you pulled it off, helpful tips you thought of or creative ways you decorated for the event.

Here are more photos of our fun evening.

We had our first party at the apartment last week and it was a blast. I finally put some of these links to good use.

Come along for the ride, lets make some mustaches!

I downloaded the template for the mustaches here and then bought a couple sheets of brown card stock from a craft store to print the template on to.

Cut them out.

Grab your glue of choice and some wooden sticks (skewers work great too) to have close by.

Turn your mustache over, dab a dot of glue and stick a wooden dowel down.

Repeat until all the mustaches are mounted on dowels or until you have as many as you’ll need.

Let them dry and then take them for a spin!

I set them in a large container for our guests to grab as they walked in.

Enjoy!

More details coming this week.

In the mean time, please discuss amongst yourselves in the comments about the best month for the “Healthy Cooking Demo” and there will be a slight cost to this one to cover the food. September or October?

I’ll be doing a Holiday Cooking Demo early December as well. Dates and details will be discussed and released via the facebook page in November. If you have specific requests please share them!!

Your coffee should have spent the night in the fridge. Maybe it spent 2 or 3. Which is fine. Mine spent 2 nights in the fridge the first time I did this.

Which means you should be starting with: A mason jar (or your French Press) full of dark, murky water and coffee beans … and your French Press if you went the mason jar route.

Here’s what my coffee looked like after 2 days in the fridge.

And the coffee grounds went from the top (from Day 1) to the bottom (now Day 2).

Pour the whole shebang into the French Press.

I tried to knock as many of the grounds into the French Press that I could.

I wanted all the available flavors and caffeine. ::wicked smile::

Your French Press is almost ready for the working magic of SQUEEZING the life out of the grounds for your coffee.

Grab the thinger. I don’t know the technical names. The top … with the mesh and the filter thing. Yeah, that one.

And push down, squeezing all the grounds to the bottom, leaving you with the filtered cold press coffee. It’s a beautiful thing.

Now grab a glass or mug. I chose something I could see through because I wanted to check out the color and I was taking photos so I thought it was appropriate to show you as well.

And then pour.

And ENJOY!

He had my interest at sweeter.

This How To is the process for DAY ONE. Lets get started shall we?

You’ll need a mason jar with lid, grinder, coffee beans. (And water.)

If you don’t have a grinder – you need coarse ground beans. Maybe along the lines of something for a French Press.

Start by grabbing a handful of coffee beans to throw in the grinder.

Assess the situation and add more beans if needed. I’m pretty sure you need to end up with about a third of your mason jar as ground beans. Pretty sure because when I was getting the recipe we were at the closing of our former home and my mind was kinda of freaking out. But I was REALLY interested in the sweet coffee, so I focused. Kind of. (Rich, please feel free to correct this process!)

Now add the second handful.

And you’re ready for the grind!

I have a push grinder so all I need to do is apply pressure to the little white thing with my finger. Like this …

^^ Not applying pressure

^^ Applying pressure … See the difference? Yea, it’s slight. There are a couple different home grinders available, this is on the cheaper end of the ones out there. Right around ten bucks.

So any way – I counted to three and then checked my grind.

It was a little to coarse I thought so I put the lid back on, applied pressure for only a second more.

And then I was happy with the coarseness. There were less, if any, whole beans left.

Now for the mason jar.

Add the ground beans to the jar.

You’re going to need more coffee.

So grab another batch of the beans, grinder, pressure, DONE!

That looks better!

Now fill with water.

Get ready to shake it!

Place it in the fridge over night.

And DAY ONE is done. It looks like a ton of steps but the whole process will take less than 3 minutes if you have everything out and ready to go.

Tomorrow we’ll drink it together!

