Recycling

This is one thing I WON'T be recycling.

The Tale of the Scary Bunny

This little Chili thought she was tough stuff this Halloween all dressed up as a...bunny! She growled the whole night long thinking she was just as scary as all the other little monsters. And here is my little monster:

Homemade Chicken Pot Pie

After getting inspired from reading this: http://adventuresofhannahandcharlie.blogspot.com/2009/10/chicken-pot-pie.html, I decided to try my first ever pot pie. It took a long time to make, but it was much better than the store bought variety. I cooked a chicken the day before, deboned it, and shredded it up. The next day, I added some fresh green beans, carrots, and parsnips and let them cook in the broth. I added a little flour to try to thicken it up a little. When they were done I added frozen peas and the chicken to warm. Then I tried to prepare the crust which was a mess! I used the recipe that my favorite cook book recommended. It was:
1 1/4 flour
1/2 t salt
10 T butter, cold and cut into chunks
1 egg yolk
3 T ice water, more if necessary
(I doubled this to make a larger pot pie.)

Put flour, and salt in food processor for a couple seconds. Add butter and process until uniform. Add egg yolk and process a couple more seconds. Put in bowl and add ice water, mix with hands and form a ball. Wrap in plastic and freeze ten minutes. Sprinkle countertop with flour and roll with rolling pin....so I did this. When I took it out of the freezer it was rock hard. It did get a little more managable as it warmed. But it started cracking and I couldn't roll it out well. Eventually when I had it flattened to the thickeness I wanted, I put the pieces in the pan and used my fingers to connect the pieces and form the shape I wanted. This part took a long time, and was almost impossible to get the top pieces to connect. That turned out to be ok, since my inside mixture was not very thick, and the holes let the water evaporate as it cooked.

The end result was very tasty! I think next time I will try a different crust recipe and see if that makes a difference. I think I will leave out the parsnips too. This was the first time I had ever used them, and I wasn't crazy about them. I will definately make this again!

200 Words and Analysis

Early in the month of October, Chili hit her 200 word mark. She is picking up new words everyday and loves to copy things she hears even if she doesn't know what they mean. She is enjoying being able to communicate, and we get such a kick out of hearing what she is thinking. The linguist in me of course had to do a brief analysis of her language aquisition. She has more than 104 words in Spanish and more than 42 words in English. She has more words (about 16) referring to animals and noises, and more than 22 referring to people she knows or characters (in books or on TV). She is now starting to put words together to show who it belongs to (like "mami gorro" for "mom's hat"). She also has a couple phrases she can use like, "How are you?" (not that she knows what that means, but she hears people say it all the time), "love you," and "alli esta" (it's over there). She really surprised me the other day when she said, "woo, woo alli esta" to tell me that there was a dog over there. My personal favorite is lately when she is asking for something and I tell her not right now, or maybe later, she responds, "mañana." I don't know if she really understands the concept of tomorrow, but she at least is okay with the fact that she's not getting it now. It makes me chuckle every time.

Now that I have written this blog post, it is really bothering me that I don't have my tildes on any of my Spanish words. Does anyone know how to do this when you use a IBM laptop and are writing using Blogger?

Making Birthday Cake

Chili helped make her own birthday cake this year. Some good, not-so-clean birthday fun!

She had fun, and got to put that apron I made her to good use.

I can't believe my baby is 2!

Curtains!

I finally have real curtains up. I made the curtains for the family room and the bedroom with the help of my sister-in-law E. She found some store bought curtains that she split in two lengthwise, hemmed, and added loops in order to have matching curtains for the two kitchen windows. Thanks to E's help, my niece and nephews keeping my daughter occupied, and my sewing, my house now has curtains! And here they are:

Bedroom curtains, need to finish the other panel, but this works for now.
Kitchen curtains

Family room

Tie-dye and Polka dots