Featured Food Friday - Banana Bread

One of my girls FAVORITE things to make is Banana bread!  They will literally refuse to eat the bananas I buy at the store so that they will go bad and I'm forced to make banana bread or muffins on the weekend!

Last weekend we had power "issues" at our house and the electric company had to come out and work on the lines leading into our house!  It was a full day of power going on and off, on and off, literally every 5-10 minutes!  I got about 30 minutes that they left power on for us while they went to take a lunch break, so I broke out my new mixer and whipped up some banana bread to throw in the oven.  Not realizing of course that our stove PLUGS IN!!!  Duh, Ellie!  The guys came back from lunch and started working on the house again, with my oven going on and off every 5-10 minutes!  I literally sat there staring at the oven watching my bread warm and cool in the oven, and I swear. . . . .it's been the best banana bread I ever ate!  LOL!  Mr. VB said next time I make it, he's NOT going to stand outside turning the power off and on so I can have moist bread!

Here's the recipe for my mom's banana bread.  It's the same that I use for the muffins, but I just bake them in a loaf pan instead of muffin cups.  And the brown sugar glaze really is phenomenal, but I don't do it for the bread because it's just too messy!

Tales of a Homeschool Thursday

Miss Boo Boo girl has a love for all things animal!

Every other week or so, I give each girl a "special project" of their choosing.  So far, Boo Boo has chosen zebras, hawks, bugs, butterflies, etc.  I'm just waiting for the day she chooses "puppy" and asks us to get her another one!

I found the most adorable printable for an animal book that she could make herself.  I handed over the craft supplies and let her at it!

There's several pages, and each one has a classification for the animals, ie. mammals, reptiles, birds.  We were able to talk about what all of the animals in each classification had in common, and why they were grouped together that way.  I can't really say that her 6 year old mind grasped it all, but she seemed to get the overall idea of it.  She kept wondering why they can't all be on the same page because they all have eyes!  LOL!  What a cute little stinker!

What to do Wednesday - Finger puppets

While we were working on the house this weekend, we asked the girls to come up with a craft or activity that could hopefully keep them busy for a couple hours.  Lil' Boo Boo girl had an idea to replicate something that a helper in her Sunday School class had done!

Finger puppets!  I'm sure hers are not as refined as the teachers were, but I figured for a 6 year old armed with toilet paper and scotch tape, they're not too bad!!  This 5 minute project of hers turned into a HUGE fiasco that kept her and her sister busy for the rest of the day and even on into the night!  They decided to use a shoebox, with the back cut out, and a little bit of fabric stapled from the top as a theater.  Freckle even made a few more characters on popsicle sticks and started writing out a script on note cards.  They ended up making tickets, a ticket booth, and a full-on finger puppet play for "Hansel and Gretel!"  What a fun day they had - AND what a lot of work daddy and I got done while they were busy!

I told the girls we'd look into doing some more finger puppets, but a little more fancy next time.  Amy, at The Idea Room, does some amazing finger puppets!  Check out the picture links below for her tutorial!



Animal Puppets





Star Wars Puppets



Nativity Puppets

Totally amazingly creative, right?!  I love all those!

I even checked out Wild Olive before I left the office today and found some printable paper cut-out finger puppets that I printed black and white, and I'm going to have the girls color them so that they can put on another finger play this weekend for Alice in Wonderland!  Too cute, right?!

Printable from Wild Olive

Tuesday Tutorial - Quickie painters trick

Almost 3 years ago when we bought our house, we were in a huge time crunch with moving out of our old place and into this one that wasn't even ready yet!  No kitchen for three months, only concrete under our feet until the floors got installed, and the only "sink" we could use was our upstairs bathtub! Ick!

The one thing I WAS insistant on was the paint and carpet!  We did carpet in the bedrooms and hired painters because NO WAY was I going to be moving the kids all around the house to make room for painting one room each weekend myself or rearranging furniture to have carpet put in the rooms after we had already moved in!  Every couple days or so, we'd go by the house and check on the progress, and I got all kinds of painting tips from the painters!

For instance, you know how hard it is to get a straight line along your ceiling when there's textured walls and ceilings?

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Here's their tip:  Run a line of caulking along the corners of your ceiling, smooth with your finger, and then when you go back to cut in your corners, it'll be a piece of cake for your brush to follow the smooth line of the caulk!  yup!  Totally works on baseboards too!  I've never had to tape in this house, not once!

I ran into this particular problem above, when I was trying to paint the front living room of our house this weekend.  Last May, we had new windows and a back door installed.  What I didn't realize until this weekend was that the installers used a clear silicone to seal the windows. . . . but it's not paintable!  You could totally see the dark color underneath!  No bueno!

I figured I'd do the painter's trick on the windows and used a line of caulk around the edges. 

Since I had a smooth line to follow, I simply ran my brush down the edge and cut in the huge living room window in just minutes!  If you have a really good angle brush for cutting in, you should never have a need to buy blue tape again!  I only use a Shur-line brush that's 1 1/2" and it's been perfect!

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Husbands get no say-so!!

I honestly have no idea how our living room/bathroom/laundry room flood turned into me repainting the dining room, but it has.  Maybe I figured, hey, might as well while I have the brushes out!  Remember the lighter and brighter kick I'm on lately?  Here's some dining room inspiration that I've been checking out!

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After our tussle about the paint color yesterday, I finally DID give in to my loving Mr. VB, instead of screaming, "Husbands get no say-so in decorating!!" like I really wanted to.  But, I bit my tongue like a good wife and headed back to visit his mistress, Home Depot, with my little vanilla beans this morning.  Miss Boo Boo girl walked out of there with more than just a handful of paint chip cards.  I don't think she'll ever be happy with the paint colors I pick for the house unless the rooms are painted to look like cupcakes!  But. . . she did finally admit that our new color was "much more prettier" than the old one I had picked.  Traitor!

This is the color swatch for "Parchment Paper" by Behr.  The first color I chose.  Funny, it doesn't look anything like this in person!  It's really just a very light cream color.  Just a shade darker than an off white.

Here's the compromise color we ended up with, and I must confess, it actually does look really great.
"Sand Motif"

Just a couple shades darker, but in person it's more of a camel color.  It had a bit of a yellow undertone, which I didn't really think I'd like, but I actually do!  I'd say the dining room is coming together pretty well.  I just need to decide on the window treatments and one day, I'll even manage to talk Mr. VB into letting me refinish the dining room table into something interesting, but I think that's a long time coming!