By the way, if you would have told me a year ago that this year I would suggest that we play a family game of soccer in honor of Mother’s Day, I would have laughed.  But indeed, now that I’m getting fit and learning to enjoy playing with my kids, I just can’t get enough.  Soccer on Mother’s Day just seemed like the perfect idea.  And it was.

So back to the dessert you’ve been waiting to hear about.

Oh, but another reason I couldn’t update you on this mystery earlier is because after we played soccer, we had a nacho and movie night – with popcorn.  Yes, didn’t you know that it’s always good to have nachos and popcorn together?  Eh, it worked and it made everyone happy.

We are pretty good popcorn makers around here, always using coconut oil to make delicious popcorn.  But this time, we used a fun new recipe from the Deliciously Organic cookbook.  It was fantastic.  However, we did have a wild ride in the kitchen while I was making it because I didn’t use a big enough pot.  You know what happens when you don’t use a big enough pot when you’re making popcorn on the stovetop?  The popcorn just keeps popping, and the lid comes off the pan, and popcorn goes absolutely everywhere.  Jen was over hanging out with us, and Matt was in the kitchen too – both of them being very supportive while I was standing at the stove feeling rather helpless while popcorn started overflowing and flying.  Matt offered some suggestions.  Jen handed me a bowl for the flying popcorn, but with it, I only managed to make a bigger mess.  Oh, you should have been there to witness the madness.  ;)

This is the popcorn that managed to make it into the bowl.

But really, back to the dessert you’ve been waiting to hear about.

If you can believe it, the dessert recipe they picked wasn’t chocolate.  I know, shocking.  But wow, was it good.

They picked a “Hot Milk Sponge Cake” recipe from my old, worn out Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.  Then, like good children, they figured out how to adapt the recipe to use healthier sugars, fats, and flours.  Is that not impressive?  More on that in another post.

So apparently that’s what all the beating was about.  Sponge cakes take a lot of beating.  Thus, the beaters were running for minutes on end.  :)

Then, if you can believe it, they made a “Broiled Coconut Topping” to go on top.  I’m telling you, they outdid themselves.  Talk about tasty!

This cake was delicious.  My family is the greatest.  And without a doubt, I will look up the recipe, ask them about their adaptations, and post it for you so that your family can make it for you sometime.  Or so that you can make it for them.  Or whatever.  ;)

Fall is the season in which I live at the soccer fields.  Our boys play soccer (all on different teams), our two oldest sons referee lots of soccer games, plus our oldest is now helping coach our youngest son’s team.  Our sixth grader plays on an additional club team which occasionally plays in tournaments.  My husband coaches some of our sons’ teams, plus helps coach our local college women’s team.  As much as possible, we go to support both the York College women’s and men’s games.  Did you follow all of that?  Don’t worry, I can’t keep up either.

I absolutely love soccer and thoroughly enjoy supporting and watching and cheering.  I am a soccer mom – it’s what I do.  Here is what I’ve discovered about myself:

You know you’re a soccer mom when…you’re watching your six year old’s team get thoroughly creamed.  The six year olds don’t seem to care too much about getting beat.  They’re just working hard and doing their best.  They run.  They try to get the ball.  They steal it from their own teammate.  They kick it the wrong way.  You keep cheering.  You keep encouraging.  And when finally, finally a goal is scored for our team, you find that tears spring into your eyes.  What, you’re crying over a six year old soccer goal?  Yes, because you’re a soccer mom.

You know you’re a soccer mom when…you decide after being at soccer games for hours and hours that you will just “rest your eyes” while sitting on the bleachers during half time of the fifth game of the day.  The sun is shining brilliantly on your face, the music is playing in the back ground and you’re sitting on hard bleachers.  As the teams take to the field again and get ready to begin the second half of the game, you realize that you had actually fallen asleep while sitting on hard metal bleachers.  And surprisingly, you feel refreshed and ready to watch more soccer.

You know you’re a soccer mom when…that aforementioned brilliantly shining sun fries your face week after week and you have crease lines in your sunburn/tan where you were squinting to look toward the field.  It’s cute.  And even though you continue to get sunburned week after week, you continue to carry blankets, jackets, gloves and stocking caps in the back of your mini-van because you really just never know when you’re going to need them.  You also carry in your purse a nice supply of water bottles, bandaids, kleenexes, and trash – because where else are your kids supposed to put the dirty kleenexes and bandaid wrappers?  And yes, you have a big purse.

