February Favorites

Here are some of my favorite Project Life and Instagram photos from February: Mostly a bunch of boring indoor stuff. Thankfully the weather has been warming up and I'm looking forward to getting outside more often.

 

February was FULL of days off from school and I had to take Tyler grocery shopping with me on more than one occasion. Normally I avoid taking him to the store because he despises all forms of shopping, but by the look on his face, I'd say it wasn't that bad after all.

Earlier this month we trekked our way over to Toppenish High School (about a 30 min drive from Yakima) to check out the VEX robotics competition. It seemed really cool and Tyler seemed into it, but unfortunately none of the schools in the West Valley participate in the program. Hmm...maybe we need to start pioneering and find a way to make it happen.

Speaking of robots: Tyler built this robotic Lego Mindstorm guitar that actually plays music and he was super pumped when he was invited to bring it to school to share with the class.

Trying to use the selfie stick I got for Christmas.

Kyle Bear reading to Carmelita. Nothing quite as riveting as "Purple Flower, Orange Carrot", but as long as you throw in a few pets and belly rubs, she'll take it.

Kyle climbed into the front of the car when we got to school for Mileage Club, so first we took a picture and then we went to run.

A special storytime at the library that included a party with Elephant and Piggie, characters from a series of beginner reader books. Kyle had fun even though he was too shy to get a picture with them.

 

Max getting a look out the dining room window. Watching the street in front of the house and all the goings-on has to be more interesting than the view of the backyard he gets from the kitchen.

Coco Bear stoically waiting for me to finish my workout so she can cry and tumble at my feet.

Finished a 4 mile run of the treadmill and there's Coco Bear on the floor all laid out and ready for belly rubs.

Coco and Max sharing a window seat.

My favorite February outfits: all about the red and pink.

And a look at the books I've read this month. The top three are my reading books and the bottom ones I've read to Tyler.

Alton Brown Live

I kept seeing commercials on TV about Alton Brown's Edible Inevitable tour and I didn't pay much attention since I figured it was for the Tri Cities, which is where our local station broadcasts from, but then I finally heard the last line..."coming to the Capitol Theatre in Yakima". What!? No way! Of course I was going. I got online and debated about getting regular tickets or the VIP tickets, which included a meet and greet with Alton Brown before the show. I finally chose the regular tickets and crossed my fingers that he would do a flash signing in Yakima so I would still be able to get my book signed but without the extra ticket fee.

So on Sunday morning (the day of the show) when I saw this on Instagram, I was so excited! Yes! It took me a minute to convert the longitude and latitude coordinates, which turned out to be the address for the Capitol Theatre.

I hauled the family downtown and we took our place in line.

Sun.In.My.Eyes. I decided to bring my Good Eats cookbook Vol 1 to the signing, although I also considered bringing my Food Network magazine from November 2011 that has Alton's brined turkey on the cover. Rick even suggested that I bring all three of my Good Eats cookbooks and the magazine and have each person in the family get something signed...but that seemed kind of greedy. The woman in front of me in line brought a cutting board for him to sign and I also saw that someone had their Kitchen Aid stand mixer signed. Such good ideas!

We got to the front of the line and although I only had a minute or two to talk to him in person, I thought he was really nice. Kyle...not so much.

All I can say is that it's a good thing the show didn't sell out early because I'm sure that was the reason for the flash signing...to draw people to the theater and hopefully sell a few more tickets before the show. He had two sold out shows in Seattle the day before and didn't do a flash signing there. Whatever the reason, now I have an awesome signature in my cookbook. Yay!

We got seats in the middle of the first balcony. Not a bad view!

A quick selfie before the show and don't worry...those empty seats around us filled up quickly.

This is the picture Alton took of the audience at the beginning of the show and posted to Twitter. They turned all the house lights around and pointed them out into the crowd to get good lighting for the picture. If only you could zoom in and see Tyler. He looked exactly like a vampire in the sun...writhing in agony and shielding his eyes with both arms. Poor sensitive soul. Besides that the show was super fun and we all enjoyed ourselves. The first half of the show included a couple of songs and some funny anecdotal stories. Then the second half had some cooking demonstrations and more songs. It was a good time!

Mardi Gras

Mardi Gras usually falls too close to Valentines day to bake desserts for both, so I like to pick one or the other. I was planning on making a king cake this year, but when Rick brought home red velvet cupcakes from Costco for Valentines day, I ended up putting off the king cake for later in the week.

 

Which worked out perfectly because my Love with Food box came and it was Mardi Gras themed this month. Perfect for enhancing our festivities! I ended up using the packets of Cajun seasoning for the skillet meal I made.

Which was this: Creamy Cajun Chicken Penne Pot from the How Sweet Eats blog.



And for dessert I made the king cake from the Cooks Country magazine. I thought it would be a fail-proof recipe since the dough was placed in a bundt pan instead of directly on a baking sheet, which I hoped would eliminate the problem of the dough ripping at the seams during baking. In that regard the recipe worked, but I still wasn't able to roll the dough tight enough and still had air pockets in the finished cake. Besides that, I didn't like how tall the cake was being baked in a bundt pan. I guess I prefer the shorter and wider version, which in my opinion looks better when served. Next year I'll try Joy the Baker's recipe and if I still have trouble, I'll be done with king cake.

Valentine's Day 2015

With Valentine's day falling on the weekend this year, I thought "Great! Rick will be home and we can actually do something together". But no, he was called into work and was gone for the entire day. Nevertheless I still had two young valentines at home that I was able to enjoy the day with.

Rick did give me a nice bouquet of flowers before he left. I love the touch of color they add to the kitchen!

I didn't wear this on Valentine's day, but during the week prior when I was pulling out all the reds and pinks from my closet. This was my favorite look of the week.

 

The weather was absolutely gorgeous on Saturday. Without a doubt, at 62 degrees, it was the warmest February day we've experienced in the last 8 years since living in Yakima. So nice! We went to the park in t-shirts no less.

The park was mega crowded so we didn't stay for too long. Tyler's getting kind of big for the play structure anyway. Afterwards we headed to the car wash (which was also super busy and we waited in line for 30 minutes) and then grabbed a pizza for dinner from Papa Murphy's.

For dessert we had some red velvet cupcakes from Costco that we paired with some Dreyer's Red Velvet Cake ice cream. Yum!

Minecraft Valentines

This is Tyler's last year of elementary school and also his last year of classroom valentines, so I wanted to come up with something really good. And by "come up with something", I mean stalking blogs and Pinterest for ideas and free printables. I ended up finding a Minecraft valentine with printable valentines and candy wrappers in green and pink. Perfect! 

 

I cut the valentines and wrappers apart and then Tyler did the rest of the assembly himself. Poor Kyle wanted to help SO bad, but Tyler insisted on doing everything himself so Kyle was relegated the job of putting the completed valentines into neat piles in a box.

 

So cute! Pink ones for the girls in his class and green ones for the boys. We used the Hershey's miniatures bars for the creepers and it wasn't until Tyler was all done that I even considered the issue of food allergies. So I had to go through, check for and take out any of the Mr. Goodbars because of the peanuts. In the end we only had to redo 5 valentines.

 

This one is Tyler's favorite and mine too. Are you a block of dirt because I dig you.

 

Also in school they had valentine-grams for 25 cents each and Tyler bought one for a special girl in his class. ♥♥♥ Awwww! 

There was no school on Friday so the valentine exchange actually took place on Thursday. When Tyler brought his valentines home, I saw that only one other person had done a homemade valentine (yay for homemade!!) and that 10 of the kids didn't do anything at all. Boo! That's no fun.