Homemade Crab Cakes

As this weekend rolled around the baby started to get really crabby.  We took her temp and found she had sprouted a low grade temperature.  We have been LONG OVERDUE for a quiet weekend and used this opportunity to slow down, pull out our cookbooks and spend some quality time together as a family.

We started the weekend off with getting ahead on some homework...

Then the Mister and I did something we haven't had the chance to do in quite some time.  We rolled up our sleeves and made a beautiful and delicious mess in the kitchen together.  

(This recipe comes directly from The Lady & Sons cookbook.)

Delicious Homemade Crab Cakes

Buehrle is silently willing the Mister to drop a piece of crab on the floor.   Drop it!  Drop it!  Drop it!!!  Droooooop iiiiiiiiiiiit!!!!!!!!!!

I don't know about you, but I am a huge fan of crab cakes.  I order them for an appetizer almost every chance I get.  I was surprised to find these homemade versions cost just as much as one appetizer (usually 3-4 cakes) while dining out and was incredibly easy to make.  The recipe says it serves 4-6.  We used them as the main course, while also serving sauteed asparagus and mashed potatoes.  At the end of our dinner we still had leftovers!!

• 1 lb crab meat (We bought lump crab meat and it worked perfectly)
• 1/3 c crushed Ritz crackers
• 3 green onions, finely chopped with tops 
• 1/2 cup finely chopped bell pepper (We used yellow)
• 1/4 c Mayo
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tsp dry mustard
• Juice of 1/2 lemon
• 1/4 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp salt
• dash of cayenne 
• Flour for dusting
• 1/2 c peanut oil

*This recipe also had ingredients for a tartar sauce, but I thought it was disgusting.  Next time we make these I will find another sauce to dip them in.  I would love suggestions if anyone has a good crab cake dipping recipe!

1. Mix all ingredients together except flour and peanut oil.  Shape into patties and dust with flour.  (When you shape them into patties make sure you squeeze them a little to get rid of some excess moisture.)  This will help them retain their patty shape.  After you make the patties dust them on both sides with flour.
2. Pan fry in peanut oil over medium heat until golden brown.  (4-5 minutes) Flip and cook the other side till golden brown as well.

* After the first one you are either going to need to cut your cooking time or turn your oil down.  We also lined a baking sheet with paper towel and set the oven to 200 degrees to keep the cooked crab cakes warm while we finished cooking the others.

This meal is definitely family approved.

We finished our weekend with Yahtzee.............

(Where Rhiannon promptly kicked our butts twice!)

(This is how Clara plays Yahtzee.....)
















Story time for the babes....

An early Valentines Mani/Pedi for Rhiannon and I!

Our color choices

And with one of the most delicious things ever created.......

How is this beer still the most delicious beer in the whole entire world?  I'm in love!

Happy Monday!!!

Vinyl Finger Paintings

Well I don't know about you but I am so glad it is Friday.  This has been one of the most emotionally and physically trying weeks I have had in quite some time.  On top of half the household getting the flu and the dog deciding to start using the floor as his toilet again and being told my dress probably wouldn't get fixed in time for the wedding when the wedding is six weeks away,  I was also dealing with unjustly getting dumped on emotionally.  At times like these I have to remind myself to revert to my old motto's.  Forgive fully and It can always get worse.  Yesterday that is just what I decided to do.  I took a deep breath and walked away from the situation.  I hope by doing so things will just eventually calm themselves out.

Sometimes it is so hard to walk away and keep your mouth shut when you know there is so much more that could be said.  I know that I have especially have a problem with that.  Now that I am older I am trying to not get sucked up in anything negative and keep only positive thoughts.  Like most I know, I lived most of my twenties being angry, confused and mean.  While I wrap those awesome 20's up I am doing the best I can to keep things positive.

That is actually why I started this blog.  To have a constant reminder of all the good this life has given me.

I must say, the week of hell ended on one of the most positive notes ever! Life has proven to be good again!  Last night I got an email announcing the arrival of one of my most precious friends first baby!  And it is a BOY!!!!!!!!!

