Days 228/229

Ok, it is obvious, i have BURNT OUT on writing this blog.  It is the thing i dread most in the evening.  Just when I sit down to stop thinking, i have to think about this.  I honestly, truly, dislike it.  But, hey, I set a goal, and I am 229 days into it, and I need to get back into this.  Because I only have another 136 days and I am DONE with it.  Which also means we only have 4 months left until 2014!  holy crap, where does time go?  Well, look at my blog.. that will probably tell you where my time has gone.

So, day 228:

I love getting the kids involved in the kitchen, as you know, especially when it is something that I know they can do almost on their own.  Making biscuits is probably one of the EASIEST things to do in the kitchen, most certainly when you use shortening and a pastry blender, the work is so simple!  Well, the girls and I made biscuits yesterday for dinner (we had Chicken and Noodles, from a FB recipe and they were AMAZING!") and the biscuits were probably the best I have ever made.  They were fluffy and flaky and they took all of, maybe, 5 minutes to bring together.  2 cups self rising flour, 1/2 (if i remember correctly) cup of shortening, blend that together with a pastry blender... something that the girls were easily able to do.  mix in 3/4 cup of milk until everything is moist and the dough pulls from the sides of the bowl.  turn it out onto a floured surface, work it until it is no longer sticky (i think it took us maybe 30 seconds total to do that part), and then roll it out to 1/2 inch thickness.  A few years ago my dad and Mike made me these awesome guide rails (2 of them) to help me easily measure 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch (one side is 1/4 inch thick, one side is 1/2 in. thick) That makes it SO easy for the girls to help roll because they can't dig into the dough and make huge divitts in it.  Then, we used a canning jar ring to cut the biscuits.  They made perfect 1/2 inch thick biscuits. We baked them for 10 minutes @ 450 and they were PERFECT.  There was 1 left after last night's dinner haha.

Day 229:

yesterday penny found out that her symbol this year in school is the Snowman.  She is VERY excited for this.  She has wanted a symbol since last year when Iris was assigned the moon for the year.  She has been looking forward to finding out what her symbol will be since we started talking about preschool early this year.  Well, today, Penny asked me if she could make a snowman for craft.  I wasn't about to tell her no!  She has never come up with her own craft idea, and she is so excited about her snowman that we were going to make snowmans come 95* temperatures or snow... well, we had 76* temps and sunny, but we still got the crayons out and the construction paper and made snowmen.  Penny's snowman actually turned out to be her "name" over and over again, but hey, she got involved and was VERY excited about it!  Even Coraline got in on the action and made a beautiful green/white drawing on a piece of light blue construction paper.