Cooking With The Little

I spent the other day cooking with my youngest child, and she's now enthralled with cooking with momma.

For breakfast we made pancakes. No secret recipe here, I just use the Better Homes and Gardens recipe from a book that was passed down to me from my mom, that she got from her foster mom when she graduated from foster care. I do man a few tweeks of my own. I separate the egg whites and whisk them into stiff peaks as if I were making a meringue. Then I add an extra 1/4 cup of milk to the batter, because we like it thin, and though it says to add an extra 2 tablespoons of milk if you want them thin, they're still pretty thick. There are many a hand written recipe or notes jotted into the margins.

Here we are getting prepared. The Little has her own little apron that she LOVES to wear. Here the Little is showing off her faces that she LOVES to make.

There Little decided that she needed momma to make faces with her.

Here's our pan getting ready for pancakes and our batter in the foreground. I really like to use a big muffin scoop to dole out the pancake batter. I also use it to dole out waffle batter. It makes for more uniform shapes as well as ensuring that I don't have to listen to complaints about who got the bigger pancake.

More smiles from the Little!

Our first pancake in the pan.

The first plate, always the first one(s) for the Little.

Growing up means getting to use the pizza cutter with assistance. A little trick I learned from a friend when we used to live in Fayetteville, North Carolina. I had this friend that had 3 little boys, and she always used a pizza cutter to cut up their food for them rather than just using a fork and knife and it was SO much faster, so I adopted it when I had the Little.

Here's her pan-a-cakes all cut up and waiting for the syrup.

Little tested, and little approved. We had so much fun together.

We donned our aprons again at lunchtime to make tuna sandwiches and tuna wraps. I opened the cans, and she scooped out all the tuna using a spoon.

Rozzy mixed the tuna while it was dry to get it to flake a little more.

Next we mixed in mayo, and dished out the Oldest tuna to make a wrap.

Then we mixed in mustard, because us girls are cool like that and we like it with mayo.

Finally, I chopped up a dill pickle and we added it to the mix because we all like dill pickles!

We had so much fun cooking and making food together that it's become a daily routine to at least make breakfast together.

A Little Glam Bag For Me

As a mom, I don't always get time to myself each day, or each week or sometimes it feels like each month. So, my own little 'me' thing, is my ipsy GlamBag.

This month my familiar little pink metallic bubble envelope showed up. I thought I had put a hold on my subscription during the move, so this was a welcome little surprise!

If you're not familiar with this service, you are billed monthly for a bag of sometimes full sized, but often deluxe sample sized makeup and beauty products as well as a little makeup bag.

This month, a slightly duct tape feel to the makeup bag, still super cute though. A houndstooth pattern with a pink sipper.

Inside I found my samples as well as a promotional flier/slip.

First I find a nude lip liner by Lord & Berry, Ultimate Lip Liner #3035. This is available in 13 colors and retails for $18.00.

Next an in shower skin hydrator, unscented thankfully, I have horrible dry skin the the winter and it's horridly sensitive. Made by Albertini International Divine skin hydrator. This retails for $16.00 for 9 fl oz. A most excellent buy if you ask me! However, considering that I had to share my date of birth with ipsy when I signed up for the GlamBag, I am slightly insulted that they sent me a cream 'specially formulated for women over 40' as it states on the Albertini International website for this product. I'm not yet 40, so thanks for that...

Followed by eco-beauty by La Fresh Groups' good night. night cream .5 oz, in what my daughter described as squeezy fruit! I feel like I locked out with this little gem, since a 1.7 oz jar retails for $40.00! That's more than my current face moisturizer that I LOVE Origins GinZing (the orange scent makes it tops in my life) and it retails at my local Sephora for under $28.

A cute full sized sample of Doll 10 HydraGel Cream Blush in FLIRT is up next. This little beauty retails for $16.00

Last is a deluxe lipstick sample, noyah, all-natural lipstick in Desert Rose. The noyah website describes this as a semi-matte dirty pink lipstick. They have loyalty points, and you can earn 9 by buying this product from them for $18.00 for a full-sized tube. I really love the packaging on this, a wood looking tube, with gold-toned accents. The wood looking tube though, has a really pretty cherry blossom tree branch painted on it.

The postcard sized flier is an offer to snap a pic of my goodies from my GlamBag to enter to win a one-year subscription.

Lastly, if any of you would like to subscribe, I would greatly appreciate the 250 points your membership would bring, so please click the link!

https://www.ipsy.com/new?refer=uikx9

Nicer in New Hampshire

Things (and people) are so much nicer than in Connecticut and I'm so glad that we moved up here! It's been absolutely fantastic! I even care less about all the tolls because, lets face it... there's always a way around them if you don't want to pay them, and the much nicer people are so much better! 

