I'm a dumpster diver!

Never thought I would hear myself utter those words!
The other day, on my way to work, I passed a house that was having a garage sale. I saw they had tons of furniture and stuff...but just kept on driving. When I was coming home that evening, they had everything they didn't sell by the side of the road for trash pickup.
This is what I scored:




It's an old sewing cabinet! It's still in really good condition, just needs a sanding and new coat of paint! I'm thinking I will do an antique "crackle" finish on it and put it in the foyer.

I also scored a chair! Here it is after I re-covered the seat cushion:


I have to say that "dumpster diving" is potentially addicting!
Of course, the kids are mortified that their mother is doing this!

Watermelon!

Well today we sacrificed our first "baby" out of the melon patch....and boy was he tasty! With the recent deluge our melons have fattened up and we had to pick them or lose them (they bust wide open if they get too much water!) Here's Ryan with our first pick:


Enjoying ice cold watermelon on the back porch:




...and spitting the seeds in the grass!

Ciabatta Style Rustic Pizza!

This is an awesome pizza dough that gives you a very rustic style pizza! Just had to share!
A kitchen aid style stand mixer is required, unless you're comfortable working with high hydration doughs and hand mixing. People have assured me it's possible, but it's much easier with a mixer. You could also use a food processor to mix the dough, but the time will be much shorter. Probably less than a minute.
The resulting pizza is light, delicious, and full of huge holes in the crust. If you grow tomatoes and basil in your garden, this pizza is just the ticket.

Ingredients:
2 1/2 C. Bread Flour (All Purpose will also work in a pinch)
1 cup water
1 tsp yeast
1 tsp. salt
Mix the flour,yeast,salt & water in your stand mixer with the paddle on high speed, it won't look like it is doing anything for a while. Then after about 10 minutes or so it will start to come together
Initial mixing, notice the dough is sticking to the sides:

Dough is done as soon as it stop sticking to the sides and is just coming off the bottom. It has the consistency of rubber but is very sticky:

Put the dough into a well oiled bowl and allow to proof (rise) until it triples. It MUST TRIPLE! I find the easiest and fastest way is to put the bowl into my electric oven with the light on. This step takes about 2hrs. for me. Be quick moving the dough from the mixer to the proofing container. You'll probobly still end up with a little dough stuck to your hands, because it's very wet.

Place your pizza stone into the oven and preheat to 500 degrees. If you don't have a baking stone, you can use a baking sheet placed upside down in the oven. Walmart has stones that are inexpensive, I've been using the same one from them for over five years now! Another good baking stone (and VERY cheap!) is to go to Home Depot and get an unglazed terracotta tile that is the size of your oven!
Now, on a heavily floured piece of parchment paper, pour out your dough into a nice blob. Parchment paper is silicone treated and won't melt or light on fire in your hot oven. It will make getting this thing in the oven much easier.

Now begin to shape your pizza! Shape it while on the parchment paper by using your fingers and "walking" them out from the center of the dough or you can grab it from underneath and stretch it. Since the dough is floured on the bottom, it won't stick too much. You don't want it paper thin, but fairly thin in the center.

Now it's time to top the pizza, I really just want some light olive oil, garlic powder, fresh tomatoes, basil and cheese. You can really do whatever you want from this point. One thing I've noticed with my oven though is that if I put the cheese on from the start, it'll burn and I'll have a raw pizza with burnt cheese. So I usually add cheese 2/3 of the way through baking.


Once your oven has hit 500 degrees, slide your cheese-less pizza on to the pizza stone. After 5 minutes my pizza looked like this, nice oven spring! Once the crust has just started to brown (after about 8 minutes for me). I add the cheese.


Now I just let the cheese get to the point that I like and the crust to be nice and brown and I'm done. The all together baking time for this pie was 14 minutes.


Once again, nice airy crust, not dense and sticky, but light and delightful.
Enjoy!

Happy 4th of July!

We had a really fun fourth, and hope you did, too! At first, we thought the day would be a wash-out. There was rain forcasted for every day this week. It had rained all day and the kids were pretty bummed. Finally, around sunset, the clouds stopped pouring and we went out and bought waaaay too many fireworks! I thought little Danny would be scared of all the noise, but he was right in the thick of things with his brothers. He especially loved the sparklers!
Here are my scrapbook pages of the day:

More canning!

