Family and Food

About a month ago our friend, Kellie, took some awesome family pictures for us. You can check out her blog here which also has links to her website. She does such a good job, I love her eye for detail. Here are some of my favorites.

On a different note, if you haven't noticed already there is a link on the right to a food blog my sister Christine and I started. Anyone who knows the Nickerson women know that we love to bake so we thought we'd start this blog just for fun. Check it out if your looking for something to bake, and we'll try to keep it updated on a regular basis.

Cereal, anyone?

Every time I read someone's blog about how they bought $50 worth of food for $2 I'm always pretty impressed by their mad bargain-finding skills. I mean, that takes a lot of work, time and planning to get all your coupons, match them with the store's sales, get there, etc., etc.

For the past couple of years I've been a partially committed couponer. Some weeks I'm planning menu's, cutting coupons, searching blogs for deals, the whole nine yards. But it seems more often than not all the effort is in vain when I'm at the store trying to sort through coupons while simultaneously wrestling a two year old who's shoving gummy dinosaurs in the cart and also attemping to feed the baby a continuous supply of Cheerios to keep him from screaming. (deep breath) So basically, I usually end up choosing sanity over saving a few dollars in the check out line.

However, I do continue to keep my eye out for deals and I feel that I finally have one that I should record for future posteriety to know that I too put forth the effort to find a great deal (at least every now and again). Kroger had a one day sale of 50% off Kelloggs and other brands cereal and crackers, and along with many coupons I got all the above items for $24. Averages out to around $1 per item, not bad I'd have to say. I'm just glad I won't have to cut cereal coupons for awhile.

Happy Halloween!

This post is mainly a photo dump for all things Halloween. These first two were taken by Kellie at our ward Halloween party. She does such a good job.

We could not get Tate to look at the camera, he just wanted to get that pumpkin.

Here are some of the pictures from Halloween night (trick-or-treating was scheduled for Thursday night here). The skunk costume got pulled out of the closet for Tate and Grant wanted to wear last year's fireman suit again. We did add a pair of fire boots (galoshes) this year so it was a little different. Probably the cutest skunk and fireman I've seen in a good while :)

We had our own little Halloween party on Wednesday night. Well, we just had dinner with a spooky twist. What do you think about the mummy dogs and spider web bean dip? Alright, I know the mummy dog looks more like a guy in a turban (thanks Christine). Just so you know I got these ideas off of my favorite food blog, ourbestbites.

Gotta have caramel apples, yummy!

Last but not least, the parent's costume. Ryan and I got invited to a fun costume party and went as a Harlem Globetrotter and his wife. So we went to the thrift store a while back to see what we could find for a costume. Ryan came across the dress I am wearing and we decided we had to have it (can you imagine someone owned that, for real?!) We found Ryan's jersey and shorts in the kids section there and added the accessories. I'd have to say it was one of our better costumes.

What entertains a 2 year old?

Grant goes through stages of different things that entertain him. Lately, if I need a good 15 Grant-free minutes I just give him some cups and water bottles to fill and pull his stepping stool right up to the kitchen sink. He loves to fill them up and empty into different containers. (Oh, and I usually don't let him do this with a steak knife in grabbing range).

Grant also enjoys dressing up, although he usually dons his fireman hat and coat or some of Ryan's shoes. I think this picture is probably one of those that Grant will want to burn when he's a teenager, but for now, it's funny and made it to the blog. This is the only time I've seen him do this though.

The other day he was playing in the garage and came in saying "Mommy, can you help me put these on". I don't even know where we keep these things but he found them, so he got to wear Ryan's old water shoes and work gloves for the afternoon.

Some of Grant's entertainment activities end up being better than others. Last week I was upstairs checking my emails. Tate was down for his morning nap and I knew Grant was just playing nicely by himself downstairs. Well actually I knew it was quiet down there so I should probably go see what he was doing, but I just had one more email to check... Ten minutes later I go down to find Grant had tossed the majority of the downstairs toys down to the basement and was starting to work on adding the couch cushions. At least the living room looked clean and orderly with no toys on the floor :)

Fall Fun

Ahh Fall, who doesn't love it? We have been taking advantage of the beautiful fall weather (well, I guess until this crazy, windy cold front came blowing in) and getting out to see what Ohio's harvest has to offer. The boys and I were able to go apple and raspberry picking one morning, both of which I have never done before. It was a lot of fun! Grant had a ball, especially with the raspberry picking once I showed him how he could taste the berries he picked. That was probably not the best idea since he proceeded to eat the berries straight from the bush until I dragged him to the car. That boy can eat.

A couple weekends ago Ryan and I took the kiddies to a local farm that puts on fun activites for the weekend. It was like a mini farm amuesment park. They had hay rides, a corn maze, zip-lines, farm animals, huge hay lofts to play in complete with slides and jumps, 4-wheeler type bike racing, and much, much more (maybe they should pay me for this).

By far Grant's favorite attraction was the humongous corn box. It's like a typical sand box but instead of sand, there's corn, and instead of a box, there's A BARN. So basically, it was a big barn filled 8 inches deep with corn kernels to play in! There were lots of large Tonka trucks and cars to play with as well, which only sweetened the deal. We spent almost an hour there and still Grant was not ready to move on. Plus, it was simple to clean the corn off when he was done, in contrast to sand, which would have chafed him for the rest of the day (and would have chafed me, figuratively speaking, when it showed up in the carpet at home). Yes, we are now considering having a corn box of our own some day.

Grant was very proud of the sticker he was issued on admission to the farm. He walked up to the goats and said "Hi goats, you wanna see my sticker?" I think they would have appreciated a little lick of it at least.

What's a fun-filled farm without plywood animal cutouts? Grant preferred to ride the stone pig and eat his apple. Tate sure makes a cute horse though!

I Can Can

Okay, I'm at least learning how to can. For awhile now I've been wanting to get all the supplies together and just try it out, learn something new. It's actually easier than I thought it would be, especially if you have someone to help you with the prep. I decided to start with peaches and picked these babies up from a local farmer's market. I only bought 10 pounds of peaches, anymore than that and I might have ended up just shoving whole peaches into the jars and calling it good. We ended up with 6 quarts of peaches. As you can see from the picture, we learned one of our first major lessons with canning--the fruit shrinks when processing so pack those suckers tight.

The most tedious part of canning is the fruit prep. We tried blanching the peaches first to help remove the skins which was only somewhat effective for us. I think we need more practice with that. It also made them pretty slick which made the slicing more intersting. I did mangage to keep all my fingers intact though, so I call it a success.

Ryan is still very busy and was supposed to be spending his time on his school work but ended up helping me with the entire process. It was awesome and cut the time in half. Thanks honey!

And now, the taste test. They turned out great! We all thought they tasted better than any store-bought canned peaches we've tried, altough we could be slightly biased We enjoyed them on waffles this past Sunday morning.

Canning the peaches went smoothly enough that I decided to try again, and this time with no help (a certain BYU game was on). The kids and I went apple picking (more about that in the next post) so I decided to go with apple pie filling. Who will eat that much apple pie filling you might ask? I have asked myself the same question, but I thought it was a waste to make applesauce since it takes a lot of work and I can buy it so cheaply at the store. So apple pie filling it is. Also, I still have several pounds of apples left so I may attempt apple butter next. Anyone have a good recipe?

A Hearty Har Har

This is among the heartiest we've seen Tate laugh. Who knew a pig in mom's mouth could be so funny?