Snow Day(s!!!) 2013

I’m a teacher.

I like snow days.

I haven’t had a snow day in 2 years.

I was like a teenager with a crush on a boy, sitting by the phone (actually refreshing the district website every minute), waiting for the auto-alert call from our superintendent Thursday night hoping he would let us know that due to inclement weather (actually, pretty bad road conditions) there would be NO SCHOOL on Friday!! We had our first snow day on Thursday, after a 12 hour day of classes and parent-teacher conferences. Two days? Awesome.

After a celebratory glass of wine…ok, a 2nd celebratory glass of wine, I started my mental list. I’m not a good sleeper-inner, I knew I would be up early when the hubs left for work (poor guy, Wash U. never closes), so started thinking about everything I would do the next day.

I always create a long list of “things I am going to get accomplished” when  a snow day is announced. I am not a very good relaxer. And, I can say, I did get quite a few things accomplished – but not quite as many as my imaginary superwoman could do. Here, in pictures is how this teacher spent her 4 day weekend

Enjoy the forecast, a cup of coffee and one of my favorite blogs, Talk of the House.

Then, off to work on Project 333. (Read more about it here – I am not making the total 33 plunge, but did make a huge purge.)

Pile from the closet – before.

Closet during.

Here is the transformation! (hah, in my dreams…)

Friday brought a dose of reality and a workout provided mother nature…shoveling.

Saturday? I was sore (Thanks, Jillian Michaels and Mother Nature) so I had some real fun and ran errands…Sunday morning included these yummy Cinnamon Roll Pancakes  Sorry, these are “raw,” I ate mine before remembering to take a picture! Thanks for the inspiration (and calories…) Amanda!

Yet ANOTHER walk with the dogs in the woods – this would have been a perfect day to ski, if the hubs enjoyed skiing and we lived somewhere you could really ski.

We saw a teepee on the trail.

Outhouses covered in snow. I am not an outhouse fan, but feel compelled to take pictures of them for some odd reason.

I’m telling you, it was a BEAUTIFUL day! Bright blue skies, no wind and 38 degrees. Perfect.

Who can resist horses in coats?

To cap off a wonderful 4 day weekend, I decided to organize one of the drawers in the bathroom. I’m a girl who knows how to have fun, but I’ll just leave you with a little tease for next time…

Snow is in the forecast for Tuesday night, but I don’t think snow lightening will strike twice. This is a picture from a 4 day snow day break when I was in high school…please ignore the date. I’m sure the 1 Hour Photo Mat place got it wrong…

A Walk in the Woods

Although the weather in St. Louis is nowhere near to what the Northeast has experienced this weekend, I am sitting at the table in our bay window, listening to howling wind with a blanket over my ankles (maybe getting dressed by noon would help?) looking over a rain-soaked backyard. Seems appropriate to look back to the fall when the leaves were crunchy, the sun was shining, and the dogs could have lots of sniffage and running in the woods.

Our son was home from college last November and introduced us to Greensfelder Park about 10 minutes from our house in suburban St. Louis. It’s an amazing, undeveloped area with lots of trails to follow and sits in the foothills of the Ozark Mountains. While we have never run into anyone else while hiking, there is definite evidence of equestrian activity – much to the delight of our dogs…

Here is Brett, with one of our “grand-dogs,” Dabo. Brett is planning on walking the Appalachian Trail this year to raise awareness and money for Guardian Angels for Soldier’s Pet – I think Dabo should join him, don’t you?

(Dabo is already famous in the dog blog world, he was a favorite of many when this photo of him showed up on Dog Shaming - I should have been suspicious when he was so quiet and “occupied” as I was sewing one evening. My daughter tells me that Kristin Conrad from The Hills even retweeted it…)

Here is the hubs and I at the top of the “mountain” – hard to believe suburbia is just over those hills, isn’t it?

Mother and son.

Not sure what this means…either is a Black Diamond ski run OR there are birds of prey ahead…

Maybe we SHOULD be checking out for a herd of wild horses?

It’s hard to get a decent picture of two dogs, but I think we’re all smiling.

