From the Soup Genius

My mom is a super soup genius. She can make a soup or stew from just about anything random left in the kitchen. And they always turn out fabulous. About ten years ago she made me a binder for Christmas with favorite family recipes, including many soups. I’ve been adding to the binder and recently had to dismantle it to put it back together again as it was stuffed too full. I re-discovered some favorites, one of them I made this weekend: Pot Sticker Soup. My mom gave me permission to share it here.

Pot Sticker Soup (Be creative with this one!)
In large Soup Pan
Sauté Garlic & Ginger in Olive Oil (Always use Olive Oil or Canola Oil… It is best for Lowering Cholesterol)
Add Green Onions, Celery, Carrots, Peppers, Green Cabbage, thinly sliced spinach, mushrooms….
All of the above or some! And any other Veggies you may have in the Refrigerator.
Cover with Chicken Broth… As many cans as it takes! and ONE more.
Homemade Chicken Stock is also wonderful!
Once cooked…
Add Pot Stickers bought at Costco!
There will be a package of sauce with Pot Stickers… Add this to the soup mixture and cook until Pot Stickers are done.
This recipe is rather vague, but Fabulous! YOU can make it up as you go along!
Add a dash of Dried Red Pepper if you want it HOTTER!
 
That was copied straight from the recipe book she made me. I decided not to add mushrooms, because I just do not like them. And I actually bought the frozen pot stickers at the local grocery store, so there was no sauce packet. We didn’t miss it. The soup was so flavorful and yummy! Figures since it is one of the easiest soups ever. I make much more elaborate ones and get the, “meh” response. This one is a huge hit with Bj. Tuesday picks and chooses her veggies from it, and loves the pot stickers. I think start to finish this comes in around 35-45 minutes, but most of that is chopping up veggies. Oh and I did use some of the carrots that I froze last summer. I had extra from my garden so I cleaned, peeled, and sliced them. I made sure they were dry and froze them just like that, no blanching. So easy, and put them right into this pan frozen. They turned out great, not mushy at all! More food preserve success!

A few Project Life Spreads

Minus showing my plans for traveling with Project Life up to Alaska I haven’t really posted that much about it. I feel like there is such wonderful inspiration out there all ready! Plus I don’t want to feel like I’m holding myself back on journaling or photos because they’ll be public. I know I can blur out bits (and have below), but it’s easier just to do what I want, honestly. I did want to share a few of my pages. I’m finished up through March 11th. I’ll share more next week.

Disneyland. Because the time we spent in Disneyland bridged two weeks I felt it was easier to do a spread pre-Disney, Disney, and post Disney (two weeks, into three spreads). And Disneyland also included the map insert (cut down 12×12 protector), a 12×12 with a dozen more disney pics, and a big storage envelope (besides trip stuff, this also holds cards from Tuesday’s birthday, which fell during this time). Because it’s all clearly Disney I don’t think it’s hard to read the “spread” as one. But usually if I do an insert I make sure it is not quite 12″ wide, so it fits in-between the pages.

A random week in January. I love my (knock off) Dymo as much as ever. One thing I love about this project is including photos I would never have scrapped or saved (uh, messy clothes photo, I’m talking about you).

I took a similar approach to our Alaska trip, in terms of keeping it separate as I did for Disneyland. So this is pre-trip, with a little photo above on the date card to show it was the week we left (I actually did this layout and the next while on the trip, with the supplies I brought and prints from Costco, picked up in Alaska).

One thing I’m really having trouble doing is editing down the amount of pictures I put in each week. I think this is because I’m realizing how little I am scrapping anything besides my Project Life, and I don’t want these gems forgotten.

I love putting in Tuesday’s artwork, notes and random scribbles. I think it is in such great context with photos of her sweet little three year old self. I stapled the “love” card to the actual page protector incase I ever do want to take that artwork out, it remains undamaged this way). The tab you see is one of these. I like having them in there to break up the book a bit (and keep me organized, I’m sure I’ll use at least two Binders at this point, I’m up to 23 protectors total already!.

The back of that artwork was this mini layout. I had to cut and resize all the photos I wanted on there, and it was still crammed. I’ve only done little layouts a few times in the book, but it works great for time specific things. If I’m feeling all mushy about something I’ll probably just do a regular layout for one of our regular scrapbooks.
Tempted to keep sharing, but I feel this is really picture heavy as is. Any questions? I can go over how I’ve found the process to work best for me in my next Project Life post if you like. I love this project, and Bj loves it too. He told me it was, “better than those pages with, ‘that’s cute over there’ and stuff.” (I think he means overly embellished). Love that he loves to look through it!

