Bread and First Day of School!

This is what happens when:

1. Your friends are sick of Amish Bread and refuse to take the friendship starter from you;

OR

2. You have no friends so you have to use up all the starter yourself! LOL!!!!!!!

If you're curious, these loaves took a total of 7 hours to bake! I told my husband that in our next house, a double oven is no longer good enough...I want 4 ovens!!!!

The flavors range from Butterscotch Cheesecake with Dates to Vanilla Lemon Curd. Yep, that is what happens when you have pantry items nearing expiration dates and the tightwad that I am will not let anything go to waste, hence, the flavors. My Amish Bread recipe is half the oil of the original recipe and 1/3 less sugar.

This is how they looked after they cooled and wrapped up for their lengthy stay in my freezer. There is no such thing as low-carb diet in our household. LOL!



Here's my baby girl on her way into her kindergarden class (she is the one in the middle with the pink shirt and brown pants). Not a very good photo as all the others showed other kids' faces and don't think their parents would love me to post those! :0

She was amazing - just like preschool, not a tear or hesitation. Unlike her older brother who cried for 2 straight weeks when I started him at preschool! But then again, he was only 2 then!



Don't forget to go to my shop for BTSS (Back to school sale where select products are 30% off!).

UPDATE: Did you NOTICE my new Blog design? :-))))) I still have a lot to learn (like trying to get back the button where I change font size - if you know, PLEAAAAAAAASE tell me!).

Golden Gate, Bay Area Discovery Museum, a 30% off sale and R.I.P.

You can just make out the Golden Gate Bridge under the fog....we're continuing to do last-minute fun activities before school starts this Wednesday!!!



Here are my 2 silly kids hiding from their parents at the park. You can't miss those big ol' feet under the pines and the Crocs kind of make you conspicuous.



No, not a real one.....



Oh, no! They're caught in the giant spider web!



I would LOVE having steps like these in our future home! What a great way to re-use old tree stumps.

If you live in the SF bay area, go visit the Bay Area Discovery Museum in Sausalito. It's a beautiful spot and former Army fort with great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the San Francisco Bay. They say that the museum is appropriate for ages 0-8 but I'd say it's better for up to age 6. The hands-on activities are great for younger children but if you have a 7 year old, they may get bored. However, the playground was amazing and worth the $8 child admission fee (and free parking!!).

Two more days before school starts!!!!! My baby girl will start kindergarten and my son will enter 2nd grade! I'm going to miss them so much and wish I can just keep them home with me all day (nope, am not nuts!). I keep telling them when they misbehave that if they don't straighten up I'll homeschool them! LOL!!

In celebration of school starting, Dizzybroad is having a "BTSS" sale - Back to school Sale! Items marked with BTSS on the title are an extra 30% off! Also a couple of new items like this one:

Lemons and Zucchini! and Witches, Ghosts and Spiders, Oh My!

My little patio Meyer lemon tree is TRYING really hard to give me ripened lemons but we're in a microclimate where it is 64 degrees during the summer! Aaargh! It has managed to ripen a half dozen so I quickly picked those, zested them and squeezed the wonderful juice from them to use for these delicious Lemon Zucchini Drop cookies.





These are soooooo good! So good that my 7 year old, who plugs his nose when he has to swallow vegetables, devours them! I got this recipe from my MIL. I'm sure she doesn't mind that I share it here. These are soft and almost cake-like and are not very sweet. If you have a garden with an over-abundance of zucchini, shred some of it and use for this recipe!



Lemon Zucchini Drop Cookies
Stir together
2 c. apf (all-purpose flour)
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Cream together
3/4 c. softened butter
3/c c. sugar

Beat in
1 lg egg (egg substitute ok)
1 tsp grated lemon peel

Stir in Flour mixture until incorporated.
Stir in 1 c. grated zucchini
1 c. chopped pecans (optional - if you do add these, toast them first to release their flavor)

Use a small ice cream scoop for uniform drops. Bake at 375 oven, 15-20 minutes or until lightly golden.

Meanwhile, make the frosting:
1 c. powdered sugar
2 Tbls lemon juice (fresh is the best - don't use bottled or it will taste like medicine!)