I am going to steal that adorable little guy and do all sorts of boy-ish field trips that my girls would never do with me.  I am SO PROUD of you N&A!  You are going to be such wonderful parents and I can not wait to meet the little man!!!!!!!!

Easy Kid Art

Back to my pinterest crafts.  I saw a lot of kid paintings that involved vinyl lettering and finger painting.  Not only did it look easy I had everything in my house to do this, so one random tuesday night when we had nothing better to do I busted out:

• Trash Bags (easy drop cloth)
• Paint (finger paint would probably of been the best choice but we used acrylic)
• Canvas (bought on sale over a year ago)
• Vinyl lettering (leftover from the science fair)

Take your trashbag and cut it so it lays flat for the worlds easiest drop cloth clean up.  Then take your letters and write whatever you want as well as make any design you want on your canvas.  Ours looked like this.

Then put your paint in separate blobs on the trash bag and let the kiddo's go at it!  

Right before...

A few minutes into this I realized Clara was still confused on what she was supposed to do...

So Rhiannon and I helped in giving her some direction.

(As you can tell by the video, she definitely got it after that and it didn't take long for the canvas to be caked with paint.)

Since the canvas was so caked with paint it was a little hard finding the letters with out messing up their creation.  I am actually pretty sure there are some dots still buried under all that paint!

Final project:

Clara is so proud of this.  She always points to it and says "Mine, Ne-ne.  Mine, Ne-ne."  (Toddler translation:  Look what Rhiannon and I did!  Look what Rhiannon and I did!)

One last friday thought for you all, I found this online and feel like I need to share.  This is how I am living the rest of this year.  

The only thing that is missing is MORE HAPPY.  

HAPPY FRIDAY!

Salad Shakers and dairy free fudgecicles

So Clara had a pretty good birthday at home.  She got bacon and potato pierogis, paper dolls (Tangled, of course), Sticker book (of Tangled), a cake (with Tangled, do you see a trend here?), a trip to the park with all of her favorite people and BALLOONS!!!!!

The kid loves balloons.  So I bought 16 helium filled balloons for our little party.  

Do you know how hard it is to get 16 balloons into a small car????  

It took me about 15 minutes and when I finally got them all in the trunk a couple across the parking lot started clapping.  They watched me the whole time.  I'm sure I looked VERY special but I didn't pop a single one!

Funny thing about this cake, I procrastinated on getting one ordered in time for Clara's actual birthday.  The ladies at Jewell told me there was NO WAY they could have her cake ready before 3 pm.  

I asked if I could just get a print out of the tangled scene I wanted to use and put it on a plain old cake.  Did you know you could buy just the printed frosting sheets?  I got the cake done in plenty of time (seriously all you do is put it on top of the cake) AND her cake only cost $3.99 as opposed to $23.  I will be doing this from now on.

 PARK!

(Clara approves of my $3.99 cake.)

Now on to the food talk I promised last week.

Don't these salads look AMAZING?  

On my never ending quest to make my family eat more vegetables I stumbled across the idea of premaking a weeks worth of salads for easy lunch grabbing for the Mister.  I wish knew the website I got it off of but I do not.  It only took me about 3 1/2 minutes to do this and even on the fifth day the salad wasn't soggy at all.

1. To make these you simply put your favorite salad dressing at the bottom of a glass jar.   
2. Add your veges and other parts of stuff you want in your salad.  (In these I put edamame, bacon, a hard boiled egg, carrots and sunflower seeds.)
3. Put whatever type of leaf you are using on top.

As long as the salad and salad dressing don't touch your salad will stay fresh and ready for you to eat all week.  When you are ready to eat them just shake the jar and enjoy!!

Dairy Free Fudgecicles

Because of the dairy allergy in my house I always have to come up with creative ways for the baby to eat "ice cream" too.  I have bought the rice cream, soy cream and coconut cream.  They usually do the trick but those things are expensive!  I came across a nutella and banana recipe that was supposed to taste just like a fudgecicle.  After scouring the grocery store I came across this product....

And it is completely dairy free!!!

The original recipe called for 1/3 cup of nutella and 6 bananas.  Put it all in a blender and blend it up until smooth and freeze in Popsicle molds.

