Caught in the Act

"I think Jellybean got a hold of the camera." 

"How can you tell?"

I'm just glad my camera survived being dropped on the hardwood floor. It's tough keeping a camera away from a climbing two year old.

Joining in on Wordless Wednesday.  Come join in, too!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

Weeknight Meal: Easy Baked Ziti

One of our favorite weeknight meals is Baked Ziti.  My husband spent two years in Italy. He claims to know Italian food and has given it his stamp of approval. I'll take that.

Baked Ziti is a grand departure from the pasta meals of my childhood.  I recall a few different pasta dishes: Lasagna (good and basic, but no real spice), Spaghetti with a meat sauce (spices from a store bought mix), Mac and Cheese (of course) and my personal favorite "Spiddle Diddles."  One of my older brothers claims that this last dish was invented when my mother was on food stamps. I haven't verified this claim, but it does kind of make sense.  Spiddle Diddles has three ingredients: Tomato juice, cooked elbow macaroni and a little pepper.  D refuses to eat it.  I craved it during at least one of my pregnancies and required it almost every day.  It's a little weird, I guess, but what's wrong with a little simplicity?

Anyway, Baked Ziti is fairly simple, uses good straightforward ingredients and still manages to be leaps and bounds above my childhood fare.

I got this recipe straight from America's Test Kitchen and have altered it only slightly. Definitely enjoy it with a green salad and some good crusty bread.

Skillet Baked Ziti
From America's Test Kitchen

Ingredients:
1 T olive oil
6 garlic cloves, minced
1/4 ts. red pepper flakes
table salt and ground black pepper
1 (28 oz) can crushed tomatoes
3 cups water
12 oz. Ziti (3 3/4 cups, I prefer ziti rigate)
1/2 C heavy cream
1/2 C grated parmesan cheese
1/4 C minced fresh basil leaves
1 C shredded mozzarella cheese

Method:
Pre-heat oven to 475 degrees.

*Measure water & pasta before you begin cooking. Prep Parmesan & basil while pasta cooks.

1. Simmering the Ziti: Combine oil, garlic, pepper flakes & 1/2 ts. salt in a 12-inch, oven safe skillet. Saute over medium-high heat until fragrant (about 1 minute).  Add crushed tomatoes, water, Ziti & 1/2 ts. salt. Cover and cook, stirring often & adjusting heat as needed to maintain vigorous simmer, until Ziti is almost tender (15 to 18 minutes or to package directions).

2. At this point, transfer pasta to an oven safe casserole dish if you didn't have an oven safe skillet.  Stir in cream, Parmesan & Basil. Season w/salt & pepper to taste. Sprinkle mozzarella evenly. Transfer skillet (or casserole dish) to oven. Bake until cheese has melted & browned (about 10 minutes). 

Enjoy!

On a side note: while I was cooking my Ziti this last week, I started to smell something burning.  I couldn't figure it out until I went to put the pasta in the oven. This is what I discovered:

 

My husband had left one slice of left over pizza in the oven the day before. I guess it was keeping warm in there and when he turned off the oven, he promptly forgot it was there. I managed to turn it to charcoal in my 475 degree oven. I was NOT happy when I discovered this.   Yuck.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

Signs of Spring

The snow is falling outside and all I can do is long for the Spring-like weather of last week. The weather was so mild that I donned my new shoes and went hunting for the signs of Spring in my garden.

My New Shoes!

It is so fun to see what is coming up in my garden this year.  We moved to our new house last Fall when most everything had died back for the year. I'm finding all kinds of little surprises coming up. 

Besides the tulips beginning to peek out, I'm finding lots of pretty early flowers that I don't recognize.

Some surprises that I do recognize and am happy to discover that I didn't kill when I cut it to the ground last Fall.

Glad to see I didn't kill you, Russian Sage!

Maybe I should have cut you back more, Vinca.

I even took a little time and began to Spring-up my new porch. Which seems a little silly right now with snow on the ground.

There's my front porch looking slightly Springy.

I also bought a little backyard friend. Meet my new solar powered owl from Target.

Hi, little owl!

It's time to say goodbye, Snow.  Go away and let us enjoy a little more of that Spring weather!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

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Embrace The Camera: New Glasses!

In an effort to use up our flexible spending money from last year, D and I decided to get new glasses.  For whatever reason, I was pretty darn excited to get some new frames. I guess it's just fun to have something new and different.

I slipped on the new frames and began to reminisce about my very first pair of glasses.  I was in 4th grade and picked those mauve and gold frames all by myself.  We purchased them in a mall and I still remember looking across to the other stores with total wonder at how clear everything had become. Such a vivid memory after all of these years.  It shows what an impact clear vision can have on one's life.  I could probably come up with some pretty great analogies with that last statement, but I'll leave that to you.
I went through my old photo album in search of a good picture of me, when I was 10, sporting my new glasses.  I found one that made me so happy.  My grandfather, cousin and me (all wearing glasses. Yes!) on the back patio of my grandparents' home. Here it is for your viewing pleasure:

Pre-braces and rocking my purple Oshkosh overalls.  Very nice!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ 

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Wordless Wednesday: Peek-a-boo

Shhh...I think I see her hiding in the coats...

