Homemade Craft Clay (Salt dough)

I was watching Sprout earlier with Cole and something on The Noodles and Doodles (whatever it's called) Bus show jolted my memory of something my Nan used to do!  (I have also seen it on Pinterest several thousand times over the past few months) Anyway, I got out all my ingredients and went to town creating something fun for Cole and I to do tomorrow!

You will need:

4 cups of flour
1 cup salt
2 cups water (may need more)
Food coloring

Add the 4 cups of flour and salt to a large bowl, pour in the water and stir.  When all the water is absorbed, start kneading!  If it's still too crumbly, add a little more water.  You don't want the dough to be too dry, nor do you want it to be wet and sticky...

I separated mine into 5 balls, poured some food coloring on each ball, one at a time and kneaded the dough until it was the desired color adding more food coloring if needed.

I do advise using gloves to do this part though...  I didn't think about that with all my enthusiasm and now look like this and probably will for quite some time:

After scrubbing.

After the balls of dough were the right colors, I put them into individual zip lock bags so that the dough doesn't dry out.

All ready for tomorrow!

I'll be back to post some of Cole's creations!  I'm excited, I love playing with Play-doh!

~Tasha

Parenting update

As I said before, Cole is now 2 and as ornery as ever!  He has been one of the things that has kept me sane over the past year! Well, almost...  His terrible two's 'could' actually be the end of me, haha.  

He is just about to join a pre kindergarten program called Head Start.  At the moment, we have weekly visits at home from a teacher while he is on the waiting list.  He starts in February and will be going to school (I can see it from my living room window) Monday through Friday, 8.30am - 2pm.  It seems like an awfully long time each day!  But they will have breakfast and lunch, play time and nap time.  It will be so good for him to be around other kids though!  I will miss him, it'll be weird not having him here all the time!  I'm sure I'll get used to it quite quick though ;)  He has turned into Stewie from Family guy with the whole 'Mom, Mommy, Mama, Mom, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mama, Mom, Mama, Mama, Mommy, Mom' thing and why is it that boys have to bang things on things?  He seriously does, bang EVERYTHING on EVERYTHING! And, I have given up on cleaning his room too!  He has this couch in his room with all these stuffed animals on (I have no idea where half of them came from, I swear he visits Toys 'r' Us whilst we are sleeping) anyway, literally 5 seconds after arranging them all neatly back on there again, I walk into this:

Excuse the bad quality, I can't find my camera charger anywhere...

I love my little man.  We have fun.

Gomez for Halloween.  I have NO idea what that is on his sleeve....

Telling Santa that he wants beach front property in Florida

~Tasha

Tasha went AWOL...

Hi guys,

I have been AWOL for quite some time now as my life took quite an unexpected turn. Way back in March, I blogged about how we had to move in with my parents for a while whilst we got back on our feet.  My parents lived in the middle of nowhere, and to be honest it probably wasn't the best decision in the world to go there.  I appreciate everything my family did to help us but because we didn't have transportation at that point, finding a job for my husband was pretty near impossible.  Anyway, to cut a really long story short, we bit the bullet and moved to a different town.  We were lucky enough to find out about this amazing non-profit organization called HSP (Human Services Programs) and if it wasn't for them we would STILL be extremely stuck. They offered us somewhere to live for 4 months whilst my husband searched for stable employment.  They put us in touch with local resources that we would never had known existed.  They basically saved our butts.

Thanks to them, and the sheer determination of my husband, he now has a very good job (actually 2 jobs), we have found an AWESOME place to live, we have ALL our stuff back with us in one place and my baby boy (who is now 2!!!) is happy!  I can also go back to work in May which I am so excited about!

This past year has been the most stressful, horrible, HORRIBLE year ever and I never, ever want to go through any of that ever again, nor would I wish it upon anyone else.

2013 is going to be our year.  I can feel it.

So, there you go.  That's where I have been and I am now going to try and get this blogging show back on the road!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that 2013 is kind to each and every one of you!

~Tasha

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Good luck, these candles are awesome!

~Tasha

Missing England

 

Just lately, I am missing England more than usual.  I think it's because I haven't been back there in 4 years and the chance of getting back there within the next 2 are looking very slim :(  I'm trying to get my Mum, Step Dad, Brother and Sister over for Christmas which would be so, so great!  I also think my best friend who I have known since I was 7 is coming over for New Years Eve!  She will be bringing her new Husband and baby Alfie with her who I haven't had the pleasure of meeting yet!  I'm so excited about that!  It seems soooo far away though!

My ramblings today are going to include some pictures of some of my favorite things from England to give you more of an idea of where I am from.

Below is the town I grew up in, Newquay.  It's on the South West coast of England and has a population of about 22,000 people! (In the summer this goes up to about 100,000)  There are 10 beaches and this is why I miss the beach so much!  When I was growing up, I don't think I took advantage of the beach enough because I saw it every day.  Now I don't, I wish I was there!  I wish I had gone down to the beaches every day!

Newquay Coastline

When you talk about England, you HAVE to include a pub!  This was the place to go in Newquay, whether it be for a quick lunch and a glass of wine with friends, a morning cup of coffee, or a girls night out.  We were here, a lot!

  Next comes food (of course!)  I have a list of things that I am going to eat as soon as I get there.  In fact, if the person who picks me up from the airport could bring all of the below with them, I would be eternally grateful!  I'm thinking they may have to roll me back on the plane though!!

