Christmas Gift: Finders Seekers: Florence

For Christmas, Billy bought me a three month subscription to Finders Seekers, and escape room style game.

The first one (a bonus) arrived a couple of days after Christmas, and was a National Park theme.  It was really fun, and we knocked it out in a night, but I found the final puzzle annoying. However, while taking in all of the elements, I found that they had music and recipes to enhance the experience!

My second one was a Route 66 theme, and arrived right before New Year's Eve, so we brought it to the Cornishes' and played about half of it after our pirate game.  We have plans to finish it with them this weekend!

All that to say this one came a week or so ago, and I wanted to really glam it up.  So, I downloaded Spotify, gathered my ingredients, even prepping the bread the night before! And Billy and I immersed ourselves in a lovely Italian holiday!

The bread was very similar to the other bread that I make in my dutch oven, but was a little on the salty side (I don't think my other recipe calls for any salt.)  It must have been okay though, because it was all gone by the next morning.

Kale and beans and beets and celery made for a decent soup.  If I were to make it again, I would throw in some sliced sausage!

I ended up looking up the answer to a couple of puzzles, one of which I still feel like was a bit abstract.  The second one I do wish I would have slept on and looked at with a less tired brain.  Despite those two puzzles, we were able to deduce the end puzzle answer and free the trapped archeologists. = )

There is still one more coming, next month, but Billy already bought me a new brand for Valentine's Day, to see if I like it any better. = )

It was a good way to spend a snowy Saturday!

later days

edit 2-11-25: backdated for continuity.

Crafts, Cooking, Creating

In one of my other posts, I'll give a tiny bit more information about some American Girl doll accessories that Haley sent up for the twins, but for now, the important thing to know is that I picked a dress for Molly and a dress for Blaire and embroidered outlines of 'their' favorite characters on them for Christmas.

Using printer paper, I just pin it on, then 'trace' the lines in a dotted pattern, and after removing the paper, go between the dots for a more solid look.  

I was worried about Areil's face looking weird, so she just has hair, but I think it looks close enough. = )

The material on the Hello Kitty dress was a knit, and it was awful to work with!  I'm glad I did Ariel first, because I might have scrapped the project.  Hello kitty is easily recognizable, thankfully, and I don't think their dolls will mind too much. = )

Speaking of clothing, Grace sewed her own skirt (with a zipper) using some fabric I got off of marketplace (thought it was from Natalie, but not earmarked for me necessarily.)

Last week, on a cool September day, Kristy had me over, and we stumbled our way through making cookies in her off-the-grid oven!  It can be heated using catering candles or stick and leaves!  We were using it inside, so we chose the former.

It was only supposed to take 25-30 minutes, so we started slowly closing the vents, and finally, after about an hour, it was finally ready to cook.  

Well, the instructions say to put out the closer of the two heating elements, but it was not working.  Each time we got it out, the other one would reignite it.  Finally, we took out the canister all together.

Sadly, between having the drawer open to get out the canister, and opening the door to drop the temperature down from 400F, it stabilized at 200F, so that's how we cooked the cookies!

They took a looooooooooong time to cook, but were really tasty when finished!

She also put together a loaf of bread, using her bread maker, though I had to leave before it finished.  

I made a banana nut loaf using some of the zucchini flour that I made from the squash that she'd given me.  We had to sub in baking powder, since she had just used her baking soda on a different project, but it turned out okay, despite the sub.  

I also tried to make a loaf, but made the rookie mistake of proofing my yeast in a metal bowl. = (  The loaf didn't cook through, but was definitely done on the outside!  The bit we sampled wasn't bad, but the rest of it went to the chickens.

And, because I didn't get enough baking it, I came home and finished my projects for the day, then whipped up an apple pie from some aging apples that we had.

Alice got to it before I got a picture, but she and Billy are my pie people and both approved.

Emily is really into Steven Universe right now, and as such added merch to her Wishlist.  I found a red tank top and some iron on vinyl at the rummage sale on Friday, so I made her a shirt.  I didn't save it for Christmas, because it's a women's medium, which would be big on her, so we will have to alter it in some way for her to be able to use it. 

After presenting it to her, she told me she would rather be a low key fan and just wear the shirt that he wears in the show.  So I'm on the lookout for a red shirt, if you happen to have one lying around?

One night, Billy saw a video and was in the mood to make bread!  The recipe required lots of sitting time, to the point that Billy didn't want to stay up late to cook it, so we stuck it in the refrigerator overnight.

I got out the bowl to bring it to room temperature, and later in the morning, he formed them into small little loaves!

The rolls came out crispy on the outside, and light and fluffy on the inside!

His instructions did not tell him to pretreat the pan, so he ignored my advice.  Hindsight is 20-20.

