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Easter

Easter with little kids is so much fun! From the fun Easter dresses to all the tasty food, and the multiple egg hunts. Easter at my house is always lots of fun.

I like to do Easter dinner for my family so the next few posts are going to be my favorite Easter dinner recipes. I calculated this weekend and I used over three dozen eggs, two boxes of butter, and almost a gallon of whipping cream! Mmmmm!

I get out my nice dishes and cloth napkins and have lots of fun. This year my 3yr old got to help me set the table. She didn’t quite get which side of the plate the knives and forks went on but we had fun!

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Bringing up Bebe

Just finished reading an interesting book on childrearing. Bringing Up Bebe: One American Mother Discovers the Wisdom of French Parenting. This was a fascinating book. The author is an American who’s living and raising her family in France. She covers the many differences between American and French parenting styles and philosophies.

I didn’t agree with every French parenting decision that she liked in the book, but many of them were quite insightful, and some were useful. She talked about things like how is it that French children eat a variety of foods including vegetables while American children will spend months refusing to eat more than peanut butter and jelly? And why do French children rarely throw temper tantrums?

Definitely insightful and a great look at some different parenting styles. A fun read, and a book I would recommend.

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Smarterer

So, for bzzagent.com I tried out this website called smarterer.com. Basically, you take and contribute to “tests” about all sorts of different topics. I tried out the bzzagent test and the adobe illustrator test.

And then you can compare your score against other test takers. Really, in my opinion it’s an interesting idea but there are some flaws. You loose points for wrong answers but since all the test questions are user generated I’ve actually answered some questions correctly and it’s been the wrong answer so I loose points.

You can report this but there doesn’t seem to be a really good review process to ensure that the questions are accurate and make sense. Also, you get points for creating questions, so it’s possible for someone to be doing better on a test than me simply because they submitted more questions than me.

All in all, this site just felt like a waste of my time. I didn’t learn anything new about adobe illustrator and how can I accurately know how much knowledge I have about a topic if all the questions aren’t accurate?

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New Black Dress for the Baby

So…shiny black dresses are apparently hard to photograph, but I think you can get the general idea.

I found this huge skirt at a yardsale this past summer for $1 that I decided to make a dress for the toddler out of.  You can’t see it really well in the picture but it has embroidered flowers all down the front of the skirt. The minute I saw it I knew it would make a cute dress, and I even had enough fabric for the bloomers!

Up close on the front of the dress. You can kind of see where I did some altering to the from to make the very top section of the front see-through.

If I ever do a project like this again I’m going to remove the waste band from the skirt before I start cutting. It was a little difficult to cut out a pattern because the skirt was gathered at the top and I couldn’t get the pieces to lie flat.

I tried it on the baby already and it’s so cute! Now, on to my Easter dress project!

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Skillet-Fried Chicken

Last night I tried out a fried chicken recipe from my Feb. Bon-Appetit magazine. A lot of times I find the recipes in this magazine to be unnecessarily complicated, however, this chicken recipe was perfect!

I did use a package of chicken breasts cut in thirds and I cut the recipe in half since my meat weight was half of what the whole chicken in the recipe is. It tasted delicious!

2 Tbsp kosher salt, divided
2 tsp plus 1 Tbsp black pepper
1 1/2 tsp. paprika
3/4 tsp. cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp. garlic powder
1/2 tsp. onion powder
1 3-4 lb chicken cut into 10 pieces, backbone and wing tips removed
1 cup buttermilk
1 large egg
3 cups all purpose flour
1 Tbsp. conrstarch
peanut oil (for frying)

!hisk 1 Tbsp salt, 2tsp black pepper, paprika, cayenne, garlic powder, and onion powder in a small bowl. Season chicken with spices. Place chicken in a medium bowl, cover, and chill overnight.

Let chicken stand covered at room temp for 1 hr. Whisk buttermilk, egg, and 1/2 cup water in a med bowl. Whisk flour, cornstarch, 1 Tbsp salt, and 1 Tbsp pepper in another bowl.

Pour oil into a 10″-12″ straight-sided skillet (not nonstick) to a depth of 3/4″. Heat over med-high heat until 350 degrees. Meanwhile, set a wire rack inside a large rimmed baking sheet.

Working with one piece at a time dip chicken in buttermilk mixture, allowing excess to drip back into bowl. Dredge in flour mixture. Fry chicken, turning with tongs every 1-2 minutes and maintain a temp of 300 to 325 degrees, until skin is deep golden brown and a thermometer inserted into thickest part of chicken registers 165 degrees, about 10 min for wings and 12 min for thighs, legs, and breasts.

Using tongs, remove chicken from skillet, allowing excess oil to drip back into skillet; transfer chicken to prepared rack. Let cool 10 min before serving.

