Daily Photo – November 30th

Nate attempting to use a spoon

~S

Tasty Tuesday – Eggnog Flan

Welcome to another week of Tasty Tuesday here at The Young'ns!
There’s a recipe index under the food tab above if you’re ever looking for a recipe I’ve already blogged.
Every Monday, I plan on trying a new recipe. If it goes well, that’s what I’ll be posting on Tasty Tuesday. If not, I’ll post a tried and true (i.e. something I don’t have to think about too hard) ;)

I received my new issue of Food Network Magazine this week, and everything looked so tasty, I had to try at least one thing! I ended up making both the Eggnog Monte Cristos and the Eggnog Flan. Both were delicious. The monte cristos were designed to be an appetizer, and I know why now. They were a bit rich to have as a meal, but it worked.

The flan! Oh my, it was delicious. This was the first time I had made flan, and it came out beautifully! I didn’t know that it was as easy to make as it was, this might be dangerous ;)

{Ingredients}

• 2/3 cup sugar
• 4 tbsp water
• 4 cups eggnog
• 5 eggs

{Directions}

• Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F. Stir the sugar and water in a medium skillet. Bring to a boil over medium-high heat and cook, swirling the pan but not stirring, until deep amber, 5 to 7 minutes. Pour the caramel into a shallow 10-inch-round cake pan, tilting the pan so the caramel evenly coats the bottom.
• Bring a kettle of water to a boil. Whisk the eggnog and eggs in a large bowl until smooth, being careful not to beat in too much air. Pour the eggnog mixture over the caramel in the pan, then place in a large roasting pan. Fill the roasting pan with enough boiling water to come halfway up the side of the cake pan.
• Loosely cover the roasting pan with foil and bake 1 hour. Remove the foil and continue baking until the custard is set but still quivers, 40 minutes to 1 hour.
• Remove the flan from the roasting pan and let cool to room temperature, then cover and refrigerate until cold and set, about 2 hours. To serve, run a thin knife around the edge of the flan, place an inverted flat plate over the pan and flip to unmold.

I was glad I had guests to help me eat this yummy-ness, I don’t think I need to eat an entire pan of flan, but I sure could have, it was that good!

~S

Linking up at

Muffin Tin Tuesday

There was no theme at Muffin Tin Monday. I’m still recovering from sickness, new floors, and Thanksgiving busyness, so I just took our regular lunch and put it in muffin cups :)

Mac’n’Cheese, Corn, Corn Dogs, Katsup. (But, mommy, what goes in the middle??) And twizzlers :)

Mommy, can I be in the picture too? ~S

Menu Plan Monday – November 29th

  
I have a recipe index, just for recipes that I’ve blogged about. You can find it by going to the food tab above.

Here's the plan for this week:
Mix-it up Monday (something new) ~ Eggnog Monte Cristos and Eggnog Flan 
Taco Tuesday (Mexican or Oriental) ~ Orange Chicken Stir Fry
Wow Wednesday (Date night or something like restaurant food) ~ Date Night
Simple Thursday (Crockpot or less than 30 min prep)~ Carousel Dinner Theater with friends. We’re seeing White Christmas :)
Favorite Friday (A family favorite) ~ Lentil Stew & Ham
Lazy Saturday (leftover buffet) ~ Leftovers and Parade of Lights in Denver
Saucy Sunday (Italian) ~ Fettuccini with Quick Ragu

Come visit me for Tasty Tuesday for some more deliciousness.
So, what are you having for dinner this week?
Link up at Menu Plan Monday over at I'm an Organizing Junkie or leave me a comment!
~S

Daily Photo – November 29th

Nate enjoying his sister’s folding chair

~S

Daily Photo – November 28th

Kahlen’s thankful tree

~S

Dang internet wasn’t working last night, boo :(

Christmas Cards – To Make or Not?

In the past, I’ve really enjoyed making Christmas cards to send to all family and friends. But this year, I have the opportunity from Shutterfly to receive 50 photo cards for free! So, do I forgo my project that I enjoy, but takes a really long time and can be a stresser if I feel like I’m falling behind OR do I just let them do all the work instead?

They have some really cute 5x7 Folded Greeting Cards and some Chic Flat Stationary Cards. Hmm, they also have fun Thank You Cards that would cut down the work after Christmas too! Maybe daddy would like a Mouse Pad for work featuring his favorite munchkins, but then I’d have to pick pictures to put on it.

Probably I’ll end up doing both. I like their Flat Stationary Cards but I like making my own cards too. So if you’re one of the *lucky* ones who actually receives a card from me, you’ll get a fancy photo card from Shutterfly with a handmade card from me, ‘cause that’s how I roll ;)

What would you get?