The last crafty thing is far less fun. When Billy and I got married, my sister and grandmother bought us a set of Navy and White bath towels from Kohl's.  They were good, fluffy towels that we enjoyed, and they looked so good in our bathroom!  A few years after Alice was born (so maybe when Emily or William was a baby?) I read an article about how to keep your house, and one of the suggestions was to only use white towels, because they can be bleached!  Well, that was the only tip in the article that I took to heart, but I said goodbye to our navy towels (which had a few pink bleach splashes on them by this time) and bought white ones, of the same brand to replace them.

Well, those towels lasted us all the way until our Michigan move, and then in the past few years, they started to fail.  So, I bought replacements, but they are awful.  Within 6 months, of normal wear, they develop holes and tears!

I know that I need to switch brands, but it's hard to change after all this time, not to mention expensive.  So, I've been delaying.  Well, the last time I ran a load of whites towels, 4 of our 8 towels had holes.  With Billy's layoff, buying new ones is out of the question, so I cut up some towel rags in an attempt to repair them.

It was a two-sided repair, so each side needed a swatch of rag.

Honestly, the repair is not glaringly obvious when holding up the towel in person (I had trouble finding the repair when showing off my handiwork to my mom) but one of them did unravel on the edge after washing it.  I'll keep an eye on it, but may end up having to quilt it to keep the patch in place.  It was nice to know that the hole shouldn't be growing larger at least!

later days

SNOW DAY!!!!

On Thursday, the weather forecast started to call for a pretty nasty storm that was due to come through Friday afternoon.  Both of the kids' districts cancelled school for Friday the night before, but we had almost finished our normal bedtime routine by the time Grace and Juliet's school cancelled, so we didn't announce it, and instead just got a good nights' sleep.  = )

I woke before Billy's alarm, since mine usually goes off a few minutes before his, despite having turned off my alarms.

So, what did we do with the day?  Well, After pushing through the laundry, and unloading the dishwasher, and cleaning/polishing the bathroom sink countertop, and refilling the soap, and showering, and bringing up a new gallon of milk, and refilling the oxiclean container, and changing the handtowels, and cutting the basil plants to dry out the leaves, I decided to make kartoffelbrot!

First step was to peel the potatoes.  We had only used 7 of the potatoes in the 10lb bag that I bought, so it took me a while to peel the rest. 

Since my compost bag was full, I took it out, as well as the trash and recycling, and brought in the empty bin from the road.  Luckily, a lot of the snow we had fall the day before, had melted.

The recipe recommended using the water from the boiled potatoes, but was taking forever to cool, and I didn't want to kill of my yeast, so I let the snow help me drop the temperature quickly.

My first loaf didn't rise very well, and was a little overcooked. = ( So, after loading up my dehydrator to make another round of potato flour, I took the potatoes that didn't fit, and made another loaf of kartoffelbrot.

This time, I was very careful with the yeast, and made sure to do everything according to the directions*.  And, it turns out, kartoffelbrot just doesn't rise much!  Both loaves came out similar in outside doneness, but was quite soft and tasty inside!  So, now we have two loaves.  Emily is a fan. = )

The dishwasher has been running non-stop today.  4 loads of dishes through the machine, and at least as many handwashed loads (though, those were admittedly smaller.)

Grace spent part of her snow day sewing a happy mushroom family!

I emptied all the hampers today, finishing probably 5 or 6 loads of laundry.  One of those loads had Billy's repaired undershirt, which had a few new holes.  Some of which were torn along the patch of the other repair, where the fabric was too weak to support the repair.  So, I now have layered patches in places, as well as a few new patches, and a repair along the edge.  Billy wasn't bothered by the first round of repairs, but this will be even thicker, and I had to patch across seams.  So, it seems that this shirt may be headed to the pile to repair the next round of shirts.  We'll see how it wears for him!

He had a second under shirt with a few small holes that was a quick patch.  

And the snow?  Well, it didn't start until 2ish.  The roads didn't look all that bad at either school's pick-up time, but I certainly wasn't bothered by the snow day. = )

Grace wanted to cook dinner tonight, and picked hamburger helper.  She did most of the stirring, but I would consider myself and equal partner with prep work & measuring & clean up. = )

Billy's commute took an extra 10 minutes, since the roads started getting slick and slushy by 5.

I took pictures of our snow gauge in irregular intervals.  What can I say, I was busy!

2:50pm, 4:41pm, 5:26pm, 7:28pm

 

We are expecting more snow tonight, so we will have to shovel tomorrow.  I don't think we're really poised to lose power, but we filled the tub, just in case. Oh, and we have plenty of bread. ; )

Now my blog is up to date, and I finished the third and final book in my series.  So, I'm going to be feeling accomplished, but dreading the snow removal tomorrow.

later days

*The directions specifically say to put the seam side up, so that the loaf is not rounded, but I like a round loaf, so on the first round I cooked it round up.  The second round, I flipped it according to the recipe, and it came out just as done, but not rounded.