You know you’re a soccer mom when…you’re on your way to church, but instead of going straight on 14th Street to get to the church building, out of habit, you turn left at Nebraska Avenue and head toward the soccer complex.  You finally realize what you’ve done about a block from the complex.  You feel ridiculous, but hey, it happens to the best of us.  When you repeat the mistake again three days later, you really being to wonder if you’ve lost your mind.

I am, through and through, a soccer mom.  Can I get you a bandaid?

I originally posted this three years ago after a “fun” incident with my friend’s roosters.  Just in case you weren’t around then to laugh at me, please, by all means, allow me to remind you of my bravery and amazing rooster fending off abilities by re-posting this story.

Aw, here’s Malachi looking at the chickens three years ago.  He was so little.  ;)

Last week, I was left in charge of caring for the animals on my friend’s farm.  I am so very happy to report that I started out with 50 chickens and there are still, as far as I know, 50 chickens.

Plus two roosters.

Two mean roosters.

Before leaving to go out of town, my friend Susan walked me through all of the elements of chicken care: “Here’s the feed, here’s the hose for water – and by the way,”  she said, “If the roosters try to attack you, just whack them over the head with the feed bucket.”

If the what?  The roosters might attack me?  I’m supposed to what?  With the feed bucket?  Uh…oh…okay.  That doesn’t make me scared or nervous at all.  {cough}

Each day last week, the boys and I would go over to do chicken chores.  The boys would gather the eggs while I would courageously feed and water the chickens.  Each day I would scope out where the roosters were and make sure I stayed out of their way, because I really didn’t want to have to whack a rooster over the head.  Not even a little bit.

Everything went fine and I had no rooster attacks to tell you about.

Until Saturday.  I made it all the way to Saturday.

I had kindly filled the water…thingy.  I had sweetly filled the chicken feeder with feed.  I even smiled (albeit nervously) at the roosters in appreciation for leaving me alone all week.

And then it happened.

Not one, but both roosters simultaneously charged at me – at the same time – together.

But don’t you worry.  I bravely jump-skipped into the air in shock and fear – and screamed something that sounded kind of like, “Aaahhhhhhh….aaahhhhhhh.  Aaahh.  Aah.”  (Yes, because that will stop a rooster from charging.)

And I sorta swung my bucket and hit one of the roosters barely, which made him look at me like, “Seriously?  Is that all you’ve got, lady?”  In which I answered, “Yeah, pretty much.  B-bye.”  And I hightailed it out of that chicken coop.

It is a GOOD thing I’d already given those chickens feed and water, because my heart rate is still not back to a normal pace, and there is NO WAY I was going back in there that day.

I returned home unscathed – and I’m sure the roosters are now completely intimidated by my presence, what with my strong muscled bucket swinging and high pitched shouting.

Yeah, right.

It would appear that I was the true chicken.  ;)

Three years later, I bet those roosters are still talking about me around the coop.  “Remember that crazy bucket lady that Susan put in charge of us that week back in 2008?  I can still remember the look on her face when we both ran at her!”  And then they bawk and cluck hysterically and give each other “high five” with their wings.

Roosters 1 – Laura 0

But I’m okay with that.

I’m very excited to share, in response to many of you asking about Tattler lids, “Do they really work?”  YES!  They really work!

Because I was so giddy with excitement over my first canning experience of this season, and because based on this happy jar sealing experience, Tattler and I are going to become extremely close friends, I got a little bit camera happy.

Here we have my Tattler lids sealed on tomato sauce jars with okra, peppers and cucumbers in the background:

Here we have an extreme close up of the Tattler lids sealed on the tomato sauce jars.  I think their smiles look so nice in this one, if in fact Tattler lids can smile (and I think we would all agree that they can, indeed, smile):

Here they are again, sitting next to their box with my water glass to the right, and my bouquet of last week’s birthday flowers in the background:

And here is a picture of three of my boys painting last Tuesday.  While I love my Tattler lids, I love my children more.  Sometimes I’m guilty of snapping pictures of weird things like butter splattered on pineapple and taking umpteen pictures of canning jars at a variety of angles, and I fail to take pictures of my children painting dots with q-tips.

