Nectarine & Apple Crisp

Fall is such a beautiful time here in the Northeastern part of the United States and apple picking goes hand-in-hand with this season.  We have a lot of Orchards that offer pick-your-own and we've made it a family tradition to go each year.  And with apple picking comes lots of opportunities to bake!  I love apple muffins, apple crisp, apple pie, apple turnovers, apple sauce... I think you get the picture.

Anyway, when I was making apple crisp one night I had a few nectarines that I threw in and it was fabulous!

I've made apple crisp before and have come up with my own version of the topping and find it to be just right for my taste, you can tweak it to be sweeter, not as sweet, etc.

INGREDIENTS:

On fruit:

-4 Tablespoons white sugar

1 teaspoon cinnamon

Topping:

-3/4 cup oats

-1/2 teaspoon cinnamon

-3/4 cup brown sugar

-1/4 cup all purpose flour

-1/4 cup room temperature butter

Peel and slice nectarines and apples and place in a 2 quart baking dish, sprinkle with white sugar and cinnamon.  Stir until well combined.

In another dish mix oats, cinnamon, brown sugar, flour and butter until crumbly.

Spread evenly onto fruit.

Bake at 350 degrees for about 30-35 minutes or until golden brown on top and fruit is soft.

Let cool for a few minutes (I like it when it's still warm but tastes good cold too) and enjoy!

Yum!  It was great, and the addition of the nectarines was a sweet surprise.

The next morning... waffles and fruit crisp!  It's kind of a ridiculously perfect combination.

Really??

Let me start off this post by saying that I am a laid back person, and that it takes a lot for me to really get upset over something.  But when it comes to my children I am your typical mama bear... with that said, let my rant begin.

This morning Brooklyn had an appointment with her Pediatrician, and we happened to arrive a few minutes early (must have been a full moon or something...).  So Brooklyn began playing with the toys in the waiting room as I held Whitney when I noticed another mother with her young son come in.  No biggie, it is a Pediatrician's office after all.  

Then, it happened.  

Brooklyn had been playing with her doll in a plastic shopping cart, she left it to play with something else but upon seeing the little boy that just arrived was interested she immediately returned to claim said shopping cart.  As I was speaking to her about how it is polite to share and that it would be nice if she let the little boy have a turn the boy's mother came over and scooped him up.  She proceeded to walk him to the other end of the room, but not before uttering "come on, we'll go play with the toys over here, obviously that little girl does not know how to share".  Of course she refused to make eye contact as she walk past me, and all I could think was is this really happening?  You would have thought Brooklyn went over and kicked the boy out of the way in order to get to the toy.  OMGoodness.

Shocked *picks jaw up off floor* I said "really? she's four-years-old, give me a break".

Her reply: "yeah... really"

Still trying to figure out why exactly she felt the need to try and make my daughter feel bad I said "wow, you've got a lot of class", laughed and walked away.  Luckily the nurse had just called us in to the Dr's office so we didn't have to sit in the waiting room with the passive-aggressive you-know-what because I was beyond disgusted. 

How can you honestly believe that is any way to solve a situation between a four-year-old and approximately 16-18 month old? (which I'm sure doesn't share 100% of the time either...).  As adults is there no way we could have solved this differently?  Well, I can say I'm an adult- this other person who thought it was necessary to talk down to a four-year-old, I've got a few choice words to call her (and 'adult' is far from top of the list) but I'll keep it clean.

If you're so annoyed that my daughter took a toy away from your son that you feel it's necessary to go to the other end of the room why not say "here, so-and-so, lets go check out these blocks".  Why do people feel the need to be so snarky and belittling? 

I strive to teach Brooklyn to be fair, share, play well with others and of course I want her to be a strong independent woman.  How do I do this? Simple. I let her resolve her own (minor) issues and problem solve on her own (when appropriate and with my supervision).  Of course if she were being physical with this little boy I would have by all means stepped in, there is no reason for violence in any situation.  

How will she ever learn to share if I just rip things away from her to give to someone else to play with?  

How will she learn to communicate well if being snippy is the way I talk with her?

How will she become independent if I do everything for her?

How will she ever respect anyone if all I treat her with is disrespect?

And believe me, I am so not the poster woman for being a perfect Mother.  I've made plenty of mistakes, and will continue to do so because parenting is a constant cycle of trial-and-error and every now-and-again if I'm lucky I'll get a thing or two right. So I really try not to judge other parents because I'm not walking in their shoes.  Each of us are fighting our own battles and going through our own hardships so instead of breaking each other down, why not build each other up?

Moral of the story: Treat each other how you would like to be treated... is it really so hard to do, and to teach our children to do?

layered spray painted {beer} bottle

Here's another fun way to dress up some empty bottles...

What you'll need :

-Empty bottle (beer, wine... whatever you've got)

-Spray paint, I used three colors but two would work

-scrap paper

-border paper punch

1) In a well ventilated area spray the bottle your base color.  Let dry, it was a sunny day so this didn't take long. Depending on weather conditions it could take anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour.  Just make sure it's dry before moving on to the next step.

(I moved it into the sun to speed up the drying process)

I liked the sage but wanted a little more bling so I added a layer of a shimmery spray paint.

I didn't want to totally cover the green, so I just misted it with a gold satin based spray paint.

2) While your bottle is drying grab some scrap paper and use a border punch on the top and bottom edges. Be sure the paper is long enough to go around the bottle.

3) Cut the paper to size, tape onto the bottle.  Be sure not to cover any of the hole punches with the tape.

Juuust barely made it...

4) Now with your last color spray the entire bottle.

