Today Templeton turns 3 years old! Or 21 in dog years. He’s been the best doggy and is super sweet. He lets Kaden do pretty much whatever he wants with him and pretends to enjoy it. Or maybe he does enjoy it, who knows, he’s a strange little dog. 😛  And what do you get a dog for his third birthday? A bath! As pitiful as he looks in the pictures, he actually wanted a one.

Yesterday I made roast beef and vegetables in the crock pot.  It smelled sooo good all day long and I wanted to eat it so bad. But I had to wait until the husband got home from work.  It was a lot spicier than I had planned on it being, but it was good. We both like some heat.  When the Hubs finally got home, I dove right in. I was starving. So I forgot to take a picture of it when it was done.

I used:

• A 2 1/2 lb. roast

• 2 tsp. salt

• 1 TB black pepper 

• 1 tsp. Season All 

• 1 tsp. Ground Cayenne Pepper

• 1 tsp. SALSPRAY COMPANY Devil’s Dust (It’s a mixture of Garlic, Salt, Paprike, Black Tellicherry Pepper, Chipotle, Lemon Peel and Habanero. We got it a specialty spice store.)

• 1 TB garlic powder

• 2 medium potatoes, peeled and chunked

• About 8  carrots, peeled and chunked

• 1 large white onion, coarsely chopped

• 1 1/2 cup beef broth

• 1/2 cup Worcestershire sauce

Mix all seasonings together in small bowl, and rub on all sides of pot roast. Put the vegetables around the roast and pour in the broth and Worcestershire sauce.  I cooked it on high for a few hours and then turned it down to low for the rest of the time (about 2-3 more hours) because our crock pot super boils and burns everything.

Tonight I made a new recipe: Butter Chicken. It sounded ok, so I thought I’d give it a try. I had no idea that it would be so delicious! The marinated chicken had such good flavor and combined with the rest of the flavors it was amazing.  I made Basmati rice and poured in on top of the rice. The recipe made way more than the two of us needed, but it was so good I totally didn’t mind the leftovers.

This picture doesn’t do this dish justice. I was so into it that I forgot to take a picture before I started and ate all the chicken. 😛

Here’s the recipe I used:

• 4 boneless, skinless chicken breast halves, cut into bite size pieces
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2  teaspoon black pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1/4 teaspoon cumin
• 1/4 teaspoon cardamom
• 1 whole lime, juiced ( I just used concentrated lime juice)
• 1 medium onion, diced
• 1/4 cup butter
• 1 can (14.5 oz.) tomato sauce
• 1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes
• 1 pint heavy cream

Today Kaden and I made slime! He was a little worried about what we were making at first, but in the end he had fun playing with it.

We used 1 1/2 cups of clear Elmer’s glue and 1 1/2 cups of liquid starch. I used STA-FLO. Mixed them together and separated it into four bowls and added a drop or two of food coloring to each. He ended up mixing it all together anyways, but it looked cool.

Tonight I made bread using the spent grain that my husband used to brew his beer with. I’m not sure exactly what kind of grains they are, but I think it’s wheat, rye caramel malt? Something like that anyways. I had never made a loaf of bread in my life, so I’m pretty proud that it didn’t turn out to be a complete disaster.

I used:

• 3 cups all purpose flour
• 1 cup wheat flour
• 2 tsp. salt
• 2 tsp. yeast
• 3 cups spent grain
• ¼ cup of sugar
• ¼ cup of butter
• 1 egg (Beaten)
• 1 cup of milk

Mixed together the first 6 ingredients, then the last 3 until dough pulled away from sides of bowl and all ingredients were well mixed. I used my hand mixer with the dough hook beaters for about 5 minutes or so.

Then I shaped the dough into a ball  in an oiled bowl to rise for about and hour and a half.  Next I squished the dough out into a rectangle and divided it into 3 equal portions. Then put each into a greased loaf pan to rise for about another hour. Then I scored top of loaves, and baked in a 350 degree preheated oven for about 45 minutes.

I’d been looking for a simple but fun project do to with Kaden, so we went to Hobby Lobby to see what we could find. We walked all through the store and the partical board letter ‘K’ was what he wanted most. Which was fine with me since it only cost a few dollars. So we took it home and got started. I gave him a paintbrush and finger paint (That was the only kind of paint we had, but it worked just fine) and he went to town.  He had a blast getting to paint it and was so excited to hang it on his bedroom wall. Waiting for it to dry was the hardest thing ever for a 4 year old to do. After it dried I glued a picture hanger on the back with some extra epoxy glue I had laying around from a previous project, and voila!  He’s pretty proud of his creation.

I found this project online and had to do it. It was actually pretty simple.

I used:

• 1×8 board cut in 18″ pieces
• 3/8″ Ceiling Flange
• 3/4″ Split Ring Hanger
• Wood screws (I don’t remember exactly what size, but short enough to not go through the back of the 1″ board)
• 3/8″ Threaded Rod 12″  cut into 3″ pieces( Cut with a small hacksaw. It takes a little work, but if I can do it, it can’t be too hard”

I stained the wood boards and let them dry. Then screwed on the ceiling flange.  The 3″ piece of the threaded rod screws into that, and then the split ring hanger and bottle of course. I nailed a picture hanger on the back and threw in some flowers I got from Hobby Lobby. Hooray!

We drink a lot of wine and usually at family get-togethers wine glasses get set down and people are always asking, “Is this my glass? I think this is mine?” So I thought this was a fun way to keep track of whose is whose. 😛 I got a little bottle of black chalkboard paint at Hobby Lobby and some wine glasses at Dollar Tree for a buck. I forgot chalk though. Duh! So Kaden’s sidewalk chalk had to do.

The husband was out of town for work and I was bored. So found something to do. The bathroom mirror was plain and boring and was starting to look bad on the bottom edge. So I went to Lowe’s and had wood trim pieces cut and bought 4 of the little square pieces. I spray painted them white put a sealer on them. After they dried I carved out the spots for the mirror brackets so they would lay flat. It would probably have been much easier if I had a chisel or something, but all I had was a dull utility knife.  That part was not fun and very time consuming. Then I realized that I carved the wrong piece of wood and ruined it. UGH. So I had to go BACK to Lowe’s and but another trim piece, paint and seal it and wait for it to dry. Then I had to carve it. Then I glued them on the the edges of the mirror using an epoxy glue.  I had to do this while the husband was gone because if I were to have told him I wanted to glue wood pieces onto the mirror he wouldn’t have liked the idea. But he liked it when he saw it.  It doesn’t make a HUGE impact, but it looks nicer than it did before.

This was a fun little project. Lately almost all of our light bulbs have decided to burn out all at the same time. So I’ve had a lot of old light bulbs. Using pliers I broke of the black part at the end of the bulb. (Wearing safety goggles, of course) Then I used needle nose pliers to pull out the insides. I poked two holes in the metal part with an ice pick and hung it up with some gardening wire. I’m sure it could be hung up with something else, I’m not sure why I chose gardening wire. But, whatever, it works. I put some water in and some flowers. (Well, weeds really. I didn’t have any real flowers at the time.) 😛