She Knits Shizknits

Christmas wrap-up

Well, Christmas has come and gone, and we have the piles of wrapping paper/boxes to prove it. Our house is full of new Lego sets, beeping Spy Watches, and K'Nex (which are turning out to be a big hit with Little Man). Here's how our Christmas went this year....

Christmas Eve day is always busy in our family. We celebrate CE with my mom, and open gifts CE night- a tradition that started when my parents got divorced many years ago and we had to split Christmas between them. So we'd do CE with my mom, and Christmas day with my dad. When we got married, it was still CE with mom, but we did two Christmas day celebrations: one with my dad, and one with the Dearest's family. Now that the kids have come along, we usually just celebrate CE with my mom, and Christmas day is spent at our house so the kids don't have to be torn away from their new toys to go someplace. The Dearest's family will usually have a post-Christmas get-together the weekend after, which works out perfectly. 

So we spent Christmas Eve at my mom's house, where we had a lovely dinner with Mom, StepDad and his family. Then it was time to open the gifts (like we could've forgotten- the small men asked every ten minutes "when is it time to open presents?"). The kids got a new Lego set of course, but they G'ma P also gave them a really cool crystal growing kit.  Those and their other gifts kept them busy while we watched the Polar Express. My mom was quite taken by the movie- can you believe she'd never seen it before?!? Wot?  I can pass her credit for one of my 1000+ viewings!

Mom also gifted me and the Dearest with a new waffle maker. I was super excited when I opened the box-we've been wanting a waffler for the longest time but never gotten around to getting one. The Dearest is a huge waffle fan, but frozen waffles are a pale imitation of the real thing so we don't eat many waffles around here. I think that's about to change because we used our waffler already and it's GREAT!  The waffles came out perfectly crunchy on the outside and fluffy on the inside....YUUUUUUUUMMMM.... I'm making myself hungry now and might have to go make some waffles for breakfast lol!

We got home late on Christmas Eve so the boys crashed pretty quickly.  Which was good because I hadn't wrapped a.single.gift.

oops (bad momma!)

Luckily the Dearest helped me out and we got done with the wrapping and arranging around midnight.  In our house, all the Santa gifts are wrapped in the same paper so you know which gifts are from Santa and which are from mommy/daddy/granny, etc..  Then it was off to bed for us tired elves...

I was expecting an early morning wake up call from the munchkins but they must have been exhausted because they didn't stampede into our room till nearly 8am!! The next few hours were a blur of opening gifts and excitement. I love this video of Little Man explaining his handmade gift for the Dearest:

LM knew the Dearest needed a new cover for his phone, but we didn't want to gift him with one because no one knew exactly which cover the Dearest wanted. So LM made Dadda a cleaning cloth for his phone...isn't that the sweetest?  Once all the gifts were opened, we put the turkey in the oven and did a lot of this:

That's LM playing with the K'Nex set Monkey Boy gave him as a Christmas present.

The Dearest and MB build the new Secret Agent set the kids got for Christmas.


a prefectly cooked Pommes Anna to go with our brined turkey...

I had to stop the Dearest from 'taste testing' or the rest of us wouldn't have gotten any!

I already posted the video of us trying out the kids' RipRider trike...now THAT was hilarious! We spent the rest of the day just hanging out and enjoying each others' company. We ate lots of delicious turkey, had extra helpings of pumpkin pie, and spent time playing outside with the neighbors....a perfect Christmas day!

Thanksgiving times two

It took me this long to post about Thanksgiving since we did it twice this year! On the official T'day, we had dinner with the Dearest's family. The weather was just gorgeous- it was probably 85F, though it cooled down pretty quickly when the sun set. It was warm enough for short sleeves!




And of course, here's the obligatory Clan photo:


We had a great time...I don't think the small men at anything except pumpkin pie all night!



It took me most of Friday to recover from all the turkey, stufffing and pie I ate, but that didn't stop me from doing some shopping online. There's no way you'll catch me waiting in line at Wmart at 4am! Waaaay better to shop online in my pjs, with a cup of hot tea and some gingerbread cookies at hand! Though the UPS guy is probably going to be sick of stopping at my house for the next couple of weeks!