We have been studying Australia, and came across a special painting style the Aborigines use:  Warlpiri.  We decided to try it.  Unfortunately, all of our paint colors except red and yellow were dried out and crusty.  Therefore, my kids got to paint Warlpiri art using only red, yellow and orange for color choices.  All of our paintings looked kind of like an Australian sunset, but it sure was fun.

How does the picture of my boys relate to Tattler and canning tomato sauce?  It doesn’t.  Although, if you look real close at my pantry doors right behind Elias, you can see a plastic knife stuck through the door handles.  I first noticed that Malachi had parked his ”weapon of the day” between the pantry door handles while my arms were full of freshly canned tomato sauce jars, which made it impossible to open the doors with my foot, which had been my original plan.  After setting all of the tomato jars back down, I may or may not have yanked the knife out with a grimace and flung it into the living room so that I could resume my task.

I bet you didn’t know that sometimes finding my boys’ toys in precarious places all over the house causes me to fling knives into the living room.

Although now that I see a picture of it here, I find the knife through the pantry door handles rather endearing.

Remind me of this cuteness tomorrow after I’ve just tripped over a lightsaber.

This was a great arrangement for us as we are actually considering getting ourselves some chickens next spring.  We thought this would be great practice for our boys.  We were right – it was great for them.  We fed, watered, set them “free” each morning, closed them up to roost each night and the most fun part of all – we gathered eggs.

Our younger boys were even delighted to get up early to go do the morning chicken chores.  I think they felt manly and “farmish”.  In fact, Malachi, our six year old, insisted on putting on his full cowboy gear before we headed over to care for the chickens twice each day.  Even early in the morning, he stumbled into his bandanna and boots.

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that cowboys mostly take care of cows.  Nor did I tell him that he’d really not have use for his rope.  Nor did I tell him that he wouldn’t really need his holster and pistol.

I also decided not to tell him that I wouldn’t need a cowboy hat.

He insisted that I wear the thing.  It mattered not that my head was too big.  It mattered not that I got strange looks as I drove all the way to the chickens and back home again.  The plastic pistol I carried in my own pocket got a little bit uncomfortable, but no matter.

Thankfully, the chickens were not unruly and we did not have to lasso a one of them.

But it never hurts to be prepared.

I say “duh” to myself frequently.  Like when I walk all the way to our storage room to retrieve something, but by the time I get there, I have absolutely no idea what I had intended to get.  Duh.  Or when I stir the wrong ingredient into the wrong bowl because I’m trying to make too many recipes at the same time.  Duh.  Or how about the time I stuck a wooden spoon into a running food processor.  We had splinter-filled cookie dough with that smart move.  Duh.

Just last week, I had a very busy day and just so happened to be wearing a cute but long sun-dress that went all the way past my ankles.  This information about my apparel is only relevant if you consider that after going out to check on my husband who was busy painting the outside of our house, I tripped on my long sundress while going up my porch-steps.  (duh)  Thankfully, my shins didn’t suffer too much for this move, and I’m almost certain none of the neighbors were outside to see my gracefulness.

But that’s not really why I told you about the sun-dress.  You just needed to know about how I tripped over the sundress so that you could understand my next and very silly “duh” moment.

You see, a couple of hours after my graceful sundress-tripping-up-the-porch-steps incident, I had to make a stop at the post office.  There are a good 10-12 cement steps in front of the post office.  Because I’m never (sometimes) one to make the same mistake twice, I was very careful to hold up the bottom of my dress as I decended the post office steps after mailing my package.  I was able to avoiding a foot-tangled-up-in-sundress-in-front-of-post-office mishap and managed to make it down the cement steps with both feet on the ground and all was well.

I was focused on rejoicing in my success – so focused that I went to the nearest silver mini-van in front of the post office, opened the door and hopped right in.  Aaaa!! (Yes, I believe that was exactly how I said it.)

Wrong mini-van.

Duh.

(It was way too clean to be my mini-van – that should have been my first clue.)

Three parking spaces down was MY silver mini-van, which I am quite sure I made it to in record time (after looking both ways twice to see who had witnessed my “duh” moment.)

The minute I got home, my husband, from his perch on the ladder while painting, said, “We just got a phone call.  Malachi was supposed to be at a birthday party 15 mintues ago.”

