Leah's Birthday Dress

Leah's birthday is coming up at the end of this month. I thought I would make her a new dress for one of her presents. I recently saw a dress in a catalog that had a horse screen printed on it. Since Leah loves horses, I thought it would be something she would love, but at $35 for a dress, I couldn't bring myself to it. So I stole the idea and made my own :) I already had patterns and fabric, so I drew the picture of the horse, scanned it and printed it on iron-on-transfer paper. I transfered it onto the skirt material of the dress, and !oila! her new pony dress. The only thing I would have done differently in retrospect is to make the horse a lighter color since it showed up so dark on the blue fabric. Otherwise, I am so excited to give it to her.

Making Soft Pretzels...yummmmy

Usually on Fridays we try to do something fun or special as part of school. Eric requested this week that we make soft pretzels, so I made up the dough while he was doing math, and by 11:00 it was ready to be shaped and cooked. They made a great lunch! Everyone enjoyed shaping their own, and on top of that, they were delicious.

I found a great recipe by Alton Brown from the Food Network. If you've never seen his show or tried his recipes, they are almost always spectacular. He is so scientific about cooking, and so I am including this recipe because the pretzels were so soft and moist, not dried out at all!

HOMEMADE SOFT PRETZELS

1 1/2 cups warm water (110-115 degrees)

1 T. sugar

2 t. salt

1 package active dry yeast

22 oz. flour, approx. 4 1/2 cups (I used a little less than this)

2 oz. (4 T.) unsalted butter, melted

vegetable oil for pan

2/3 cup baking soda (don't omit this secret ingredient)

1 egg yok beaten with 1 T. water

pretzel salt

Combine the water, sugar and salt in the bowl of a stand mixer and sprinkle the yeast on top. Allow to sit for 5 min. or longer or until the mixture begins to foam. Add the flour and butter and, using the dough hook attachment, mix on low speed until combined. Knead until the the dough is smooth and pulls away from teh sides of the bowl, about 4-5 min. Remove the dough from the bowl and place in a well-oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap and place in a warm place until the dough has doubled in size (about 1 hour).

Preheat the oven to 450. Spread two baking sheets lightly with oil. Set aside.

Place 8-10 cups of water and the baking soda in a large saucepan or roasting pan and bring to a rolling boil.

In the meantime, turn the dough out onto a slightly oiled work surface and divide into 8 or 12 equal pieces. Roll out each piece of dough into a 24 in. rope. Make a U shape with each rope, holding the ends of the rope, cross them over each other and press onto the bottom of the U in order to form the shape of a pretzel. Place onto the oiled baking pan.

Place the pretzels in teh boiling water, 1 by 1, for 30 seconds each. Remove them with a slotted spatula or spoon. Return to the baking sheet, brush the top of each pretzel with the beaten egg yolk and sprinkle with the pretzel salt. Bake until dark golden brown in color, about 12-14 min. Transfer to a cooling rack for at least 5 min. before serving.

Eric at a Piano Recital

Eric was in a piano recital a week ago, but I just hadn't posted anything about it yet. He did a great job! The songs he played are "Almost like a dream" and "Shout to the North". Right after the recital, Dennis and I took just him out for a belated birthday treat (he turned 9). Since we didn't do a birthday party this year, we decided to do something special with just him and us. Granni & Gramps babysat the others while we took Eric up to Annapolis for dinner at a seafood restaraunt (Kentmorr Rest. http://www.kentmorr.com/) and then to see a movie he has been really wanting to see after reading the book series-Spiderwick Chronicles. It was a good movie (way too scary for the younger two) and actually we had some great conversations afterwards. In the movie there was more drama than in the books surrounding the fact that the parents of the main characters were separated, so it offered an opportunity to talk about this with Eric, something he really has been sheltered about up until now. So we had a nice time on Saturday, and on Sunday, we celebrated Granni's birthday as a family!

Kitchen Desk Project

Grandma came over this afternoon and while she and Leah took a nap, Dennis whipped up a new kitchen desk for us. Just kidding...it has been a work in progress for several weeks now, and today we put the finishing touches on it. Dennis did the building, and Heather did the finishing. Below are pictures of the process from start to finish, enjoy!
Rough cut red oak from a fallen tree, we had it milled and Dennis is here planing it down to workable size.
The oak, ready to be made into cabinets.

This is the rough base unit. No shelves or drawers yet.

After Heather finished the base cabinets, desk top and upper cabinets, we installed them, but no doors or drawer fronts yet. The upper storage is so nice! The finish I put on the desk top was a dark stain, and then polyurethane. I painted the oak a coffee ice-cream color, and then glazed with a chocolate brown to achieve an antique look. Then coated it all with a clear coat. Many many steps.

