Tastes of Spring: Rhubarb

Wow! It has been a while since I've written a new post. It is definitely spring here in the Pacific Northwest, and I love it! Besides the fact that the weather can't make up it's mind and can (and usually does) go from rainy to sunny several times during the day. It makes getting out into the garden or going for a run a little tricky.

On Easter I went up to Mt. Vernon to visit my grandparents and see some tulips. They're so gorgeous!

While I was up there I stopped by my dad's cousin's house to pick some rhubarb. She has a HUGE plant (wish I took a picture of it); so big that you could not even tell I picked about ten stalks! So now I have lots of rhubarb, and need to figure out what I am going to make with it. Such a hard thing to do since my family and I LOVE rhubarb! I cut up 4 cups for a pie for my dad's birthday and stuck that in the freezer. Of course we had warm rhubarb sauce over vanilla ice cream for dessert that night. Now I still have plenty of rhubarb to try out some new recipes. My aunt gave me the Taste of Home Farm Fresh Favorites cookbook for my birthday a few years ago so I decided to look in there. Low and behold they have a whole section with rhubarb recipes; muffins, pie, jam, ice cream, etc. Which one to try first?! This morning I made the Rhubarb Lemon Muffins (recipe in the link), and the turned out great. They are especially delicious with a little butter and homemade strawberry jam!

I think I may try this recipe again, and use grated fresh ginger to replace the lemon peel. They would become rhubarb ginger muffins.

Next recipe to try is the Rhubarb Popover Pie (again recipe is in the link) for breakfast tomorrow! And of course I'll be making a batch of rhubarb jam! What are your favorite things to eat in spring? Do you have a favorite recipe with rhubarb?

Seahawks Mania!

Living in Seattle just got better when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl!! I was already a Seahawks fan, but this was the icing on the cake. To honor this great achievement I have been creating Seahawks fan gear. Everything is available in my Etsy shop: rainydaydesigns.etsy.com

Braided Seahawks Scarf

Seahawks Football Earflap Beanie

Seahawks Knotted Headband

Of course not everyone is a Seahawks fan. All of these are also available to be customized to your favorite team's colors, or whatever colors you would like.

Two New Additions

There are two new little additions to my family. My cousin-in-law had her TWINS last week!! That means I've been hard at work making lovey blankets for them to cuddle, and hats to adorn their adorable little heads.

I got the idea for the lovey blankets from a woman I follow on Instagram and this pattern on Ravelry. They have an elephant themed nursery so I'm going to make an elephant head from here (which I also found on Ravelry) to put on the lovey blankets instead of the lamb like the pattern. I was watching the last episode of "Smash", sniff sniff :( , while working on them the other day.

The hats are a Tunisian crochet pattern and yarn that I found buried in one of my yarn bins. I totally forgot that I had bought that yarn to go with the free pattern from the shop along the LYS Tour two years ago. It's still cute none-the-less, and I can't wait to see how it works up. It was a pain to wind since the beads can't fit through a regular ball winder; so I had to wind it by hand off of the swift.

I'll post pictures of the finished projects in a few weeks. What are your favorite projects for babies? What projects are you currently working on? I love to hear your feedback!

This is How My Garden Grows (May 2013 Update)

I have been so busy lately that I have been horrible at weeding my garden, and planting seeds this spring. Thankfully rhubarb doesn't take much care so I already made a rhubarb pie!

The raspberries are trying to take over the whole garden area. I've been pulling shoots out of every section lately. The bees are busy pollinating, which is what I like to see! There are already too many berries starting to grow that I can't count them all. :) In the picture, don't mind the patch of dandilions that currently occupy the raised bed.

This year I'm trying out those Topsy Turvy tomato growers. I hope that having them in a sunnier spot will produce more red tomatoes instead of being left with a bunch of green tomatoes in the fall. A bonus is that while out for a walk around the neighborhood a couple weeks ago, I found a table with FREE tomato starts! I'm Dutch, so anything free is awesome!

Another new addition to my garden this year is the strawberry tower. I got the idea when I was on a field trip to Seattle Tilth with my pre-k class. I figured it would be easy enough to DIY so I drew a mock up on Google SketchUp first, and then handed the plans over to my Dad. Thanks to Stacy for the strawberry starts to put in it! I'll transplant the rest of my strawberry plants after they finish producing fruit this summer.

Last but certainly not least, is my flower bed. Which has actually been getting more attention lately than the garden. I noticed dahlia shoots coming up so I weeded around them. I had to cut/pull out some of the vinca ground cover to give the dahlias and iris more space to grow! I aslo took out the sticks that were supposedly supporting them as they grew, and replaced them with tomato cages since I won't be needing those this summer. A nice addition of rabbit poop fertilizer, and they're growing wonderfully. Now if only the slugs would stay away from them. :(

I'm hoping that blogging about my garden gives me more motivation to finish weeding so I can plant more. What have you planted in your garden this spring? What would you like to grow in your garden?

Birthday Cupcakes

So I settled on baking mocha cupcakes with raspberry buttercream for my Dad's birthday.

