Terrific Kid!

Little Monkey brought home his backpack the other week with all the usual papers inside. This time there was a special letter from his teacher, letting us know that she had picked Little Monkey as the Terrific Kid of the Month from her class! She let us know there would be a special award ceremony and we were invited to come. This week we headed into Little Monkey’s school to congratulate him on his award.

One student is chosen from each class, once per month, based on their positive attitude, good character and responsible citizenship. The Terrific Kids program is put on by the Kiwanis club.

Little Monkey high-fiving Dr Z (our Vet and member of the Kiwanis Club)

Little Monkey did a great job going up to get his award and the fun presents that came with it. He got a certificate, bumper sticker, Terrific Kid pencil, coupon for a free donut at Donut King, coupon for a free kid’s meal at Beef O’Brady’s and two coupons for free kid’s meals at Oakwood. (Too bad for Little Monkey that he can’t eat at any of those places! He was quite happy with the pencil and bumper sticker though!)

Little Monkey with his certificate

After all the kids got their awards, they posed for a group photo and then got to have juice and a cookie. Thankfully I knew there would be refreshments, so I brought a pumpkin muffin along for Little Monkey. He loved it and was glad to have a snack, even if it was different from everyone else. He didn’t seem to mind. Little Monkette had his cookie and juice. She was of course thrilled with the snack!

Yummy Cookie!

Great job Little Monkey! We are very proud of you!

Crockpot Santa Fe Chicken

I ran across this recipe on Pinterest and thought, “That looks pretty good and seems pretty simple. I’m going to give it a try.” So I pinned it to my food board and made plans to make it. The nice part of this crockpot meal was that it could cook either 10 hours on low or 6 hours on high. I think this is nice for people who work during the day because some crockpot meals are 4 or 8 hours and you just aren’t home from work in those time frames.

Santa Fe Chicken from Chef in Training.

I am using the photo from my Pinterest board, because my meal didn’t come out looking this nice, but it tasted great! I got all the ingredients out and measured up the night before because we would be out the door in the morning to head to bible study. Right before we left, I put everything into the crockpot and off we went. When we returned from bible study, the house was already smelling yummy.

Here is the recipe: (I got it from Chef in Training.)

CROCK POT SANTA FE CHICKEN

Recipe From: skinnytaste.com

• 24 oz (1 1/2) lbs chicken breast
• 14.4 oz can diced tomatoes with mild green chilies
• 15 oz can black beans
• 8 oz frozen corn
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro
• 14.4 oz can fat free chicken broth
• 3 scallions, chopped
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tsp onion powder
• 1 tsp cumin
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper (to taste)
• salt to taste

Combine chicken broth, beans, corn, tomatoes, cilantro, scallions, garlic powder, onion powder, cumin, cayenne pepper and salt in the crock pot.

Season chicken breast with salt and lay on top.

Cook on low for 10 hours or on high for 6 hours.

Half hour before serving, remove chicken and shred.

Return chicken to slow cooker and stir in. Adjust salt and seasoning.

Serve over rice.

This is a Weight Watchers approved meal, if you are doing such a program. (We are not, but I thought it was nice to see that it wasn’t horrible for us.) You can get the point counts for it on Chef in Training’s page.

We will be making this meal again. It was easy and yummy. The only thing Big Monkey had to say about it was that I should use more chicken. (I probably used about half of what the recipe called for because it was what we had.) He said it was good but thought it would be better. Apparently I had talked it up too much.

Little Monkeyisms

Little Monkey's Smile...Missing THREE teeth!

Sometimes Little Monkey says some crazy things and I know that if I don’t write them down, I’ll never remember them. Some of the items in this post are from a recent trip that we took to go see the Orlando Magic play in the arena.

We were driving home and I asked, “What were your favorite parts of the game?” Little Monkey responded with, “The playground (inside the arena), getting that shirt (Grammy bought him an Orlando Magic Tshirt), seeing Stuff (the Magic’s mascot) and the airplane (Airtran inflatable flying plane inside the arena that drops prizes.).”

When we got closer to home we saw some fireworks in the distance. There was only a few, maybe three total, so it looked like maybe someone had some leftovers from New Year’s Eve. We were talking about the fireworks and where they might be coming from and Little Monkey said, “Maybe someone had a parade, or maybe it was a dance party. I don’t know where I learned that.”  Oh Little Monkey, I don’t know where you learned that either. All I could do was laugh.

