Finally some craftiness!

Of course, it would be work-related craftiness, but a girl has to make do with what she's got, right?  

Last week I had to tie-dye a pair of tee shirts for a display at work.  The tie-dye kit provided enough dye for up to eight regular shirt, so I had a TON leftover.  What's a crafty girl to do with all that leftover dye?  I could have poured it down the drain, but where's the fun in that?  

Instead, I grabbed four new, white newborn baby bodysuits and proceeded to tie-dye the heck out of them.  

They came out pretty darn cute, if I do say so myself.  

Now I just can't wait to have a squishy little baby to put in them! 

Simple Foods: Tuna Helper? I think not!

I ran across another great recipe last week that is a perfect substitute for yet another convenience food pitfall.  You know the one I'm talking about....it comes in the box.  With all the salt.  And the preservatives.  And the sauce powder.  

I'm the first to admit that I frequently grab for boxed convenience foods on evenings when I've had to work all day, or when the kitchen is cluttered, or when I'm just feeling plain lazy and don't feel like cooking.  Bad, bad, I know, but hey, nobody's perfect!  

Imagine my surprise to find a recipe that fits all the same criteria as that certain boxed dinner:  it's quick, it's tasty, the kids gobble it up, but it's healthier!  It's made from real ingredients, not freeze dried vegetables and seventeen other things I can't pronounce.  

Like most of my recipes, I found this one on AllRecipes.com.  The actual recipe is here, accompanied by photos and reader comments, but I'll give you the quick and dirty version below:

BEST TUNA CASSEROLE

Ingredients

• 1 (12 ounce) package egg noodles
• 1/4 cup chopped onion
• 2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
• 1 cup frozen green peas
• 2 (6 ounce) cans tuna, drained
• 2 (10.75 ounce) cans condensed cream of mushroom soup
• 1/2 (4.5 ounce) can sliced mushrooms
• 1 cup crushed potato chips

• Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Cook pasta in boiling water for 8 to 10 minutes, or until al dente; drain. 
• Preheat oven to 425 degrees F (220 degrees C)
• In a large bowl, thoroughly mix noodles, onion, 1 cup cheese, peas, tuna, soup and mushrooms. Transfer to a 9x13 inch baking dish, and top with potato chip crumbs and remaining 1 cup cheese. 
• Bake for 15 to 20 minutes in the preheated oven, or until cheese is bubbly. 

The only changes I made were to omit the mushrooms (we're not fans), and to use cream of chicken soup instead of cream of mushroom, because it's what I had on hand.  The result?  A cheesy, flavorful casserole that the entire family enjoyed!  I will definitely make this casserole again, and I'm excited to have found a good standby recipe that works even better than boxed convenience food when I'm pressed for time or feeling like a lazy cook!  

Crafting Sanity: How I Make Time

There hasn't been a whole lot of crafting going on in the Crafting Sanity household lately, what with the impending baby arrival (in 7 weeks!!).  Most of my time lately is spent trying to whip the house into shape, getting birth supplies together, and getting myself in the right head space to deliver a baby.  All these things are time consuming and leave little downtime leftover for craftiness, and I'm feeling the lack of creativity very much.  

But, even though I don't have the time to sit down and spread out a project on the kitchen table doesn't mean I'm not doing something crafty every day.  Even if I'm just picking up the knitting needles for ten minutes here or there during a cleaning break, I'm still making progress toward finishing a project.  My goal every day is to have at least 30 minutes of "Crafty Time" to work on one of the many projects I have in progress.  I've learned over time, that if I go too many days without making something, I tend to get a little grumpy.  So, for the peace of the family, I craft.  When Mama gets to craft, Mama's happy.  And when Mama's happy....well, you know how that one goes. 

