Sneak Peek

Since I've shut down Barefoot Creations for the holidays, I've had all this wonderful free time! I've been baking like crazy, my house is actually STAYING clean, and I'm finding time for other projects! When you consider I spend 6-12 hours/day on Barefoot Creations stuff, it's a huge amount of time I have, and I'm thoroughly enjoying the break.

With the baby on the way, I gave Paisley a choice between staying in her room.. or moving to the room across the hall (a little smaller). She didn't hesitate and said the baby can have her room, and she'll have the other room. :) She even started hauling her stuff over there (but I had to tell her "not yet").

Since she's so eager, I thought I'd get on prepping it for her. I decided I was going to paint an accent wall in it before she moved in... so I set out to do that on Sunday. But once I started, I decided to paint all the walls. Then Sunday night I decided I wanted to paint a very small mural, just below he built in bookcase. I got a little carried away..... here's a sneak peek:



I'm REALLY enjoying this project. I forgot how much I loved painting, drawing, etc. I miss art... sewing, papercrafting and crocheting have become my arts.. but I miss the other parts of it.

I painted for 5 hours tonight, got A LOT more done than I thought I would.... and I just kept adding more and more. There's a few more things I'd like to add tomorrow, plus a little more detail.

I will take more pictures once Paisley is moved into her room.... which won't be til after Christmas.

I'll finish painting tomorrow night, and then we have guests coming on Wednesday until after Christmas. Then she can move in there. She's going to be so excited!

Hi, I have an announcement...

On July 4th


I'm going to be a big sister!

Saltine Toffee

This is one everyone knows.. but I've had a few requests for it this year. It's an old old recipe.

Saltine Crackers

1 cup butter

2 cups brown sugar

2 cups semi-sweet chocolate chips

..................

Preheat oven to 350 degrees

Line cookie tray (jelly roll type... with edges) with tin foil, and spray with non-stick spray

Lay the bottom of the tray with saltine crackers... closely together, as few gaps as possible.

Melt butter and sugar together over medium heat on the stovetop.

When mixture comes to a rolling boil let boil for 2 minutes, stirring.

Pour mixture over crackers.

Bake in oven for 10 minutes (it will bubble up all nicely)

Remove from oven... let stand for 2 minutes.. then sprinkle chocolate chips over the top. Spread the chocolate evenly over the top as they melt.

Sprinkle peanuts, or crushed up saltines on the top.

Put pan in the fridge for about 30 minutes.

Break it up and enjoy!

(I might try to get a picture of these as well).

Cappuccino Crinkles

This was a new recipe this year... and I think it's a winner:

1/3 cup butter

1 cup packed brown sugar

2/3 cup cocoa

1 Tbsp instant coffee crystals

1 tsp baking soda

1 tsp cinnamon

2 egg whites

1/3 low fat vanilla yogurt

1.5 cups flour

1/4 cup sugar

................

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Beat butter on high speed for 30 secs.

Add brown sugar, cocoa and coffee, baking soda, cinnamon.

Beat until combined.

Beat in eggs and yogurt until combined.

Mix in as much flour as you can with the mixer (might have to do the rest by hand.... my mixer managed to mix it all though).

Place sugar in small bowl.

Shape dough into 1 inch balls, roll in sugar, place on ungreased cookie sheet.

Bake for 8-10 minutes, til edges are firm. Cool on cooling rack.

Makes about 32 cookies.


Recipe from 100 Best Cookie Recipes 2009

I may get around to posting a picture of these...

Christmas Baking

Following the gingerbread house on Saturday, we decided to do a little Christmas baking. Paisley was anxious to help.

Her job: roll the cookies in crushed candy cane and place them on the trays.




At one point she combined several balls of dough to make a GIANT cookie.


... and then made a snowman.


Once all that was done, we watched the cookies bake.


We're saving some for friends and family, but we also sampled them (including Paisley's giant cookie).


Tamara will share the recipe for these cookies in the next few days.

Gingerbread House Building and Decorating

We decided this year was the year to start making gingerbread houses. :) Paisley's really into helping with baking and decorating (and building and fixing), and pretty much everything. She's also very into posing and saying "CHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESE"













She was very good about using the candies as building materials rather than eating them, too. We snacked on leftovers when construction was complete.

