Our Family Unit - Confessions of a Vintage Homemaker

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April17th

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Failed Family Night

Posted in: Family Traditions

As you know, we’re trying to have a Family Night once a month, where we set aside the night to do “kid stuff”. Well, this month has been busy, especially on the weekends, and we just were struggling to fit it in. I had the food already, so one night Kyle got home at a reasonable time and we just sort of spontaneously decided this would be the night. What a poor poor choice we made….

For dinner, I made hot dogs and mac’n'cheese – what kids wouldn’t love that combo? MINE! Berlin wanted nothing to do with the hot dogs and Kade wasn’t too sure about any of it. I had made these super deluxe chocolate peanut butter cookies for dessert, but the rule is, if you don’t eat your dinner you can’t have dessert. Well, we never did make it to dessert. In between trying to convince them to take bites, Kyle and I were spelling back and forth what the entertainment for the evening could be.

“How about the new V-I-D-E-O-G-A-M-E?”

“You mean the one with S-A-M the B-E-A-R?”

Meanwhile, Kade chimes in with “Q-B-E-A-A-V-D-O-P – what does that spell, Mom?”

I felt like I was living the SNL Will Forte Spelling Bee skit.

The evening went from bad to worse, by the end of dinner both kids were in tears and covered in ketchup. We gave them approximately a 20 second bath and put them both to bed an hour earlier than normal. No dessert was eaten, no video games were played. I think we were all just wiped out at the end of a long week and my check-box-personality tried to squeeze in something that had no business being there. Sometimes you just have to let things go, one day I will learn that…I hope.

I’m thankful to say that the next morning, the kids awoke bright-eyed and bushy-tailed with no seeming damage or scarring memories of the night before. Maybe it was a success after all.

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April11th

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Happy Easter – Beatrix Potter Style

Posted in: Family Traditions
I hope you all had a great Easter weekend. We had so much fun here. Usually our holidays are fairly quiet since we live far away from family, but this year family came to us. Kyle’s parents and grandma came to stay with us and help celebrate. It was a great treat and we were so thankful for their visit.

If you know anything about us, you know that we are not early risers. But this was Easter and we had a full day, so we got up early to get ready and yes, I’m one of those mothers that dresses her kids in pastels on Easter.

First up, was pictures with the grandparents…

Then we went to church for an amazing service that brought the reason for the day into focus. Jesus is ALIVE! Hallelujah! We have much to be thankful for!!

After church, our friends hosted an egg hunt and brunch at a local park.

The kids really enjoyed the hunt, especially Berlin, who was not about to let go of her bag of eggs for anything! Then our family went home to enjoy our own delicious brunch, Beatrix Potter style.

These dyed eggs were a fun experiment. My friend Bree had made them one year and they looked so beautiful, I decided to give it a try. So last June I bought a bag of ties at the Goodwill for $2 and have been storing them under the guest bed for almost a year. I finally fished them out last week, sorted out the 100% silk ones and cut them up into squares. Then we wrapped the eggs with the silk and boiled them for about 15 minutes and the tie patterns transferred to the shells. Some turned out better than others, but I thought it was cute and I liked the muted colors in my Spanish moss nest.

I might have gone a little crazy with the amount of food, but once I started gathering ideas I didn’t want to weed any of them out. So I just kept cooking. We had a ham (of course), yogurt with homemade granola, lots of fresh fruit, blueberry muffins with a streusel topping, cinnamon rolls, a veggie platter, deviled eggs, and a super easy and very tasty Sausage Strata (recipe below).

By the time we wrapped up our very late brunch, the kids and I were ready for a nap! We took the rest of the afternoon off, relaxing and Skyping with family. It was a wonderful day and I’m so glad that we got to share it with family. Thanks for coming Opa and Omama and Oma!
Easy Sausage Strata
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Recipe type: Breakfast

Author: All Recipes

Prep time: 20 mins

Cook time: 1 hour 10 mins

Total time: 1 hour 30 mins

Serves: 8

This strata is really easy to make. Put it together the day before, then just remove from the refrigerator and bake. Ham or bacon can be substituted for the sausage.
Ingredients

1 pound pork sausage

6 (1 ounce) slices bread, cubed

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

6 eggs

2 cups milk

1 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon ground dry mustard
Instructions

Place sausage in a large, deep skillet. Cook over medium-high heat until evenly brown. Drain, and set aside.

Layer bread cubes, sausage, and Cheddar cheese in a lightly greased 7×11 inch baking dish. In a bowl, beat together the eggs, milk, salt, and mustard. Pour the egg mixture over the bread cube mixture. Cover, and refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight.

Remove the casserole from the refrigerator 30 minutes before baking. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C).

Bake 50 to 60 minutes in the preheated oven, or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean. Let stand 10 minutes before serving.
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April3rd

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Pinterest Easter Eggs – Actually Done!

Posted in: Family Traditions

I admit it…I’m a Pinterest addict. The first thing I did after I got hooked was to convince as many other people to join as I could, in order to justify the insane amount of time I spend pinning. I feel better knowing I’m not alone. :)

Sure, Pinterest is infamous for somehow convincing people to endlessly pin great ideas they will never do, BUT I have proof that it doesn’t have to be that way! Right now I have just under 1000 pins and I’m going to estimate that I may have done maybe 50 of them. Am I really trying to brag about a 5% success rate? OK, not really, that’s pathetic. But I did succeed in making some darn cute Easter eggs that I wouldn’t have done otherwise. Pinterest is still justified in my book! :)

One of the best things about this project is that the total cost was $1 (for water balloons). Everything else I had on hand. Including the starch, which is just kind of funny that I own. It’s been in the cupboard forever and I’m not sure what project I bought it for originally…but I can assure you it wasn’t for ironing clothes.

After I blew up the balloons (with the air compressor because I apparently have zero lung capacity), I made a very watery glue solution. I can’t tell you the exact ratio because I just filled up the glue bottle with water and sloshed it around. It’s a very technical project, you can tell. Then I untangled my mess of embroidery floss and soaked it in the solution. I wrapped each balloon with approximately one skein of embroidery floss, but some of them were short because, as I said, this was all just stuff from the closet. After each balloon was wrapped, I sprayed the heck out of it with the starch. Basically, I knew my glue solution wasn’t strong enough to make them hold their shape, so the starch was for structural purposes.

I let them dry overnight and then strung them on jute to hang over my dining room window and on my vinyl forest.

We’ve been reading Beatrix Potter – The Complete Tales and her illustrations are extraordinary. They’ve inspired me, so we’re going to try to do a woodsy rabbity feel for our Easter decorations this year. More on that attempt later.

I hope you like the eggs. Head on over to Pinterest and search for some Easter inspiration, if you haven’t already. Or maybe some new shoes, or a great new hairstyle, or places for your next vacation, or wedding dresses (despite the fact that you’re already married). So many pins…so little time.

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March31st

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Easter Egg Hunt

Posted in: Homeschool

We had a little pre-Easter celebration yesterday with our homeschool group. Some of the moms volunteered to put things together and it turned out beautifully! The weather was gorgeous and the kids had a blast. Such a fun day!

We had two Easter egg hunts, one for kids over 2 and another for the Littles. Berlin absolutely loved her Easter basket, even when it was empty. And kept it by her side the whole day.

There were also a few crafts for the kids. Kade made a cupcake Easter basket (which looked very tempting to other tiny hands…) and a “stained glass” cross with tissue paper squares and contact paper. Yeah for parks and mom’s willing to invest in blue frosting. ;)

Happy Holy Week everyone. We’ll put up more about our Easter plans next week, in the meantime…send me your favorite brunch ideas.

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