Orange and Lemon Cupcakes-When Life Hands You Lemons Part 2…

Arizona is full-on spring time!  The citrus trees’ produce is perfect for picking.  We keep going to my parents citrus orchard (really it’s just their backyard but they have plenty of trees!) and picking bags of citrus.  So I’ve been trying to make as many different citrus-y things as I can.  Did you see my orange and lemon rolls?

A fantastic recipe to bake inside of citrus is cake! I grew up doing this at camp. 

1. Cut off top of fruit.

2.  Take flesh out of fruit (then eat the flesh or juice it).

3.  Fill fruit shell halfway with cake batter.

4.  Put top/lid back on and put into muffin tin.

5.  Cook as directed for cupcakes.

6.  Either eat with a spoon, or peel the citrus skin away (kind of hard to do).

7.  Enjoy!

We used to make these at camp.  You make the batter and fill them while at home.  Then when they are filled with the cake batter you cover each fruit tightly with tin foil.  Keep these in the cooler until you are making dinner.  Throw these into the fire while cooking your dinner.  They take a little longer than cupcakes would.  I think they are best done this way.  Isn’t everything yummier when cooked by a fire?

This is a great project to do with your kids.  You cut the tops off and let your kids pull the flesh out.  We then ran all the flesh through the juicer and enjoyed our juice while the cupcakes were baking.

The cake totally takes on a citrus-y flavor that is awesome!  And they cook up super moist! 

 

We made these in oranges and lemons.  We also used chocolate and vanilla cake batter.  All 4 variations were delish!

 

Try this and let me know what you think!

 

I’m still searching for more recipes using citrus.  Please let me know and I will post a list!

 

Rebecca

Orange and Lemon Rolls-Or, When Life Hands You Lemons…

We just picked more than a bushel of oranges and lemons!  My parents have a backyard full of citrus trees.  The kids and I headed over and helped lighten the load of those poor trees’ branches.  They were gorgeously full!  I love how pretty trees are fully laden with their fruit! 

Such a great way to spend some time with my kids!  Outside, gathering fruit, helping each other….

So we’ve been busy making everything citrus that we can.  First up was lemon and orange juice.  As a crafter, I just could NOT throw all of that beautiful peel away.  So, as I juiced we cut the fruit in half and pulled the flesh out to save them as fruit cups.

Next, I added frozen dough to each one and let it rise.  I also made a citrus butter (just added lemon juice to melted butter, or orange juice for the orange rolls) to coat the tops with before I baked them up!  I just baked them like I would normal rolls.

Oh these smelled like heaven while they were baking!

 

My overall conclusion was that they were not as citrus-y tasting as I was hoping for.  Next time I will add way more lemon or orange juice to the butter!  They also needed extra cooking time because the bottoms (that were inside of the fruit cups) wanted to stay dough-y.  They were still all devoured in one day.  We love carbs in my house!

 

After we ate the rolls out of the fruit cups, I shredded the cups and added them to my compost.  So that made these oranges and lemons a 3-for-1!!  YAY!

 

I have a few more fun things that I have done with my citrus bounty.  I have many more lemons, orange, limes, and grapefruit.  I’d love to know what you have done with yours.  Do you have any great citrus recipes?

 

Rebecca

Starbucks is my new best friend-Coffee Grounds For The Garden

I have always thought to myself that I needed to go to a coffee house and ask for their used coffee grounds (don’t use new as they are too acidic) for my compost.  However, I am not a coffee drinker.  So, I always forget to do this (and don’t have any of my own).
Today I happen to be at Starbucks for a snack.  I was SO excited when they had an awesome bucket out front that had these large bags of used coffee grounds, already ready to go.  They even put them into the empty coffee grounds bags so there is no additional packaging other than the sticker to seal it.  I always think about stuff like extra packaging for things.  Anyways, these bags of used coffee grounds are free and now super convenient!  I could have kissed the woman behind the counter when I saw this!
 
I am no composting master and have never used these before in my compost.  However, the sticker from starbucks had great information about it.  When I got home with my bag of coffee grounds I did a bit more research about using this. 

*In my research I also found coffee grounds are a great way to organically take care of slugs, ants, and to keep cats from using your garden as their toilet.

So, I decided to use it straight in my garden first.  The kids loved helping me spread it into the garden and it was a great way to reinforce that plants need food and water.  Then, I dumped the rest of it in my compost.  I also added some ash, to the compost, that I have from my patio fireplace (all wood burning).  I have always heard about adding this as well. 

