jack-outside-o-the-box

Pantry Construction

2011-01-20T08:43:00.004-04:00

I'm a lucky girl! My husband is both handsome and handy! When we moved into this house in May I instantly knew I wanted to turn the broom closet into a mini pantry. We are in a bungalow-not a huge space so a big walk-in pantry is not in the cards. I love the cupboard space this has created for us! Although-I have to admit that reorganization of my cabinets is something that is still on my list of 'to-do's'. Here is a picture of the kitchen when we moved in...

The broom closet is just to the right of the dishwasher. This was my 'make do' solution-

And here is the finished product, aside from the organization! As you can see we added new hardware and painted an off-white, after my husband rebuilt the doors in a shaker style.

LAST YEAR's Teachers gifts

2011-01-19T12:12:00.002-04:00

Finally getting around to posting pictures of last year's teachers gifts. DS6's teacher got the flowers (says'thanks for helping me bloom this year') and DS9's teacher got cookies.

Guilty of SERIOUS neglect!!

2011-01-19T09:43:00.000-04:00

Mom of two found guilty in the court of blogging for neglect in the first degree, for her unforgivable laziness in updating her home and holiday blogs; The Warmth of the Stable, Macabre Monthly, and jack-outside-o-the-box. She has been sentenced to share extreme creativity (or just idle rantings) as much as is humanly possible for one year-at which time a panel of her peers will decide if she is worthy to continue her sentence for one more year.

Teacher gifts

2010-06-23T08:52:00.000-03:00

Today is a craft day! Hooray! I got some great ideas here for teacher gifts! So I will (hopefully) post my efforts tonight or tomorrow! I'm also working on some weekly crafts for Christmas in July at the Magical Holiday Home forums. More about that on The Warmth of the Stable.

2010-05-26T08:12:00.000-03:00

Dirty work!

2010-05-26T07:59:00.000-03:00

Just wanting to post a little gardening list of 'to do's'. The thing about planting is the fact that it needs to be done all at once, as soon as you can, so you can enjoy it for the longest amount of time. Unfortunately, I'm not too good at the 'all at once' stuff! However, here's the list and I'll see what I can do!

place 2nd hanging basket
plant pink fairy lilies
plant blue glads
transplant morning glory vine
transplant black eyed susan vine
plant more sunflowers
plant mother's day pansy
plant dahlia
dream about pumpkin patch and window box

2009-10-01T19:46:00.000-03:00

THIS IS FABULOUS!! I SOOOO WANT THIS! Sorry, let me regain my composure...okay. This is in the Canadian tire flyer this week, with money going to Breast Cancer. It's from 3M!

Summer Fun

2009-07-07T10:19:00.000-03:00

Here's my adaptation of a really cool idea from Craftzine's blog. We actually had a couple of things in the "done" pockets already. I just cut paper plates in two, printed and glued on our labels, and added magnets to the back so they would stay right on the fridge.
We used craft popsicle sticks and glued our summer plans on each one. The boys have fun moving them from one spot to the other.

Here's a toilet paper roll 'Lola' we made. We love Lauren Child's Charlie and Lola books!

Here's the birthday invites for DS8's party. I just printed them off on cardstock, ripped the edges and sponged the edges with brown ink.

I got the candy for the cake/treasure chest today from bulk barn. Yikes! My frugal side took a beating! The candy will go in goody bags so I'll make it do double duty!

Been a long time...

2009-06-22T14:54:00.000-03:00

But I've got a couple of things done this week and I thought that I would share...

I made some cupcakes from the Familyfun website-so easy and cute!(Instead of good and plenty candies for the chalk, I used Popeye candy sticks, broken into thirds.)

These are the Sand bucket cakes I made for teacher's gifts. I got this idea from Real simple magazine a few years back .

This is the card design we chose for the teachers-The boys did a great job with them. We got the idea from papercrafts magazine. The inside says, "Have a sweet summer"

I was lucky enough to find an 'H' at the dollarama! I mod podged this summery paper on it for our porch. Love those stripes!! More simple stuff to come this summer...

Where have I been?!

2009-03-19T19:12:00.000-03:00

Sorry I've neglected you my blog friends! It's March break! WEEEEEHOOOOO! We kicked it off with a free magic show at the library (magician-Al Bernard).Little Squdge took his own wand and had an opportunity to put it to use during the show! Great fun!

