This was one of my extremely silly Christmas gifts this year. I saw this on Pinterest, and knew I had to do something with it. Originally, I saw it as ‘Carpe the hell out of this diem’, but that wasn’t serious enough for the friend I wanted to use it for. There are so many Scrabble tile crafts all over the web that I fell in love with and wanted to try so badly. So instead of buying a handful of them, I bought 398 Scrabble tiles! I have a bunch left over but I only did about half of the crafts I wanted to do with them.

I made some Scrabble tile pendants, using the initial of the person I made them for with multicoloured chains. I made other tile pendants from rando letters that I covered with super cute pictures and other images. We churned out some name plates for the kids’ teachers using tiles, charms and Scrabble tile holders. We even made Chrismtmas ornaments of our friend’s last names using ribbons and tiles. These magnets are just one example of what we were up to with them. Of course he can use these letters to spell out whatever else he can with this combo!

These were made with Scrabble tiles and magnetic tape. The adhesive on the tape wasn’t amazing so next time I’d add a drop of hot glue or crafty epoxy to it as well to keep it on just in case.

Sometimes, Seize the Day just wont cut it. Sometimes, we need to Seize the Fuck Out of This Day

Naturally, you could do this for any saying you or the person you’re making it for loves. Or you can just do up a bunch of random letters to make a set, I did a little research and it seems that this is the most popular combo.

8 x A D I N O R S T
4 x B F G H K L M P Q U V W X Y Z
12 x E
6 x C
2 x J

We are still out of town doing some Christmas visiting. So much fun has been had this week! I will do my best to add any content I post about on the rest of the trip to the main site this week. These are my favourite photos taken since Christmas morning. I hope you are all having a wonderful holiday season with your friends and family. <3

Greetings!!!

I’ve been gone far too long, I know. I was doing a little web design, and I was doing a little home child care and you know, that whole ‘life getting in the way’ thing. Things have calmed down a bunch though. I’m not doing home child care anymore and have a much smaller list of web design work to do. The good news is I’ve been cooking and baking as usual – maybe even more than usual lately, so there are heaps and heaps of recipes to add to the site and talk about. With Christmas coming at light speed I’ve been doing a lot of crafting but I’m a little nervous to post much of that until after everyone has already opened their gifts because I know a lot of my friends and family read my blog (thanks guys). You can expect a parade of deliciousness and hopefully some crafty inspiration around here in the weeks leading up to Christmas. I’m also thinking about breaking ‘Domestic’ into ‘Kitchen’ and ‘Cleaning’, because while they’re both domestic maybe someone looking for a homemade cleaning solution recipe doesn’t care about chocolate covered Oreos (but really, who doesn’t care about chocolate covered Oreos – what’s not to love there people?!). I may also add a ‘Kids’ section for the same reason. I don’t love when a site has too many sections but I think these additions make it easier to filter out what you’re not looking for. Yes? Good, I thought you’d agree.

Before I get to changing anything around, here’s a few new additions to the site!

Pink Fudge

PB Stuffed Cookies

Fairy Headbands

Even though there is only one recipe in this whole post, I’m calling it a Tasty Tuesday and I’m participating in all my favorite foodie link ups – Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Tuesdays at the Table, Made From Scratch Tuesday, Tasty Tuesday (@ 33 Shades of Green), Tasty Tuesday, Delectable Tuesday, Tea Party Tuesday, and Hearth ‘n Soul. And since this is a very crafty post, I’m also linking up with Get Your Craft On, Made With Love, Craftastic, Tip Me Tuesday, Tuesday Crafty Confessions, and Totally Tuesday.