Wish you could hear the rustling of the leaves as the dogs smelled every inch of the world at their paws. Talk about FUN!

Ready to head home and snooze the afternoon away.

The humans are ready, too.

A beautiful day.

 

Go out and find some untraveled areas near your home – once you get the snow out of the doorway, that is! (found this on the web…poor guy, but he looks ready to go!)

Sunday afternoons are made for naps (with good buddies)

Ham and Cheese Sliders (a.k.a. Ham Balls)

We are off to our friend’s home to watch the “BIG GAME” this afternoon – and I’m bringing over a long-time favorite of the Hamlin family. We’ve enjoyed this recipe for years, and thanks to the internet (and Pinterest!) lots of you have enjoyed it, too. You may have heard them referred to as Ham and Cheese Sliders – yummy, cheesy, buttery, hammy goodness. I promise, you, it is impossible to eat just one.

We have called them Ham Balls since living in Iowa. I would make them for our friends every Christmas and Randy couldn’t think of their name, so he christened them Ham Balls and the name stuck.  I was very protective of the recipe (yeah, I was one of THOSE people) and didn’t share it until we moved…A girl’s gotta keep a couple of secrets!

The original recipe I have is from A Taste of Old Salem, a community cookbook published by the Junior Women’s Club of Salem, VA in 1989.

I don’t know how to insert a printable document (yet) so you’ll need to copy and paste if you decide to whip some of these babies up before 5:00 central time!

Ham Rolls (thanks to Kimberly Preston)

3 pkgs. Pepperidge Farm Party Rolls*

2 sticks butter

1 medium onion, chopped fine

2 tbsp. Worcestershire sauce

2 tbsp. mustard (I use Dijon style)

3 tbsp. poppy seeds

1 1/2 lb.  shaved deli ham (whatever is on sale!)

1/2 lb. thinly sliced Swiss cheese

1)  Bake  the rolls as directed on the package; remove from the pan and slice in half horizontally. It is much easier to put these together if you don’t separate the individual rolls before serving. (Keep the aluminum pan, you’ll need it to bake them in after they are put together.)

2)  Saute onion in butter until translucent, add the Worcestershire, mustard and poppy seeds to the onion/butter mixture. Divide evenly between the 3 pans of rolls, don’t worry about it soaking in…that’s what makes them so delicious!

3) Top with the ham, then the cheese and put the tops back on. Wrap in aluminum foil and bake at 350 degrees until cheese melts – about 20 – 30 minutes. These may be put assembled and frozen and heated without defrosting – just may take a little longer.

*(These are NOT available any longer – the best substitute I have found are Sister Schubert’s Frozen Parker House Rolls, others have used the Hawaiian style sweet rolls, but the Parker House are my pick, they are a perfect bite size) Also, this picture shows some of the butter mixture brushed onto the top of the rolls before baking – you could easily make more and do this.

If you haven’t caught it yet – Puppy Bowl IX  is on Animal Planet this afternoon – the commercials might not be the same as the big game , but do you get to see any NFL players get penalized for excessive tail biting or pooping on the field? Hmm…maybe during the off-season?

At any rate – enjoy your day. I think there’s enough time to get to the store and make yourself some Ham Rolls!

Two Christmas Projects are DONE!!

How exciting!!

This week I finished TWO, yes TWO Christmas projects. Please ignore they were for Christmas 2012 – as many accountants and those who work for the government will attest, numbers are often irrelevant and can be manipulated as the situation dictates.

Last year I made pillows for family members and friends using some favorite photos and transferring them to special heat transfer fabric. This VERY easy to do – and worked great on my home printer. Here is a tutorial on eHow. The response from everyone waas great, so this year I decided to do it again – but make them more individual this time.

My daughter, Kate (a.k.a. Bride-to-Be or BtB) gave the hubs and I these framed maps for our anniversary last year. Here they are – the one on the left is where we were each born and where we got married (Go VOLS!) and the one on the right is where our family has lived since BtB made us a threesome.