These were REALLY good and the girls gobbled them up rather quickly, however, I think next time I might bring the number of bananas I put in it down to 4.  The banana taste was almost overpowering, and when you are making a mock fudgecicle, you only want it tot taste like chocolate, not bananas!!

CLARA'S TWO!!!!!

Sweet little baby girl, I am so proud of all you have accomplished in your two short years on this world.  You are forever my little shining rock.  We love you with all of our hearts!  Happy Birthday Clara Marie!!

The life of a rock star goes something like this....

Day #3 in this world

Birthday #1

Birthday #2!

I realize this might be the creepiest start to a video ever, with the creepy singing, walking into a dark room and creeky door and all, but just listen to the cutie pie and don't think about how creepy I sound in the morning.

Happy Birthday Clara. I Love You!!!!!!

2nd Birthday Preparation!

I was going to post about food today.....but 

  Tomorrow is Clara's 2nd birthday!  

So instead I am dedicating the entire day to cleaning so we can all relax and have fun and eat lots of cake tomorrow.  I am so happy that I get to have a sweet little baby (big) girl who can run and play and eat cake.  

We love you little buggar!  You have NO IDEA what fun is in store for you!

(Probably not as much fun as this was, though.)

Melted Wax

Like most folks that I know, I am a member and a fan of the website Pinterest.   I heard about this site a while back but was incredibly hesitant to join.  I was afraid it would suck me in and take away my time and thoughts from more important matters (aka children, mister etc.)

One day my friend came over and showed me her wedding board and talked about how it makes it easier for her to gather her ideas and not lose them.

That was all the convincing I needed.

So I joined up and I have found 

• SO MANY useful tips and ideas to help me on my never ending decluttering journey.
• Lots of fun crafts for me and the girls to do together
• Lots of ideas to make delicious and frugal meals
• 5 hundred thousand million home decorating ideas
• millions of different fun hair styles for Rhiannon and I to try out.
• etc. etc. etc.

One thing I noticed right away was the freakish crayon art craze that is going on right now.  Have you you heard of it?  Where you use your hair dryer to melt crayons for some crazy looking art?  I bet you have, because....... 

 Seriously. 

 EVERYONE AND THEIR MOTHER IS MAKING CRAYON ART!!!

I had to admit it looked like a TON of fun to make so I decided to jump on that bandwagon for a quick spell......

There were a few different ways to go about this, Rhiannon and I tried three.  Unfortunately I don't have pictures of one of my projects (they were Christmas presents) so I will only tell you about two today.

This is the one Rhiannon did.  She wanted to make a rainbow effect.  We started by picking out a canvas to glue our crayons on, I have quite a few of blank canvases that I painted black for when I was in school.  Now that the project is all said and done I am glad she chose the black over the white.  It made her colors pop more.

Rhiannon chose her colors and used hot glue to keep them in place.

So the next step is to use your hairdryer to melt the crayon wax however you want.  You see that "drop cloth"  I put up?  It didn't do any damn good, so if you are going to do this I suggest going into a garage.  We also found that it would melt and go about 2 inches and cool and harden.  We tried heating up the clumps but that only resorted in the clumps going down further instead of breaking up.  (This was a very dramatic moment in the making of this art piece.  Rhiannon was sure I ruined it.)  If you do this and are using a larger canvas I would suggest putting the hair dryer to the back instead of on the front of the crayon.  Also, we were going back and forth horizontily over the crayons.  I would go vertically on one color until you get it how you like and then move on to the next color. 

Here is the finished product.  This was kind of fun, but only kind of.  Rhiannon is 11 and this took about an hour and a half.  Around halfway through this she got really bored with it so this is definitely not a project to do with little ones.

The next one I did was a lot more fun for me.  I might have Rhiannon make one of these because the possibilities are endless on what you can do.  (I don't have a completely finished picture of this project, sorry.)

I started this piece out by drawing a cartoon interpretation of my friend.......(She doesn't really have knobby knees, that is just my bad drawing skills)  I used sharpies to color her in.

I then added some bling to her belt :)

And now for the fun part!