Before I even get into what I posted on the site in the last few days or the collection of crazy cute iPhone photos I’m amassing thanks to a ridic app that I can’t stop playing with – I bring you my kitchen. I posted a crooked picture of it when our offer was officially accepted, 90 days before we closed (longest – and somehow also shortest – 90 days ever). So here it is, a much better view of the room I spend the most time in. The other half of the kitchen has the eating area, the cookbook bookshelf and Wee One #2’s play kitchen – and the pantry! That deserves it’s own post. I have never lived in a house with a walk in pantry or one with this many cabinets, so when we set out to buy a house both of those things were on my wish list. What I really love about it, though I know I’ve said it before, is the working triangle of the fridge to sink to stove. I honestly hadn’t even noticed it until my uncle in law was here on moving day (I can’t call him ‘my husband’s uncle’ after being married for 11 years, as I now adore him like my own uncle) and mentioned that it’ll be a great kitchen for cooking and baking because of the triangle! I had no idea it was an actual ‘thing’, I thought it was just something he said till I later read about it.

Anyhoooooo, out the sink window is the ‘main road’ of this wee town, I guess there are actually two main roads in this town and this window shows the corner of them. There is a whole lot of tractor and horse trailer action on this corner. Also, every single house in town (except ours, I’m not lying) has a dog and they all walk it by this window. (Sidebar- yes we are now entertaining the idea of getting a dog and we are trying to settle on a breed, it will likely be a year until we actually welcome one home). On one hand, a curtain would be a good thing so randos can’t peep in, but on the other hand, there are no randos in a town this small and I like waving like an 80 year old Granny at everyone. For reals. The big patio doors are just out of the frame in the second photo, but you can see where they are from the curtain, just beside the stove. Those doors are very high traffic around here, and I can keep mixing while I glance out to do a quick head count and be sure everyone is accounted for. Love!

I will take photos of my pantry this week – I could make an entire post out of all the weird ingredients in there. You never know when you might need actual honeycomb or hazelnuts or oat flour or dehydrated sugar cane or condensed/evaporated/powdered milk! Not to mention of course the stockpile of apple juice – three kids can easily go through a single can a day.

This week so much of the additions around here have been crafty! I’ve been baking up a storm of course, but most of the projects I’ve added to the site were in the crafty section. There was one recipe added though! It’s another recipe on the health(ier) side of things, a burger from Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious – with mushrooms and zucchini!

	Homemade Plastic Bowls – Am I really writing about a boxed kid’s craft kit? Sorta. I have always been a fan of crafts like these Makit & Bakit type things. The concept of putting plastic in the oven is so alarming and amazing at the same time, I’ve loved it since I made my first record bowl about 15 years ago. These little ‘Makit & Bakit’ crystals were different and I wanted to try them but I couldn’t find them outside of a kit.
	Birthday Wishes – My mother has always made a really fun and (often a really big) to do out of everyone’s birthdays. Not just my Dad & my sister, but also my aunts and uncles and close friends have had serious birthdays courtesy of my mother. As is the case with a lot of people who work hard for other people, she hasn’t had many serious birthdays of her own.
	Adhesive Bookplates – Finding crafty ideas for teachers can be rough because even after only a few years of teaching, with an average of 20 kids in each class just imagine how many hilariously crafted gifts they already have. Or how many ‘incredibly useful’ mugs they must have! I’m not out to always give the best gift, but I do aim to give each teacher something they’ll actually use.
	Crayon Monogram – I am aware that this is one of those teacher gifts that serves no purpose other than being extremely cute but just look at it! Look! I originally found the idea on Tip Junkie, the inspiration post is over here at Keeping Up With the Comptons – it was posted two years ago and I just did it this June. A quick search turns up so many versions of this craft; Two Peans in a Bucket, Well, How Nice, Dollar Store Crafts, Rainy Tuesday Mornings, Creative Mommas and my personal favorite version from Chic & Cheap Nursery.
	Fabric Bookmarks – These were part of the collection of things we made as end of school year thank yous to the teachers and staff at the wee ones’ school. These were made for the librarians, who are a retired couple and so sweet with the kids. I have no doubt that between the two of them they have a great deal of bookmarks, but they are so often lost or in need of replacing I figured it was a safe gift. Plus after seeing these ones on How About Orange I had to make some myself!
	Deceptively Delicious Burgers, Part 2 – These burgers are the 15th recipe I’ve made from this book. I can’t say these burgers were amazing, because they were not. However, I can say that not one out of all five of us didn’t finish their burger – loaded with mushrooms and zucchini. None of us like zucchini and only one person likes mushrooms. I think that counts as a success, because while no one raved over them, no one complained about them either and we all got a shot of immune system boosting mushrooms, selenium and B2!

