Best Playdough Recipe

Want to be the coolest mommy ever? Then do I have the stuff for you...homemade play-dough. Who knew?

Since we have entered monsoon season, its been a battle to think of new things to keep the boys entertained. I cancelled the cable a few weeks ago so we could 'spend more time outside and enjoy the summer'. (Guess how well that plan worked out?! Lol, its basically been raining ever since.) So, I decided to try my hand at some play-dough. We have the store bought stuff, but there's nothing quite like homemade. I found a fabulous recipe, and I thought I'd share. It was so much easier than I originally thought, and it only took about 5 minutes per batch. So far we've been using it for almost two weeks and its exactly as it was the day I made it...aside from the fact that C's ration went from 3 bright colors, to 1 muddy blob. Either way, it keeps them entertained for HOURS, which is great :)

Enjoy

You will need:

1 cup white flour

1/4 cup salt

2 Tbsp Cream of Tartar

1 Tbsp Oil

1 cup water

Method

Mix together all the ingredients and heat over medium low heat stirring constantly. After about 3-5 minutes the dough will come together to form a ball that looks something like this:

Mmmmm, looks yummy, no?

At this point, remove from the heat and knead the dough for another 3-5 minues. I've also seen versions thatsay to add the food coloring at the kneading stage, which I suppose would work well if you wanted a few different colors from the same batch.

And TAH DAH! You are officially cool. How cool you ask? So cool that, as K put it, "Other kids might say their Mom is the best, but no, YOU are the BESTEST MOM in the WHOLE WORLD."

Store it in an air tight container (I keep it in the fridge) and you are good to go!

Back to Blogspot

Exactly a year ago today I abandoned my blogspot blog to check out Wordpress. Well, I'm back to blogger. Wordpress is really limited in what you can do with the appearance of your site, and since I like to change the look quite often, I decided to go back to Blogger. Yay!!

All Aboard

Can you guess what our favorite thing is around our household? I keep waiting for that day to come when K decides that "trains are for babies". But so far that has not been the case. Thomas still reigns supreme here and K has passed that love along to his little brother.

"I'm a conductor" C proudly announced to me and James this morning. He then ran off to grab his Thomas hat and set up a train, complete with passengers cars and some mighty cute passengers.

I just love all this imaginative play!!

Where's The Sparkle?

Life has been hectic and I've been neglecting my blog. Despite drowning in laundry and a work to-do list a mile long, I am determined to get back into the swing of things. I love blogging because it helps me to remember the little moments that I would otherwise forget, and it reminds me to have a sense of humour in some of life's less-than-funny moments.

A few weeks ago I was able to sneak away for a night out with a friend. We went to see Sex and the City 2, here in Cochrane.  I'm not a die hard fan of the series (I just watched the first movie a week earlier), but I'll admit this one had me chuckling. Carrie Bradshaw has finally settled down with Big, and throughout the movie she's focused on her relationship, has it gone stale? Are they old and boring? Had marriage caused them to lose their sparkle?

It was a typical chick flick, had a few laughs, some romantic moments. I enjoyed myself, after all, a lot of it is true. Mortgage, kids, you do lose some of the romance and excitement that was there when you were just dating (at least I think there was romance and excitement...its been awhile). But we're not that bad. We still make each other laugh, we do on occassion dress up and go out. We haven't lost our sparkle. 

Then I get a text message. I kid you not, this is how it went:

james: im hungry
stacey: Good for you
james: all i need now is you holding my right hand, and a burger in my left!!!

Really, how much more romantic could we get? Eat your heart out Carrie!

Why Clean When You Can Bake?

Forget Fabreeze, throw away the air fresheners and incense, NOTHING makes a house smell better than fresh baked banana bread. All modesty aside, I make the yummiest banana bread around. Inspired by some great banana bread my girlfriend Karma had for us a few weeks back, I decided to crack out my Grandma’s old recipe book and with a few small modifications, I have a recipe the whole family loves (including James, who despite being a human garberator absolutely hates banana bread, but loves this one). So here you go, hope you try it!

