Snow Days!

They weren't kidding when they said we were going to get a ton of snow were they?! :)

I don't know about you, but I love snow days. I hope we are out all week. Even if it means putting up with grouchy kids who argue and fight most of the day, lol. Actually they haven't been too bad,.....yet.




Starla is obsessed with Littlest Pet shop these days. She will just play and play with them for hours....





Something about snow always makes me want to cook and bake, lots of comfort food. Which is why I know my diet is going to be in shambles this week. I've been wanting to make The Pioneer Woman's cinnamon rolls since I got her cookbook as a birthday present last august, but just hadn't really found the time. So I decided that yesterday would be the day!

I love the Pioneer Woman, if you have never been to her website you must go check it out, now. Go on, click on it, I will wait..... :)

She is such an inspiration to me. The fact that she took her talents and hobbies and created this enterprise for herself from the ground up. She's just an oklahoman housewife, mother of 4, she homeschools her kids, and she loves cooking and photography. So one day she started a blog, and now she is a celebrity of the cooking world. I love it.

She's going to be in OKC saturday for a book signing from 1-4pm and I REALLY want to go. But the boys have their choir performances at 3pm, so I don't now if I can make it through the line in time. :(

And I notice that all of my heros so to speak, the people I look up to and who inspire me, are all strong southern women that, except for The Pioneer Woman, came from just about nothing, from poverty, and made a name for themselves. Dolly Parton, Paula Deen, Gretchen Wilson & J.K Rowling. All but Dolly were a single mother, living in dirt poor circumstances, some on welfare, and all of them took a passion and a talent and worked their tushy off and made something of themselves. They didn't let their circumstance stop them or hold them back, they didn't just settle for that way of life, they had a dream and they made it come true. And each of them inspire me, and I look up to these women. They are my heros, I want to be like them when I grow up. :)

Ok, back to my cinnamon rolls....




I love that her cookbook is just like her blog, each step is pictured and explained. That and she makes funny comments along the way....




I actually halved her recipe, which will make 50-60 cinnamon rolls. I could have made them a froze them before baking, but I figured that was just asking for trouble for my waistline. And since we can't get otu and deliver any to friends and family, then we didn't need that many.










yum.....



We made 3 pans, one we ate yesterday, one we ate for breakfast this morning and we have one more in the fridge. :)


the boys getting ready to go outside.....




Starla hasn't been out in it yet, and I've only gone out to take pics and feed the birds. Maybe it will melt a bit and we can make snowmen, but so far the snow just isn't sticking.

















Alan shoveling our driveway. This was after he tried to venture out to wal-mart and got stuck halfway out of the drive. He had to have help from the neighbors to get him back into it.....










video games, movies and PJ's...what a way to spend the day.





The kids made snow snow ice cream. Starla & Roman just made plan ol' vanilla, but Bourbon mixed a packet of hot chocolate with his and made chocolate....





yum!




I decided my next cooking project of the day would be cake balls. Most everyone in my circle of friends are familiar with them, but I know my family that reads this are probably not. There is this website devoted to them, Bakerella and she does some AMAZING things with them. I really want her cookbook for them, but haven't managed to get it yet.

bake a cake, any flavor, crumble it up and add a can of frosting, any flavor...





mix it all up.....






shape them into balls or other shapes, and then dip them into melted chocolate, candy coating or sprinkles... whatever you want. We did some with the different colored candy melts and some in a variety of sprinkles.





Nothing fancy like Bakerella, just simple Valentine's inspired cake balls. Don't they look super cute on my little cupcake plates I got from my secret pal at work last week?!










Day two!

Starla has been in her PJ's for 2 days now, but I think we will remedy that shortly today....





Yesterday I noticed lots of bird scrambling around, trying to find warmth and food. There were even a couple of beautiful red cardinals hanging about our front yard.

So when Alan was finally able to venture out to wal-mart last night, I had him pick up some birdseed.

Today we made birdseed ornaments.

Take your birdseed, mix it with about a cup of flour and a cup of water, give or take. You just want to make a sticky goopy concoction that will harden.






get some cookie cutters and spray them with cooking spray





put the sticky birdseed goop into the cookie cutters, then cutup some straws and put one in each of them to keep open a little hole to string some thread or yarn into.




Then you can wait for them to air dry and put some string on them.


And now they are outside, hanging from various places, in hopes that the birdies will find them.







But you know, I noticed lots of birdies flying around yesterday, but today so far I haven't even seen one....


Roman is the only one who wanted to go out today and play.....