Skip ahead to see DAY 2

Healthy brownies. Really? That don’t taste like cardboard? Um, yes. These are rich and not entirely sweet (over the top), there’s also no flour so the light airy taste just isn’t there. That’s not a bad thing! They’re good, really. They’re not like fudge although in the photo they look very dense – I don’t know how to explain this, you’ll just have to try them. My kids loved them and they have no idea they’re healthy. All they saw was chocolate and heard me say brownies – done deal.

You’ll need: Eggs, garbanzo beans, mint (optional), agava nectar (or maple syrup, honey – some natural sweetener AND SPLENDA IS NOT THAT SWEETENER!), baking powder, chocolate chips.
I have a problem with splenda. Please forgive me.

Staty by melting your chocolate – you can do this however you normally would – I use a double boiler but I used this makeshift one because most people either don’t have a real one or don’t know what they are. All you need is a heavy sauce pan 1/2 full of water and a heat resistant bowl to set on top of that pot. The steam will do the work without burning the chocolate.

While those are working on melting – throw your beans, eggs and mint into a blender to mix up.

Check the chocolate – it should be well on it’s way to melting.

Then add your baking powder and agave nectar to the mix, blend it up.

Chocolate melted? Awesome, add that to the mix too!

Mmmmmmmmmm.

Put it in a greased 9X9 or 8X8 pan.

Bake and then let cool in fridge …

Cut and serve!

Then please ask a little taste tester to try them out.

ENJOY!
Recipe:
Prep Time: 10 minutes            Cooking Time: 45 minutes
Yields: 8-12 brownies
 
Ingredients:
1 ½ cups dark chocolate chips or carob semisweet chips (I use Ghiradelli’s 60% cocoa)
2 cups garbanzo beans, drained and rinsed
4 eggs
2/3 cup agave nectar or ¾ cup brown rice syrup
½ teaspoon baking powder
Optional, blend in some mint leaves
 
Directions:
1. Melt chips slightly.  You can place them in a heat resistant bowl on top of a boiling pot of water until melted.
2. In blender or food processor, combine beans and eggs. (and mint!)
3. Add sweetener, baking powder, and chips. Process until smooth.
4. Pour batter into 8×8 or 9×9 inch pan.
5. Bake at 350 degrees for 45 minutes.
6. Allow to cool in fridge, cut and serve.

I have days where I need to create something. Anything. Most of the time that means writing, and right here. The other times it generally means in the kitchen.

I used this recipe and went from the hip as follows:

1 and 1/4 cups Amaranth
1 cup uncooked quick-cooking oats
2 tablespoons ground flaxseed (flaxseed meal)
1/4 cup finely chopped dried apples
1/4 cup finely chopped pepitas (pumpkin seeds)
1/3 cup brown rice syrup
1/2 cup almond butter (which I made on my own!!!)
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Once everything was blended well I transfered to a pan, any size you pick, that was oiled and used wax paper to smoosh it evenly.

Then stuck the pan in the freezer for about 30 min to harden everything together so I could cut it up, photograph it and then eat them! YUM!

The pan I used, for the shape of a “granola bar”, yielded 6 bars.

I tried making my own fruit roll ups last week after reading about it here and here. There were some REALLY good deals on strawberries last week so I went out and bought 8 pounds.

Oh yes.

I found out that my oven turns itself off after being on for 12 consecutive hours. I had a batch of just strawberry and a batch of strawberry/kiwi. I had 3 pans in the oven over night and the strawberry batch was ready in about 10 maybe 11 hours. The strawberry/kiwi batch (2 pans) took more like 15.

Then I still had some left over so yesterday I made another batch of the strawberry/kiwi and it was ready in about 5 hours, on it’s own in the oven.

Here’s what I think:

After you’ve done your reducing of the puree – stick it in the fridge overnight. The next morning, preheat your oven to 170 or 200 – something low near there and dehydrate your cooled puree. It goes faster, or it did for me. About half the time.

Enjoy!

** I modified the linked recipe – I only used berries, applesauce and agave nectar. Use what you have, what works for you. Have fun!