gettin' crafty with it

Irene came and went and boy, are we glad she's gone!

Our pre-hurricane preparations were not in vain as the storm hit hard in our neck of the woods.  Once the eye of the storm passed through, our power went out and while Jon manned the house (namely, working closely with neighbors to prevent the serious flooding in our cellars to become too damaging), Evelyn and I kept busy indoors.

[By the way - major props to Jon and our neighbors for their true display of old fashioned "neighborly-ness."  By working together, they kept a bad situation from getting worse.]

About five hours into lost power, I set Evelyn up with some play-dough while I made my first attempts at creating fabric flowers.  I've long admired the beautiful jewelry that many bloggers/etsy-site owners create with their fabric florettes so I thought it'd be fun to give it a try.  Why not, right?  I had plenty of time (although no access to an online tutorial - ack!).

So here they are!  I don't pride myself on being crafty AT ALL so this was a pretty big accomplishment!  And, I ended with a pretty cute ring in the process!

It was nice to bid adieu to Irene with a bit of loveliness adorning my right hand!

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here she comes

Oh, Irene.

I suppose we're ready.  Our cellar has been emptied.  Our pond has been drained a bit (not too much to make the koi uncomfortable but hopefully enough to prevent pond flooding).  The extraneous items on our property (grill, hammock, patio chairs, lawn ornaments, etc.) have been secured in the garage.  Lanterns, flashlights, and candles are on the kitchen counters, ready to be quickly accessed.  Batteries and other "essentials" have been purchased.  Local officials are issuing driving bans for the next few days so our pastor needed to cancel church.  I just finished making several phone calls off of the church directory to let them know of this cancellation (ah, the duties of a council president).

Now we wait.

On the plus side?  Well, our local library has every season's box set to one of my favorite childhood television series: Road to Avonlea.

Anyone else an Avonlea junkie as a kid?  My mom, sister, and I tuned in to this Disney Channel program every Sunday night for seven seasons.  It's been great fun to re-discover this series and I'm already on the second disc to the third season.  In fact, I just watched the episode to which the above photo is taken (Aunt Olivia's wedding to Jasper).  So until the power goes out, I'll be finishing up season three and moving onward to season four.  Jon's even enjoying it a bit, although he mercilessly makes fun of the soundtrack (too many woodwinds, especially bassoon, for his liking . . . apparently)!


I mentioned our pond up above.  Here is a picture of it . . . we love our gigantic koi!

  
The pond is directly next to our cellar door so if it overflows, it'll drain right on down . . . and if the power goes out, our poor sump pump will not be able to "save the day" as in previous instances.  I hope our fishies bury themselves in the mud in order to ride out the storm, otherwise they may find themselves swimming in the hot water tank!

Stay safe, everyone!

 

veggie lasagna

YUM!

Weight Watchers designated this week's theme to be "Go Meatless" (or something along those lines -- I'd have to pull out my weekly to be sure).  Part of our meeting, with my fabulous leader Chellay, was spent discussing yummy meatless dinner ideas and some inspiration was really flowing to me!

This afternoon, while planning out our weekly dinner menu, I decided to search out a new vegetarian lasagna recipe.  I've made my own spinach lasagna plenty of times but really wanted to branch out, especially since veggies are so fresh and plentiful this time of year!

My search landed me with an AMAZING Weight Watchers recipe.  I would HIGHLY recommend this one!  As always, I adapted the recipe a bit to our own liking, but here's the general gist . . .

1. Heat oven to 425 degrees.
2. Roast assortment of veggies with garlic, olive oil, and fresh basil for 25 minutes, or until very tender (stirring often).  Our veggie assortment consisted of one small eggplant, one zucchini, one yellow squash, three roma tomatoes, one small onion, shredded carrots, mushrooms, and two sweet red peppers. 
3. Pour half of your roasted vegetables into your blender (be sure that they're very tender).  Add about a half cup of water and puree.  
4. Meanwhile, you've boiled your whole grain lasagna noodles.  I needed 11 to fit three layers in my baking dish.
5. Layer your lasagna, from bottom to top: puree, noodles, puree, roasted veggies, fresh (shredded, part-skim) mozzarella, fresh shredded parmesan, noodles, puree, roasted veggies, cheese, noodles, puree, cheese.
6. Bake for about 25 minutes, or until bubbly.

Seriously, we gobbled this yup (lil' two year old Evelyn, included)!  I invited my sister over to dinner and she raved about it, too, which can be a rare occurrence!

I did manage to take a few pictures, albeit not many.  Regretfully, I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, as I was rushing to feed my hungry lil' one!

Roasted Vegetables

Bottom layer of Veggie Puree.

I think this is the third layer??

OH!  And did I mention that each serving (of what I cut - 12 servings in my pan) were only 4 POINTS PLUS?!?!?!  Such a lovely Sunday supper on this late [and rainy] summer evening!

Sunny Days

It was nearly a year and a half ago, but the other day, I received yet another compliment on Evelyn's first birthday party from March of 2010. She was just getting into Sesame Street, so we appropriately appointed the theme as "Sunny Days."

Here's some inspiration for any of you who are thinking of throwing a Sesame Street themed birthday party for your little girl . . .

We went with an orange and pink color scheme to bring a little originality to the Sesame Street party.  Orange = Evelyn's favorite color (even then) and the pink brought a bit of femininity.

Evelyn's all-natural smash cake.

Cookie Monster obviously wanted to hang with the desserts!

The birthday girl and her proud parents.

Since this is one and a half years ago, I was still carrying the 50+ lbs I have since lost on Weight Watchers.

The "piece of resistance" = Ernie's Rubber Duckie Punch!

"Chalk" Full 'o Love

I have some pretty amazing students!

