Winding Down

The holidays are winding down. Today is New Year's Eve, but for us, it's just another day. We will be celebrating some with my parents for our annual dinner, but other than that, it's pretty low key. I have some pictures of the holidays and one special gift to talk about.

Before I get to the special gift, I need to tell you the story behind the gift. Don't worry, I will make it short.

When my sister and I were little, my mom bought a big book of bedtime stories. It was a Golden Book and most of the stories were their classics consisting of "The Little Train The Could," "The Pokey Little Puppy," and "The Saggy Baggy Elephant." There were also longer stories about firemen and doctors. This book was originally published in 1972. One story, in particular, was our favorite. This story was called "Daddies." Our own daddy worked every weekday and sometimes on a Saturday and traveled a lot. When he could, he would read this story to us before bed. It quickly became our favorite. To this day, my sister and I could recite this story, word for word. "What do Daddies do all day? Daddies work while children play."

As we grew up, the book, of course, made it's way to the basement. While packed away in the basement, in a box, on the floor, there it met it's demise. It rained hard one week and the basement flooded, ruining the book and many, many other things. We can't exactly remember when, but we figured about 1991. Having the book to read to our kids was now just a memory. My sister looked and looked for it for years. It was out of print and not one of Golden Books more popular books, so finding a copy was proving difficult.

Fast forward to mid December 2011. That story popped in my head one day at work. I went home and immediately started to search. I could not remember the title, but could remember the cover. After an hour or so with no luck, I called my sister and asked for the title. She gave me what she thought was the title, but it wasn't. I typed in, one last time, the title we had, but this time doing an image search and BAM, it was the first book to pop up! I clicked and it sent me to a website called vintagechildrensbooks.com and there it was! I did some research on the website to make sure it was okay, got the info I wanted and sent my inquiry. 3 days later, the book was in my hand. It was in perfect condition and even smelled as I had remembered it!

If you are still reading, great! You have probably figured out what happens, but I'm going to tell you anyway. We decided we were going to give this book to our parents for Christmas. I made a bookmark with a cute saying on it and a picture of our family and my sister's family.  "What children need most are the essentials that grandparents provide in abundance. They give unconditional love, kindness, patience, humor, comfort, lessons in life. And, most importantly, cookies." Rudolph Giuliani. This is the quote on the front of the bookmark. The back had the scribbles of my niece and nephew and the signatures of my girls. We placed it to mark the story "Daddies" and there you have it! Mom and Dad loved it and cannot wait to read it to our kids! 

 It was a wonderful moment! The entire day was special. It was the twins first Christmas! It was a great day for everyone!

 

It's Here! It's Here! It's Here!

What's here? You may ask. Christmas break that's what! It's a 2 week vacation for me from work. It's one of the many benefits of working at the school our children attend, and, it's a 2 week vacation from school for the kids! I slept in until almost 9:00am, and the girls are still asleep and it's 9:30am.

The girls have so much they want to do on break this year. We are going to wait until after Christmas, but the list is 1) to see the movie Chipwrecked  (I'm trying to convince them that the movie We Bought A Zoo is a better choice :o).) 2) to go ice skating. This one sounds awesome except hubs and I haven't been on ice skates in almost 20 years! AAAAAACCCKKKK! Should be a great time! Must remember to take the video camera! 3) Spend some time with their cousins. This one is a must! The cousins are the twins, 7 months old and my nephew, 6 months old! The girls (and of course Tony and I) just adore them, but with busy lives all around, we haven't seen near enough of them (and their parents!)

To add to this, Tony has several days off so we have game days planned and lounge around and do nothing days planned, and shopping days planned. It's going to be a great vacation!

Of course Christmas Eve and Christmas Day are going to be so much fun! These days are filled with family gatherings and good food! I can't wait! This year is so special. It's the first Christmas for all the cousins and Tony has both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off!

It's going to be awesome!

Now if we can keep the dogs from eating the remaining ornaments and the Christmas lights it will be the best Christmas EVER!

This is minor damage really!

We Did Some Crafting Today

Today we did some crafting. My oldest is sick. While she was sleeping my youngest and I played with clay, then I played with my sewing machine. It was a fun day. Well, except when I had to clean up all the mess made from these crafts. Oh and the piles of laundry I did in between projects.

This is L making a snowman. She is very creative.

Here she is adding the arms

This is my clay statue. I will paint it tomorrow.

This is the iPhone case I made for my sister. I'm thinking about adding a button over the Velcro stitching. I now just need to find one.

This is the charger cord opening at the bottom.

This is the closure.

The lining is the same as the outside and it is padded for extra protection.

The back. My sister has a thing for dragonflies and I happen to have this material on hand.

Quality Time

Life gets busy. Work, homework, chores, after school stuff, cooking, cleaning, laundry, projects, Christmas gift shopping, wrapping, and hiding to do. You name it, we are doing it.

But that doesn't mean we can't stop for a few minutes and have some fun, right?

While Tony was studying, we decided to have some fun with Photo Booth on our Mac. My kitchen is for the most part clean in the background, so I figured posting these shouldn't be too embarrassing. Oh and me, sans make-up is totally not embarrassing either!

