Yesterday...

Yesterday, while I did this (see explanation below) . . .
Angela did this! What a cutie!
Natalie joined her when she got home from school. . .

I love when the girls find good things to keep themselves busy while I am doing nutty things like trying to can butter. Ever heard of it? Well after canning 10 jars, I found out it is not really recommended, so don't do it. (o:

I got the idea from a food storage book. When I was having trouble and none of the jars were popping/sealing, I decided to send out a call for help. I wrote an e-mail to a girl who runs a really great website with recipes, tips and ideas for food storage. (The title of this post is linked to it) I asked if I was doing everything right. She was great and responded very quickly. She sent me a link to an article that gave some reasons why it's not recommended. Mainly because the "canning" method you use for it doesn't get hot enough to kill any potential bacteria.

For those of you who are wondering why in the heck I was trying to can butter and aren't familiar with food storage - here's the reason. Our church leaders really encourage families to gather food storage for "a rainy day". That way when weather events, natural disasters, job loss and other unpredictable events happen in our lives, we can take care of our families and have food ready. I have loved working on getting our several months supply of food. It was awesome when the snowstorm happened in December. We did have to eventually run to the store to get milk (but we have dried milk for a bigger emergency - I'm just not a big fan of the stuff) but we never had to worry about running out of food. I walked out to our shelves in the garage and always had what we needed for meals.

So anyway, I got to thinking that it would be nice to have butter on hand, but you can only keep so much in the fridge. When I saw the idea I thought it would be a nice addition to our food storage. Oh well! Crystal recommended keeping Crisco on hand and there are also some forms of powdered butter you can get, FYI.

Like a Kid in a Candy Store...

A few weeks ago Aaron Brother's Frame store was having a clearance sale. 75% off all their inventory! They were closing the location nearby and wanted to get rid of everything. I went three times during the sale. I couldn't get enough. There are so many things I've been waiting to hang up because I needed frames! I bought the three matching frames above and the prints inside them for less than $30! The frames are quite large - I don't know if you can tell. I was happy with the great deal I got. Ned* and I have always wanted to use our big entryway walls to make an art display. We've had the other two paintings for a while and were excited to add a few more to our collection.
These pictures have been waiting for nice frames for YEARS! I could never find the right frame for the right price. I love how these turned out. These are sketches by our good family friend Peggy - she is like an aunt to me. She is a great artist and gave me these beautiful cards years ago. I always thought they were too pretty to use and wanted to frame them for our lighthouse themed bathroom. They really make the bathroom look extra nice. Thanks Peggy!

I have a bazillion more frames to fill with pictures and prints. I have a few already with things in them waiting to be hung. I'll post more when I get things up.

The only sad part of the story is that I found out later that the store eventually put everything on sale for 90% off!!!! Wow - I guess it's good I didn't know - I would have bought more frames than I could ever hope to use. I LOVE frames!! I am grateful to have found some really screaming deals! Thanks to Shannan for giving me the heads up. (o:

My House Stinks

(Note: no we don't always make Sarah wear her bike helmet when she is gardening. (o: Only when it's for science experiments! he he )

It is science experiment season in the northwest.

The kids are working on science experiments for the science fair at school next week.

Sarah had a cool idea for hers...

She is giving some pea plants different kinds of liquids to "drink".

We are watering one with milk, one with lime margarita mix (it's an ingredient for Billy*'s ribs), sugar water, salt water and of course, boring old water.

After two weeks of watering, the smells from the various liquids (especially the milk) are getting pretty rank. I'm happy that tomorrow will be our last day for collecting data and we can throw out the stinky plants.

We did a couple other experiments with watering - this one was seeing how using different amounts of watering affects plants. I thought this turned out very cool. The "over watered" plant is very leggy and hardly has any flowers and the underwater plant has hardly grown and is looking sad.

Just in case you were wondering, plants don't like salt water.

Sarah and I were actually surprised how well the "milk" plant did. It looked very healthy up until just two days ago. I think the milk starting to spoil is the problem, otherwise, milk might actually not be such a bad thing to water with! (o: The sugar water plant has also done surprisingly well and is still doing good.

The sugar water one is second from the left and the water "control" plant is on the right. Obviously, the tried and true method of watering with water seems to be the best for plants. Surprise! (o:

We also did one more experiment with white flowers in soil. We tried watering two of the plants with red and blue colored water to see if the flowers would take on those colors. After two weeks, they are still as white as can be. It works with cut flowers in a vase, but doesn't seem to work for flowers in soil. Interesting. (o:

Natalie has also been doing an experiment, but we have had such disappointing results, we are going to try something else this weekend. We tried doing a taste test with Twilight using different flavored waters. She refused to drink ANY of them during our 4-6 hour long test periods. Stubborn cat! That's okay though, we have another cat experiment up our sleeves, she won't get off that easy! (o: Hopefully she'll feel up to a game of hide and go "treats" this weekend.

Thinking of You...

Dear Twilight,

The house is much more calm without you. There's no one running like a screaming banshee through the blinds, no one messing up the girls Polly Pockets while they play on the floor. No one has been scratched all morning.

It is kind of nice...

But we miss you and we're thinking of you.

I know you don't understand why you had to go in the travel bag and in the car to that guy who gave you shots a few weeks ago. We tried to calm you down on the ride over, but as far as I can tell, you don't really understand English.

