Freezing Corn on the Cob

First, get yourself a big 'ol bag of FRESH corn from the farmer's market or roadside stad. Grocery store corn is NOT acceptable to this farm raised girl. I would rather not eat corn at all than eat grocery store, over ripe, starchy, who knows how many days it has been picked for corn. I robbed from mine my brother's corn field early in the morning with a little help from the girls.

Shuck and silk the corn and cut off any bad spots. Bring a huge pot of water to a boil. When you put your ears of corn in, it will stop boiling.

When it starts boiling again, it's time to take the ears out. Immediately put them in a large bowl or your sink filled with ice water to stop the cooking process. This was my last batch below, so just pretend like there is WAY more ice in there.

Line them up on a cookie sheet and put it in the freezer. It's ok to stack them on top of each other. I set mine down in the deep freezer as soon as I get the first batch done and just add to it as I go.

Leave them in there until the next morning so they get nice and frozen solid. Then, just throw them into freezer bags.

I use gallon bags so I don't have so many floating around getting lost in the freezer. And since they were frozen in layers, on the cookie sheet they won't be all stuck to gether in the bag and you can just pull out however many you need for each meal.

Monkey Munch

Monkey Munch

9 cups Chex cereal (any variety)
1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup peanut butter
1/4 cup butter or margarine
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar

Put chex in a giant bowl with a lid and put aside. Place chocolate chips, peanut butter and butter into a microwavable container. Microwave the mixture uncovered for a minute on high. Stir the mix again and continue to zap in thirty second intervals until it mixes smoothly. Add the vanilla and stir. Pour this combination over your chex in the large bowl, put the lid on and shake! This is a great time to let the kids help out. Just make sure you get all of the cereal coated. Remove the lid, and add the powdered sugar, seal the bowl and shake again. Spread Monkey Munch out on wax paper to cool and dry. Or, do what I do and leave the bowl sitting on the counter without the lid. Walk by every few minutes and toss it gently until it is completely cool. Keep in an airtight container for storage.

Sit back and watch your little monkeys enjoy!

Pillow Box- Last minute gift wrap

So, here it is the night before the last day of school, and what have I done, but procrastinate as usual. I intended to buy some cute little gift bags at Dollar Tree today for the girls to put their teacher gifts in for tomorrow, but my day did not go nearly as smoothly as I planned. So, I did something I am thankful to be pretty good at; I improvised!



Click on the template image for the link to a printable template.

These go together really quickly. I used some lighter weight cardstock I had on hand. Heavier cardstock is a little harder to work with, but will be more durable. We didn't need these to last forever though, just make it through a trip to school in the girls bookbags.

I just traced around the template and cut it out, then I used the pointy end of one of my knitting needles to score the dashed lines onto it. Then had Abby write the names on them.

I found it easier to go ahead and pre-fold all of your creases before you do any taping. It's easier to get it to go together smoothly this way.

Tape the edges together.

Fold in the ends.



Tie a ribbon, or piece of string around it to keep the ends closed or just tape them.



DONE! Now that was easy wasn't it?


We made fabric bracelets similar to this one for all of their teachers this year. I took the girls to Hobby Lobby and let them pick out whatever fabric they wanted for each teacher. I stitched up the fabric tube and then they pretty much did the rest of the assembly themselves.