10 minute Repurposing craft-Go Rockets!!

This is Homecoming week at Eddyville Blakesburg so at the BAC they are celebrating with "Hat Day" Thursday and Friday will be "Black and Gold" day. We didn't have any school shirts yet for Logan this year so I dug out an old EBHS State Wrestling 2006 tee shirt that used to be Austin's.

I pulled out my trusty sewing scissors and cut out a Rocket from the part of the shirt that said Eddyville Blakesburg. Got the iron out and pressed it onto a plain black tee shirt with fusible webbing. You can buy fusible webbing from Walmart or any fabric store and it's cheap. I always buy the plain shirts from the Dollar Tree when they have them in my kids' sizes so I can make fun things like this. Tee shirt fabric won't ravel so you don't have to sew anything. I will let him wear it Friday and then I might go ahead and sew around it with a zig zag or satin stitch, I think it looks a little plain. Logan loved it though. I really need to get crackin' on the EBHS stuff before Wrestling starts. I plan on making bows for the girls and some dresses or something in black and gold, maybe some cute little leg warmers and skirts?

Eggrolls are easy!

When I get a craving for Chinese food I don't like to fork over $50 for a single meal for all of us so I make my own. I tend to do that with all kinds of though because I hate to pay somebody 4 times (or more) than actual cost to make or do something I can easily do myself. It makes no sense to me. Besides if I go out to eat anywhere I am usually wondering how many times the people touching my food actually wiped snot on their hands or if they actually washed their hands after going to the bathroom before touching my food. Grossed out yet?

Egg rolls are very easy to make and you can use whatever you like in them for filling. I usually buy the egg roll wrappers once or twice a month and they will keep in the fridge for over a week. That way I have them on hand when I get a craving.

The ingredients I use most often are ground pork, coleslaw mix, soy sauce and garlic. To make enough filling to use up the whole package of wrappers I use:

1 lb ground pork
1/2 bag of coleslaw mix
3T Soy sauce
1T minced garlic

I put a couple T. of water into a hot skillet and throw in the garlic (from a jar) and coleslaw mix. Just stir it around and cook on medium heat until the cabbage softens a little. If you cook it too long you are on your way to Sauer Kraut-you will smell it and know right away. Even if you get it too soft it's still usable don't worry. Line a mixing bowl with a paper towel and dump the mixture in the bowl to drain, you don't want any extra liquid in the filling or your egg rolls will get soggy. Using the same skillet brown the ground pork until done and then drain it in it's own paper towel lined dish. Some people actually rinse the meat but I don't, I just let it sit while I lay out the wrappers on the counter. Lay them out in rows so you can put the filling in and roll them. I plug in the fryer now and get a small dish with a little bit of water for sealing the egg rolls as you roll them. Some people use an egg mixture or some cornstarch and water mix but it's not at all necessary-plain water works just fine. If you don't have a deep fryer you can use a couple of inches of your favorite cooking oil in a pan.

Now take the paper towel out of the cabbage mixture bowl-the cabbage should be well drained now. Dump in your cooked pork, Soy sauce to taste and stir it all up-that's your filling.





Put 2 T. of filling in the middle of your wrapper. Now fold one corner in and then the 2 sides. Make it pretty tight so you don't lose any filling. Dab bit of water on the last corner and then roll it up tight. Smooth that last corner down so it sticks. Fry them for a couple minutes until they start to turn light golden brown. It's the secret to keeping them from getting greasy. I had a toddler emergency so the ones in my picture are a bit darker on the back side but hey this is real life not the Food Network right. Drain them on end in that dish lined with a new paper towel. If you lay them on their side the grease or oil will not drain out and that's gross.

Now if you have some left over wrappers you can use pie filling or do like I did. I had 2 left so I put a tiny bit of the filling I had made and I added a couple of chunks of apple to fill them out. The apples were left from snack time and since they were just sitting there in the dish already cut and peeled I stuck them in and they were yummy! The girls really like to eat these and I find it easy to get lots of veggies in their diet this way. I like broccoli slaw and zucchini, onion and ground turkey or ground beef with fresh baby spinach. Just use what you have on hand and experiment with leftovers too.


