Wednesday, October 28, 2009

A finish!

First I will say I have kind of misplaced the blog that had the turkey soup recipe so until I can find it so I can give credit to who created it it I won't post that recipe, but, since Thanksgiving is coming soon I will be creating my own recipe for use with turkey leftovers so I will post that when it happens.

Now I finally have a finish to report. Not a sewing one but one that has been plaguing me since my arm injury. I have not been able to work on it since before April so I'm very happy to have it done and am very happy with how it turned out. Here's a few pics......







This is a double wall basket, basically 2 baskets in one. First I made the inside basket and then made the outside basket using the inside basket as a kind of mold. The only thing connecting these baskets together is the rim row.

Now I am going to share a small update on the house renovations. I showed you before the laundry area when it was tore apart. It's is far from done but the dry wall is up in the new doggie room and of course a floor and the laundry closet is almost done, floor replaced and dry wall up and the washer and dryer is temporarily in there so I can do laundry until we have the floor laid. Here are some photos...



The upper picture is the dogs room. You can see the framing where the new door will go and the new back door. To the left the room bumps out where the washer and dryer used to be. We are pushing the original door back to remove the new laundry closet, furnace and pantry out of the dogs room. It will be a room that is all theirs and they love their room and really miss it so hopefully we can have them back in it soon.

This next picture is me standing in the new door way of the dogs room showing the laundry closet and there will be bi fold doors on it and the other side of the room will have bi fold doors over the furnace and pantry. The door you see in the photo is the old laundry room door and will be removed and that will be open to the kitchen.



The next pictures is what my master bath room look like right now. It's a little difficult to stand back far enough to get a good picture but you will get he general idea...





The photo with the window is where the garden tub used to be and is where the new whirlpool/shower tub will be and that window will be gone.

The other photo is the other side of the bathroom and the walls you see there are new. The stand up shower used to be there and we used the area to build the new laundry closet.

We still have our goal of having every thing done including my sewing room and all the flooring replaced by Thanksgiving and I think we can do that. Unfortunately Dan had to take a day to change the radiator in his Jimmy an then he took another day to change the oil in all the cars and then yesterday he was feeling pretty bad but he will be hitting it hard again soon. Right now he said all the big work that throws dust and wood particles all over the house is done so I have been working on detailed cleaning to get every thing cleaned up. It's slow going but coming along nicely. That is what I dislike about remodeling, the dust gets into every thing every where.

We have spent all of our Saturdays in October going to marching band competitions. They were good and placed well in most of them. Here are a few photos of some of the formations while they were marching.







Well, I guess that is it for now.

Bye!

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Gluten free apple crisp

Okay, this was so good I had to share. I usually do not like apple crisp at all but make it for my husband but this stuff was delicious! I loved it! I had quite a few apples that needed used up so I searched out a recipe on the internet that looked good to me and adapted it to be gluten free. Here is the recipe....

It makes a 9x13 pan size.

INGREDIENTS
10 cups all-purpose apples, peeled, cored and sliced
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 cup quick-cooking oats
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup packed brown sugar
1/4 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 cup butter, melted

Obviously I used a gluten free flour for all flour the recipe calls for. I used Bob's Red Mill Gluten Free flour and did not add xantham gum and it did not need it.
I also did not melt the butter. I just cut it into pieces and used my hands to mix every thing together until I had a nice crumb topping and I do not use butter, I use a dairy free margarine since I am severly limiting my dairy. Also, I used certified gluten free oats as well, Bobs Red Mill brand. I also did not measure the apples. I just peeled and cut and tossed into the pan until I thought I had enough and when I had the apples and cinnamon and sugar mixture all mixed together I sprinkled a little apple cider on top of that just for fun.



In to the oven it goes......




DIRECTIONS
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degree C).
Place the sliced apples in a 9x13 inch pan. Mix the white sugar, 1 tablespoon flour and ground cinnamon together, and sprinkle over apples. Pour water evenly over all.
Combine the oats, 1 cup flour, brown sugar, baking powder, baking soda and melted butter together. Crumble evenly over the apple mixture.
Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for about 45 minutes

It was delicious and I served vanilla ice cream on top of Dans and a vanilla soy ice cream on top of mine.



YUM!!

It was great. Next time I will share the turkey soup recipe, it was so good, especially with the homemade noodles!

Also, on a side not, can I just say it is snowing outside right now! It's only October 15th, wonder what this means for our winter.

Bye!

Tuesday, October 6, 2009

Not as planned......

Okay, so dinner didn't go as planned the other night. Can you believe it took until after 8pm to make that darned turkey!? I can't say I've ever had that happen before. So I picked everything off the bone and as I type this I'm kicking myself for throwing the carcass away and not tossing it into the crock pot for turkey broth! Anyways since we ate leftovers instead I took the turkey last night and heated it up, made the mashed potatoes and veggies and gravy and we had it for dinner. One problem... me and Dan are now sick... again! We had the H1N1(pretty sure that is what it was)go through our house a couple of weeks ago and I never quite kicked it off completely and now here we are sick...again. I'm not sure what this is but am hoping it goes away pretty fast, at least a whole lot faster than the last time. I'm missing basket class again this week and I am only 1 round of curls away from finally being done with the double wall basket that has plagued me since before my shoulder injury and surgery.

