Grow Your Own Easter Grass

My fabulous next door neighbor is like the all-natural McGyver of crafting. She can take sticks, dirt specks and pine gum and create an elegant chandelier. She can make anything in the world out of sheep’s wool and she notices lovely things everywhere she goes and then tames them to decorate her beautiful home.
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For Easter she helped me plant my own wheat grass to use as an Easter basket for my little bunnies this year. The project was super easy and looking gorgeous and I think you should all try it this month so it will grow in time for Easter. It takes at least two weeks to get looking gorgeous.

First, you soak a couple of handfuls of wheat in water for 24 hours. Soft white wheat berries are best and you need to get some that haven’t been stored with oxygen absorber packets. My neighbor purchased ours at Whole Foods for very little money.

Next you fill a pie plate or other dish with dirt about an inch deep. Then you sprinkle the soaked wheat berries over the top of the dirt. You only need about half of the amount of wheat that we used. We went a little overboard.
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Water well and cover with plastic wrap until tiny sprouts appear.
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After the sprouts start popping up (24-48 hours), remove the plastic wrap.
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When the grass is a couple of inches tall, move the container to a sunny location so it will turn green in color.
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On Easter Eve, cut the sod to fit in your Easter baskets, dress like a bunny and place eggs and treats amidst the blades of grass.

How sweet is that?

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Posted in crafty, domesticality, holidays | 7 Comments

The Economics of Teeth

I hope Magoo never learns that it’s possible to sell his organs for money… or candy.

Lately his main revenue stream comes from the secretive but highly lucrative tooth market. He yanks one out, processes it, makes it available for purchase and he finds no shortage of fairy buyers, willing to supply him with income in exchange for the goods.

The money is used for three things.

1. Counting – Magoo stacks and counts his money like Scrooge McDuck
2. Planting choking hazard landmines – Where will Wanda be most likely to find this quarter so I can cry when she gets her hands on it?
3. Buying Candy
4. Attempting to buy useless junk from the machines at the front of the grocery store.

Recently while I was checking out at Safeway, he plugged “twenty-five cents” into a machine full of plastic bubbles containing rubber thumbtacks or something equally life-changing. Pennies, a dime, a couple of nickles. They all slid down into the recesses of the machine and when he turned the knob… NOTHING HAPPENED.

I explained to him that it only takes quarters and, oh the weeping and wailing that then ensued. Cruel is his existence.

On the way home from the store, he told me that it was the worst day of his life.

“Is today Tuesday?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Then I hate all Tuesdays. Tuesdays are the worst days of my life.”

And he meant it too. Bitterly.

His solution to the problem of his impoverishment – “I need to lose more teeth. If I push really hard, I bet I could make more of them come out.”

I’m sure he could. But should he? If he yanks out all his teeth, with what will he eat all this candy he plans on buying?

That kid would sell his right frontal lobe for a ring pop if he could find a physician willing to perform the lobotomy. I pray he never does.

Posted in disasters, food, Honesty of Children, kid stuff | 5 Comments

Focus Day and Chanting Boys

“That’s right! It’s true! Education needs revenue!”

This is what I heard my 6-year-old chanting as he brushed his teeth for bed tonight. Although it would have been funnier to hear one of the more saucy, constitutionally-based, vocabularically rich chants from the rally today, ala “AMPLE PROVISION – PARAMOUNT DUTY”, this one still made me laugh just a little. [Read More at the Mom Congress Blog.]

Here are a few pictures of our adventure:

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Posted in Random | 1 Comment

Green Drink Recipe – A Smoothie Brought to Me By Target

I buy stuff at Target fairly frequently so I was pleased to see that they were expanding their grocery selection. When they sent me a $25 gift card to try out their new grocery department and blog about it, I figured it would make a good food post.
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This recipe is one of my favorites, a green drink smoothie I make to pump my kids and myself full of vegetables. They’ll eagerly drink three handfuls of spinach when it’s pureed into this mixture but ask them to eat four leaves by themselves and they’ll act like their life is over.
Green Drink Spinach Smoothie

    Green Drink

2 heaping handfuls of fruit of your choosing
About one pound of fresh spinach
2 Cups fruit juice
1 Cup water

Throw your fruit in a blender. Stuff in as much spinach as you can. Pour your liquid over top. Blend until creamy and green.
Green Drink Spinach Smoothie
I like to use at least one frozen fruit, my favorite being one banana and a huge handful of strawberries. For fruit juice, I just use whatever I have available. For this recipe I used frozen strawberries, a banana, a bag of spinach and Dole pineapple/peach/mango juice, all purchased with my gift card from the fresh grocery department of Target.

The dry goods selection is surprisingly good at Target, not to the level of a traditional grocery store, but decent and they have a good supply of basic produce if you’re not looking for anything fancy. They have meat, dairy and frozen foods now too. I found the prices to be really low on some things and high on others.

Tillamook cheese, for example, was $8.99 for a baby loaf, way more than I’m willing to pay. Their bagged spinach, however, cost less than I find it on sale at the grocery store.

Overall, I think it’s a convenient option if you’re going to Target anyway, but I wouldn’t make it my primary grocery source.
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Posted in around town, food, recipes, Reviews | 6 Comments

One is Better than None

My friend Emily had knee surgery today so we wanted to do something nice for her. My efforts involved lasagna and spinach salad. Laylee’s efforts were more on point. She offered to come and read to her since she can’t do sports for a while and created this highly topical card:

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Posted in kid stuff, shish | 9 Comments

3T Ninja

My mom sent Wanda these cute leggings for her birthday. I misread the label, seeing it as NINJA (3T). It may not be what was actually on the label but I think it fits.

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Posted in shopping, signs | 2 Comments