Why does being crafty matter so much to me?  I guess because, in the end, home made matters.  I treasure things that are created out of love, and with a skill learned from family members, and passed on to loved ones.  Creating something from a pile of raw materials is slowly becoming a lost art in our consumerist, import everything culture, but I don't want to lose the magic and treasure of handmade items in my own life.  I want my kids to grow up with an appreciation of this type of skill, no matter the finished project, and to realize they don't have to buy something at the local mall for it to be worth something.  A handmade gift, however imperfect, is more precious than anything that can be bought in a store. 

Crafting keeps me sane.  It's as simple as that.  So it's important that I make time to work with my hands, to create something beautiful (or not so beautiful!) to feel healthy spiritually and mentally. 

Craft as therapy....how about that?

Simple Foods: Homemade Chocolate Syrup

For a very long time, I've wanted to adapt my families mostly processed and commercially produced diet to one that concentrated more on simple, whole, healthful foods.  

I've discovered that the trick to making the switch is not to overhaul the entire kitchen at once - that's definitely a recipe for failure!  Instead, I'm concentrating on slowly replacing convenience or processed foods that we eat very frequently with simpler, healthier, homemade alternatives.  

Case in point: chocolate syrup. 

I love chocolate milk, and I drink it an average of three times per week, sometimes more now that I'm pregnant.  If I'm craving something sweet and chocolaty, I'll mix up some Hershey's syrup into a tall glass of cold milk, and my craving will be satisfied.  But, I don't kid myself that chocolate syrup is healthy for me in any way, shape, or form.  I mean, with ingredients like these:

High fructose corn syrup, corn syrup, waster, cocoa, sugar, potassium sorbate, salt, mono- and di-glycerides, xanthan gum, polysorbate 60, vanillin, and artificial flavor.   (Taken directly from the Hershey Syrup bottle.)

you really can't say there's any nutritive value in there at all!  

Yesterday, I stumbled across this recipe that someone on a healthy living forum shared.  You can find the original recipe, with photos and feedback here, but I've provided the ingredients and basic instructions below.

Homemade Chocolate Syrup

Ingredients:

1 cup cocoa powder

1 1/2 cups sugar

1 dash salt

1 1/2 cups water

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Mix all ingredients in a sauce pan.  Bring to a boil for 3-5 minutes, until mixture begins to thicken.  Store in an airtight jar in the refrigerator. 

How simple is that?  Five easy (and easily pronounceable!) ingredients, and five minutes on the stove and you have your own chocolate syrup!  No guessing what's in it, no plastic bottle to throw away, no high fructose corn syrup going into your body!  

Now obviously, even the homemade chocolate syrup isn't terribly healthy, but at least it is made with natural ingredients that weren't cooked up in a chemistry lab, yes?  So now I think I can feel much better about giving my kids the occasional mug of chocolate milk, or drinking one myself, now that I know I can make a much healtheir, more wholesome version of a much-relied on chocolate treat!  

Have you tried out this recipe, or have another great homemade recipe that replaces a store bought, processed convenience food?  I'd love to hear about it!  Just drop me a note!

gardening: starting simple

I have a confession:

I love to garden, but I'm kind of bad at it.  

Last year, I planted scads of peppers, tomatoes, cucumber, beans, etc, and none of them were harvested or eaten, because I quite simply forgot about them.  My excuse at the time was that I was busy with two kids, busier with work, and the garden was around the back corner of the house, so it was out of sight and out of mind.  

I'd like to do a little better this year, starting with scale.  

Instead of planting a dozen each of a dozen different types of plants, I'm going to stick with just a few plants each of a couple different varieties.  Just a few of our most-enjoyed vegetables, one or two herbs, and possibly a fruit like strawberries.  The idea here is that if there is less garden to mind, I will be able to make the time to care for it properly.  

With that in mind, I'm thinking of growing a cucumber vine, a runner bean or pea bush, the strawberries, and a few types of mint for tea.  That isn't many plants at all, and should be perfectly manageable, even with a preschooler, a toddler and a newborn to watch out for.

Secondly, the garden location needs to change.  

