Make It Monday: Three Bean Salad Recipe

You are going to love this recipe for Three Bean Salad! It combines all your favorites, plus some new things and uses balsamic vinegar instead of apple cider vinegar. I cannot stress enough how important it is to have a good quality balsamic vinegar is. You could probably forego the honey because a REALLY good balsamic vinegar will have both a sweet and tang taste.


Three Bean Salad
1 can Kidney Beans
1 can Garbanzo Beans
1 can Green Beans
1/2 Red Onion, minced
1 med cucumber, seeded and chopped
1/4 C balsamic vinegar (a good quality one!!)
1 T honey
2 T olive oil
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp dried cilantro

Directions:

• Combine all beans, onion and cucumber in a large bowl.
• Stir to combine.
• In a shaker container, combine balsamic vinegar, honey, olive oil, garlic and cilantro and Shake.
• Pour over vegetables in bowl.
• Stir to cover.
• Let sit for at least 1/2 hour before serving.
• Enjoy!

Pottery Time: Mugs

 If you haven't noticed, I have been doing a lot more slab rolling and hand building and have not been on the wheel in a while. My first couple mugs I made were on the wheel and they are nice and are ones I kept for myself. But I have really grown to like hand building and slab rolling. I feel so much more in control of the clay, but I diverge, that is not telling you how or why I made these mugs.

I made all three of these mugs as gifts. When I was making them I was most nervous about how the handle was going to stay and hold it's shape and not crack. I started out with some jar molds (I used smallish glass pickle jars for my mold.) and shaped my slab rolled piece around each and attached a circular base.

The make the handles, I did make the slab rolled clay thicker to start out with, but I had to be careful to not have it be too thick or it would not shape as well and too thin and it would not hold it's shape. I cannot remember exactly what I set the thickness on the roller to, I think it was about 1/3, whereas the rest of the mug was rolled at 1/4. I used scratching and slip to adhere the edges of the handles to the mug.

I really like this mug design, so much that I kind of want to make one for myself, but this one was given to a friend for her birthday. I made it in blue (her favorite color) and brown. I had overlapped the rolled slab and made it looks like buttons holding it together. I hand painted the entire piece with under glaze in blue and brown. After the first firing I then drizzled a navy blue color glaze on it and glazed the whole piece in clear.

This one was made as a going away present for a coffee loving friend that I used to have coffee playdates with our youngest kids. I added texture to this clay by using a texture roller. Then I hand painted under glaze of yellow and purple before the first firing. It was actually pretty time consuming to paint each of the insides of the little squares. Then I applied a clear glaze over the entire piece before the final firing.

And finally, this one I added lace on top of the clay as I rolled it out. I did not use under glazes on this one because I wanted it to match the Tall Cylinder Vase I was also giving to this friend for her birthday. She just had her birthday, so I was finally able to share these projects that I had made.

Next week I will share one more project I have finished and then I better get my butt back in the studio and start creating because I don't have any more projects in the works to share. I did just create some coordinating jewelry pieces for a friend's birthday present and will share those soon and I do have some plans to work on some loom knitting projects and will share those with you later too.

Thrifty Thursday: Frozen Treat Deals at Burger King

Taking your family out for ice cream doesn't have to break the budget. Again this summer (I noticed they did this last summer too!), Burger King (at least at all the ones in MN that I have seen signs at) are selling vanilla soft serve cones for 50 cents and $1 for any size Icee. Our family of four spent $2.14 for cones for each of us, pretty good considering we would pay that same price for only two ice cream cones at another big fast food place (in which case then I choose to support the local ice cream shoppes that charge that price for a small cone.)

Wordless Wednesday: Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Campground

This was where we stayed for Camp MOM. It is Rice Creek Chain of Lakes Campground and Park Reserve in Lino Lakes. Check out my other posts regarding to Camp MOM too!

Try It Tuesday: Easy Paper Plate Butterflies

This was such a fun and easy project for my kids to do and for the most part it was an independent project for both my 3 year old and 7 year old. Can you tell which one was made by my son? I will give you a hint, his had to be a monster butterfly with three eyes.

Supplies needed: Colored paper plate, scissors, pencil, googly eyes, pipe cleaners, craft foam, glue and anything to glue on (including glitter glue) to provide decoration.

To start out with, I drew half circles on the back of the paper plate and let the kids cut them out on their own. Kids don't get to use scissors too much so any time they get to practice cutting they are very excited.

I also drew the body of the butterfly on some craft foam and let them cut it out as well.

You can see he is concentrating very hard on cutting out his wings. I chose to use some leftover (from a birthday party, they are the smaller plates you would serve cake on) colored paper plates, but if you only have white plate you could paint them.

Here are both of their creations. Same instructions, but they got to choose from the supplies how they wanted to use them. As my kids get older they like to show off their individuality more and more.

Here are all the supplies I got out for them to choose from that included regular and colored googly eyes, a variety of pipe cleaners, different colors of craft foam, beads, sequins, puffy fabric pieces and glitter glue.

They really had fun with this project and needed very little assistance.

Make It Monday: Clean Eating Crepes

I finally did it! I finally decided I would part ways with my original crepes recipe and clean it up (wasn't too terrible to begin with, but still could be improved upon)

Clean Eating Crepes Recipe
1 C Oat Flour
2 large egg whites
1 large whole egg
1 1/2 C coconut milk
1/4 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. cinnamon (if making breakfast crepes)
1 packet Stevia (if making breakfast crepes)

Directions: Whisk all ingredients together. Preheat a omelet frying pan and spray with non-cooking spray. Pour 1/4 C of the mixture in the pan. Cook until bottom has just set and cooked (15-20 seconds), then flip and cook until that side is set. These cook really fast.

Top with your favorite fruit, a homemade clean nutella, carob chips, your favorite nut butter, or fill with veggies, scrambled egg whites or beans and salsa.

Sponsored Post: Bubble Gum Princess Book

My daughter was thrilled when she saw that she would be helping me review a new children's book called the Bubblegum Princess by Julie Gribble and published by New York Media Works. As any of us with children know, us liking something is only half the story; it is what our children think of it is the other half. A book needs to make it on a parents list of acceptable books and then the child deems whether it is worthy of reading a story more than once or not. At the time of writing this post, I have already read this book with my daughter three times and I am sure we will continue to read this book.

When I asked her what she thought of the book she told me she liked that it was about that if you just be yourself, good people will like you for who you are. When I asked if there was anything she would change or didn't like, she said she really wish that at the end of the book when Katy was teaching everyone how to blow bubbles that it would give instructions on how to blow bubbles. My daughter so badly wants to learn how to blow bubble gum bubbles and she has learned that books teach you things and was really hoping in the end this would teach her how to blow bubbles. Even though that disappointment was short lived, she continues to like the book for what it is.

As a parent, I appreciated the exposure to more complex words that were used in the text of the story. I think it is very important for children to be exposed to a wide vocabulary of words. I know through some of my parents child classes I have taken with my kids they have said research show a child only needs to hear a word a few times before it becomes part of their own vocabulary and the larger they build their vocabulary by exposure to new words the easier learning to read generally is for them.

I also think that the quirky illustrations by Lori Hanson appealed more to my 7 year old daughter than other books with perfectly proportioned princesses exist. At her age she has moved beyond the cutesy princesses and looking for more complexity in the drawings of books that appeal to her.

You can find out more information about New York Media Works online at:

Website

Facebook

Twitter

I received one or more of the products mentioned above for free using Tomoson.com. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I use personally and believe will be good for my readers. I received no monetary compensation for this post.