Sign up here and you can get 50 free photo cards from Shutterfly too!

~S

I was not paid for this post, but I will be receiving the 50 photo cards I mentioned. All opinions are my own.

Daily Photo – November 27th

The kids love the new floor (and so do I!). Of course it’s hard to get a good picture of the whole thing when they do this to it as soon as they possibly can. I’ll post more pictures from the construction, etc, later this week. Hopefully I’ll be able to get a better picture of the whole thing along with the sweet rugs I scored on Black Friday.

~S

Daily Photo – November 26th

I’m pretty sure we’ve discovered Nate’s favorite holiday – Thanksgiving! He saw the pumpkin pie up on a shelf and got very excited, signing cookie please cookie please cookie please while also pointing and squealing. Yep, this boy loves to eat :)

~S

Daily Photo – November 23rd

Mmm, fresh pomegranates thanks to a friend and his parent’s orchard. These came to me  straight from California, yummy :)

For a great tutorial on how to peel and eat these tasty winter fruit, go here.

~S

Daily Photo – November 22nd

Sick kids + off my normal routine = no pictures. Sorry!

We went from lice to bed bugs this week

~S

Daily Photo – November 19th

And yesterday I had sick kiddos. Poor Nate can’t keep anything down. Add a bathroom painting job, a run to the dump, and a few mystery shops, and I was a little busy.

Anyway, here’s the video I mentioned. Enjoy :)

~S

Daily Photo – November 18th

Sorry, I don’t have much today. My mom and I spent the day ripping out carpet, tile, and baseboards. I have a great video of taking out tile, but my mom has it right now, so you’ll just have to wait.
I’m gonna make you work for this one. There’s a picture on facebook of ripping out the carpet, but you have to go here to see it. Maybe when things calm down around here, I’ll actually get it posted here instead of just on facebook.

~S

Wordless Wednesday / Daily Photo – November 17th

Playing with fabric leaves with friends

Nate and Tilly sharing a leaf and a measuring cup

Find more of this week's Wordless Wednesday (or Wordful) posts at 5 Minutes for Mom
~S

Tasty Tuesday – Chicken and Dumplings

{Dear Mom,

Thank you for teaching me how to cook. Thank you for teaching me not just how to follow a recipe, but also how to modify it to make it what I wanted. So many of the recipes I see involve something out of a box or a can or a mix of some kind. I don’t need to use those, I make far better ones for cheaper and not that much more effort thanks to your guidance. I can tell just by reading a recipe what I’ll want to change to make it what we like to eat. I can look in my pantry and pull out a dozen meals. I can cook for two people or twenty. Thanks, mom. May my children learn as much from me as I did from you.}

Welcome to another week of Tasty Tuesday here at The Young'ns!
There’s a recipe index under the food tab above if you’re ever looking for a recipe I’ve already blogged.
Every Monday, I plan on trying a new recipe. If it goes well, that’s what I’ll be posting on Tasty Tuesday. If not, I’ll post a tried and true (i.e. something I don’t have to think about too hard) ;)

I was looking at a recipe for chicken and dumplings, but it wasn’t exactly what I remembered from childhood, so I sort of followed that one and sort of did what I remembered having. I did use her recipe for Fauxtisserie Chicken, and it was pretty good. I need better fresher spices next time, more salt, and more foil.

The trick to good dumplings is to make sure your broth is really boiling, then drop the dumplings in by the tablespoon until the top of your broth is covered. Let them cook until they’re just done, and they should be nice and fluffy and doughy and impart some creamy goodness to your soup.

 

Chicken and Dumplings

{Ingredients}

• 5 cups Chicken broth or stock. If you use canned, get the low sodium kind. Try making it once, and you’ll never want to go back. I use the canned when I don’t have time to/forget to make the “real thing”, so don’t feel like you have to make the broth, it just tastes way better.
• 3 cups water
• 3-4 carrots, peeled and chopped
• Celery if you like. Hubby doesn’t, so I don’t usually put it in.
• 3-4 cups cubed chicken. I liked the Fauxtisserie that I mentioned above, but you could really use any kind.
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1/4 cup shortening
• 1 cup milk

{Directions}

• Put chicken broth, water, carrots, celery, and cubed chicken in stock pot. Bring to a boil.
• In the meantime, mix flour, baking powder, and salt in a food processer or bowl.
• Add shortening in 2-4 blobs. If using a food processor, pulse a few times until crumbly. If not, use a pastry cutter or two knives to incorporate shortening.
• Slowly add milk, mixing a little bit until all milk is poured in. Pulse a few more times to get the dough into a nice ball. It should be sticky, that’s fine.
• When soup reaches a boil, put the dough on top of the broth a tablespoon at a time, careful not to put one dumpling on top of another.
• Fill up the top of the broth with dumplings. If you have extra dough, you can put it by the tablespoon on an ungreased cookie sheet and cook them at 375 degrees for 10 minutes for some tasty biscuits.
• Once the last dumpling is in, boil for 10-12 minutes.
• Eat with a nice side of veggies or a tasty sandwich. Mmm, yummy!