Mark, at our parent-child group told the story of the Gingerbread man (a much more humorous version than I remember-LOL!) so we had to go home and see how fast our gingerbread men could run! (Turns out not fast enough! YUM!)

The Master Chef at work!
Recipe from "The Gingerbread Man" retold by Jim Aylesworth

2 1/2c all purpose flour

1tsp baking powder

1/4 tps baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1tsp ground ginger

1 tsp ground cloves

1/4 tsp ground allspice

beat together in another bowl:

1 egg

1 cup firmly packed dark brown sugar

2/3 cup dark molasses

6Tbsp softened butter

Add dry ingredients to wet mixture until well blended. Cover and refridgerate for one hour. Preheat oven to 350 F.

Sift flour onto your board and your rolling pin as you work to keep the dough from sticking.Roll out a portion of dough 1/4 in. thick. Cut out your gingerbread man with a floured cookie cutter. Bake 8 min. or until slightly firm to the touch. Cool on rack.

Decorate and enjoy!

We decided to grow our own grass for spring! The plan is to tell three billy goats gruff again-maybe with some goats from the dollar store to munch on the grass! I'd also like to get

"A tiny seed" by eric carle, from the library.

NO KITTY! IT"S NOT LITTER!!

Hurray for Recycling!

2009-03-04T14:04:00.001-04:00

Well, we NEVER win anything, but I think our luck is changing. Big Mister won a 42" TV! YAY! Anyway, The kids and I were excited by the possibilities the packaging held! I was able to use one of the boxes to make a felt board for the boy's room and they made charming 'bases' for their lego men out of the styrofoam! Very Cool! The large box may become something else, yet. (If we can salvage it from Dad and his lighter!)

Monday, March 2

2009-03-02T16:37:00.001-04:00

Oh No.

What a lazy day here!! J-bird is home from school today and Big Mister is home from work. He has, as usual overworked himself and hit the wall. So I just can't seem to get anything done, but it's great to have everyone home.This is a picture of the freezing rain we got today. So it was a good day to stay in!

Gotta plan the meals for the week. I still haven't tried making pretzels but I want to give it a go!We are having ham tonight(leftovers)Tomorrow is chicken with M&M's chicken and rib sauce and I think I'll make up a three day salad to go with it. (recipe to follow)Wednesday will be spaghetti with garlic bread and three day salad. Thursday Chicken and rice and veggies. Friday friends are coming so I'm thinking Tacos. Oops-it's Lent so I better re-think that! Off to surf my favorite sites!

Lions and Lambs

2009-02-26T22:39:00.000-04:00

Sunday is March 1st! Already! So hopefully our house will be back together after ripping our ceiling out last Friday and I can focus on some March activities with the boys. For little Squidge I found a cute letter 'L' coloring page here. I want to use the 'in like a lion, out like a lamb' phrase to do some weather graphing with him. DLTK has a simple printable. He also learned the poem 'the March wind doth blow and we shall have snow...' at our Music in Motion group, so maybe we'll do some thumbprint robins and a paper bag kite later in the month.

Of course we can't forget St. Patrick's Day and our usual visit from a tricky leprechaun. I hope he doesn't make too much of a mess this year!

J-Bird has been asking for a diary so I found this Journal calendar with great prompts for each day! Anything to get him to practicing his printing and cursive writing! Of couse the important thing to him is that it has a cool lock on it, so even if DH can rig up a journal box for him to keep it in he'll be happy!

301 Days until Christmas!

2009-02-26T22:20:00.000-04:00

Wednesday I celebrated what we at Magical Holiday Home call Rudolph Day! A wonderful opportunity to keep a little Christmas with you on the 25th of each month. My accomplishment for February was to (finally) finish scrapping the Christmas pictures for 2007. This means that the Christmas baby books for my babies are full. Onward to more memories! Time to order the pictures from 2008! (I've always had great luck with snapfish)

Meal plan for the week!

2009-02-23T11:06:00.000-04:00

This week begins Lent so I am glad to think about a meal plan now, rather than forget and eat meat when we aren't supposed to!

Monday- hamburger, gravy, mashed potatoes and carrots.