Ha!

Oh well! It was fun!

I love my life!

Cravings

As most of you may know by now, I have to eat gluten-free. My body just doesn't like anything with wheat, but my taste buds love anything with wheat! I miss my occasional fried food. They were few and far between before I found out about the intolerance, but when a craving hit, I indulged. Now, uh, not so much, well, actually never do I cave to a craving. Just the the thought of how I feel after I eat it should be a big reason not to even crave it, but I still do.

Enter, King Arthur Gluten-Free Multi-purpose flour! My saving grace!

This stuff is expensive and high in calories so I won't satisfy these cravings very often, but it's good for making a flour coating, gravy, or sauce.  I did make cookies with it and it's not a good replacement for that. BUT, it did what I was looking for. I was able to recreate a dish from Olive Garden that I was craving. Chicken Scampi!

If you've never had Olive Garden's Chicken Scampi, then shame on you. The combination of the chicken, peppers, onions, garlic, and light cream sauce is amazing! Now do you see why I was craving it? Just don't kiss anyone after eating, or even talk within a 1/2 mile radius unless you have an Altoids handy or a toothbrush or mouthwash. The garlic is pretty strong. Actually, that is an understatement! It's fabulously strong!

I found some copy cat recipes, but I just decided to make my own. I left out the pasta. I can't eat regular pasta and I didn't have any gluten-free pasta. It really didn't need it anyway. Below is my recipe. I'm the type of cook that does my measuring by way of sight (yes, a pinch of this, a dash of that) so I'm going by sight on amounts. If you make this, you may have to use more or less or you could try the method I use. Be for warned though, it may make some family members or friends angry when you can't recall the recipe, especially if it was good! I'm so guilty of that! This is my own recipe and I didn't write it down, so I'm going by memory. I do hope it works, but if not, comment or let me know some how and I will redo this.

Rene's Gluten-Free Chicken Scampi (without pasta)
large skillet
small saute skillet
1/2 small red pepper thinly sliced
1/2 small yellow pepper thinly sliced
1 small red or yellow onion thinly sliced
1 clove of garlic, thinly sliced
8-10 chicken tenders
1 1/2 cups of milk-divided
3/4 cup GF flour (or regular all-purpose flour if you don't need GF)
1 tbsp garlic powder (yup, I like it garlicy!)
2 tsp paprika
ground black pepper to taste
salt to taste - I think I used about 2 tsp
1/4 cup olive oil or other vegetable oil (do not use EVOO here, you need to get it hot and EVOO has a low burn point)
Cooking spray or 1 tbsp olive oil
2 tbsp of butter
Plate lined with paper towel for draining chicken

Directions:
-heat  8 inch or large skillet with cooking spray or 1 tbsp olive oil, saute peppers and onions  and garlic until crisp tender, remove to a bowl. Cover to keep warm.
-Rinse tenders and pat dry.
- place oil in same pan as above. Heat over medium heat
-Combine flour, garlic powder, paprika, pepper, and salt in a pie plate or small baking pan.
-pour 1/2 cup of milk into bowl
- dip tenders into milk then coat with flour mixture and place in hot oil and cook until light brown or about 3 minutes per side (I'm guessing on time, it's hard to remember, sorry!)
-place tenders on paper towel lined plate  or platter
-in separate skillet melt butter over medium heat. Add remaining flour mixture from chicken or 2 tbsp new flour mixture and make a roux. Once combined, slowly add 1 cup of milk to make a gravy/sauce while stirring. You can add more milk if you would like a thinner sauce add milk a little at a time. -Continue to stir over medium low heat until thickened, then remove from heat.
-to serve: place 2-3 pieces of chicken on a plate, cover with pepper mixture, cover that with gravy/sauce and volia! You have what I ate for dinner the other night!

Note A: if you would like it more like Olive Garden's, prepare angel hair pasta before starting, toss with olive oil or butter once cooked and cover. Place remaining ingredients once cooked on top of the pasta as stated above. YUM!

Note B: I use an iron skillet that was my Grandma's. It is very well seasoned and nothing sticks and it gives a really nice brown to things. I highly recommend this or stainless steel cookware. You just don't get a good browning, in my opinion, with non-stick. Again, this is my opinion and I happen to have the iron skillet and the stainless in my kitchen.

I'm BAAAAAAAACK!

With the sign up of Facebook, my blog has taken a back seat. And for that, I'm truly sorry!

I've decided I would like to start blogging again. I don't know if my life is that interesting, but it is nice to keep track of the things that happen in my life, good or bad. I'm terrible with being sentimental and I'm realizing that my memory is just not what it used to be. I want to be able to go back to certain times in my life and look at pictures or read text that brings that memory back.

I don't know if I will update daily, weekly, bi-weekly, or more, but I will update this, I promise!

Less Facebook, more blogging! And sewing, and drawing, and photography, and cooking, and cleaning, and parenting (that one is most important!)

I want to let you all know that I've added an email sign up. Please put in your email and every time I post, it will send you an email.

Merry Christmas everyone!