The Best Brownie! Seriously.

I am not really a big chocolate eater. If it is there, I will eat it. If it isn't, well, it doesn't bother me. Most of the time I would rather a fruity type of dessert than a pure chocolate one. There is only on exception. These brownies.

Brownies are really a fickle thing to nail down. There are so many varieties and with that so many different tastes. Some people like walnuts in their brownie to give it an extra crunch. Sometimes I like walnuts in brownies but it really depends on the texture. Some like brownies with icing others not. You can have cakey brownies, fudgy brownies and everything in between. It really is hard to have a will please all kind of recipe.

For me I don't want a dry brownie. Nothing is worse then biting into a browning and having it be all dry and bleh. I need moisture.

Well enter this recipe. It is my favourite. I could eat the whole pan myself... sometimes I almost do. This recipe is from my grade 11 English teacher. She would bake them for us and when I bit into them I felt like I was in brownie heaven. At the year end assembly she gave the recipe out (as she was leaving the school) and I think I was the only one who brought a pencil and paper to write it down. But now I will pass on this delectable secret, mostly so I know where to always find the recipe when I need it.

In a microwavable bowl put
1 cup butter
300g pkg of Chocolate chips (this is around 1.5 cups of chocolate chips if you buy in bulk)
melt and mix together.

Then add
4 eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 cups sugar
mix together

then add
2 cups marshmallows
1 cup flour
mix up

Pour into a well greased 9x13 pan and put into a 350 oven for about 40 minutes.

I find that it is easier to cut them when they are completely cool, or the next day. But it is hard to resist the awesome gooeness.

Taking A Break

Around here life is getting pretty busy. I am going to take a couple week break and be back May 8th. Have a lovely next couple of weeks!

Yard Work, It Can Actually be Fun!

Miss V. and Miss G. preparing the front yard for their Fairy Forest

This week has definitely made me feel confident that spring has sprung. The weather was in the double digits for most of the week. I even got my first sunburn of the season. And, I think the snow has finally melted from all those shadowy places that snow usually holds out in.

With spring comes yard work and tons of it. Even though I thought I did a pretty thorough job in the fall, cleaning up the leaves and other debris, when the snow melts I am totally proven wrong. The leaves seem to have multiplied, little sticks litter the ground and holy pine cones Batman! In our front yard I have never seen so many cones as this year. There must be well over a hundred. As of writing this they fill about a fourth of the bin you see in the pictures, and we are not even close to being done picking them up.

Today the girls had the day off from school, and I needed the work in my front yard started. (I do not trust Miss P in the front yard at all. It is too close to the road, so it is hard for me to get out there and get it done.) I told the girls that the fairies came last night and told me that they love to dance in our yard and help their fairy flowers grow, but they couldn't get to their flowers because of all the leaves and pine cones. The fairies needed two girls to help them so they could come and dance. While Miss G. was skeptical of that story line, Miss V. loved it and soon both girls were out with their work gloves cleaning up. I know... I lied... but it worked and they are having fun. I hope not too much damage will be done to psyche.

After about 5 minutes they started planning more than picking up. They are planning to turn the front yard into a fairy town complete with university and "death school" (I don't even want to know). With a few gentle prods from me for them to keep going they kept up the work. While I still have lots to do out there, it is a start. I think the most important thing here is that the girls had a great time using their imaginations and are now so excited to make their fairy town a reality. I will make sure to post some pictures of their completed town, if they are actually serious about it that is.

What kind of yard work do you have planned? Do you use fairies as an excuse too?

Homemade Paint - for kids

This week has been a sick week here. Poor Miss G. She has had such a runny nose. It has now moved on to a cough. Poor girl. Hopefully this is the end to the sickness for this winter season and we will have nothing but health from now on.

Since Miss G. has been home from school she decided this would be the best time to do experiments. And why not? The schools science fair is coming up so this was the perfect opportunity to do her science fair project. She was looking at how well certain items absorb water.

I showed her how water absorption worked and what happens when things get over saturated. Here is a link to a great experiment to do with the kids. With the water left over from that experiment Miss G decided she was going to add a bunch of different things to see if she could make paint. I think she was on the right track but had the proportions out of wack. Well today we remedied that. Here is how to make homemade paint.

1 cup salt
1 cup flour
1 1/3 cup water
food colouring of your choice.

This makes four generous sized amounts of paint. For more colours either make more or have smaller amounts.

I found this recipe in the description of this youtube video. Thanks youtube! Have fun painting!

Don't Look for the Living Among the Dead

Sorry for the late post. Yesterday we were at a friends house with a bunch of other families having fun. We didn't get home until later than I was expecting.

It is Easter time. It is a time of rebirth for the earth and for the soul. For me it is also a time I reflect upon the resurrection of Jesus Christ and what that means in my life. The following is a video that portrays that well.

In the New Testament account of Christ's resurrection, an angel says to Mary, "Why look for the living among the dead?" Now while in this account he is referring to the body of Jesus, this line can be applied to our lives and habits, whether Christian or not.