I've been busy in the kitchen! Last night I canned 10 pints of garlic kosher dill pickles slices. Take a peek:


We hauled this in from the garden today:

So I guess I'll be making a couple of gallons of spaghetti sauce to can as well!

I have to tell you, I really LOVE country life! If I could quit my nursing job tomorrow and spend my days educating the kids and tending my home and garden, I would absolutely be in heaven! Makes me wish I had discovered horticulture before I went off to school to get my nursing license!

Nothing new to report on the homefront. We'll be schooling the kids through the summer due to the time we lost during the move. We spend our mornings doing lessons and our afternoons at the pool. Kyle is so tan that he looks like a little blonde haired, blue eyed Hispanic child! Doug is slowly gaining business here in town. He's got a new website: weddingsbydouglascreamer.com

Well, I better get busy on those tomatoes!!!

Check out my melons!

How's that for an eye catching title?
My melon patch has finally starting producing! So far, we have 18 watermelons growing! I planted two varieties, Congo, which produces huge 35 pound melons, and Sugar Baby, which has the highest sugar content and produces 10 pound fruits which are the perfect size for the fridge.
Doug teases me that he's going to get me a sign and I can sell watermelon out of the back of the minivan on the side of the road! I can see it now...me sitting in a lawn chair on the side of the road with the back door of the van propped up, kids playing by the roadside, and a sign that reads, "Homeschooling family needs to buy books - Please buy a watermelon!"
Congo:

Sugar Baby:


I'm also growing cantaloupes! I planted a variety called "Amish" that is from a company called "Saving Our Seeds" or S.O.S for short! This variety is over a hundred years old and is a TRUE cantaloupe (not muskmelon, as the "cantaloupes" in the store are!) The flesh has a very dense, but lite texture and it is very sweet! No more store bought "cantaloupes" for us anymore!

Cuts like buttah....

The good 'ol summer time!

It was a lazy summer day at the Creamer household today! After the usual grind of school work and chores, the boys headed out to the pool. I swear these kids are half fish! They'd happily spend the entire day at the pool and burn to a crisp.
Here are some fun pics of them in action:
I call this one "Bellyflop" (ouch!)


Here comes the "Cannonball"


And here's a thumbs-up for fun in the sun from JP!


Seems I was the only one productive today! I canned 12 pints of salsa! After all that canning, I was ready for a jump in the pool, but instead Danny and I laid down for a nap!

(...and yes, I know there are only 11 pints in the picture! We *had* to open one when the boys came back from swimming....quality control, you know!)

A picture is worth a thousand words....

Danny was playing with the older boys and then disappeared for a few minutes.
He came back wearing this:

Not sure if this get-up was for protection against his older brothers or if he wanted to start a new sport...BaseFootBall!

Digital Scrapbooking

I've always admired those moms who could put together amazing scrapbooks for their children! Each child had their whole life captured in colorful pages with witty and clever journaling. Mothers would spend hours and days gathering just the right papers, stickers and accents for these works of art....well, not me!
I have discoved digital scrapbooking, and I'm totally addicted! I can take a few photos, and with the help of PhotoShop and some free scrapbooking websites, I can build a page in minutes!

Here's a sampling of the boy's pages:




If you have PhotoShop (or something similar) you can assemble these pages in minutes, upload them to Walmart or CVS to print (I print mine out on 8X10 matte paper) and just slide them into my scrapbooks! It's easy, cheap (a little over two bucks to print per page) and it really is a lot of fun!





Here is are a few of the sites that offer free downloads of papers and embellishments:

http://shabbyprincess.com/

http://www.digitalscrapbookplace.com/place/freebies.shtml

http://scrapbook-bytes.com/

Have fun!!!

John Paul-isms

John Paul is one funny kid! Everyday Doug and I catch ourselves saying, "Did you hear what JP came up with today?" So I thought I'd list a few of our John Paul-isms!

Neighbor: "John Paul is such a pretty name! Tell me, are you named after the Pope?"
JP: "Yep, can you guess which one?"

