Homemade Apple Chips!

Love apple chips, but don't have a dehydrator?

No Problem!!

You can use your oven! Yes I'm serious!

 

Here is what you'll need

Several small apples, or a few large ones

(I like to use Honeycrisp or Gala)

Cookie Sheets

Spray oil

Cinnamon

 

Preheat your oven to 200 Degrees

Slice your apples thin, I used my mothers old Mark Four Super Slicer

from the 70's WOOHOO Retro!!

Spray your cookie sheet with spray oil

Lay the apple slices on the cookie sheets in neat rows but don't let them touch

Then, I like to sprinkle cinnamon on them and rub it in with my finger ( a clean one obviously)

Now pop those bad boys in in the oven! But keep an eye on them,some will cook faster than others.

As they brown you may choose to either flip them over or take them out entirely.

I happen to like mine a little browner so I leave them in longer. They will not usually be crispy until you let them cool for a bit, so don't be alarmed if they are browned but still seem soft.

 

 These are delicious!!! And they make the house smell sooooooo freaking good! I also read that you can do this same process with Bananas to make banana chips, but I have yet to test that out.

So for now.........

Enjoy falls perfect food,slightly roasted and lightly crispy.

 

XOXO

Heather

 

 

 

 



Happy Halloween

We cannot officially trick or treat until Sunday because of the bad weather. But here is what I wore to work today. And our nifty blues clues pumpkin we carved :) Happy Halloween!

Hurricane Sandy

I think Monday was one of the worst nights I have ever had.

The power went on and off about 12 times, before finally cutting off at 3am completely,

Me my husband and my little guy were all cuddling unders tons of blankets in

 our bed trying to keep warm.

 

Hurricanes have never mattered much to me, I live in Cleveland, Ohio and I always thought we were safely nestled away from being too effected by storms like these.

But this storm was huge, and nasty and relentless.

 

I awoke at 3am and couldn't fall back to sleep with the howl of the wind, I stayed awake watching the

flashes from blown transformers as they exploded one by one.

I kept thinking "wow if it's this bad here, I can't imagine how bad it is on the east coast"

My heart just went out to those poor people.

 

We woke up to a cold, dark house, the little guy didn't really handle it well,

Neighbors tree down

apartment near us

We hopped in the car and decided to see if ANYONE had light, at least we would be warm.

We found that the city right near us did have sparse electricity in areas, and a Bob Evans was open.

(YAY WARM FOOD AND COFFEE)

 

We warmed up in there for about an hour and a half. Then headed back home,

we saw alot downed trees and flooding rivers on the way home, see roaring rushing waters like that just make you realize how powerful mother nature can get.

 

Eventually our lights returned as well as the heat, I obviously did not go to work because we had a downed tree in the yard, and I really didn't want to risk driving in the bad weather anyways.

Once the power went on, the little guy and I made cupcakes and spent the rest of the day laying around with my hubby :)

So ready to get back to normal.

Hope you are all safe

xoxoxox

Heather

 

 

 



Among the living ( again)

Once again sickness took up by our pretty little ears and threw us across the room.

Just kidding....

But seriously, last week was brutal, beginning with a 2 am trip to the ER for My Little guy and ending the week with me being pretty sick with a flu/cold

 (OMG I AM MOST CERTAINLY GOING TO DIE) Virus.

Finally we are all feeling back to normal, ( hopefully for longer than like 2 days)

Anyways,

Since we all felt better this weekend, we decided to catch up on some much needed fall festivities.

We rounded up the little guy, picked up the mother in law in the car, and headed out to the country for farm market shopping, antique browsing and pumpkin picking :)

My two sweeties mugging for the camera outside of the Antique store

An Antique store
( that we are no doubt no longer welcome in thanks to the political fight my husband got into with the owner lol)
Oh well, their prices were too high anyhow!_

SO EXCITED to find himself a small pumpkin lol

.....still excited

I just love that smile!

Hope your weekend was grand!

xoxoxo

Heather



Quick and Easy Chili

Fall means soup season and soup season means CHILI!!

Over the years I have tried making it several different ways, spicy, sour, sweet ect.

The recipe below is my own personal one that I have been partial to for awhile now.

I just love a house that smells like chili lol! It's oddly comforting to me, and reminds me of when I lived at home and my father would make it while the big football game was on.

Like most of my recipes, this one is adaptable, if your a vegetarian, just double the beans!

You can also slow cook it for hours.