Oh duh.

Yep, the “duh” moments just never stop around here.

Have any “duh” moments you’d like to share?

Here’s one more look at the mess, just so that the pictures to follow make you say a louder “ooooohhh…..ahhhh…”

And nowwwwwww………

Everyone together now, “Ooohhh…Ahhhhh….”

Here’s a different angle of that area, so that you can see that the ugly refrigerator looks even worse now that it’s in a clean room.  And also so that you can see my two big blue Rubbermaid tubs which I am using to store cereal, corn chips, raisins, whole wheat pasta and a few other random dried foods that don’t fit well in other containers. 

If you look real close at the wooden shelves, you’ll see that they are incredibly crooked.  So, don’t look too close.  Those were a project the boys and I tackled a few years ago when Matt was out of town and I desperately wanted shelves.  They are pretty much pitiful, but they work.  And they remind me of the day when my boys were all little and I was trying to have them help me with this manly project, allthewhile working to keep the babies from eating nails.  Ah, the good ol’ days. 

My big (free) buckets fit nicely between the shelves.  Most of those are filled with my year’s supply of wheat, but some of them contain a huge amount of Sea Salt, or Millet.  If you haven’t read about how I acquire free or almost free buckets with lids, hasten to click here and read.   (That may be the first time I’ve ever used the word “hasten” on my blog.  Or ever.)

Here are some specifics of what is on each shelf because I’m sure you want to know about every square inch of my storage room.  (In that case I will hasten to tell you.)  In a lovely see-through Rubbermaid container, I put all my nuts that just came in from Braga Farm.  I believe there are a few packs of dried fruit in there too.  I went to a lot of trouble to scribble the word “Nuts” on a label, even though you can see right through the container because shucks, labels are cute.

Under the nuts are my buckets of palm shortening, expeller pressed coconut oil and shredded coconut from Tropical Traditions.  The buckets under those buckets are actually not what they say they are.  I have my bulk cocoa and I can’t remember what else in those buckets…but it’s okaythat I can’t remember…I have labels on the top for those too.

Then on the bottom shelf I have some boxes of Natural Value plastic wrap and baggies.  I bought a case of each of those about five years ago, I kid you not.  That’s what I still have left.  I guess now you know how quickly we go through plastic wrap and baggies.

Moving over to the corner shelves that I swiped from my kids’ lego room (without asking)…

Top shelf is tomato paste, organic ketchup, coconut chips, Larabars and tuna.  It’s a random assortment, but it works.  The next shelf is my bulk popcorn and some rye grain.  The next shelf is my bulk Sucanat divided into containers, some oats and my new maple syrup.  The bottom shelf is my Ecover dish washing liquid and Ecover dishwasher powder.  LOVE that stuff.

To the left of that shelf is one of the pitiful shelves.  On top is all the excess canned tomato sauce and applesauce that won’t fit into my pantry in the kitchen.  Under that is coconut oil and my mom’s salsa.  I’ve had it on my list to tell you the story of my mom’s salsa and I’ve just GOT to get around to doing that.  It’s such a wonderful story {sniff}.

The bottom two shelves are random spices and citric acid for making cheese.  The spices are not for making cheese, just the citric acid…just in case that wasn’t clear, because spices in cheese, yuck.

Moving over to the pegboard wall and the shelf with jars…JOY!  I took your advice and put all my canning rings on the wall.  If that wasn’t fun, I don’t know what was.  And there on the shelf are some of my empty canning jars waiting for harvest time in the fall.

Oh look, a different view of this area.  There are more coconut products from Tropical Traditions.  I think we are all aware that I love Tropical Traditions.  In a basket on top of the coconut products are some boxes of unbleached muffin liners.  Not sure why they ended up there, but I liked propping the basket like that.

And now the other side of the room.  Again, let’s see the before picture, shall we?

Yikes, and now the after picture:

It’s much better, but not as impressive perhaps as the other side.  I was at least able to clean out and organize my storage containers, as well as put together a shelf of containers I use for taking meals to others.  Our window air conditioner is on the floor back there and will stay there until July.  And that table right there in front needs to be dusted.  Eh, I’ll get to it eventually.

