Homemade Instant Oatmeal

I've been looking at my food storage and ways to utilize it better to help stretch my budget, so I started looking at options. Almost every morning Carson and I share a bowl of oatmeal and since I have 12 #10 cans of instant oatmeal in my closet I need start using it.
I looked all over the internet for options and I came across this recipe from Momables and I am excited to have breakfast in the morning with my Carson.

Homemade Instant Oatmeal Packets

21-24 snack sized Ziploc bags
10 cups quick oats
1 t. salt
1 cup brown sugar
2 t. cinnamon
1 cup powdered milk

Instructions

1. Put 6 cups of the oats into a large bowl.
2. Add the remaining 4 cups of oats into a blender.
3. Blend until almost powdery, then pour into the large bowl.
4. Add salt, brown sugar, cinnamon, and powdered milk.
5. Mix well until everything is combined.
6. Measure 1/2 cup of the oatmeal mixture into each snack sized plastic baggie and seal.

To use DIY Instant Oatmeal Packets:

1. Pour packet into a bowl and add desired hit water. Stir and serve.

 This recipe almost cleared out an entire #10 can! 11 more cans to go...hummm.  Gorilla Poop it is, my kids will be sad I'm sure.

It feels like home!

On Monday we began boxing up our lives again to move into a much smaller townhouse. It was not a decision I was thrilled about, but necessary all the same. We would be moving from a twin home to a four-plex that is much smaller without any of the luxuries that we had become accustomed to.
Last night was our first night in the house and that's when I realized that this is where we probably should have started out in the first place.  Maybe I have an unrealistic view of the world or maybe I bit off more than I can chew; either way we are going to make this our home. James and I were able to sit and watch the sun go down together last night.  I don't know why we hadn't noticed the sunset before in our other house 30 feet away, but I loved sharing that moment with him.
The kids celebrated this morning by letting me sleep in until 7:50 and only wanted cereal in our small dinning room. We will probably have to get a storage unit until I can sort out the extras and find room for our long-term food storage. But in the long run we are still saving money. Tomorrow I will start staining the shelving unit in the living room which will help with some of the clutter down stairs.   

Swig Sugar Cookies

Now that we live in Southern Utah there are a new things that just seem to be expected.  A. We are Mormon and B. we love Swig.  Sadly both are true, so I was excited to find this recipe so we can make these cookies whenever my kids want them.  I think the trick is the cream of tartar in the cookie that makes them so good, it is basically a Snickerdoodle without being rolled in the cinnamon and sugar. So let us begin!

Swig Sugar Cookies 

1 c. Butter at room temp

3/4 c. Vegetable Oil (I used Olive Oil cause that's what I have)

1 1/4 c. Sugar

3/4 c. Powdered Sugar

2 T. Water

2 Eggs

1/2 t. Baking Soda

1/2 t. Cream of Tartar

1 t. Salt

5 1/2 c. Flour

1. Cream together butter, oil, sugars, water and eggs. Add dry ingredients to butter mixture and mix until everything is well combined.  The dough should be a little crumbly and not sticky at all. 

2. Roll dough into golf ball sized balls and place on cookie sheets.  With the bottom of a glass dip into 1/4 c. sugar and a pinch of salt (in addition to the ingredients listed above) and firmly press the cookie so that the edges crack.

3. Bake at 350 for 8 minutes or until the bottoms are barely browning.  Move cookies to a cooling rack and into the refrigerator once completely cooled.

Now lets make that famous pink frosting!

Sour Cream Frosting

1/2 c. Butter at room temp

3/4 c. Sour Cream

2 lbs. Powdered Sugar (approximately 7.5 cups)

1 t. Salt

1/4 c. Milk

Red Food Coloring

Start by creaming together butter, sour cream and salt and then slowly add powdered sugar.  When it gets so thick its not like frosting add a slash of milk.  Alternate this process until your frosting is the desired consistency.  Add 2 drop of red food coloring and whip on high for 1 minute.

Keep cookies in a sealed container until they are ready to serve.  The magic of a Swig Sugar Cookie is that the cookies are cold and the frosting is room temperature.  Frost cookies right before serving (if you need to make them in advance and need to refrigerate the frosting make sure you give it time to warm up a little before serving).

Monster Cookies

I love baking and trying new recipes.  This year church starts at 1:00 which gives me plenty of time to make cookies for school lunches for me and my sisters family.  In college one of my roommates used to make us cookies on Sundays and one of our favorites was her Monster Cookies.  I have been looking for something similar and I might have stumbled upon something here thanks to the powers of Pinterest and Sally's Baking Addiction!

