All Things Supercinski

Blogging has been a little sparse these days. I have been spending almost every spare moment finishing up my lactation educator requirements and they are done! I hope to get them in the mail this week. You can imagine how free I feel! Now I have a few little projects to start (and finish)–taxes, landscaping in the front yard (with the help of Big Event), and repainting the laundry room.

We gave Josiah a bicycle with training wheels for Christmas, but it was a little too big. We put it away since it was too cold to ride anyway and pulled it out two weeks ago. He grew enough for his feet to reach his pedals and is enjoying riding it. He has improved so much in such a short time and is getting better about stopping on his own.

Thomas and the kids enjoyed the snow last week in their non-waterproof winter-wear. They built a little snowman, which Josiah crashed down shortly after it was finished.

And lastly, a cute picture of the kids.

We often get questions from friends about starting their own vegetable garden. While we most definitely aren’t experts, gardening is one of those things that you learn through trail and error. What we do now is far different from what we did a few years ago, and we seem to improve every year. One of the greatest tools for us has been Texas Gardener Magazine. We were given a subscription for Christmas a couple years ago by my dad and Debbi–who are expert gardeners to us and perhaps they were tired of answering our questions–and we have learned so much. What makes this magazine unique is that it is just for Texas and breaks our state into zones so you know what and when to plant for your zone. Planting on time is a very important aspect of gardening, and this takes a lot of guesswork out of it. A great price and a fabulous resource. Perhaps it would be a good Valentines gift for the gardener in your life?

White Whole Wheat Flour – Did you know that there are different types of wheat berries that are ground into flour? The traditional whole wheat flour is made from hard red winter wheat and has a stronger and more bitter flavor. This isn’t always that tasty and your hubby and kids might complain a bit if you use it in everything. You can find flour made from the more mild hard white wheat berries. It is not bleached or stripped of the germ or anything like all-purpose flour, still whole wheat, but not nearly so bitter. I have been using it in just about everything these days and no one in my house knows the difference. It is great in muffins, pancakes, waffles, cake, you name it. I find it in the King Arthur brand at my grocery store. Compare the nutrition labels of the white whole wheat and the traditional whole wheat–they really aren’t very different at all.

No More Trouble Zones workout dvd by Jillian Michaels – First of all, can I just say how much a dislike names like “saddlebags” and “muffin top”? I have enjoyed hearing how many ladies have jumped on the 30 Day Shred bandwagon! I picked up this dvd after I got bored with the Shred. This is a great circuit training workout that focuses more on strength training than on cardio intervals like in the Shred. You won’t be doing any jump squats or mountain climbers in this one–in fact, the only jumping jacks are in the warmup.

This workout is just 40 (actually more like 45) minutes of hammering your “trouble zones”. You do mostly compound moves–squats with shoulder raises, lunges with bicep curls, etc. There are seven different circuits–each with five moves that repeat twice in each circuit. The circuits are: quads and shoulders, chest and abs, biceps and bottom, quads and triceps, abs, upper body bore and lower body core. She recommends using three pound weights. While the workout is long, it is worth waking up a little early to do it. I sweat a ton and definitely feel the burn, and I have seen great results from doing it. And for those of you with a Jillian-aversion, you have the option of doing the workout without her voice, just music. She is a lot easier to listen to in this one and her pointers are really helpful. I saw it on sale at Target yesterday for $10.

(Eek! I just saw that Jillian has a new Yoga dvd set to come out March 2nd!)

We eat a lot of yogurt and granola around here. I perfected my yogurt-making skills (seriously–the huge thermos makes it such a breeze!) and have delved into the world of granola. I tend to prefer expensive granola and can run through a $5 box in a few days. For snacks. Anyway, I tried a bunch of different recipes and never really liked any of them… until now. I can’t get enough of this stuff. I’ve made at least a batch a week. It is a little expensive to make with all the maple syrup in it, but you can get maple syrup for at Sam’s at a huge savings compared to the grocery store. I’m talking pure maple syrup here, not that HFCS flavored with artificial maple flavoring junk they pass off as food. This is my modification of this original recipe.

Granola
3 cups rolled oats
1 cup sliced almonds
1 cup shredded coconut (not the sweetened kind)
1/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup coconut oil, melted on the stove
1/4 cup plus 2 Tablespoons pure maple syrup

Preheat oven to 250 degrees. Mix oats, almonds, shredded coconut, brown sugar and salt in a large bowl. Combine melted coconut oil and maple syrup and pour over dry ingredients. Stir to mix. Pour onto a large, rimmed baking sheet. (I don’t worry about using two sheets, it’s okay if it is not all in a single layer.) Bake 40-45 minutes, stirring every 15 minutes. If you follow the original recipe’s baking time, you will end up with a nasty burnt mess.

This is great with milk or yogurt, fruit or by itself. Enjoy!