These freeze well both ways, cooked or uncooked. I freeze them uncooked and then drop them in the fryer frozen like you would some boxed store bought ones. I have a lid on my fryer though because there is a lot of splatter with the frozen ones. You could thaw them and fry too.

We play with milk jugs!

The triplets are really into playing with doll babies and doing things like Mommy. It's so cute to see them rocking and singing to the dolls, changing the clothes and diapers and feeding them. They talk to them in a sweet little soothing voice and I just love it. They have strollers to push the dolls in but we didn't have any beds, investing in 3 isn't something I can do right now with our 1 income budget. I love to make things out of recycled items or re purpose something that isn't being used. So I dug into my scrap stash and whipped up 3 sets of blankies and mattresses and sliced some plastic milk jugs in half being careful not to leave any sharp edges. Taa-Daa baby doll beds! They were so thrilled and they played with them all morning. Piper liked her little mattress so much she took it to nap with her. I stuffed them with cut up fleece off of a sweatshirt that was in my stash, not too full, I wanted it to be flat like a mattress. If you have time you could decorate the jugs, I did not. An older child may want to paint or decoupage them. If you are going to decoupage don't buy that expensive stuff, just use school glue mixed with water and cut up some old catalogs or ripped picture books. Remember it's not material things that make great childhood memories it's the experiences-so if you have a preschooler this might be a fun craft.

*WHAT* was in that diaper??

Yet another post about poo. Sorry but when so much of my day is devoted to changing diapers, potty training, cleaning messes of all kinds and mostly all of my social time involves counting and ABC's, singing and pretending to cook when I'm not in the kitchen cooking for real. Well I can't remember the point and I'm sure my grammar was incorrect in that last sentence but it's late so you'll have to forgive me. I'm not even going to change it lol.

So anyway...I finally got out of the house today to interact with some real adults and what did they have me doing? Looking into diapers filled with melted candy bars made to look like POO!! The blonde in the picture (who answers to Rachel the Beautiful) is responsible for this fun filled game. I digress, this day was not for me so I will let it slide this time. This day was Trisha's special day, she is going to have a sweet little baby girl soon. This will make 2 sweet little girls now. I didn't get everybody's picture at the Baby shower simply because I didn't want to have to ask permission to put them in my blog, no littles in the pics either, same reason. I will add a pic of my present just cuz I made it myself. I also have a baby blankie and some booties but new baby doesn't have a name yet so I will wait until she arrives and gift those then since there is a large blank space on the blankie for her name. I had fun today even if it involved pseudo poo.

Just an interesting note, well I thought it was anyway, Piper has been picking the sequins off of a little purse that the girls play with and well. I found out yesterday that she ate a few of the red ones, you can guess how I knew.

For the Birds

We had a bad day earlier this week when Logan found a little baby bird and fell in love. Long story short, the dogs got it and we had to have a funeral. So in honor of his little friend we made some pine cone feeders to hang out in hopes the the mama bird would get a treat. We used up some old salad toppings that were getting stale and we had the pine cones from the other day when we gathered them from the yard.

Flarp On The Sheets

I said I wanted a break from potty training and I guess I'm out voted 3 to 1. Yesterday I dressed them in the typical 1 piece outfits and disposable diapers hoping that they would just stay dressed. It didn't work out that way at all, they were stripping left and right every time they peed or pooped the diapers were a flyin'! They went so far as to remove their diapers and place them on the baby dolls. Then Ava started bossing her sisters, "Chloe dipah, now...come here!" She was ordering them to come to her and let her put the diaper back on them after they ripped it off. Chloe actually went over and laid down and let her attempt to put it on her! I was thinking maybe I should just let Ava change everybody and forget the potty training.

Today I just put cotton training pants and tee shirts on them all. I was mopping up pee most of the day and they were entirely naked most of the day too, don't worry there is no carpet. I'm wondering when my days will stop revolving around messes. If I'm not cleaning up after somebody else I'm cooking for them. When I get the dishes unloaded from the dishwasher there is usually another load waiting to go in or I'm cooking/baking again so there will soon be another load. The dishwasher runs on average 4 times a day at our house. I try to wash the big pans by hand to save room and run it less but it doesn't help much. When the kitchen is clean the rest of the house is a wreck. It's like shoveling the sidewalk in a blizzard. Now that school has started I am trying to keep up with the laundry better. I put away about 11 baskets of clean laundry last weekend and I don't want to let it get that bad again!! I am able to do 3 loads easily each day but that doesn't keep me ahead of the pile when you add in sheets, blankets and pillows with pee, sheets and comforters with "flarp" on them and regular bedding.