Sis and Bro-In-Law came into town on Saturday, so we had a second Turkey Day.

The Dearest ordered a turducken from a local specialty grocer; we've never had one before and it was HUGE!


It had to cook for 9 hours so we put it into the oven at 1am, and took it out at around 11am....




I think it turned out pretty good, though there was a lot of "is this chicken?" "what's this? duck?" "I think I found some turkey!" at the table LOL

After we stuffed ourselves on the turducken, sweet potato casserole (made by BIL and Sis- YUM), and more pie, Sis and I headed off to do some shopping. We went to the Spectrum and checked out the new Forever 21 store there. The store has been closed for the past six weeks as they remodeled & expanded it- now it's so big it took us almost 45 minutes to just walk around and look at everything!

F21 is one of my favorite clothing stores- they usually have really cute, trendy stuff that doesn't cost an arm and a leg. The new store is also carrying some more nicely made stuff under the 12by12 label. The biggest drawback with F21 clothes is most of it is made to last only a season or two, but check out this 12x12 sweater I got recently:

It's pretty well made and will last quite a while as long as I don't shrink it in the wash! LOL I got this skirt while shopping with my Sis:

I think it will be fun for holiday parties this year, though I"m not sure what top to wear with it.  Speaking of holiday parties, I need to start planning for Monkey Boy's 5th birthday party. Yikes!  Time to start brainstorming....

Jealous of June....

Yesterday was one of those baking/sewing/laundry/cleaning days that makes me feel like June Cleaver...without the pearls. I wore my apron almost all day long, except for running out to pick up Little Man and the neighborhood kids at carpool.

I got roped into volunteering at MonkeyBoy's preschool- meet the new co-room mom for his class! *bow* thank you! One of the room mom projects for this month was making smocks for the Thanksgiving 'feast' party. I had bought the fabric last week, and yesterday I sat down to cut and sew the smocks. Cutting them didn't take long, even with Monkey Boy's "help".  He was so insistent about helping that I ended up giving him some scraps of fabric so he could cut his own designs out. 

After a while, we took a break from cutting/sewing to make some banana bread. Check out MB helping me with that too:

While the bread baked, I got my sewing machine and started sewing up the smocks. At some point we finished all eleven smocks, pulled out the banana bread, and made lunch...then it was time to pick up LM. The afternoon was filled with homework, cleaning/laundry, and getting ready for the evening rush. At least we didn't have soccer practice this week. Our last soccer games of the season were this last Saturday. Look at LM with his trophy (and the Dearest aka "Assistant Coach"):

I really wish I could get LM to give me a better smile, but nowadays he's into this strange grimace thing that shows off those huge front teeth!

Here is a quick iPhone shot of me and Monkey Boy at his team's trophy party. MB is so proud of his trophy, he has been carrying it around and showing it to everyone.

Strangely enough, both boys ended up on teams with green jerseys, even though they are in two separate divisions. That came in handy a couple of times when I couldn't find one or the other's jersey...I just put on whichever jersey I could find! LOL

Today is going to be super busy...We have friends coming over for a playdate in a few minutes...then it's off to preschool for MB, physical therapy and then a teeth cleaning for me, pick up at preschool, dinner, and finally the art fair at LM's school tonight. I was going to try and fit yoga in there somewhere, but I think that's going to have to wait till tomorrow morning. 

This is my second week of going to physical therapy and I'm not looking forward to it. I have an OLD (as in 12+yrs ago) knee injury from playing hockey, and it's really been bothering me for the past couple of years. Since I've been doing yoga quite intensively, I've really noticed how much weaker my left (injured) leg was than my right. I was having pain in my hip and knee and finally went to see my GP, who luckily specializes in sports medicine. He couldn't find anything wrong with a physical exam, so sent me for an x-ray, which came back clean.

The next step was PT, and I made my first appt. last week. I've never had PT before, but the therapist I got was great. Not only does she practice yoga and pilates herself, her little boy goes to the same school as LM. Her diagnosis was atrophy of my left hip flexor, probably held over from when I broke my left fibula (also playing hockey) 15yrs ago. It doesn't help that I have scoloisis and my pelvis is really out of whack. I was surpised that I would have pain from such an old injury, especially considering that I was/am pretty active, and felt that I had made a full recovery from the original injury.

