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I made a sign from a piece of fence for a friend of mine.
It's actually just sharpie marker with polycrylic over it to protect the flaky paint.
Here's a close-up of the words. I just love this hymn, don't you?
You might recognize the fencing as the same material we made the valance in the nursery. I still love how it looks!
You can read more about here.
Have you made anything lately?
We're planning a cross-country trip this summer with a weekend at Yellowstone National Park! I've wanted to go there for years and years, so we're jumping at the opportunity even though we can't stay long.
I thought I'd whet our collective appetites for an adventure in the wilderness!
Have you ever been to Yellowstone? What was your experience like? What would you recommend? Keep in mind that we don't have much time there and will be on a budget. We also have three small children! Where would you stay? What are the top three things we HAVE to see?
Be inspired!
There's nothing better than spending time with Daddy on Father's Day! My boys' Daddy thought we could all do with an outing, so we spent the day at the John Deere Pavilion in Moline.
The boys all enjoyed climbing in the big tractors!
After exploring all the tractors, we enjoyed a delicious meal at Johnny's Italian Steakhouse next door. By the way, steakhouses are a great place to eat if you're vegetarian!
What did you do to celebrate Father's Day?
This was quite the week! Our suppers are a great illustration of that, and because of the craziness I don't have pictures of most meals, but I tried to make up for it by including a recipe for our favorite veggie burgers!
First, the run-down of our suppers this week.
Friday: My husband got a thanks-for-all-you-do Visa gift card from his boss at work, so we decided to eat out--Chinese food! My picture is awful, but the food was great! It's not hard to eat vegetarian food at a Chinese restaurant. Usually they are happy to substitute tofu for meat, but you do have to watch out for some of the sauces. We had tofu, veggies and noodles as well as egg-drop soup.
Saturday: Typically this is a light meal because lunch is a big one, but I forgot to take a picture and can't think for the life of me what we ate this particular Saturday night!
Sunday: I tried a new recipe and highly recommend it! It's from the blog Novel Eats and it's called Coconut Ginger Vegetable Soup. Novel Eats is a great place for all sorts of vegan recipes and she does such a great job with her instructions and pictures of the steps in her recipes. We loved this soup but it does have an odd combination of tastes--coconut, ginger, lime... Since I was doing a Thai soup, I added noodles with a Thai peanut sauce and steamed broccoli. So yummy!
Monday: We had a showing (our house is on the market) over the supper hour. I was planning to make a picnic but my husband suggested we just go to Subway. Ok! Sure made my day easier!
Tuesday: Our Bible study group met for supper at our house. We had minestrone (made by me), cornbread and green salad as well as a fruit salad with yogurt dressing (made by our guests). It was a light, delicious meal, but I forgot to get a picture.
Wednesday: The same people who looked at our house on Monday came back with their parents. That's a great thing, but they didn't call until 5 and wanted to see the house at 6! I was alone with the boys as my husband was at a meeting until late--and he had the car! The boys and I took a walk to the creek and had fun throwing rocks and wading. When we finally got back I toasted some frozen leftover pancakes which we ate with peanut butter and applesauce.
Thursday: Finally! I made something! The boys have been begging for watermelon and they were finally only $4 this week. We ate that as well as fresh corn and homemade veggie burgers!
Here's how I make veggie burgers.
2 cups cooked garbanzos + 1 cup water
OR 1 can of garbanzos, pintos or black beans with liquid
2 cups quick oats
1 cup walnuts
1 onion
2 cloves garlic
1/4 cup Bragg's liquid aminos (or low-sodium soy sauce)
2 T nutritional yeast
1 t salt
Add the garbanzos + liquid, oats, walnuts (whole), garlic cloves, Bragg's, yeast and salt to the bowl of a food processor with the chopping blade inside, put the grater/slicer attachment on top, turn it on and feed the onion through the top. Let the machine do the mixing and chopping for you! It needs to be well-mixed, so I let it run for about a minute.
It will look something like this:
You can tell that I've already scooped a bunch out, can't you? See:
I like to use my electric skillet for frying burgers. Use whatever works for you! If I have more time, I like to bake the burgers. It takes about 30 minutes at 350*. I scoop the mixture with an ice cream scoop which makes a nice shape and keeps the burgers the same size.
The burgers need to be flattened while you fry them (or before baking). I use a potato masher dipped in water for this.
Fry over medium heat for about 5 minutes, then flip the burgers and let them cook for another 5 minutes.
The recipe above makes about 2 dozen burgers, depending on the size. The burgers store well in the fridge or freezer. I like to use leftover patties
as a main dish by placing the cooked burgers in a baking dish, covering
them with gravy (vegetarian, of course), and baking them in a 350* oven
for about half an hour. You can also use this recipe to make veggie meatballs by using a smaller scoop, not flattening them, and baking them in the oven.
We enjoy our veggie burgers with mayo, barbeque sauce, onion, tomato and lettuce. They also grill well if they're pre-cooked.
I hope you like the veggie burgers! Let me know if you want more ideas for vegetarian/vegan meals, or more recipes.
What did you eat this week? You can see our suppers from last week and the week before HERE and HERE.
Enjoy!
My little boys had birthdays last month. With birthdays come presents and then come thank you cards, right? My mom sent me some cute ones but I needed more and couldn't find them anywhere! The ugly ones I did find were $4 for a box of 10!
So what does a good crafty mom do but make some!
Remember these canvas portraits I made?
See all the birthday cards? There were more too. Well, I took some of them and cut 'em up and glued them on blank cards that I bought forever ago at Michael's. And here you go: 8 free cards.
Just for fun, I thought each of the cards deserved a close-up.
I cut around the frogs and lily pads, attached them to a blue card with scrapbook tape, then drew the water and the one frog's tongue.
Inside I wrote, Hopping by to say THANKS!
This crane was originally on top of a cake, but I just cut it in half and added it to a white card. The inside says, Thanks for the load. Nothing like a little cheese!
This cute little monkey was on the front of a card and the yellow printed section was the back of another card. The inside says, Swinging by to say thanks!
Mr. Frog came with googly eyes but I had to replace them for this card. I sincerely hope one of my kids did NOT eat the originals... but I suspect that's indeed what happened. The bugs were on the same card but I drew the little dotted trails and the eyebrows. The inside reads, Just hopped by to say thanks! I know, pretty creative.
The truck came from one card and the yellow pattern the back of the same card that you saw above. You can see that I wrote Thanks for the haul for my birthday! I wish I had centered it with just Thanks for the haul. Oh well!
These balloons came from card but the yellow stripe is cardstock I had in my craft closet. I had a sheet of thank-you related transfers, you know the kind that you rub really hard and they peel off? I really sound like I know what I'm talking about, don't I? Well, that's how You're the best! got there.
Continuing the balloon theme, the picture and the light green section were from a card the boys got. I glued it on a green card and added silver and red polka dots and another rub-on transfer that says Thank You. In case you didn't read that on your own from the picture.
The cute little bear was already floating around with the balloons. I just cut around them and added them to a blue card. I added the Merci! and Thanks! with more rub-on transfers and really hated this card! Then I thought to add the cloud which was cut from another part of a birthday card and glued on upside down. Much better.
So there you go! 8 free cards and a fun evening being crafty. The best part? Finally crossing "thank you cards" off my list!