We have been traveling a lot this month (one more trip to go tomorrow), and we have had a great time with family and friends. We have enjoyed visits with friends from far away…

and farther still (and Elizabeth didn’t drop them!)

We reflected on our Savior’s birth and the events leading to his coming. The Jesse Tree was a hit and will be carried on next year.

We have been busy baking and making…

and taking time to sip some tea.

Speaking of tea, I must show off my mom and Woody’s amazing craftiness. Isn’t this table the cutest?!

It has been awhile since I posted about any craft projects of late. I did not even want to touch my sewing machine after the diaper-sewing extravaganza of 2009, but have slowly come out of hibernation, though not to the point of wanting to make all of our Christmas gifts again this year. I have found fun, little projects over the past month–and the best part of these is that I only bought less than 2 yards of fabric for the all of them!

I saw this cute toddler dress tutorial, and just had to make one for Annalise. I’ve now made three and decided to hold off on anymore until spring. These were the first two I made (getting a little one to hold still for trying on and for pictures has got to be the hardest part).

I also made a pretty fall pillow cover from this tutorial to go with our new (to us), grown-up living room furniture. (Thanks again, Mom and Woody!)

And I churned out my new favorite accessory, this simple headband, during two commercial breaks one evening. I’m a simple-accessorizing kind of gal, and had to limit myself to only making two. One can only have so many braided headbands.

Then I finally got my act together and organized our ridiculous pile of library books, and it is cute, too. Previously, there was a huge pile of books on the ground, now an old milk crate has been given a new look and new purpose. This was so easy, I want to make more to hold toys in the kids’ rooms. I used this tutorial. My button is not the cutest, but I had it already and used scraps from my kitchen curtains for this one.

I also made ten of these little star ornaments from scraps and some fabric I purchased too much of (as usual). They look just like hers, so you can imagine them around our little tree.

If you subscribe to Sew, Mama, Sew’s blog, then I’m sure all but the headbands look familiar to you. This blog is such a source of crafting inspiration for me. Check it out! I think that November’s Scrap Buster entries were my favorite of all time. I will be looking through them again after Christmas.

I should be plowing through some light reading, but instead, I am uploading pictures and posting an assortment of photos from the last few weeks.

We were enjoying some beautiful harvests from the garden (have I told you how much I love a fall garden?), but then we got a deep freeze this week and lost our green bean and tomato plants (not a shocker, they are not frost-tolerant). We picked off every last green tomato, and we now have a huge canvas bag full. Check out these plump green beans!

We braved the freezing temperatures and visited a living Nativity scene and our city’s Christmas light display. It was freezing, but fun, and Josiah had his first hay ride, which he thoroughly enjoyed. Annalise and I were decked out in coats, hats AND the baby-wearing poncho, and we were still cold.

Speaking of Josiah, I had a middle-of-the-night-brilliant idea (they always seem to come to me then, a silver lining to night nursing), for Josiah to conduct some experiments in mixing colors. I had found an extra medicine dropper while cleaning out a cabinet, gave him some water colored with food coloring, and set him to mixing. This kept him busy for HOURS! He asked to do it all weekend long, then finally got tired of it. I highly recommend it as a rainy day activity. We had just read this book, so that is probably the source of the idea.

I enjoy reading about other families’ traditions around the holidays, especially families with preschoolers. We want to be purposeful in our Christmas traditions in that everything points our children back to the true meaning of Christmas–that God became a helpless baby, born in a barn of all places, as a part of his plan to redeem us to himself. In seeking this goal, we have chosen not to do Santa, but that is not the point of this post. Many of these ideas are from the book, Treasuring God in Our Traditions, by Noel Piper. Thomas gave me this book when we were engaged, and I highly recommend it.

Every night during Advent, we read a bit of the Christmas story, repeating the previous nights’ portions so that by the end, everyone has just about memorized the story. We read an adaptation of Noel Piper’s advent calendar story (DG used to sell a simple Nativity scene calendar and Noel’s readings. It was discontinued a few years ago, but I got the readings from a friend) and use this magnetic Nativity Advent calendar. We keep it on our kitchen table on a cookbook stand for the month of December.

We started a new tradition this year of doing a Jesse Tree. Every night during Advent, we also look back at many events, beginning with Creation and ending with the birth of Jesus, looking at the big picture of waiting for the promised salvation of God. We borrowed a little tree from my mom, but a branch would suffice. We are doing these child-friendly readings . Each night we read a Scripture, discuss, and hang the related ornament on our little Jesse tree. I bought many of the ornaments at Hobby Lobby–they have little painted wooden cutouts that go perfectly and are nicer than cardstock. The rest I have made from felt or painted little wooden squares to go on the tree. Here is a sample for inspiration:

We also keep kid-friendly nativity scenes out for the kids to play with, but I think we need to hide Baby Jesus and only bring him out at Christmas because he is a highly coveted item between these two kids! I also like Kendra’s idea about leaving an empty cradle under the tree.

