Thursday, October 20, 2011

Cute Babies - October





Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns
One a penny, two a penny 
Hot Cross Buns!
The girls have been listening to nursery rhymes on Starfall and I thought it would be fun to make hot cross buns.   Apparently Hot Cross Buns are a spiced English bun traditionally served at Easter time.  The recipe we used is from this site. I'm just going to put down what we did

INGREDIENTS
Dough
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm milk
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon granulated white sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
4 Tbsp butter, softened
2 eggs, room temperature (if taking right out of the fridge, let sit in warm water for a few minutes to take the chill off before using)
3/4 cup dried cranberries (you're supposed to use currants and maybe chopped candied citrus peel but having neither of these on hand we just used dried cranberries)

Egg Wash
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk

Frosting
1 teaspoon milk
3 to 4 Tbsp powdered sugar

Mix together the dough and let it rise.  Shape into little rolls.  You can cut crosses in the top but I found that very hard to do for some reason.  Brush with egg wash (this makes them nice and shiny!) and let rise again.  Bake at 400.  The other recipe said to bake 10-12 minutes but we ended up baking them closer to 20.  I'm not sure if its just my oven or what.  Take out and let cool.
Put frosting ingredients in a ziplock bag.  Mush them together to make the frosting, adding powder sugar until it's a nice thick consistency. Cut off one corner of the ziplock bag and squeeze out frosting crosses on the rolls.

We thought these were pretty good, though the girls were reluctant to eat the cranberries.  Also, they were a bit dense because my dough wasn't rising for some reason.

Saturday, September 24, 2011

Cute Babies - September








Ring Around the Rosies

It's fun that there are more of us now and we can get a decent sized ring.

Vivian loves Ring Around the Rosies so much, she plays it by herself.

The Imitator

The Imitator 2

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Princess Hairstyles

We've been trying out some princess hairstyles at this site my sister recommended: http://www.princesshairstyles.com/




This is my favorite: simple, easy and pretty.

They do make for some awesome post-do styles too:


After a Long Hike



We went on a hike up in some mountains just south of San Francisco. 

Cardboard Playhouse

With all the cardboard we had on hand, the girls begged me to make a playhouse.  So here is our attempt.

Once put together, we painted it!







Sadly, it wasn't very sturdy and it eventually collapsed.

Happy Birthday Addy



Cute Babies - August Edition









Baby Lizards

Our New Piano



Nothing beats a Free* piano.

*Shipping and Handling not included.

Something is Wrong with Our puzzle

We started doing this puzzle and wondering what all the pink was... and then Kyle was all: The pink is the sky?  Once you got the hang of green is brown, red is green and blue is pink, then it wasn't too bad to solve. 

Can those arty people who know this stuff tell me what went wrong with the printing?

Sunday, September 04, 2011

Blowing Bubbles

Laundry Hamper Laughs

We thought this laundry hamper from IKEA was a cute idea.  We didn't foresee this problem though. 

Cleaning Up Apples

Sunday, July 31, 2011

Cute Babies




Ice-cream Milkshake

Upset that Meghan had a milkshake and she only had an ice-cream cone (which she asked for, by the way), this was Addy's solution.