Meatballs. Yeah commence happy dance

Okay so apparently, I do more cooking than anything. I realized I should probably give away one of my favorite SECRETS...Cooking secrets that is. I'm talking about Meatballs. Homemade, hands messy, a part of your soul, and a whole lot of love poured into each little ball you hand form. These babies are moist, and they taste amazing. I have REFERENCES.


What Cha Need:

1 lb ground beef. (I dont care what percentage...but I use lean ground beef)
garlic powder
salt and pepper
1 egg
3/4 cups of water
3/4 cups fancy cheese (I used asiago, romano, & parmesan combined)
1/2 cup bread crumbs (I use these A LOT don't I?)
and a honkin' bowl.


Now you see all the ingredients up there? Exactly as they are listed LAYER...See that....I SAID LAYER everything. NO MIXING, no combining early. LLLAAAYYYYEEERRRRRRR. Don't question me on my madness.
This means you put the meat on the bottom, then the garlic powder right on top (now some people in my family are sensitive to garlic so use your best judgement on how much to use), then salt and pepper on top (same use your best judgement rule) and so on and so forth.

Here we are in order

Now when everything is sitting pretty on top of one another in the order listed wash your hands.


Then take off any jewelry that means anything to you that is on your hands. I would hate for meat or crumbs or cheese to get stuck in a diamond, or a crevice you cant clean on your wedding ring or something. See i did it...

This is the part when i usually heat up my pasta sauce for spaghetti and meatballs.

Mixing time!
Now this is fun for the kids to get in on too.

SQUISH SQUISH SQUISH mix that with your hands. Feel the icky gooey, and mush it all together. I would say do this for about 3-4 minutes.

once everything is mixed and loving one another in that bowl you will need to form little balls about the size of a golf ball maybe a bit bigger, depending on how big you want them. I then place them all in the sauce as its heating up and i cover it. 

Occasionally i will come by and jostle the pan, but be careful not to rough them up too much for they might break apart and you end up with just a "meat sauce".

After about 5-7 minutes on one side in the sauce I turn mine GENTLY over. Recover pan. Again these babies are fragile. Another 5 minutes and i would normally take one lucky pup out of the pan and cut it in half to make sure its cooked through. And i sample too...NO big deal. Usually at this moment i revel in my awesomeness because my mouth just went to some sort of sicilian heaven. MMMM

You are welcome! Now you make!

The poor man pasta

The poor man pasta... how do I explain this? 

I came up with this pasta idea, when all I had were a few ingredients to make something for dinner. I became a master at this task when I went to college. You know the saying "starving artist". Well I know it first hand. Now I made this batch just for me and my two year old. so you will have to adjust accordingly.

Ingredients:

Egg Noodles

frozen corn

frozen peas

Frozen spinach (I always bought fresh spinach in the produce section, then when i get home i stick it in the freezer)

1/4 cup bread crumbs

garlic

oregano

salt

pepper

Olive oil

Tyson Grilled and Ready Chicken breasts (always have some of these on hand-salads, quesadillas, pasta dishes such as this, wraps) 

Instructions are easy.

Cook the chicken in the oven at 375 for 18-20 minutes. Or if your really short on time it's microwavable.

Cook pasta. Cook the amount you feel your family will devour.

Cook the corn, peas, and spinach in the same pot...its okay i promise. (since the spinach was frozen all I had to do was crunch it in my hands and it was pretty much shredded into the mix of veggies. hidden from sight..ninja like)

In a little bowl while the stuff is cooking mix breadcrumbs, garlic, oregano, salt, pepper together. 

After pasta is complete drizzle some olive oil over the pasta. Chop cooked chieken-add it to pasta. Drain water from veggies and add to pasta. Mix together. Then add the little bowl of mixed seasonings. mix well. You can add some butter or more olive oil to the mix if i needs a little extra moisture. I added about 2 more tablespoons of butter to it and mixed until it was melted. Thats it your done. Pretty easy.

I'm sorry but...

You should try reading these next statements with "I'm sorry but..." before you start each number.