I also went and fell in love with the Instagram iPhone app. I fell hard. It’s addicting to have your already super cute phone pictures made extra adorable. See evidence below. There are 16 filters (I think) and the effects range from fading the image slightly to giving it a different ‘mashed potatoey’ feel with a border. My favorite filter is called Nashville, (the first, and last 2 image). I wonder if there’s a 12 step for this sort of addiction??

There has been a lot of cookie baking going on around here and actually, a whole lot of other treat making and painfully-from-scratch cooking going on as well. So much that I’m going to just have to post a heap of my queue as thumbnails to get through it all so I can post the new stuff. It’s not that my kitchen creations (and my craftyness) this past winter/spring/summer are not amazing, because naturally I think they are lol, but there is so much more amazingness on the way!

	As with many of the whimsical creations coming out of this kitchen, these adorable little creations are courtesy of Bakerella! They could not be easier and as usual, these are amazing. I made them as Valentine’s Day treats for Wee One #1’s class party. I wrapped them in foil and made little tags that said ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ for him to give to his classmates with his paper cards. I wasn’t there, but he said they were a hit – despite not looking at all like the kisses I had intended them to look like. Whoops.
	There are so many cute smore-themed ideas for end of school year gifts for teachers. I actually made this one for our principal, because she has really gone out of her way for us more times than I can ever properly thank her for. I first saw this idea over at Back Porch Creations and I loved it, but I needed my packaging to be a little more girlie than that.
	I made these (recipe #14 from Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious) alongside the Italian Meatloaf from the same book. The meatloaf was ok, but I had seconds of these rice balls! They’re not a quick fix though, they take some effort to make, but just like everything else in life, when does quick and easy usually equal amazing? Alonst never, especially in the kitchen. These rice balls are actually loaded with chicken, sweet potato and either spinach, broccoli or butternut squash puree – I used spinach. I also used whole wheat breadsrumbs instead of whole wheat cracker crumbs.

I also just found out a few minutes ago that today, August 30, is National Marshmallow Day. What?! How did I not know about this?! I will whip up something with marshmallows in it for dessert – what are you making to celebrate now that you know? 😛

This post title does not at all describe what I’ve added to the site today, just what’s keeping me from adding more. Whenever my amazing, wonderful yarn-spree-paying-for husband buys me heaps of yarn, all I want to do is knit it up. We have been buying from Knit Picks a lot lately, not just because their prices are very reasonable (though they really are) but because their shipping isn’t painful. Ordering the same types of yarn from other shops will run us twice as much! Now that the wee ones have three other wee ones next door to play with everyday, I plunk down on the patio and watch all six of them run and chase each other and throw their little heads back in laughter and make delicious memories. Wee One #2 is the only one to have a new playmate her exact age and man, do they get along well. Instant besties, it’s the sweetest thing. The oldest kids are just a year apart and have created a series of videos for their new You Tube channel. Yup, that’s what I said. My favorite is when the neighbor kids stay for supper and we fill both kid-sized picnic tables, it’s soooooo cute to have half a dozen kids running around. I know, I know, that’s crazy. Don’t worry, I will probably not be having another three kids. Probably. I am still the weird neighbor that brings baked goods next door almost everyday – except now my next door neighbor totally gets it and so far likes everything I’ve made for them. Score. Anyhoo….

We’ve also checked out the park and we’ve gone swimming at the dock a few times. I have to admit though that I miss walking for an afternoon swim in the lake by our old place. There were often pretty decent waves on the lake, which was fun for so many reasons and the sand bar was sweet too. However, being able to go for a swim whenever is rad – dock or lake. 🙂

I added two posts today, one in Crafty and one in Healthy, though as I have noted before I am aware that most of the recipes in that section should be dubbed healthier, and not necessarily healthy. Ahem. I’m getting through the backlog of things to post. I should be totally up to date in less than a month! I’ll be posting Halloweeny stuff on time! Hooray!

