Homemade Marshmallows!

We finally made the time to whip up a batch of the homemade mashmallows that I posted about here. Right now I have them curing in the pans. The recipe says to turn them out, cut them apart and roll them in a combination of rice flour and confectioner's sugar. I don't normally keep rice flour on hand and planned to substitute corn starch, but discovered my box is almost empty. Since I didn't make it to the store last night, I think we are going to get creative and roll some in cinnamon and powdered sugar and some in cocoa powder and powdered sugar. Hopefully these will come out similar to the gourmet marshmallows we had from DeBrands. I am having a Once Upon a Family party on Sunday and am going to fire up the chocolate fondue fountain. I think these marshmallow will be wonderful with flowing chocolate! That is, if I can save any from my children. They are very anxious to get their hands on them and were very bummed they had to cure overnight. I will say that the recipe was very easy to make and I think we will be making these again.

Edited to add the link to the DeBrand marshmallows. YUM!

Your love is extravagant!

Have you heard this song by Casting Crowns? It was new to me, but the litergical dance group I am in at church is working on a dance to it. The song is beautiful and the lyrics are stuck in my head and I can't get them out which is not all bad.
Here are the lyrics:

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel I'm
moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in the
secret place
Cause Your love is extravagant

Chorus:
Spread wide
in the arms of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I
ever known that You considered me a friend
Capture my heart again

Your love is extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate
I feel
I'm moving to the rhythm of Your grace
Your fragrance is intoxicating in the
secret place
Cause Your love is extravagant

Spread wide in the arms
of Christ is the love that covers sin
No greater love have I ever known;
You considered me a friend
Capture my heart again

Your love is
extravagant
Your friendship, it is intimate

Just wanted to share that! It is such a good reminder that God's love IS extravagant! Hope the song gets stuck in your head, too!

On another note, I have a layout to share:

This is a photo of my oldest and my youngest.
The journaling reads:
Sisters...
There are 12 1/2 years between you two. Although your relationship will never be one of close camaraderie, it is special and unique. Rachel brings out the “little mother” in you, Elizabeth. You are SO sweet and playful with her. And I see the way Rachel looks at you. There are times I even feel a tinge of jealousy as I watch her face light up at the sight of you. But it soon passes because I am so grateful for this bond that you two have.

This was done with the new Simply Love paper pack and element set from Cottage Arts. I know I am going to be using this one again; it is beautiful.

Gotta go - I am off to bible study this morning.

One more page...

One more page. I am usually a very slow scrapper, but this came together really quick. I was in the zone! This is all done with Doris Castle's goodies: her My Heart's Delight kit and Goodies 3 set (from Scrapbook Graphics).

Did I ever post these?

My brain is so not working lately. I cannot remember if I showed off these layouts. Both of them were done with the Miracle of Birth kit created by Doris Castle for Cottage Arts. They are Rachel pre-birth and post-birth (8 weeks old). She is now already 3 1/2 months old. Time flies! At this young age, she is already showing the tell-tale signs of teething and the grumpiness that goes along with it. If my memory is correct, my son started teething early, too. BUT he didn't actually cut a tooth for like 6 months. I'm hoping Rachel isn't like that - she's too grumpy! :-)

Again with the pink toes.

Ok, so I just HAD to do a pink bandaid layout! Doris Castle just completed this cute scrapbook kit for the StoryTellers Club and I thought the bright colors were perfect next to that shocking pink cast.

One week of cast prison complete and Abi is adjusting well, although she has been pretty whiney lately. Part of that I think is just the age, but it has been way worse since her little accident.

I have a couple of other scrapbook layouts that I have done, but they are using kits that haven't been released yet, so I will wait to post them.

Gotta do this!

How FUN is this! I think we need a set of the whole family! I am trying to add a picture, but blogger is being uncooperative. Oh well, here is the link.

Cool site ALERT!

I found this site called organizedhome.com. It has tons of wonderful printables for creating your own household notebook/day planner. Looks like a GREAT resource!

