My Laboratory

Cooking is an experiment.

The kitchen is the wetlab. 

The scientists are slightly less educated, but definitely cuter.

And the result is more fun and delicious.



Pear Gingerbread Upside Down Cake



And the result definitely comes and leaves quicker.

Lessons Learned

The past couple of weeks have been rough.  Sickness has found our household, unfortunately, mainly focusing on me - the mama.  During this experience there have been several lessons learned, which when thought of as such, are pretty funny.

1. When the mama is sick, no one has any fun and cabin fever quickly inoculates all.
2. In case you're wondering, if a stomach ache is accompanying the illness, laxatives are not an appropriate answer.
3.  Mac and cheese is apparently a staple that should always be stocked (I didn't know this, and was informed when Joe went to the store and bought little else than several boxes of Mac and Cheese).
4. Shows such as 'The Voice' greatly attract the 5 year old set.  After watching for the first time last night, Natalie woke up at 6am to tell me it would be on tonight too (and then go back to bed). How does she know this and why does she care so much?
5. The family diet circulates around peanut butter and the promise of treats if you're good.
6. The definition of "quiet" changes by the minute.
Oh the list could go on and on, but I think the point is made - nothing is normal when someone is sick. I'm looking forward to Spring.

Pictures will come in another post, but there are none for the today. The camera must be sick too.

The Water Closet

One of the rooms of our house that typically gets looked over in the decorating department is the bathroom.  This weekend I set out to change that for the girls' bathroom.  See the before pictures:

There wasn't anything wrong with the bathroom, but the flat paint that resided, did not pair well with two children and a puppy who sometimes takes a bath too. 

Initially, the bathroom redo started to take shape with a color change. 

But something was missing...this is a kids bathroom afterall.  To help make the bathroom more fun, I enlisted a few professional painters.

They made some beautiful artwork to decorate the large, long wall in the bathroom.

We framed it and came up with this finished result:

Pretty cool.  Now this is my favorite room in the house, which is unfortunate since I spend very little time here.  Maybe I can get some help from the professionals to decorate my bathroom as well?

A few pictures of the rest of the semi-finished bathroom.  One or two small projects are still in the works to finish it up.

Pictures don't show the differences well, so I suppose you'll just have to visit to see it for yourself :o)

Frosty Came to Town.

A mild winter isn't always a bad thing.  We don't usually get heavy, wet snow.  You know, the kind of snow that's good to make sculptures that go by the name of Frosty.

This winter we have heavy we snow.  What could be better than heavy, wet, snowman-making snow?  Friends to build the snowmen with of course!  We live on such a great street.

It's also a little bit of fun to go sledding...

And then celebrate the creation.

 

 

And what do you do after you make the first snowman?  Well, you make him a friend of course.  Although our snow-friends look a bit like the Calvin and Hobbes snowmen (missing body parts), with only bottom portions made.

Another thing we were blessed with - a beautifully peaceful sunset.

 Amazing how some of the most fun comes from a completely unpredictable Friday evening.

10 Pins Followed by Z's

What do you do when  you live in a Snow State and you don't have any snow?  We've worked on projects in the house, focused on cleaning and were in need of a break.  Since sledding, skiing and snow shoeing were not options, we went bowling.

 It was a lot of fun, sadly, none of us were as good as we are at Wii Bowling.  In fact, Natalie won the first game - legitimately (embarrassing to admit), this was taken mid-way through the first game. I blame my poor showing on taking photos and using the wrong ball ;)

 And at the end, we were lucky to enjoy something even better than bowling....cosmic bowling

I've also been working on a project, with Joe's help.  When we first moved back to the US, we were very fortunate to inherit some furniture. While the furniture has been very useful, some of it is a little outdated. We decided to start to update the Master Bedroom furniture DIY, specifically the headboard to the bed. Check out the process and final product for our new headboard.

Time will tell how long this project lasts.  For now, we are enjoying the new look. Now it's time to catch some Z's.

Horses, handstands and ham

Happy New Year!  

The beginning to our year has been good, but very busy - how about yours?  So busy, in fact, that I have had no time to make resolutions - which I suppose could be viewed as a good thing: content enough to not need resolutions, or a bad thing: too busy to even make a resolution might mean there is a resolution in itself.  I'm not even sure where the busy-ness came from; however, it dawned on me today that I should not shun being busy.  In fact, I enjoy being busy and begin to loathe those times I have nothing to do.  I suppose the one resolution I could make, would be to take more pictures of the busy-ness.

Only a couple of pictures today.  The first are a homage to our family living abroad (that's you Heather and Lee).  We tried your Christmas present, and while a thank you would do, I personally thought you'd like to see how it was used. You are missed.

Linnea has also lately been declaring that she aspires to be an artist.  Case in point, here is her first "grown-up" art project, a modeled clay horse. 

And here she is posing with the purple horse...

Finally, gymnastics continues...in our living room.

More pictures will come as we get back into the groove this New Year.