The Bunny Chair And Hillbilly Pillow

This morning the girls had a commitment at church and then went to lunch. I took that opportunity to work on my grandma's rocking chair that I've had since Caboose was born (over 11 years ago). It is still in the same condition as when I got it, which has lots of lovely mustard color from the 1970s. The wood is pretty scratched up from being old and from being moved at least four different times since we've had it. Once we even saw it taken off the moving truck out of a wooden crate, sitting upside down on top of our grill. There wasn't any packing material around anything in that entire crate. Needless to say it went down as one of our two worst moves.

I could have painted the wood and then sanded it, or I could have sanded it and evened it out, but I wanted this to be as simple as possible. I'd been motivated by the nester covering a footstool in fur with her glue gun, and the primary reason this chair hadn't been recovered yet was because I was intimidated by the upholstery. It wouldn't be like covering a chair seat and stapling underneath it.

I bought some white short fur half price at JoAnn's a few weeks ago. The base is a little thin, but I had some light-colored muslin I hot-glued on the chair first. I could have gotten away with not using it, but it looked better with it.

The girls walked in after lunch and I had the chair about 75 percent finished. The first thing Chatty said was, "It's a bunny chair."

I did vacuum it, but I'm curious to see if we can sit in it without having to use a lint roller. I vacuumed myself too. It was not a pretty sight. I thought I was part bunny by the time it was all over! Of course it didn't help that I was wearing black knit pants.

At Christmastime I purchased a set of two matching fabric napkins at Target. I used them to make a pillow. Since the napkins had finished edges there were a lot of options, but I have it finished off with a zipper.

The first thing Caboose said when he saw the pillow back then was, "It's a hillbilly pillow!" He still doesn't really like this pillow. I don't know why. I think I'm going to move it to my bed.

Lasagna

I don't know of any recipe for lasagna that doesn't take a long time to cook, usually at least an hour. But this one is quick and easy to make because you don't have to cook the noodles first. I love that! And it still only takes an hour in the oven.

Quick Lasagna

Ribbed Lasagna, uncooked (12 pieces)
32 oz prepared spaghetti sauce (like Prego or Ragu)
15 oz drained cottage cheese
12 oz grated Mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1 lb ground beef

Brown ground beef. Mix in spaghetti sauce. If the jar is a little less than 32 oz, I usually add some water and sprinkle some Italian seasoning in to make up the difference.

Spray cooking spray in a 9x13 glass pan. Place a small amount of the spaghetti sauce mixture in the bottom. Place three strips of uncooked lasagna in the bottom and then one broken piece to fit and fill in across the short side.

(I usually put my cottage cheese in a colander while I'm browning my ground beef so if there is any excess liquid it will drain out.) Spread 1/3 of the cottage cheese and 1/3 of the spaghetti sauce mixture on top of the noodles. I plop it down and then mix the two together as I spread it out across the noodles. It looks like this:

Then sprinkle 1/3 of your Mozzarella cheese on top of that. I actually just buy two packages of the shredded cheese and end up with 16 oz and use all of it.

Repeat these layers two more times.

Top with shredded Parmesan.

Cover with foil and bake at 375 degrees for 30 minutes. Remove the foil and continue baking an additional 30 minutes. Let stand 10 minutes before cutting.

This recipe came from a lasagna noodle box or a Ragu jar or someplace like that. I've had it for so long that I don't remember where it came from.

I tried those flat noodles once instead of the ribbed and they worked the same.

Last Monday

The 18th of April, we had three inches of snow. It was about 28 degrees outside.




It looks like even this American Tree Sparrow was looking up to figure out what was going on!

It's 50 right now. That seems almost like summer after last Monday.

Easter

We colored eggs again with our Spin an Egg. I can't tell you enough how much we love them.

We got our first one from a specialty toy store in New Jersey when the oldest three kids were under five and Caboose wasn't born. We would pass it around and everyone would take a turn.

A few years ago I got a second one somewhere. It made things go faster so that two kids could each share one.

Now they sell them at Wal-Mart and places like that for $5 each. We bought two more last year so each child could have their own. I boil four dozen eggs and give each child a dozen to color the way they like.




I purchase the tie-dye coloring kits in the box each year (four of them, of course) because they have the right kind of egg color to use in the spinner. They come in little white packets like you see on our table in five different colors.

Each one of the kids comes up with their own favorite and unique way of coloring their eggs.

Chatty:

Sparky:

Buddy:

Caboose:

After church today we had our annual Easter Egg Scavenger Hunt for the kids to find their baskets. This is where the egg was hidden with the first clue (we used to hand them the egg but started doing this last year).

Each of the kids picked an egg to start, but nobody found the clue the first time around.




Caboose finally found the first clue!

For the last clue, they had to find the golden egg in an egg hunt with about 30 other eggs in the rec room.

Success!

Scary

Buddy's latest thing is to scare us. He likes to jump out at his siblings and say, "Boo!" or hide around the corner in a room, and when I come in he'll wait until I notice him and then kind of go, "Ah!"

He's smart enough to do it very quietly with me. I'm used to him and don't usually jump or scare.

About two weeks ago I sent Sparky to the basement for something. I heard her scream and she kind of ran back towards me. I got scared because I thought she saw a big spider.

Nope. Buddy put his life-sized stand-up Cal Ripken, Jr., on the fourth stair down. That was the first thing she saw when she opened the door.

See, about a week prior to this we had finished cleaning out the garage. Buddy has had Cal since Illinois, but he'd been living folded up in the garage since we got here. We had Buddy move him to the basement and we stood him up.

Next thing we know we're following Buddy down the stairs and he jumps back. He has put his "Big Cal" right around the corner so that when someone walked down the basement stairs and turned the corner to the right, they would see a big man. He scared himself twice. He decided that wasn't working so well and he was going to take a different approach. That's when Cal turned up on the stairs.

Next thing I knew Caboose had moved him into the powder room and had scared one of his sisters.

I'm just hoping he doesn't show up on small group night.

I Didn't Know Mascots Wore Cups

Overall we are a sports family. Chatty would be the biggest exception.

Today around our house there was some discussion about Pablo Sandoval, nicknamed the Kung Fu Panda, getting hit by a baseball in an area that would be the least desirable place for a man. The clip was shown on ESPN's Not Top Ten or one of their similar lists and so talk was rampant. Except for Chatty. She wasn't around when we were all talking about it.

Hubby has been out of town for the week. Tonight at the dinner table Buddy asked him if he saw what happened to the Kung Fu Panda. Buddy told Hubby that he didn't think the Kung Fu Panda wore a cup because he actually acted like it was painful (Buddy plays catcher and of course wears a cup, has been hit sometimes by foul balls, and says as long as you have a cup it shouldn't hurt that bad).

Chatty chimes in, "I didn't know mascots wore cups." (She thought it was a random character, not an actual team mascot, like when the president characters ran out at Nationals' games, and he got hit by the ball. Although the Presidents are tied to the Nationals and aren't really random, but that's where her thought pattern was going.)

I think this one tops the bucks and points.

And yes, having a boy that has played baseball for so many years has led to cup being a common part of everyday vocabulary, other than one you drink from.