Rise and Shine Rooster Pancakes

I'm working my way through all the barnyard animals on our pancake making Sundays.

We went with a rooster this time.

If you have a rooster cookie cutter that would make this barnyard breakfast easier  and faster to achieve, otherwise you will have to do as I did and cut it out with scissors!

I have had my eye on a rooster cookie cutter at our grocery store and I think I'm gonna have to cave in and buy it. That way I can mass produce these little guys!

I cut the shape out...

Covered the "feathered" area with whip cream....

Put strawberry puree, jam would work well, or a fruit spread, on his comb and wattle.
I added a tiny triangular piece of orange for his beak and a mini chocolate chip for his eye.

I sliced another small piece of orange and placed them on his legs...

Very simple really. I love incorporating the fruit into breakfast like this. It keeps breakfast on the healthy side with out sacrificing flavor or fun!

Rise and shine sleepy head!

Civil War Themed Cookie Cut Outs

Today was the first day of our Civil War Reenacting Day for kids. Boys and girls, every one was welcome. For two hours kids and parents got together and brought history to life. It was a lot of fun for me and the kids.

The idea to have a reenacting day for kids was actually my middle child's. He loves history and wants to be a reenactor. Civil War Reenacting can be very expensive and hard for families to make the time commitment that goes with it. We didn't want to stifle his love for history and excitement to share that passion with other kids, so we, my husband and I did our best to make his idea a reality. So, we planned a few days over the next few weeks of Civil War Era activities and food for a wide variety of ages.

One of the things we planned on doing was some cooking, using a Blue and Grey Cookery packed with recipes passed down from the Civil War. Today we made Old Southern Cornbread and  Northern Brown Bread. As a bonus one of the families brought fresh milk and we shook it up in a mason jar till it became butter and spread it on our bread. We also had hard tack and a sweet treat, Civil War themed cookie cut outs.

These soldier's caps were very simple to make and the kids were very excited about them.

I used a baseball cap cookie cutter. I made the sugar cookie dough, rolled it out and cut out the shapes.

When I finished cutting out the shapes I cut off the little bump on the top of the hat to make it flat like a soldiers cap.

I baked the caps and then let them cool before I frosted them.

First, I mixed up some royal icing frosting and added a dab of black food coloring to it. It's a gel kind of food coloring. It made it VERY black.

Then, I made the rim of the cap black and let it dry.

Once they were dry, I mixed up some blue frosting and some grey and frosted the rest of the cookie.

When the blue and grey frosting had dried, I took some more of the black frosting, and with a toothpick drew a thin line in the front and added a yellow star to the side. I used one of the soldier's caps we have at home as my guide.

The kids were thrilled with how they turned out and I was thrilled that it made them so happy.

We had such a great day learning through play and enjoying a snack or two with some friends!

Have a blessed weekend!

Homemade Mayo

I stumbled upon this homemade mayo tutorial while browsing Mooberry Farm's blog.

I had never made homemade mayo, but it was on my list of things to start making at home. It took me all of 10, maybe 15 minutes to make. One other thing that I love about her mayo is that it's cooked!

So easy and so good. The kids couldn't say enough good things about it through mouthfuls of tuna fish sandwiches. The mayo thickens quite nicely after it has cooled.

I permanently added this to our recipe box. Follow her wonderful tutorial and cross mayo off you grocery list-for good!

Strawberry Italian Ice

My kids love fruit! Strawberries in particular are one of their favorites. We made this recipe back in the winter when we were studying Italy, but lately we have been making it quite frequently and decided with strawberry season fast approaching now would be a good time to share.

It is just as good if not better than store bought. It tastes like REAL strawberries.
No food coloring, preservatives, high fructose corn syrup, artificial flavor etc., and it only takes a few minutes to make!