Let's hope...

that this is not another manic Monday. No playing out on the ice for my children - no way - nuh uh!

Yesterday started off great. Everyone got up on time for church and we even got there early and had plenty of time to deal with Abi in her cast. We ended up pushing her in an umbrella stroller. Since she is too little to handle crutches, we decided to look into a wheelchair for her when we go out places like church. Well, our doc would prescribe it and when I called our wonderful insurance company, they said they would cover it as long as we rented it from and in-network provider. I'm thinking GREAT! Then he informs me that Abi has a $1000 deductable and after that was met they would pay 80% which basically means they won't be paying anything towards it. Then I called and found out that it costs $225 a month to rent a child-sized wheelchair. Ugh! So, we started looking at other options. Our first thought was a wagon, but our wagon doesn't have any sides for Abi to lean on. It is the traditional metal Radio Flyer. Then we borrowed one, but it seemed so big. Especially when we thought about trying to use it in tight, crowded spaces (like church). We even went shopping for one, but decided ultimately decided to try to use the umbrella stoller we have. Thankfully Abi's casted leg is just short enough to stay off the ground in it. The stroller worked great and it wasn't too big.

ONE WORD
Ali Edwards has discussed in her blog and e-zine about choosing one special word for the year. One word to focus on and be your theme. For herself, she has chosen PEACE and has mounted the word on her studio wall. So, I got to thinking, if I were going to choose a word what would it be? My first thought was DISCIPLINE. I always need to work on being disciplined and doing the tasks I need to do instead of procrastinating. Right now, I feel somewhat disciplined, but when things get busy everything seems to fall apart. This past Christmas season really showed me that. But when I thought about using the word discipline to motivate me and even putting it on MY wall, it seems so negative to me. But no other words really felt right until yesterday at lunch. We ate at a Chinese buffet and when I opened my fortune cookie I read, "Simplicity and clarity should be your theme." CLARITY really struck me. I need CLARITY! Clarity of vision; clarity of purpose, clarity of priorities, clarity of what my next task is. I think if I had CLARITY, I would be more disciplined.
www.Dictionary.com defines clarity as clearness or lucidity as to perception or understanding; freedom from indistinctness or ambiguity.
I plan to do an in-depth word study on clarity and see what I learn.

Have a great day!

Better Moods

I just want to say thank you to everyone sending kind thoughts and prayers for my little Abi. I am happy to announce that she woke up yesterday in a much better mood. I heard commotion coming from my son's room. Abi has been sleeping in there on the bottom bunk. It was still early and dark and I was concerned that she was crying and upset again. But what I discovered was that Patrick was sitting in bed with her and the were giggling and playing "kitties and puppies." I cannot tell you how happy I was to hear that laughter!

The funny thing is, though, as soon as Abi saw me, she got a pout and said, "My leg hurts - carry me." I was sweet but did not pick her up and left her to play with Patrick and instantly her mood was better. So I am trying to find that fine line between spoiling her rotten by coddling her and doing some special things for her.

I am lucky that although she is an active toddler, she doesn't need to be running around constantly. Even still, this month is gonna be hard. For myself, I feel like I need to get into a routine with her. I keep forgetting to take her to the potty and she has a very strong bladder and NEVER says anything. All of a sudden I will realize that she has not gone for hours. And she will still say she doesn't have to go, but once I get her there it is like the floodgates have been opened. I also want to try and remember to move her to different spots in the house where she can play. That way she is not always staring at the same 4 walls and I am not tempted to let her spend too much time in front of the TV. She is used to spending most of her days running around the house playing with her brother. Hopefully, I can train Patrick to stay put and play with her in one spot. Right now he plays with her for a while and then runs off and leaves her by herself which makes her sad.

That's all for now. Abi is watching Dora: Backpack for the second time and I would like to shut the TV off when it is over and I have some paperwork I need to get done first.

