How Many Mittens Have Your Kids Lost This Winter?

It's March!  Winter should be shuffling off sometime this month.  I can't wait.

The thing I'm most looking forward to leaving behind (for maybe 6 months) is all the extra "outdoor clothes."  And all the "where's my _____??" that we do every morning.  Today we actually discovered Emma must have left her snowpants at her after-school care.  Lucky both girls have 2 pair!  (I will take some of the blame, as I do try to collect everything at the door, but some days the kids are so antsy to get outside that I just can't gather everything - time to learn to take your own stuff, kids!)

Today I want to gripe about mittens.  Do your kids lose mittens like crazy?  I can't say my kids "lose" them, more misplace and/or forget them.  We have to have about 3 pair of mittens or gloves (and I mean the cold/snow playing/nylon winter mitts) per kid, otherwise we'd be doomed to freezing hands.  And it was a struggle to buy a new pair each in early January (we're deep into winter so, of course, no stores have mittens) when we got holes in the ones from last year.  The new ones have holes now too, but that's another story.

I know my kids have cubbies and backpacks and their own spaces to keep things at daycare and at school.  So where do the mittens go?  Rose told me one day she left hers outside at recess.  Pretty sure it was cold out that day - why did you even take them off, kid?  (The answer to that was they were wet - ok, I'll give you that, but weren't your hands cold??)

Emma is a great helper for Rose to find things she's lost at school.  I'm not sure how many times Emma has gone through the school lost and found and retrieved items that belonged to Rose.  I tried at the beginning of the year to put our name stickers in every piece of clothing, but somehow that doesn't help them get found.  And then we had to buy 2 rounds of mittens over the winter and wear them right away, so I don't think they got labelled.

And then there's the storing of winter clothes inside my house - I have no room for hanging winter pants (2 pair each) and coats and then also store hats, mitts, scarves etc.  We have a tiny entryway - just big enough for the door to open - and then there's a set of stairs.  At the top of the stairs is almost immediately a set of stairs to go downstairs.

We use this little landing as our shoe and coat area.  It's not enough space for 2 kids in full winter gear to stand together and get boots on.  I've tried to organise with pigeon hole shelves and baskets, different types of shoe racks, and hooks behind doors and down the basement staircase.  We're as good as we're going to get there.  But all the mittens have a basket in my shelf unit that no one seems to know is there.  Hats and scarves go in another.  Grown-up winter gear has it's own slot also.  I know the system, I don't think anyone else here does.

This winter I've tried to get the girls to put their mittens on the heat vent.  You know the little cone shaped thingy that goes over the vent that you put your mittens on to dry out?  That's my landing space for any mittens worn outside. It's been working ok - until the morning that someone didn't do that (after I nagged 5 times the night before) and mittens are wet.  Cue the tears.  This is one of the many reasons we have extra (sometimes with tears in them) mittens around the house.

Anyway, the forecast for next week has plus 5 and 7 degree weather in it.  Let's hope we can downgrade to our fun knit mittens once the snow starts to fade away.  We have a ton of awesome knit "not for super cold weather" mittens that don't get much wear over the winter.  Guess they're our transition time mittens - although they don't work well in the wet weather of spring either.  Hmm...

Please share with me your family's winter solutions:  How do you keep mittens from getting lost or forgotten?  How you store all your abundance of extra winter outdoor wear?  How often do your kids forget snowpants or something at school?  I'd love to commiserate and share winter woes!

~Jess

The Ancient Art Of Breadmaking - My First Attempt

Last week I read a thousand recipes for bread.  I found a few that sounded good but I didn't have any yeast, so I downgraded my ambition for kneading bread and made a quick bread loaf instead.  It was a bit less than stellar, but totally edible.

My quick loaf tasted just like banana bread, but without the bananas, so a bit lacking in the deliciousness area.  A nice layer of jam made it much better, and now that loaf is gone.

When I was at the grocery store this week I indulged in some yeast packets and today I am making "real" bread.  I guess they call it yeast bread in the cooking world.

Never before have I felt the desire to bake bread.  Suddenly the idea struck me, so I've acted on it.  My household doesn't actually eat a lot of bread, but maybe homemade bread will change that.  I guess time will tell there.

The recipes all look so easy.  Activate the yeast, mix the few ingredients together and knead, let it rise, knead again (or not depending on the recipe) shape and bake.  For me the hardest part is knowing when the dough has risen enough.

I've read about 5 websites about baking bread, proofing dough, and measuring and knowing how to tell if it's time to bake.  They are all similar, but all have differences.  My method is to read a ton of ways, then use my best judgement and hope for the best!