These were silly and fun to make for the last day of school for Wee One #1’s class. He just finished grade 5, so it had to be something fun but not too cute. They’re one of those projects that’s done in 20 minutes and only requires a few supplies. These are literally Rolo sleeves wrapped in construction paper.

This is Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious version of Italian Meatloaf. It’s made with spiced breadcrumbs, lean ground turkey, carrot puree and turkey bacon (among other things). It was just meh but I think if I took out the extra liquid and just left the carrot puree it would hold together a lot better. Or maybe adding some ground oatmeal? We’ll see if I even re-do this one again. This book has had enough winners for me already as it is and this was the 13th recipe I made from it.

I also remembered to take photos of the kitchen to show you, so I’ll get on some pictures of the pantry and talk about that tomorrow!

I was pretty proud of myself with today’s updates for you. I added some really amazing Rolo Stuffed Chocolate Chip Cookies to the Domestic section, then wee little Post It Packages from scrapbooking paper (which are really, really cute, I have to say) in the Crafty section and I even managed to get my Deceptively Delicious Banana Bread post up in the Healthy section – all long before my self inflicted deadline. Then I got to the Pretty section, and there are a couple of hair tutorials I was going to post, but I’m not too happy with the photographs so I decided to do a Window Shopping post on Apothica instead. Oh boy. I got sucked in. I adore makeup and shiny things and girly colors (and even matte things and dark colors) and before I knew it, I was almost late to post this!! Ack! Way to be distracted by shiny things, May.

Moving on.

	These cookies are a lot easier to pull together than they seem but so so so much yummier than photos can possibly get across to you. Imagine. It’s a chocolate chip cookie, which is already pretty great and then BAM, you’re hit with a mouthful of caramel. Right?!
	This is the post that assisted in making me late today. Apothica is now accepting PayPal and for me, that’s cause to celebrate! Lipglosses that are so shiny they rival MAC’s Lipglass and shimmering face powders so pretty they’re right up there with Too Faced’s Candlelight Powder. Color me in love.
	This banana bread tastes just like banana bread! So what? So it’s made with pureed cauliflower! Hello serious vitamin boost with no questions asked!
	This was an end of school year gift for the hard working secretary at my kids’ school. All elementary school secretaries work hard, I have on doubt, but they so often are overlooked when all the teachers get well wishes and mugs!

I would love to get some photos up of my new kitchen, but every time I think to do it there is something more pressing that needs to be done. The whole fridge to sink to oven kitchen work triangle is great in this house – for sure the best and easiest I’ve ever had. My husband has serious issues with clutter so I try to hide most of my kitchen power tools and this kitchen has decently deep cabinets so my blender, food processor, bullet, slow cooker, etc are all tucked away. At first I thought it would be a pain to pull stuff out when I wanted to use it, but as long as all the cabinets are kept tidy (so far, so good) I just grab the gadget I need when I need it. It also frees up space for rolling out dough or cooling things on racks. I’ll put it on my to do to get pictures of the kitchen today so I can have them up tomorrow.

I promised Wee One #2 that today would be a crafty day. At the end of the school year, her report card was as perfect as a report card can be without your child being an alien. So we told her she could choose her ‘passing gift’ (who came up with that phenomenon anyway?!) and she chose a book on learning sewing crafts, Made By Me (See all Children's Crafts & Hobbies Books), a sewing basket with the essentials and fabric. She picked out some from Fabric Closet and tulle in 3 different colors from Fabricland. Her favorite thing so far has been embroidering and today she wants to attack a tshirt for the first time, so far we’ve stuck to plain squares of fabric to practice on. Wish us luck with this little project!

Another catch up post today – and today I posted about homemade makeup again! Yup. Homemade lipgloss this time. First though, I’m trying to update each section with one article a night till I’m caught up and then I can blar, blar, blar on and on about whatever it is I’m obsessing over.

