Extra Cream Anyone?

Homemade Butter

 A young girl in my ward here gave me the coolest suggestion.  Every year for Thanksgiving, she and her siblings make homemade butter!  When she explained how simple it is - as simple as pouring heavy cream into a jar and shaking it...no 100 year old wooden barrel required;)- I knew that we HAD to try it!

After cleaning the house this morning I rewarded the kids with a movie.  They chose Star Wars 2.  While watching, the kids took turns shaking the little jar of cream mixed with a tsp of salt.  It wasn't too terribly long before the novelty wore off and I had to rotate in a turn of my own;)  The kids don't yet grasp the coolness of making your OWN BUTTER!!  After about 20 minutes of moderate shaking, mixed in with resting and a few minutes of vigorous shaking, we opened the lid and found this:

YEAAA!!  Butter!!  I'm drooling at the sight of it!!

We poured of the liquid (buttermilk) into a cup and then loaded our fresh butter into our Thanksgiving Day serving dish and placed it in the fridge:

Really and truly, it tastes silkier, smoother and richer than the store bought stuff AND it's fun!!  It's like jumping back in time...and taking Star Wars with you;)

Tip:  At first the cream is, of course, thin and easy to shake...keep shakin'.  After a while it becomes the consistency of frothy cream and seems to hardly move in the jar at all...keep shakin'.  A few minutes after this, small lumps will begin to appear in your cream...still...keep shaking.  Your honin' in on it.  Within a few minutes it will look like the picture above and you can separate it from your butter milk and enjoy!  Hope my suggestion is worth something to you and you give it a try!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

The "Beatles" at Epcot

In 1996 (this is Joey), my family went to Florida to pick up my older brother, Jake, at the end of his LDS mission.  We went to Epcot Center, where my mother painfully dragged us to all of the pseudoeducational exhibits.  Epcot, overall, was lame back then.  And it is still pretty lame today.

However, on the "Showcase of Nations" (or whatever it is called) side of the park, there is a small gazebo located in "England" where a tribute band called The British Invasion plays Beatles and other cover tunes from the 1960s.  I don't remember anything from Epcot 1996 except the other-worldly sight of my parents dancing, screaming, and acting like teenagers while the band played "Help," "She Loves You," and other staples.

I didn't know the Beatles' music back then, as my parents had reared us on a strict diet of The Beach Boys and Peter, Paul, & Mary.  Thus my musical soul went malnourished, deprived of essential nutrients, while a bounty of Rolling Stones and Beatles LPs rotted on the shelf.

That night in 1996 was my awakening, and on this trip to Disney World I had one request and one request only.  We were going to suffer through a day at Epcot in order to watch the fake Beatles.

I had been preparing the kids for over a year, putting together a playlist called "Daddy's Music" for bath time and playing my guitar while singing "All My Lovin'" and "She Loves You" before they went to bed at night.

But nothing could have prepared me for the freak show that our kids put on while The British Invasion played our favorite tunes.  My favorite moment is when Isaac strums along to the guitar part as if on cue.  That's my boy!  Please excuse my off-key background vocals.  You can't go to a Beatles show, even a fake Beatles show, and not SING ALONG!

Georgie's Magical Dance

It was about 8:30 pm on Monday, November 2nd, 2009.  We had just stepped off of Cinderella's Magical Carousel and were ready to bring our day at Disney's Magic Kingdom to a close.  But the true magic was yet to come.

With the fairy tale tunes from the carousel in the background, our very own Princess Georgie was transported to her own world.  Some of her nascent Studio One dance moves come through, but most of it is her own spontaneous choreography.

P.S. You can hear us cut Isaac off rather harshly about halfway through.  He was a little upset at the time, but I hope he understands eventually.

P.P.S.  The segment is woefully short due to our amateurish lack of preparation.  Always bring an extra tape!

A Typical Sunday/Saturday Morning

Joey and I were talking in bed this morning and I commented how much I loved the background noise.  We were chatting, at 7am, to the sound of the kids playing in their room together.  ANd this is the background noise of all our weekend mornings, something I miss hearing every morning since Isaac went to school.  When left undisturbed, they always wake up with a vivid imagination together.  I love it so much that I decided to post about it!  I wish I had a live post from my mother, telling me what we were doing on a typical weekend morning, complete with a picture...