Projects and the Like

Juliet helped me make a loaf of bread to start off our new year!  We couldn't bake it until the 2nd, since it has to sit for 18+ hours, but we did start it on the 1st. = )

And, I got to use the wax covers that Sarah got me! (She found them at the dollar tree!) I'm still trying to find a good way to store them.

Juliet made a fancy wrapped box for Billy's birthday.  = )

I saw a video on the internet, that said if you put a piece of bread on the counter next to your onion while you are cutting it, your eyes won't water.  So, I thought, why not try it.  And it totally worked!!!

The loaf of bread that was the fruit of my & Juliet's labors! 

The Helterbrands bought Emily and William wireless headphones for Christmas, and sent them stickers so that they could tell them apart.  William was quite excited to get his labelled!

Emily's friend Abby came to spend the night during the break.  They wanted to make gluten free cupcakes, so they used some of my potato flour!!!

They ate round one like muffins, without frosting, and they must have been good enough, because they all had a second one, with icing!!!

I am working my way through a puzzle book, and this style of puzzle has me stumped.  I don't have a good way to do it.  I'm considering building an excel document.  It's hard in that most of the clues are related to other clues.  I tired doing it like a logic puzzle first, but there were not enough clues.  Does anyone have any suggestions.  The tilted names were superfluous.

After a thwarted attempt at Menards, after Sarah's failed kiosk attempt,  I ended up at Ace Hardware to get each of the kids a key cut.  They worked!!!   So Emily's life is now fully improved: everyone has a key, so she's no longer solely responsible for unlocking the door afterschool, her Eb Alto Saxophone has been cleaned and repaired, and her new phone* has a much longer battery life!

While placing my BJs order, I noticed that Cocoa Pebbles cereal was on Clerance for $3.98, for the double bag box!  While I'm sad that I think this means that they will no longer carry it, we eat a lot of cereal, so I put in an order for 15 boxes!  While at Gordons I did some price comparison, which validated my purchase. That's an 11oz box for $3.99, as opposed to the BJs 38oz (split into two bags) for $3.98.

The tower of cereal!  The kids were really excited, and helped me find a place (behind the coats in the laundry room) to stash it all.  We have until August before it hits the expiration date, so I don't think we'll have any issues with waste.

Grace wanted a tablet stylus, and found some on Amazon. I told her to see if she could find a DIY tutorial.  She found one, and it worked!

She hasn't used it since the first night, so I'm really glad she didn't spend any money on it!

Last week, Juliet came home with a blank VIP poster!  She wanted to get started right away.  After she picked out some pictures, I helped her print them, and she designed her poster.  I helped with the word search, on which she wanted to add some Easter Eggs, so she hid Kennedy, Luna, Grace's names as well as the teacher and para's names! = )

To keep my daily caffeine consumption low, I've been filling only the very bottom of my tea ball with my Scottish Breakfast Tea blend.  One day, when one of my herbal teabags ripped (the tag glue was too strong) I took the opportunity to see how much tea is actually in a tea bag!

Not that much actually!  It is a little more than I put in each morning, but not by much!

On Wednesday and Thursday mornings I ended up shovelling the small bit of snow that we got before Billy and I drove on it.  Then would finish up after taking the big kids to the bus stop.  Well, on Wednesday, our power kept flickering off for just a few seconds at a time, but would always come back on.

I went to Carl's straight after dropping off the twins, to get Billy's birthday cake.  Well, Carl's had some pumpkin bread mix in their clearance area, so I bought 3 boxes, because it's out of season and I really like it.

Anyhow, I came home and made myself a pot of Lemon Loaf tea, and mixed up a box of the pumpkin bread.  It hadn't been in the oven 5 minutes when the power went out and didn't come back. = (  I left it in the oven, since it had already started.

While sitting in a dark, progressively colder house, I attempted to heat up my lunch using the heat from my hot tea.  It might have been wishful thinking on my part, but I felt like the bottom was a little warmer than the top!

The power was out for about two hours, and about two minutes after it came back on, we got the email from Grace and Juliet's school that they were going to have an early release.  I dropped what I was doing and was the second person in the pickup line!

The pumpkin bread only needed 30 minutes at the correct temperature to finish, and it came out alright!  In fact, the kids almost finished the loaf before bed!

The plant light makes a cool pattern of light through the water bottles that we set on the counter each night, in preparation of school the next day.  The green water bottle seems to create most of the colors!

Next week is Kristy's birthday, so I made her a water bottle carrier!  Since I haven't given it to her just yet, I won't be linking this post on my facebook. = )

It came out cute enough that Grace has asked me to make one for her!  I told her, maybe for her birthday. = )

later days
 *I don't know if I've told the story, or the conclusion, but Emily got a "new" phone, because getting a replacement battery in her current phone was going to cost more than replacing it.  Granted, we shop for phones on 'swappa' so they are new to us, not necessarily brand new.