Sweet Victory

We are of course big hockey fans in this household.  Bruins hockey fans to be exact so seeing them win the Stanley Cup was a huge thrill.  My husband is the biggest fan of all and so for Father's day it seemed only fitting to make him some Stanley Cupcakes for father's day.

Again my handy dandy Cricut was useful in
cutting out the little jerseys and cupcake holders.
The cupcake holders say 'champs' on them.
Then I just used some markers to add the color
and names to the jerseys.
And yes, I spent some extra time to make a little
Stanley cup replica out of some plastic cups, a toilet paper tube and tin foil.
The cupcakes are pina colada flavored and my favorite Bruins fan was more than happy to eat them for dessert on Father's Day.

WoooHoooo!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The Stanley Cup is back in Boston!!

Wordless Wednesday

Homemade Happenings

We had a lot of homemade goodness going on over here during the end of last week.  I get such a little thrill out of anything homemade.  I made tomato sauce Thursday.  It is still early for really good tomatoes but I made do with what I could find.  It came out pretty good and I can't wait for the really good tomatoes later in the season.  Friday Dom and I made chicken sausage.  We've pretty much mastered the pork and I wanted to try making chicken because I believe it is a bit healthier as well as cheaper to make.  I joked that if we wanted realy fresh sausage we could just grab a chicken from the yard.
 I was of course joking.
 I will be honest and say at some point I would definitly consider raising meat birds.  Yes, I am well aware of what the act of processing your own birds entails.  My parents raised turkeys when I was younger and I witnessed the whole process first hand.
Could I do it myself?  That remains to be seen.
The first time would be the hardest but knowing that the chicken lived a happy life being chickens and not crammed into little cages and pumped full of antibiotics and hormones would make it easier for me.  I am honestly quite disturbed by the size of chicken breasts that you find in the grocery store.
Henrietta and Henny Penny are quite safe from becoming sausage as we are quite fond of them and they're egg laying, insect eating contributions to the family.
Anyway,we made chicken sausage and it turned out good.  I think that we will switch to making chicken sausage for a little while since we have both worked so hard to lose weight.
Next homemade item on the agenda was Mozzarella cheese.  In my neverending curiousity to find
easy things to make at home I came across the New England Cheesemaking Supply Company. They sell kits for cheese making at home.  The mozzarella takes only an hour-(actually the box claims 30 minutes but it was closer to an hour for us first timers.)  It really wasn't that hard and the cheese came out pretty good.  You can just use milk from the grocery store as long as it isn't ultra-pasteurized.  I hope to find a more local source for milk because the cheese would be even better!

So by Saturday afternoon we had fresh sauce, sausage and cheese and decided to make pizza for
dinner by making up some homemade dough.  So fun!  I had several little helpers because Becca had a
friend from school sleepover and we had a delicious homemade pizza!
Add to that Kenzie's woodworking creations and we had lots of homemade fun!

Kenzie Creations

Kenzie is a hands on kinda girl and really likes to design and build stuff.  Mostly she had been making little inventions with erector sets and sketching out little inventions in a notebook.
Recently though, she was playing around with some wood that was in the yard that was leftover from when we built the deck.  The pieces had been used to hold down a tarp and had since just been in a little pile in the yard.  One day while Dom and I were working in the yard she stacked the pieces up in a little bench, minus the legs and was hanging out.  After commenting on her cute little design Dom offered to help her screw it all together.  Her eyes got all big "Really!?"  she exclaimed.  And that's just what they did.
Kenzie finished off her little bench with a nice little paint job and it makes a perfect addition to the fire pit!

 This weekend she and Dom took on another project that she thought up.  This idea seemed to spring from her watching us add a nesting box onto the chicken coop. We added a little door in the back of the box to easily get the eggs out.  Soon after seeing this Kenzie mentioned how she would like to make a box and soon was sketching out her design.  The little box/cabinet now sits proudly next to her bed and doubles as a nightstand!


Below are a few pictures of her working on the box.  Dom obviously did the cutting of the wood but the design, most of the assembly and painting was all done by Kenzie!

I am curious to see what she comes up with next!

Wordless Wednesday