...(I wish it was a cuter one...and yes, I know my curtains don't match...I'm working on it;)  This is, hands down, the greatest thing about blogging!  Back to my story, by about 7:15 on weekend mornings, the kids have unloaded every stuffed animal, princess barbie and star wars toy onto their bed and are playing anything from Star Wars, to animal families.  Almost always, their method of play is Isaac narrating what he's doing, "and then Luke gets out of the ship and rescues you,"  Georgie listens for her cue, for Isaac to tell her what to do and say next, and then she does it, word for word.  When it comes to creative play, Isaac almost always runs the show.  By about 7:45, she ditches him to find me, but he almost always follows, begging her to come back.  If I'm in bed, she climbes in and I try to convince her to snuggle.  That lasts for about 2 seconds because she's hungry.  "Mommy, can you make me some brefast?"  I reluctantly climb out of bed or Joey runs in from the computer or the guitar, where he spends his Saturday mornings, and gets it for them.  A typical breakfast in the Merback household is Yogurt and Grape-nuts, or oatmeal or toast.  There's usually some fighting going on at breakfast..."she has more than me" or "she always gets that placemat" or "mommy, I said for you to get me some orange juice."  But, if we're lucky, the mood is pretty peaceful.  Its nice to wake up to!  Maybe I should try and recall those joyful moments later in the day when it takes all I can muster not to send them to weekend school;)

flowers, flowers, everywhere

flowers, flowers, everywhere

I did my first craft show last weekend and sold a whopping $100.00 worth!!  (I hope you're catching my sarcasm:)  The traffic wasn't very high, I put it quite a bit of time and even money toward the whole project and didn't quite make it all back but, still, I'd say the experience was worth it.  I shared a booth with a talented jewelry making friend named Nichole and we both felt the stress of looming rejection or failure, but we had fun!  Some friends asked me to post pictures with some tutorial links for the things that I made.

These fabric flowers were probably the most successful and unique things that I made.  Adults, teenagers and kids liked these because they are sort of casual/organic looking.  The edges frey as they are worn, which I love.  I had a box full of vintage buttons that my Gran had saved over the years that really came in handy.  I would recommend buying a lot on ebay for any sewing projects that you do.  Its hard to see the feathery, flouncyness from these pictures but they do have an almost whispy, petal look to them from the way they are folded.  I've been in the habit lately of holding on to any remnants of fabric that I get...be it old clothes, stained clothes, sheer curtains from when we moved in...whatever.  If there's any morsel of cuteness to a stained clothing item, I save it and repurpose it.  These clothes came in really handy for these flowers!  I'll bet you could find the stuff in your house to make a flower or two right now...for free!  Let me know if you do.

I used a lot of feathers on the silk flowers.  Thee cutest ones, bright pink and peacock feathers, sold out so I don't have any pictures.  Here is where I found them and for a pretty bang up deal too!

Last and probably least, I wanted to post how the vintage Belle dress turned out.  About my dilemma over keeping it a dress for dress up or making it into an adorable skirt for Sundays, my friend, Alyson suggested doing both.  She suggested making it into a two piece play dress who's bottom half could also be used for Sundays, weddings, Christmas etc.  I thought that was a genius idea and proceeded to hack into the work of some amazing mother from the 1940's.  Let's hope that she wasn't glaring knives at me from her cloud in heaven:)  Perhaps she's forgiven me now that she can see the finished product.  The bottom half was no big deal...rip out the seams and add an elastic waist...nothing to get excited about!  But the top was another story.  The results you see here were PURELY good luck and chance.  I had no real game plan...I just went about in my hairbrained way of cutting, patching, gathering and sewing until it came out looking as much like Belle's gown as I could possibly get it to.  I think Georgie 'll like it!  I'm glad that family and friends can only see pictures because if you saw the real deal you might notice what a shoddy job I did!  It's best, for me, that you remain in ignorance!

Better Late Than Never...Halloween

I know you'll be shocked, but Georgie was a princess this year.  Georgie had wanted to be Aurora since I first asked her the "costume question" a few months ago.  I told her that we weren't buying halloween costumes this year so she had to pick something from her closet.  When hearing what Georgie wanted to be, a kind friend let us borrow her little girls Aurora costume from a few years before.  It was perfect and Georgie loved it.

Of all things, Isaac wanted to be a bat.  I was pretty excited about this idea because it was his own, completely...not TV's idea, a friends idea or anything else.  I had fun putting his costume together out of a black beanie, an umbrella (for wings) and a black hoodie.  Cheap but cute!

Happy late Halloween!

Georgie Says....

"It already was Isaac's turn and now its my turn now.  I went to Disney World and then I had to go and then I had to fly and then I went to see Altus, OK."  I'm going to tell you about Disney World if Mom doesn't kill me before hand.  I't's tricky keeping these hands away from the keys and keyboard!

  (last part by Mom)

I'm very beautiful.  Pluto is such a good dog.

"This slide was cute and small and pink.

And that other picture was about I was silly and a hermit."

eh?

  

"This wig was long and I was pretending it was my hair.  I liked to look in the mirror when I wore it and carried my purse."

"These are the Ooo la la girls.  Daddy told me that was their name.  They are from It's A Small World After All ride.  Ya, ya, it was my favorite."

"She's captured and we want to save her.  And she is very so pretty.  Her dress is made out of fabric and her mom made it until she corrected Peter Pan.  And now her hands are tied up by the pirates just like this.  We tried to kill the pirates and save the pirate ship and Tinkerbell."

"I licked it and I just did."

"I was very so beautiful with my crown and my dress and one nation under Disney World!"  LOL;) Your guess on that one is as good as mine!

Over and out from the one nation under Disney World!