Silly Dog

I love this little dog, she just has so much personality and always seems to find new ways to make me laugh. Tonight, she was walking around with a small stick type rawhide hanging out of her mouth like a cigarette. This, in itself was quite funny (or maybe I'm just easily amused. LOL!)

Later, I noticed she was carrying the same rawhide stick around while going in some strange places. I watched her as she went behind and around a chair by the window, then walked over to a blanket on the floor and nosed it around a bit. Not satisfied, she continued to the small space between a foof chair and the wall, but then seemed to sense I was watching her and left for the foyer. I suspected that she was trying to hide it for some reason. When she came back from the foyer empty mouthed, I went and found it - under a bench and behind a shoe.

I carried the stick back and showed her that I found it and teased her a bit with it before giving it back to her to see what she would do. She wandered around a bit more, poked around a bit more and finally hid it in our sunroom, on the couch, under a pillow.

Paul snatched it up and gave it back to her again. She wandered around and would not settle until she didn't think we were watching and finally nestled the rawhide behind a different shoe, next to a hutch in the dining room.

It's funny to watch her and wonder what is going through her little doggy mind. She has several other rawhides, of various shapes and sizes and isn't hiding them and has never displayed this behavior before (with the exception of one 'real' bone, in the presence of two other dogs at my brothers home.)

What are you thinking, my silly little doggie? :D

New Routines and Lots of Time in the Kitchen

The first week of school flew by in a wink and we are still sorting through what our routines will be. One thing I have been enjoying is having more time to spend in the kitchen. I love baking with the girls, but it is definitely easier and faster to get things done by myself!

This week I have had fun trying some new things as well as making some tried and true recipes. Here are some of the things I made:

Breakfast Cookies - we have made about 8 or more batches of these since finding the recipe. This weeks were cashew and pepitas.

Lara Bars - or Lara balls as we call them, since I make balls instead of bars. I made the Cashew Cookie dough ones, adding oats and chocolate chips. They tasted like no-bake cookies!

Homemade Graham Crackers - This recipe turned out OK to snack on, but were a bit hard and unsuitable for s'mores. I used my new-to-me pasta maker to roll out the first half of the batch. It worked pretty well for getting the right thickness, but I have to work on my rolling technique a bit after watching and learning from some youtube videos.

Homemade Marshmallows - I know, not my typical healthy fare, but sometimes you just have to try something! I let the girls each try one plain. Sage didn't care for them and Regan said she could taste the egg?? However, hey made the best s'mores!! Even Regan said they made the best S'mores ever!

S'mores Bars - After two nights of s'mores by the campfire, a bundle of homemade marshmallows leftover and two packages of stale graham crackers - I decided to make this S'mores bar recipe. It lived up to it's post title of 'S'more than you can handle', in that I found it overly rich. For someone who loves anything sweet, even sickeningly sweet, this is very uncommon for me. After one sample, I sent the rest of the pan to work with the hubby, as I couldn't bear to eat another bite!

Legal Donuts - I found this recipe last week while looking around for healthy alternatives to bringing cupcakes to birthday parties at school. I had been wanting to buy a donut pan and they were on sale at our supermarket this week - so, what's a girl to do?? :D They turned out moist and tasty.

Lest you think that all we did was eat baked goods all week (although the overload of baking did cause DH to ask me if I was pregnant! LOL!), I did actually do some cooking too!

Crunchy Chicken Tenders - I made this recipe from Sneak Chef tonight for dinner. I didn't have the ingredients for the Orange Puree (carrots/sweet potatoes), so I substituted canned pumpkin. They turned out delicious! We will definitely be making these again. I made extra today and am going to see if they freeze well.

Did you make anything yummy this week? Bon appetite!

Back To School Eve

I was doing some blog reading the other night and came across this post at Eighteen 25. I loved the idea of a back to school fashion show!

We didn't go all out, with the food and such, but we implemented the dressing up and photoshoot part! I am so happy that this will be one less thing we have to do tomorrow, on an already crazy first day of school morning.

Here are a couple of favorites:

The backpacks are packed, Regan's lunch is made and the 'first day' pictures are taken! Here's hoping tomorrow will be smooth sailing! :D

(The idea for the notepad with their names and grades was inspired by some other blog reading, but I can't remember where!)

What's New and Exciting

It's September (I know, I completely missed August here on the blog - but I'm going to just pick up where we are right now)! It is a season of change, for us, and for most families with school age children. It is our last week of summer vacation before both girls head to school next week!

Regan will be starting third grade and Sage will be entering Kindergarten. They are both very excited!  We rode our bikes to the school and they got to check our their classrooms. Regan met her teacher too - Mrs. VanderMeulen.

We finally had our garage sale! We had been talking about it and preparing for it all summer. We wanted to have it at my in-laws condo (better location) and it worked out perfect that their subdivision was planning one for last weekend (meaning I didn't have to advertise and more traffic!! :D ). I had told the girls they could have the proceeds from any of their toys that were sold - but, that we would have to discuss how the money was going to be spent. They have been talking about getting a fish tank for quite a while and we ended up finding two at the neighborhood sale.

I intended to set up the smaller one right away, and see how it went. Then, set up the bigger one later if they kept an interest in taking care of the fish and small tank. Daddy had other plans though. A few hours and $80 of their garage sale money later - we have two working fish tanks, stocked with fish and supplies to last about a year. The girls didn't even bat an eye at spending the majority of their $120 garage sale proceeds on the fish tank. Easy come, easy go, I guess!!

The other thing the girls did at the garage sale was have a snack stand. We baked some granola bars and breakfast cookies and made lime-aid and crystal light. They sold a snack and a drink for $1 and raised a total of $42 toward their Compassion International goals. (They girls have each picked out some items they want to buy for children in need.) All day at the garage sale, they were so excited about the money they were earning for their gifts - even more excited than they were about the money they were earning for themselves (from their toys). I hope their giving hearts will continue all of their lives. :)

I have been busy this week stocking my freezer up for winter. We bought a bushel of peaches at the farmers market this week ($22) and I've made some peach freezer jam. The rest will get eaten fresh or sliced up and frozen - to be used in smoothies, for pancake topping, etc. Today we picked up 8 dozen ears of corn ($20) to be put up. And earlier this week, I cooked up a huge batch of Tortellini Soup (14 meals!!) and stocked an entire shelf of the freezer! YUMMY!

So thankful for the abundance of blessings!