1. Your kid will fall off the bed- listen I don't mean to sound brash but it happens. Whether it be the couch or the bed they are going to fall off at some point. Also ties into your kid will get hurt. Cuts/scrapes/ other boo boos are going to happen. Your job is to be prepared for them and try your best to prevent them. But sometimes no matter how careful you are  -let me just say it- shit happens. 
2. No blood no bandaid. A lot of people freak out when their child falls and just simply lands on their butt. Let me give you a hint- they won't freak out if YOU don't freak out. I normally stop and like freeze in my tracks and look at my son and wait for his unguided expression of pain or being scared. I have quickly learned my son is pretty freaking durable. I look in his eyes when I help him back up and sweetly say "you are okay" and smile. I guess it is going to come in handy later in life metaphorically speaking . When he falls down I will be there to encourage/ help him Stan back up and remind him he is okay.
3. You will lie to your kids. I never wanted to lie to my son. Like EVER. But I found that I was catching my self in little white lies to keep my sanity in tact. Like when your child has a favorite toy that is especially noisy and only has one freaking setting-loud as heck- and after a while the noise induces your body to produce twitching like actions. Yeah at that point you need to do something. Suggestion: with ninja like actions sneak into said child's room and smuggle the toy out of there like a columbian drug lord, and if anyone asks "Its Broken...Uh oh?"
4. Your going to think other kids are ugly compared to your beautiful creation. 
5. You aren't in the parent club until someone asks you if your kid clad in all blue and a baseball cap (or in all pinks and a tutu) is a boy or girl. SMH. 

Can I get a witness.

Sensory bags

Alrighty - sensory bags here we go.

 What you would need

There are ao many possibilities but I have

• shaving cream
• Hot glue gun
• Aloe vera lotion (you can also use hair gel)
• Glitter
• Food coloring
• PompomS
• Clear glass rocks/beads
• Tiny little gems
• Fuzzy yarn/ string
• Plastic bags (I have different sizes- and mine are freezer bags)

Now you don't require all of these things but I make two different types I bags and I used a little bit of everything. I have all these things on hand usually contained within my craft box.

You can put pretty much anything you want inside your sensory bags. 

Now here are your basic steps to make one EASY!! 

1. Take one size of plastic bag that you would like to use (each sensory bag uses two bags)

2. Fill with your choice base substance-  I chose aloe Vera. You only need about 1/3-2/3 cup depending on the size of the bag you chose. You don't need much.

3. For this one I am making : it's going to be "all things shiny" so I sprinkled a fair amount of glitter on top of the aloe Vera.

4. Then I added the little gems and glass beads. 

5. To seal it properly i squeezed all the air out the best i could and I used my hot glue gun along the top in between the two sides of the zip.

6. Place inside a second bag either the same size or the next size up. And repeat hot glue step. 

I also made one that I call "all things fuzzy" 

My son enjoys squishing them both.
In case you didn't check it out before, See what else you can do with shaving cream!
Thanks for checking this out! Have fun!

Go to creative everything.

You see this giant pad? 

Yeah that one.

Well I have to just share thing simple thing with anyone who wants to take the time to read this. 

This is a giant newsprint paper pad. The sheets are huge and personally I think the more coloring room you have the better. 

My son knows now that when mommy takes out the giant pad of paper it's time to be creative. Usually he suggests a medium he wants to work with- yesterday it was play dough- the day before it was water colors... Now let me explain. 

Looks like I am a weirdo mom. I know; me saying my son experiements in different "mediums" sounds like I'm crazy and some sort of a hipster. But only having a single form of expression gets pretty boring. A medium is basically different creative forms- clay, painting, pastels, linear work, there are so many different ways to use different styles of creativity and expression. I bet you wouldn't consider snow a medium. Letting your kid go outside accompanied by yourself and just letting them build something. Building and playing with Legos is also another medium and does help build creativity. But I digress. 

Back to the giant pad: 

My son chose playdough yesterday and naturally I grabbed the big pad and flipped it open to a clean page- and this is why-

Playing with play dough on carpet or a counter scares me a little. 1. Playdough gets into carpet (and stays fairly easy) 2. Counters tend to be up high and you just plain have to be more careful. I feel like you don't get as wide of a range of motion if you wanted to go edge to edge.    

Now I'm speaking in terms of a toddler- if you have a 12 year old it might be easier to work on a counter. It's all based on how you feel your child will do. Or some families are lucky enough to have a "craft" table which [i am so jealous]. 

This is what our playing with play dough on the pad looked like

We also have painted 

And colored 

All within a giant pad of paper. 

By far my favorite purchase ever and if you can find something similar go for it!! The bigger the better! 

When you lovely folks find your giant pad to do works on ---what did you use it for?!