You were very sweet and quiet as we signed the papers for your surgery.

Don't worry I opted for the extra pain killer after so you won't be in as much pain.

We hope you will forgive us for making you have a rough day today,
We said a prayer for you to not feel too much pain.

As we left the vet's office, Angela asked, "why we gave our kitty to them" and when we got home, Natalie got into position to "catch the cat" as the girls often do when we come in from the garage door, since you always like to escape and explore. (I think it is funny the girls all fight for this job and they have to take turns. As soon as we get home the question always hanging in the air is, "Who's turn to catch the cat?")

Even though this is not fun, we just don't think it's a good idea to let you procreate. (o:

No offense, we think your potential kitties would have been adorable, but in the last few months we've learned how much work a little trouble maker like you is and one of you is all we can handle!

We promise to take extra good care of you when you get home this afternoon and we'll keep Angela at a distance, although it will be very hard for her to not pick you up and give you a squeeze.
It will be nice to have you back, messes, trouble and all - the house isn't the same without you.

Natalie found this tattoo at the vet's office and put it on herself (on her face!) before I knew what she was doing. I guess it's her little tribute to her kitty. I'm sure she'll get some comments at school today. Natalie and Sarah were very sad and worried for Twilight today, it was very sweet.

Preschool Fun

We have had fun this year going on preschool field trips every Thursday for Angela's little preschool co-op. Yesterday we rode, scooted and walked over to the Gerber's house for a fun "frog-hopping" adventure. Miss Arianne taught a frog lesson this week and thought it would be fun to have the kiddos play on the Gerber's gymnastics equipment and play frog hopping games.
We discovered that Angela is very flexible!

And Natalie is an awesome jumper! Also, her hair looks really cool when frozen in time!

Natalie has often been a guest of honor at the field trips since she has afternoon Kindergarten. Although - we don't get to take our sweet time most days because we have to run and feed her lunch so she gets to the bus on time. (I won't miss half day Kindergarten next year, but I will miss having Natalie with me more!)

This was one of the darling froggy cupcakes Arianne made for all the kids. Angela ate the darker eyeball part, but you get the idea. Isn't it cute? (Arianne does professional catering and is very talented at these sorts of things - we are lucky to have her in our group!)

Angela loves when it is her turn to get Bobolito Bear, the preschool pet. The last time she got him the first thing she said she wanted to do with him was get ice-cream. Luckily, I remembered this time and we got a Frosty with Bobolito the day before he had to go to someone else.

This is Angela and Natalie with Angela's good buddy Tyler. They are pretty cute together. Kayelynn and I often carpool the kids since we live close to each other and I love to hear Tyler and Angela's conversations in the back of the van. One afternoon Angela asked Tyler, "What your dad's name?" They talked about their dads and their names and how they went to work for about 5 minutes. Cute kids.

Polly Pocket Art

(o: We have Polly Pockets out all over the place every day. Sometimes they are spread all over the floor around the castle Angela got from Santa. Some days they are all over the game table in the front room. This particular day, they were all over the kitchen table and they looked so pretty in the sunlight. (o: I love to see the scenarios the girls set up with them each time. They have some pretty cute furniture (Playmobil has great stuff and it's perfect Polly Pocket size - they have cute little details like teeny towels and perfume bottles, etc.) Anyway, the girls LOVE to set up little scenes and I get a kick out of seeing how they set it all up so meticulously. It's a shame when they have to clean it up at the end of the day, but if they didn't I would go crazy.

One more...

I forgot to mention one of the books Angela and I picked and brought home from the Art Museum bookstore. We got the hardback version of this book. It is filled with tons of pages of pictures, like the one on the cover - of fruit and vegetables with a lot of personality. We loved the book so much we both sat on the floor of the store laughing for about 20 minutes enjoying each page. There are no words, just LOTS of fun-filled pages with some very imaginative food! I've seen other shorter versions of this book - board books, etc., but this one has tons more. Very imaginative and fun to look at with little ones! Heck, even for adults, this is a very cool coffee table book. I have this one up on our book display in the living room. It just makes me happy. (o:

Shopping Genes

My girls come from a long line of shoppers. I love to shop (though I rarely get the opportunity), my mom, aunts and sister love to shop and I have very happy memories shopping with my grandma Jensen who also LOVED to shop. So it is only natural that the girls would enjoy the shopping experience also.

We have been very lucky to get lots of darling hand-me-downs from my aunt and her girls ever since Sarah was born - so we don't have to go shopping often. But as the girls get better and wear through more of their things, we have to take time to replace those very loved and worn out clothes.

We all went to Kohl's this weekend and the girls were so excited to try on clothes and go in the fitting rooms. They felt so fancy! We found some cute things and great deals.

Natalie and Angela were dancing all over the place as they checked themselves out in the mirror. Natalie commented that the INXS song was a good "trying on clothes" song. (o:

One of Sarah's cute new outfits. I thought she looked so pretty, I had to get a picture.

I was excited to get a couple new things also. I bought my first pair of slacks since 1997!! As a stay at home mom there were rarely ever times when I needed to wear slacks. Now as the girls are getting older, I think I should have a few more sophisticated clothing items in my closet besides jeans and T-shirts.