	Homemade peanut butter cups are honestly better than store bought ones. The chocolate has a better crunch to it and there is just something satisfying about knowing what’s in your treats – even if it happens to include 2 cups of icing sugar! At least there’s no mystery chemicals that no one can pronounce, right? The wee ones love them, adults love them and if you pick up the molds, they even look pretty close to the real deal.
	When I made this soup, I was perfectly healthy. Then just a few days after I made it, I had a horribly sore throat and lost my voice for a week! What?! Who let that happen?! It was awful, but this soup was a great comfort and of course I believe all that garlic and heat made me feel better – even if no one appreciated my awful garlic breath!
	I know making a jean skirt from an old pair of jeans is nothing new, but it’s not difficult even with just the most basic sewing skills. Most of the effort in this project is in the ripping out of the old seam, which is usually at least double stitched. The result is a cute skirt that you can be sure will fit!
	Yesterday I talked about making homemade mineral eyeshadows – today I’m onto homemade lipglosses! The glosses take longer to make but you can churn out more at a time and they are just as customizable. I made hot pink and then purple and also a batch of clear for Wee Ones #2 and #3.

I have the great fortune of a new friend, who just happens to be a professional chef (how lucky am I?!), lend me one of his serious, grown up professional cook books. You all know by now how much I love to do silly, playful things in the kitchen. I mean, who doesn’t love it when I stuff a brownie into a cookie? Or when I bake pies into cakes? (I did that just last month and it’ll be a nice epic blog post when I get to it). But there is just something about putting on my apron, kicking the kids out of the kitchen and really setting to stretch my skills and make something as pro as I possibly can.

My new kitchen is pretty amazing for this sort of thing. Maybe tomorrow I’ll give a walk through after I do my catch up post for the day. So last night, with the assistance of this book, I made the best beef stew I’ve ever made. I know, I know, oh Maytina made a stew woooooow, but even my husband, who usually says after supper ‘thanks so much for making supper, it was really good’, turned to me after a few bites and said ‘wow Maytina, this stew is really good’ and then a few bites later he turns to Wee One #1 and says ‘isn’t this even better than usual?’ and then when the was wiping up the remains of the stew with his bread he said ‘seriously, burn this recipe into your brain, can it be the new way you always make stew?’ Maybe I will skip ahead and post this recipe soon.

Also this week, the Beekeeper’s Quilt was introduced to me. Holy moly. I absolutely must make this. I still feel that way about the sock yarn blanket (my sister Nikoleta made this one). There are only so many hours in a day unfortunately, so this amazing quilt will have to wait a while. But I can dream.

I’m just starting the foot on my first Cobblestone sock in Knit Picks Stroll in Sprinkle Heather. I made a pair last year for my mother in law too. They knit up quick but I’m itching to get to my queue. I can’t ever have more than one thing on the needles at a time, unless the sock blanket is one of them because I’ll knit up my leftover sock yarn after each pair of socks before I move on to something else. My list-oriented-ness is alarming even to me sometimes. Ha!

So fun to be posting again!

Greetings long lost souls. It’s been two weeks since my last post which, while better than the seven weeks between that and the post before it, is not cool and should be my last disappearance for a while. Things are falling into place around here – all the boxes are unpacked, all the clutter has been tossed or donated and I can finally look around the new house and sigh happily instead of having no idea where my extra food processor blades are (the horror).

Actually, there is one casualty of this move – the nubby thing on the top of my pressure cooker. Insert loud, inconsolable sobbing here. I was positive that I packed it in the pressure cooker. Of course when I took the lid off once it was out of the box, it was not only not inside the pot but not inside the box. Now that everything has been unpacked, I have to give up and order a new one. My dad gave me his (hilariously unused – hilariously because he’s owned it for 30 years and it still had the original recipe book/instruction manual inside) just a few months ago, but I can’t imagine making mashed potatoes without it now! It’s actually good for a lot of otherwise time consuming cooking, I should write an article about that.

So far this week, I have added four articles to the site – one for each section and yes, all from projects or recipes done and photographed months ago. However, they are all good projects and recipes!