I used the mocha cupcake recipe that I found here from Pinterest (of course!). 

 

The raspberry buttercream I adapted from my "taste. Cupcakes" cookbook. I found it at Sam's Club, and originally bought it solely for the Advocaat buttercream recipe; which I will post at another time. Anyways, here is my version of raspberry buttercream.

Raspberry Buttercream Frosting
Yields enough to frost 12 cupcakes

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar
3-5 Tbls. seedless raspberry preserves or jelly

Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, beat the butter until it is creamy. Sift in the powdered sugar and beat until smooth. On low add in the raspberry preserves until desired taste and color is achieved. Either spread or pipe onto cooled cupcakes. Enjoy!

These were the best looking from my batch. Note to self: get piping tips for better results! I also got to use the DIY Cake Stand that I made in this post. :)

I love to hear your feedback! Please comment if you try this recipe. Or what have you baked lately?

Dad's Birthday Choices

My Dad's birthday is tomorrow so I've been scouring my cupcake book, and Pinterest for ideas of what cake/cupcakes I should make for him. His favorites are raspberry, coconut, and coffee.

So far I'm either making cinnamon rolls or scones for breakfast. The cupcake choices are as follows: coconut with raspberry butter cream, mocha with raspberry butter cream, or mocha with espresso butter cream. Such a tough choice!

It helps that he has a sweet tooth, hmm probably where I get it from, so he'll enjoy whatever I end up choosing. I'll post pictures of what I chose tomorrow.

Winter Crafts & Activities

Now that winter is almost over, here are a few of the crafts and activities we did in the Frog class.

Lick and stick snowman pictures. Sorry, it's sideways.

Doily snowman picture. We hung these on their lockers. Again, sorry it's sideways.

We also made borax crystal snowflakes which I posted about a few weeks ago. The kids also had fun playing with the shaving cream snowman in a bag activity.

The beginning of February was literacy week at our school. We had fun reading The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle and we painted funny colored animals, too! We also read The Mitten by Jan Brett, and decorated a mitten and made animal puppets to tell the story. Finally, for our assembly we retold the story of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and the kids loved making wild things masks. I wish I could post a picture of all of them because they were SO CUTE! Although, I'm slightly biased since they're my class. :)

These are just the few crafts and activities we had time for. I found tons more on Pinterest that I wanted to use, but there isn't enough winter! Maybe I'll use those next year.

What are some of your favorite winter crafts and activities with kids? I love to hear feedback!

Learning How to Knook

No, it's not the e-reader from Barnes & Noble. It's a special crochet hook with a knitting needle on the other end. For me it's the combination of two of my favorite hobbies, knitting & crocheting, into one awesome craft! With a little help from a kit I got at JoAnn's and watching a few YouTube videos I have gotten the hang of how to knook.

Pictures are always helpful so here are a few of my new adventure:

This is the Instagram picture before I even opened the kit

Figuring out the knit stitch

Figuring out the purl stitch and making stockinette

Starting my first project: spa cloth from the booklet that comes with the kit

Super excited to be using scented cotton yarn! (Sorry it's sideways)

Finished spa cloth!! (Again, sorry it's sideways) Working on more to add to my Etsy shop. :)

So far I'm enjoying this combination of knitting and crochet. It's also a great conversation starter since hardly anyone knows what it is! My next knook project is a toddler hat for a friend's 12 month old. What knitting or crochet projects are you working on?

Other Wedding Projects (the last post)

I'm horribly late on posting these pictures of other projects for Diana's wedding! But better late than never, right?

After Diana and I finished the wedding invitations we still had some work to do. There were still table names and place cards to make along with programs to put together. That was all part of my wedding gift to them. I also helped her make cute tumblers for the bridesmaid gift baskets.

 

One of my favorite things that Diana and Aaron did was collect rocks from different beaches in the area, and used those in the bottom of the bowls for the center pieces. Where they got the rocks coordinated with the table names. The bride & groom table had rocks from all of them. Isn't that a cool way to add in a piece of the Pacific Northwest?

Fun Fact: Mukilteo Ferry Park is the beach where they got engaged!

This is my place card. We printed names on one side with table name on the other, and the little "C" in the corner indicated that I chose the chicken option for food. Then we simply stamped on the side with Baroque Motifs to match the table names.

Diana typed up everything for the programs (with a little help from Google!), and we went to Kinko's to print them. Pretty basic: cover, order of ceremony, listing of the wedding party and parents and grandparents, timeline for the reception, a short thank you note, and their new address is on the back (due to privacy I'm not posting that). Can you tell she's very detail oriented with the specific timeline for the reception? Good thing it all went according to plan. :)

I found these tumblers at Dollar Tree after looking everywhere else for them. I got the glitter glue from the dollar section at Target. Diana wrote our names on the side and bride, maid of honor, and bridesmaid on the lids. One thing we didn't realize until putting water in them is that the glitter glue comes off then it gets wet. Looking back we should've spent a little more for the puffy paints instead. Oh well, they were still cute while they lasted. :)

That wraps up my wedding projects posts (finally!). Since the wedding in September I've had a lot more time to work on other projects. I'll post more about those later...