Shew, so there you go.  I am not so much in a state of chaos anymore, thankyouverymuch.  Unless you count some of the other areas of our home that kind of fell apart while I was cleaning the storage room this week. 

Total money spent on this project:  $0.  I had everything I needed on hand for this, including pitiful, crooked shelves and plenty of rubbermaid tubs.

And can I get three cheers for my beautiful red carpet?  Yes, I’m sure you’ve been admiring that.  And if you’ve been wondering if I’m going to vacuum in there, I’m gonna have say…um no.  It’s a storage room and it is overall just a nasty room.  I’ll save my housecleaning efforts for the rooms that matter.

Okay, so what have you been working on this week?  Show us what you’ve done or share about it in the comments!

After you see these pictures, some of you are going to shake your head in dismay.  Or you might giggle because you’ll see that Laura actually has a bottle of vegetable oil in her food storage (it was for a science experiment, I’ll have you know).

I have several excuses for how scary this room is, like:

• This room is unheated, therefore freezing during the winter, so ain’t no way no how I’m going in there for longer than the time it takes to grab something out of the freezer or throw down an empty box.
• Our recyclable items hang out in here waiting to be taken to the recycle center every few weeks.  (Yes, we have to take all of our recycling to a recycle center – it doesn’t get picked up here.)  This clutters up the room very quickly.
• The boys go into the room to get one box out of our pile of boxes so they can make a project, but they usually pull from the bottom of the pile, making all of the boxes fall down.
• It’s a storage room.  We don’t live in there.  I can close the door and walk away and forget about it.

Here’s the view when you first walk into the room.  Don’t you love how UGLY the front of my big freezer is?  That’s how I got it for super cheap - the poor thing was ugly.  :)  Putting an ugly freezer into my ugly storage room just makes sense, don’t you think?  It was a great price, and it works just fine – ugly door or not!  (Notice how I’m trying to distract you from the mess of the room by pointing out my freezer door?)

Here’s a closer-up picture of the food stash, and jars, and Walmart bags of canning rings.  Now there’s a beautiful organizational method:  throw all unused canning rings into a Walmart bag and toss it onto a pile of bulk food.  Adorable, tidy and practical.  Yeah, right.  (This is why we’re organizing this week!!!)

Here’s an even closer-up picture of the big shelf of food.  And ice cream maker.  And pressure cooker that doesn’t get used because I’m afraid of blowing up my kitchen.

Have you seen enough?  Well…sorry, there’s more.  If you turn around and look at the other side of the storage room, you’ll see this:

You know, when you go through six to eleven dozen eggs each week, you do accumulate a lot of egg cartons.  Those need to be returned to our friends with chickens.  And then all that other stuff really needs to be sorted through and taken to the recycling center or given away or thrown away or put away.

So there you have it.  My mess revealed. 

And here’s what I’ve decided:  If I’m going down…I’m pulling you all down with me.  :)  I wanna see your messes too…it’s only fair, right? 

Take a picture of the biggest messy spot in your house (or the one you want to tackle this week).  Post it on your blog if you have one, and come link up here.  Let’s make this the hub for all messes everywhere, shall we?  Show us your before pictures so we can all commiserate on how messy life gets.

On Friday (the 22nd), I’ll post my “After Pictures”, along with another link-up so you can show us your finished CLEAN and ORGANIZED pictures.

Just think about how many of us are going to get a scary mess under control this week!  It’s inspiring, isn’t it?  And yes, just a little bit intimidating.  But c’mon…if I can do it, so can you!  Show us those pictures!

(If you don’t have a blog and want to email me your before and after pictures just for fun, I’d love that too!)

So do tell…what’s the messiest spot in your house?

But…

You know I love jars.  Jars are beautiful and jars are practical and jars get used at my house constantly.  I’ve been given a countless number of canning jars and storage jars.  I’ve found wonderful jars for pennies at yard sales.  My house and my pantry are full of jars of all sizes.

But I don’t buy stuff, which is why I had such a struggle at the store the other day.  I had Elias (9) and Malachi (6) with me at the time.  We were in the “canning aisle” looking for some more of those nice plastic lids for my wide mouth jars, which unfortunately, they didn’t have.  I was backing out of the aisle when on the top shelf I saw a wonderfully, incredibly cute and fantastically huge jar.  It was thick and sturdy and it said “Ball” on it and I fell in love.