Here are the beautiful finished drawers with Dennis' dovetailing-great work Dennis.

All finished tonight, and all put together. I spent all day putting the finish on the doors and drawer fronts. Once they were dry, we got it all put together, and we just love it, it's our new favorite piece of homemade furniture in the house! The only thing left to do is the door and drawer hardware (still looking for what we'd like).

Next project, the rest of the existing kitchen cabinets will be refinished as well to coordinate!

Last Day of Skiing

On our last, sad, day of skiing, everyone got a turn! Leah spent a little bit of time on the magic carpet slope, and boy was she funny! It is amazing how many people it takes to get a little 2yr old down a hill on skis! I put in this picture to show what a funny drama she turned it all into! What is so funny about her on skis is that she is already so close to the ground, and she just bends over and puts her hands on her feet and her head down so she can't see anything, and goes until she wants to stop and then just slowly falls to the side in a heap. Then she is so happy to just lay there until someone comes to pick her up!!! In the picture above she is making snow angels. In the picture below, I captured Granni, Dennis and Eric all around her helping her up. How funny.

As for Bay, he really took off on Friday! Thursday night, Dennis, Eric and I spent quite a bit of time with him on the magic carpet slope and he really got comfortable doing his "pie" to stop. So Friday morning, I took him over to the green slopes that were much longer and he had a blast! He got into doing "s" turns on the slope, even got going pretty fast so that when Eric came to join us, he was keeping up with Eric as far as speed! Poor guy, he worked so hard that his leg muscles were sore for 2 days after that! Here is a short video of he and I skiing on Backbone Pass, his first run down the Green Slope.







All in all we had a great time and the kids loved being with their grandparents for an entire week! Granni and Leah spent a lot of time in the loft of our condo (which Leah called the "tippy top") playing games and reading books. Eric learned to play chess with Dennis. Now back to the regular routine of life!

A Full Day of Skiing!!!

We had a great day of skiing today...the weather finally cooperated, and everyone enjoyed themselves on the slopes! Bay & Eric spent the morning in ski school. We always try to get them at least one lesson each year, it makes such a big difference in their skills, especially since we just only go once a year. Eric, of course, was not excited about going, and was totally grumpy even when he was done, but he really got some good pointers and worked on what he learned all afternoon. He was happily skiing some of the expert slopes with his new confidence :) Bay's lesson really paid off as well. He mastered the wedge for stopping, and even though he was wiped out after a morning of skiing, he went out tonight after a good nap this afternoon, and he and Dennis skiied about 10 times down the magic carpet slope and he really got a good handle on his stopping, turning and staying in control. He said, " I LOVE SKIING!!!" The snow today was just groomed ice mostly, but the weather was beautiful, so we had a great time. In between going out on the slopes, we took turns hanging out at the condo with Leah or making dinner and having lunch. They have a nice hot tub here, and Dennis & Leah spent some time this morning in there, and Eric & Dennis sat in the hot tub for about an hour this afternoon before dinner. We have been having so much fun just being able to relax. Tomorrow is our last day skiing, and then we leave on Saturday to go back home. The videos up above are of each of the kids and a little clip of each of them skiing.

Family Ski Trip!

Well, we are here, at Wisp Ski Resort in Deep Creek Lake, MD, and have had an exciting start to our ski trip. Heather's parents took us skiing this year (what a treat!) and it is going to be the warmest February on record! I think we saw on the weather that it was 71 degrees at home! Horrible skiing weather, but we are trying to make the best of it. We got in a good day of skiing yesterday (Monday) before the warm weather and rain arrived. We had our own bout of family firsts...all 3 kids on skis at the same time! Eric zipping down the mountain, Bay having a ball skiing about 10 yds. and then falling down, and Leah even on her own little pair of skis! She was hilarious...Leah was telling everyone she saw "I'm doing a GREAT job!" and she definitely surprised us with her bravery :) Something really neat they have at ski areas for little kids that they never had when I was growing up is a lift called the "magic carpet". It is so much easier than a horrible rope tow...it is like a conveyor belt that goes up the little bunny slope that you stand on with your skis on. The little kids can get on an off by themselves.

Today, with the warmer weather, we ventured out to the little town of Oakland, MD to an Amish dairy farm. We got a private tour of this families dairy farm...and we got to feed the baby calves, milk a cow, and hook up the cow to the automatic milker. It was lots of fun and something we wouldn't normally get to do!

Check back later and we may update the blog with more posts of the vacation week as I have so much more extra time to spend on the computer while we're here!