Friday, July 20, 2012

Guest Post!!

Hey y'all! I'm guest posting over at Leilaland (http://myleilaland.blogspot.com/2012/07/making-rainbows-guest-post.html?m=1) today so go check out how to...

Make Rainbows!

Happy crafting!

Rulissa

Saturday, July 7, 2012

Sidewalk Painting...

Also known as...

How to keep children from 4-14 busy.

I've seen this all over Pinterest and the Interwebs, so I thought we needed to give it a try.  Afterall, I already had all the supplies on hand and the monkeys were making me crazy - per usual!!!

To make your "paint" use equal amounts cornstarch and water.  Then add food coloring.  We started with 5-6 drops of each color.  


Then, we put our painting pants on and went crazy.  The paint dries to a chalky substance and washes away with water!  Easiest clean up EVER!!
  



(This is my standard when painting or drawing with chalk.  I know - adorable!)

Happy painting, y'all!!

Rulissa

Thursday, July 5, 2012

You Say Tomato...

I say...

Holy Cow! What am I going to do with all these?!


My amazing hubby thought... "Why not make spaghetti sauce?" (You should know, our monkeys LOVE spaghetti - they'd eat it for every meal every day...IF I made it!)

So - we looked around online for a good recipe to try and found something AMAZING! Did you know you can make spaghetti sauce in the crock-pot?!?!

Here is what we did... Not so much as rules, but guidelines (name that movie!)

Ripe tomatoes
Onions
Any other veggies you want (optional)
Garlic
Italian seasoning
Salt
Pepper

Chunk up your tomatoes. Chunk up your onion. I have a standard 4-qt crock pot and I filled it to the top. (I know it's hard not to have exact measurements, just go with it!). Just eyeball it and use about 3 times as many tomatoes as other veggies. I also used 4-5 cloves of garlic... Just depends on how many vampires you want to ward off! ;-)

Now, add your salt, pepper and Italian seasoning. You will have an opportunity to add more later so don't overkill it now.

Cook on low for 3 hours.

Your tomatoes are cooked down, so now is the time to blend it together. Transfer it to your food processor and pulse it until it's as smooth or chunky as you like it.

Then return it to your crock-pot and cook for another 3-5 hours. This is when you can taste it and add more seasoning if you want. Also, this is when you can add meat, if you like meat sauce. (If you are making this to freeze or can, DON'T add your meat to the sauce until you are ready to use it!) You can also add a small can of tomato paste if you like thick sauce - again, wait until you are ready to use it to do this.

And... we're done! Each batch makes about 2 quarts of sauce.


Now... Above I mentioned optional veggies. These could be anything from celery to zucchini. Spaghetti sauce is an excellent way for your family to eat their veggies and not even know it! ;-)
(And the movie was Pirates of the Caribbean...The Pirate Code- not so much rules as guidelines.)

Happy slow cooking- love you all!

Rulissa