I’m curious to know if other people have used either coffee grounds or ash and what their results/opinions have been!!!

Rebecca
Happy gardening and composting! 

Make Your own Zucchini Horn

Yes, you can make music from a zucchini stem, or Zucchini Horn!  These amazing Zucchini Horns actually blow pretty loud.  My Brother-In-Law showed me this, this summer and I think it is the coolest thing! 

It reminds me of making noise from a grass blade.  Anyone else do that in their childhood?

I love having my kids in the garden with me.  Anything like this that I can do, to help them enjoy it even more, is frosting on the cake to me!  Actually though, this gets me pretty excited too!

My sister’s garden is growing so well!  I have been reaping the benefits of her garden all summer!  This zucchini is about 15 inches long! 

They are finding their zucchini is wanting to take over their garden box (don’t they always take over!?).  So, they have to keep cutting back their zucchini foliage.  I was lucky enough to be over when they were doing this and my Brother-In-Law showed me this super cool activity to do before adding those zucchini leaves to the compost.

You want to cut the whole length of the zucchini leaf off, including the stem, down to the vine.

Then, you are going to cut the leaf off of the stem.  Make sure to get pretty close to the leaf, as marked on the above picture. 

The zucchini leaf’s stem is hollow between those two parts.  However, you want to make sure you cut close enough to the leaf that the stem part, at the mouthpiece, is solid and not hollow. 

Here is your cut stem.  This is the horn.  You will now need to do 2 things.
First, cut about 3/4” slit down the center of the mouthpiece side, which is the side that was attached to the leaf.   If you look closely at the picture I marked where you slit it.

Next, you want to scrape the outside of the mouthpiece about 2 inches down, on the outside of the stem.  This is because you will be inserting this into your mouth and it is kind of prickly if you don’t scrape off the bumpy prickles.

We actually used a kitchen knife to do all this cutting and scraping.

Next, you put the mouthpiece into your mouth.  You have to put more of it into your mouth then the length that you slit. 

Now, blow.

I’m telling you.  This is the coolest thing ever!  The mouthpiece vibrating from the slit is what makes the noise. 

These zucchini horns only work for a few hours as they don’t work once they start wilting and go soft.

Also, as my children played with it they would close the slit up and it wouldn’t work.  So, I would just kind of push open the slit a little and then it would work again.  I didn’t have this problem when I did it, so I think it was probably my son who tends to bite down on things. ;)
If your first one doesn’t work, practice with how you are cutting it.  My Sister’s horns didn’t work.  She would either cut too far away from the stem, or too long of a slit.  My Brother-In-Law’s worked every time!

Rebecca

I’d love to hear from anyone that does this! 

Zucchini Bread-Straight From The Garden!

See that beautiful basket of gigantic zucchini?  Right by my zucchini plant?  Yeah, I guess you can tell that zucchini did not come from my garden!  Well, they are not from mine, but they are from my little sister’s garden! 

Erika Erika How does your Garden Grow?  Hers is growing so well that we had a BBQ and ate corn on the cob from her garden last weekend!  Loved it sooo much!  I go visit her garden more than once a week to get my produce from her garden (peas, beans, lettuce, carrots, green onions, herbs, and zucchini are what I’ve gotten from her)!  This weeks bounty is zucchini.

This summer I am baking and cooking daily with my children.  I’m having them do complete recipes where I’m just the helper (they are reading the recipe and telling me what to do).  This was perfect other than heating up my house in the summer time!  I am finding that using produce from our own garden (or from my families garden) gets them even more excited about the whole process of gardening and baking!

My kids and I shredded about half of those zucchini (by hand)!  I always shred extra so that I can freeze it in one cup increments (my zucchini recipe needs one cup of zucchini, so I find this easiest).  I always try to have enough shredded zucchini (from my garden) to last me all winter.  I add shredded zucchini to everything that I cook and bake, from muffins, to pancakes, sauces, casseroles, etc.

The kids and I spent the whole day baking up 4 double batches of zucchini bread.  Actually, we took half the batter and froze it.  Then, the rest we cooked up in various forms.  Half of the actual bread (or muffins) we also froze. 

I like to have variety so I varied the recipe with each batch.  We also cooked up each variety in three different forms; bread loaf, muffins, and mini muffins.

I love the recipe from my old Betty Crocker cookbook, though I haven’t found a zucchini recipe that I haven’t liked.  Here are some fun, and healthy variations that we tried this time(and loved):

I always cut the sugar and oil in half.  Then, I add applesauce to replace the loss of oil (exact amount). 