So I left you with why I do not have kitchen counters, here's why......






Major water leaks! It all started with our slider back door......



It turns out it has been leaking for years. We really regret those french doors so Dan had to take out the doors, rip up the floor, replace insulation and remove a rather large colony of carpenter ants. The new slider looks great and we have had some serious rain storms and zero leaks. Then, a few weeks after, the toilet in our bathroom decided to overflow for 4 hours or so and that went from the master bath through our master bedroom, what a mess! So tiles popping up in there and we decided to rip out the bathroom and redo it and replace the carpet. But before we could even start that we discovered a major water leak in the laundry room, yes, when it rains it certainly pours! So the pictures with the fridge above are pictures of that work when it started. The pantry has been removed which is why I have no counter space because my pantry is on the counters. The door way is getting pushed back to place the pantry in the kitchen area and the laundry room is becoming the dogs room and we are breaking into our master bath and creating a new laundry area and that door will be accessible from the kitchen as well. Done so far is the new side door in the dogs new room, the dry wall is up and flooring is all replaced. It is now time to break into the master bathroom to create the laundry area. Hopefully I will not have to go to the laundry mat this week!! After this demo and drywall mudding is done then the whole house will be repainted and refloored. We're practically building a new house here people and poor Dan is exhausted with all the work at his job and then all the work at home. Hopefully we will be completely done before Thanksgiving. Fingers crossed!

So when we found the kitchen, laundry room leak we were 1, yes, 1 day from leaving for South Carolina. It was a nice vacation though. We stayed in a cabin on the ocean on Hunting Island. Would I do it again......uuhhhh, maybe, maybe not. I'm not big in doing the same thing all the time. I like to do some thing different so I can experience new things. Next summer we are hoping for Washing D.C. Here are some pics from the South Carolina trip......






This was one of the coolest things about the island......






The deer were so tame! These are some of my favorite pictures. And don't get me started with all the jelly fish. There was some kind of jelly fish convention going on or some thing. We all got stung and mine flared back up even after we got home, so did Dans. Also, it turns out I'm allergic to shell fish. Broke out in blisters all along my gums after trying crab. Now I'm told to never eat fish again.

One more thing before I end this post and consider myself caught up enough. Guess who turned 16 and is now driving??



Well darn. I know I have a picture of her and her car but I can not find it right now. Oh well.

Today I am going to try my hand at gluten free noodles for some soup using the leftover turkey. I found the recipe on a great looking blog which I will share after I try it and post how it went tomorrow. I'll even share pics if I can remember. I've been dying to try some pasta but have not had the guts. This recipe made it look so simple I just can not help myself and with us being sick this just sounds like some thing we could use. I think I will make it for lunch and we can heat it for dinner too.

Bye!

Sunday, October 4, 2009

Yes, it has been awhile.

It has been quite awhile since I have posted anything. We went to Disney in April to watch Susan's high school band march the evening parade. It was really cool.

Did I mention it was cold there!








It was a good time.......

And then this happened......



Yeah, it hurt, how dare I put my jacket on! I was putting my jacket on and there was a loud pop and a whole lot of pain.

Then, I think about a week after we got home there was this......



Yeah, Susan had to have her gallbladder out. She was a very sick girl. She got very sick with an attack on the bus to Disney but they were still close to home so she would not tell her band director because she was afraid she would turn around. Bad me forgot to give her the pain meds she was prescribed but luckily I had them in my luggage and took them to her hotel. It was a cursed trip. 2 of the kids in the hospital, one with just strep and came right back from the ER, one almost died, she could not come home until several weeks after the kids were home and was never able to go back to school. Thankfully she was able to walk her graduation!

Then there was prom......



The boyfriends turned out to be a HUGE loser by the way.

Then, one MRI later this happened......






Yes, I had to have surgery! Turns out I had bone spurs on my shoulder from a previous injury and a tendon kept popping on it. My shoulder was cleaned up and some bone shaved off my collar bone. It hurt, it still hurts but is a lot better but I spent the summer recovering and am still recovering and working on it. Clearly no crafty things going on here these past months and not a ton of gluten free creating. I've been sticking with my old stand by's. When I get my kitchen counters back I can work on creating some new dishes and I'll have to explain what happened to my counters in another post because that will be a long one too. Let's just say every thing went to hell with the house at once. I wanted to tear my hair out! Abandoning my house crossed my mind, but then I got my senses together LOL. I have pictures to share of what we are doing and we had another nice vacation.

Dinner tonight, a large turkey about 18 pounds stuffed with cut up onions and oranges, mashed potatoes, gravy and salad. A lovely gluten free dinner, yummy! Gotta go baste the bird!

Bye!!