The therapist thinks that the muscles in my left hip never fully regained their pre-injury strength, contributing to my knee pain and an extremely tight IT band. I never really noticed it before because I would compensate with the right side of my body.  But in yoga, we work both sides of the body equally in ways that most sports/exercieses don't. So the weakness in my left leg and hip became more pronounced as my practice progressed.

Luckily, the therapist didn't tell me to stop yoga...just to 'dial it down a notch'.  Also, no more walking downhill to LM's school for at least three weeks...and she added some exercises to help strengthen my left hip. She also worked on my IT band A LOT last week....in fact I had a bruise about eight inches long and two inches wide on the outside of my left thigh that proves it. Luckily, the bruise is healed just in time for her to do it again this week! I'm not complaining too much, though. Between the excercises and being more aware of how my leg moves while practicing yoga, my hip is feeling at least 60% better...and my knee is 90% pain free. That's amazing considering that I had such bad hip pain earlier this month that I literally couldn't walk after sitting for more than 10 minutes.  I would have to stand and let the muscles stretch for 30 seconds or so before I could move. Now I'm able to get up with minimal pain- woot! 

I'm not really looking forward to today's PT appt, but since it's working I'll have to go.  Now...it's time to tidy up, make a pot of coffee, and break out the banana bread for MB's playdate!

Memorial Day

This year's Memorial Day block party was supposed to be 'low key'.  We didn't pull out the waterslide, we didn't rent a jumphouse, we didn't put out a pool....we just sat around:

BBQd (lots of delicious tri-tip!):

...and let the kids just play. There was a lot of scooter and bike riding:

Then the squirt guns came out!



And of course we had to have water balloons. Why is it that water balloons take FOREVER to blow up, and the kids go thru them in seconds? I spent at least an hour blowing up about 200 water balloons. It took less than 2 minutes for them to all be used up!




The weather was just perfect: not too hot and not too cold. We started around 11am, and ended up staying outside all day long.  Around 6pm we finally decided to order pizzas for everyone who was still hanging out, clean up the street, and head inside to watch the Lakers game.

We finally got home around 7:30pm...just in time for a quick dunk in the tub for the small men.  They had their bath and then crashed HARD...I think they were both fast asleep before 8!  I don't blame them- I was pretty exhausted myself.  Even if all I did all day was sit around, chatting with the other mommas!

M-O-U-S-E spells 'rat'

We have a very untidy garage...well 'untidy' is probably an understatement. What's in our garage?  Not our two everyday vehicles, that's for sure!  The Funbus is parked on the driveway, and the Dearest's car is either in front of the house or on the side curb.  What IS in the garage??? The Dearest's non-operational Mazada Miata, all the kids' toys/bikes/etc., the Xtracycle, the kids' little electric Jeep....and just lots and lots of junk.

One corner of the garage holds all our stinky hockey gear. Last week the Dearest went in there late at night to pack his gear for a late ice hockey game. I heard him yelp, "I just saw a mouse!"

UGH

We have had problems with field mice getting into the garage in the past, but from the size of this little critter, it's a rat (probably a fruit rat). Seeing our uninvited guest spurred the Dearest to do some Spring cleaning in the garage.  So he spent Saturday morning and most of Sunday taking everything outside, sweeping and re-organizing. 

The Rat had made itself a nice little nest, complete with pieces torn off a rag rug, and a stash of stolen dog kibble. Quite cozy!  Unfortunately it had to go so the Dearest swept everything up.  He's going to lay traps today, just in case the Rat decides that it would still like to hang around.

Half the garage is still out in the driveway, but the Dearest says it will all (mostly) fit back in. We are giving away some stuff to Goodwill, and a lot of it will need to go in the trash.  But seeing the tidied-up garage is worth it!

What else have we been up to?