I play around with the amount of whole wheat flour to regular flour.  We don’t like the texture once it gets past 3/4 whole wheat flour to 1/4 regular flour.  I’m working on that though, as I’d like to have it eventually be 100% whole wheat flour. 

I always add wheat germ and flax-though I add these to everything as I cook and bake and when I make our smoothies to go with our meals (I make smoothies for 2 meals a day).  I probably added 4 TBL of each to each double batch. 

One of the batches we added Fage Yogurt.  Yum, and so healthy (I get the fat free and get the large tub from Costco-I add it to many things as well)!  I will do this every time now!

We made one batch with chocolate chips and drizzled chocolate on the top of one of the loaves of bread.  Another we sprinkled a brown sugar and flour mixture on.

My recipe also includes lemon zest.  My Mother has lots of citrus trees so I zest up the citrus that I get from her and then freeze it.  It’s so easy to use this way.  I always add extra!

I would love to try other variations!  What have other people done?  I’m thinking of adding shredded carrots or other veggies (I’ve done apple muffins with the same recipe and loved it).  Maybe even other fruit like strawberries? 

These last pictures are just a few from my garden.  My tomatoes are finally starting to produce.  I think only about 5 plants are really going to produce though.

One day when I own my own home again I will definitely be gardening in the front yard with fruit and veggies.  I find these plants to be so beautiful!  This is one of my cucumber plants with white and yellow beautiful flowers on it!
 

Unfortunately, other than my herbs and strawberry plants, much of my garden I just put in too late and will not be producing for me.  Since I just moved in and had to build my own garden boxes, I’m ok with this.  I started the seeds early enough, just didn’t build the boxes soon enough and those seedlings have struggled!  If I can just keep these plants alive through the summer, then I’ve always had luck with tons of produce through the autumn and winter. 

 

I’m already looking ahead to autumn planting.  I’ve never done a winter garden, but since I live in Arizona it should be easy to do!  Lots of my plants that I put in this year wont produce for 2-3 years anyways and they are all growing very well!  Those would be my blueberry plants, and my three citrus trees.

I’m also going to be planting my pumpkin seeds next week.  I plant in two week increments to try to get pumpkins to carve for Halloween!

Hope all of your gardens are growing well!

Rebecca

Fairy Garden Garden-Gotta Check This Out!

My kids and I are having so much fun in our fairy/rock gardens!  I think you will be seeing many more updates on this as we make all of the hundreds of things we have planned for these gardens.
Let me give you the first look at our Fairies’ garden.

I’ll point a few things out because, quite honestly we have spent way too much time on these creations! ;)
We made a garden with rows for each plant type.  Starting along the top row we have corn, next are green onions, zucchini, carrots, and then lettuce.  Along the left side are our sunflowers.

The coolest part of this is that all of the vegetables are removable!
Oh ye-ah!  I wanted this garden to be completely interactive for my kids.  So, they can “pick” everything for picnics or regular meals.  Even the basket to hold the bounty was made by us!
Now, when the season is over the kids can take everything out, down to even the corn stalks themselves!  Then, you will just see the rows of dirt!  They can pretend to plant their garden and watch them grow!

Here is all the produce we have so far.  Notice in the basket we even have strawberries.  We have a strawberry barrel in progress for those to “grow” in.
Also, the corn can come out completely down to just the corn cob, ready to eat.  Or they can pick corn cobs with 1, 2, or 3 husks still on it.
Oh and my zucchini plants...  I think zucchini plants are the most gorgeous vegetables that you can grow!  These were so much fun to make…we even included tendrils under the flowers and stamens inside!
 
We have a campfire to cook up our bounty.  We still have to make a “metal” bucket to actually cook the food in.  We’re thinking we’ll make some more veggies that are already cut up, so that we can make stews and such.
We tried to make the rings in the logs, like real ones.  They turned out pretty cute.  Again, everything is interactive so each part of the campfire is its own piece so that it can be moved however, or wherever they want it to.

Here is a shot of where the Fairies’ garden went into place.  We added more pathways, sand, and even some moss.  We wont be able to actually grow anything in these fairy gardens, the kids talked me into moss being the next best thing!  I think it’s pretty clever.