You will need:
2 cups of water
1 cup of sugar (granulated or raw)
1 cup of strawberry 100% organic or all natural juice (I use a strawberry- kiwi blend because no one sells pure strawberry. Just make sure it's 100% juice whatever it is!)
1 cup of strawberry puree, or 2 cups of frozen or fresh strawberries cooked down and mashed up. Add 1/4-1/2 cup of sugar to sweeten them if they are not sweet already.

In a separate small pot dissolve your sugar in the 2 cups of water on low heat.

Remove from the heat once the sugar is dissolved and add the juice and puree/mashed strawberries. Whisk together. Take a ladle and ladle your juice mixture into 4 oz. mason jars. I love all the bits of strawberry in there! It's the perfect texture when it's frozen.

 Screw the lids on and pop them in the freezer for a few hours. No less than 3-4 hours.

Take them out and serve whenever you need them. I love storing them in the mason jars because it is the perfect sized serving.

I can make 12-14 servings with this recipe depending on how far I cooked the strawberries down.

I love that this recipe is made with very few ingredients and packs a ton of flavor.

Barn Wood Repurposed

We have been doing some much needed repairs to our barn over the last month. This means scrap wood! Yeah!! Parts of our barn had to be cut away to make the necessary repairs. Thankfully my husband knows how much I love reusing wood and he always sets it aside. He knows it won't take me long to figure out how to re-use it!

I was able to sneak some artsy-crafty time for myself this weekend because it's been SNOWING!!! all weekend long. Crazy. But, I seized the moment and took advantage of being indoors.

This is not a good picture, I know, but there was no good angle to take a good picture from, believe me I tried. It is a board off the side of our barn. Perfectly weathered and over 100 years old. Love.....

I left it as is, as far as color goes. I love the old gray wood coming through the faded red paint.

I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it as soon as I had it in my hands.
I wanted to make a couple farm signs out of it. I hopped on the computer and chose a font in Microsoft Word (I don't have any fancy programs) that looked farm-ish to me.

I chose the phrase, or phrases I wanted to use, chose the size letter that would fit on the board, typed out the letters I would need, and printed them out.

Then, I grabbed my scissors and cut out each letter.

When I was finished cutting everything out I placed the letters where I wanted them on the wood.

You can't see it in the photo, but I traced around the letters with a pencil.

Then I chose black paint to paint in the lines. I just used acrylic paint.

I made two signs which were exactly the same size. I used different phrases on each.

To mount these signs to the wall we drilled a hole in each end of the board on the black letters, or stars, so the black screw would not be seen.

I love pigs. Sigh....I always have. You'll start to see a piggy pattern in our posts, like yesterday's piggy pancakes, as we get closer and closer to getting our hogs this spring.

Time to hang the signs!

I chose to hang them in our entry way. It is a narrow room so getting a good picture was kind of hard, but I did the best could....

In the entry way/mudroom I have a 3 cupboard storage area my husband made for me out of old kitchen cupboards. He added the molding to the top and the design on the bottom to dress them up. All scrap wood and the cupboards were going to the curb, so the whole thing was free. I'll have to post on that project another time.

This space was a little difficult for me to decorate. I didn't know what to put above the molding. The bottom is a Lemon Edge White and the top is a butter cream yellow color. The tile on the floor is actually the same color as the red in the barn wood. The wood was the perfect length and width for this space. I put one sign on each side of the cupboards.

You can use any kind of scrap wood for a project like this. It's very easy and took less than an hour to do both signs, and it was free.

Happy scrapping!

Sunday Morning Piggy Pancakes

Perfectly pink and extremely delicious! These piggy pancakes were such a big hit this morning that no one ever opened the syrup jar!!! What was it that made them so delicious? The strawberry whipped cream! I used our strawberry puree (see the "how to" here) to give the whipped cream the flavor and the perfectly pink color. I just added as much of the puree to the whipped cream as I needed to get the pink color.
Then, I simply added two regular sized chocolate chips for the eyes.

I made my shapes for the piggy face by pouring free hand the batter onto the griddle. You can always cut out the shapes with scissors if they don't turn out quite right.

