Donations: Day 6 ~ American Girl Doll Bed

My donating heart has spread...a mother could never be so pleased.

My eldest daughter has been cleaning her room for the past year. I'm really not exaggerating here. She is a "stuff" kiddo and has a room full of stuff. She is constantly cleaning her room. Every day I walk by and can't imagine how she cleaned her room for hours the day before and needs to clean it again.

On one of her recently hour long cleaning sessions, she decided to let a large item go. She's a teen now, so somethings are just not as important to her anymore. She decided to donate her American Girl Doll bed. I set it out in the living room for a couple a days to see if she still felt that way as time passed. Then about two weeks after we put the bed in the living room, the girls had a friend spend the night and she brought her American Girl doll.

Within hours of the friend being over, my eldest daughter asked if she could give the bed to her friend. My heart swooned. I asked her if she was sure she was ready to give it away. She said yes with a huge smile and said she would rather someone use it and love it then it just sit in her room taking up space. That afternoon when the friend's mom came to get her, I made sure she was okay with this transaction being it isn't a small item. Mom said yes and the friend had a wonderful new bed for her doll.

Life is good. We experienced the joys of giving and letting go and freeing up space and purging and cleaning and I'm SO HAPPY for my daughter. She still has a lot of stuff and still always needs to clean...but one thing is gone. Every little step counts!

Organizing: Day 6 ~ Nail Polish Stash

Having three daughters has created quite a nail polish stash. Years ago, I put up a cute little shelf in their bathroom that had three shelves (one for each). They lined all their nail polished on it and wow was there quite a collection.

Recently I went to paint their nails and discovered a few things about the collection. Some where junky little kid nail polishes that rub off in a few hours and where really too young for my pre-teen and teen girls. Then there were ones that were so old they separated or were so crusty you couldn't get the lids off of them.

We went through each nail polish and cleaned out the old. I think we got rid of about 20 nail polishes. Then we did nails (just another thing to do when you have a kid laid up with a broken leg).

I'm hoping that after all of this, my girls will just throw away the ones that are no longer good as they come to them. We'll see...

New Recipe: Number 14 ~ Frozen Yogurt Drops

It was Spring Break and having one kiddo with a broken leg, I tried to find a few things to make our days a little fun. This was a simple thing I found on Pinterest. It's not exactly cooking but it was a new thing so here it is. I know...we did this on Spring Break. If you haven't noticed, I haven't really found the time to blog. I'm back (I think).

I used a yogurt drink but any flavored yogurt would work.

I put some yogurt drink in a zip baggie and snipped on corner (very small snip). Then I just pipped some yogurt on a baking pan lined with wax paper. I stuck it in our deep freezer for about 15 minutes.

Viola, a wonderful frozen snack and the kids thought it was fun. We discovered the smaller drops are better. You can just suck on them. The big ones are like taking a huge bite of ice cream and can be very cold and very overwhelming. We'll definitely be doing this again. It was just too easy!

Random Acts of Kindness: Day 3 ~ Compliments to the Server

With one kiddo in a full leg cast, Spring Break looked a little glum around here. Hubby and I decided to take the kiddos out to eat at BJ's Brewery to kick off what would be a low key Spring Break.

I had been but the family had not. Well...I must just say, it was an amazing time! I cannot begin to brag enough about our evening. The food was great, the timing was excellent, and the service was a 10 out of 10! I'm really not exaggerating. The first dozen jobs I had, were in full service restaurants. It is not brain surgery but I will say our town is really laking on great service.

It was so amazing that I asked our server to get her manager and come back with the manager. She looked really scared. When we first sat down I ordered a drink I dislike and sent it back to get something different. I think she thought I was going to raise hell about it.

When the manager came over, I seriously just gushed on our service. I told the manager I was really impressed and though I had brought my family to try their wonderful pizza, it was our server that would have us coming again and again. They just created regular customers and I could not think of one single thing our sever could have done differently to make it any better. I watched our server's face go from complete worry to absolutely beaming.

He thanked me for sharing the praise. I said I'm sure he was used to only talking to customers when things go wrong and people were unhappy. He asked that I never stop doing that because it really made their night and he planned on bragging about our server at the close of shift.

My kiddos and hubby were really excited to see how happy it made them. It made our night too. It's expensive to go out to eat and we've almost given up going out to eat because it's such as waste of money to get mediocre food and poor service. This night was amazing and I hope it was an encouragement to them.

We'll definitely be going back and we'll be asking to sit in Christina's section!

New Recipe: Number 13 ~ Corn Beef & Cabbage Egg Rolls

We celebrated St. Patty's day at my parents' house, therefore I had a corn beef brisket in my fridge and needed a fun recipe to make it. When I asked my hubby if I should throw it in the freezer or make it (so we would have corn beef twice in one week) the Irish in him leapt out and said, "Make it."

Corn Beef & Cabbage Rolls

Ingredients Roll:
-Corn Beef
-Cabbage
-Onions
-Egg Roll Wrappers
-Egg (beaten for egg wash, can substitute water).

If you've never purchased Egg Roll Wrappers before, you can find them in a couple different places in the store, but always in a cooler section. They will either be near the produce or the yogurt but is almost always be the tofu. Most Egg Roll Wrappers are made of tofu.