Be careful when spraying near the paper, I sprayed a little at a time so it didn't run.  I'd rather go back and spray a little more if I had to as opposed to putting on too much and ruining the design.

5) Once the bottle is dry carefully remove the paper.

Pretty cool, huh?  You can use this as a vase, decoration for a mantle, etc.

This would be great in orange and black (Halloween) or red and green (Christmas)... the possibilities are endless! Have fun with it.

wine {bottles} and glitter

This is a really simple way to decorate some of those old wine bottles sitting around... or {better yet} give you an excuse to enjoy some of your favorite pinot so you can get your craft on.  Although if you end up drinking the entire bottle in one sitting I'd say wait a day or two, some hand-eye coordination is needed for this.

What you'll need :

-empty wine bottles (labels removed)

-regular white glue

-glitter, the finer the better.

Remove the labels from the bottles.  I was lucky and had very little trouble getting the labels to peel off, but I did have a few stubborn ones so here's what I did.  I filled the kitchen sink with hot water, added about a half cup baby oil and some dish soap, let the bottles sit for 20-30 minutes and the labels came off really easily.  If there was any residue left from the adhesive I found a scrub sponge worked well to remove that.  A good tip is to fill the wine bottles with water so they don't just float on the surface.  This works really well with beer bottles too.

Dump the glue into a liquid measuring cup, or a small bowl with a spout.  Mix in the glitter until it's well incorporated.  Carefully pour the glue back into the glue bottle.  The finer the glitter the better, it will come out of the spout on the glue bottle easier, the larger glitter will clog it up.

While turning the wine bottle with one hand, slowly 'glue' around the neck of the bottle.  The more you glue the more will run down, just don't totally load it on - you want it to go down about halfway when wet.  Let them dry overnight.

In between each drip I put a little dot of glue that ran down to add a little more shimmer to it.  I loved how they turned out, and it was super simple!

All done!

This technique can be done on any size/shape wine bottle.  We have a hydrangea plant behind our house so we filled each of the wine bottles with some water and added the flowers to complete the look!

pallet sign

I've been dying to do something with an old pallet, and when my husband found this beauty in his shop I knew it had to be made into something spectacular!

I grabbed some paints, brushes and got to work...

ps. the baby snack container is holding water so I could switch out the paint colors as needed

All finished! We used this for our Corn Roast so everyone knew where to park and where to find the grub... worked like a charm!

my non-Pinterest-ing wedding

My husband and I will be celebrating our 5th wedding anniversary this Saturday (woo hoo!), and it got me to thinking...

Oh, the horror!

It seems as though everyone is on Pinterest these days.  And I’m just as guilty as the next person.  I’ve spent many a night after my girls have gone to bed pinning delicious recipes, fun activities to do with the kids and of course my fair share of DIY project ideas.  And with our fifth wedding anniversary approaching I can’t help but feel a little curious - had Pinterest been around in 2007 when I planned my wedding it most likely would have been so much more beautiful and amazing, right?

Wrong.

Every time I go on Pinterest it’s hard to ignore the zillions of wedding related pins.  The table settings, favors, centerpieces, floral arrangements, invitations, bridesmaid dresses, wedding gowns, etc.  And they’re all beautiful, but is it worth it?  I’m not going to lie, as soon as I got engaged I went out and bought every wedding magazine in print and ripped out pictures, created a wedding binder and filled it with everything I wanted in my dream wedding.  Each time I found something I loved I’d add it to the coordinating {labeled and color-coded} section.

But this was only something I kept for my own sake, it wasn’t something I advertised and showed to every single person I know.  I wanted my guests to be surprised when they walked into the reception hall for the first time, for them to be as excited as I was to see it all come together.  The last thing I’d want were people to walk into the venue and say Oh, that’s nice - I saw that on her ‘Here Comes The Bride’ wedding board or Yeah, she pinned ten different versions of those online.  Isn’t there anything left to be desired anymore?  If it’s all there in your 943 pins doesn’t it spoil the fun a bit?  And what if your attempts at recreating your virtual wedding falls short, won’t you be disappointed?

I’m not bashing Pinterest in any way... have you seen my boards and dozens of pins?  I’m kind of obsessed.  I think it’s a great reference tool and should be used as such.  Not a I-just-got-engaged-so-my-sole-mission-in-life-is-to-pin-all-things-wedding kind of thing.

Five years later I can honestly say I am so happy with how our ‘ordinary’ wedding turned out.  It was just what I wanted, and then some.  As for my dream wedding binder, it’s packed away with all my other wedding memorabilia and there are a dozen things in there that never came to be - and no one will ever know the difference.  After all, the most important thing isn’t the wedding, it’s the marriage.

chalk it up

I love to decorate, I have so many different ideas for our house it's insane. But with decorating (and in most cases, redecorating) rooms it can get expensive so if I can do something on the cheap I'm all for it.

This is a piece of scrap plywood my husband had that was laying around in his shop that I decided to spruce up.

It was really dirty, covered in dirt, dust, and bird poop (I said it was really dirty, didn't I?)

After a good scrubbing it was all ready for some chalkboard paint.

I got a can of spray chalkboard paint from my local hardware store and this was what it looked like after my hubby finished spraying it for me. Isn't he just so sweet?! ;)

My hubby is a third generation Dairy Farmer and also a third generation 'wicked good' sweet corn grower... never heard of that last one?  Well, then you've obviously never had our sweet corn because if you had you'd understand why we call it 'wicked good'!  Anyway, last year we did a corn roast & open house and everyone had such a great time we decided to make it an annual event!

Here's a shot of the machine shed once we got done decorating it... Just wait until you see the before-and-after pictures!