Coupon Time!

Children's Place is having a 4th of July sale.  Save 20% on any order over $50 using code JULY4TH.  I just ordered 9 pieces of clothing (shirts, shorts, and jeans) and it came out to $7.38 each (including shipping and tax!).  

We'll be setting up a pool in our backyard for the weekend, and I'll make allergy-free cupcakes for the little guy (the big guy will eat them, too).  All other cooking will be limited to grilling or crockpotting.  What are your plans for the 4th?

Monday Mumblings

I have several things to write about but none of them warrant a post of their own, and since I'm still sleep deprived these are Monday Mumblings instead of Musings.

• I took a cue from Jaci on controlling how much stuff our kids have and decluttered K-man's room yesterday.  A full trash bag of diapers he had outgrown went out the door for donation, a full trash bag of toys he no longer plays with went out the door for donation (this was after 2 trash bags of donations a few weeks ago), and 2 trash bags of toys and a box of books went into the closet where they will be sequestered for a minimum of 3 weeks.  And do you know what?  He still has plenty of toys and books to play with.  His room is no longer cluttered - niether is our living room.  And he finally sat down and played with Mr. Potato-head for longer than one minute.  I think it was because he can actually concentrate on one toy without having umpteen others distracting him.  I like this.  When we finally open the closet door to review what's in there, we'll be swapping toys - he won't get them all back at once anymore.

• K had some interesting time-outs this weekend.   There was a lot of crying and kicking and screaming and lying flat on the floor.  I think this is the epitome of having a  two-year old.  He is having to understand the consequences of his actions and that's important but dang it, I just want to pick up my baby and cover him in kisses. 

• It's six weeks in the making but I am almost finished with a re-do of my bedside table.  It hasn't been hard or complicated, it's just that I'm doing it when I have a free moment and it's not a gazillion degrees outside.  We live in Texas - It's June - It's a gazillion degrees outside every day.  The only thing I have left to do is antique glaze the last shelf and then seal it all.  I'll post pictures when it's all finished.

• My garden is barely alive.  Do you know what moles eat?  They eat grubworms.  Do you know what attracts grubworms?  Compost. Can you guess what I piled 3" high in my garden?  Yuppers, compost.  I hate moles.  They and the tunnels they dig have killed most of the garden and an apricot tree.  The only good thing left is the watermelon vine with two melons on it.  

• Hubby and I exterminated the inside and outside of the house yesterday.  I had it up to HERE with the six legged creatures invading our house.  I also cleaned all of the utensils in all of the kitchen drawers with bleach and then wiped down the drawers with peppermint and eucalyptus oils to ward off anymore visitors.  The kitchen smelled really good from the oils.  

• I cooked up some bacon yesterday evening to make a mess of green beans.  K-man finally decided to try a bit of bacon...and then he had several bites because wonders of wonders, bacon is good!  Hubby and I high-fived...bacan will help put fat back on the little boy since he lost a few pounds last week being sick.  The kicker?  Within about 20 minutes of eating the bacon, he broke out in eczema.  Looks like we found another food intolerance - we'll add it to the list.  

• I had highlights added to my hair and had bangs cut in it.  I'm liking it...except for this little section of bangs that wants to stick straight out of my head like a glorious unicorn horn.  A little hairspray and a bobby pin are all that is keeping humilation at bay today.  

 

Father's Day & Golf Gloves

In honor of what happens when you leave Dad home at nap time with his unsuspecting little boy and a golf bag to clean out...

The Virus

Both of my fellas are sick. We think it's something that they picked up at K-man's swim lesson (Hubby was in the pool with him). We've all been up since 1:00 thus morning. All nighters were a lot different in college! We took the little guy to the pediatrician this morning and he was diagnosed with The Virus. Great. Let's hope The Virus runs it's course quickly (this is day 5) so we can have a fun weekend.

Mirror Mirror on the Wall, You're Boring!

I posted earlier about a mantle change and have spent a lot of time staring at that mantle and figuring out what to do next.  However, when it came to what to do with the plain boring mirror hanging in our living room, it was a fairly quick decision that I wanted to either paint it, etch it, or decal it.  Considering that having a two and a half year old in the house greatly reduces my ability to concentrate, I went the decal route.  Working with one of the vendors from Etsy, I had a custom tree decal made out of frosted material to provide the etched look. 

I don't have a photo of the mirror hanging on the wall beforehand, but here it is on the kitchen table.

And here it is hanging on the wall with the decal.

Hubby really likes it.  He helped choose which tree and what material (I was originally going to go with a dark color like black or navy).  Now it's not just a mirror - it's actually something to look at.

The Story of the Strawberry Tart

Once upon a time, there was a fair young maiden who wanted a strawberry pie very badly.  Okay, so maybe she wasn't "fair"...she was more a medium complexion and had a few pimples on her face due to the fact that her hormones were raging in anticipation of her next monthly visit from Aunt Flo...but she wanted a strawberry pie very badly -  understand this! 

She had the strawberries and she had a pie crust.  So she visited the glorious square of all information called "ThePuter" and asked the great allknowing entity called "TheWeb", "Oh Great TheWeb, can you tell me how to make a strawberry pie?"  And TheWeb said, "Your search has returned 524,125,369 results."  Out of those 524,125,369 results, she found one recipe for a simple strawberry tart.  So she kissed her frog prince and sang a beautiful song made some racket as she flitted and fiddled around her cramped quaint kitchen preparing the treat.  Here's how it turned out...

And then into the oven this went.

45 minutes later the result looked more like this...

In her zest for as much strawberry-ness as possible, the really-not-so-young-but-still-trying-to-believe-she's-18 maiden had overfilled the pie crust and the tart had fallen apart in the oven.  Did that stop her or her prince-who-cleans-the-kitchen from eating the strawberry-mess?  No!  They dined on overcooked gooey strawberries and were happy. 

The moral of the story?  When you screw up a recipe, post about it on your blog.

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The first time I made this, I actually followed the recipe and it turned out wonderfully.  I even served it to company.  The second time I made it, I used a can of apple pie filling and it turned out nicely, and we didn't share that with anybody because it lasted only 20 hours in our household.  This last attempt was my hair-brained idea that I could put as many strawberries as I wanted - which obviously didn't work.  Also, slice the strawberries thinly...the thick ones just seemed icky.  Here's the recipe.  Enjoy!

Rustic Strawberry Tart

-pastry dough (I used a Pilsbury Pie crust from the store – found in the biscuit/cinnamon roll section)

-4 cups strawberries, sliced (2 packages from the store)

-1/3 cup + 1 teaspoon sugar (I’ll use a little less sugar next time as we served ours with ice cream and it was more than sweet enough)

-2 teaspoons fresh lemon juice

-2 teaspoons corn starch

-1 tablespoon milk



Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Toss sliced strawberries with 1/3 cup sugar, lemon juice and corn starch. Roll out pastry dough into a 9" circle. Lay pastry dough on a baking sheet lined with a Silpat. Mound the strawberry mixture on the center of the dough, leaving a 2" border. Wrap the border around the strawberry mixture. Brush the border with the milk and sprinkle with the teaspoon of sugar. (I didn’t do the border thing with the milk and sugar) Bake for 45 minutes.