Cook Corn Beef:
Cook the corn beef in the crock pot on low for about 6 hours. Pull the corn beef from the crock pot and let is rest on a cutting board for about 15 minutes. Shred corn beef and put into a dish and refrigerate (for about an hour till the meat is cool).

Sautee Onions & Cabbage:
Sautee about one sliced white onion in a frying pan with a little butter (butter not oil...very important). After the onion becomes clear, add in sliced cabbage (try to make the onion and cabbage slices about the same width). Add some more butter (at this point I think I used a total of 4 tbsp). Saute onions and cabbage until cabbage shrinks down stirring to make sure all the cabbage gets cooked evenly. When the cabbage is all withered down, stop stirring regularly and allow the onions and cabbage to caramelize. Allow the onions and cabbage to remain in the same place in the pan for 5-10 minutes before moving things around and letting it sit for 5-10 minutes. Continue to do this until the cabbage and the onions brown and may even blacken in some areas (though you do not want it all black). Remove from heat and place in a dish and refrigerate for at least one hour (I try to put it in around the same time as the corn beef so they will both be ready to use at the same time.)

After both the cabbage and onion mixture and the corn beef have cooled, it's time to roll.

Rolling egg rolls may seem hard, but it's really quite easy. Lay down an egg roll like a diamond with points up and down and side to side.

Place Corn Beef in the bottom 1/3 of the Roll. 

Place Cabbage on top of beef.

Fold up bottom corner.

Roll part way.

Fold in one side to the center.

Fold other side to the center.

Egg wash the top and fold over the middle.

Viola...beautiful rolls.

 After the rolls are complete, I used my deep fryer set at 375˚ and fried until golden brown (or fry them in a frying pan turning them often to ensure every side gets crispy). They can also be baked in the oven at 350˚ for about 15 minutes with egg wash on the entire roll but they do not get very crispy this way.

Served over sauteed cabbage & onions...and believe it or not ~ soy sauce.

Reading: Book 4 ~ Water for Elephants

Water for Elephants

By Sara Gruen

I loved this book and would recommend it but with caution. This is not a book for young readers. There are some very adult scenes in this book (of sexual and explicit nature). 

The main character in this book is an elderly man (in his 90s) and goes back and forth from him in present in the nursing home in which he now resides and back to his youth when he unknowingly became part of a traveling circus.

This book definitely kept my interest and was not only easy to read but I could set it down to get things done around the house (unlike "Hunger Games"). This book was made into a movie that came out just about a year ago and I have yet to see the movie. In the notes from the author, it seems this book was semi based on several different recorded circus stories from this time period. Throughout the book there are several pictures of circuses from this time period. It was definitely a different world.

I enjoyed this and recommend it (to adult readers).

Knitting: Project 3 ~ Hemp Hat

I used The Rikke Hat (free pattern available here) as inspiration for this hat. I used another Ravelry user's notes (link here) to make the decrease for my hat, being I did not like the star like swirl the original creates. I wanted this hat to be for a guy and the star, swirl decrease look girlie to me.

This is a garter stitch hat (which in the flat is knit every row) but being it was knit in the round, it is actually knit one row, purl one row. It's a great slouchy hat and super comfy. I was looking for a hat to make from hemp yarn because of a request from a friend. Hemp yarn can be difficult with which to work being it works more like cotton and can be stiff. I was able to get a nice slouchy, soft hat from hemp with this pattern.

Front view

Back View

Side View

Close up.

Materials:
-US size 4 16" circular needle
-US size 8 16" circular needle
-US size 8 DPN
-Stitch Marker
-Darning needle
-2 Skeins Elsebeth Lavold Hempathy (153 yards each), held together. I used contrasting green yarn.

Directions:
-With larger needles (I used two sets of US 4 needles, to make sure the cast on is nice and loose) CO 85 sts using the German Twist Cast-on Method (holding both strands of yarn together for entire pattern) *There are some great youtube videos on the German Twist Cast-on Method. I linked the one I used at the bottom of this post.
-PM to indicate end/beginning of round

Brim
Using smaller needles
-Round 1: Knit
-Round 2: Purl
-Repeat 14 more times for a total of 15 garter stitch ridges

Body
-Change to larger needles
-Round 1: Knit
-Round 2: Purl
-Repeat until hat measures 6" from cast-on edge

Decrease (switch to DPNs as needed)
-Round 1: [k2tog, k3] repeat to the end of the round
-Round 2: P
-Round 3: K
-Round 4: P
-Round 5: K
-Round 6: P
-Round 7: [k2tog, k2] repeat to the end of the round
-Round 8: P
-Round 9: K
-Round 10: P
-Round 11: K
-Round 12: P
-Round 13: [k2tog, k1] repeat to the end of the round
-Round 14: P
-Round 15: K
-Round 16: P
-Round 17: [k2tog] repeat to the end of the round (16 sts remain)
-Round 18: P
-Round 19: K
-Round 20: P
-Round 21: [k2tog] repeat to the end of the round (8 sts remain)
-Cut Yarn and use darning needle to thread through the remaining live sts, pull and close the hole
-Weave ends into the hat

Enjoy!

German Cast-on Method