Signs of Spring

A 2MomsView of Spring

by Mimi & Meg

Here in the Midwest (especially the northern parts), Spring can be a fickle fellow.  One minute it's warm, then it's raining, next the wind jumps to 65 mph and then it's snowing.  Great right?  Always an adventure here and it never fails to amaze us how even in the midst of all this crazy weather things will start to grow.

Mimi

Spring is springing up all over!
Speaking of grow...last week my oldest childs feet grew a half a shoe size! Shoes that were fine one day and POOF suddenly the next day his big toe is poking through!
It's this time of year we transition into a new weight of clothing for the spring (some shorts, some t-shirts and gym shoes) and we notice just how MUCH they have grown. I put away coats and boots and wonder if the sizes will coincide with the seasons for the my next child? I notice as I get weepy over all the things they have outgrown and panic as I realize that the oldest has nothing but the second is in GREAT shape for shirts. Grumblings from my husband who also notices this child-related sign of spring because the amount of money it costs to keep re-clothing them gets larger in correlation to their age. Of course drawers get emptied out and closets get raided.  And because of this, it's a good year to clear out these outgrown t-shirts from their drawers and baby tees from their baby bins (a topic for another day) and getting quilts made out of them. Like this fantastic example here by www.toocooltshirtquilts.com, which is themed. Spring will spring some space in their closets with this little project.

(photo credit Too Cool Tshirt Quilts)

Nostalgically, I notice that they no longer willingly and curiously want to help me do all the things I normally do in Spring.  The teenager does not desire to assist in cleaning out the garage and the pre-teen could care less that his closet looks like a bomb exploded in there! I miss those times and cherish my memories of little hands and curious faces as we completed a Spring cleaning task together. Now I assign duties and offer payment. Which is fine because it's good to learn how to be self-reliant.
But I digress, that is definitely another topic for another day.
There are other signs of Spring at our house too, ones that don't make me wonder if did all the things I should have when they were younger. Since my oldest has been a pre-teen we have decided that during our "Springbreak" or some weekend during April we take an ADVENTURE. It usually is small in nature and involves eating outdoors somehow, but it's just us. We go someplace we have never been (and sometimes will never go again), we eat something we have never eaten before and we take pictures and TALK about anything and EVERYTHING. And yes they actually talk to me, you know why, because there is no electronics and we are out in the middle of nowhere (I know good planning). This has quickly become my favorite because the hopes and dreams come out. No filter from how others think and no limits because it's ADVENTURE day! It's like a mini-glimpse of things to come. They are relaxed and full of themselves from discovery of the world around us.

Spring actually came to my very OVER-stuffed closet.  I threw out (to charity of course) FOUR garbage bags full to the brim with clothes, shoes, purses, baby bags (I KNOW!) and belts. I finally was serious of the questions you are supposed to ask yourself when cleaning out your closet

1. Have I worn it in the past year?
2. Does it fit?
3. Is it in fashion now?
4. Will I ever (truthfully) wear this again?

Wow, what a freeing thing to rid myself of all that stuff that I didn't even know that I had anymore! So while it is still chilly outside, Spring is definitely in full bloom inside my house!

Meg

Spring in our house has brought on the allergies, coughs, colds and any other kind of illness you can think of! Between trips to the doctor with the 4 year old and breathing treatments with the 2 year old, I have been cleaning one little corner of this house at a time.

This being my first year as a stay at home mom I am finding myself struggling to balance the needs of my kids to go to the park with my needs to clean the heck out of our entire, tiny little house.  I've decided to take on one project each day and pat myself on the back if I manage to get that finished ;)

On top of cleaning, we have the oldest ones birthday and I always feel the need to do WAY too much to celebrate!  I have the insane obsession with baking the cake myself and I end up dragging my husband into the intricate decorating process that leaves me sleepless for night before hand, and up till 1 a.m. the night before the party.  This year my 4 year old asked for a Lego Superhero birthday and my head nearly exploded. As an avid adult Lego fan I had been waiting for this my whole life (maybe that's an exaggeration, but I was excited!).  It is all always worth it in the end to see how excited they get when they see their cakes.  Most of my friends make fun of me for stressing out over these things, but I love doing it for them and I always love a good challenge :)

I think the thing that has struck me (or should I say both of us) the most this Spring is how fragile life is.  Of course the lesson or idea is something we all already know but this Spring Mimi and I have both been slapped in the face with story after story of struggles and losses that families around us have had to handle. 

