Yogurt Sorbet Stuff

 It has been hot here like really really hot.  I don't mind it hot is way better than cold being cold stinks.  The children and husband do not agree at all.  They have been rather miserable about the heat.

 To help cool off I made this frozen yogurt sorbet stuff.  It was pretty tasty once we added enough honey to it.  We've been making our own yogurt for a while now and that made it much more tart than expected.  Of course when my mom told me about it she was probably thinking about using sweetened vanilla yogurt to start with. 

 The blender did not work like at all.  The food processor did a great job.  Of course by the time I figured it all out the fruit was not so frozen and it was more like a shake than a mug of frozen yogurt. 

 We ran out of bowls this day, they were probably in the dishwasher.  I'm not sure how a family of four can go through bowls so fast.  Oh wait mostly it's because most foods start in a bowl like stir fry and spaghetti and stuff like that, stuff that most families probably eat off of a plate.  Jeff likes bowls better than plates for most foods.

Anyway this worked great for a quick snack for the kids and we'll be making this again I'm sure.

Frozen Yogurt

About a pint of thick yogurt

One small bag of frozen fruit

Honey to taste

Mix in the food processor until desired consistency.  Enjoy :)

The 'Ineeda' Box

Okay I guess that I have become a Pinterest junky!  Never thought that would happen but wow so many people sharing things they have found and things I might have never seen otherwise.  Anyway I found this post about a box a woman made for her car.  It isn't an 'emergency' box like with jumper cables but for the everyday emergencies like runny noses.  We have been using ours for about a month or so and it has been so helpful especially when I drive for field trips.  I had to restock it after field day at the local park I don't think any of those kids left with the skin on their knees.  Now the original post has how to create a really cute outside to the box I took the super simple way out and found a cute diaper wipes container so I didn't have to dress it up.  I liked the Huggies one because it has a really sturdy hinge.  The wipes went to the kindergarten class for craft days and a few went into a ziplock for emergencies, I should have put them all in a bag for restock but didn't think I would go through them as fast as I have.  So a run down of my stuff

Ineeda Box Contents
Kleenex
Clorox Wipes
Vinyl Gloves
Pens
Safety Pins
Hair Bands
Headache Reliever (my kids are driving me crazy I need some now too!)
Pad
Mints
Hand Lotion
Hand Sanitizer
Carmex
Band Aids
Stamps
Baby Wipes
Empty Shopping Bag (for garbage, vomit whatever happens ya know?)

So what would you put in your box?  I would love to hear some ideas to make this box even better and honestly these things hold way more than it looks like they can.  Have a great week!

Pinterest Cookie Idea

Alright so I saw this nifty idea on Pinterest and decided that it was wonderful.  As many things I didn't read the directions and jumped in whole hog and it didn't go as I had planned.  

It is a very simple idea take delightful homemade cookie dough spoon into ice cube trays, freeze, then place into a freezer bag so that one always has cookie dough ready for when you need just a little something.  This sounded great one of my favorite things is to pull out the toaster oven and make just a few cookies for a treat once in a while instead of having a whole batch we don't need to eat.  

The problem was the cookies didn't slide out from their ice cube coffins with out much prompting from the butter knife.  By the time I was done coaxing the little bastards out the dough was so warm that I had to refreeze the chunks so that I could put them into a freezer bag.  It would have been so much easier to spoon out the dough straight onto the cookie sheet, frozen them and then put them into the bag.  No prying no fussing and two less things to wash.  Oh well lesson learned and I now have two ice cube trays instead of one, whoo hoo.  Oh yeah and I'm not sharing this cookie recipe with you because even that was a fiasco, how can you mess up chocolate chip cookies?!

Ginger Baby!

 It's alive!!!!!  The ginger we planted here finally grew!  We noticed it late last week but I wanted to wait to share the good news until we knew for sure that it wasn't just something the squirrels planted for us.  Those squirrels......

This is something those squirrels (or chipmunks) did for us.  They "helped" us eat the lettuce we planted.  I have so many words but none of them appropriate.  They did not seem to like the dark lettuce as much as the other types because that was left until last and part of it is still there.  At least the lettuce grows back when devoured trimmed.  You can see that the plant in the front is already coming back.  

In other news we are in serious talks about adopting a Sheltland Sheepdog named Annie.  Our friend has to get rid of hers so as long as the kids don't freak when they meet her she will become a member of the family.  I hope it all works out.

Gardening at School (fail)

Molly and Jack go to the most unique school in our city.  Instead of one grade per class we have multi-age classrooms and our teachers are nick named the teachers without walls because of how much time we spend out of the classroom learning.  This school is also special because they want the parents there involved in there students learning and classroom environment!  How sad that this is unique.  Two weeks ago Molly's teacher asked if I would be interested in helping the class put in a vegetable garden.  The boxes were already there from a few years ago with dirt in them.  Now if I had been smart I would have said well let me look at what we have going on first, instead I said sure I would love to!  The teacher wanted to start with seeds but I was afraid that the kids wouldn't see any progress before they left for summer break so I headed off to Meijer early the next morning to buy a flat of started veggies.  The kids and I along with another mom got the beds cleaned out.  As they pulled more and more weeds I realized we hadn't seen a single worm and although we have had rain this Spring the soil was very sand like.  Maybe if I was smart I would have said 'ya know we should wait a day and add some compost to this before planting', but the kids had seen the starters and the bucket of seeds and I just couldn't tell them 'no'.  So with great trepidation we added the plants explaining why they couldn't be grouped to close together and that they would grow large and run over each other.  I could have saved my breath because this photo is the first day we planted, it looks pretty okay.  As of Saturday the whole thing looks totally pathetic.  Most of the plants are already dead including the marigolds.  The kids are really sad and bummed out.  I was looking forward to a gardening club with them all summer and showing off how great fresh bruschetta and pico de gallo is straight from the garden!

I guess I really do need to learn how to say 'No' once in a while.