The recipe I chose is from Allrecipes.com.  It was called Traditional White Bread.  The only thing I changed (after reading other reviews) was to lessen the salt to 2 tsp, and I used one cup of whole wheat flour in place of 1 cup white.  I also didn't have "bread flour" so I used regular all purpose.

I have a lovely Kitchen Aid mixer with a dough hook.  I actually had to dig out the manual/recipe book that came with it to do a quick read on their bread-making ideas.  I used the dough hook and after my yeast was "activated" I added the first few ingredients and got started.

Everything was going swimmingly until I tried to add my 3rd cup (or so) of flour.  The dough was coming together, starting to pull away from the sides as the recipe suggested and then I poured in another half cup of flour (which is difficult to start with as the bowl lip is close to the top of the mixer) and when the hook got going it "poofed!" half the flour back out the top and all over the counter and the mixer.  It did this every time I added more flour.  I know I lost at least half a cup, but I don't know how to stop that from happening.  I think part of the deal is that my mixer is too small to make 2 loaves at once - although that's how almost every recipe is written.

After the first "proof" I kneaded the dough and split it into the two loaf pans and left it to rise again.  Just when I was pre-heating the oven we had to leave unexpectedly for 2 hours.  I imagined the bread was toast (nice pun, eh?) but my hubby said we could likely salvage it if we put it in the fridge while we were out.  Apparently hubby makes delicious cinnamon buns - says his family; I've been with him 12 years and I've never seen him bake anything - and he used a 24 hour recipe.  So that's what I did - left it to slow-rise in the fridge 2 extra hours over what the recipe suggested.

The bread baked for 35 minutes and turned out of the loaf pans beautifully.  I didn't decide until after baking that photos would have accompanied this post wonderfully.  So here's one of the loaves fresh out of the oven.

I couldn't wait for the loaves to cool completely.  I cut into the more rustic looking one, slathered some butter on it and ate it.  To my surprise it was good!  It's a smidge more dense than the recipe led to me believe, but since I added whole wheat flour and proofed in the fridge for some extra time, I'm not surprised by this.  I don't anticipate it will be hard to eat these loaves of bread!

I welcome any critiques or suggestions on my process.  One of the loaves is perfectly rounded and the other is lumpy and uneven on the top.  When I put them in the pans I could see this would happen, but short of removing it from the already greased loaf pan and re-kneading and shaping it I couldn't see a way to alter the appearance.

Also readers, if you have any other delicious easy bread recipes, feel free to share those in the comments as well!  Or tricks for add-ins or changes to make better/different tastes to my bread - I'm hoping to continue making bread, but maybe only one loaf at a time so I don't overload my mixer again!

One of Those Days

Some days I just can't handle my mom life.  Everything irks me: the kids are too loud, the dishes are piled up just for me, everyone's shoes are in the middle of the floor and I can't escape even for 2 minutes.  On these days sometimes I just want to go "home"...until I realize I am home and the "home" I'm thinking of I gave up 15 years ago to move forward into adulthood.

Don't get me wrong, I love my mom life.  These little people who just want to sit with (or on) me all the time just because they love me are fabulous and a continuous sense of wonder and joy in my life.  But once in a while I like some "me" time.  Even when I have time at home without the girls I rarely take time just for me.  I'll go get groceries and do dishes and laundry, sweep the floors, and clean up the toys that I keep stepping on, before everyone gets home to eat the food, dirty the dishes and create more mess and laundry.  It's a vicious cycle.

Now that I'm blogging (which I am enjoying immensely by the way) I've taken away a few more of those quiet minutes I try to sneak during the day.  But the writing actually allows me to unburden myself of some of those feelings that get pent up when you are frustrated with your kids or family.  I really don't want to yell at the kids, or be upset with my hubby, when I don't know why I'm frustrated in the first place.  So by taking time out to write about it I can feel my feelings and describe what went on (if I really want to) and work through it.  For me it's quite therapeutic.

In case you haven't picked up on it, it's been one of 'those' weekends.  Hubby was away all day yesterday so I had to deal with every need/want/crisis etc that cropped up.  Thankfully it was an alright day, but when the neighbour kids congregate in our yard I feel like I have to "mom" them too, and so I truck out snacks and drinks and whatever else they may need as well as tending to my own offspring.  I love that the kids like to play in our yard, and it keeps it easy for me to watch over them (without helicoptering) but sometimes I feel overwhelmed.  Sometimes when I'm alone after the kids go to bed I just sit and have a little cry, and I don't really even know why, but it releases some of the tension I was feeling during the day.

I don't think it's too much to ask to be able to drink my tea while it's hot, or surf the internet for 5 minutes without someone climbing into my lap and demanding to "play games!" or even read a book for more than 2 minutes at a time (and subsequently reading the same two pages over and over.)  But I guess such is the life of a mom!

Toodles!