Watercolor Collage

We managed to fit an art project into the schedule today.  I was pretty excited - I've wanted to do this one for a while now.

You start out by painting a random watercolor design.  Cody decided to jazz his up a little by adding in some pencil markings which he claims are letters in his name, because "every good artist puts his name somewhere in his painting".

 Dylan mixed a few colors together there in the center and wound up seeing a toucan.  Do you see it?  I sorta could at first but can't now.

I almost had a hard time painting randomly.  Is there really such thing as truly random??

Once our paintings dried it was time to draw our grid lines on the back.  We choose to make our squares  1 1/2". 

Once all the lines are drawn it's time to cut, cut, cut.

 Katie's pile of pretty colored squares.

Cody's pile was so much more enthralling what with all that orange grabbing your eye for attention.

Our ever present companion.

Now that all the squares are cut it's time to position them on another piece of paper.  The object is not to put your painting back together like a jigsaw puzzle but to randomly place your pieces creating a totally new design.

My partially constructed design - I had to wait on the glue.

Katie gives her design 2 thumbs up.

Cody and all his eye-catching orange.

Dylan's mystical hidden toucan.

Mine. This was such a fun and easy project.  An especially good project for perfectionist children, since there are no mistakes.

Gluten Free Dinner

Two fairly triumphant recipes to share. 

The first is a gluten free bread.  I'm going gluten free for 60 days to try and determine if I have a gluten intolerance.  And, just so ya know, gluten is in everything!  Just like corn - it's everywhere! 

I wasn't real sure this would turn out at all, after hearing that it was really difficult to make gluten free bread and that most folks just buy it online from a place they've found.

 But, I did a little research via the web and found what seemed to be a good recipe.  I found it at Gluten Free Mom.  She has lots of helpful information.  I'm so thankful she took the time to set up that website.

This is the yeast being proofed.  While the recipe is written for newbies, I found it helpful even though I've made my own bread for years.  I followed the recipe to almost a T.

The recipe calls for a bunch of different flours and didn't look like "normal" bread dough does.  Here it is in the oven trying to rise.  It acts like more of a quick bread than a yeast bread.  You spoon it into the pan.  Ha ha ha ha  While the bread was in the oven doing it's thing.....

Pioneer Woman's lasagna is the other recipe.  I really wanted to eat it, but couldn't with regular noodles.  So, I slipped in these brown rice noodles instead.  I knew if I told my family what I'd done they wouldn't eat it.  I was banking on there not being much of a taste and/or consistency difference.

Look at all that glorious cheese.  You can't see my snafu from this angle.  I was on the phone (ok that's a lie, I had just hung up) while assembling the various layers and suddenly...... I realized that I'd laid down the 2nd layer of noodles without putting in the meat/sauce.  I literally went "Ruh Roh!" 

Then I reasoned that no one would notice.  It gets all jumbled up when you dish it out of the pan anyway, right??  I just carried on with the layering I had left, which wasn't much since PW's only has 2 layers.  Actually, I was afraid to pull the noodles out.  They tear, they get stuck to themselves.  You know......

Well, out came the bread and in went the lasagna.  It had risen pretty nicely.  Look at it!  I was like "OH!!"  Looks good doesn't it?  I was still apprehensive because while it may look good on the outside the inside could be yucky.  So, I waited for it to cool.

And as it cooled the bottom side caved in on itself.  Looks kinda funny, huh?  I realized once I tasted it that it needed to cook a little longer and that when I pulled it out of the pan I had put a hole in the bottom.  I guess it acted kind like a balloon. 

The lasagna all finished.  Sure does look pretty.  So hungry at this point and really anxious to taste everything!!

No one noticed about the layers in the lasagna and it tasted just fine!  If anything, it was too much cheese.  The bread was good too.  More of a sweet bread, but I can work with that.  The texture was just like homemade bread and soft.  I will definitely make this again!

Snow Day

The craziness continues here in Central Virginia.  As usual, the weather man nailed the forecast on the head.  Thankfully my hope does not rest in the weather man.  The predicted 1 - 2" turned into 9 - 10". 

This is at about 9:30 am.  The snow was coming down fast and heavy.  This much snow had accumulated in about 2 hours.

Dylan was willing to go out to measure the snow for me since I'm too wimpy to do it myself.  Please note that he is out in the snow in shorts and a t-shirt with NO shoes on.  I'm SO proud.  At this point we had 9" and it continued to snow for another 2ish hours with not a whole lot more accumulation.

My daffodils continue to hang tough.  No worries though, it'll be mid 60s on Wednesday and 70 on Thursday.