Pink "Bandaid"

That's what Abi is calling her new cast that goes from her toes to her thigh. Can you believe that her little spill on the ice yesterday resulted in a bad fracture - a non-displaced fracture to get technical. At least her bones are still where they should be, but to keep them there Abi will have to be in this kind of cast for 4 weeks. This kind is the non-weight-bearing type which means that since she is too young to handle crutches, she will have to be carried everywhere - even the bathroom. Then she will get a walking cast for a few more weeks.
Poor girl! She was in SO much pain last night. We got x-rays yesterday and a diagnosis by around 5pm. They told me to take her home and we had an appointment with the orthopedic doctor first thing in the morning. She barely slept last night. Her leg was hurting so much that she bawled most of the night. I think the longest she slept was 2 hours straight and I was incredibly thankful for that. If you don't mind, say a little prayer for my little girl. Please, pray for healing, no pain, and PATIENCE for us all. She is already asking to take the cast off. It's going to be a long 6 weeks!

Here she is sitting in what has been HER spot on the couch for the past day. It may end up being her spot for the next month, too.

Just another manic Monday

I got woken up this morning with a phone call from my electrician saying he was going to be at my door in less than 45 inutes to replace all of our smoke detectors that are acting kooky. That meant I had to make sure everyone was awake and dressed since he needed access to all the bedrooms. Then I realized that my whole house was a mess because we were slackers this weekend. I hate that! So I was scrambling this morning.

Overnight we got a dusting of about a 1/2" of snow and my children were BEGGING to go out and play in it. So after breakfast and devotions, I gave them permission to delay schoolwork and helped everyone bundle up to go outside. Less than 30 seconds after the door closed behind them, Elizabeth came back in with a screaming Abi. Seems she stepped outside and immediately slipped on the ice. I just figured she was being a whiney toddler, but she kept saying that her leg hurt. I then got concerned when I offered to let her sit on the couch and watch Dora and as soon as she tried to walk that way she dropped to her knees crying. I carried her to the couch and she hasn't moved since and cries if anyone gets near her ankle. So, I have an appointment to take her to the doctor this afternoon. I am praying that she hasn't done anything serious to it. I am planning to drag baby Rachel along because she has been kinda congested. I am hoping the doc will take a quick peek at her to relieve my worries with her too. Can't help but always worry about something with these kids!

I still have Christmas decorations to take down. I like to leave them up until Epiphany. Of course that was last Saturday and I should have worked on them over the weekend, but I really felt like I needed a break. I did the bare minimums of housework and mostly just did cooking and cleanup. Hubby borrowed Season 2 of 24 on DVD and we overloaded on it every evening. We even sent all the kids upstairs to bed early so we would have more 24-watching time. Anyone who has watched it knows how addicting that show is. Every episode ends on a cliffhanger and you just HAVE to watch the next one. Bummer hubby is out of town this evening so I won't be able to watch it. Maybe I can actually get something done around here instead!

Well, I am typing one handed with Rachel on my lap (excuse any typos) and she just "did her doody" so I must wrap this up.

Have a great day!

I stumbe upon this recipe today. My sweet-tooth of a daughter, Anna, would LOVE to make these!

My Knight

Here's my little guy wearing his new dress-up outfit he got on Christmas. It is a LEGO knight outfit I got at the LEGO store in Chicago last July. He looked SO serious after he got it on!

My journaling on this reads:
My Knight in LEGO armor.
Patrick, you look so handsome and serious wearing the knight’s outfit that I bought for you at the LEGO store in Chicago and gave to you for Christmas. It is my hope that you will learn to wear God’s armor as well as you wear this. Christmas 2006

I achieved the blue effect on the photo by running a Virtual Photographer filter (Hard Steel) on it. I then applied a layer mask to bring some of the original color back into the helmet. The alpha on this is a freebie off my friend, Doris', blog. She is really good about putting some wonderful goodies on there. The rest of the elements are from Doris' It's a Guy Thing kit.

Rachel's 1st Christmas

Here's a quickie page I did with a couple of photos of my baby girl at Christmas. It was really fast to put together because this Doris Castle's Home for the Holiday's quickpage.