BOO!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

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Watch Out for Bunnies!

Just noodling around with a Martha Stewart template and creating some holiday appropriate road signs.
Enjoy!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

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Moment by Moment

What follows is some serious soul-searching interspersed with cute pictures of my kids. Bear with me.

I feel ashamed to admit how often I lose my cool around my children.  In all honesty, not losing my cool at least once during the day is a rare exception. Not only do these kids know a great deal about how to push my buttons, but they are also extremely irrational. The combo of the two is a sure fire way to bring out what I call "Mean Mommy."

Holy cow!

I've been mulling this over a lot lately.  Some days are just bad.  One day in recent memory was particularly bad. It started off with an incident at Hobby Lobby that culminated in my screaming at my kids in the car.  It was not a proud moment.  There is nothing that makes me feel worse than raising my voice to my children.

Did you say something, Mama?

There are days when I feel like every moment (literally every moment) I am making a conscious choice to be the parent I want to be and not the alternative: that red faced, screaming, growling, mean mommy that I don't even recognize myself in.  I don't want my children to remember that person.

We're too busy watching TV to look at the camera.

So, I've been working on strategies to help keep Mean Mommy at bay.  One such strategy is anticipation: remembering what is going to set them off (or myself) before it happens. That is way easier said than done.  Another is recognizing that I'm not dealing with rational human beings. I'm dealing with people who are emotionally volatile, underdeveloped and short. People who have no idea from one second to the next what they really want or need.

I need your camera, Mama.

My last thing: Attitude and a huge dose of perspective.  There is so much that happens during the day, so many things that irk me that really aren't that important when I keep the proper perspective.
I was privileged to teach a lesson to a group of women and young girls at church on Sunday entitled "What matters most." During the lesson I asked a question that I'm not even sure I was prepared to answer for myself:
What excuses do you cling to that keep you from being the kind of daughter, sister, friend, wife or mother you know you should be? 
It's so easy to come up with excuses for why I lost my cool.  I'm tired, I'm hungry, they won't listen, I have too much that needs to get done today, they won't cooperate, there's pee on the floor, they made a huge mess, she has to touch everything, I can't take the whining, etc...

I'm buttering you up.

Why do I cling to my excuses for having a bad attitude when there is so much joy to be had in each moment?  

Joy is a Star Wars ABC book.

I need to remember that my time with these little ones is short. It won't be long before they are out of my arms and into the world where I can't protect them. There will come a time when I don't get to see their sweet little faces every day; a time when they don't want Eskimo kisses or to be picked up and just held. There will be a time when they don't think I'm hilarious anymore and when they won't seek me out for comfort. A time when the Spider Man costume gets put into storage along with the baby dolls and loveys. A time when they simply grow-up.

So what am I teaching them now?  What do they learn when they see me throwing temper tantrums over things that just don't matter? They are watching me every second and learning how to respond to the situations they'll encounter as they make their way in the world. I'm responsible for that.  It's my job to make the decision every moment to be the mom I want to be.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

Spring Cleaning: The Pantry

When we moved to our new home, we were so anxious to just be in that I left a lot of the organizing tasks on the back burner. I don't even want to think about what my basement looks like...
Anyway, Spring is coming and I thought I'd start my organizing off with FINALLY bringing some order to our kitchen pantry. 
Here's the before:

It's hard to tell, but the shelves are fairly deep and it was in total chaos.
(I realize as I post this picture that I am broadcasting to the world our eating habits, *gulp*)
 I have been putting off clearing out this pantry because it makes me tired to look at it, but I finally got up the courage and found a really cute little helper.

Here we are.

Ready to clean?

After clearing off the shelves (she cleared anything she could reach)
I put her to work dusting the floor and shelves.

All done!

I threw away an unbelievable amount and then put the majority of it back in bins.  It is far easier to see what is in there now and not have things get lost in the back.  I still need to figure out a good can storing solution.

Well, it's not as cute as the pantries of Pinterest. Oh well, I just don't see myself painting, stenciling or wall papering it. I'm also not planning on investing in cute canisters. That said, it works for us and now I know what's in there. Success!

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

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Wordless Wednesday: My Black Days

"Then come my black days. Mad. And loud. I howl. I growl at every cloud."

Dr. Seuss







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Experimenting with Brooches

 I've had a couple of cross-stitch pieces sitting around that I haven't been able to decide what to do with.  I first thought that I could applique them to something, but my second thought was that I'd love to be able to use them for more than one piece.  I want to be able to move them around as an accessory. So, I decided to experiment and create a couple of brooches.

Cross-Stitch Brooches

 Materials:

Cross-Stitch Sample

Craft Spray Adhesive (or adhesive of choice)

Felt

Bar Pins

Scissors

 Glue bar pin to the back of cross stitch piece

Cut slit in felt for bar pin. Glue felt to back of cross-stitch

 

 Trim excess cross-stitch material

  Model it on your cute vintage cardigan

 Two brooches, ready to accessorize.

Jellybean actually giggled when she saw these and then tried to figure out how to pin both of them on.

Have a Happy Day!

~MJ

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