	These are Pecan Pie Cookies, they have been officially counted as the 7th cookie of the year, baked back in February. I know, as if I’m only posting them now, but here they are – in all their pecan pie glory. They have all the pecany, brown sugary, buttery (and even slightly creamy) taste and texture of a pecan pie with the portability of a cookie. I know, I know. You’re welcome. Go make some. I’ll wait here.
	This torte was pulled from Smitten Kitchen, and just like everything else I pull from there, it was very, very good. It’s not fussy at all, and while its technically a summer squash, I used a butternut squash and cooked it in the dead of winter!
	Making mineral makeup was so fun!! Everything from knowing what’s actually in the makeup that I put on the biggest organ of my body, to being able to control the exact colours and richness is just amazing. Not to mention you can say you made your own (which is rad enough) and compared to other mineral makeup of the same quality, there is a decent savings there too!
	This hat is really really cool, but it’s also an epic fail if we’re determining success by wearability. Intended as a 31st birthday gift for a man with at least an average size head, it might fit Wee One #1. I decided to write about it anyway though because the pattern is great, and the finished product, while totally useless to the person I had intended it for, turned out better than I expected it to. I really love to do any kind of colourwork, but I usually sequester intarsia work to one room, out of the children’s grasp, so as not to walk into a room with yarn barf all over the place. Anyhoo, these were made in one room and somehow also made pretty quickly, for me anyway.

Tomorrow I’ll add more articles to the site and blog about them here! There are so many fun things I’ve made that I can’t wait to show off. Homemade Tater Tots, anyone??

In this post, I’m participating in three WIP Wednesdays; Freshly Pieced, Tami’s Amis and Musings from the Fishbowl.

Of course it’s socks, right?! I’m about to start a few sockless projects believe it or not! For now though, I’m knitting up Nemesis socks from Knitty for my Dad for Father’s Day. I’m almost done sock one. It’s amazing how little time it actually takes to knit a sock compared to how long it takes me to physically finish one. Kids, life, going to the beach, cooking, cleaning – I know, I know. This is officially a first world problem, yes? Sorry. Anyhoo, my Dad will be here any minute to stay for a couple of days, so away we go with some pictures of his sock!

Sadly, I was a little wobbily in the pattern on the foot. :/ However, I am very happy with the rest of the sock and I still have the second one to go!

The yarn is Stroll Sock Yarn in Terrain Twist. The pattern used 450 yards, and these balls are 231 yards so I got two and am hoping to use the left overs for a sock yarn blanket because I’m a big fat copy cat and I think they look really cute. The heel on this sock is lovely, but not so dainty, it’s definitely a unisex sock!

I am in love with this pattern. I really loathe knitting from a chart, and as much as I loathe the process I think it’s especially worth it for these socks.

I am weaving in ends on a blanket that originally I had planned to post as a finished object on Friday, but I’m thinking now about knitting another carbon copy of it and then knitting (or sewing) them together. It’s been done and shelved for almost two months now but after taking it out again and taking photos of it, I think it should be bigger. Much, much bigger. It’s a wedding-turned-first-anniversary gift, so bigger is better yes? That makes it a work in progress then, doesn’t it? Here she is!

Thoughts? Big enough for the newlyweds to snuggle under at least, right? <3

I’m baaaaack!!!

I know I said I’d be back in a week four months ago and as you can see there as been a whole overhaul around here, the blog has expanded to better sort and organize all the content and the really exciting news is in the middle of all of this – we bought a house!! There are a lot of reasons we love the house we bought but for now I’ll give you a sneak peak of our favourite parts – the backyard and of course the kitchen. There’s no way we could buy a house without a serious kitchen.

There will be more pictures as we move in and get settled – which isn’t happening until August anyway. The backyard is huge and has an area already set aside for gardening, and as you may have suspected, will be growing once I get my hands on it. The other thing I adore so much about this house is that it has a pantry – an absolute necessity in my dream kitchen.


The changes to this site have been long in the making and I am so happy to finally be finished and able to show it all off. I’m still going to be posting my weeklies – I love doing them! Just now I’ll be linking to the pages instead of putting the recipe or instructions directly in the blog post – this way I can include more than one if I want to.