I started off by taping tin foil (all I had in the house) around the umbrella and girl so no wax would get on them.  I used my hot glue gun and pushed different blue crayons through it to create a rain effect.  I used the eraser end of a pencil to push the crayons through.  Also, you are going to need to take the wrapper off BEFORE putting it into the gun.  While the wax was still wet I sprinkled some blue glitter on top to give it a bit of a sparkle.  

This was what it looked like when I first took the tin foil off......

After this picture was taken I added a bunch more wax to the bottom half of the canvas.  I also added some more on top so it would look like it was "dripping" off of the umbrella, brightened the girl up and drew in some puddles at her feet.  

This project really was so much fun, and for those of you wondering, NO it will not ruin your hot glue gun.  It will, however make your glue turn into fun colors, so if you do an all white project after something like this I recommend getting a different gun.

I hope everyone is enjoying their week with this RIDICULOUSLY nice weather we are having!  Tomorrow is going to be all about one of my favorite things......FOOD!!!!

Parties are exhausting!

It has been a month since I have posted last and this is why:  Holiday/Birthday party madness/Wedding crunch time has taken OVER our lives!  We have........

• had three christmasses
• survived new years (and it seemed as though every year the girls wear less and less clothes on new years.  its COLD ladies.  at least wear pants that cover your entire bum, or, dresses that do not have holes cut out in them.)
• Hosted a successful 1-2-3 birthday party
• knocked about 35 items off of our to-do list for the wedding (which is an alarmingly 61 days away!  where's my paper bag??? I need to breathe......)

And if it wasn't bad enough that I have been ridiculously busy I have now succumbed to the ever addicting pinterest.  I was worried that it would suck all of my time away and make me want to just sit on the computer all day.  I was very pleasantly surprised to find it has done the EXACT opposite!!  I have made so much yummy food and made so many cute crafts with the kids since I joined that site!  Plus I have a stockpile of more fun and useful ideas to keep me busy for months!!!  I plan on blogging about all of our fun new things we have been making starting tomorrow.   

Here are a few captures of the past month in the life of us....

The Puppy came back home!  After what was the longest two weeks of frustration I have FINALLY broke him from pooping all over my floor...... 

(Clara is mocking Buehrle)

Christmas Umbrella!!!!

These clear umbrella's are a wonderful thing to have in this city when you are not tall.  You can protect your face from the rain AND from other peoples umbrellas!)

Family Sledding Day!!!!!  

Clara enjoyed the sledding, but hated the not being able to walk in her snowsuit!

New Years Eve with my Love while being surrounded by scantily clad women.

Aunt Dawn's Birthday Shot!!!!!

Christmas with Gramma and Papa

Birthday Madness!!!!!!

Since my sisters kids were turning 1 & 3 and Clara is turning 2 all around the same time she came up with the brilliant idea for a 1-2-3 birthday party to make it easier for the family to get together to celebrate.  

She did such a wonderful job taking care of all the big stuff for this day!  Thank you Christi!  I could have never pulled this off!

Setting up is over now lets get this party going!!!!

Clara with two of her favorite people....Ju-ju and Amana.

It really isn't a birthday party if your mom doesn't make you cry.......right?

(worst mom ever)

Cake Time!!!!!

(Ju-Ju tried to blow his candle out with his fingers...)

Here Clara is still to timid to touch her cake since I said No no no! while trying to get a before picture.  (Once again, worst mom ever.)

PRESENTS!

Clara says thank you to all her friends and family who came to make her birthday party a success!  She is having so much fun today with all of her new toys!!  

(She refused to eat breakfast unless "tangled" was eating breakfast with her and then did her hair for a good 30 minutes.)

One last thing I want to add directed towards my Aunt and Uncle, I know we said this 500 times yesterday, but THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU for helping us out and watching the kids yesterday!  We would have never been able to find such a perfect outfit for the Mister to wear for our wedding if it were not for you.  The girls had so much fun with you, Rhiannon didn't want to leave and told me that next time I need a sitter I should always take her to your house!

Times like these I am reminded of just how lucky I am to have a family who not only loves each other unconditionally but also never questions that family comes first, ALWAYS.  

I am very blessed for the family I was born into and I hope each and every one of you know that I love you SO much and am so happy to see each and every one of you this weekend!!!