Something Pretty, Something Yummy

Another twofer! Just in case you didn't read the last post that had a twofer in it, here's the definition of a twofer: Two for the price of one! Today's twofer features Something Pretty, a game holder that can help decorate your house (hey, another twofer! I'm full of 'em today!) and Something Yummy, a snack, to go with the game!!



Something Pretty
So here's the story. Cause I'm one of those people that has to explain everything, I can't just give you this without you knowing the whole story! My niece went with a friend to Florida and discovered a game called Bananagrams.  (It's a game that's sort of like scrabble, but you work on your own instead of together and whoever uses all their tiles first wins.  It's very addicting ) She came home, ordered it from Amazon and introduced me to it.  FUN! My mother in law loved it so much, she bought her a set.  But the bag it came in broke, so she put it in a zip lock baggy.  Well, I kept borrowing the game from her so much, and having the broke bag, she decided to buy her another set with a new bag and let me have the set in the zip lock baggy. Then the zip lock baggy ripped open and I had to find something to do with them.  Being the pack rat, scrapbooky person I am, I save glass jars like a squirrel puts away nuts for the winter!! That's when the lightbulb went off over my head.

 I took an empty, (washed) ragu sauce bottle and put the game inside

 Picked out some paper, orange is my favorite color.  I then ran some Tim Holtz ink pads over it I, waded it up some and straightened it back out and then ran some brown color over.  The crinkles were the only part that picked up the color.  Then wrapped the paper around the far and glued it.

 I made a tag to label the game.  I not sure I like this tag, I'm thinking about running it through the printer or something to make the letters a little neater 

 The lid had writing all over the top that would ruin the whole look of the pretty jar.  So I took the gold colored paint dabber and covered the lid.

 Lastly I picked out some ribbon, wrapped it around the jar a couple of time and tied the tag to it.  Viola! A pretty jar that I can set out to look pretty while holding one of my new favorite games!

Something Yummy

Now while you're playing this really fun game, you're going to need snacks to enjoy! I found this snack in a Four Ingredient Cookbook one of my former piano students gave me for Christmas one year.  I've been making these for years and my husband loves them.  These are called pizza crackers.  They're quick, easy, and yummy.

What you'll need:

Round Ritz Crackers

1 Package of Pepperoni

1 Package Mozzarella Cheese

Ketchup

How to prepare:

Lay your Ritz crackers out on a pan, I put the salty side down cause I like tasting the salty part as I eat the snacks.

Next, squirt a little ketchup on each cracker

Then, lay a pepperoni on top of the ketchup 

After the ketchup and pepperoni add cheese on top.  You can put as much or as little as you want.  I'm a little obsessed with Mozzarella cheese, so I use a lot.

After the cheese it's ready to pop them in the oven.

 Bake them at 400 degrees for around 5 minutes or until the cheese gets good and melted.

 Give them a minute to cool off and....

..you're ready to enjoy these yummy little snacks!

So there you are.  My twofer just for you! Now, go out and buy Bananagrams (Cause you'll love this game) buy some Ragu sauce (so you'll have the jar to put them in), scrapbook supplies (to do make the Ragu jar pretty), and all the things you'll need for the snacks, (to enjoy while you play Banangrams!)

Enjoy!

I'm a Musician.....with kids

When I was six years old, my mom decided I should learn to play the piano.  I got no say in this at all.  For the first five years I was hauled and dragged back and forth to piano, and forced to practice everyday.  I even remember this one time when my mother, the queen of guilt trips, guilted me into practicing.  Yes she did.  And there was the time the she threatened to glue my hiney to the bench until I practiced.  At that point I was ready to quit.  I begged my mom and dad to let me quit! They admitted later on that they came very close to letting me, but they stuck it out and made me stick it out.  After that, I started getting into songs I liked, and I started enjoying it more. (Yep, that's me in the picture! My first real piano sat in the kitchen for a long time, then it got moved to my bedroom)

Getting ready for my recital in 2002

When I reached my senior year of high school, music started meaning more to me.  I started appreciating my ability to play piano, and even though it was still hard to make myself practice, I didn't have to have my mom making me sit down and practice.  I wanted to share my knowledge and my love of music, so I decided to try my hand at teaching.  My very first student was my grandmother.  I fell in love with teaching music.