Tomorrow, we’ll get back to business as usual, with a few little changes. The weekly line up looks like this now:

Mondays – Menu Mondays from Kate Says Stuff

Tuesdays – Tempt My Tummy Tuesdays, Tuesdays at the Table, Tuesday Night Supper Club and Hearth ‘n Soul

Work in Progress Wednesdays – from Freshly Pieced, Tami’s Amis and Musings from the Fishbowl

Baking with Kids Thursdays – documenting the kids’ cooking and baking through Baking with Kids

Cookie Fridays – perhaps the best day of the week, check out the gallery

Super Cute Saturdays – if I have time for this, so do you!

Catchall Sundays – rando day, for things that don’t fit anywhere else

I have still been doing my self-inflicted challenges, so I’ll be posting them as often as I can to catch up. Right now, I have a lot of fun stuff to share with you!

As far as my domestic endevours go, I feel head over heels for Bakerella’s Cupshakes, which essentially is a milkshake crossed with a cupcake. I also made step by step instructions for eclairs, and chocolate fudge. As part of the Baking With Kids challenge, where the kids are baking and cooking their way through Linda Collister’s cookbook, I made a batch of puff pastry for them to use in the giant cheese straws recipe. I also added the 4th cookie of the year, the playfully pink cowgirl cookies to the gallery.

I have gotten my crafty groove back, though so far I’ve only posted about my stack of facecloths. Ahem. I did add two window shopping posts though, one on Charlene’s Supply Closet and one on The Loopy Ewe, two shops I am moderately to severely obsessed with. I’ve also added two interviews (Krissy of Krissyanne Designs and Megan of Radmegan) plus a book review of yet another new obsession – Martha Stewart’s Craft Encyclopedia. I’ve been busy!

There have been some health-concious related kitchen changes around here as well. I may as well just say it now without outing anyone, but two dear friends of mine have gone vegan. Which means two things really. First of course it means I now know way more than I ever wanted to know about being vegan and what rules there are and what different types of vegans there are which then also means I also know a whole lot about all kinds of scary stuff that even my vegan friends are not interested in. What’s that? SUGAR. Wowzers. White sugar is way worse than I thought and people let me tell you, I love me some sweet treats so what to do? I’ve been testing recipes using other kinds of natural sweeteners (because as bad as white sugar is fake sugar is even worse), and they’re working out pretty well. I mention this because while I am still cooking and baking my way through Deceptively Delicious, and while I am aware that adding veggies to pretty much anything is never a bad thing, I hesitate to call these recipes healthy knowing all that I know now. I am going to keep them in the ‘healthy’ category anyway because they are miles healthier than what used to come out of my kitchen. The second thing that happens when good friends go vegan is that I have to learn to cook and bake for them! I can’t have them coming up for the weekend to eat pasta and lettuce, can I?! I have been learning so much – expect some uber healthy additions to the healthy section in the coming weeks.

In the meantime though, here’s what I have added to that section to start with – Deceptively Delicious Stew (which adds pureed borccoli to a yummy stew), Dr Oz’s Green Smoothie (this is crazy healthy), Deceptively Delicious Mac & Cheese (with cauliflower puree and two kinds of cheese), Deceptively Delicious Applesauce Muffins (with applesauce duh and carrot puree), Deceptively Delicious Brownies (with pureed carrots and spinach), and an old school homemade Garlic, Honey & Lemon Cough Syrup recipe. Very old school, my Granny would be proud.

Aaaaad just like I said I would, I dove right into making a ‘pretty’ section. I’ve become more of a girly girl than ever in the last year so it’s been fun to write about it! I added two window shopping pieces, Body Shop and Mod Cloth, plus a 101 on Lotions, my Make Up Bag Must Haves and my first hair tutorial ever – my Puffy Bun, which literally takes 5 minutes – no more than 10 even with all three wee ones running underfoot at once.

Phew. I hope my little hanful of loyal readers are happy with the changes. Let me know what you think guys!!