Being a high school choral director, I have the pleasure of getting to know my students over the span of four years.  It's such an amazing experience to really watch them grow and develop into such inspiring young adults.

This year's group of seniors, the class of 2011, were particularly inspiring to me in my career.  First off, it was a gigantic class (I graduated 28 from the choral program - that's well over 10% of the graduating class . . . probably closer to 25%)!  Secondly, they were especially enthused and motivated in their vocal and theatrical endeavors.  Most importantly, I feel as though I really had the opportunity to "grow up" with this class, as they were freshmen when Jon and I got married (some of them even sang with our church choir at our wedding) and were VERY involved in my pregnancy with Evelyn.  [Seeing me directing our production of Grease while in my third trimester probably served as some of the best birth control for any high schooler to witness - I was a very cranky lady.]  They have been so involved in our lives that Evelyn always refers to them as "Mommy's kids."

Needless to say, it was very difficult to watch them graduate.

I had watched (and many a-time counseled them through) these kids overcome typical teenage growing pains (i.e. first dates, bad test grades, break-ups, familial frustrations).  I had also been deeply involved in many atypical, and sometimes very serious,  issues, including my one student's intense battle with cancer.  [By the way - Nick has been CANCER-FREE since the end of November!!!!!!!!!  Thank you, Lord!]

ANYWAY!

I found a lovely surprise left by a few of these special students in our department's office. . . .

I share an office with a very dear colleague and friend, Heather (our band director).  A few years ago, she thought it would be cool to hang a corkboard where we could display any senior portraits that our students gave us.

Well!  This corkboard has never been taken down by either Heather or myself since it was initially hung in 2009 but a student of ours recently started dropping hints to us that he and a few of his friends left a surprise in the office.  Boy, did we search EVERYWHERE for this "surprise!"  I mean, we had to clean the office out before our summer recess so we thought for sure that we would've uncovered said surprise at some point.  Having found nothing out of the ordinary, the student hinted to Heather that the surprise was somehow associated with the corkboard.  We pulled it off the wall, and this is what we uncovered .  .

Professions of their gratitude in rainbow chalk!  

So sweet and so representative of just how special these students are!

Thanks for making my life so lovely, Class of 2011!

Muffin Tins: Part 2

I highly recommend cooking with your muffin tin if you are the parent of a toddler.  Um, and if you are on Weight Watchers.  It allows for perfect portion control (for both scenarios) and adds a bit of whimsy to eating a balanced meal (for the toddler . . . okay, yeah for both . . . ).

We did muffin sized turkey meat-loaves this evening.

As I've previously mentioned, I'm not the biggest fan of meat dishes but these were pretty good (and only 3 points per "muffin" on the Weight Watchers PointPlus program).  Jon and Evelyn, however, really enjoyed this concoction.  I sort of made the recipe up as I went along, but here's the gist of it:

• Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees and spray muffin tin with extra virgin olive oil cooking spray.
• Combine in a large bowl one pound of all natural ground turkey, 1 egg, about 1/3 cup of skim ricotta cheese, 1/2 of a diced onion, 1/2 a cup of sliced mushrooms, 1 packet of no-salt bullion, and black pepper.  
• Using an ice cream scoop, place one serving (1 scoop) in each muffin.  Top with a pinch of seasoned bread crumbs and 1/2 of a cherry tomato.
• Bake for 35 minutes.

On another note, I've almost finished a mini-home decor project in the bathroom.   When I say "mini," I really mean a small project which may not seem like much to those of you who blog on these matters.  It was on my list of projects to get done this summer, however, and I'm sure we can all relate to the satisfaction found in crossing items off a "to-do" list.  Will post more upon its completion!

Enjoy your holiday weekends, everyone!

Fun with Muffin Tins

As I've mentioned before, one of my goals this summer is to make at least one new recipe each week.  This week, I've run into a bit of a theme where many of my meals have been made in a muffin tin!

We started with an old stand-by in our house: Mini Muffin Quiche.  Okay, they're probably really frittatas since I don't make a crust, but anyway . . .

I love this dish for many reasons.  Evelyn LOVES these little delicacies and will gobble them down like rapid fire, plus they're full of power foods which are awesome for her growth and development.  Also, they serve as amazing leftovers and can be reheated the next day for either breakfast or lunch.

Okay, so the recipe is as follows (adapted from a recipe I found on Weelicious last summer):

• Spray muffin tin with that handy extra-virgin olive oil cooking spray stuff and pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees.
• Whisk five eggs with about 1/4 cup of milk and about 1/2 cup of ricotta cheese.  Season to your preference.
• Add any vegetables.  This particular batch had spinach (3 cups pre-cooked with the water drained like crazy), 1 diced tomato, and chopped black olives.  I also added fresh shredded mozzarella.
• Pour into muffin tin.  Be sure to fill only halfway because they will rise!
• Cook for 25 to 30 minutes or so (or until a nice golden brown).

This morning, with the temperatures being so cool, Evelyn and I decided to use up some of our ripening produce and bake.  We took an old stand-by banana bread recipe with the intent of folding blueberries into the batter.  As we got going, I realized that our three little ripened bananas wouldn't have been enough to yield the two cups of mashed banana so we added some applesauce to the banana (and cut the 2 eggs to 1).  My, oh my . . .were these ever a toddler hit!

  Yummy, yummy.

Tonight's original dinner plans included MORE muffin tins (mini ground turkey meat-loaves) but we decided to treat Evelyn to a date out with Mommy and Daddy instead.  We hit up a local Salad bistro (where the kid's meal is practically as large as an adult-serving - ahh!), visited a local kiddie amusement park, and finished the night off with some fro-yo.    If these temperatures keep up, then I'll give the turkey muffin meatloaves a try tomorrow!