On Christmas morning, we bake a cake for Jesus as a way to celebrate His birth. This may be Josiah’s favorite part!

In an effort to steer the focus away from gifts and teach about giving, we assemble Operation Christmas Child boxes each year. This was an easy thing for Josiah to understand and we talked about and prayed for the little boy who would receive the box of items Josiah had helped pick out for him.

From Noel Piper, “May our decorations, gifts, and festivities–or lack of them–never block our view of him (Jesus) but always point us toward him.”

If you would like to read our advent calendar readings, you can read on. (Thanks again, Megan, for typing them up for us.) Read more »

We went ahead and pulled the sweet potatoes out of the garden a few weeks ago. I can’t believe how big so many of them are!

It was amazing how many potatoes each plant produced. You can see the tops of the potatoes from one of the plants (the same potatoes in the picture above).

The vines were a great nitrogen source for the compost pile. You can see about three quarters of the potato haul in the background.

Around the rest of the garden, things are growing so well with these mild temperatures and all the rain we have had recently. Our tomatoes are getting bigger (and sampled by birds), but I am so excited about having homegrown tomatoes in November!

We’ve also got green beans on the plants and hopefully some broccoli crowns soon. (Green beans on the left, broccoli on the right, and as usual, I planted a little too close.)

And I am most excited about the super foods growing here–kale and beets! As you know, I love kale and I can’t wait to have some fresh kale for free. You can also see some little sugar snap peas in the background.

I have been intrigued by the idea of freezer cooking for a long time and have successfully dabbled in it since we got our garage freezer almost two years ago. The idea of once-a-month freezer cooking sounds fantastic, but the execution of a huge shopping trip and day of cooking is out of reach at this point in my life. For the past two years, I have made a point to cook double of meals that freeze easily (namely soups and casseroles), with one to eat and one to freeze for busy days.

One of my Bradley students told me about the cookbook, Fix, Freeze, Feast, that she was using to stock her freezer in preparation for her birth. I was intrigued and used some birthday money to buy it. It was totally worth it, and I am hooked on freezer cooking.

The authors’ premise is to purchase meat in bulk at Sam’s or other warehouse stores for savings. I just use the quarter of the cow we have in our freezer already, whole chickens from our broiler adventures, and other chicken from Sam’s or the grocery specials. Rather than making a month’s worth of meals, each meal makes 3-6 meals. Some are casseroles or soups, but most are not, which I love. One of my favorites is called Sweet Asian Chicken. It is basically sliced, raw meat in a marinade. Just thaw and add veggies and you have a great stir fry.

Every recipe I have tried is delicious. There are no cream of whatever soups used in the recipes, and all are very made from scratch. Some recipes call for boullion granules, which I have yet to find locally without MSG, but I think you could use broths instead.

Bottom Line: two thumbs up from this cook who enjoys a night off a couple nights a week without eating out.

We took a break from doing our little preschool homeschool lessons for a couple months this summer, or we did them off and on and just never picked up the pace and it dwindled away. I blame Annalise phasing out her morning nap, me not being so interested, and Josiah already knowing his letter sounds. I read this great post from Gina and it really got me thinking. Thomas and I had some discussions about it, and decided not to work on reading stuff as much with Josiah, unless he was really interested, and do our more formal “school time” based on science.

He is really interested in reading and loves to practice writing and sounding out short-vowel sound words and writing words. We just do that when we are hanging out and make it more fun. I had to stop doing the BOB books with him for awhile because he was trying to memorize them too much. As an overachiever in some areas (what, me?) I am tempted to work really hard with him so that I can have a kid that reads early, but that is ridiculous so we are taking it at Josiah’s pace.

Anyway, we discussed these things with the other family we do our little preschool group with, and agreed to make things more fun and have lots of science experiments and art stuff during our weekly group time, with some reading, phonics and math in there, too. A unit study, I guess. Last week was our first meeting and I chose the broad topic of water. It was a lot of fun.

First, we did a little math, counting raindrops.

Then the boys learned about and felt different states of water–solid, liquid, and gas. After that, they raced beads of water across the wax paper while blowing them with straws. They made lots of beads and worms of water and then ate a snack.

While they ate everything but the celery, I read a book about rain and about Noah and the first rainbow from Josiah’s little Bible book. Then we started our floating experiment. The boys had to make predictions about whether the objects would float or not and then we would draw them and the results on our chart.

Then we attempted to make rainbows with crayon shavings. It did not go so well and the colors got all mixed together.

Afterward, the boys went outside and continued the floating experiment with every small object on the back porch. And before you think that everything is always rosy in Supercinski-land, things took a downward dive as Josiah spent the next half hour having extreme difficulty playing with his friend and sharing toys.

Next week… insects!