Homemade Ice cream

VIDEO:  The girls making homemade ice cream!

This was a really fun activity!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons sugar

1 cup half and half

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

1/2 cup salt (The bigger the granules, the better. Kosher or rock salt works best, but table salt is fine.)

Ice cubes (enough to fill each gallon-size bag about half full)

1 pint-size ziplock bag

1 gallon-size ziplock bag

Instructions

1.Combine the sugar, half and half, and vanilla extract in the pint-size bag and seal it tightly.

2.Place the salt and ice in the gallon-size bag, then place the sealed smaller bag inside as well. Seal the larger bag. Now shake the bags until the mixture hardens (about 5 minutes). Feel the small bag to determine when it's done.

We added chocolate powder to our ice cream to make it chocolate - it turned out just like soft-serve and oh, so yummy! 

Next time I'll just do 1 bag instead of 3.  5 minutes is a really long time to shake a bag for a little kid, and it turned out to be a lot to eat too. 

VIDEO:  how the girls like their ice cream!

River's Restaurant

River LOVES cooking.

When she helps me cook and makes delicious things we call it River's Restaurant!

She loves making and creating.  

She loves cleaning up too!

River's Special Sauce:

Ranch, Spaghetti Sauce, Parmesan Cheese

We love making pancakes!

The BEST Orange juice I have ever had!!!

Her own creation -

River loves using cheese, Ranch and Olives!

Snow IceCream -

Vanilla, Cinnamon, Sugar and Snow!

River loves to give presents.

She loves to make people smile.

When anyone in our family is feeling sick or she feels like they need an extra-special pick me up, River makes them a tray of goodies and a beautiful car. 

Super Thoughtful!

We had fun making making this colorful healthy yummy dish!

River decided to make a cake for a neighborhood potluck.

She got lots of compliments on her "cake that tasted like a sugar cookie"

I got this cookbook when I was about River's age, and it was my favorite. 

Micky Mouse and all the Disney characters make different dishes - it is fun to look through it together.

Powdered Sugar Snow makes it so fancy. 

Apricot, Peach, Berry Delish!

We LOVE Smoothies!

I did a blog post recently about Icees and Slushies - these are frozen juice, but a Smoothie is a creation indeed!

 River and Silver are my big helpers to create our smoothie masterpieces!

 Add any fruit:  Some ideas:  Peaches, Apricots, Pears, Strawberries, Blueberries, Bananas, etc.

Add ice cubes, frozen fruit, Strawberry shake powder (Available at Costco "Breeza Brand" a big tub for $3), milk, yogurt or frozen juices like orange juice.

The possibilities are endless and delicious!!
They each turn out different and oh so yummy!

 My Omi (grandma) gave us a vita-mix for our wedding, and we use it ALL the time :)  It is fabulous to make shakes with - it really blends all the pieces up so finely.  Even the peach or apricot skins it cuts up so fine.

 We also love vegetables!

Have you heard of Bountiful Baskets.  This is seriously the best thing ever!

Every other week we get to pick up two large bags of veggies and fruit for $15. 

http://bountifulbaskets.org/

It has a large variety of different fruits and vegetables.

They also include ones that I don't buy regularly, so we have quite a bit more variety in our diet these days - yams, artichokes, pomegranates, pineapple, berries, etc. 
The girls go with me on Saturday mornings to go pick up our healthy stuff - they tell me the colors and what it is called as we gently (sometimes) put it in our bags.

It is available all over the Western States.  Fabulous!

 My cooking friends

 Our Day of Tears:

     When onions were on the shopping list Colt brought me home a 25 lb bag of onions. WoW - maybe I may need to be more specific of what I had in mind on those shopping lists! The next day my project was to dice and get all the onions in the freezer. Now, I love onions, but I have a hard time peeling and cutting them up. I cry buckets of tears for each onion. I couldn't get through an onion before tears were flowing too quickly and I'd have to step away. Between my tears, Silver's tears, Summer's tears, and countless interruptions.....it was a long morning. After 30 onions I called it quits until nap time. To finish up the bag was 33 more onions - I didn't shed a tear. Either I was completely out of tears, or the open window blowing cold fresh air against my eyeballs was a wonder! We now have a freezer full of chopped onions :)

Another of my favorite things is scents.  We have a scent warmer that heats up wax to release the scent.  Think a scented candle without the fire.  Here are the girls finding their favorite scent:

Some better than others, heh?

River found a keeper!

Oh, my precious girls! 

You're growing up so fast.

Priceless!

We have so many precious memories:


River's story from our trip to California: We were all standing around talking on the beach. Our backs were to the ocean and River was digging in the wet sand. All of a sudden a HUGE wave came up and got her. She went tumbling in the water and got sea water in her mouth. She was being so brave too. Last year she didn't want anything to do with the water. This year we would walk down until the waves splashed on her toes and then we would turn running and screaming :) Last year we found crabs. This year there was an outcrop of rocks that she splashed around behind. It was nice because the waves would make puddles that would come and go, but the waves wouldn't overwhelm her.

Silver loved the sand as much as River did!

Saturday Ventures

River LOVES Fishing

River was sitting with her pole in the water when we saw it start to dance. Dad, I think I have one! Sure enough! This is what she reeled in!Way to go River!

Silver LOVES the water! We would go to the swimming pool often. Whenever she gets in the water (pool or bath) she kicks her legs and squeals and has the greatest time!

Silver takes this position often!
River LOVES cooking, we have fun making all sorts of yummy things for our family!

Some things are big successes, some are not! Cullinary tip: Don't try blueberry waffles, they just stick in the waffle maker and make a big mess, but the purple waffles were deffinitely different!

Pumpkin cookies are our favorite thing to make!Daddy's 30th Birthday!

Colt's Archery

Silver dawn loves exploring her world!

Silver at the Grand Canyon
Silver LOVES to Climb! She climbs on low chairs, River's bed, boxes, the dishwasher, she'll try anything! What an adventurer!

Silver loves to walk with chairs. She took her first steps yesterday, 2 steps by herself. She gets so proud of herself and breaks into a huge smile!

Ahhh, we see the miracles of the Lord Every Day!