Crafting and Cooking

We'll kick off the post with the baklava that Emily made!  It was quite tasty!  She's been in the mood to make some more, I just need to get her the supplies. ; )

Kristy gave us (a second round of) huge zucchinis, so I got to work on them!

First off was cutting one of them up for the dehydrator.  I used 4 from her this summer and have maybe 2 cups of flour to show for it?

The second one I shredded and made 2 loaves of zucchini bread.  Neither of which I took an end product for.  If I'm offered a late season one, I'll made on more batch and be sure to take a picture to add to this post!

I saw this cool hack that you can put these freezer pops in a vacuum sealed cup or water bottle and take them to the beach or on a trip for a cool treat! Well, when I packed them up, we ended up spending the ice cream money that Avia gave us at the end of our adventure, and never got to them.

I wasn't quite ready to part with the water bottle, and so I started bringing the twins freezer pops for our afternoon walks home from school!  I bring three, one for each of them, and just over halfway home there is a public trash can.  Once their first one is gone, we cut the third in half, which lasts them the perfect amount until we are home!  So far, I've only forgotten once!

Grace wanted to use food dye to make a rainbow cupcake desert for our most recent game day with the Cornishes.  I feel like we eat plenty of dye without adding more into our diet, so I asked her if she could maybe use fruit, or other food instead.  She did a beautiful job, and it looked so colorful!

I made some coconut cookies.  They touted only being 3 ingredients, but the comments added egg and flour, which made them quite good!  I added chocolate chips to some of them, and it turns out that was also a good move. lol.

I made another round of squash soup with some of our bounty!

Just as good as last year!

Grace showing off our blended, ground, and milled zucchini flour!

Grace found a super cute pea pod stuffie on the internet.  She wanted to save money to buy it, but I was able to convince her to try and make one instead.  It came out so cute!!!

Her inspo: 

Loving this season of the year and of life!

later days

Other Happenings

Adding a post to highlight little events that wound down our summer!

Grace measured almost everything and kneaded the dough for our dinner rolls one night!

She then played with a portion of the dough for hours after dinner!

William came home at the very end of the school year and told me that he was sad that his teacher's rocking chair was broken (and we saw it out by the dumpster the very last day of school.)  Well, this summer I found not one, but two chairs for his classroom and it was particularly fitting, since the twins will be in his room next year!

I found a solution to store my 'ice bags'!  Whenever we need a bag of ice, I start collecting it from our 'countertop' ice maker a few days in advance.  I am so stingy with my ziplocs though, I hate to toss them, so I'd been keeping them next to the ice maker, but it was in the way and looked awful.  So now, I have this lovely basket keeping them for next time!

I scored a giant green summer zucchini squash from a road side stand, so I thought I'd try my hand at zucchini flour.

I chopped it, 

ground it, 

drained it,

drained it again,

And spread it out thinly.  I cooked it on low for days in the oven, and it was not drying.  Finally, it was turning brown instead of drying, and so after three days, I threw it all out. = (  All that work makes it extra sad for it to be a complete fail.

Next time, I'll stir it on day one, to see if that helps.  I'm also looking for actual dehydrators at yard sales. = )

William with his crazy hair, post bath!  He got some hand-me down cologne and has been wearing it when we go out. I feel like all of my kids grew up so much this summer!

Grace made a cute little library out of foam. = )

My collection of old/broken cell phone covers is looking pretty robust.  I plan to use them to make a garden path, once I have enough of them. = )  I'll take your old ones if you have any!

 School for everyone starts tomorrow!  Supplies are ready, but I don't know if I am!

later days