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Comforts for Baby

I really enjoy trying new products, and my favorite product review site is BzzAgent. I get to try out real products for free and leave my feedback.

My latest campaign was from Kroger’s line of baby items. Comforts for baby.

I received a free box of diapers (96 diapers in the size that I got), a free container of baby wipes, and two free sippy cups.

1. I loved the baby wipes, they’re store brand so a lot cheaper than a name brand but they’re still thick and soft. Walmart’s baby wipes are really thin so I don’t use them, I’ve been using pamper’s instead. But I think I’ll switch to Comforts. I like them just as well as pamper’s baby wipes and Comforts are a lot cheaper!

2. The diapers are ok, they’re a little smaller than the same size in Pampers so I wish I’d gotten one size larger. The weight limit was the same on the size 3 comforts and the size 3 pampers so I expected the same size diaper. They still fit my toddler but a slightly larger size would have been better.

I think they’re a little rougher feeling than Pampers but my toddler doesn’t notice the difference. They always seem more saturated to me when I change my toddler but I haven’t had any diapers leak or any rashes on the toddler.

They’re cheaper than Pampers and work as well even if they seem less nice to me. I still have half a box of diapers to go through before I have to decide which I’ll purchase.

3. I did not like the cups. My kids don’t like cups with the rubber stoppers so I had to pull those out. Which wouldn’t have been terrible, but the cup is tall and skinny so it tips over easily, and without the rubber stoppers, they spill everywhere.

I liked the flip lid that is on the cups, it’s a great idea, but the cup still leaks when it’s on if I don’t have the rubber stoppers in. If you have a child that drinks out of cups with the stoppers in it, you’ll probably like this cup, but it just doesn’t work for me.

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$10 Credit to Rue LaLa

Rue LaLa has a $10 credit for new members. Their site also says free shipping for the next 15 days. I don’t see anything on there today for $10 or less but you have a few days to wait for new sales.

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Superbowl Party

I’m a casual football fan, I enjoy sitting on the couch Sunday afternoon and watching football but I honestly don’t care which team wins. I’ll cheer for whatever team my husband picks.

For me, the best part of football is the opportunity to get people together and spend some time with friends and family. Even if that time is spend yelling at the TV!

That said, I always look forward to the superbowl. It’s late enough the baby goes to bed right after it starts and I can enjoy the game with everyone. And enjoy tasty football snacks!

My favorite snacks:

1. Chili Cheese dip – 1 can of beanless chili and half a container of velveeta cheese, melted and mixed together
2. Pizza rolls – canned pizza dough, with pepperoni, Parmesan cheese, spices, and mozzarella, rolled into a log then baked and cut into rounds.
3. Chicken wings – frozen from a bag
4. Veggie tray – just to balance out all this unhealthy food.

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Baby Quilt and Child’s Apron

I’m a little bit behind on posting sewing projects, so, here’s a couple I  just finished:

Little girl and doll apron. This fabric was leftover from a project last year so I just used it up.

A baby quilt and burp cloths that I made from leftovers from sewing projects. Whenever I finish a project I cut as many squares as I can get out of the leftovers and just save up the squares until I have enough complimenting squares to make a quilt.

It definitely makes for a fun quilt!

And, a closer look at the burp cloths. The have terry-cloth on the back so they’re super absorbent and easy to clean with.

I have two more sets of cloths done, but I’m still working on the quilts to go with them. I don’t have quite enough squares to piece them together. I guess that means I need to do a few more sewing projects.

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Au Gratin Cabbage Recipe

I tried out a new cabbage recipe last night. I like cabbage, my husband doesn’t like cabbage, and the kids find cabbage too hard to chew up if it’s not cooked really well. So I decided to try a Cabbage Au Gratin and see how that worked out.
The girls and I loved this recipe. The baby ate two helpings! I got it off of All Recipes and made a few adjustments based on people’s comments on the site. My recipe is below and you can compare it to the original if you’d like.

Ingredients

  • 2 cups shredded cabbage
  • 1/2 cup grated carrot
  • 1/4 cup chopped green onions
  • 2 cloves garlic minced
  • 1 egg
  • 1/2 cup heavy cream
  • 1 cup shredded cheese
  • salt and pepper to taste
  • 1/2 cup lightly seasoned breadcrumbs

Directions

  1. In a large skillet with about 1 tsp oil, saute the cabbage, carrot, onions, and garlic for 7 minutes or crisp-tender. Salt and pepper to taste. Transfer to a greased shallow 1-qt. baking dish. Sprinkle cheese over top.
  2. In a bowl, whisk together the egg and milk. Be careful not to whisk too much or the cream will thicken. Pour over the vegetables and cheese. Sprinkle with bread crumbs. Bake, uncovered, at 350 degrees F for 30 minutes or until a knife inserted near the center comes out clean.