The twin bed

Tuesday is very proud of her big giant TWIN sized bed. I had picked out some fabric thinking we would just use her crib mattress for a while, but that didn’t work out. I wanted to use the same fabric so I just got a coordinating sheet at Target for the back of this duvet cover.

It’s hard to see in this picture but the sheet set came with a ruffled pillowcase, it’s so sweet. The green pillow was the one we made with Karen and her girls using this tutorial (it’s a great easy one first time sewers!). To piece the top of the duvet with out an obvious seem I used a tutorial from a fellow Portland Modern Quilt Guild member, Elizabeth. I used a fusible web instead of glue though.

It worked really well, and I’m super happy with how this turned out. Now I’m feeling a bit twitchy to make something for the new baby!

My mini me.

Tuesday is being so cute about the baby right now. She loves talking to it, but more than anything she likes playing pretend with her baby. Most specifically Thomas (Tommy), her go to baby doll. I got her this little cheap baby doll so she would have something entirely plastic to take in the tub. I’ve already made Tommy a dozen diapers, which were a big hit.

I used this tutorial. The next request was a carrier for Tommy, “Just like you used with me when I was a wittle baby!” “And green, with some polka dots.”

The carrier we used with her was a Baby Hawk (we loved it). So I fashioned this to be similar (I’ve also made this Sew Liberated pattern, and used some of those techniques).

Really pretty easy, it went together quickly, using left over fabric from other projects. Thomas has been with us pretty much constantly lately, so this does free up her hands. Oh, minus that time I dared take Tuesday to the store with out Thomas. Hello 15 minute mega tantrum. Now what to do about the baby she says is in her tummy? The “funky baby”. If you ask her what that baby looks like she does a pose and shouts, “funk”. Oh three year olds, how I love thee.

That sleep thing is working too well.

Tuesday has been going to bed on her own every night for over a week. It’s crazy! She also has no problem with at least 1.5 hours of rest time. You’d think I’d be getting more time on the computer and all of that, but actually no. Bj and I have rediscovered evenings together and I love it too much to want to be on the computer. We’ve been watching a few shows, he’s been working on projects (troubleshooting everything I somehow do wrong with anything electronic), and I’ve been reading, lots. Ah, I’m sure I’ll figure out some kind of schedule for getting back online, but right now, it’s bliss.

Some of my long suffering projects are getting a little time. I’ve been working on this shawl for a while, it’s easy to pick up without a pattern, so it was my in between project. I’ve never knit a shawl before, I don’t actually know what I’ll do with it. I wore it as a scarf over the weekend. More pictures to come.

Extra bonus points if you can remember either of these.

It does help that I finally got my sewing machine fixed, replaced, actually after having tension issues for a year. So I’m on a sewing kick now. I did finish a few things, and hopefully can add to that list.

Seven Years

I really can’t believe today I’ve been blogging for seven years… SEVEN. That is just… I don’t know, crazy? And cool, and weird that I’ve put that much of my life on the internet. I still need to go back and fix a lot of errors from the transfer over to wordpress last year, but my first entry is here.
I love that all my friends and family thought I was super creative just to come up with a blog at all. It was years before I could say I had a blog and people would know what that was without explanation. And now it seems there are so many! There is so much wonderful creative energy all around and I love it. I admit I read more blogs than I can really keep up with, and my commenting has fallen by the wayside… something I’m working on, so to friends out there who I also read, I’m sorry, I still love you!
My second entry (here) brings back so many good memories. I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much reading that entry. I remain entirely consumed with too many projects, and love it. I am still a fan of all things colorful, and happy. I try to remain as optimistic as possible. It’s hard not to with these lovelies:

I’ve come a long way since random feet pictures (ok how about one for old times sake):

I’m so glad I have a record of how I went from that person to this one.

Now if only I could get my act together and put the thing in some kind of hard copy format! I have serious nightmares about it all disappearing overnight!
Most of all thank you for my lovely readers. I doubt I would have kept putting myself out there if not for you all. Always encouraging, and funny, and there for me. Kisses!

Starred.