Sweets Jar

Before Christmas, Uncle K sent me a message telling me that he had an idea of a gift for Aunt S but that he needed some help. He had done some looking online but couldn’t find what he was thinking of. He told me of his idea, a sweets jar, labeled for Aunt S. He asked if I could help him out with finding them or creating it. He said he would pay me for the work but I told him that we still needed to get Aunt S something else for Christmas, so we could make it and give it as our gift, if that was okay. He agreed. When she was about to open the gift, we gave a full disclosure that the idea was Uncle K’s idea but we were able to bring it to fruition.

Sarah's Sweets Jar

I found a handle of suitable jars at Old Time Pottery and asked Uncle K which size he thought was best. We finally settled on the one you see above. I would say it is probably a 20 oz or so sized jar. I used some vinyl we had on hand (the white and brown) and picked up some pink to add to it. I really wanted to do pink and lime green but I couldn’t find any green in the store. I used the cricut to cut out all the parts and applied them to the outside of the jar. To finish off the gift and get Aunt S started off right, we gave her two bags of mini m&m’s to put inside. Now whenever people come to visit her in her office, she will have a fun jar full of candy to share with them!

Teddy Bear Biscuits

Little Monkey’s class makes different snacks each Friday as part of their lessons. The idea is to help them learn step by step directions and measuring. The only problem for Little Monkey is that he often can’t eat whatever them make because of his PKU. We came up with a plan with his teacher so that he could still participate and have a snack. At home on Thursday nights, we make a Little Monkey PKU diet approved snack that will be similar to what the other kids will be having. He takes it to school on Friday, makes the snack with the other kids and then eats the snack we made at home.

Today’s snack is Teddy Bear Biscuits made from refrigerated biscuits. Since that wasn’t an option for Little Monkey, I asked on the Cook for Love Facebook group what we could do. Turns out there is a Make ahead Biscuit recipe on the Cook for Love website. We got home late last night because we were helping some family members move, so Little Monkey didn’t get to help out in making this item at home.

Teddy Bear Biscuit!

Little Monkey loved it when he saw it this morning. The only problem was that when I moved it off the cooking sheet, the head and ears all became disconnected. Little Monkey wasn’t too sad about it. He understood how to put it back together for school. I am interested to see how he liked it and how much he ate. We put some cinnamon and sugar on top of it before baking, since the other kids were going to have cinnamon and sugar on theirs too.

The biscuit recipe was pretty easy to make and we also have other biscuits in the freezer ready to bake whenever Little Monkey might want some.

Crocheted Softies Book

The other day I got another fun surprise in the mail! I won another giveaway from Sew, Mama, Sew’s Giveaway week. This giveaway was from Vegan Craftastic. I won Crocheted Softies, a book about how to crochet 18 different cute little animals. Since I don’t know how to crochet, I was planning to give the book to my mom if I won. So, I have passed the book along to her and hope that she will learn to make a few of the creatures inside. There is a cute little fish and octopus. I think both of them, along with the crab would be fun additions to the beach house.

Crocheted Softies

Thanks Vegan Craftastic and Sew, Mama, Sew for having the giveaways!

I Love You Because

Before Christmas, my mom sent me a link to the picture below and said that she would like one but not with the bright red frame. I took that to mean that I should make her one for Christmas and make it go with her decor. She also sent it to my sister, so I let my sister know that I planned to make one that would go with the beach house’s decor in case she planned to make one too.

I <3 you because....

I picked up a basic light brown frame and some island blue paint. I painted the frame with two coats of paint. I found the fabric in my fabric stash and had enough to use but only if I made it a vertical picture with horizontal stripes. I decided to use the stripes as the lines (Although it doesn’t look like I used them at all to line up the words because the words you and because don’t appear straight.) I wrapped the fabric around the inset part of the frame and glued it down on the back side.. I cut the vinyl in the cricut machine, using the flip feature. I applied the letters to the inside of the glass and lining up the letters with the lines of the fabric. I didn’t consider that the lines might not be perfectly level…because once I flipped the glass over to properly put it in the frame the words no longer lined up properly.

I love you because....

To finish off the gift, I got two dry erase markers for Mom and Dad to use to fill in the remainder of the sentence. I didn’t put a blank line for the remainder of the sentence, deciding that they could use the lines in the fabric for as many lines as they wanted.

I gave Mom and Dad the frame and markers at Christmas and they were happy with it. And who knows…maybe we will add these to our inventory of Two Florida Girls when we do local shows.

Cookie Decorating Day

At the beginning of December, Little Monkey had some friends over to have a cookie decorating day. We met one of the other families at a PKU event and another family online through Facebook. Turns out one of the families lives about 15 minutes down the road from us. We were very excited to all get together and decorate cookies and let the kids play.