         Ingredients

• 1/4 cup salted butter, softened to room temperature
• 1/4 cup Crisco
• 1/2 cup light brown sugar
• 1/4 cup sugar
• 3/4 cup creamy peanut butter
• 1 large egg
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 and 1/4 cups all purpose flour
• 1/2 cup quick oats (not instant or whole-rolled oats)*
• 3/4 cup M&Ms (any size or variety - I used peanut butter, plain, and mini M&Ms)
• 1/2 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips

1. Preheat oven to 350F degrees. Line baking sheet with parchment paper or silicone baking mat.
2. In a large bowl, using a hand-held mixer or stand mixer with paddle attachment, cream the butter and sugars together on medium speed, about 3 minutes. Mix in the peanut butter, egg, and vanilla (in that order). Scrape down the sides of the bowl as needed. Slowly mix in the baking soda and flour. Do not over mix. Fold in the quick oats, M&Ms, and chocolate chips. If the dough is very soft and unmanageable by hand, chill the dough for 30 minutes before rolling.
3. Rolls balls of dough, about 2 Tablespoons of dough per ball, onto prepared baking sheet. Press a few extra M&Ms on top for looks, if preferred. Bake for 9-10 minutes - do not bake past 10 minutes. The cookies will appear undone. I too mine out at 9 minutes, which is recommended. Slightly press down the baked cookies with the back of a spoon, since the cookies only slightly spread in the oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 10 minutes before transferring to a wire rack. Cookies will firm up as they cool. Store cookies covered at room temperature for up to 1 week. Cookies freeze well.

Notes

* Please use quick oats in this recipe. You need the slightly finer texture from the quick oats in order to give the cookies a more uniform texture. Quick oats will act more as a binder in this recipe than whole oats would, since the consistency is more powdery and the oats are smaller in size.

Recipe Source: SALLYSBAKINGADDICTION.COM

Washington Rec Center

Since we have been in Utah we have been checking out all the local watering holes and we so far we love the Rec Center the best! It has everything from little babies to the adults entertained all in one place!

James loves the turbo slide, Logan loves the play area, Carson loves the lazy river, and I love that everyone is having fun and no one is crying!

Carson will be attending preschool there starting next week so we will be getting to know them a little better!

James, second grade looks good on you!

James went back to school yesterday and boy is he excited to be in second grade.  It was fun to be in the classroom as he realized he already knew 2 of the kids in his class (Thank you church!). James teacher, Ms. Price, has been teaching 3rd grade and even she's excited for 2nd grade!

My kitchen

I finally got my kitchen cleaned!  One of the things I hate most about moving is finding homes for all our stuff. This kitchen has the most fantastic pantry and I have reworked it once and would like to do it again when the boys are in school.  So without further ado....my kitchen!

Indoor S'mores

I'm not going to lie, s'mores are one of my favorite things about summer. I love the process of making them and finding new ingredients to add to the yummy mess.  I love the open flame, family and friends coming together and the way you smell when you get home from the fire. In our old neighborhood we used to have fires almost every weekend of the summer. Sometimes we would have 3 or 4 firepits lit at the same time.
James has been begging me to do a fire at our new house and I finally was able to find wood and buy the Hersheys chocolate bars, but then the flash flood started and old friends knocked on our door and well you can't blame the kid for getting frustrated.
Tonight after dinner we got out the Graham crackers, marshmallows and Tarder Joe's Chocolate Almond Butter.  We set up a line of grahams with the chocolate almond butter and then cut marshmallows in half and put them on the other half of the graham and into the toaster oven. I have tried them in the microwave, and although I love watching them expanding they get so chewy and I don't love that. The toaster of was perfect.  It lightly toasted the marshmallows and it didn't make the graham crackers soft!
Now to enjoy the sticky mess with the boys!

We moved...again!

I feel like I am always talking about moving.  I lived in the same house for 18 years,  but in the last 13 years I have moved 26 times.  Guess I need to figure things out a little!
I loved living in Coupeville.  I loved my neighbors, my job, the boys Pediatrician (Dr. Barrio) and the boys preschool. It has never been such a perfect fit and I guess that's why we stayed for 2 years.
Last year I was ready to do this move to Utah and even gave notice at work and the preschool, but then I got some sense knocked into me and I signed my lease for another year. At that point I felt like I was just doing my time until school was out and we could make the move south.
Moving away from my family was difficult and I worried about my mom. But in humor only Heavenly Father would think of my brother moved to Washington the same week I moved out of Washington. She lost 3 grand kids she knew intimately and gained 3 that had lived 15 hours away from their entire life.
Now we are in Washington, Utah and only 5 minutes away from my sister.  The boys have loved our daily visits to the pool or local splash pads and finding new places to eat ice cream. It is funny how Carson and Easton (both 3) don't get along, but Easton seems content playing with James and James doesn't seem to mind.
School will start in the next 2 weeks for Logan and James and I might even find a place for Carson to hang out for a few hours a week to play with kids his own age.
I will post pictures once I have done some cleaning!

Episodes

My eldest son has been having violent episodes of rage as long as I can remember.   I have always been able to hold him tightly to help settle the rage, but as he gets has gotten older this method hasn't worked as well. Episodes seem to occur more frequently with change.  In the last month he has moved twice, finished the first grade, played with his father, and drastically changed everything he has ever known in life. 

Today he had 2 episodes- the second being far more violent resulting in dented walls and broken toys. I was able to see the signs at the beginning of the episode enough to send his 2 little brothers into a bedroom and lock the door from the inside to be safe. Thankfully it only lasted 15 minutes and no one was hurt.

I am curious if it was short because I completely removed myself and the little boys. I have never left him to calm the storm alone.  I hate that can see the hurt in his eyes as he struggles to calm his body and it pains me beyond measure.

After he had settled he came downstairs and politely asked if he could color more pictures for me. I asked him to give me a few minutes so that the floors could dry and he said yes and headed straight upstairs.

This sweet child went from being insane to calm in a matter of moments. Thankfully very few have seen this side of him and even more thankfully I have the opportunity to stay home with him to help protect him and provide him with stability.