But I’m a person who doesn’t buy stuff. 

So I kept backing out  of the aisle, and the boys followed me.  And then I felt myself magnetized back into the canning aisle, and before I knew it, instead of going in reverse, I was moving forward.  Suddenly, I was holding the jar, examining it closely.  The boys were quite bored with the whole situation, until I exclaimed something like, “think of the cookies we could put in this thing!”  and then they also liked the jar.

I didn’t really need any more jars, and I don’t buy stuff…so I put the jar back on the shelf (I may have hugged it first), and then I backed out of the aisle and walked away.

We went to the produce section and picked up a few things we needed (and now I’m just rambling) but in the produce section we found these adorable, little bananas.  I’d never seen such tiny bananas before and the boys thought they were the coolest bananas ever.  They were only 97¢ for the whole bunch, so we decided to grab them for a snack.

Now we were ready to check out, but I couldn’t stop thinking about that jar.  In my head, the jar was already in my kitchen, filled with delicious treats for my family…or filled with rice or beans and looking cute on top of my fridge…or filled with a nice batch of Limeade with floating ice cubes and lemon and lime slices…

Somehow, for the third time in fifteen minutes, we ended up back in the canning aisle.  (Elias and Malachi are great sports…and are also quite used to having a weird mom.)

I made a decision.  I was going to splurge and buy that jar.  It was $10.47 for Pete’s Sake, which was an excellent price for such a nice jar.  It’s not like I was going to be taking the meat and vegetables out of my children’s mouths so that I could ”support my habit”.

I put the beautiful jar into my cart, stepping all over myself as I began to launch into a long, yet eloquent lecture to the boys about how we don’t normally just see something at the store and decide to buy it “just because we like it” or even if we love it, because that’s how money gets thrown away and we really want to be careful with money and not wasteful…

And everything I said was totally sinking into their sponge-like brains, I’m sure.

Then Elias interrupted to say, “But Mom…at least this is something you’re really going to use a lot.”

Maybe he was still thinking about the cookies I was going to put into the jar…but yes, he was right.  I’m really going to use this little (big) splurge of a jar.  Oh look…I already am.

See, isn’t it beautiful?  (It’s okay with me if you don’t think so.  I love my jar.)

(And you can’t have it.)  ;)

If you didn’t already know that I am weird and obsessed about jars, now you know.  And now you also know how hard it is for me to spend money on things that aren’t food or socks.  Shucks, who am I kidding? 

I have a terrible time making myself buy new socks.

:)

What’s your obsession?  Do you love jars?  Do you drag your children back to specific aisles at the store so that you can hug things?  Do you struggle to spend money on socks?

I can’t let David Letterman out do me, so here are my Top Ten Ways To Be A Cool Nana…..

10.  Tattoo your grandchild’s name on your arm. If you have several grandchildren use both arms. If this doesn’t sound appealing use an ink pen for the tats and wash it off after your grandchildren visit.

9. Feed your grandchildren as much candy and as many soft drinks as they can hold, but make sure you only do this when they are not spending the night with you. Unless of course you like staying up all night watching Miley Cyrus reruns.

8. Do whatever they want to do when they want to do it and don’t complain about the mess.

7. Give them the television remote and tell them they can watch anything they want (be sure and have the remote programed for only age appropriate channels before you give it to them).

6. If they are spending the week with you and don’t want to take a bath or brush their teeth-don’t make them.You fought that battle with your children. You shouldn’t have to do it again.

5. Take them to an animal shelter and buy them a pet to take home to mom and dad.

4. Get concert tickets for their favorite rock group and tell them they can take a friend. Then buy yourself a good set of ear plugs and go with them.

3. For summertime entertainment- Have a food fight out on the deck. When you are done use the water hose to spray everyone off. Remind grandchildren not to try this at home. Parents are not nearly as cool as nana.

2. Use photo shop to make a picture of you with their favorite sports star. They’ll think it’s really cool that nana once dated Tom Brady.

And the number one way to prove you are a cool nana….

1. Sell your car and replace it with a Moped Scooter. Use the money you make to take the whole family to Disney World for a week.

Teresa is a super fun Nana (even though she really doesn’t have a moped) who blogs at Nanahood.  Spend some time with her on her blog, and take all of your moms and Nanas with you!