My Lucky Day

I don't know how it happened, but St. Patrick's Day really snuck up on me this year. I was still prepared though, with all things green and otherwise festive.

Earlier this month, Tyler made this leprechaun and pot of gold with the instructions inside our Family Fun magazine. He looks pretty much like Santa, except for the red facial hair and green clothes. Cute, huh? Did I say how much I love Family Fun magazine?

And don't even think about pinching us, because we were wearing green today...and lots of it!

Going with the green theme, we made a festive shamrock smoothie. Tyler didn't make this one up....we found the recipe in his National Geographic Kids magazine. It's made with a frozen banana, green grapes, kiwi, spinach, lime yogurt, and some milk. It's kind of good. Tangy though, from the kiwi.

For dinner, we had the usual suspects.

Corned beef

and Irish Soda Muffins.

Instead of roasted red potatoes, I tried a recipe for colcannon, which is basically mashed potatoes with cabbage mixed in. It was alright, but I missed the roasted potatoes.

Shamrock Treats

Last month, Tyler declared that we would be making shamrock shaped rice krispy treats for St. Patrick's day. And true to his word, he helped me make a batch today after coming home from school.

From melting the marshmallows to counting out the drops of food coloring, he was a man in charge.

And now we have a cute little batch of treats to eat for dessert.

Oh, but he didn't stop there. He's been working on a set of "instructions" to help me out in the kitchen.

Here are his instructions for making banana smoothies. By putting the words 'make up' in the title, he means that he made up the recipe all by himself.

And his apple smoothie. He told me to make this in four days....what is it, a weekend only kind of treat?

Two More

We spent the majority of the weekend running errands around town. Along with the regular grocery shopping, I was also in search of the perfect cut of corned beef. I usually go with the flat cut because it's less fatty than the points. But it took me four tries before I even found a store that had any flat cuts. Geez, what a hassle!

Despite all that, I still managed to get a little work done in my scrapbooking room. Here are the two pages I finished this weekend.

Here I used some October Afternoon Christmas paper and plain cardstock.

With this one, I used some Basic Grey paper and other scraps.

Thank You Daylight Savings

I cannot tell you how glad I am that daylight savings is finally here. My days have been in need of a slight adjustment. The sun had been waking me up earlier and earlier...not that that's necessarily a bad thing.

But what I really want are longer days. I want to be able to eat dinner while the sun is still shining outside. More specifically, I want Max to make it through the 6:00 hour without shrieking because it's getting dark outside.

Yes, starting today, we will have peaceful dinners again.

Thank you daylight savings.

For dinner tonight I made Chili Tamale Bowls, a recipe I saw on the Rachael Ray show last week.

Super yum! That's all I have to say about that. I used ground beef instead of pork, and chicken broth instead of beer, but otherwise followed the recipe. I'm so glad I found a good use for my massive stash of ancho chilis. Yum!

Max saw the polenta and must have thought it was couscous (which he adores), because he was really excited...until I offered him a bite. He was sorely disappointed and ended up eating a cracker instead.

One Jam-Packed Day

We started out the morning over at Lowe's for their Build and Grow project. They were making tabletop basketball hoops.

It was a fairly simple project, so Tyler had his finished in a snap.

And since there wasn't that big of a crowd today, Tyler had plenty of room to try and shoot a few hoops.

After that, we were off to the skating rink. Our last attempt at skating, which had been Tyler's first and only try, didn't go that well. So we waited a year and were ready to try again.

We even had his wheels loosened a bit, so that they would actually spin this time.

Believe it or not, he was doing really well. He didn't even want any help from Rick.

Backwards.....really? I've never even tried that!

But all that skating was exhausting! After 2-1/2 hours, Tyler didn't even want to stand up anymore.

Well, it's a good thing he rested up on the way back to the house, because he had big dinner plans. He was making some macaroni and cheese from one of his GP cookbooks.

It looked great coming out of the oven and when dinner was done, there was nothing left but an empty casserole dish. We had eaten every single bite. Yep, Tyler's going to be a good cook when he grows up.

Recipe Rewind

Here is a look at the new recipes we tried this week.

First we had Spaghetti Pie, a recipe from one of my Light & Tasty annuals.

I really liked this one. It was so much better than the last one we tried. I think a noodle crust is a way better idea than a solid meat crust. It didn't hold it's shape very well when we sliced it, but it still tasted great.

Next we had Sausage and Kale soup, from the March issue of EveryDay with Rachael Ray.

It has Italian sausage, kale, cannellini beans, and macaroni in a mushroom infused broth. Tyler claims to hate mushrooms, yet he ate two helpings. When he saw the mushrooms floating in the soup and asked what they were and I told him they were porchinis. That seemed to satisfy him and he ate them right up. The soup is definitely better the first day, as the noodles soak up the broth the longer it sits.

Finally, we tried Spiced Roast Chicken with Onions, Lentils and Couscous, another one from Rachael Ray.

The chicken was unique, flavored with cinnamon and ginger. The lentils and couscous were good too, but a little bland. Next time I be sure to season them a little more during the cooking process. On the side we had some slices of buttered sweet potato, so all in all, it was a tasty meal.

The Last of '09

I finished a few more scrapbook pages for the last few months of 2009. So now that I'm finally wrapping up last year, maybe I can get started on 2010 before too many months start getting away from me. I know how that goes!

For this one I used a mix of old DCWV paper, October Afternoon and good ol' plain cardstock.

This one uses the October Afternoon Weathervane line from last fall and BoBunny dot paper for the background.

Here I used mostly Making Memories paper and embellishments.