Yesterday was all about food stuff. And I still have an itching to make more stuff; cookies, scones, breads. But I am going to make myself not spend the day making food stuff today, but instead do some other projects maybe. But I can't quite figure out what I want to work on. I could scrapbook, make my sock animals or monsters, start one of the many sewing projects I want to do, make some valentines gifts....the possibilites are so numerous. I really should be getting stuff ready for the JBF consignment sale, or working on my novel, or something productive. And then I think I should be playing more with the kids, board games and art projects and stuff with them instead of just stuff I want to do. This is why I hope we are out all week.... :)

Our week in review....

Roman's volleyball game on tuesday.....









Starla fell asleep on the chair watching a movie....



Playing with daddy.....









Starla has a new big girl bed! Aunt Kim gave us a trundle bed (she was the one who gave us this bed too, it was Karli's bunkbeds, Roman has one of them too!) so we gave Bourbon the trundle bed and Starla got Bourbon's bed. She was very excited. She got new sheets for it, which she picked out herself...Littles Pet Shop.











this same evening Starla was jumping on the bed and I told her to stop or she would get hurt, she said "No I won't" and about a minute later she dived down and overshot her pillow and instead smacked her head very hard against the headboard. She has a nice big bruise right smack in the middle of her forehead....

Roman's volleyball game thursday....

















friday afternoon I got to go to the Velvet Monkey and get my hair done! It had been 12 weeks, I was WAY overdue.... :) The week before had been Estrella's birthday, so I made her a birthday cake too....









It was soooooo nice outside, in the 70's that day!! So I was not surprised when Bourbon, Starla & I went to the park (Roman went to do pull-ups with daddy) that the park was packed out. I bet there were 50 or more kids running around playing in the sunshine, it was the busiest I had seen it in quite a long time!!





Starla waited patiently for this swing for about 10 minutes or so. She was the third kid in line when she decided she wanted on it, and I was impressed that she just stood there, quietly, waiting her turn....









Saturday we went to Chuck-E-Cheese's to help celebrate our neice Gracie's 5th birthday.....












It appears that Bonita is pregnant, so we will be having puppies somewhere in the near future. If you know anyone who wants a puppy, we will have some to give away soon....





Monday, after we were done grocery shopping and running all of our errands to get ready for the looming snowstorm, Starla asked if we could go to the park. It was a bit chilly, but not horrible, so I thought, why not. And off we went. What a huge difference from a few days before, there wasn't a soul there, she had the whole place to herself.....












Thanks to my parents, who not only kept my kiddos so I could go, but also paid for my meal, I got to go out with my friends monday night to help celebrate Nicolette's birthday!

We went to Moma Roja's on Lake Hefner. I had Sweet Corn tamales (which were actually an appetizer, but they sounded sooo good that I wanted them for dinner!) and a fish taco. Yum!




Momma's Night! Happy Birthday Nicolette!

Week 3

Somehow I managed to lose 3.4 lbs this week, even though I had some good days and some bad ones. That only puts me at -2.4 for the contest since I was over 1 lb last week. But I still have time to make it up!

I did great at drinking my 64+ ozs of water this week, which I think was my saving grace on the days that I didn't eat as healthy as I should have. I have discovered that if I drink out of my big 32 oz Mercy hospital cup with the straw, I drink more water than if I carry around a water bottle. I don't really know why, I guess I must like straws or something. But whatever the reason, it works. I fill it up with ice and water first thing in the morning and carry it around with me all day long. At first it took a while to manage to drink 2 of them in a day, I just wasn't used to drinking that much of anything, much less water. But towards the end of the week I found myself drinking 3 or more of them! Which means I find myself in the bathroom every 20 mins. lol. But it's good for me. It fills me up so I'm not hungry and is said to make your skin healthier and speed up your metabolism.

I can't seem to make it to the gym though, but I am trying to work out more at home, and walking around the track at work. I try to add physical activity to my day anywhere I can, even if it is only in small little bursts. Everything helps.

I fear this week isn't going to be as good, but we shall see. Last night I went out with my momma's group and ate a yummy mexican meal. Today (and probably most of the week!) we are snowed in and I am making cinnamon rolls from scratch, and have big plans of making cake balls, cookies and a variety of other things. Something about snow makes me want to bake and bake and bake. I am going to try to have some self-control and not eat very much of my creations, but we shall see how it goes. I am going to try to do a lot of the Wii fit since we are trapped indoors, but it's hard getting it away from the kids these days, lol.

I did buy a bottle of some cheap diet pills yesterday, knowing this was going to be a rough week, to try to help me make up the difference. But I hate relying on diet pills, because as soon as I get off of them, I just gain it all back. I want to try to instead change my eating habits and learn how to maintain a healthy lifestyle, so I can keep it off this time. But I figure since I am working so hard, and not relying on them totally to do all the work, it's not that bad of a thing. Maybe they will just give me a little boost. I really like the energy it gives me too. I still am going to try to stick with my weight watchers points, drink my water and get at least 30 mins or more a day of exercise.

May the force be with me. :)