Merry Christmas!

We hope you all are having a wonderful Christmas!! 

Povatica!

Have you ever had Povatica?  It is a yummy bread that has it's origins in Croatia.  My family has this every Thanksgiving and Christmas.  Every year someone in the family makes it - usually my mom or my sister (and there is usually a partner or two involved in the process).  If you want to try some but don't want to make it, this place looks like they have tons of choices! 

This year my sister came over to make up a few loaves.  We used two bread machines to make up the dough.  While the dough was rising, she used a food processor to grind up some pecans.  She was nice enough to use pecans in place of the usual walnuts since I always have a bad reaction to walnuts.  One year when we made this I tried breaking up the walnuts in a sealed baggie with a rolling pin and inhaled some walnut dust - that set my nose to itchin' sumpthin' fierce!!

When the dough was ready we spread it out as thin as we could get it.  The pros can get it paper thin but we weren't that lucky.  We stopped spreading when the dough kept tearing.

 We then took the cinnamony/sugar/pecan mixture and spread it across the dough.  We rolled it up and baked it.  We had cut off the ends to make the loaf look neat, so we baked the ends and used those for taste testing!

Such a delicious treat for the whole family!

Yer on!

The boys recently rediscovered a toy Bino Uncle sent over when Biju's parents came for a visit.
We all enjoyed a round or two of "soccer"!  (In fact, I think they're playing this as I type with their cousins, who are over for a visit.)

 Bonus Photo:

 I think both Alex and Aren still have bed head but they wanted their picture taken with Gracie (who never has bed head, thankyouverymuch!)

Crafty!

A few weeks back I set to work making some bags for a Busy Bag Exchange.  A group of other mamas and I all made some activity bags to keep our children entertained/educated and we then exchanged them so we all had about 16 bags, or so. 
For the first bag, I made a blind texture game.  I cut a strip of fleece and notched a bit out of the center to use as a blindfold.  There were two cards of each texture.  Onto poster board, I hot-glued buttons, different fabrics, feathers, etc. This was my assembly line:

While I was working on my craft the boys were busy doing some artwork of their own.  They were cutting out people and making castles.

Just throwing this one in for fun.  Aren was playing quietly, alone, with his blocks.

Here is Aren working on the other busy bag I made.  Spoon Shape Matching.  Shapes drawn on one clear spoon, one white spoon.  The idea is to lay the clear spoon on top of the white spoon with the matching shape.  Aren did well with the first three shapes and then I walked away and he knocked all the spoons to the floor. 

The boys have enjoyed playing with some of the activities I brought home.  A few of the bags I'm saving for use in the future!

Line 'em up!

Aren's artwork:

And when he was told he needed to put the cans up, he did... up higher!