A very cool thing about making a polymer clay garden is that my kids are learning a ton about vegetables.  We had to really think through what makes a vegetable really look like what it is supposed to look like.  The corn husks needed the fluff on top of the stalk.  However, we did take liberties with how the corn attaches, so that we could make it interactive.  We looked up pictures on flikr, and actual produce from our refrigerator to get colors, leaves, shapes, and more “just right”.  It is also fun figuring out what tools will make the right effect that we are going for.  It was my oldest daughter’s idea to have a false bottom on the garden, for the vegetables to be able to push into.  It works like a charm!

Rebecca
I would LOVE to see any fairy/rock gardens that anyone else has!  We are getting our inspiration from anywhere that we can!

I'm joining the fun at the following parties!
The Persimmon Perch, Skip To My Lou, Keeping It Simple,  Making The World Cuter, the DIY Showoff,

Rock/Fairy Gardens!!

 
We’re making better and bigger fairy gardens than the pots we had before!
This is turning out to be more fun and a better idea than I first thought.  Look at the cute pebble paths?  Those fairy houses we made last year out of Fimo Clay.  Wait until you see the new Fimo Clay Fairy stuff we’ve been working on!  But they’re not ready so I’ll post those another day!
 
I am loving these fairy gardens because it gives us even more reasons to be outside.  It gives us something to do together that we are all enjoying.  It also gives me us an excuse to do more crafting!  Gotta love that!  My kids have so many ideas for these things that I cannot keep up!
 
Here’s a view of more of this daughter’s fairy garden.  I have these “rings” of dirt in my backyard that are perfect for each child to build their own fairy gardens in!  In the middle (kind of lower right of the picture) that was my attempt at a pond, with island in the middle, waterfall off to one side that has a hidden fairy house underneath the waterfall.  I’m not loving how it turned out, but dear daughter does, so that is all that matters!
 
Daughter number 1 made a tunnel with a cave.  I thought it was so cute.  I’m having fun making surprises for the kids to be found in their fairy gardens.  I made that pile of gold nuggets to go in my daughter’s mine.  Now she is making a mining cart! ;)  Our ideas are breeding off of one another.  Love the arch?  It’s a horseshoe from daughter’s birthday party about 3 years ago!  We’re using what we have.

My dear Son’s Fairy Garden is turning out more Army Barracks right now.  He can’t make up his mind between garages for cool cars, or an airport.  Yet, his fairies are the army men (last year, said army men even got wings!).  I’m still mulling this one over.  I’ll come up with something to delight that sweet boy of mine!
 
This all started with my children bringing home more rocks to collect.  Being the good Mother that I am…..I usually toss, said rocks. ;(
But I finally decided to let them pile them up in their own piles in the backyard (it’s mostly rocks anyway…we live in AZ after all).
We found large rocks and I cut out their names in Vinyl.  They put their vinyl letters on the rocks however they wanted. 

Then, I let them have at those rocks, with spray paint.  It was interesting the colors that each of them chose.  I would not have guessed it!

We had my kids covered with gloves and giant face masks to do the spray painting.  Those masks aren’t for tiny faces (and the gloves weren’t for tiny hands either), but they worked.  Once they were done spraying, I peeled the letters off the rocks.  Now their name rocks will go in their fairy/rock garden.  The rest of their rocks they can scatter as they please.  There is plenty of room for plenty of rocks. 
Now maybe I can regain my title of “Good Mother”, by not throwing out anymore of their precious rocks!
 
One more picture to leave you with.  Isn’t she a beauty?  I’ve been drooling over something like her for about 10 years now!  She was my Mother’s Day gift this year!    I was not expecting to get her, so it was a very nice surprise!  She’s already got egg shells and banana peels in her (I stole them from my Mom at our Mother’s Day brunch.  I know my Dad thought I was kooky, but it’s not the first or last time he’s thought that of me!).

Rebecca
PS  Thanks to my whole family for a wonderful Mother’s Day!  You all are too sweet and it was such a joy to spend the day with you. As always, the food was to die for, as well!  I am so thankful to have such wonderful and amazing family in my life!  I think the water balloon launcher broke, so all the cars should be safe now ;)

Earth Day-Come See My New Garden!

Happy Earth Day!!

That’s my flower box.  I know it should be on the outside, but I prefer it inside with me! ;)  Washing dishes is actually a delight when I am next to these beauties!

Gardening is very important to me.  I wont get into it as we all know the positive reasons for gardening.  However, every few years I move.  It’s just the way I roll.  I just moved into this home (well, in October anyway).  So, this garden had to be started from scratch.  It’s also a rental so I didn’t want to put more money into a garden I couldn’t take with me (been there, done that!). 

