Chocolate Milk

I was craving chocolate milk, so I found a recipe on Pinterest. Here's what I use:

2 cups whole milk

1 T cocoa

1+ T powdered sugar

1/2 t vanilla

I like to use a heaping tablespoon of powdered sugar and slightly less than a tablespoon of cocoa. But I can't seem to mix the ingrediants by hand. After mixing them in the Nesspresso, my milk is rather foamy:

After leaving it in the fridge for about 15 minutes, it settles to this:

Which can be stirred to this:

And, naturally, enjoyed to this:

Kai and the Cookie Press

Kai came to spend the night with us, which was a special treat. She informed me that she was most looking forward to "delivering cookies." The last time she spent the night with us, Regan was visiting as well. We made sugar cookies and decorated them with icing. When Craig got home, he and Kai took plates of cookies to our new neighbors.

I've since purchased a cookie press, so we decided to try that. I found a recipe for spitz cookies that promised 6 dozen cookies. Kai was able to operate the cookie press, making lovely shaped cookies like these:

Oddly, they moved around on the pan during cooking:

But since they kept their shape, even moving around the pan in the oven (which is sorta creepy), so in that respect the recipe was a win. 

Here we are set up to decorate:

And decorating:

But remember that 6 dozen cookies? We ended up with 191 cookies. The end result:

We delivered 6 dozen cookies to the neighbors. Kai has a plate full of cookies to take home. And Craig took a tupperware container full to work today.

Birthday Surprises

Last weekend, we had Craig's partners and their wives over for dinner. Craig was craving butterscotch pudding, so I turned to Pinterest for help. I found an amazing recipe that turned out great.

For his birthday, I decided to mix it up a little by making both chocolate and butterscotch pudding and layering them. I did make the crazy decision to cook them both at the same time. It worked, but I do not recommend this method:

But I'm pretty happy with the final product:

For the butterscotch pudding:

Whisk together:
2T + 2t cornstarch
1/2 t salt
1/2 cup brown sugar (tightly packed)

Add:
1 1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup cream
1 t vanilla

Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly. Lower heat and simmer for 1 minute. Stir in 2T butter.

For the chocolate pudding, I modified the recipe just slightly:

Whisk together:
2T +2t cornstarch
1/4 t salt
2T sugar
1/4 cup cocoa

Add:
1 1/2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup cream

Bring to a boil over medium heat, whisking constantly. Lower heat and simmer for 1 minute. Stir in 1 cup chocolate chips, 2T butter, and 1t vanilla.

Just a Typical Morning

So a knock on the door got me out of bed this morning. No one was at the door, but I found the subcontractor in the sideyard. When I asked if he knocked, he says, "ah, yeah, your car's just not in a good place."

I can only stare at him because my car is in the garage and Craig's car is in the driveway. 

So he follows up with, "if you leave the car there, I'm just gonna splash it with concrete."

I moved the car. But how about saying, "I can't work with the car parked in the driveway, can you move it?"

Off to College

Not me, of course. Bryce is heading to University of Utah so I put together this stash of goodies to send with him. 

We will take two days driving him to school. We took advantage of Bed, Bath & Beyonds online shopping, with the option to pick up our order in Salt Lake City; hopefully all his linens and dorm essentials will be waiting for us there. 

Laundry Room

One of the things we were unable to finish before we moved into the house was the laundry room. Here it is when we bought the house:

Because of the window and the height of our washer and dryer, we had to move the sink to the window side. We added a normal-depth upper cabinet (the original ones were very narrow) and a deep base cabinet. We flanked the upper cabinet with pull down drying racks.

But our move date approached, we had no counter top or sink installed. Here it is on move-in day:

Here it is after we moved in, with the washer and dryer in place:

And here it is, finally finished with the countertop and sink!

Fridge Drama

As we were moving into the house, we encountered a small problem with the fridge - it didn't fit:

This was particularly frustrating, because our contractor had moved the lower cabinets a few inches specifically to accommodate our refrigerator. I had the movers put the fridge at the other end of the kitchen, so I had a place to store food. I waited to unpack the boxes that would go into any of the cabinets on that side of the kitchen, because I did not want to have to move everything again for our contractor to move the cabinets.

Our contractor came out to the house, prepared to move all the cabinets on one side of our kitchen. But first, he wanted to try putting the fridge in place himself. He had moved the lower cabinets to fit our measurement of the fridge and, somewhat remarkably, our measurement of the fridge matched his (we had a few measuring problems during this renovation). So, he gave it a try:

It fit perfectly. At least it was only a minor delay to my unpacking.

Move In Day

This will be a series of before and after photos, taken before and after the Meathead Movers brought everything into our new house. There was some furniture in the new house because we had our new purchases shipped to the new house rather than move them.

