Sweet Potato chips

I'm always excited to find new foods that Abigail can eat (she's got the allergies, lots of them). SO when I find one on SALE I usually have to try it.. Well here was one that we tried and I have to say, THEY ARE HORRIBLE!! As Abigail said after tasting just one "mom, these are just NAaaaassttty" They sound like a good idea, but Sweet Potato chips it turns out, are NOT... I guess we will stick with pretzels for now!!

Homemade Larabars

I was suppose to post this a few days ago, but what can I say. I'm a busy women!!

So my MIL found some really great bars at Sam's club and got excited and had to tell me about them. You see, they are all natural foods, and my daughter with all the allergies can have them. I admit, they are pretty good, but they are also pretty expensive, even at Sam's Club. So my SIL decided to do some research and found some recipes online. There are many sites about making homemade Larabars. This one is my favorite:

http://enlightenedcooking.blogspot.com/2008/02/home-made-lara-bars-energy-bars-part-3.html

The basic idea is it's all a mixture of nuts and dried fruit. You can add spices to add more flavor. The basic proportion is 1/2 c dried fruit to 1/3 c. nuts.

Of course I LOVE creative recipes, and had to experiment. I bought a variety of nuts and fruit and tried a few. The first priority was to use up some prunes I had. So I made some Mixed berry and peanut ones

5 prunes (1/4 c.)
1/4 c. Mixed berries N Cherries
1/3 c. Peanuts.

They tasted pretty good, so we chilled them for later.

The second ones I made were even BETTER (I did some tastes test with friends lol)

3 prunes (all I had left)
1/3 c cherries (basically just enough to make 1/2 c. of fruit)
2/3 c. Cinn. Roasted Almonds (I did more than the 1/3 c, since the cinn and crunchy outside took up more space than just plain almonds)

These were the favorite. They were really yummy.

I found some dried apples and am going to try some apple pie flavored ones, I will add some cinn and maybe cashews?? I'm not sure which nut. My SIL did some with peanuts and cherries and they taste JUST like PB&J.. If you can't find some dried fruit, you can always dry them yourself. That way you won't have the extra sugar they add to the store ones too. SO to make it simple, here's the steps.

1. find some dried fruits and nuts

2. In your food processor (my SIL used her meat grinder) process the fruit first. Till it's mush. Remove the clump, but don't scrap the blades or bowl. Put the fruit aside in a bowl.

3. Process the nuts, till crushed into small pieces. Add any spices you wish to the nuts.

4. Mix the two parts together

5. form into balls, or small bars.

6. Chill in the fridge or freezer. I just put them in a Ziploc bag I labeled. But you can wrap them individually if you want.

7. ENJOY!! and don't forget to write down what you did, so you can make the same ones again lol!

A few more variations we rolled around in our heads but haven't tired:

Add some choc chips or baking cocoa
roll them in powdered sugar to make them less sticky (all though they really are not that sticky)
Use some oatmeal

Don't forget to share what you've tried.

Blizzard of 2011!

YUP, in case you didn't know, we live in the Great White North lol. Well it gets whiter as you go north, we live in the Lower Peninsula, in Central Michigan. We got quite a bit of snow, but not as bad as other places. Our total by the end of it was 15" on the ground, but only 7 1/2" of it was from the storm. We only lost power for a few minutes, but one block over and most of the rest of our small town was out for about 1 1/2 hours. We all survived, it IS winter after all lol! Here are a few pictures from our adventure. We walked around the block to play in the snow with some cousins.

She was collecting snow balls to give to her aunt! lol
He just wanted to find the biggest ones.

Can you guess what happened here?? lol That little stinker tossed snow right in his face and laughed and laughed. I'm glad I was taking pictures LOL
Well after a good storm, you HAVE to go sledding, right?? So we packed up the kids and went to a local hill. Not an official sledding hill, but it worked great. It was just big enough for the gang of 9 kids. We met some friends and family there. I tried to get some good 'action' shots. But trying to not get run over was more important lol. The kids had a BLAST!!

Amber and Nichole were hungry LOL! This is BEFORE:
and AFTER (ok, so not really lol, but she did sit there munching alot of it)


You can see how deep the snow is, He could only walk in his old tracks, it was clear up to his waist.