Oh hey, have you ever heard me write about Tuesday’s sleep issues? No? Have you been reading my blog longer than a month because it’s a reoccurring theme. When she was a newborn I was thrown for a shock to learn that some babies actually could go all day (and most of the night) with out sleeping. Like ever. She didn’t take a single nap that wasn’t on my breast for the first year. Yes, YEAR. Then somehow when she turned one she started taking a nap in her room and it was so awesome. She woke up happy and played in her crib for a while before calling for me.
Nighttime was a little harder, we couldn’t really ever get to her to lay down and go to sleep alone. She never did that once. She had to be totally asleep in order for us to be able to leave the room (oh and, as an added bonus she did not want to sleep with us, oh no, that would have been too easy). So we’ve been rocking/singing/dancing/back patting/etc. her for up to three hours every night for her to sleep. And that didn’t get her through the night. She has to pee every night and that woke her up. So around the new year we ditched the crib and put the mattress on the floor so she could take herself to the bathroom in the night, instead of us getting up just to lift her out (she never figured out she could climb out of it). Then we had wake up issues, and just all sorts of annoying set backs.
Oh and by the way I’m pregnant and freaking out about having to rock two kids to bed for hours every night (how would that even be possible?!?), get two kids to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and have two kids not napping (oh because by the way Tuesday is growing out of the nap). I think you can see the writing on the wall there, it would not end well. Or at the very least my prospect of ever having time to knit or scrap again would be non existent.
I’ve asked people for advice. Or rather, told them the situation and they offered me some. 9 times out of 10? “Let her cry it out.” “Get a lock for her door and just leave her in there.” The other 10% was something like, “I’ve been there, good luck.” We did briefly try letting Tuesday cry when she was younger and it was the most horrendous thing of all time. I got the book from the library and followed it to the letter. Every night got worse, not better. And her mattress was soaked with tears. And I felt like the most evil human being on earth. Then the next morning she was a terror, as if to say, “you thought that was a good idea, really?” It may work for some, but it did not for us.
Putting Tuesday to bed lately has been so horrible. She’s not happy, we’re not happy. She can’t get comfy with my belly in the rocking chair; just a bunch of problems. I finally posted to a local mom’s group (with a crunchy/natural mindedness bent) and begged for ideas. Someone recommend a rewards chart. The thought had never crossed my mind and for some reason I just didn’t think it would be good to start on charts and stars. Why? I don’t know. I think I just want Tuesday to do everything “right” intrinsically. But I figured I might as well try it, after all it was something I could make with my Silhouette :). So I whipped one up…. boom. First night: FELL ASLEEP IN HER BED BY HERSELF! (first time ever) SLEPT THROUGH THE NIGHT! Star charts… I love you.
I came up with this star allocation:
1 star for silent reading time (15 minutes), with lights on before lights out (after we read to her, to prepare her for being in the room alone, this is kind of the easy A).
2 stars for going to bed by herself (I stay nearby and work loudly so she knows I’m around, and occasionally she cries down to me. I pop up there at set times).
3 stars for sleeping in her bed all night (she can get up to go potty).
also 1 star for a nice quiet rest time (from 2:30-4 every day, she can play upstairs, read, anything but get into water).
The routine is really slow and drawn out, as it always was, something I just think she needs. We still go up there and get all ready together, read together, listen to some music, etc. And I don’t just turn off the lights and leave. After she reads alone I turn off the lights, turn on her fan, and we listen to a few songs together and talk for a bit before I go downstairs. So far she does cry out a little bit. And tonight she told me I was a mean mama. And then she falls asleep in under an hour and wakes up super happy. It’s awesome.

She loves picking her stars (I made them in a bunch of colors) and counting to see if she can get a book. I went to the YMCA’s book sale last week and just bought a huge basket full so we should be good for a while. I told someone else, “what she doesn’t know is I would have bought her a first edition of a book just to get her to sleep!” ha! A 50 cent book seems like a pretty good deal to me. I think we’ll probably end up putting other things on this chart, activities, etc. Books were just what came to mind since she spends about 70% of her waking time with one (and 20% playing coffee shop, 10% eating). I honestly had no idea how quickly she would take to this (a big part of it is her just being ready I think for more independence), so I am a bit surprised how fast she’s filling the chart!

Of course some days, it’s just too hard to make it through rest time awake 🙂 I left after this for a freezer cooking date, and Bj said she slept until 6:15. Needless to say that night she didn’t earn any stars…
I’ll keep you posted, but so far I think we’re really onto something. We actually had a dinner guest over and I was able to come back down and hang out with him after Tuesday went down. I did a little happy dance. Now lets just wait and see what the little one inside my tummy has planned for me…!!!!

Is this thing on?

I was going to do a post, but something is funky with wordpress…. in fact I am typing in white type. DO you know how hard that is? I have to go back and highlight it occasionally to make corrections. A true type ping blind test.Thank you for all your beautiful and sweet comments. I would expect nothing less from my most lovely readers. Here’s hoping I can truly update soon (here that IT guy…. A.K.a> Bj?)