Fruit-Kebobs...

... Easy and fun and yummy... Need I say more?

Happy 4th!

So Jacob is four. Wow. Holy smokes. Crazy. I find this hard to believe, and yet here he is. My wonderful little boy. He is so excited to be four!

Here is my delicious looking iced cake:

This icing is so good! And way easier than buttercream.

1 pkg instant pudding (I obviously used chocolate)

1/2 the milk called for on the package of pudding

1 small container cool whip

Mix together for creamy deliciousness. 

Bonus recipe: throw leftover icing in the blender with milk to thin the consistency. Pour into popsicle molds for the best "fudgsicles" I have ever made.

Now, Jacob wanted a digger cake. So then I brought out the heavy machinery... CAKE DESTRUCTION! 

But look at that cute face! He loved it and had a great birthday.

There's a Hole in my Blue Kitchen

So thursday morning we woke up to a huge puddle of water on our kitchen counters, and there was water all in our cabinets. Weird. Our bathroom is right above our kitchen so we thought maybe the shower curtain was out of whack because we had had small drips before when the boys splash water out of the tub all over the floor. Anyways, so thursday evening we gave the boys a bath with strict instructions not to splash. They didn't and yet we had even more water in our kitchen. Hurray! Just what we wanted to deal with. So we cut a hole in the wall and this is what we found.

Okay. Well I loosened the trap, but see that ring hanging in the middle of the trap? That is only half of the piece that is supposed to seal the joint there.

Here is the other half. Nice, eh? No wonder water was pouring out of that joint.

So here is me trying to take the pipe apart. Awkward at best. (This should be a super model pose.)

This is the hole. What those wires are for, I don't know, but I found them sitting in a puddle of water. I don't think they are live, they don't pull out, and I have no idea where they go other than upstairs.

So that was a thursday night. Today is friday. It is fixed, we had showers and there were no leaks. Yes. Though I was secretly hoping maybe it would be something worse and we could gut our bathroom. Yet I am also so thankful it was something we could fix on our own and only took a few hours and 20$.

A very special thank you to my father-in-law for his advice over the phone that evening. We couldn't have done it without you.

Another special thanks to my neighbours on both sides. One lent us a drywall knife and the other lent us some pipe glue. 

A Yum and a Yum With Potential

So we decided to start a new tradition in our house: dessert on Sundays! It sounds crazy but usually Jeff and I wait until the kids go to bed to have dessert so now we are going to share it one day a week. Which means I get to maybe experiment on my family a little more! So I made what I am calling "Easy Mom's Apple Crisp."
You will need: 6 small apples cut in half. Scoop out the seeds. Lay them cut side up in a 9x12 dish.

Melt 1/2 cup hard margarine and add 3/4 cup each of rolled oats, brown sugar, and flour. Add 1/4 tsp cinammon. Mix together.

Put one big spoonful of topping mix on top of each apple.

Bake at 350 for about 30 minutes. Serve with vanilla ice cream and your Sunday dessert will be a hit, guaranteed!

So that was my YUM. My YUM WITH POTENTIAL story goes something like this:

Last week at church the ladies were talking about zucchini. Everyone has too much zucchini. So one lady tried 8 different zucchini brownie recipes. I asked which was the best and was asked in return if I have the original Canadian Lutheran Ladies cookbook. Why yes I do. Find the recipe simply title Zucchini Bars. Make that. So I did. Here is the recipe:

Beat together 4 eggs, 1.5 cups oil, and 2 cups sugar.
Sift together 2 cups flour, 2 tsps baking soda, 2 tsps cinammon, 1 tsp salt and 4 tbsp cocoa powder
Mix together.
Add 1 tsp vanilla, 3 cups grated zucchini, and 1 cup nuts or chocolate chips
Pour in greased and floured 15x10x1 pan. Bake 350 for 25-30 minutes. 

FYI that pan is just a big cookie sheet. There is an icing recipe with it but I was out of icing sugar. 
Anyways... I thought the batter had a strangely not chocolatey colour to it, but figured I was crazy since this was the best of eight recipes. It tasted good, the boys loved it, but I wasn't that thrilled with it. So the next day Jeff is organizing and pulls out the can of cocoa powder. It catches my eye because it is navy blue.... And the cocoa powder I had out in the brownies was not in a blue can but in a purple can. So I had to dig through the newly organized pantry to find the purple can.... That's right, I put hot chocolate mix in my brownies instead of cocoa. I think if I had made them right they would have been brownies and not just brown zucchini cake. Potential.