I made Orange-Lavender Crisps:

Oh these were GOOOOOD. I like orange and I like lavender....how can you go wrong with orange + lavender + butter? LOL The recipe calls for the cookies to chilled in the fridge, then rolled out and cut into shapes, but I couldn't get my dough to release from the countertop once I cut it. Because it's a shortbread dough, the butter starts to melt as soon as you remove it from the fridge, and it melts even faster as you handle it for rolling. So by the time I cut mine out, they were falling apart.

I finally shaped the dough into a sausage shaped tube, wrapped it in plastic, and stuck it back into the fridge.  After another 10 minutes of chilling, I unwrapped it and was able to slice of thin pieces of dough, which I placed on the cookie sheets and popped into the oven.  The crisps spread a bit in the oven so they were about 2 inches across once they were done. 

Amazingly, everyone who has tried them has loved them.  The small men ate probably a dozen apiece before I snatched away the remaining crisps! LOL  The recipes makes A LOT of small crisps so I was able to give away another dozen and we still had some left over. This is definitely a recipe worth repeating.

purple maze

We received a huge head of purple cabbage in our CSA basket this week. Our neighbor shares our basket with us, so I had to cut the cabbage in half for her. Look at how beautiful the inside is...

4o'clock snack

Christmas eve

Counting down the hours till Christmas morning...


watching Santa's progress on NORAD...
spreading out "magic reindeer food"...

eating candy canes...
Christmas Eve dinner with good friends...

opening their one Christmas Eve gift (and no, I did not make the open the matching pajamas!)

Monkey Boy got a Batman airplane, since that's his current obession...and LM got a Wizard Kit...

Now the small men are snug in bed, waiting for Santa to arrive!  Merry Christmas all!

the pumpkin hordes have arrived

We do love our pumpkin-ness here at Chez Shizzknits.....pumpkin pie, pumpkin ice cream, pumpkin poundcake.....if it's made with pumpkin, it's usually a hit. Every year around this time I start stocking up on canned pumpkin (usually the organic pumpkin from Trader Joe's).

But this year, as I blogged about earlier, we received a large pumpkin in our CSA basket that was obviously more for cooking than carving. So I thought I'd try making my own pumpkin puree.  It was alot easier than I thought- I used our CSA pumpkin + two other small Sugar Pie pumpkins I bought from the local grocery. There are plenty of places online with instructions for making your own pumpkin puree, here are just two to get you started:
Pioneer Woman
All Recipes

I went with the lazy-woman's method (similar to Pioneer Woman): Cut open your pumpkin, scoop out (most of the) the insides (while your 6yr old goes "ewwwww gross") and dump onto a pan. Cook in a 350F oven till soft- about an hour- and let cool.  Scoop out the softened flesh, process in a food processor till smooth, adding water if necessary.  Place in freezer bags in 1cup increments. Freeze.

This is our CSA pumpkin, just after I cut it open.

Look at all those yummy seeds! We roasted the seeds, and the small ones are still eating them since we got ALOT.  The three pumpkins I cooked ended up making 10 cups of puree. I mixed the puree from the CSA pumpkin with the Sugar Pie pumpkins since it was much wetter.  In fact I had to drain the CSA puree in cheesecloth for about an hour before it was dry enough to use.

So what have I been making with our homemade puree?

The afore-mentioned Pumpkin Spice Scones...

Pumpkin Cookies with Vanilla Glaze:

These were GOOD....they are slightly cakey with a crisp bottom and edges. The Dearest says they remind him of Snickerdoodles, but with a hint of pumpkin. My pumpkin-hating friend, Ms. J, even liked them.
Here's the recipe:

2.5 C    all purpose flour
1    tsp baking powder
1    tsp baking soda
3    tsp pumpkin pie spice (I love Penzey's PPS)
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 C    butter, softened
1.5  C    sugar
1     C    pumpkin puree
1           egg
1     tsp  vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350F.

Combine flour, baking powder, baking soda, PPS and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

Cream together the butter and sugar till smooth. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla. Beat till creamy.  Mix in dry ingredients (do not overmix, batter should be very wet and quite smooth).

Drop by tablespoonfulls onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.

Bake for 15-20 min, till edges just start to brown. Cookies will still look underdone on top.

Cool on a wire rack while making glaze.