One of the most poignant and distressing stories is a family is a local family in which 2 of their 4 children have been diagnosed with a rare disease called Batten disease. This is a "rare genetic illness that has ruthlessly robbed them of their speech, balance, and mobility. At this time, LINCL-Batten disease is always terminal, usually between the ages of eight and 12." (quoted from www.noahshope.com) And this Spring their son just 1 week shy of his 12th birthday lost his battle. 

(For more information about their battle with Batten and how you can help please click here.)

Many, many people have decided to show support of this family by tying red ribbons around their trees.  I am humbled and amazed to see how many ribbons are down each of our streets.  Most of us didn't know them personally but yet we all feel the need to show this family that they are not alone.  When I see the ribbons it reminds me to hug my babies a few extra times, to leave the mess on the counter and go play superhero games, and to be truly grateful for my family, my friends, and my community.  We don't know how many more tomorrows we are going to get and this Spring I am truly making an effort to be the best mom/wife/friend I can be.

Carpe Diem people (Latin for "seize the day")!!

Go make Spring messes!

Peach Cobbler

by Mimi

I came across this cobbler/cake when I was searching for easy recipes for Easter Lunch/Dinner. And although, we didn't use it that day but we did end up trying it. Fruit Cobblers remind me of Summer and what is the weather like right now?  ...WINTER.  
So we had a full on summer meal that night and it ended with a Summer dessert, Peach Cobbler. 
Also, it is basically a dump cake. The way our lives run these days, if we want dessert it better be something I can literally throw in a pan and throw in the oven.

Super Easy Peach Cobbler

Prep: 5 min
Cook: 60 minutes
Serves: 8-10

Ingredients:

• One box yellow cake mix
• 2 jars of Trader Joes peaches
• 1 stick of butter (melted)

( and a little cooking spray)

Instructions:

1. Preheat oven to 350° Fahrenheit
2. Spray bottom of 9x13 baking pan or glass dish(i used) with non-stick cooking spray.
3. Dump 1 whole jar of peaches into pan, drain 2nd jar and only add peaches
4. Cut the peaches in half. Spread evenly on bottom of dish/pan
   
5. Sprinkle cake mix evenly over entire surface of peaches.
   
6. Drizzle melted butter all over the top of dry cake mix
   

Cook for 55 minutes or until top is golden brown .

As usual our oven (which is not very hot) took about 1 hour and 5 minutes to do the trick.

Noteworthy:

We like this a lot but we found it to be SUPER-sugary. I think the next time I will use either fruit suspended in water or fresh peaches with water.

AND i think this could be transferable across ANY fruit you want to try.

Let us know what you think and what you tried.

Bon Apetit!

Welcome to our so-called Crazy Life!

Welcome, Welcome, Welcome!  To a place where we are always trying new stuff, bringing our own special twist to old stuff and just trying things out because we are curious.

We are here to do the beginning phase of a project for you.  You know the one where you are staring at the idea or project somewhere and thinking to yourself, "BUT will it really turn out ok?"

From DIY-ing, to crafting, to baking/cooking, we are up for attempting and sometimes slam dunking it, to attempting and falling flat on our faces! What a ride!  It's just like anything else in life. If you try and succeed, GREAT!  But if you fall and make mistakes, LEARN from them and move forward, SmArTeR!

We both bring background of different specialties to this site and hope that we get to use them to help others, continue learning and make COOL stuff with our own 2 (well really 4) hands.  

So welcome, stay awhile, share and poke around.

This is our first try at blogging so we appreciate your patience with us as we dream.  We welcome your feedback.  

Thanks for visiting!

Easter Breakfast Casserole

by: Mimi

Type: Breakfast

Serves: 4 - 6

I was inspired to try this type of recipe because I had made egg cups recently and instead of making a fluffy scramble-type I made baked over easy eggs and they were DELICIOUS! So I saw a version of this on Food Network website that they made in an iron skillet and wondered if I could do the same thing in a casserole dish. And TA-DA, I CAN!

If you'd like the original recipe click here.

Ingredients:

• 
  Country Style Hash Brown Potatoes
• Turkey Sausage
• ½ cup Monterrey Jack Cheese
• 8 eggs
• 1 tbsp dried onion flakes
• 1 tsp salt
• 2 tsp pepper

Instructions:

1. Cook hash brown potatoes in a large skillet with an oil of your choice (olive, corn, vegetable, etc).  Sprinkle with the salt and pepper amounts while cooking in skillet. Get nice and crisp.
2. In another medium sized skillet cook the turkey sausage until also crisp on the outside following the directions on the box. Once completely cooked set aside to cool.
3. Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit.

