Christmas in Pictures

It turns out I have many fewer pictures from Christmas than I thought I had.  Or at least fewer pictures that I ought to post online- early morning, no makeup, in her jammies shots of my sister didn't make the cut no matter how adorable Isa was in in the photo.  Now that's sisterly love!



Bacon jam- homemade presents for friends



Decorating sugar cookies with Grandma- I think more sprinkles went in her mouth than on the cookies

Our traditional Ethiopian Christmas Eve feast

Perhaps the greatest present Santa brought- her own "makeup" case



The new ruffled-tush jammies that Grandma made Isa.  She made me jammies from the same fabric
but I discovered on Christmas Eve that I'd forgotten to pack them.



Oh, the Pillow Pet madness!!!!

It was all too much for Soona-puppy...
Of course, this is how we all looked by mid-afternoon.



The Ousting of Cranky Mom: Part 1 of a Yearlong Saga

(I promise there will be a belated Christmas post with glorious pictures, but I really felt I needed to get this post out first)

2010 was a rough year because whenever I got to a point where things were falling into place, life would implode a bit. I spent the year feeling as though I couldn't ever get ahead. No, scratch that. I spent the year feeling as though I couldn't even stay afloat.

Which sucks. A lot. And has turned me into Cranky Mom. Cranky Mom misses a lot of the joy in raising a talkative, amusing, full-of-love 3 year old. Cranky Mom experiences only the stress, remembers only the tantrums, sees only the piles of undone laundry/toys/dishes. Cranky Mom yells too often. Cranky Mom relies too often on TV and can go for days without leaving the house, even to just play outside. Cranky Mom is stressed out, exhausted, and on auto pilot. Cranky Mom simply reacts to life rather than living it. I really hate Cranky Mom.

Time to oust Cranky Mom!

I've never had much luck with New Year's resolutions and last year's To-Do List was only moderately successful. However I really like the idea of having some sort of motivating principle or goal for the year and a friend suggested the One Word Resolution. Totally brilliant but much harder for an overly wordy person, like myself, to do. After much deliberation....

My word for 2011: PROACTIVE

Sounds a bit strange, but let me elaborate. I am surprisingly good at recognizing my own failings and the things in my life that I most need to work on. However, I never seem to get around to actually doing the work to fix those problems. All those things that make me exhausted and cranky, well, most of them are within my power to change. I just haven't changed them.

Take the 40lbs I wanted to lose for my sister's wedding. I did manage to lose about 15lbs but post-wedding, have gained it all back. I am not a newbie to weight gain and loss. I know exactly how I gained the weight and I know exactly what I need to do to lose it. But have I stopped my excessive nighttime eating? Have I utilized opportunities to add exercise into my routine? Nope.

I've complained about the shambles of my finances to you all before. But have I done anything concrete to try and help myself- made an actual budget, found extra work, made an appointment with the bank to talk about mortgage help? Nope.

So there you have it. The word that I want to strive for in 2011is proactive. As Nike would say, Just Do It. I'm going to stop sitting back and waiting for life to fix itself. In the (spoken all too often) words of my darling Isa, "I do it myself!"

Because I am a glutton for punishment, I decided I needed a challenge this year to really keep myself present and involved in my life. Something tangible that I could use to monitor my progress in taking back control of life. A way to be accountable to the goal of being proactive. Enter the experiment: http://www.myhomemadeyear.blogspot.com/ Follow along as I attempt to revamp my life by going homemade. Intriguing, no?

Don't worry, for the three of you that still read this blog, I'll still be blogging here about Isa B and the pitfalls of Mama-hood. And, hopefully, a bit more consistently.

Surprise Me Sunday- A to Z Bread

Okay, so this isn't really a true Surprise Me Sunday recipe. I have been baking A to Z Bread for many, many years. It's a recipe my grandma clipped out of a newspaper and has been handed down to my mom, then me. It's a basic sweet bread recipe where you insert 2 cups of pretty much any fruit or veggie. The surprise part is how much flexibility you have with the recipe. I rarely make it the same way twice.

I'm sure you've heard the expression "Cooking is an art but baking is a science." And that probably holds true for many recipes. When you bake following the recipe exactly tends to be very important. But honestly, you cannot mess up this bread no matter how much you mess with it. (Well, maybe you could ruin it if you completely forgot an ingredient.) I make substitutions ALL THE TIME based on what I have on hand or how healthy I want to be. No white flour? Substitute wheat. No white sugar? Substitute brown. Want to avoid the oil? Substitute yogurt, applesauce, etc. Or make it a combination of the two. Batter too dry? Add some milk or juice. Experiment with additional spices. I've done all of those things to the recipe and while it may alter the texture of the finished product some (especially if you do all yogurt instead of oil), it's still very, very tasty. And easy.

