Whole wheat applesauce zucchini bread

Fresh from the garden applesauce zucchini bread

Ingredients

• 3 cups flour (I use 1 c. oats, 1 c. whole wheat, and 1 c. white flour)
  
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
  
• 1 teaspoon baking powder
• 3 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 3 eggs
• 1 cup applesauce
• 2 1/4 cups white sugar
• 3 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 2 cups grated zucchini
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Directions

1. Grease and flour two 8 x 4 inch pans. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Sift flour, salt, baking powder, soda, and cinnamon together in a bowl.
3. Beat eggs, applesauce, vanilla, and sugar together in a large bowl. Add sifted ingredients to the creamed mixture, and beat well. Stir in zucchini and nuts until well combined. Pour batter into prepared pans.
4. Bake for 40 to 60 minutes, or until tester inserted in the center comes out clean. Cool in pan on rack for 20 minutes. Remove bread from pan, and completely cool.

Octopus Watercolor

Painting renominates my soul and after having kids, this is one of those hobbies that takes space and time.  Both of which, I don't have very much of.  Just wanted to share what I have been working on.

Quick set cement hand print tiles

Oregon summers are the best! While at the beach, we mixed up some quick set cement and made hand print tiles on the sand.  

Start by mixing the cement the thickenss of pancake batter

Pour onto leveled sand

make your hand print impressions

decorate with found treasures 

Ours was dry to take home in 2 hours, but fully set by the end of the day. 

Garden helper

One of my favorite things is kids playing (and helping) me dig in the dirt.  Thanks Little Helper!

Literary Baby Shower

 My girlfriend lives on a farm property and is a teacher, so for her baby shower, we combined the cute spring animals with books. I cut up vintage primary readers and made them into garlands by sewing the cut out circles into a chain.

 Here is the buffet spread.

Does this project look familiar? The baby's name starts with R and what better a way to greet her arrival than by a book wreath with her initial! 

 I made book flags for each croissant sandwich.  It turns out that of the flags I made (triangles of book print glued to a toothpick), some, well, most of them, were of a steamy and rather trashy romance novel. Ha! It was great to read each snip-it of text aloud while fawning over pink baby clothes. 

Water Wall of recycled containers

At the farm summer camp my kiddo went to, they had this awesome water wall. They really encouraged the kids to get messy and learn through play.  What an awesome way to clear out those cupboards and make something magical for your kids. 

 My kid's birthday party has long since passed and wanted to post a picture of the invite I made for them.  Using scraps of leftover scrapbooking paper, I printed this phrase onto tinted computer paper and adhered it to the base scrap of paper. 

Fairy things and dragon wings or super hero gear,
We want to see you dressed up when the birthday time draws near.
Here is where the fun will be, please come, stay, and play
So join Liam and Macey to celebrate their super great big day.

I then used a 1/4 of a circle for the cone and two pom poms for ice cream scoops (bead sprinkles of course) and stuck that through the upper left corner for some DIY dimension. 

Using Celery Stamps

I believe that it is great just to use the items around you as inspiration for artwork. For this project, my kids and I cut off the base of a celery bunch, dipped that in red paint for the rosette and used the left over stalks dipped in green paint as the leaves.  It was a really easy project  and the rosettes were perfect as "I'm thinking of you" cards for the Grandparents.