Time with the Fam

My brother, Joe, his wife and kiddos drove up last weekend for a little visit. We were so excited to see them! Especially since we had never met our newest little cousin/niece, Amelia:

Eden was in heaven! She loves babies, and was tickled to meet her cousin for the first time. We also had a little birthday party for Charlotte's 2nd birthday. Here are the kids, getting in the spirit!

Grammy made the cake:

The birthday girl! She looks a bit pitiful, but that's because she was feeling under the weather most of the time they were here with runny nose, eyes, etc. She also banged her lip pretty bad while playing outside right before this shot, so her little mouth is swollen! Poor girl, not a happy day for her birthday party!

She still seemed to enjoy it though and put on a happy face when she could muster it:

Oh, and lest I forget a very important part: the party was hosted by my parents in their new home! It is so exciting to be able to have them here and part of all that's happening. It was lots of fun to have Joe and Sarah and the girls up for a few days! Already looking forward to their next visit. 

To end, random shots of my sweeties. :)

Recipe Review: Spaghetti Squash Pizza Crust

As I've been attempting to eliminate gluten completely from my diet, I've been experimenting with some new ways to make some of my favorite foods. Pizza was on the top of that list! When I saw a recipe for pizza crust made out of spaghetti squash, I was skeptical but interested. I love spaghetti squash but I just couldn't figure out how it was going to make a good crust for pizza. Turns out if you add enough cheese, it makes anything good!

The process was fairly simple, albeit time consuming. The pictures of my crust didn't turn out, but it looks exactly like the pictures on the original blog post (see here).  Here is my final pizza after toppings were added:

I know the edges look a little burnt, but I actually liked it that way! Gave it a little crunch. I thought the taste was actually very good, and the consistency was great for being gluten free. The problem I most run in to while baking/cooking GF is that things get crumbly. This crust didn't have any trouble hanging together and was very moist and I think it would have been even crispier if I followed her instructions for using parchment paper (unfortunately, I have a hate relationship with parchment paper so I never use it). All in all this was a great substitute for pizza (although Dominos makes the best GF pizza that is takeout) and I'll be making it again!

The Little Things...

You know when you decide to do a little project that should just take a few minutes and then it turns into 2 weeks? Yeah, I had one of those moments a few weeks ago. 

When we moved into our house (three years ago now!) there were four closets that had the two bi-folding doors. I'm not sure why, but I've never been a fan of these. So when I saw a pinterest idea for making them into french doors I jumped on it. Plus, it seemed so simple! I'll spare you the boring and sad details of all the little problems I ran into, but here's the short version:

I got simple little wood pieces at Lowes, about a half to three quarter inch thick, roughly six inches long and an inch wide. It didn't need to be precise, we just needed to mount two magnetic closures on it, like this:

I drilled the wood onto the upper inside frame of the closet door, and then attached the metal piece (from the magnetic closure kit) to the actual door. I lined the door up with the frame then attached the magnet part to the wood, so when the door closed up all would line up correctly. 

I then took simple brackets and attached them to the folding part of the doors (in three spots: top, bottom, and middle of the door) so they would stay straight rather than fold in together. 

Voila. Make shift french doors from bi-folding doors:

A few of the doors didn't seem to line up exactly the same on both sides of the closet, so some of the wood blocks ended up looking like this:

I could definitely piddle around to make everything nice and perfect, but let's face it: I am not that girl. :) 

I'm glad I did it, since now I can actually use all of the space in each closet instead of being blocked by the folding doors. Honestly though, it didn't make as much difference as I thought. But still, it's a step in the right direction to making this house how we want it!