And we HAD to warm up with Hot cocoa. Does this look like a happy face to you??

We live in Michigan and winter is in FULL swing. We are at 19 degrees right now, but last night it was 3 with a windchill of -10 brrr. But since I got a new camera a few weeks ago and am loving taking pictures, here are a few recent ones (when it was a bit warmer out lol).

Marky looking out over the Lyons Dam







Looking out towards the old water plant

It's DONE!! backroom pictures

Phew, I guess I never posted finished pictures of our backroom. I got them on facebook, but neglected my blog. I wonder how many people check out my blog that are on my facebook?? I probably shouldn't assume everyone lol.

SO here are the finished pictures of our new and improved backroom. We got it done just days before family arrived for Thanksgiving. It was a GREAT week and than in December we had MORE family over. It was a great end to the year for us.






We have been enjoying it tons! The stove is great for keeping the backroom warm with the door opening to the cold air. Our cat finds it to be quite comfy too.. This is Max! I will post more pictures in another post.

Backroom remodeling con't (lots of pictures)

All this wood planking has come off and is the pile you see a few pictures down.
New stud walls are going up.
After the old walls came out, you could see the underside of the roof. You are looking at the ceiling and roof joyce, and yes some of the wiring. You can see some of the ceramic spindles to the old wires if you look close.


The mass of old wires we pulled from the ceiling and walls. Some that went to no where.

Resetting the driveway door. It was crooked from the house shifting. Marky was helping.


The last pieces of drywall is going UP!!
Abigail wanted to help SO bad. So Papa gave her a screwdriver to hold. She held it for a while waiting lol. Note, she got herself dressed lol,

Drywall is up and mudding has begun.
Through the week I helped get the ceiling ready for the cedar planking.



The beginning of the ceiling going up! And in case you wondered, this is the peel and stick kind. It's the glue each piece and nail kind.. It took us 5 hours, including breaking for supper and breaks to get it done. It was like a puzzle!

Recessed lights and attic access!
So this week, we are working on finishing the plaster on the walls, so maybe we can paint this weekend!! How exciting.. It will hopefully have paint and floors before family comes for Thanksgiving! Lots of work, but worth every bit of it.

The backroom has a REAL dryer vent!

Yes, you read that right.. We've been working on the backroom for the past few weeks, well a few months is more like it I guess. My hubby works too hard, I help when I can, but my expertise is not in home construction. I can help clean though.. So here's what we've gotten done. First we had to gut the whole room, just like the rest of the house, we gut as we go and start over. One of the exciting things about old homes is the stuff you find when you start remodeling. When we first moved in, we dug out the old cistern and found tons of dishes and bottles. Well gutting the backroom has uncovered some cool stuff too.. In the walls we found the old coal shoot.
Inside the coal shoot we found some parts to the old stove.. We had to ask around, but we've figured out that this large piece in the picture is from the top of the stove. There was another one just like it that clamped together, much like a mouth to crush the large pieces of coal.. It's really heavy and from end to end is 17" long.


We also found some other stuff too, here are a few of the really cool ones. A shoe... Note the patches tacked on with tacks, not glue. It appears to be a women's shoe, i'm guessing about a size 6.

This paper is one of my favorites.. The rolled up one was in the wall where the chimney used to be. It is a bit chard but it's dated and readable. Since it's rolled up and crumbly it's hard to take a good picture of it.

November 14, 1926

"ROWAN, 7063, between Green and Beard--Five rooms and bath, newly decorated, with garage; west side"

under the section for "SALE- BUNGALOWS
"Alter Road
Step to Jefferson, 6-room semi, oak finish,
decorated throughout, 3 large bedrooms,
garage; only $1,000 down."

We have found other papers, in the dining room and kitchen, but they are packed in a tote for now. They were used as lining under the tiles and were from when GM was first opening and hiring!

So back the the dryer vent.. This house has never had one. If you don't believe me, here's a picture of the laundry area when we moved in..

yes, that is lint all over the wall and coating the gas line. Safe eh?? We have been using a bucket of water contraption UNTIL today!!

I will post updated pictures on another post. It's hard getting pictures to the bottom of the page on here..