Baking Bread

Yesterday I got up bright and early (not by choice, my little girls don't know how to sleep in) and made two loaves of wheat bread and one loaf of banana bread.  I always have "bake bread" on my to-do list but it never happens because I don't get around to it until it's too hot outside to turn the oven on inside.  The house smelled so good yesterday though, I think I'll try and get up and get the dough started early more often. Justin ate half the loaf at dinner time last night, so I think I'll have to bake more bread in a few days anyways.  The recipes I use always turn out really good so I thought I'd share them with you.

Wheat Bread

2 1/2 cup warm water

2 T. yeast

2 T. white vinegar

2/3 cup sugar or 1/2 cup honey

5 1/2 cup whole-wheat flour (I do 3 cups wheat flour, 2 1/2 cups white flour)

1/2 cup wheat gluten

2 t. salt

4 T. dry powdered milk

2 T. oil

1/2 cup potato flakes

Mix ingredients in order listed for 12 to 15 minutes in mixer bowl with dough hook attachement.  Let rise until double - 1 to 1 1/2 hours.  Punch down, then shape into loaf or rolls.  Let rise again until double and bake at 375 for 20 to 30 minutes until crust is golden brown and bread sounds hollow when lightly tapped.

Banana Nut Bread

1 cup sugar

1/2 cup butter

2 eggs

2 cups flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

3 bananas mashed

1 teaspoon vanilla

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Heat oven to 350.  Cream sugar and butter.  Add eggs and beat well.  Sift or mix flour, baking soda, and salt.  Add bananas (I mash them up in a pie plate with a potato masher, it seems to work really good), vanilla and nuts.  Put batter in a greased and floured loaf pan and bake for 1 hour.

Stroller Blanket Dimensions

Alright, so here is the dimensions of the stroller blanket for those people that were interested in making their own.  The finished size is 15 inches by 25 inches long.  The straps are 8 inches by 1 inch (finished).  So if your using solid fabric you would cut it at 15.5 inches by 25.5 inches and use fourth inch seams.  If you want to make the top patchwork style with squares instead of a solid piece of fabric you would need 15 squares 5.5 x 5.5 inches.  Once you get your straps sewn together and turned right side out all you do is sew button holes at the end of the strap and then sew your buttons on the top of the blanket and your all set.  I hope that makes sense.  It's just a simple blanket with straps sewn at the top.  But if anyone needs more info I would be happy to go into more detail.

When I was shopping at Walmart this morning I happened to walk past the fabric section and noticed they had over 100 bolts of brand new flannel in stock.  I almost never buy fabric at Walmart unless its a fabric emergency, but look how cute this lady bug fabric is!  I'm going to make a purple blankie for Maddy and a pink blankie for Macey.  I'm thinking of doing mini denim blankets for the girls . . . but we'll see, sometimes I change my mind.

Little Birthday Present

My little sisters birthday is coming up (she never looks a my blog, so I'm safe posting this) so it gave me a chance to try out my new crafty machine.  Macey and I made this cute little box and temple bracelet to give to Kirby.  The fun thing about the Silhouette website is it has a lot of 3-D downloads you can get.  There are a lot of mini boxes to put treats and little presents in (Silhouette should be paying me for this.)  I also downloaded a different, more flat kind of box to put cookies in and take to my visiting teaching people next month - I can't wait, it's gonna be soo cute! I can't tell you how many times I've wanted just a little box to put a small present in and then I've ended up putting it in a huge gift bag - like little hair bows or jewelry or something.  I love my little machine. 

Family Home Evening Box

At Walmart right now you can get these crates for three dollars.  I saw them and I thought "that would make a perfect family home evening container." So I brought it home and pulled all of my manuels off the bookshelves and my papers out of the filing cabinet and put them in.  It's soo nice to have everything in one spot! I didn't realize I had soo much family home evening resources.  The talk Mothers Teaching Children in the Home (I know I've talked about it before, but it was such a great talk) gave me the idea to copy the lessons that I give in primary and keep them in a folder along with my pages of notes and the visual aids I used.  So that way when Macey and Maddy are older I can pull these lessons out and use 

them again.

 

Sorry the picture is so dark, my photoshop program is on the frits right now.  But anyways, doing this gives me more motivation to read every scripture associated with the lesson and to put more effort into the visual aids because I can use them again for a family home evening lesson in the future.  Right now they're to young to understand the Samson and Delilah lesson or the Ruth and Naomi lesson.  I'm pretty sure the lesson I gave Monday night on Obeying your Parents from the nursey manuel didn't quite sink in.  Oh well, I'll just keep trying I guess. :-) 

Been Busy

I've been making lots of stuff lately, I just haven't taken pictures and posted them yet.  I just got called as the Activities Day leader.  For all you non-LDS people, Activity Day is for girls 8-11 to go to activities and build friendships, learn new skills and have fun.  The first activity we do is going to be a big, fun get-together party.  I'm soo excited for it! I have soo many fun ideas for it - hopefully I can fit it in the budget I was given :-) I'll get some pictures taken (after I do the laundry and get back from the library, oh and do the dishes too) of the fun things I've made and am working on and get them posted here.  I know ya all want to see.

Happy 4th of July

Happy 4th of July! My fourth of July crafting mojo didn't kick in until a few hours before we went to a BBQ yesterday. (Bow tutorial link here.)  Luckily I had a little bit of red ribbon around the house.  Anyways, I hope you all have a happy and safe fourth!

Sock Puppets

"Hello, my name is Bob."

All you need is old socks, yarn, felt, googly eyes and you've got yourself hours of entertainment.  Thanks for the idea Mom!

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