A traditional English breakfast.  Sausage, Bacon, Fried Bread, Fried Egg, Mushrooms, Baked Beans, Tomatoes, Black Pudding. It makes me want to lick the computer screen.

The famous Cornish Pasty.  Shortcrust pastry filled with steak, onions, potatoes and suede, sprinkled with lots of black pepper.  The trick is to eat it before the seagulls steal it from your hands.

PROPER fish and chips!!!  I probably miss this the most!!!  I have tried to recreate it but have failed.  It just doesn't taste the same.  And on a side note, A BIG FAT YUCK to Long John Silvers.

This my friends is quite possibly the best chocolate bar ever known to man, woman, or child.  In fact ANY Cadbury's chocolate makes me salivate.  My Husband will no longer eat American chocolate.  Cadbury's is not the same here...  I don't know why the recipe would be different, but it is :(

That's all I can remember for right now!  If there are any English people reading this who happen to have the perfect fish and chip recipe from back home, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know!  You will seriously make my life complete!

My parenting journey so far

Half way through my pregnancy, I decided that I was going to be an awesome Mum and I was going to have an unbelievably awesome child (which I do by the way).  My Son wasn't going to have a pacifier, timeout was going to be completely unnecessary, he wasn't going to go through his terrible two's (haha), I would be the most patient Mum on the planet and would take everything in my stride, he wasn't going to be bribed with things to be good, he was going to be eating an extremely healthy diet, filled with lot's of different fruits and vegetables and a whole load of other insane naivety.

This is how it REALLY went. Within the first 4 weeks of being born, I was gently coaxing him to take the pacifier (that he didn't actually like all that much) he got used to it, but then at 3 months, decided absolutely not.  I'm grateful, but also quite sad sometimes.

In the past couple of months I have found that timeout has been ABSOLUTELY necessary, even though it has absolutely no effect.  In fact, if he knew what the middle finger was for, he would definitely be using it.  It's all a fun game at 18 months.

I am a lot more patient than I expected, but man, that child tests it often.  Again with the games.  We have a morning ritual at the moment (baring in mind that we are living with my Parents at the moment and it's not AS child friendly as our previous house was) he wakes up and comes into the living room, I watch his eyes spy the ornaments on the shelf, he edges his way over, flat against the wall, looking at me with this big F U grin.  I start saying no, he grabs it and runs down the hallway, like a bat out of hell.  I chase him, as soon as I get within 2 feet, he pitches it across the room and shouts "bye, bye, bye" whilst waving and running in the other direction. He moves his way around the house doing this with the bookshelf the trashcan, the dog bowl and whatever else he can see that he knows he is not supposed to touch. This is the start of the terrible twos that I was so adamant he was not going to have. Is that a grey hair I see?

The healthy diet that I dreamed about has also gone south.  To start with, he liked most vegetables, if he didn't, I could quite easily disguise them and he would be none the wiser.  He will not eat ANYTHING that looks even remotely like a vegetable.  I tried to hide peas in mash potato the other day.  He sucks all the mash potato off and throws the peas across the room.  He has also learned how to say cookie, which is totally my fault.  Remember when I said there was to be no bribery?  Yup.  I bribed him with a cookie to come inside and now that's all he says when he's hungry (Well he points at the cupboard and says "key? key? key? over and over again).  Luckily though, he loves fruit.  He's totally addicted to sausage too.

As much as I complain sometimes about the stuff that was bound to happen!  I would never have it any other way.  You can't stay mad at him for long, he is absolutely hilarious at times.  I guess he also has my genes which I so can't be angry with him about. lol.

Not the best quality picture...

Oreo Love

The other night my Aunt was talking about a recipe that she loves to make when Mint Oreos are in stores.  They sounded so good that we immediately rushed to the store to buy the ingredients!  I can't actually tell you what she calls them (although you might get an idea when you look at the pictures in a minute)  so just for your viewing pleasure and to keep them rated G for everyone, I have boringly renamed them Mint Oreo Truffles.

A ball of minty, delicious, sickly goodness

They truly are delicious.  They are VERY sickly.  I never, ever say this because I have the ability to happily eat the most sickliest things on the planet when other people are sitting there going green around the gills, but I could only eat one of these.  I think if I made them again, I would make them much smaller!!

All you need is:

2 packs of Mint Oreos

2 packs of softened Cream Cheese (The rectangle packs)

1 package of White Chocolate or Vanilla Almond Bark

1 package of Milk or Dark Chocolate Almond Bark

Put the cream cheese in a large bowl and crush all the oreos, we did it by hand but it probably would have been easier using a ziplock bag and a rolling pin!  Mix it all together until it look something like this:

Any clues on what the real name is yet?

In 2 separate pans, over a very low heat, melt the almond bark until smooth.

Roll the oreo mixture into balls (I did them the size of golf balls, you may want to roll them smaller than that!) and using a spoon (because the almond bark is hot!) dip each ball into the almond bark, alternating between white a dark and place them on a wax paper lined cookie sheet.

Put them in the freezer until the chocolate hardens and you are good to go!

If you have any problems finding almond bark like I did!  Then I suggest you look in either Walmart or Michaels!  They are the only places that I have ever seen this!

Let me know how they turn out!

~ Tasha