Glaze:
2    C   confectioners' sugar
1    T   vanilla extract
3    T   milk

Mix sugar and vanilla in a medium bowl, adding milk 1 T at a time till glaze is desired consistency. You may also add a bit of molasses or cinnamon to the glaze if you want a more spicy icing.

Drizzle the icing over the cooled cookies with a fork.

Fight off cookie-grasping hands as you stuff your face with fresh, warm cookies. YUM.



I also made a pumpkin pie, pumpkin pancakes, and tomorrow I'm making Pumpkin Spice Lattes for a potluck. Right now I have about 5 cups of pumpkin puree still in the freezer....and I'm wondering if I'm going to have make some more, or if I should start worrying about the small men turning orange yet....

peeling, baking, and eating...

I really want Fall to arrive so some of the sweaters I finished over the summer can be worn, but the weather is really not cooperating. We had a mild summer and it seems we are getting our heat a bit later this year. The photo I took yesterday of the 100F temp is proof of that! I was a bit inland so it was warmer, but we still had 95F temps here- though it cooled down considerably last night and today is supposed to be 10 degrees cooler than yesterday. It would be nice to have some crisp Fall weather! It's been so hot that we have pretty much been staying inside in the A/C.

The small men wanted to bake an apple pie- I think it was actually an excuse to use our new apple coring/peeling machine. I let them wash the apples we had picked, set up the machine and gave them each a turn. 

First to go was Little Man.

At first he was very interested in how the machine worked...then suddenly it was..."How fast can I turn this thing??" Check out that concentration! Evidently, it all works better if you stick your tongue out. Next was Monkey Boy's turn. He got the hang of it really fast after watching big bro...

He even had time to flirt with the camera while turning...

Here's our recipe for apple pie...this makes the filling, which you can freeze for up to six months.

8cups sliced, peeled apples (we used Golden Delicious, Winesap, Galas and a few Fujis)
1cup   sugar
1/4C   flour
1tsp    cinnamon (we used Ceylon Cinnamon)
1/4tsp salt
1/3tsp nutmeg
2TBS   lemon juice
2TBS   butter, cut into chunks

1-gallon ziptop bags for freezing


I lined up all the bags and LM measured the dry ingredients into each bag. Then we used the apple machine to cut, peel and core approximately 20 apples.  It took about 5 apples to equal 8 cups.

Dump the apples into the dry ingredients. Shake everything up so it's all mixed and the apples are nicely coated.

Drop in the lemon juice and butter, seal and freeze immediately. If you let it sit out at all, it gets waaay juicy. We put our bags into the deep freeze right after filling each bag- make sure you lay the bags flat so they freeze faster and store better.

To use, defrost overnight in the fridge or on the counter for 30min. Pour into a prepared pie crust (or use the recipe below for a fresh crust) and bake at 375F for about 60 minutes.

Pie Crust
2cups    all purpose flour
1tsp      salt
1TBS     sugar
6TBS     butter (cold)
6TBS     shortening (we used Crisco butter flavor)
6-8TBS  ice water

Dump the first three ingredients into a food processor. Pulse till combined.

Add the butter and shortening. Pulse till combined...mixture will look like damp sand.

Turn on the processor and let it run while you drop in the ice water. Start with 6TBS. You want to get a nice, round ball of dough in the processor. Usually it only takes 6TBS, but sometimes you need to add more. When the dough balls up, remove from the processor, place into plastic wrap and put in the fridge to chill for at least 20 min.

To use, cut the ball of dough in half and roll each half out into a  1/8 inch thick circle that will fit your pie pan. Put one half on the bottom, fill with your apple pie filling, and place the second circle on top. Vent with one or two small holes, pinch the edges of the crust with fingers or fork to seal, and bake.

Yum!

We got a delicious pie out of our afternoon of apple peeling.  The crust turned out nice and flakey- I think the secret to a good crust is using the food processor. I've tried making crust with a dough blender before and never had good luck with it. The butter would always melt before I could get the dough nicely blended. The processor works so quickly that the butter stays nice and chilled so the crust is perfect. 

Oh, and no pics of the apple pie because we ate it so quickly that I never got a chance to get the camera out!