Last summer, the only glimpse I got of our poor, neglected plants was when I chased one of the kids back into the fenced in part of our yard, where 99% of our time is spent.  

This year, I'd like to incorporate our garden plants into our living landscape.  Cucumber vines and bean bushes should grow well against our yard fence, spearmint and peppermint will do well in containers on the porch where there's a bit of shade, and I'm thinking of trying the strawberries as a border plant around the porch and down the side of the house, and possibly in a hanging basket or two.  

If the plants are worked into our landscape, they become much easier to care for.  For instance, I don't have to leave the children inside the fence to go out and water, weed, or tend plants.  Also, the plants will always be in view and I'll be able to tell at a glance while walking from the car to the house if anything needs attention.  The only drawback I expect to see is the death of a few plants by my well meaning but not-so-gentle-at-times little ones.  We'll try to combat their over-loving the plants by giving them their own growing space and their own seeds to plant.  They love to play in the dirt, and hopefully they'll learn a bit about being gentle with fragile plants in the process.

Now it's just a matter of waiting on the darn cold weather to pass so we can get out there and plant, plant, plant!

Power Outage = Blessing in Disguise?

I’m sitting here on my couch, legs stretched out in front of me, enjoying the type of silence that comes along very rarely.  There is an utter stillness in the air, and only the shrill chirping of crickets for background music.  

We’ve had storms for most of the day in our neck of the woods, the kind of pop-up thunderstorms that can be so unpredictable, but still so beautiful, in the spring.  Even though the storms have blown over, the power has just gone out, plunging the entire house into a comforting darkness.  The only light is the light of the computer screen that I’m using to type this blog entry.  Thank goodness for laptop batteries!

I have to confess that I do love a good thunderstorm and subsequent power outage, so long as that outage isn’t long enough to spoil the food in the fridge.  There’s just something otherworldly about sitting in the dark, cut off from most of the trappings of current civilization that makes the day (or night) take on a whole new meaning.  

When all of our little gadgets and gizmos are unavailable to us, what do we do?  I’ll be the first to admit that I’m more than a little attached to the Internet.  But, I also believe that it’s healthy to take a break from the fast pace of the electronic world we live in, to slow down and appreciate the simpler, more basic things life has to offer.  And sometimes, like now, when I don’t have enough sense to unplug the TV myself, or the willpower to stay away from Facebook, I’m glad that Mother Nature has the chance to intervene and force my hand.  A night without surfing various blogs or compulsively refreshing Huffington Post will be good for me.  

So now, with no lights to turn on, no TV to stare at, no radio to listen to, I’m going to take advantage of this gift, this sudden stillness that begs me to put away the keyboard, and I’m going to crawl in bed with a sleepy toddler.  He’ll snuggle up to me in that trusting, warm way that he does, and he’ll say “Hi, Mommy, time for ‘seep’.”  

Yeah, buddy, it’s time for sleep.

Hello and Welcome!

Welcome to Crafting Sanity, my catch-all blog about living frugally, decluttering, homeschooling, simplicity and more!

Why Crafting Sanity?  As a mom of two kids under five, with another due in late May, my life sometimes gets a little crazy.  Add in working outside the home and trying to run a part-time photography business and it gets downright insane!  I have to find my little pieces of sanity wherever I can, and most of the time, I do it by crafting: sewing, scrapbooking, painting, etc.  Arts and crafts are therapy in this house!  


At the same time, I'm always looking for ways to make our everyday lives simpler.  A simpler life equals less opportunity for the crazy to move in and take over!  In that regard, I'm recently on a mission to declutter our home, declutter our financial life, and make every day about the things that are most important: each other.  


As the blog grows, I look forward to posting about our progress, as well as sharing craft projects and tutorials and information on how everyone can simplify their lifestyle and home.  Pictures and stories about my kids are a given!  


I'm looking forward to sharing our journey with you, and I hope you enjoy following along!