Once you have your shapes the size you want them, spread on your whip cream. First, do the main circle. Then, do the nose and place it on the large circle. Last, the ears. Place them at the top of the circle. Now, add the eyes. You're finished! How easy was that. Breakfast was so quiet this morning. All I heard was eating noises. Like I said, no one put a drop of syrup on their pancakes. They were really good.....

Go ahead! Pig out!


We hope you had a wonderful day!

"The Earth is the Lord's, and the fulness thereof; the world and they that dwell therein." Psalm 24:1

Whoo Wants a Granola Owl Pop?

This week has been busy, but it's a good busy! Spring is in full swing!

We haven't seen any barn owls around here lately and I'm okay with that since we have new little kittens to protect! I do think barn owls are fun to spot though, so we decided, in order to get our fill of barn owls we would make some out of our
granola bar recipe. It's much safer for the kittens that way!

These are made just like the Granola Baa Pops. For instructions on how to make the pops and cookies please visit that post.

To make these owl pops I used an egg shaped cookie cutter.

I placed two white chocolate wafers on for the eyes as soon as they were cut out. This way they are still very warm from being in the oven, so the chocolate melts nicely to the granola. I then placed a mini M&M onto each wafer. When the wafers soften you can gently touch the M&M and it will secure itself to the soft wafer.

I melted about a handful more of white chocolate wafers in a double boiler. When those were melted I spread some of it onto the granola. This is the glue for the almond slices. Cover as much of the owl as you can with the chocolate.

Start at the bottom of the owl and work your way up to the eyes. Layer them so they overlap each other and look like feathers.
Once the body is finished put some white chocolate at the top of his head. Start at the top of it's head and again work down towards the eyes layering as you go.

Slide a few almond slices in around the outside edges around the eyes. Dip one end of the almond slice in the melted chocolate, if you can't spread it on with a knife, and set them in place.
For the finishing touch, add the orange beak. I used an orange sprinkle that was a leaf, but had a triangular shape to it. You could also use an orange starburst flattened out and cut into a triangle shape. I attached the beak with a dab of melted chocolate and set it in place.

There you have it! A few simple ingredients and you've got yourself an owl pop!

To complement the sliced almonds you may want to substitute the vanilla flavoring for some almond flavoring, in the granola bar recipe! Super yummy!

If you don't have any lollipop sticks to make the pops you can leave the sticks out and make them "cookies"!

Either way, they'll be gone in a flash!

Whoo wants one?

Spelling Word Search

Spelling is one of those subjects that you can get by on with out having to purchase a curriculum. If you've got a dictionary you're good. If you're creative and have a dictionary you're in even better shape! If you're organized about creating your own age appropriate word list from your dictionary then you definitely get an A+!

I however need word lists made up for me to share with my kids. It just makes life a little easier to have this done for me. I tried one year having a go at not using a spelling book and I felt like I needed some spelling support (that's what I like to call it any way).

We had a wonderful time with the dictionary, but I needed a tad bit more structure (for me).

So, to keep things from getting boring in spelling, and to keep the kids from feeling like they have to memorize a list of random words that mean absolutely nothing to them, and to keep them from pulling their hair out when I pull out a nicely arranged age appropriate list of 20 words to know by Friday, we try to bring in fun activities that don't feel like school.

One of those activities is a spelling word search.

You will need graph paper for this activity.

I first section off a piece of the graph paper. You don't want the section to be so big that they are forever filling in random letters. You just want it big enough to fit the entire list comfortably in the designated area.

I am usually not allowed to look or watch them make their word search. I am the one who has to find all the words when they are finished, so they don't want me seeing!

They place their words in all directions. Up, down, backward, forward, and diagonally.

When they are finished placing their words where they want them, they can start filling in all the empty squares.

Once they have finished with their word search they hand it over to me and see how long it takes me to find all their words. They deliberately try to make it as hard as they can for me.

This is a fun way for them to "write" out their words. We like this exercise a lot for spelling since it really is a game.

Happy homeschooling!