We talked to our dietician and she was able to get us connected to a person at Cambrooke who generously sent us some wheat starch that we need to make the cookies. Wheat starch is the one odd ball ingredient in the cookie recipe and it isn’t cheap. We were thrilled that Cambrooke was happy to send us some for our little party.

Before the party we cooked up a bunch of cookies, decorated for Christmas and made aprons for each little guest. We also planned to make some cookies once the guests arrived so that we could show them the recipe. Little Monkey decided that we needed a sign in the yard so that people would know where to park. Mimi tried to convince him that wasn’t necessary but he wouldn’t give up. They ended up making a sign and putting it on the back of my car. While making that sign, they also made two signs for the door. Little Monkey did all the writing and then hung them up. Apparently this special animal tape was all he could find.

Welcome!

We set up two tables for cookie decorating but ended up only needing one. We used the other to collect all the finished cookies. We laid out all the aprons for the guests, but Little Monkey decided that just their first initial wouldn’t be enough. So he labeled each apron with their names too!

Appliqued aprons for the guests.

Once all the little chefs arrived, we had some pku friendly foods for everybody to eat. Once their bellies were filled up on good stuff, we got to the fun part! We pulled out all the cookies and lots of icing and some phe free decorations and let the kids go at it. It was a fun crazy time with lots of icing covered fingers and candies and cookies being eaten.

Concentrating on decorating cookies!

Even Little Monkette had fun decorating cookies (and eating them).

As cookies were decorated, we moved them over to the other table to make room for more decorating. Each family had their own section and we filled up some cute storage buckets with all their creations and more undecorated cookies to take home. We’ve been enjoying snacking on our cookies for most of the month. Amazingly, the cookies keep pretty well. We also took a plate of cookies to Little Monkey’s nurse and deitician. They shared the cookies with the office and everyone was surprised at how yummy the cookies tasted. (Lo pro foods have a bad rep for not tasting too great.)

A small collection of the decorated cookies!

A great time was had by everyone and we hope to have another cooking day in the new year. Our deitician has also asked us to consider putting together an event for our entire clinic (pku patients and families) next year. By the time Christmas comes around, the new Nemours Hospital should be open and they are going to have a big teaching kitchen that we could use to hold our event!

 

Four Seasons Towels

I found this idea on Pinterest–they were sold in an Etsy shop that is now closed until July.  I decided to use the photo as inspiration for my own set of towels.

Water4Christmas Etsy Shop 4 Seasons Towels

I did some free hand drawing (I’m not very good at that…) and cut out the trees from two different brown fabrics I had on hand. Then I picked out some fabrics to use for the leaves and just made an ovalish type shape. I ironed them onto the flour cloth towels I bought (Walmart $2 for 2 towels) and then stitched around the edges. I usually sew just about EVERYTHING with white thread but this time picked out colors closer to the fabrics I was using. These were all threads I had on hand too. My four seasons tree towels are similar to the ones I found on Pinterest but also a little bit different. I really like how they turned out.

Four Seasons Towels

As I was making them, I thought….I need to make myself a set of these! This set was given to my grandparents. My Grandma C really liked them and said that she didn’t want to use them, but just put them out for display. I assured her that they were meant to be used and could be washed and dried in the washer and dryer.

New Monkey Hat

About a week or so ago, Sew, Mama, Sew held its Giveaway Day. I entered quite a few, just hoping to get lucky enough to win one. Well, I ended up winning two! Yay! So far only one of my prizes has arrived but I’m excited to share it with you.

I won a Monkey Hat from Raven’s Rascals.

Here I am trying it on right after opening the mail. I am also wearing a new shirt I got from Uncle K and Aunt S for Christmas. It is very comfy.

Monkey Hat (and new shirt)

I was hoping the hat would bring with it some cooler weather (it was coming from WA) and lucky enough for me, it did. Today we headed out to run some errands and it was chilly out so everyone bundled up. Little Monkey decided that since I took a picture of the kids all bundled up, he should take a picture of me too! He made me pose in the same place they did.

Posing with my monkey hat!

I am loving my new monkey hat, though Big Monkey thinks it is quite silly. What does he know anyhow?!?

Go check out Raven’s Rascals. They are a Relay for Life Team and are raising money for the American Cancer Society.

Raven’s Rascals Relay for Life Team
Blog: www.ravensrascals.blogspot.com
Facebook: www.facebook.com/ravensrascals
Etsy: www.ravensrascals.etsy.com