Gettin' My Craft On!

So I have been home from the States for over a month, and I still haven't blogged about my BFF's wedding, nor have I finished blogging about my trip to Paris with Elphie, not to say mentioning my amazing birthday weekend! But I will get there, I promise. And those are not just empty words. I just have...issues...with finding a balance. There tends to be a lot of extreme behaviors one way, and then the complete opposite (and many times back and forth a time or two more!) before I get back into my "groove." And the past few months have been anything but regular!

And in the "extreme behavior" toward the negative, for a week or two, I was completely ensconced in the silly Facebook games. Frontierville/Pioneer Trail, Mafia Wars 2, Cafe World...all that crap. It was like a trance I couldn't be pulled out of. But Monday, I finally reached a decision that I had been mulling over. I decided to stop playing them. All of them. (Well, okay, I still have Words with Friends and Scrabble, but those only take, like, 2 minutes to make your move and then you wait on your opponent to go. No big.) And in the time that I have not been playing those time-sucking games, I have done the following:

Completed the WestKnits Mystery KAL:

Started and completed a stitchmarker Lariat:

Started and completed a pair of Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Wristers:

 

Started and completed a hat for The Instigator's aunt:

Made my own mitten blockers:

Blocked the Bella mittens for Tara:

 Baked a batch of zucchini muffins and 2 loaves of zucchini bread (this is all that was left of the muffins after 24 hours...they were completely gone in less than 48! LOL):

Started and completed a cowl (for trading for an apron from a fellow crafter!):

Finally finished a blanket to donate to a patient of Nephrotic Syndrome 

that has been a long time in coming!:

And have done some super-top-secret HSKS swappy items. Plus,that's to say nothing of finally getting my crafting supplies slowly migrating upstairs to my new craft room (used to be the boys' toy room, but we moved those upstairs to the large closet and their bedroom), catching up on housework, participating in running a knitting swap, and actually cooking meals! I have really been on fire! LOL I'm really hoping that this is less of a swing of the pendulum in the productive segment of my balance and more of a trend leading to habit. :) I guess only time will tell, but all in all, not bad for a week's worth of effort. :)

Baking Away!

Tomorrow afternoon/evening is our Halloween party!!!! Superman, Batman and I will be going down to Ramstein to see Kristin, Elphaba, and their boys and having a spooky old time! :D It's going to be so much fun! I can't wait!

I'm taking some goodies with me, so today I spent much of my time baking. (And when I wasn't baking, I was cleaning...my house needs it!!!) I had originally wanted to make these Pumpkin Pillows, but there isn't a snowball's chance in H-E-double hockey sticks I'd be able to find wonton wrappers at the Commissary. Granted, I could have done some variation of a pie crust, but I honestly didn't feel like going to the trouble. LOL So instead, I resorted to these 2 ingredient pumpkin muffins!

Unfortunately, I didn't look closely enough at the recipe posted before starting (oops!), and ended up opening the wrong can of pumpkin! So now I have to find something to make with the pie mix/filling. (Which, if you know me, is so heartbreaking, giving how much I love pumpkin...LOL)

The RIGHT pumpkin (puree) on the left and the wrong pumpkin (pie mix/filling) on the right

As I could only find the 30 ounce cans of pumpkin at the Commissary, I split the can in half and made one batch with French Vanilla cake mix and the second with Spice Cake mix. (I can already tell from the smell that the latter is going to be my favorite!) And I know the recipe says you only need the two ingredients, but it wasn't mixing the greatest, in my opinion, and still a bit dry, so I added one egg to the spice mix batch.

While I was waiting for the last set of muffins to come out of the oven, I started in on preparing for the Oreo cookie spiders.

Unfortunately, we don't have the black licorice pull and peel here, so the legs will be red, and I cannot buy black jelly beans if it's not Easter season, so I substituted with M&Ms. I cut the pull & peel whips into the 1.5" segments (I used 4 pre-peeled whips and had about an inch leftover on each whip, ending up with 215 leg pieces). When I sat down to put the legs into the cookies, they wouldn't fit. :( So on my way to the gym tonight, I stopped by the Commissary to pick up Double Stuf Oreos. Wouldn't you know it....they don't even carry them. So instead, I will try shaving off some of the end that is to fit inside the cookie and try that route. And if that fails, then I'll just use Ritz crackers, peanut butter and pretzels to make the spiders! LOL

While I waited on the appropriate time to replace the cookies, I worked on the Mini Witch Brooms.