It's called A to Z Bread because the original recipe had fruit/veg suggestions for almost every letter of the alphabet. Here are the ones I commonly use. Feel free to ask for additional letters if you want but you're really only limited by your imagination.

Apples, grated
Applesauce
Bananas, mashed (Isa loves to mash them with her hands for me!)
Carrots, grated
Pears, chopped
Pumpkin, canned
Zuccini, grated

A to Z Bread

3c flour
1 tsp salt
1 tsp baking soda
3 tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp baking powder
3 eggs
1c oil
2c sugar
2c fruit or veg
3 tsp vanilla

Preheat oven to 325. Grease & flour 2 lg loaf pans OR grease 2 muffin tins.

Sift together dry ingredients and set aside.

Beat eggs. Add oil & sugar; cream well.

Add fruit/veg and vanilla to egg/oil/sugar mixture.

Add dry ingredients. Mix until just combined.

Pour batter into pans/tins.

Bake 1 hour for loaves (until knife in center comes out clean) or ~25 min for muffins.

Halloween

This year for Halloween Isa dressed up as Princess Tiana. My mom made her a costume which looked spectacular, though I am probably a bit biased. I was surprised by how many people had no idea who Tiana was, but I suppose the first African American Disney princess isn't as big a deal to others as it was in our house!


And what "accessory" did Princess Tiana need? Why, a frog prince, of course. We dressed up Papaw as her frog prince, which Isa thought was hilarious. Note the little crown on his hood! (And please excuse the fact that this photo was taken against the messiest wall in my house...)


First we went Trick or Treating down at the shops and restaurants in Columbia City.


Then we had pizza for dinner. I told her she could have 1 piece of candy while we waited and she chose a Tootsie Pop, but then said "all done" after only a few minutes. You can't really tell from this photo, but I'm wearing a Pink Ladies jacket.


After dinner, it was back up the hill and onto Trick or Treating in our neighborhood. Dad and I took Isa around while Mom stayed at our house to pass out candy. Despite horribly rainy conditions on Saturday (and again today), Halloween was totally dry and not too cold. I bought 2 bags of a KitKat/Reese's cup mix (75 pieces per bag) and by 8:00, we were out of candy. Much busier than last year but at least I don't have lots of candy leftover to be munching on. :)

Surprise Me Sunday

I dubbed this month Clean Out the Pantry Month. In that vein, every Sunday I've cooked a meal, entirely unplanned, from whatever I find in the pantry and/or fridge. Thus Surprise Me Sunday. I think it may survive past October because it's turned out fairly well so far.

Earlier in the month I made a falafel and hummus and the following week it was chicken soup with leftover Ethiopian vegetables. Last week it was a spicy lentil soup (I added berbere) with toasted tortilla wedges and quark, which is sort of a cross between cream cheese and sour cream. Tonight's meal was basil stir fry over rice. Had basil, 1/2 an onion, orange pepper and green beans that needed to be used up. Rice in the pantry. Voila. Very simple but quite tasty.

There are several benefits to Surprise Me Sunday dinners. Most obvious, of course, is that the pantry and fridge are slowly becoming less cluttered. Random food stuffs don't get lost in the back of the pantry for years on end and fewer veggies mold in the fridge.


Less tangible is the boost to my confidence in the kitchen. I am not afraid to admit that I am not a great cook. I don't feel confident in my ability to experiment or deviate from recipes. And while I haven't tackled anything overly ambitious (yet!), just winging it with easy menus helps immensely. Eventually I'd like to make Surprise Me Sunday into a bit of a challenge ala Chopped. Take truly random ingredients and find a way to make them into something delicious. Or at least edible.

So stay tuned to see what surprise meal each Sunday brings!

Gonna do it Glee-style

Here's what happened last time.....

Isa turned 3! It was hot, hot, hot (note everyone trying to stay in the shade). There was a sprinkler and butterfly cupcakes handmade by yours truly.

Isa decided she was finally ready to be potty-trained! One morning I changed her into big girl underpants and she never looked back. Sorry, no photos of that milestone. :)

On a weekend when the grandparents took Isa, I changed her room into a "Big Girl Room" complete with canopy over the bed and a chandelier. It was very well received!

We went to several baseball games with Grandma and Papaw. Isa can sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" all by herself. Now if she'd just do it on camera....

And we went to the Puyallup Fair. There were fake cows to milk and real bunnies to pet.



We attended an event with our adoption agency down in Portland. It was fun to see so many other adorable habesha darlings, as well as our attorney who was visiting from Ethiopia. Isa had a blast at the Portland Children's Museum.

And that's what you missed.....

Not okay

Too exhausted to coherently write anything for the blog right now.

Instead, let me send you here for a great post.

And, even though it probably goes without saying, it's NOT OKAY in my world either.