Sinterklaas Crafts

In the Frog class we like to do our own little "Christmas Around the World", and teach the kids about some different cultures. This year we went to the Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, & Switzerland. Since I'm Dutch I had a great time teaching them about Sinterklaas since I grew up celebrating it. I think the highlights were the blue Big Bird (on the Dutch version of Sesame Street), and the video of "Zwarte Pieten Style". But they had fun making a few crafts too so here they are:

This is one I made, but the kids used magazine cut outs to complete their wish bags.

The kids loved making a Piet hat! This is the one I used to become "Piet" when I taught them about Sinterklaas.

All of the kids were adorable in their Sinterklaas hats! They even got a little goofy wearing them sideways or upside down. :)

I can't forget the delicious peppernoten I made at home and brought for snack one day. I wasn't sure what the kids would think because of the anise flavor, but they loved it. I also brought in a chocolate letter (an F for frog class of course!) which they also loved.

I'd say I was successful at teaching them about Dutch culture since they still sing Sinterklaas songs I taught them. One of my girls told me, "I asked Santa to bring me peppernoten and a chocolate letter." If you would like more information about Sinterklaas or these crafts just ask me in the comments!

Fall Craft Projects

Well, the Frog class was busy crafting this fall. Thanks to Pinterest for pretty much all of my ideas!

 We painted egg carton pumpkins. Some are scarier than others!

I got a kit of these foam pumpkins at JoAnn's. I love how they used the same items, but they're all so different! I also got a kit for foam turkeys that the kids had fun putting together.

We made hand print spiders around Halloween. Isn't it cute with the googley eyes?

After reading the "Pumpkin Patch Parable" we made pumpkins similar to these that we hung on our lockers.

For Thanksgiving we had fun coloring pasta (I discovered that liquid water colors work well too) to make noodle turkeys like the ones found here, and hung them above the lockers for everyone to admire. We also made hand print turkeys then used feathers to decorate them to use for a bulletin board display.

Happy crafting! Please leave feedback of crafts you've done with kids for fall, if you want more details, or if you like an idea. I would like validation that I'm writing to an audience.

Margarita Cupcakes

Since we were having taco salad for my Grandma's birthday lunch we decided to stick with a Mexican theme for dessert. I found these margarita cupcakes on Pinterest. I used this Margarita cupcake recipe , but since I didn't have a box mix I make the cake mix from scratch. So this is the DIY white cake mix recipe I used, but in my opinion it needs a little tweaking because the cake itself was heavy instead of fluffy like a cupcake should be. The lime buttercream frosting was simple to make and delicious to boot! I added a few drops of green and yellow food coloring to give it a lime hue. I topped all of the frosted cupcakes off with a sprinkle of kosher salt which not only kept the true margarita flavor, but also was a nice touch of saltiness to accent the sweetness of the frosting and cake. Finally, what would a baking post be without a few pictures?!

This is the first dozen I frosted. You can kind of see the light green hue in the frosting. Disclaimer: I am certainly not a professional. Although, I'd love to take a cake decorating class at a bakery or craft store someday.

Here are the second dozen...the frosting job turned out a little better on these ones.

So there you have my latest baking adventure. Stay tuned in the next week or so for my detailed report on the wedding invitations. :)

June Garden Update

It's been since May & April when I last posted about my garden. Everything has grown a lot since then. Check out these pictures to see for yourself:

Big picture view of raised bed, raspberries, small bed, blueberries.

 Close up of the two new blueberry bushes I planted. Finally dug up the lemon balm, and added a few friends for my lonely blueberry bush.

Raised bed: 2 tomatoes, 3 bush beans, 2 corn, & chives. In front is carrots, swiss chard, & kale. I'll post about making kale chips later. :) Look at that raspberry patch! I picked the first 4 berries off it today, & they were SO yummy!!

Big picture of the left side of the garden. Look how tall those peas are...taller than my 5'1" that's for sure!

A better view not looking through the peas. It's hard to see, but in the middle is mystery squash (note the 4 garden labels). After the wind blew over my green house these are the squash that came up, & we'll see what they produce. This also gives a good picture of the soaker hoses I finally got out of the shed.

Here's a better view of the spinach, & leaf lettuce that were in the shade of the last picture. They look a little thin because I picked some for salad. :) Might I add that it was delicious salad!

This is the "small" garden off to the side of the raspberry patch. Sadly my radishes have all bolted. :( On the other hand that one cabbage is doing great!

The flower bed by the house is looking a lot better since the April post. Mostly due to the fact that I've been working on weeding it. My dahlias are coming up! The fenced in plant has decided to grow super tall this year. :/ Like the peas it's taller than my 5'1", and continues to grow!

Thanks for taking a peek at my growing garden! Sorry that the pictures are not the best quality since I took them with my iPod touch (I have seemed to misplace my regular camera).