Each Fruit Roll-Up gave me 15 pieces of the 2" requirement (and I cut the 2" strips and the fringe before removing it from the paper to avoid unnecessary sticking to everything!), and I had leftover the ends that are folded in on themselves.  I had some issues at first, but it turns out I had cut the fringe the wrong direction, which gave it a completely different (and completely unsatisfactory) look.

The one on the left is done properly and how it is SUPPOSED to look

I used a teacup to hold the water and a syringe that the pharmacy gives out to give infants medicine (Don't worry, this one was unused! lol) to dab a drop of water on the Roll-Up. (A cheap, new paint brush would also have worked just as easily.) It was actually a little bit tricky, and while wrapping them the wrong way, I actually contemplated going for the fatter pretzels, but it all worked out in the end.

And let me tell you, between peeling all those Twizzlers and rolling all those little Roll-Ups on the end of pretzels, my fingers got a bit sticky (as did my kitchen scissors)! LOL

I waited on making the sugar cookies until the boys were home to help me cut out the shapes, but that ended up backfiring because of how long everything else took, so I haven't even begun to make those! They will have to wait until tomorrow while the boys are at school.

For those of you that know me well enough to know my baking preferences, you know that it's a pretty big deal that I'm resorting to "cheating" and using pre-made mixes to bake cookies. (I'm of the "bake from scratch or it's not truly baking" camp.) But with all the other goodies I'm making, I just don't really have the time to take to make it the right way. :( So tomorrow, more kitchen time and cookie cutters are in my future!!!

Lunch time!

Whew! I have been up since 5am today (which in and of itself is a rarity!), without it needing to be for an appointment or anything! I decided to make the best use of my day and clean. Well, that and the fact that I really need to prepare for my husband coming home from deployment and I may also have a friend coming down from Germany to visit and staying with me, so cleaning is most definitely in order! But now it's time for lunch! Nomnomnomnom! I figured that while my boys are occupied with stuffing their faces I could justify a few minutes on the computer. :)

I've noticed a few of my other mom friends share all these phenomenal recipes, but personally, I don't usually get around to trying them. (Which really is a pity, since they do truly look to be tasty...) I'm not a cook. I do not enjoy food prep. Which, if you take into consideration my employment history, is actually ironic. I like to bake. Cakes, cupcakes, muffins, pies....YUM! That's the sort of thing I enjoy playing around with in the kitchen. Sadly, that does not make for good eating. (And on top of that, my oven is gas...I have discovered I hate baking with a gas oven. It's all well and good for the stove top, but I like to bake with electricity!) So I'm stuck with cooking, regardless. So what does a military wife whose husband is deployed and has to cook for two "half-people" resort to? Lots of easy meals. Boxed mac & cheese, cereal, and sandwiches. Lots and lots of sandwiches. Bologna, grilled cheese, PB&J's, tuna fish...sandwiches. But how do you keep from feeling like you're just preparing the same thing over and over and over and over, day after day after day? Especially when your kids are going through growth spurts and are determined to pester to be fed every 1-2 hours? My mom had the perfect solution: cookie cutters!!! Now any time that's sandwich time in our house is a happy time for the boys. They love picking from my plethora of cookie cutters to make shapes of their sandwiches! And as I do like to bake (and do often!), there are shapes aplenty!

The cookie cutters I have are kid-friendly, since they enjoy making cookie shapes as well, and are plastic and about an inch tall.

My little guys are all about cutting the shapes themselves, and because of the cutters being plastic, they love that they're able to!

The bat is one of their favorites, thanks to Batman! LOL So how do I get them to eat all the excess? I tell them they have to also eat all of the "hole" that they made, too, or else they can't have a shape in their sandwich next time. Works like a charm!

I will never be too old for tips from my mom! But now, since lunch time is sadly over, it's time to get back to cleaning...



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