Banana Loaf:

• 1/4 cup margerine
• 1 cup sugar
• 1/4 cup chocolate chips (original recipe calls for nuts…but since thats a no go, we do chocolate instead!)
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1 1/2 cups flour
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 3 ripe bananas
• pinch salt

Cream margerine and sugar: combine remaining ingredients. Place into a greased and floured loaf pan. Bake at 350 F for 45-60 minutes.

I like to also sprinkle a bit of the sugar and cinnamon onto the top of the loaf, when it bakes it becomes this beautiful crunchy top to the loaf. Forget bread, as James says, this is more like banana cake. Yum!

Peepshow at the Rivett Household

Last week my pastor stopped by my house to drop something off. It was the middle of the afternoon, the boys were upstairs playing. I was chatting away while my visitor stood on the front steps. "How's your day going?" he asks. As I'm about to answer, K bursts down the stairs, waving and shouting "Hi! Hi!". I turn around in time to see him, wearing nothing but socks (mismatched) and underwear (on backwards of course, cause that's how he rolls). As I'm turing beet red, all I can muster in response is, "That about sums it up"

What's up with little boys and pants? I can't keep them on my kids. I thought it must be a guy thing, James has been known to do a lot of boxer only roaming (apologies to our neighbours who have likely caught this spectacle through our windows). But I've heard from my friend that she has the same issue with her daughter.

Even as I type this, K has once again stripped down to his undies. Oh, I hope this is a phase, can you imagine what my conversations with the teachers will sounds like?

Careful if you knock on my door, you never know what you're gonna see.

The (other) Ring (aka. K to the Rescue)

What is wrong with me?

Yesterday we had a busy day. We had church first thing, then two showings, dinner at mom's, and offer on the house...it was crazy. It started out feeling rushed.

8:00am: Up, shower, get kids and us dressed.
8:30am: Everyone in truck, drive to church
11:00am: Service finished, back home to clean
11:30am: Feed kidlets
11:45am: Kidlets to playground while Jimmy cleans up
12:30pm: Out of house for showings, Realtors calls with counteroffer on house (this has been in negotiation since Saturday at 2pm)
1:00pm: Out to Cochrane with dogs and boys in tow to check out spec home
3:00pm: Negotiating with Realtors
3:30pm: Dinner at Nana and Pops
4:30pm: Home to sign contracts on our house....but
4:45pm: Problem with deal, realtors go to fix...we wait
5:45pm: Problems fixed, contract signed
6:30pm: My engagement ring is lost


All the excitement about the home  selling comes to an abrupt halt when I realise I have lost my engagement ring...and possibly my mind.

Since the house is on the market we had taken all my nice jewellery out of the house with the exception of my engagement ring, which is all I wear now since I nearly lost a finger due to my absent mindedness. I don't really take it off unless I'm showering or doing dirty work, which I did on Saturday night. I was working with chicken and I took it off not wanting to get it full of chicken slime. I didn't even realize I hadn't put it back on until mid afternoon.

James had cleaned the house, and he hadn't remembered seeing it. And I didn't remember putting it back on after the chicken mess. So I'm panicking. I have gone through drawers, dug through garbage bags with chicken guts (gagging all the way), crawled on the floors, looked in pockets, and in laundry piles, in my purse, in the bathroom, EVERYWHERE. Its gone. And all I can think is that we did have two couples through the house.

Could people really be that awful. If you saw a nice ring on a counter, and no one was watching, would you grab it?

I hope not, but I've heard worse.

I'm crying, my sweet K is saying, "Its okay Mommy, we all feel a little nervous sometimes. We'll find your ring."

By the end of the night I've resigned myself to the fact that I've lost my ring, that some evil-doer has swiped it and am seriously considering tattooing a ring on my finger since I am clearly not destined to wear a ring.

At the crack of dawn, K comes into my room, pops on the lights and runs to my bed, "Mommy, I have to tell you something"
Me: "*Grumble*...(incoherent half asleep ramblings)"
K: "Mommy, look, I was tricking you and playing with my trains, and I looked, and there was your wedding ring"

And there it was. My ring. A kidlet (either mine or one of our passer-throughs yesterday) must have grabbed it off a counter and played with it and left it in the middle of K's train set. Best early morning wake up ever.

K you're my hero!