(this batch was made in 1 hour including prep time)

 

 

Homemade Quick and Tasty Chili
1.25lb Ground Beef or Turkey
1 large bottle of V8 or (vegetable juice)
1 14oz can of tomato sauce
1 14oz can of black beans
1 14oz can of kidney beans
1 large onion
1 large green pepper
1/4 cup of Chili Powder
1 and 1/2 Tsp. of Cumin
1 tsp of Black Pepper
1/2 bottle of your favorite BBQ sauce (to taste)
1 Tbsp of white sugar

Directions:
In a large pot, cook meat until no longer pink (drain if necessary)
Add onions and peppers, saute until soft.
Pour in V8, tomato sauce, beans, and BBQ sauce.
Add spices and sugar.
Let simmer for about an hour.
Garnish with shredded cheese and sour cream.

I also cannot have Chili without cornbread, I CANNOT
(call it the southern girl in me)

Here is the recipe that I use for sweet cornbread
 

Makes servings USMetricAdjust Recipe (Help)

1 cup all-purpose flour

 

1 cup yellow cornmeal

 

2/3 cupwhite sugar

 

1 teaspoon salt

3 1/2 teaspoonsbaking powder

 

1 egg

 

1 cup milk

 

1/3 cup vegetable oil

 Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (200 degrees C). Spray or lightly grease a 9 inch round cake pan.
2. In a large bowl, combine flour, cornmeal, sugar, salt and baking powder. Stir in egg, milk and vegetable oil until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pan.
3. Bake in preheated oven for 20 to 25 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center of the loaf comes out clean.

By the way, if you have trouble with corn bread sticking to cast iron
( if you are using cast iron, here is what you do):
Slip the pan into the 400 degree oven for about 10 minutes
when you take it out, melt butter in the bottom and around the sides,
then pour the batter in the pan, (It should sizzle)
this will give you cornbread with a crispy coating.

Garnish with LOTS'O'BUTTER!
Enjoy!!!
xoxoxoxo
Heather
 

 

Just us two

I had one vacation day left for the year ( small tear)

I decided to use yesterday to spend some quality time with my son.

We had breakfast, saw daddy off to work and headed down to French Creek Nature Preserve

for a beautiful fall hike.

 

After our walk, we decided that Ice Cream was in order

 ( Ice cream? Before lunch? at 11 am in the morning? Why not??!!")

This was inevitably what happened about and hour later lol

 

Such a great way to spend my last vacation day of the year :)

 

xoxoxx

Heather

 



Kid Kraft: DIY Blues Clues Game

Overall, I don't really know how popular Blues Clues is anymore,

but my son is currently obsessed with it.

 

Given that, it is extremely hard to find any Blues Clues Merchandise anywhere.

And what I do manage to find is really over priced.

 

So I decided to make a Blues Clues game for my little guy.

 

I should warn you I don't have a Cricket paper cutter and I am not a scrap booker so I don't have all the fancy stuff to make an elaborate one. But with a little free hand drawing and some supplies from the dollar store, I think I did pretty well, (see i just KNEW four years of Art School would pay off! :)

 

Here are the supplies that you will need ( I got mine at Dollar Tree)

- Red spiral bound small notebook ( I couldn't believe I actually found one with red binding!)

- Index Cards

- Pack of foam sheets

-Markers ( different colors)

-Sharpie marker

-Craft glue

- Scissors

 

(Photo note) You will notice a blue stamp pad and round floral foam.
I didn't name these two supplies because I tried to create a "paw print" stamp with them,
and it failed miserably....you'll have that lol...Just disregard those two items lol

 

What I did:

 

For the notebook, I cut out a green foam square and glued it to the front of the notebook.

 

Then with a black sharpie I free hand drew the "Thinking Chair", cut that out,

and glued it to the green square.

 

 

For the "Clues" i had intentions of making a "paw stamp" out of foam and floral foam, but lets just say it didn't work out :(

 

So I ended up drawing like 10 paws on index cards myself lol

 

I then cut them into little squares with my paper cutter.

And your DONE!!

Here is the end result!



How To Play:

 

There are so many different variations on how you can play this, you really need to just base it on how old your little one is.

 

We decided that the main object of the game would be to find out "what blue wants to do?"

what he wants to do is up to you as the parent. For example, I wanted my son to settle down and get ready for bed last night, so I had him stand in another room, while I put three clues out, one on his pillow on his bed, one on his toothbrush and one on his favorite book next to the bed.

 

Then I handed him the notebook and had walked around with him singing "we are looking for blues clues" when he saw a clue he would yell out, "a clue! A clue!" then put it down in his handy dandy notebook. When we got all three clues, we went and sat on the couch (our version of the thinking chair) and put the clues together.

 

He was super excited and couldn't wait to play...again and again and again.

 

When we were done, he had the notebook in his hand and said "mommy this is really cool! Thankyou mommy!" My heart just melted!!!! At the end of the day I'd say my job was done :)

I mean just LOOK at this face lol
I'd say he is pretty excited.







The best part is, this only cost like 5 bucks to make!! No KIDDING!!!

5 bucks and like 30 minutes!

 

Enjoy!!

 

xoxoxo Heather