The family room:

Living room / Dining room:

Kitchen:

 

Bryce's Bedroom:

 

Craft room:

 

Master Bedroom (only after pictures, just imagine it was empty):

 

Kai's First Visit to the New House

Kai came with me to visit the new house for the first time. While I swept out the garage, she occupied herself by building a "gate" with scrap wood to keep her imaginary animals inside. Unfortunately, the sheep, pigs, goats, and horses kept escaping, forcing her to run around the driveway to capture them and return them. This is such a fun age!

Inside, while I unpacked the chairs for our dining room table, Kai decided she needed to make a bed out of the protective covers in which the chairs had been shipped. 

Of course, I had to join her for her "nap".

Here's a poorly composed picture of the new dining room table and chairs. You can see that the packaging material is now rolled up. I'm taking it back to the rental house to use for our packing.

Our new living room furniture - sofa and chair, with the new bar in the background (still wrapped in plastic):

Kai also discovered our mail slot. Here's a video of her showing me how it works:

New Bathroom!

First, a picture of the tile before the fixtures went in:

Here's the vanity. The sink obviously hasn't been installed just yet.

My bathtub! It had to come in through the window seen in the pictures above. It was so large, in fact, that the window and frame had to be removed to allow the tub into the house. But we didn't have to knock a hole in the exterior wall! Or two interior walls! (Those were the initial options.)

Here you can see my zero-entry shower! The picture is sorta blurry and I don't think the glass door had been installed yet. But I was so excited that our contractor found a way around putting a threshold on the shower. This was one of Craig's surprises for me. I've always wanted a zero-entry shower, because I trip over the threshold on most showers. Doing this required a special drain, to protect the wood floor in the hallway just outside the door shown in the picture. But it works! And it's wonderful!

Tile!

We are in Alaska, enjoying our adventure, but this picture from our contractor brought great excitement:

Our bathroom has tile on the walls! And I think it looks amazing!

We bought a house!

And our contractor got there first. He already had one wall taken down before we had a chance to visit.

First surprise - at some point, they took out the pocket door and framed the opening as a single door into the kitchen. We are taking out this wall, but inside our contractor found an abandoned vent and a hard-wired smoke alarm, both of which had been drywalled over.

Kai Projects: Food and Paint

After establishing that I would be staying with her today, Kai informed me that she wanted to do "a food project" and then a "paint project." We turned to Pintrest, starting on the board where I keep ideas I want to try with her.

Kai's focus on "a food project" forced her to skip interesting looking projects like making bouncy balls and colored soap in favor of an apple flower. Here she is, with our inspiration on the iPad behind her:

A closer look at our finished project (ours has a raisin and nut mixture because we've run out of plain raisins):

After her snack, Kai was ready to move onto her "paint project." She selected the picture of herself with bottles of flour paint on Pinterest, so we repeated an earlier project. 

We mixed flour, kosher salt, and water in a big bowl until we had a thick, paint-like consistency. (We didn't measure anything, I mostly allow her to scoop or pour the ingredients into the bowl and mix them up. We discuss whether the miture is too thick or too thin and I help her determine which ingrediants might help.) Using a funnel, I transferred the "paint" into our bottles. 

Kai added food coloring, I mixed the paint, and she screwed the lids in place. She managed to only knock one bottle over, but the paint was thick enough that it didn't even spill. 

Here she is, outside, with her art:

Kai Projects: Carefree Crafts Day

When I initially signed up for a monthly craft subscription, I tried three different companies. We continue to get my favorite, Carefree Crafts. When Kai was home every day, we had to ration the projects with other homemade projects. But with Kai starting daycare, spending more time with Maurico, and finding favorite homemade crafts, we've fallen behind. We spent today binging on Carefree Crafts.

Here is Kai, wearing an old Carefree Craft we had to move to make room on our drying rack downstairs:

We started with a homemade craft - an oil and water mixture with glitter and food coloring:

Then our first Carefree Craft, from the December package, Kai is stringing buttons on a pipe cleaner to make a candy came ornament (You may notice the gingerbread houses in the background, a sure sign that we are a bit behind on cleaning up our craft area.):

Next, a waterless "snow globe" ornament:

After we woke up from naps, we moved into the January, winter wonderland, package. We made this handy penguin ruler for measuring snow...too bad we don't get snow here:

Here, Kai looks thrilled showing off the chalkboard sled and the ruler again:

We made snowflakes from coffee filters, markers, and water (still folded up in this picture):

Here, a snowman coaster:

And finally, a mitten window hanging:

The worst part? There were more crafts today that I didn't get decent pictures of. It was a craft filled day.