How To Crochet: Single Crochet

I'm participating in the Photo: 52-ABCs Challenge. Basically you take one picture a week that goes along with the alphabet letter. You'll go through the alphabet twice in the year. If you'd like to participate also, you can go the facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/photo52abc

Chocolate Banana Cake

I recently found a recipe on pinterest for a banana bread made with cake mix and thought, that sounds great! I thought I had a box of yellow cake mix in the cupboard so I set out 4 bananas to get good and over ripe. Well, when I went to grab my yellow cake mix I discovered that I had Devils Food mix and not yellow. So I went with it!

Ingredients:
4 very ripe bananas
1 box Devils Food cake mix
2 eggs
1/2 bag of semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 degree.
Grease and flour a 9x12 casserole dish.
Peel and mash the bananas with a fork in a large bowl.
Add eggs and stir. Add cake mix and mix with a hand mixer until combined.
Stir in chocolate chips
Pour into casserole dish
Bake at 350 for 40-50 minutes or until toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

I whipped up a little peanut frosting to top the cake. I call this cake and not bread because it's not very bread like, it is moist and delicious though!

How To Crochet: slip knot and chain

If you have any questions, leave a comment and I'll do my best to answer them!

B is for bus {Photo: 52-ABCs}

I'm participating in the Photo: 52-ABCs Challenge. Basically you take one picture a week that goes along with the alphabet letter. You'll go through the alphabet twice in the year. If you'd like to participate also, you can go the facebook page here https://www.facebook.com/photo52abc

Quick and Easy Ranch Dressing

Being dairy free there are a few things I miss, one of them is ranch dressing. I checked EVERY bottle of ranch in the dressing aisle and was never able to find one that didn't have milk in it. So I scoured the internet for a ranch dressing recipe and ended up making my own and I think it's quite good. This can be made dairy free or with dairy and it's nice and thick :)

1 cup mayo
1/2 cup sour cream (sub Tofutti Sour Cream to make it dairy free OR you can sub 1/2 cup coconut milk + 1 t lemon juice (original not vanilla, I use the Silk refrigerated drinking kind, not canned cooking kind))
1/2 t dried parsley
1/2 t dill weed (you can use 1/4 t if not a huge dill fan)
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t onion powder
1/4 t salt
1/8 t black pepper
1/4 t dry mustard
1/8 t paprika

Whisk it all together and refrigerate before serving!

Living Room Take Over

When I had my first child I remember feeling like my living room had been taken over with baby gear, and that was just as swing and bouncy chair. As Jake got older and we had a second child our living room really was taken over. Our living room has a bit of an odd layout being an old home, so it was almost too easy to split it up into half living room, half playroom. We've been moving things around, removing furniture, and adding toy storage to accommodate the growing toy collection over the last three years but our hardest hit occurred just a few weeks ago with Christmas and Audrey's first Birthday!

Our first piece of toy storage was this Step2 toy box we got just after Jake's first birthday. I really love this toy box and highly recommend it.It can be purchased here http://www.amazon.com/Step-2-883100-Bookcase-Storage/dp/B001LMW5Z4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1326165587&sr=8-2

Our play kitchen, which doesn't get much play lately, but takes up a lot of space!

Our latest piece of toy storage is the shelf with the multi-colored crates in front of the window. We've had it for almost a week now and so far I like it. It was very easy to put together and it hold a lot. My only issue is that Jake pulls the baskets off the top and sits up there! For anyone who is interested it can be purchased here: http://www.walmart.com/ip/Delta-Multi-Color-Deluxe-Toy-Organizer-with-Bins/17167595

And lastly the kiddie table. This table gets a ton of use by Jake. Sometimes he sits here to have snacks and he sits here to do his coloring. (Yeah, he colored all over the table)

I wish we had a better solution for what to do with the bigger toys, but overall they don't really bother me that much :)