Baked doughnuts

I've made this recipe a few times, and while tasty, the doughnuts are very heavy and dense. Might be due to the fact that I always replace some of the white flour with whole wheat. At any rate, it doesn't stop anyone from eating them.

From The Encyclopedia of Country Living,  by Carla Emery

Just as if you were making bread, combine 2 pkg yeas, 1/4 cup warm water, 1/2 cup scalded lukewarm milk, 1/2 cup sugar, 2 eggs, 1 tsp salt, 1/3 cup shortening, 1 tsp nutmeg, 4 1/2 cups flour and 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Knead, cover and let rise for 50-60 minutes.

Turn onto a floured board and roll with a rolling pin until dough is about 1/2 inch thick. Cut with a doughnut cutter and carefully lift with a spatula onto a greased cookie sheet and brush with melted butter.

Let rise until doubled in bulk. Bake at 425* for 8-10 minutes. Brush with more melted butter.

Dust with cinnamon and sugar, or glaze with icing.

EAT!!!

Recycled crafts

Fabric applique using scraps and cereal box

This turned out okay, but I need some stencils. Freehand letters--->not my forte

My first Mother's Day gift from my oldest daughter. I turned it into a candle using melted bits of old candles.

Random cup and saucer I glued together to make a candle using various bits of burned down candles.

Since the handle of this lovely cup broke off long ago, I decided to turn it into a small pedestal. I'll use it to display a birthday cupcake or even a tealight. I plan to make a larger one soon.

Garden update

Image via Wikipedia

So the garden is not going as good as I'd hoped. While vines and plants are growing, they aren't as tall as they should be and aren't producing either. Two days ago I picked a small yellow summer squash. The rest are either too small still or rotting. :(  There area lot of cucumbers, but they're only an inch long and they're just sitting there. The cucumber beetles are having a great time, though, destroying the vines. Now they've moved onto the butternut squash and I am not happy about that at all.

There is a nice head of broccoli growing, however, and that's very nice. Last night Foo-Foo and I were down at the garden looking for pests to pick and drop into the jar of death (as I call it) and suddenly he gets all excited:  "Broccoli!  Broccoli!"   :)

I was reading in my gardening book about cucumber beetles and the only way to reduce them is to use floating row covers, so I guess next year I will try that. I also want to have the cukes grow on trellises. Right now they're growing on the fence and threatening to invade the neighbor's yard, but I have a feeling those little striped and spotted fellows will take care of that.

Rocky buggy time

Rocks are fun! Rocks are cute! Rocks rock!!

Buggy

The weather has been great here in NW Indiana, and I"ve been outside working on my garden, which is getting pretty crazy, as I knew it would. And look what I've found crawling around:

Apparently Japanese beetles are Indiana's main pest, next to mosquitos, that is. At first I was just tossing them into the plastic jar and slamming the lid on real quick. Then I started throwing the bugs into a mixture of water, dish soap and oil and that really did the trick. So far I've taken off a ton of Japanese beetles, some cabbage worms and a few cucumber beetles, which are so small they're hard to catch. I usually go out to the garden a few times a day to pick off pests. It's fun!

Yep, I'm weird.

Summer?

Well, the calendar tells me it's summer, but the weather is another thing altogether. How simply delightful to have such a cool and rainy spring/summer! /sarcasm

Anyway, things are growing out in the garden, but not as quickly as they ought to. I have a few photos of the garden and whatnot to share:

the lovely compost containers!

Upcyling/Recycling

I've really been getting into the recycling craft thing. The best part is that I've been making some useful stuff--much better than a toy out of a toilet paper tube that will eventually be thrown away.

The first project was a revamped mirror I got at a thrift boutique. Note: if a shop has the word 'boutique' anywhere in the name, it's not a thrift store. Ok, got it.

I made some ugly light fixtures from our house in Illinois into planters. Can you dig it?



Next up was the old wooden ottoman that belonged to my grandmother. I've been dragging that thing around for eight years a while now, always with the intention to redo it. Well, I finally did! After gluing the pieces, I scored some half-price upholstery fabric at Joann Fabrics and then had to wait until the weather warmed up before I could use the spray adhesive. For some reason my family objected to being poisoned from the fumes. Whatever.  The weather rose above fifty degrees and I got to work gluing on the foam we'd saved from our Sleep Number bed. So good to finally use some of that stuff! No doubt the movers thought we were pretty odd. I think it turned out just okay, sort of lumpy, but it was my first time upholstering anything, plus at least it's finished. What do you think?

ugly gray foam--def an improvement from plain ugly wood.

The finished project. Foo-Foo seems to like it.

The other things I've been doing are making some bulletin boards using some of the cardboard currently taking up  residence in DynoDad's garage and some cloth I've had lying around. I only have to attach ribbon to hang and then I will post pictures. 

The final project is a redo of an awful stainless steel trash can I bought a Lowe's when we moved to Illinois, not realizing it required special trash bags to work correctly. I tried regular ones for a time, but then gave up and shipped it out to the garage. I didn't want to toss it because I knew I could find a use for it. And so I have. I only have a bit more to do and then those pics will be here as well.