For instance, I was turning down a lane in the parking lot at the Rochester Market Basket and noticed that one of the cars was backing up, I waited because honestly, I wanted the parking spot.  The van stopped backing up for a second, and then started back up again, but was far to close to my car, so I knew she either wasn't looking or was trying to get me to back up into traffic, which would be far too dangerous. I honked my horn really quick, just a 'hey I'm here!' kind of honk. The lady noticed that I was there, and I proceeded down the lane because she pulled back into the spot. As I'm walking into the store, the lady pulls even with me, rolls her window down, and I brace myself to be yelled at. Instead, she actually said "Thank you, I wasn't looking." I almost had to pinch myself!

I just can't believe the amount of times that I've had interactions like this, where people are just nicer up here! Now, I'm not saying, everyone come move up here, but it's great for a vacation unless you like having 5 miles between highway exits and a seriously low population with houses so far from each other, then, yeah, maybe you could move here and be happy. I know I am.

Titi Lisa, Gremlins and Point Sebago Resort

It's been several years since I last was able to visit my friend Lisa and my girls were able to visit with her gremlins. Thanks to moving to the great whiterer north, known as New Hampshire, we were able to spend a day with Lisa aka Mommying on the Fly, Chevy, the Gremlins & her in-laws at Point Sebago Resort.

This place has SO much to offer in terms of family fun! You can sign your kids as young as 3 up for activities each day! The kids have so much fun! There's even a bounce house that the kids can play in the camp area. They offer camping 'in the raw', camper/5th wheel sites, fully equipped trailers single & double wide as well as actual cabins that you can rent for the week. If you REALLY fall in love with this place, they even offer homes for sale that are on the property! You really should check this place out!

I'm trying to talk the husband into going next year at the same time of year, so that we can get an entire week in with Lisa and her Gremlins.

Getting to see Lisa again after over 3 years was just like we hadn't missed a day! There was hugging and squealing like a teenage girl, but it was awesome! We can still talk about anything and everything without limits.

The youngest and the Gremlins took a little bit to get reacquainted, but then it was just like they had seen each other yesterday. All of the girls running and frolicking in the water, playing games at the arcade and games on the beach. Rozzy even got just past waist deep in the lake water!

We roasted marshmallows and I learned that they're even better when you set the grahams and a piece of chocolate on edge of the firepit so that the chocolate premelts. We tried roasting foil pockets of sliced apple with sugar & cinnamon and pockets of peach with a little sugar, which we of course topped with roasted mallows and some graham cracker. The neighboring trailer shared glowstick necklaces with all the kids and we let them roast a mallow while waiting for a friend to grab a sweater!

Saying goodbye is always the worst, but we always manage to make the best of it. Down side... we had to say good bye and don't really know when we will get to see each other again, for all that we know it could be another 3 years before the Juice Box reunion. Up side... we enjoyed every single minute of the day that we did get to spend together! Sad to see each other go, but happy for the time that we did get.

8th Annual Woods, Water & Wildlife Festival

So the youngest and I went to the Moose Mountain Regional Greenways, Woods, Water & Wildlife Festival today. For $5 we got in, the little was free due to age and since no one else wanted to come, it was just her and I.

At the 4-H stand, she learned how to make a new paper planter using masking tape, 1/2 page of news paper and a 14 oz tin can. She had a choice of zucchini or green beans, and she chose the green beans.

She took a photo as a moose, and then we took a selfie with her as the squirrel and me as the moose. Such a cutie!

Then my very determined daughter decided that she was inventing her own species of tiger... can you figure it out?

It's the first and only Blue Tiger

We then decided that it was time for a snack, fresh fruit salad was just what the doctor ordered. Yum!

Up next was feeding the farm animals. Rozzy had a lot of respect for the goats, Alpacas, and chickens.

We even found this cute little baby goat laying next to (presumably) his momma goat, that just kept drifting off to sleep...

Then we bough a single raffle ticket and waited to see if we won, The little got to pick the basket, and she chose to try and win some cars, but alas, the winner of the basket was someone else. The little handled it like a champ and kept playing.

All in all it was a great time. We also talked to a man who makes art from rocks. The little LOVE rocks and would decorate the entire house with them if we let her. He showed her how he makes bird baths from large rocks/stones. There was also a man who makes canoes and paddles all by hand! They were some of the most gorgeous that I've ever seen. Such workmanship!

Until next year (and hopefully with more photos!)...