Tonight was our last t-ball game of the season. Chip is on a camping trip so I thought I'd try to make it a special night by making some home-made ice cream sandwiches for dessert before the game.
I used some refrigerated mint chocolate chip cookie dough to make 6 cookies and some vanilla ice cream for the filling. Success! The kids loved them!
Little did I know that the snack after the game would be ice cream sandwiches! Oh well.
I have a tendency to buy things at garage sales and then let them sit around in the garage waiting for me to find the time to fix them up somehow. Usually the thing I buy is something we need but still...
Anyway, I purchased a bookshelf at our
church garage sale for about $8 in April. Then school let out and potty training took over and, although I was pestered by Boo, I just didn't get to refinishing it. Finally, Chip decided he would like to have his garage space back, so I started stripping the old stain off.
Well, Chip did a second application of stain removal and then sanded off what was left. He also trimmed up the decorative wood that was on the top and cut some scrap wood to create a better looking front siding.
Then he applied the new stain and finishing coat. I'm grateful that he took over the project because, at the rate I was going, it would have been done shortly before Boo graduated from high school! Here's the finished product. It took the place of the smaller bookshelf that my grandfather made (which I refinished all by myself a few years ago!).
Here's the older bookshelf, now in Boo's room. It took almost no time for it to be completely full of her chapter/series books!
About a week ago, we tried our hand at sloppy joe turnovers. I found a recipe on
Little Birdie Secrets and decided it was a great time to try them. I ended up not liking them as much as I thought I would. The kids ate them and were much less messy than usual! Next time we will use a sloppy joe seasoning mix or Mamwich instead of making it from scratch. It just didn't have the zesty flavor of our usual sloppy joes.
To make the from scratch version of sloppy joe turnovers, you need:
1 lb. ground beef
10 oz. can refrigerated flaky biscuits
1/4 c. onion
1/2 c. ketchup
1/4 c. sour cream
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. garlic powder
-Heat oven to 375 degrees. Brown ground beef and onion in a skillet. Add ketchup, sour cream, salt and garlic powder. Simmer for 2 minutes. Roll out biscuits (just stretch them out a bit with your hands). Place a heaping spoonful of meat mixture in the center of each biscuit. Fold over the biscuit to cover meat and seal the edges with a fork. Cut a slit on the top of biscuit. Bake turnovers on a cookie sheet for 15-20 minutes or until golden brown on top.
If you want to do it the way we are going to next time, you need:
1 lb hamburger
1 can mamwich/pkg of sloppy joe seasoning
10 oz. can refrigerated flaky biscuits
- Prepare the biscuits the same way as above. Brown burger and add seasoning (follow directions on can or bag). Spoon meat mixture onto biscuit and fold over, pressing the edges together with a fork. Bake for 15-20 minutes or until golden on top.
So for my 100th post, I thought I'd share a portrait of a major part of my day (for the last few weeks).
No need for words...
This temper tantrum is brought to you by the letter E and the number 2!
Growing up I did my fair share of tye-dying in Girl Scouts, but always in small circles... never multiple colors and big swirls. A few weeks ago, my friend
Jenni made up a bunch of shirts for our children for a trip to the
Museum of Science and Industry. That same week, there were left over supplies for tye dying at Kid's Club. I took some home and we decided to create some wearable art!
If you have never done this style shirt before, I suggest buying a kit at your local craft store. We soaked our shirts and bottoms in soda ash water for 20 minutes before we began creating our design to help absorbtion of the dye. Apparently soda ash is very difficult to find on its own so a kit might be your best bet.
First we made 4th of July shirts. Bug and Boo each did their own and I did a shirt and a pair of shorts for Ebabe.
Then we made rainbow designs for 3 more tank tops, a pair of shorts for Bug and a skort for Boo. Somehow the way we wrapped the skort, there is a large almost white area on one leg. It's very interesting. I don't think Boo added enough colored dye to her bundle to penetrate the entire cloth.
Boo's outfit is on the left, Ebabe's shirt in the middle and Bug's outfit on the right.
I just downloaded photos of various things I knew they would see around the store and pasted them into an Excel spreadsheet. The free spot was the Target logo. Yes, this is consumerism at it's best but hey, it kept the kids occupied and allowed me to get my shopping done without too much fuss. 
Here's the completed card. I printed the copies in black and white to save some money and used random Easter egg stickers we've had in the drawer for years. We'll probably try it again at the grocery store. Maybe I'll have them make the bingo cards using the ads in the paper. Hmmm...