When cookies are done, immediately spoon a small amount of frosting on top so it coats the top of the cookies. Use the back of the spoon to spread the frosting around. Frosting goes a long way so don't spoon too much on each cookie.

Makes about 3 doz.



Here is a comparison of regular sized lemons and Meyer lemons...Meyer's are much smaller, thinner peel and very juicy. The flavor is out of this world!



This is how cold it is where we live...basil DOES NOT EVER GROW here!!! This is the 2nd year I've tried to grow basil and it just spits out little tiny leaves, shrivels then goes straight to flower. Now, if we lived just 3 miles from here across the freeway, the temperature there is 10 degrees hotter. I see people with huge lemons on their trees and herbs that are growing all over the sidewalk. Sigh....



Look at what's new at my shop! Go get them before they're gone!

Summer wind-down, Dizzy Blooms and another necklace

Summer is definitely winding down, trying to squeeze out as much fun from it as we can before it's over!


Photo above was at Marine World.



Sand sledding! When we got home, took about 3 days to wash off the sand from their hair.


A beautiful day on the Oregon Coast.

So two more weeks before school starts. And with that I'll get 20 hours of kid-free time. 20!!!!!! Last school year I had 1 1/2 hours of free time. In that 1 1/2 hrs, I squeezed in grocery shopping, post office and starting dinner. Can you imagine what I'll do with 20????!!!! Me neither!


Here's another one of my Mom's necklace now listed at my shop. It's a gorgeous necklace with beautiful beads and stones. I love how it's shorter than standard size so you can wear a rounded neck shirt and still have it show. I just wish I knew the names of the beads! And look at the cool gift bag/purse that it comes in!! That is another one of SU! paper that's retired.


Introducing the new Dizzy Blooms! Can use them on so many things! And look at the colors I've got!

Jewelry, notebooks and bats!

Look at what's new at my shop!

All are listed except for the blue necklace - need to go find out from my Mom (yes, she also makes jewelry!) what kinds of beads she used. It's a gorgeous necklace - great to wear with jeans. And look at how it's going to get sent - in that new adorable paper purse I designed! If you know SU! that paper I used to make the purse is now retired. Sure wish I got more than 1 pack of it! LOL!

The bats on the Halloween cards can be removed and put on your refrigerator - because they're magnets! It's a gift and a card! How cool is that?!

Raspberries!

We brought back 6 boxes of raspberries - picked from the kids' grandparents' garden in Oregon!



Look what we've made with it so far...





The jam is freezer jam - good in your freezer for a year! A note on those pectin boxes...if you use them after the marked expiration date, your jam will NOT set! I learned the hard way and have 2 batches of strawberry "jam" that is now essentially just strawberry syrup.

Head over to Dizzy Broad for a HUGE clearance sale! Got to make room for new stuff - like Halloween! Also have listed the first 2 of my Mom's recycled plastic grocery bag purses! Get them while they're still available!

Man in Skirt and back from vacation (again!)

It seems that we just got back from our Florida vacation and off we went again but this time to the Pacific Northwest. We had a wonderful visit both to Oregon and Washington states! We even made it to the Oregon Coast with the entire family which consisted of 9 children! I believe the adults were officially outnumbered by the little ones.

Can you guess where this photo was taken? Yep, that's a man in a "skirt" and its type used to just be found in Seattle but we hear they can now be seen about town in Portland, OR too. Apparently, a lot of carpenters like to wear these "Utilikilts" because of the good airflow! LOL!



And what kind of animal leaves these type of footprints? I believe they call her "Rosie" and the famous pig can be found in front of the fresh fish store where they throw fish around when someone buys a piece of fish.



Look at this beauty! When kids got too close to it, the fish monger behind the counter made it move. Can you guess what it is?




And here's my family at Pike Place Market. Love that place! We lived downtown Seattle for 2 months and we went to the market everyday to buy fresh produce. We even got to visit my favorite bakery: The Three Girls bakery!



Here's the view from our house when we used to live in Seattle:

That cruise ship above was one my parents were on when they were on their way to Alaska!


That is the Puget Sound where you can see lots of Islands, cruise ships, ferry boats, Navy ships, barges, sailboats and once, we even saw a bunch of Orca whales!


Now here's our view from our house in California:



No comparison!

More vacation photos tomorrow. Hope you all had a Happy Monday!