1. Scrape cooked hash brown potatoes into a 13x9” baking dish (mine was glass).
2. Sprinkle dried onion flakes onto the potato layer.
3. Once sausage has dried I ground it up in the food processor.  
4. Spread layer of sausage over the potato layer.
5. Sprinkle the ½ cup of cheese over the sausage layer.
6. 

   Make a little nest 8 times evenly in layers.
7. Cook for 5 minutes to warm the nests so the egg cooks faster and more evenly.
8. Remove dish from oven and crack eggs into little nests
9. 

   Replace in oven and cook for approximately 11 minutes or the egg white is cooked and the yolk is still a bit runny (you can poke the yolk if needed).

Serve immediately.

Special Note:I also made the bottom portions minus the egg the night before to keep the potatoes from getting soggy.

Noteworthy:

So it got a little overdone because it will turn that corner of not and perfect REALLY quick! What we really learned is that apparently our oven isn't very hot, (thus the overcooking). It was our first time making it and even though it did not turn out perfect, I would make again because...
it was still DELICIOUS! And so we ate it with just as much zeal as usual,, with a variety of toppings, i.e. jalapeno hot sauce, fig butter, siracha sauce, etc. We also served with bagels, which my kids just slid their portion right onto the bagel and ate like it was a sandwich.

Let me know if you try it and what you think.  Plus any tweaks you might have added to make it more your own! 

 Bon Apetit!

2Momviews Review

Smell these Smelly Balls - 
Essential Oil Car & Home Refresher

by Mimi & Meg
Skill level: the newest Newbie
Time: 30 minutes

Do you love Essential oils? We do! AND we found, in our Pinterest  habits a great idea (thanks One Crazy House) out how to get theses little aromatic jewels snuck into our lives, more seamlessly and gracefully. At One Crazy House, she has lots of great ideas on how to incorporate them into your daily life BUT one particular idea stuck out for us.  It was the adorable little clothespin & wool ball project. We gave it our own particular M & M spin.
We were inspired by the SNL skit from 1998, by the fictional Sweeney Sisters of NPR and their "Schweddy Balls." If you have seen that skit (and if you haven't Google IT!) you know the kind of snickering and giggling we did while working on this project.

Materials Needed:

• sharpie markers, mostly wider and 1 fine point in a white or gold or black (your choice)
• clothespins (we used regular & mini size)
• Wool balls of assorted colors and sizes 
• Essential oils
• Hot glue gun & glue 

1)We started with plain clothespins. Taking our sharpie markers and coloring them (Honestly this was a little "zen" for us). There was no intention for them to match colors with either the wool balls or the essential oils?  That just kind of happened.  

Noteworthy: 

After the fact we realized that you should write the names of what you are using on the back of the clothespin. We did this to not run the risk of mixing old and/or different types of oils (which can have different reactions and effect). So write your labels on the back with a black sharpie before the next step!

2)After the clothespins were finished being colored we took our hot glue guns and glued on the wool balls.  

3)Decision time - what aromas did we want to have in our homes and cars?

Mimi - I chose Thieves, Copaiba, Lemon, and StressAway

Meg - I chose Thieves & StressAway

(for further information about the Essential Oils we used please click here)

4)Now drip slowly 10 drops onto each wool ball of your creation

To use: Simply clip the clothespins with "smelly balls" onto your heat vents either in your car or a heat vent at home.

 2MomReview:

Mimi - The first day they were great!  I loved going into different parts of my home and getting a different aromatic experience.  I especially loved the Thieves aroma and so did my family. But after the 2nd day I could no longer smell them?  And by day 4 one of them fell apart? ( We think it was a combination of the heat from the vent drying out the glue and that the essential oil somehow deteriorated the integrity of the glue? ) 

Mimi's sum up...not very convenient for me if I have to keep "refilling" it every couple of days.  Not to mention it will become expensive. So I will keep looking for healthier ways to make my house smell better. The diffuser is not something I have tried as I can't imagine that it wouldn't get knocked over in my house with my giants. 
I also tried these in the car and found the same situation, the "Smelly Balls" weren't very smelly after a couple days.  