In 2008 I decided I wanted to try going to college and getting a Bachelor's in Music Education.  You know, college is hard! Not only did I have to take all the music courses, but I had to take General Education courses too.  Things like history, english, math and even speech! It's even harder when you have a spouse and a child at home.  It was hard to find time to do the wife and mother thing while trying to get homework done, papers wrote and squeeze in a enough practice time so that your professor doesn't give you that look that means 'you could do better.'!  I got two semesters down and stopped.  We wanted to have another baby (Kenny) and I refused to do college pregnant and then with a newborn.  It probably would've ended with me in an insane asylum for the protection of those around me.  But while I was there, I learned even more about music.  I learned a new appreciation for it.  I learned a lot of the technical stuff and the artistry stuff.  I learned that you have to learn rules of music so you can break them.

Today, I see my music as my gift from God.  He's given me so many things.  My wonderful parents, my adorable husband, the sweetest boys in the world.  But the music He gave me is all mine.  It will never leave me, it will never judge me, it will never get mad and give me the silent treatment.  It is mine to mold and shape, to use, to enjoy, to escape to.  Today, I am so thankful to my parents for making stick it out.  Today, I love to sit down an practice.

My Mother and me at one of my yearly recitals, we played a duet

The only problem with loving to practice today is that I don't ever really get to! My four year old and one year old make about impossible to practice.  As soon as they hear that piano room door open, here they come.  Like dogs when the snack bag shakes.  My college piano teacher gave us all a list of practice techniques we can use to help our practice time. One of the techniques says to create your own distractions and get used to playing with them.  His suggestion for a distraction was put a banana on one end of the keys and an orange on the other.  If only those were my distractions! He obviously never had children in the same room with him while he practiced.

 The first thing I have to do is pull Kenny down off the piano bench so that I can sit down.  Well this just upsets him something awful and he starts pitching a fit.  So while he's sitting by the piano leg crying, I sit down and get my music ready.  Now Kenny has realized I'm about to play, so he starts trying to climb up on the bench beside me, by grabbing my shirt sleeve and pulling.  I'm trying to ignore all this while continuing with my playing but now that he's up beside me he must play with me! He starts banging on the keys.  Most of the time he's in the higher keys, away from where I need so I have learned to tune out what he's playing and focus on my music.

Connor likes to sing.  He'll sing along with anything, even the songs I'm practicing.  Whatever I'm playing, whether he's heard it or not, he's singing along with it.  At the top of his lungs.  Again, I've learned to tune it out for a while.

If I can get them to stop banging on the keys and singing along, they do one of two things.  Start messing with the books on the bookshelves, usually making me stop playing and get up to put the books back, or the run out of the room and go deadly quiet.  That usually means some sort of disaster for me.  One day I realized they were quiet, came looking for them and Kenny, who can apparently reach the middle shelf of the pantry, had the cheeseball bag open, his face was completely orange.

One time I put them both in their room and told them to play in there until I was finished practicing.  I shut their door so Kenny couldn't get out.  I practiced for almost an hour, listening to them on and off.  I could hear them playing and laughing so I knew they weren't being traumatized by being shut up in their room alone.  When I was finished and opened the door to their room I thought for a minute that maybe a bomb had actually gone off in their room and I had just missed the boom, I mean some of those songs I practice are fortissimo (loud as possible).  So I didn't do that anymore.

There are the rare occasions when they're at their grandma's, or with their daddy outside.  I snatch those few and far between moments for some uninterrupted practice time.  I never would've thought that practicing all by myself could feel so good.  If you had told me when I was six that one day I would love practicing as much as I do, I would not have believed it.


I love my music and my piano.  I love my boys dearly.  But right now, with them little, trying to mix the two is hard.  But just so you know, I never discourage them from playing on the piano.  I only ask they play it while I'm in there with them.  I would never want to discourage my kids from expressing themselves musically.  I do hope one day they will both learn to play the piano and love it as much as I do.