So, with this as my inspiration I turned to etsy - quick search for “state maps” and I found Saturated Color. Her customer service is great – a couple of the maps I ordered were digital and the others are actual pages from old social studies books. Sad to say, I think some of them looked a little familiar, does that make ME vintage? The digital images arrived immediately, the actual pages were in my mailbox within a week – protected from any sort of impact they might have been exposed to.  All I needed to do was download or scan, transfer to the fabric, buy some fabric and pillow forms, decide how I would put them together, clean the house, prepare food for all of our guests/visitors, clean the house, go to the grocery store, teach school, wrap gifts, clean the house…well, you get the idea. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

What ended up being completed by Christmas Eve were the downloaded images, wrapped up in a tube an inserted into stockings with a promise!

Following are the VERY basic steps I took to make 2 of the pillows – one for BtB and another for FSIL (Future Son-in-Law). Yes, you are correct – the rest are still just a figment of your imagination – but are in a REAL pile on my pile of UFOs (unfinished objects).

1) I decided to save myself a bit of math work and use a Log Cabin type piecing system. After transferring the photos to the fabric, I cut two pieces of fabric the length of the shortest end of the picture. I used a 1/4″ seam because there was not a lot of fabric to work with on the sides of the picture.

Here is what it looks like from the right side.

I used the design and the edge of my presser foot to sew the pieces together. Apologies to eastern Pennsylvania, I hope there were no injuries resulting from a giant sewing machine needle sewing through you.

All 4 sides attached – but it looked a little plain, so after searching through my ribbon box, I found some pretty gray grosgrain that matched the drawings on the maps perfectly.

I purchased 14 X 14″ pillow forms, so trimmed the fronts to 15 X 15″ (allowing 1/2″ seam allowances on all 4 sides) and cut a 15 X 15″ piece for the back of each pillow. If I have the gumption, sometimes I will insert a zipper in the pillow back – but lacking the zippers and said gumption – these two were made without.

All sewn together and ready for the newlywed’s home! I had some heart-shaped buttons in my stash and put one on the city where each of them were born.

Just a few more to tackle before Christmas 2013 creeps up on me.

Weather around here is chilly – freezing drizzle turning to rain then 68 degrees forecast for Monday. As a teacher, I must protest – what happened to SNOW in the winter????

Phase 1

It feels VERY good to have kept up with most of what I wanted to accomplish this week!

• Did one house cleaning/keeping job each day - because I really hated spending Saturday AND Sunday cleaning, errand running, and grocery shopping. Wasn’t always fun to come home after a long day in the classroom and vacuum or clean bathrooms – but most everything I intended to clean got cleaned.
• Stuck to my exercise plan, except on Wednesday. Hope to do a 5k again with my buddy Kelley – even if she has upped her game and registered for a half marathon…not me, I have a wedding to plan this spring, no time to train, right?
• Planned our meals, shopped for them, prepared them and didn’t have to back to the store for anything! I am using many of the fun recipes I have on my Pinterest board, what did we all do without Pinterest?
• Went to Happy Hour (hey, I’m a teacher – we need Happy Hour) at Balaban’s in Chesterfield. Heaven on earth for those of us who enjoy wine – they have GOOD stuff for half price! Look for me there next Friday. Oh, and putting HH on the list of “thing to do this week” is totally acceptable in my book - in the words of Stephen Covey, I was practicing Habit 7 – making meaningful social connections with others. AND scored a whole bag of wine corks for Kate to use for the reception! (she’s busy with some fun ideas – she made a garter from my dress ruffle already! See her post here)
• Cleaned up my email inboxes (silly me, I have 3, no, make that 4 email accounts) – and kept up with all of my favorite blogs. My most favorite right now is Talk of the House, check her out - she’s a teacher, mom and I love her style.
• Did a little bit of Project 333 in my closet, really am trying to have only clothes that I love in my wardrobe. Not sure I can get to 33 items, but I’m getting closer.
• Most importantly – got the first prototype of the dress Kate will wear to the rehearsal luncheon done. You can see a little bit about that here. But, here is a picture of the dress the FIRST time she tried it on!

