Banana Bread

A good friend of mine recently gave me a whole grocery bag filled with ripe bananas. Most of them got peeled, wrapped up in foil, and frozen, but I left a few out to make banana nut bread. I have to say that I am pretty proud of this recipe. I am not sure where it originally came from, but it is the same one that my Mom has always used, and because of that so have I. When it comes to banana nut bread, there are about a million recipes out there, but this is my go to.

 

• 2 cups sifted all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 eggs
• 1t vanilla
• 1t baking soda
• 1/2t salt
• 3-4 mashed bananas
• 1 cup ground or chopped nuts

Cream the butter; add sugar and cream. Stir in eggs and vanilla; add bananas. Then stir in dry ingredients and nuts. Pour into 2 bread pans, and bake at 325 degrees for 55-60 minuets.
*****Something that my mom and I do that make this even extra yummy, we rub butter or shortning on the pans then coat them with sugar. Yum Yum!!

This bread is great for breakfast, and also just for a snack throughout the day. I love to warm it up in the toaster oven, and then add a little butter!

Spending The Weekend In The Woods

A year ago, Steve found an article about this cabin in a magazine, and the whole family fell in love with it. So, Steve did some research and found where the cabin was, and we started planning dates on when we could all make it out there. Well often times life gets in the way of our plans, and we had to reschedule a couple of time. We finally made it out on the last weekend it was open for the season! How lucky!

It took us about 6 hours to get to the cabin, so I got all that time in the car with my hands free of kiddos. I got a lot of knitting done! It is not that often that I get so much time at once to work on a project.

This cabin is tucked away in the White Mountains. It has running water, and is solar powered. There was an amazing front porch with a view of an open meadow, where wildlife sightings are common. Oh, and the fireplace, I love that fireplace!

We took Miss O fishing for the first time, and Short Round was content to hang out on the big front porch. He loves to be outside.

It only took us about 15 minuets to decide that we wanted to come back to this beautiful place. However, next time we will chose a warmer month to visit.

This Monster Cookie Goes Out To Mike Cromika

A year ago today we lost a special man; one of the best. We miss him greatly, and think of him often.

Thrifting

This giant mess in my sewing room floor is my stash from my latest thrifting adventure

I got a couple of sheets. I am not sure what I am going to do with the blue sheet, but the heart one is going to have a new life as a pair of pj pants. I got it for $1.60, you can't beat that for a pair of pj pants! The one on the far right is a tablecloth that I plan on using to protect the table, when Miss O and I are working on crafts.

These are just some cute kids clothes.

 

This is my collection of pillowcases that I am going to use to make pants for Short Round and maybe a dress for Miss O. Oh, the Tow Mater pillowcase is for Miss O. She kept calling it her blanket, and it was just to cute so I had to get it.(it was only 30cents)

New shirts for DJ! $3.00 each

Ahhhhh! Thrifting! I love it. I have not gone in so long. Since before Short Round was born. I am super pumped to get started on repurposing some of these things into stuff that my family will use. I will make sure I post the finished results.

Knitting Update

Now that the weather is cooling off, many folks have picked up their needles and started knitting. For many, it is nice and cozy to cuddle up with a blanket and a current project, but for me I get the crazy urge to start knitting around July. This has been a trend ever since learning how to knit. Another trend is planning to make Christmas gifts for my loved ones, but never starting soon enough to knit a gift for anyone. This year I got an early start. I have many of my gifts planned out, patterns printed, and yarn purchased. I even have a couple of the projects started, but I have to be careful of what I am working on when I am around some of these folks.

For someone special, I decided to try something new; lace. Now keep in mind I am a fairly new knitter, and have not branched out a lot. I also do not have much experience in troubleshooting.

 

Well, I messed up, and did not know how to fix it. Sooooo, I just ripped out what I have spent the last few days of spare time working on! As you can see from the picture above, I did not get very far, but my spare time is very limited these days, which makes having to rip it out more tragic.

New goal, learn how to fix my mistakes so I don't have to do this again!

Enjoying The Last Days of Summer

Even though it is now Fall, and most of the country is cooling down, it is still pretty warm in the desert. We are all still wearing t-shirts and shorts, and spending lots of time outside working in the yard. A couple of days ago I was watering the herbs in the front beds and Miss O just could not resist the sprinkler. I got to sit, knit, and  listen to Miss O giggle while playing and enjoying the nice weather.

 How nice!

{this moment}

A Friday treat- a single photo with no words to capture a moment in the week

 

Joining Amanda for {this moment}

This Week In My Garden

Last time in my garden July 23!

Monday in my garden October 6

Please don't judge me for this awful sight! Wow it has been a really long time since my last garden update. As you can see the weeding has fallen to the wayside! Despite the unruly condition of this garden, it is still producing like crazy! I was out in the garden Monday trying to decide what needs to be pulled up in order to start the fall garden, but could not really find anything! I did find another watermelon growing, so I can't pull up the melon patch yet, and the tomatoes plants look awful, but are still putting out tomatoes left and right! The okra still has life left in them, and the eggplant just keeps on keeping on!

Oh yeah in the mass of weeds, I found some green bean plants that decided to make a reappearance, and a butt load of basil that is growing in the spot where it was planted last year. Living in a warm climate has some pretty cool advantages!

So these scary images are the last ones you will see of our wonderful summer garden. I am going to get the seed this week for the fall garden, those need to be in the ground soon!

If you are still keeping garden notes, and would like to share stories and photos, please feel free to leave a link in the comment section. I would love to see how your garden grows!

 

Family Fun At The Fair

Last week we took the family to the county fair. Oh what fun. The weather was amazing, and there was so much to see, and eat. We had corndogs, and cotton candy, and kettle corn, all the best parts of a fair. We did not ride any rides, and Miss O did not ask about riding any. My future farm girl was to occupied with all the 4-H animals. She wanted to pet the goats and bunnies, not ride anything, which was fine with us. There was a petting zoo, and while many of the kids were screaming and crying with fear of these animals that are not part of their normal life, but not my daughter! She had to go around to every animal and pet it and play with its ears. It made me so proud. She will have no problem adjusting to life whenever we buy our farm!

There was also a rodeo going on, and we sat and watched that for awhile. DJ told us awhile back that he had never been to a rodeo before!!! We were shocked! So, we watched till Miss O got squirmy and then went to see more animals. We only got to watch a little, so he still has not gotten to see the exciting rodeo stuff. Maybe next year we will get to watch more.

The Children's Museum of Phoenix

This is a giant climbing structure, where kids can run, climb, and go crazy

The decorations in this part of the museum were decorated with reclaimed materials.

The sun hitting on the wall of cds was so beautiful.

This is when we realized that we did not have any pictures of Short Round yet

All I can say is, Soooo much fun! We will be taking the kiddos back again in the near future! There were so many cool things for a kid to explore. I am still kicking myself for not making sure my camera battery was fully ,because it died about half way through the museum.

There was a noodle forest, a market, an art studio, a toddler play room, and so much more.