Skating party

Today was the annual U of L skating party at the Enmax Centre. This was our second year going; you may remember seeing photos of Paisley crying while skating, sitting, and visiting Santa last year.

Plenty more smiles this year. I'm convinced it's the skates:



We continue to work on the finer points of skating:






She's showing improvement with her balance and comfort on the ice every week. Of course it always ends up with "carry me ... go fast":



No crying for Santa this time around, but she was still pretty tentative:



And for good measure, Tamara took a nice photo of Mark and I, the CanesCast guys, at centre ice by the Hurricanes logos:

Date Pinwheel Cookies

A family favourite at Christmas is Date Pinwheels. We all love them, and they're great to keep in the fridge, and slice and bake as you need them!!

Date Pinwheels

Date Filling:

Combine in a saucepan

2 cups chopped dates

2/3 cups sugar

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup water

Cook over medium heat until mixture thickens to spreading consistency. Stir constantly.
Remove from heat and stir in

1 Tbsp lemon juice

1/2 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Chill.

Cookie Dough:

Cream thoroughly

1 cup margarine
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar

Add

2 well beaten eggs
1 tsp vanilla

Beat until light and fluffy.

Blend or sift together

2 3/4 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon

Add dry ingredient to the creamed mixture and combine thoroughly. CHill dough until firm.

Divide chilled dough into three balls. Roll each to a 8 x 12 inch rectangle. Spread with date filling. Beginning at the narrow edge o each, roll up like jelly rolls. Wrap securely in waxed paper. Chill overnight or until needed.

To bake, preheat oven to 375 degrees. Slice off desired number of cookies, making each about 1;4 inch thick. (tip: roll the cookie roll as you cut, to avoid a flattened side) Place on greased baking sheets and bake in oven for 10-12 minutes.

Wrap remaining cookie dough and return to fridge. Because of date filling, all cookies should be baked within a week or 10 days, but you can throw the rolls in the freezer, and pull them out later (great for prepping well before Christmas, just pull out of freezer, and put in fridge for the week of Christmas).

Dressing up

Paisley loves to play dress up. I think it's probably daily that she wears her tutu, as well as various hats, etc. One day about 2 months ago, I left Paisley playing downstairs while I was cleaning the bathrooms... about 10 minutes later she came up to find me, and asked me to put her wings on....

I came down about 5 minutes later to her declaring "I'm a FAIRY OWL PRINCESS, mommy!" As she was running around "flying." She cracks me up.

What happened during nap?

A while ago (well 2 months ago), I went into Paisley's room after nap time to get her up, and found this on the floor:



I didn't think anything of it, got her up, and got her changed... then I noticed a that her butterfly pillow was a little deflated (ok, half deflated):



Looking around I didn't see anything.... so I asked her where the insides of the butterfly were....

She very proudly and eagerly ran to her play kitchen and opened 2 of the cabinets:





OH MY!

At least she told me where it was. I have yet to stitch it back up, and it remains in the basement... but oh my.

Usually she's not much of a mischief maker, only the rare occasion.

Seems lately that she is eager to give nap up. I send her for nap right after lunch, and she just plays up in her room for a couple hours. At least it's down time for her and me.... but it makes for a very cranky dinner hour :(

The couple times I've put on a show for her while I cook dinner after a no-nap afternoon, is when she crashes on the couch (almost unheard of for her). I usually let her help with dinner though.

Just too tuckered out

Pirate Paisley

Paisley got to go trick-or-treating for the first time this year (last year she got to collect some candy at the Hurricanes game, though). She dressed up as a pirate and we went up and town our street.

Pre-loading her bag with snap peas :)







The consensus: she makes a very cute pirate.

Happy Halloween

We spent the day before Halloween carving up those pumpkins we picked up at the corn maze last week.

Paisley helped Mommy with cleaning out the pumpkins and separating the seeds. Mmmmmm, those will be tasty later on.




Then we got busy with the carving. Even Paisley's little pumpkin was turned into a jack-o-lantern.


She wanted it to be a happy jack-o-lantern.


We didn't go overboard with decorations this year, but along with the wreath and leaves, it does look seasonal and inviting.


Here's the whole pumpkin family. Mommy and Paisley made traditional jack-o-lanterns, while Daddy made a Drupal one. We even decorated some Veggie Tale gourds.

Ready for Tea