Bows, bows and more bows

I had forgotten just how much I love making bows. It's been over a year since I made one.

Until this week.

And I have made roughly 40.

I have had lots of past customers, 1 VERY persistent Twitter friend and numerous small children that live under this roof asking for bows.

I caved. And I am so glad I did.

I uploaded some of the bows I made to my Flickr page. But here is one that I made last night that I absolutely LOVE.

It's not really a bow. But I like it. And it's made of ribbon.

Sorry for the poor photo quality. It’s been overcast here and I had to use the flash. Bleh.

In other news, I have been painting the walls in our house. See, I have 2 little girls who like to draw messes all over the freaking walls mommy beautiful pictures on the walls. You know, because they don’t have enough coloring books. Since when is 498,289 coloring books not enough?

To their defense though, our walls only have primer on them. The brainiacs that painted this place when we moved in didn’t finish the job. Have you ever tried to get marker/crayon/highlighters off of PRIMER only walls. Yeah… it ain’t pretty. I went through at least, AT LEAST 5 magic erasers on 1 little teeny tiny spot behind my desk. Good Lord it would take me long and cost more to do the whole house.

Sooooo I’m just painting over it.

With semi-gloss. :)

AND since our crown moulding is white, our base boards are white and we have tile throughout the house, guess whose job just got easier?? WOOT! Can you say easy cleanup??

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Update. I found a picture of one of the walls with the “art” on it. Check this out.

Enchilada chicken

Now this is not to be confused with chicken enchiladas. Which, by the way, I happen to LOVE. My kids, not so much.

I know. They are weirdos.

So I made this instead. I saw a recipe in my latest Woman’s Day for a slow cooker chicken dish that used enchilada sauce, chili powder and orange marmalade along with a slew of other ingredients.

I do not like orange marmalade.

I know. I’m a weirdo.

So I thought… why not just make the chicken with out the marmalade and make into a Mexican type thing instead of sweet. WOW. It was delish.

Here’s what I did. Oh but how ‘bout a picture first??

There… that’s better.

Enchilada Chicken

2 –3 pounds of skinless chicken (I used legs and thighs. Boneless skinless breast would work too)

1 can of enchilada sauce (I used mild cause I’m a wimp when it comes to spicy food)

1 Tablespoon onion powder

1 Tablespoon garlic powder

Cilantro

Salt and pepper to taste

I used a big baking dish for all this chicken. SPRAY your dish with non-stick. Trust me OK. :)

Place your chicken in the pan and pour the sauce all over the chicken, use about 1/2 a can of water to get all the sauce out. Then sprinkle the remaining ingredients over the chicken. Turn to coat well. Cover and bake. (I baked at 425 because my chicken was still a little frozen and I was in a hurry. Just use whatever temp you use to bake chicken. To each his own) Remove foil and continue cooking until the outside is nice and crispy and brown.

Next I make this I’m going to go skinless and maybe add a can of tomatoes and top it with cheese. Delish!

My pickiest eater proclaimed she did not want to eat this. But when I put it in front of her, she gobbled it right up! She finished the chicken before anything else.

Our “Garden”

I shared what all we planted in our “garden” a couple of posts back but It’s not really a garden, garden, more like a container garden. I wanted to do a table top garden but we ran out of time when my husband was home last time. So containers it was!

Check this thing out! It’s growing like cah-ray-zee!

It’s a cherry tomato plant and it’s the fastest growing plant I have!

Behind the cherry tomato plant I have a container of straight neck squash growing. It’s FAST too.

Here’s one little guy who just made an appearance over the weekend.

So far there are about 30 blooms on here. Looking forward to some tomatoes!!

Then we have the upside down tomato plant. It’s housing an heirloom tomato plant. Yum.

No blooms on this one yet. See those 2 hanging baskets in the back? I’m gonna put tomato plants in those too. When my Dad was here weekend before last, he hung up 3 more hooks for me. I have 2 jubilee tomatoes to put in there.

Can you guess what this is?

I’ll give you a hint.

You have probably NEVER heard of it before. How’s that for a hint. ;)

It’s culantro and it’s muey delicioso! Kinda like cilantro on steroids in terms of flavor.

Here’s my pepper plants. They are in a container with 2 tomato plants until I can get the tomatoes out of there. I left them outside yesterday when we had a HUGE storm come through so they are a little beat down at the moment.


Have you ever done this to your plants?

I had to put sand over the soil because of the gnats that were swarming. I did some research and I think they are called fungus gnats. They like the damp soil and they really go to town on your roots. The gnats were also getting into the house and driving me insane. Gnats be gone!

This is what it looked like outside my house yesterday evening. The huge storm came through very early yesterday morning and then it stayed pretty much cloudy all day.  The clouds started rolling in again while the sun was setting. It was such a weird shade of orange.

So pretty though. Surreal looking.

Science Fair and Open Houses

It’s science fair time at Caitlin’s school so she has been working on it for about 4 weeks now.
She decided to do an experiment on which soil will basil grow best in. We used red clay, dirt from the backyard and potting soil. Of course she knew which one would do best but what she didn’t know was just how much the different soil would affect the plants.

Take a look. Here’s all 3 together.

What a difference huh?

She started the seeds in those little soil pellets and then transplanted them to the different soils. We were so careful to make sure the experiment was accurate, that we even rinsed off the pellet soil before planting them in their respective soils.


Here’s the outcome of the red clay

Here’s the outcome of the dirt.

And here’s the outcome of the fertilized soil.

So like I said all in all it took about 4 weeks. 2.5 weeks to start the seeds and get them big enough to plant and then in the different soil for about a week and a half. We had no idea that the red clay would just kill the plant so I think that was the biggest surprise of the whole experiment.

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We also attended an open house on Tuesday night. It was at an awesome Christian school here in town. We actually a little out of town. Actually is ALLLLL the way across town from us. At least 30 mins to get there. All interstate. Traffic. Boring.
That is gonna be the deciding factor I think. There are lots of other schools that are closer to us, but they don’t offer all the extra resource classes that this school does.
Since I absolutely do NOT want her attended public school next year, we have to consider funding. That means work for me. But not work as in office work. I’m gonna set up my Etsy again and start selling dresses, bows, skirts and anything else I can possibly make. It’s gonna be a BUSY summer for me!

11 Years Ago

I was so young. Clueless on how to raise a child. I just lost my mother in September to cancer and had NO clue what I was doing.

I was 16 hours away from my dad and I was about to have a baby. I was only 22 years old! TOO young if you ask me.

It was the worst of all 3 of my pregnancies. Morning sickness for 7 months straight. I was so ready for it to be over.

Homesick, depressed and in a bad relationship were not the best circumstances to bring a baby into this world.

But at 9:57 pm on May 7th, 1999, my oldest was born. I finally had someone who I could love and could love me back unconditionally.

I brought her home from the hospital on Mother’s Day, which for me was pretty darn special.

She has grown up to be smarter than I could ever pretend to be, sweeter than I have or will ever be and more loving than any child I have ever known.

Yes, she gets on my nerves so bad sometimes I want to string her up by her toenails, but I still love her.

Happy Birthday Caitlin. I love you thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiissss much!

Wordless Wednesday

There is a radio station in my dads town that starts off their morning show program with this saying. Everyday.

I used P-Dubs picture, copied the text on top and then hung it right above my desk.

Click to make bigger. :)

It’s a great reminder for me to slow down and enjoy my kids while they are little and that each day is a new day and I am the one that chooses which path to take.

I love it so much that I put it as a *sticky* on my home page.

OK so this wasn’t such a “wordless” Wednesday after all. Maybe I should have called it “less words” Wednesday. HA!