Ruts, we all get into them. For me, it is with tidying and getting rid of stuff. It seems I can never get the job completed or things accumulate again. Clearly what I am doing isn't working, yet I seem to use the same tactics. This is me looking for the living among the dead. I am doing the same things over and over, yet, I'm not gaining new results. I'm not gaining happiness. I am not living.

The same can be said for having too much stuff. If we accumulate too many things, we are not able to live. Instead we are surrounded by dead things. Objects that don't give off a living energy.

What we need to do when we are stuck looking for the living among the dead is looking at things a different way. Having a paradigm shift. Thinking of ways to inject a living energy. If you are feeling devoid of energy and feel listless it is time to examine what in your life is causing you to look among the dead instead of the living. So that could be examining your relationships, your jobs, the way you do things.

Now, I am not saying you should end relationships or quit jobs, but just reexamining them and seeing what can be done to be re-energized in them.

Often when the energy in something is "dead" it is often because it is stagnant or not moving. If you are not moving at all, there will be no energy, and without energy there is no life. So think of something creative to jazz things up. In relationships that can be date night, a list of ideas can be found here. An article by Richard Paul Evans says that we should ask "how can I make your life better today?" That is injecting life into things. That is looking for living among living.

In the world, things that seem dead actually bring forth life. Compost, rotting logs, burned forests, these seem dead. But when you look at them more closely there is actually a lot of life going on in them. And from that, new life and growth can flourish. So if there is something in your life that seems dead, look at it more closely, see the life that is in it and use that as a springboard to newer and greater things.

Have a Happy Easter!

My Way to Unwind

Sometimes you need a little pick me up. For me it is when I get to view or use some of my favourite things. Nothing spells out bless to me like drinking a caf-lib or herbal tea in one of my favourite mugs. These aren't the fanciest of mugs. There is no interesting story to go along with them. I bought the blue one at a grocery store in university and the other one at Target. But, despite their seeming ordinariness they make me smile and I feel content.

It is nice to have things in your life that help you feel grounded and remind you of how content your life is. I am a natural complainer. If I can claim it as one of my talents then it would be near the top of the list. Because of this it is natural to think life is dismal and that it will never be quite right. But, give me one of those mugs and I realize life is not as bad as I am making out to be. I just need to chill out and smell the roses.

What I love to do is put the kettle on right before I tuck the kinds into bed, or put them down for a nap. When that task is done the water is ready for me to start making my drink. I then take my book and sit on my comfy loveseat and voila. A peace flows over me. Warmth from the warm drink floods through me. How can you not be content.

Sometimes, if I need a break from the barrage that can sometimes be my children, I make hot chocolate for my own kids in their favourite mugs. Sometimes I even jazz it up. They are happy and I get a few minutes of me time where I can just sit and let my mind be.

I was feeling very generous. Whipping cream and caramel sauce. Yummy!

What are some of your ways to unwind?

How to Refill Foam Soap Dispensers Inexpensively

I don't know why but bars of soap just wig me out. They look beautiful (well they do until they are on their last legs), but the thought of using the same one others use to wash their hands just bothers me. I know that it is irrational. I am not a big germophobe so I don't get it. But there you have it. We all have our interesting quirks. Because of this liquid soap is for me.

Liquid soap is great. You just have to pump a little on your hands and a way you go. You don't have to worry about the bar slip sliding around and landing on the floor. I love how easily it lathers. To me it is amazing. But the thing with regular liquid soap is that you go through it like crazy. Or at least we seem to in my family. I think I was refilling the container once sometimes twice a week. That is with the older two at school for most of the day. The kids would use a full pump when only a half pump would do. And the refill jugs were pricey. I think the last one I bought was $6.99 and that lasted only only a few weeks.

Enter the foaming soap. I love this stuff. It is already lathery straight from the bottle and it uses way less soap. The container usually lasts two weeks with my family, so that's great. But once again, what to do about the refills?

Well lucky for me I have brilliant friends who show me all their nifty tricks of the domestic engineer trade. The following tip is brought to you by my friend Sherri. She truly is incredible!

All you need to refill your foaming soap dispenser is an empty soap container with foaming pump and your favourite kind of gel body wash. It has to be the gel kind. It cannot be the white creamy kind. That will not work.

Add about 1/2 an inch to an inch of the gel body wash to the container. (I am usually under an inch.)

Fill the rest with water. Make sure you leave space at the top for the pump and for the water and soap to move around.

Secure the lid tightly and gently rock the bottle back and forth to thoroughly mix the body wash and water. (You don't want to see any of body wash chunks.)

That's it. It takes a couple of pumps to get the foam at the beginning but then it is perfect!

The gel body wash I used I got for $2.99. I have refilled my soap dispenser six times and I still have gel left for probably 2 or 3 refills. (The body wash that I have in the pictures is bigger then the one I have been using so it will probably refill a lot more. I used it because the colour contrast is greater and thus easier for you to see.)

So if I get a full 9 refills from this bottle it will cost me $0.33 per refill. Not too bad. Even if I only get 8 it is still only $0.37.

I found another recipe online that makes it a bit more eco/people friendly. You can get that recipe here. I am going to try it out someday, I just don't have the materials on hand. So for now I will stick to the body wash.

What kind of inexpensive domestic tricks do you have that you get excited about?