Ice Crystals- Beauty in the details

Jack Frost has been nipping at my nose.... and my window. Mr. Sir, James and I watched "Rise of the Guardians". It was a really adorable movie. So when I saw this frost on my window I immediately thought of that movie.

Sometimes beauty really is in the details. I had to take pictures and share.

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Plaid Diaperness

My sisters mother-in-law gave me an old shirt to upcycle. I was originally going to make diaper soakers with it. But I am a sucker for plaid, and what is cuter than a little plaid tushy. So here is a plaid diaper cover that I made for James.

I played around with diapers, but so far I still like just using prefolds with covers.

Here's the cute tushy.

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The socks are hand dyed by Wendy Richardson owner of Quilt Tapestry Studio. Aren't they adorable?

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Rendering Lard, Fatty Pigness

I love pies, I love pie crusts. So does Mr.Sir, he practically begs me for pumpkin pie year round. I just strongly dislike rolling out pie crusts. I will just squish it into the pan before I clean off the counter to roll out one pie crust. So what I do is I will make 5 or 6 crusts and freeze them. After making a few crust with oil recipes and one with a lard recipe. I am a believer in Lard. Lard is a super fattening ingredient but if you are having pie, you are splurging on calories anyways so might as well make it good. Everything in moderation.

I went to Wal-Mart to buy lard for my pie crusts , found a box and brought it home. Mr. Sir read the box and said "Uh, Honey? Why did you buy hyrdogenated lard?" I had no idea, I just saw the word "Lard". I was using lard for the flakeyness and to avoid hydrogenated oils to begin with, yet here I was buying hydrogenated lard. So Mr. Sir and I agreed that we would try the real stuff.



When we went to pick up our beef from the butcher I asked to buy some lard. He gave me this big bag full of white and pink stuff. I've never seen unrendered lard before.



I got home and used this tutorial on how to render it by My Humble Kitchen. Mr. Sir helped me chop it up and we stuck it in the crockpot.

After a couple of hours, I strained out the cracklings and poured it into mason jars.



 4.6 pounds of unrendered lard got me a quart and half a pint of snow white lard. It is going to last me ages, but its the good stuff!

 Mnmmm Pie

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Cheese Potato Egg Breakfast Pie

One morning I had a lonely pie crust sitting in my freezer. I thought to myself "This must be used!!" (Mostly because we had 3/4 of a cow to go into our chest freezer in meat form. But also because I was really hungry. ) So I dug through my fridge and freezer and came up with Cheese Potato Egg Breakfast Pie. It consisted of

1/2 a bag of Bob Evans Breakfast Potatoes
3 Eggs
a handful  of frozen cauliflower
1/4 cup cheddar cheese
1/4 cup of velveeta stye melty cheese
a couple of spoonfuls of cream cheese
salt
pepper
herbs of choice

mix the eggs, cauliflower, salt, pepper, and herbs. Put potatoes in pie crust, pour egg mix over potatoes, cover with cheese and throw the slabs of cream cheese on top. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes or until eggs are done. Yum. I usually just cook by eye and handfuls so do what works best for you.

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Baby stuff you just hate to throw away.

I found out about this website.

           http://www.babyearth.com/renew/

                             It is excellent.



You know that stash of baby stuff that is just sitting in storage. Those expired car seats, old strollers and etc. This company will recycle them for you. They accept
- Strollers
- Car Seats
- Swings
- Jumpers
- High Chairs
- Diaper Bags
No needing to track down  someplace that will take them. You just pay shipping, send it off, and they give you a 5$ coupon to their store. Sounds good to me! James's car seat expires next December 2014. I have been dreading that time, because I have to throw it away instead of keeping it for future children. (My sister used it before me for my niece, so it has been used quite a bit!) The reason I cringe is because this car seat still looks like new. A sticker has fallen off, but other than that it looks perfect even though it is going on the second child.

I urge you to check it out and keep these large items out of our landfills to be repurposed or find new homes.

Here is James chilling in his car seat earlier this summer. I believe he was 3 months old. 

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*I am in no way affiliated with BabyEarth.com I just find their mission to be excellent.*

P-P-P-Pie Day.

My sister had this brilliant idea of doing a pie day after Thanksgiving this year. Because really, we always have a ton of leftovers and it usually ends up being turkey sandwiches. After many years of turkey sandwiches; it was time for a change. A pie change. Instead of going out and buying crusts I decided to make ours in advance so I came equipped with 5 wheat pie crusts (lesson learned: next time don't play with the pie crust recipe and just make them white crusts instead of getting fancy and adding wheat flour, they baked a little tough)

So our Post-Thanksgiving menu consisted of
- Leftover Turkey Pot Pie with veggies and leftover brussel sprouts.
- 2 Apple Pies
- Leftover Pumpkin pie
- and an absolutely delicious Pecan Pie

Pot Pies

I made the pot pie, my sister made the apple pies (with both fresh granny smith apples and some frozen apples that I prepared earlier this fall), and our mother made the pecan pie.

Apple, Pecan, and Pot Pies

The pecan pie was wonderful, it was made with dates and date sugar with only a little bit of brown sugar used. It was so sweet you could only eat 1/2 a slice with a cup of coffee. It was wonderful (in my opinion, because I like sweets).It also had an almond flour crust. Nice and nutty with the pecans.

Apple Pies

My sister also brought some Apple Mead. Oh. My. Word. Chilled Apple Mead = Complete Bliss.

Apple Pie

I hope that you had a wonderful Thanksgiving!
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