Tuesday- Pancakes!

Wednesday-Mac n cheese

Thursday-shepherd's pie(with leftover hamburger and carrots)

Friday-salmon, potatoes and veggies

Saturday-bologna cakes with leftover potato

Sunday-Ham or turkey?

Baking-

soft pretzels

Shopping list-

eggs

celery

milk

coarse salt

Weekend Fun!!

2009-02-23T09:54:00.000-04:00

What a busy and fantastic weekend we had! Friday night we decided to rip out our living room ceiling! We are going to put in hardwood flooring so it was now or never! We didn't want heavy chunks of plaster coming down on the hardwood later on! So my house is one big dust layer and will get worse before it gets better, as DH has one final sanding to do before I get to clean up!

My Baby is 5!

2009-02-19T15:22:00.001-04:00

I can't believe it! Five years ago today Little Squidge was born in the middle of 'White Juan', a massive winter storm! I love this picture! It's the first one taken of these two together. J-bird was finally able to get to the hospital to see his brand new brother!

Squidge just loves 'Veggie Tales' so this is his 'Bob the Tomato' birthday cake!

Faaaaar from professional, but he doesn't seem to mind!LOL!

It was definitly a 'Lego' birthday! We ordered from the canadian online site and I was very pleased with it! (as was Squidge!)

Three Billy Goats Gruff

2009-02-17T19:15:00.000-04:00

I found a copy of "The three Billy Goats Gruff" at the library and it's been fun expanding on it this week! We found the images online and Little Squidge practiced his cutting and gluing to make them into popsicle stick puppets. Today we made a bridge out of dollar store sticks and it was lucky they were colored as it gave us the opportunity to take a look at patterns! Next I'd like to grow some grass(for the goats to eat on the hillside). It should be a good length to use for an Easter display in April!

2009-02-14T15:55:00.000-04:00

Happy Valentines Day!

I hope you are spending a wonderful Day surrounded by those you love!

I gave the boys a breakfast of heart shaped french toast (their most recent favorite) and bacon. I did one stop shopping at Zellers yesterday and got a 13 pack of gift bags. They are bright colors and can be used for alot of different occasions. I also got foil chocolate hearts and small boxes of red and pink smarties. They had Marvel puzzles for $2.00 so I got them each one of those.

I think we're doing Greco for supper or some kind of take-out and I've made brownies to have with vanilla ice cream and home made hot fudge sauce. Yummy! I gave my hubby the battle of the sexes game. It looks fun and at $4.97 at the local Wal-Mart, the price was definately right!

I also bought some small ceramic cups that say 'I love you' and 'L'Amour' to fill with chocolates and put at everyone's place setting.

I printed Valentines I downloaded free from my scrapnfonts newsletter. You should sign up; they have freebies often!

Here's the recipe for the hot fudge sauce. ENJOY! I won't be held responsible for the extra caloric intake!

Hot Fudge Sauce

1 cup sugar

2tsp flour

1/2 tsp salt

1 cup water

2 squares unsweetened chocolate

6 Tbsp cocoa

2 Tbsp butter

1tsp vanilla

Combine sugar, flour,salt and (if using) cocoa. Blend in water. If using chocolate, add now. Bring to boil over medium heat, stirring constantly. Remove from heat and stirin butter and vanilla.

Serve hot. YUMMY!

Wow-it's February third!

2009-02-03T18:57:00.000-04:00

Can you believe that we are already past groundhog day and on our way to St. Valentines Day?

Here in Nova Scotia we follow Shubenacadie Sam's forecast and apparently we are going to be 'enjoying' another 6 weeks of winter. I would love to be outside taking some of the latest storm in, but our youngest hates the snow and cold. He is just getting over a bout of pneumonia so I really can't blame him! We have had a few good skates on our outdoor rink, though, and I'm hoping we can get a decent size tobogganing hill set up with the 'spoils' from today's continuing storm. If your interested in trying to build your own rink check out this link; Rink.

The snowmobilers have been going by all day, as we have a wonderful set of trails that run right next to our house. We don't have one yet (one income household) but are lucky enough to have a brother in law who doesn't mind sharing now and then!

Squidge waiting, not so patiently, for a snowmobile ride...

Big Jack and J-bird putting around the yard...