Noteworthy:
I am also going to try just applying the oil directly to the wood to see if it lasts longer? I'll update you to let you know how that works.

Meg - I loved the different smells in each room I went into.  I used the Thieves in the bathroom that the kids use and it was a wonderful change to the "interesting" smell that is usually in there :)  I'm with Mimi though, by day 2 I couldn't smell them anymore either.  I also had a horrible cold and the concentrated smell of the oils was making my eyes go crazy.  

Meg's sum up... I do own a diffuser that I purchased when I first ordered the oils.  I can see the benefits of using that over the "smelly balls" because it seems to distribute the scent much more efficiently. I will try using the clips in the car because I can see that they would be a great way to make the oils more portable!

As always please let us know what you tried or thought, we'd love to hear from you.

St. Patty's Day Fun

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

by: Mimi

I grew up in a house where my Mom was doing these sorts of traditions with me (way back in the 70's) so I thought every house did them too. So I turned them into a tradition for my family too. So here are just a few ideas here to make St. Patrick's Day fun in your home too. From my house to yours...

At our house I take all the milk containers, water containers, salt shakers, toilets, anything liquid (with a clear or white base) and turn them green. I do this by simply adding water soluble food coloring to them.  It's non-toxic and adds a bit of whimsy to a regular day.

We also

• turn the furniture upside down or sideways.  
• hide items that normally sit out.
• eat Lucky Charms or Fruit Loops (rainbow colors) for breakfast (it's 1 time a year it won't damage them that much).
• leave notes from the Leprechauns with gold chocolate coins or Rolos.
• wear rainbow socks that day and of course ALWAYS wear green!

Here are some other St. Patrick's Day traditions I found on the interwebs...

Marie at Makes and Takes 1st idea is great print out an image of a shamrock and hide it for a week or so before St. Patrick's Day and tape a treat on the other side (coin, gum, candy, etc). (you can get more from her here)

Or how about a Shamrock shake?

Like this one from Allrecipes.com (click here for how to make)

image credit Christina from Allrecipes.com

Lastly and seemingly the most popular on the internet with kids is the famous Leprechaun trap.

Like these from Popsugar.com (click here for more of these ideas)

(image source Not Mama)

The kids have always appreciated and enjoyed St. Patrick's Day because it's just about crazy pranks (that are harmless) and silliness.  These are two things children thoroughly enjoy and I would almost go so far as to say crave. What's better than a good giggle?  Nothing.

Enjoy the day, be silly and above all make a little mess!
Happy St. Patty's Day to ya!

DIY - Simple TP Tube Bird feeder

by Mimi & friends
Skill level: kids & parents can do together
Time: 10 minutes (from start to hanging)

So winter is almost at an end (YEAH).  And I've noticed the amount of little birds coming back from their winter hiatus to warmer climates and MAN, are they hungry!  The ground is still frozen a bit and the trees don't really have any buds yet.  Crucially, my youngest noticed this. He asked me if there was a way we could help them birds, maybe feed them.  So I said let me check it out, because truthfully, I didn't really want a permanent feeder hanging out in my yard (I'm sorry I can hear my grandmother's voice in my head..."Dirty Birdies"). 
So I did a little research on a temporary way to help the birds out.  Turns out there is a such a thing and it is pretty simple. I found a lot of the information about them here. They are super easy and can be done with a majority of what you already have in abundance at your house, empty toilet paper tubes! 

Let's get started!

Materials Needed:

• Peanut Butter (non chunky)
• birdseed mix
• empty toilet paper tubes
• 2 pans (9 x 13") for rolling the tubes around in 
• 2 spreading spatulas
• wet rags (it can get messy)

1) Get your kids (age 3 and up)

2) Pour birdseed mix into 9 x 13" pans

3) Make sure toilet paper tubes are cleaned up of excess toilet paper

4) Use spatula to evenly spread peanut butter all over the outside of toilet paper tube

5) Place peanut buttered TP tube in birdseed pan and roll back and forth. (Kids 2nd favorite part)

6) Once thoroughly coated with birdseed, go find a tree branch and slide it onto the branch. (Kids 1st favorite part)

Noteworthy:  

We tried to place ours where the kids could see them from inside so we could observe who ate off of the tubes and the habits of the birds.  

And you should be prepared that squirrels can & will take off with them if they can. So make a lot.  Lord know we have plenty of empty TP tubes being produced. HA!