folding madness

Fact: Katie is getting good at origami.

Fact: Katie loves to mass produce things once she figures them out.

Mama's solution: Put this skill set and passion together and transfer it to something more beneficial for the culinary needs of our family.

Wontons.

Mo was not happy watching us, and ended up joining in.

Her start was commendable, painting water on the edges very carefully.

Then she would just scrunch the whole thing up. And "fold" it over a bit.

"Ta da!" she would proclaim.

The meat tended to slip out of the Maddie creations a bit too easily after being boiled, but they were all edible.

Usually wontons are made with shrimp and ground pork, but I often make them with turkey because it's easily available at my grocery store and is a tad healthier.

Turkey Won Ton

1 lb. ground turkey

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. oyster sauce

1 Tbsp. minced onion

1/4 tsp. sesame oil

2 tsp. sherry

8 water chestnuts diced

4 large Chinese mushrooms diced

1/8 tsp. pepper

1 green onion stalk chopped

1 egg

2 packages of wonton skins

Mix ingredients well. Make wontons using 1 tsp. of filling per wonton.

You can check out YouTube for some tutorials on folding wontons.

ushering in spring

If you've been to our house the last couple of months, you probably saw our Winter Wreaths.

It was quite the crafting adventure for me and the Little Wickies.

The girls collected pine cones at the park and then I went out and purchased my very first glue gun. I then diligently glued all the pine cones to the wreath.

The next morning I picked it up, and all the blasted pine cones fell off.

I resorted to tying the pine cones down with twine. Then we sprayed it with mass amounts of glue and had at it with glitter and beads.

This week we "Spring-ized" the wreaths by painting the pine cones.

Our wreaths are like the ghetto version of Dana's beautiful acorn wreaths that she painted and then repainted.

card sharks

Katie has been talking about Valentine's Day for awhile now. We started a list of people she wants to send cards to.

The list has grown and grown. I warned Katie that we were looking at a lot of cards this year.

We decided to have a little card-making party to tackle the task.

I think the kids had fun. But, you wouldn't know it looking at these pictures.

Making cards is apparently serious business.

Looking through my pictures I have zero smiling faces.

But they did make some great-looking cards. I like seeing the creativity. Lia even made a pop-up card! I wish I had taken a picture of it.

Katie made a series of very uniform cards, very unusual for my more-is-better girl.

Maddie was a card-making machine and made more than 20 cards.

Mission complete.

me try sew

That pretty sums up my level of needle-and-thread literacy.

A while back we were lucky to receive some scraps of fabric over at rice babies. She was even so sweet as to include a note offering to sew the pillows together once the girls had colored them.

Apparently my lack of sewing skills has permeated the greater blogosphere.

We had a bit of a slow afternoon so I let the girls have at it with some fabric markers.

Maddie would only color on that left-hand window for some reason. I even tried turning the fabric to face a different direction thinking she was coloring what was closer to her. But alas, she kept coloring the same window.

After, I suggested -- to the girls horror -- that we sacrifice a little-used stuffed animal to finish off our pillows.

In the end I climbed up into my linen cabinet, brought down a vacuum-packed bag and found a pillow that we weren't using.

My finish work on the pillow is -- well, let's just say it's sub-par.

But the Little Wickies don't seem to mind.