Our Eventual Homestead

I always struggle with ideas for Valentine’s Day so this year I traveled over to Pinterest to see what I could find. What I found were a bunch of really cute ideas!

Little heart-shaped pepperoni, perfect for a heart-shaped pizza! Would be great with heart-shaped veggies too!

This is just adorable and would look great on my door!

These would be really neat for an older child to pass out instead of traditional Valentines.

I think I know what our daughter is giving her friends for Valentine’s Day this year. So cute!

Or maybe we’ll make these!

Have you prepared for the inevitable? I’m over at Hillbilly Mom today discussing how to oranize all of your important documents:

Do you know where all of your important documents are? Do you have a will? How about a Power of Attorney? Where is the deed to your home or the title to your vehicle? If you don’t know the answer to any of these questions your family certainly doesn’t either. What if something happens to you, how will your family be able to access the information they need to properly handle your affairs?

Not to sound morbid but at some point we will all pass away. Our loved ones will be left with the daunting task of settling our estate. At a time of deep grieving do you really want to add to the stress by not having all of your important documents in order. Do you really want your loved ones to be left searching for unpaid debts, titles, passwords or any other information they may need? I know I don’t and I don’t think you do either. Read the rest of the article here…

We love banana bread in our house so I was very excited to find this recipe for Cinnamon Swirl Banana Bread from Lovin from the Oven. It was absolutely delicious! I made a few changes to the original recipe, substituting half the flour with whole wheat flour. It made a denser bread than usual but was still very moist and yummy!

Ingredients:

For the Bread: 

• 3 ripe bananas
• 1/3 cup melted butter
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 egg, beaten
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1 tsp baking soda
• dash of salt
• 3/4 cups flour
• 3/4 cups whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup chopped walnuts or pecans (optional)

For the swirl:

• 1/3 cup sugar
• 1 Tbs cinnamon

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 350°. Grease a 9×5 loaf pan.
• Mix bananas, butter, sugar, egg, and vanilla together in a large bowl.
• In a separate bowl mix the flour, baking soda and salt together. Add dry ingredients to the banana mix a little at a time, stirring until well mixed.
• In a small dish, mix together the 1/3 cup sugar and 1 Tbs cinnamon.
• Add 1/2 of the batter to the loaf pan. Sprinkle about 2/3 of the cinnamon-sugar mixture all over the batter in the pan. Add the rest of the batter, and then sprinkle the leftover cinnamon-sugar on top.
• Bake for about 50 minutes or until a knife inserted in the center comes out clean.

I think the next time I make this recipe I will try using a muffin pan instead of a loaf pan. Cinnamon Swirl Banana Muffins sound pretty good too!

Recipe Source

A little inspiration for your weekend.

“Your success as a family, our success as a society, depends not on what happens in the White House, but on what happens inside your house.” 

-Barbara Bush