If you don't know what "Flarp" is...you probably don't have any little boys. It comes in a container and you can get it at the Dollar store. It's a putty sort of substance but a bit wetter and slimier than silly putty. You push your fingers into it and it forces air into it making loud and super obnoxious fart sounds. The best laughs around for a buck! This is especially hilarious when mom is on the phone talking to the Dr.'s office or the Mortgage company. I went in to shut off Logan's TV and found him sleeping with his hand covered in Flarp. He had apparently molded it around his hand like a glove and then he fell asleep like that and it stuck to the sheet and dried out so it's like silly putty on the sheet.

Oh yea, the white cat from my post in May...well she has taken up permanent residence here. We found out from the neighbors that she was dumped about a mile down the road and kept getting ran off until she ended up here. Wonderful. And to add to the joy I'm feeling she has given birth to 4 chubby little kittens in the playhouse. I'm not sure where to move them to where the big dogs won't get to them but they are about 3 weeks old. We need to move them though before they start pooping on the deck. It's not a poop deck and I refuse to clean up after them too. Enough I say!

Spiders Sir!

I haven't blogged since Memorial Day or something like that. It's been bothering me so I am finally back. I promise I am not turning this into a Military Blog. :)I guess the reason I haven't bothered to post is that I really didn't have much to say that wasn't depressing. I wasn't feeling very funny. Knowing that Austin was off at boot camp was really hard for me. It might sound silly to some of you that have never done it, it isn't the same as sending them off to college or getting a first apartment. It isn't simply the physical separation of being in another time zone that got to me. It wasn't thinking of the physical and mental challenges that he would have to endure or the yelling and screaming of Drill Instructors while spit flies and being IT'd (Intense Training) to the point of nearly collapsing because somebody in his platoon screwed up. I know my son better than anybody on this earth and I knew he could handle all that. Although I missed him terribly and getting a letter from him was like Christmas morning, it wasn't missing him that bothered me either.

I was having a really hard time thinking of him being sent to war. I know that he will be deployed, it's just a matter of when and where he will go. I was terrified. I cannot honestly say that I am not still afraid but it is getting easier. I am so proud of him and his willingness to make a commitment to something greater than self. I am proud of him to have the courage to actually do something about his desire to make a difference. This whole thing has caused me a lot of stress, as some of you know enough to make my hair fall out, I want to laugh about it but it hasn't stopped yet. I am totally going to get one of those Dolly Parton wigs though if needed! But anyway I did some research and found out that the total number of fatal casualties from this war is something like 4,334. That's a lot. That scares me. But to put it in perspective the death toll on US Highways in recent years has been well over 30,000 on average. That's per year.

My oldest stepson has been to Iraq and came back in one piece so I know it's not a death sentence. It's just hard, but maybe I should be more worried that Levi is getting ready to get his learners permit to drive. Eeek.

To end this on a silly note...well first I have to say Support our Troops, google it and there are tons of ways to help them even if you are anti war, nobody hates war more than the men an women who are there fighting it, they still need help from the home front. Thank a Veteran too, most of them still see terrible things when they close their eyes at night and they need to know that what they have been through was not "for nothing".

OK, on with the silliness. Austin told me in a letter about swim week. They have to swim with full gear and heavy packs, helmets and boots etc... and they have to jump into the water simulating jumping out of a helicopter and other scary stuff. Some of the Recruits cannot swim or are not strong swimmers. The DIs are there to make sure nobody drowns but lets just say it ain't summer camp. So one day they are all getting screamed at beside the pool and one of the Recruits is looking nervous. The DI picks up on this of course and goes over to ask him what he is afraid of and he says he is afraid of drowning. The DI tells him he is safe and he will not let him drown. The Recruit does not look any more confident so the DI gets mad, "What else are you afraid of?" The Recruit responds "Spiders, Sir!". They all had to bite their lips on that one.