******

Neighbor: "John Paul, you have the prettiest blue eyes! What color eyes does Ryan have?"
JP: "Brown"
Neighbor: "What color eyes does Kyle have?"
JP: "Blue"
Neigbor: "What color eyes does Daniel have?"
JP: "Blue"
Neighbor: "O.K., so that's one brown and three blue eyes."
JP: "NO! Danny has TWO blue eyes, not THREE!"

*******

Me: "John Paul, were you a good boy at baby sitting today?"
JP: "Yes, I was very good....I didn't sit on any babies!"

*******

Neighbor: "John Paul, what does your mommy do at her work?"
JP: "She's a nurse....and she sells babies!"
(Thank goodness Ryan was there and clarified that I *deliver* babies, not sell them!)

*******

Friend: She noticed his St. Rita medal and said, "John Paul, are you a Catholic?"
JP: "Yes.....but just a little bit."

*******

Some things you might not know about JP:
If John Paul doesn't like something, he'll tell you he's "allergic" to it.
He loves, loves, LOVES Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, his lunchbox, and money.
Little Danny is his BEST friend.
When he's outside, he digs in any dirt he can find!

My silly boy:

The Godfather (not the movie!)

We had a joyful day yesterday! Doug was honored in being named godfather to precious baby Rhapsody Brigid! The ceremony was just lovely in welcoming this newest child of God, and both Doug and I couldn't get enough of the wonderful smell of chrism (mixed with the scent of sweet baby head!)
The D. family along with godparents Cindy H. and Doug. Father Torres performed the Sacrament:

Proud godfather!

Dinner at our house tonight

Here's what's for dinner at our house tonight (much to the dismay of the kids!)

Check out our babies!

This week my plants bloomed and now we have "babies" in the garden!
With all the rain and warm temps, my plants have just exploded! Here are the latest pics:


Zucchini and squash:
(from my endless hours of watching FoodTV, I understand that filling the zucchini blossoms with rich ricotta or marscapone cheeses and then frying them is quite the delicasy!)




My first tomato!


Little pollinators at work:


Here's our watermelon patch. This is the SECOND time I've planted it! The first time I didn't use the black plastic and the weeds over took my seedlings. The second time I did it right, but looks like we won't be enjoying watermelon until August!


Yeah, I'm a big nerd......BUT I'M A NERD WITH A ROCKIN' GARDEN!

Happy Earth Day!

The Creamer family celebrated Earth Day by firing up the grill, and spreading weed & feed and ant poison over the yard!

Here's the Grill Master at work:

Focaccia Bread

This snack is extremely fast, easy and CHEAP! You can use it for sandwiches, snacks or as a dinner bread. Very versatile as you can use whatever is in your spice cabinet or left over in your fridge! I used the following recipe and added some ground flax seeds (for a healthy omega 3,6, and 9 boost!) I had to add extra water as well due to the seeds. We topped ours with garlic powder, dried italian herbs, freshly ground pepper and parmasean cheese!



INGREDIENTS:
1 teaspoon white sugar
1 package active dry yeast OR 2 1/4 tsp. if using from bulk
2/3 cup warm water
2 cups all-purpose flour
2 tablespoons olive oil
1/4 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS
In a small bowl, dissolve sugar and yeast in warm water. Let stand until creamy, about 10 minutes.
In a large bowl, combine the yeast mixture with flour; stir well to combine. When the dough has pulled together, turn it out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for about 3-4 minutes, adding flour as necessary to keep dough from sticking.
Lightly oil a large bowl, place the dough in the bowl and turn to coat with oil. Cover with a damp cloth and let rise in a warm place until doubled in volume, about 45 minutes.
Preheat oven to 475 degrees F.
Turn dough out onto a baking stone/sheet dusted with cornmeal or sprayed lightly with oil. Push dough out using your fingertips to the edges of your baking surface. Brush lightly with olive oil and top with cheese, herbs, and seasonings.
Bake focaccia in preheated oven for 10 to 20 minutes, depending on desired crispness. If you like it moist and fluffy, then you'll have to wait just about 10 minutes. If you like it crunchier and darker in the outside, you may have to wait 20 minutes.