~S

Linking up at

Preschool Corner / Raising Rock Stars Preschool – Review 1 (LTHIFE)

Kahlen is 3 years, 10 months

Oops, way behind again! In my own defense, we’ve been sick and battling lice and now we just decided to replace the flooring on our entire main level!

Anyhoodle, this was our review that we did of the first six weeks of school. We actually took two weeks to review because it just fit better. That way, too, we were able to do one letter per day since we usually do 4 days a week and there were 6 letters to review. It was nice taking it a little slower and doing some other activities during the week, like free painting, that we don’t usually do because we’re doing our curriculum activities.

We used the power point show from each week to briefly go over the verse, the letter, and the sight word. I also took the review unit that Carissa has made, printed everything, and laminated it. I didn’t have time (or money) to go get metal rings to hold everything, but I did pick up some small plastic rings while we were at Home Depot  doing their Kids Workshop. I made one ring for:

• The verses. I put the verse on the back and the picture that was associated with that verse on the front.
• The sight words
• Numbers. I put the numbers on the front, and the objects on the back.
• Two for the letters. One had the letter with objects on the front, and a plain letter on the back. The other had letters on both sides.

Almost all of the things I used are included in the download from the members only area at 1+1+1=1 (She only charges $10 and it’s been sooooooooo worth it!!)

I also laminated the letter find that has upper and lower case of all the letters in our review.

So, for each day of our review, we

• Picked one of the rings to focus on. We either talked about them or she traced them.
• Wrote our sight word on a dry erase board (I’ll get the link for the ones we have when Oriental Trading is back up)
• Circled the letter of the day on the letter find

I used a lot of activities from Confessions of a Homeschooler’s A-Z Review, and just pulled out the letters we needed. I also went through the letter of the week curriculum and picked a few activities that we hadn’t done for each letter.

For every letter, we did the Collage Worksheet, which I put in a binder with room for the other letters as we do them later in the year.

  L is for Leaves

T is for Tissue Paper

H is for Hands I is for Igloo

F is for Felt

  E is for Envelope (which I let her decorate however she wanted to with her dot markers)

Ladybug Cutting

Turtle coloring. She did NOT want to color the ones that were upside down, so I had her turn the paper upside down so they were right side up :)

Hippo patterns

   Inchworm building

  Elephant shape craft

Spoon alphabet matching. She did not like this one much either, but mostly because she actually had to think about it and because it took awhile to complete. She did it though, and did a great job!

A-Z Beginning Matching Game. The cards just have the picture on it and they have to match the correct letter. We did uppercase then lowercase, and she did great! 

 

  Uppercase/Lowercase matching. Went very fast, she’s a pro at recognizing her letters now!

 

 

We continue to work through our Kumon books: My First Book of Drawing and My First Book of Cutting. She’s been improving in her cutting skills and has complained less about the drawing. Still not her favorite, though.

She drew a snow cone and an acorn for our review weeks. She was frustrated that we didn’t have two different colors of brown for the acorn, but that’s what happens when there are only 8 markers in the set.

She cut a ruler, and then went around for days measuring everything, including her brother. Eventually, she left it sitting somewhere and Nate got a hold of it. The end of the ruler.

She *loves* Starfall. I frequently find her clicking on another letter, quick, before mom notices I’m done with the first one!

We don’t do it all the time, *maybe* once a week, but it’s good.

For shape and cutting practice this week, I took this Trace the Shapes worksheet from The Ramblings and Adventures of a SAHM that we traced the week before and she cut them out instead.

It was very challenging for her, but she did pretty good! Last time I had her do them, we just did the first page, which has mostly straight lines. This time she had to do all of them.

I’m still amazed at her memory and ability to pick things up so quick. She can recite all of the verses word perfect and usually the reference too. She will correct daddy if he says them wrong ;)

What have you been doing for your preschooler? Come link up at Homeschool Creations! Interested in learning more about my curriculum choices? Check out this post about my plan for the year.

6 letters down, only 20 more to go!

~S