Kate in my wedding dress, 1996

I think she’s going to be a beautiful bride.

Enjoy the rest of the weekend!

Is it January Already?

OK, I have been TERRIBLE at posting. Is there a worse word than terrible? Probably. A lot has happened since November 3 – Thanksgiving, sooner-than-expected death in the family, Christmas (and all the ensuing activities – baking, wrapping, shopping, not exercising…), sewing gifts (really…adding gifts yet unsewn to the pile), school starting again and the monthly countdown to Kate’s wedding can now be done on one hand.

On Houzz yesterday I read 11 Easy Ways to Keep Your New Year’s Resolutions. One of those 11 I will do right now – spend 10 minutes on a resolution. I am allowing myself 10 minutes to get a post done and set the stage for a later post – maybe even later today.

I have 2, actually 3 major sewing projects on my docket – my mother-of-the-bride dress, Kate’s rehearsal dress (made from MY wedding dress…yes, I must get out the shears) and her veil. 4 months, 13 days. I suppose I SHOULD finish before the actual day – maybe even 2 weeks before the day?

OK, 4 months. Wish me luck and I will look forward to your encouragement, support and even nagging, my friends.

What has kept me busy for the last week or so is this little surprise for my friend who is about to add some sweet pink to her family! (I can’t let you see much more – she might actually be reading this…)

So, here is what a 10 minute attempt at a resolution looks like…

Back from the shower! The teaser picture was an inspiration from sew4home.com. I did not order the fabric from fabric.com - I would like to one day, but found some really soft and plush minky-like fabric and flannel at my locan Joann’s. If any of you have ordered fabric online, I’d love to hear what you think.

Here is the finished product…

Apparently Nicole Kidman was spotted with a double-faced Minky Baby blanket…AND was just interviewed by Ryan Seacrest on the Golden Globes… coincidence?

Halloween Fun at Middle School

Since it was Halloween last week, I decided to have some fun with my middle schoolers. Maybe they are getting too old for class parties and costumes at school (and BTW, things have sure changed in regard to THAT subject! I don’t remember the last time I heard of kids in public school being able to dress up and have a class Halloween party…but, I digress.) I did get my Halloween “on” with my snazzy purple tights – and a couple of my teacher neighbors did the same:

Since my 6th graders are in a sewing unit, we couldn’t prepare any food, so Pillsbury came to the rescue with their refrigerated cookie dough with the pumpkin in the middle. It’s great to be a FACS teacher with access to 5 kitchens!! I think I could have received 35 votes for teacher of the year that morning. 11-year-olds are easily bought with carbohydrates.

Pinterest was the source for the 7th grade fun. This was one of the first pictures I pinned to my FACS Teaching Ideas board. It looked fun and easy – but just didn’t have the right opportunity to work it into the curriculum. Enter Halloween and the need for a break from Power Points, worksheets, and learning everything they need to know before I let them be in the kitchens to start cooking. It was a hit, and some of them are going to try it with kids when they babysit. What’s not to love? Hot dogs and pasta!

Counting out the pasta

Hot dogs are cut – ready to start poking!

Waiting for the water to return to a boil

Boil for 10 minutes

Serve and enjoy!

The 8th graders made a delicious variation of the microwave cake-in-a-mug…using only cake mix and water! They loved them and again, it is something easy and safe for teens and tweens to do on their own.  I found the recipe on the Utah FACS Summer Conference proceedings link on the UEN website (an awesome source for FACS teaching ideas.) I don’t have a picture to share – most disappeared pretty fast.

Mix 1/2 cup of DRY cake mix with 1/3 cup of water in a cereal-sized bowl; stir for 1 FULL minute; microwave for 90 seconds (depends on your wattage – it can overcook quickly). Top with 2 tablespoons chocolate chips, chopped nuts and caramel topping; return to microwave for 10 – 15 seconds. Serve! It helps to spray the bowl with cooking spray and to wipe any excess batter from the bowl before you cook.

Next week we are off to visit our son in Knoxville, TN for the first Missouri/UT football game. I’m rooting for the Volunteers – and hopefully their first SEC win!