My plan this year is my own garden boxes (following square foot gardening) and lots of LARGE pots.

I live in Arizona, so first I had to shovel rock (where else does everyone have rocks for yards?)  out of the way for my garden boxes.  That is hard work! 

Do you see the black line running along my house?  That is the only way I can make a garden grow.  It is my water line.  I’m adding drip lines on an automatic watering system.  We have to water every day here…it’s PHX!

I went with Cedar Wood Fencing.  It was dirt cheap, and the only way I could afford the Cedar Wood that I wanted.  The fencing is 6 feet long and 4 inches wide.

I cut my fencing in half, so that I could make 3ftX3ft garden boxes.  I also cut a 2X2 into 12 inch pieces.
 
I stapled and screwed 3 fence boards to my 2X2 pieces of wood.
 
These are my sides all stapled and screwed and ready to be made into a box!  I love using power tools and building things with wood.  Like, I have a problem because I enjoy it sooo much! ;)
 
I just placed my boxes into place (where I dug out the rocks).  Leveling your garden box frames takes a little finessing.  I have a wonderful side yard for a garden.  It is actual empty space, plus it will get afternoon shade, which is imperative here!
 
I laid down cardboard boxes in the bottom (hopefully for a weed barrier) and then added my soil.  I used The Square Foot Gardeners own secret blend of soil.  I found it premixed at Home Depot.  My daughter and I hauled all 14 bags ourselves, thank you very much!
 
I started most of my plants from seed, back in January.  I think I left some of them too long before planting them in the ground though and they are not as far along as they should be.  I added store bought flowers (pest control).
 
I also bought 3 LARGE pots to plant our first citrus trees.  My Mom and Dad have tons of citrus trees and are sweet enough to share.  However, my kids and I have been dying to grow some of our own.  I’ll show you pictures of the fruit…in 3 years when we get some! ;)  We got an orange, lemon, and lime tree.  Each of my kids “owns” one and is in charge of keeping it alive  taking care of it.
 
You already saw my new strawberry barrel with my post on my butterfly mobile.  We’re already eating fruit out of it and I’m so excited about it.  We’ve had the worst luck with strawberries, in the past!
 
Here is a shot with 2 of my garden boxes, my large pot with my blueberry plant in it (another trial I’ve been dying to do), my strawberry barrel, and my two large wine barrels that I’ve always wanted!   One wine barrel is for herbs and the other one is salad greens. 
Here’s a list of all the plants we’re growing this year:
zuchini, yellow squash, tomatoes (lots of varieties), cucumbers, cantaloupe, varied lettuces, spinach, broccoli, sunflowers, marigolds, strawberries, carrots, green onions, white onions, basil, lavender, thyme, rosemary, parsley, sage, peas, beans, watermellon, green peppers, hot peppers, and a few other I can’t think of right now.  I planted the most of tomatoes and zuchini.  I shred and freeze my zuchini to use all year round.  This year I hope to can my tomatoes (in jars, not actual cans as I’m trying not to have my food in cans anymore).
My little sister Erika got her garden in earlier than I did and hers is just flourishing!  She added some fun ones that I would like to try next year: celery, asparagus, cauliflower, and radishes.  Don't those sound fun!?

So, what are you growing this year?

Rebecca

Soda Can Butterfly Mobile

I have been loving making things with metal.  Quite awhile ago I stumbled upon Pam’s wonderful blog called, Gingerbread Snowflakes.  She had these beautiful tin butterflies made out of pie tins.  Ever since, I have loved finding my way back to her blog!  She has other things that make me swear we are family such as many Danish posts (my heritage) and beautiful outdoor trips!  Well, just recently she had a post on this darling soda can butterfly mobile.  LOVE IT! 
The above picture was taken with me lying on my back to get the bottoms as I even love the soda’s designs on these butterflies.  I also loved the shadows the flash and butterflies made on my house!

Another thing that I love are these cute little girl hands, chipped nail polish, dirt under the fingernails, pen drawing on the back and all!
So, my idea for these butterflies was to emboss designs into the wings.  I pulled out all of my stencils (like the one above) with fun designs on them and put them to use to decorate the wings of each of my butterflies.
 
If you look closely at this one you can see that I used a set of those metal stamps to engrave “Roots & Wings” into this butterfly (along the bottom of the butterfly, in the center).  I thought this was cute because that’s the name of our blog (obviously) but it was even more appropriate for where this mobile is going to live-in my garden.  Plant roots and butterfly wings!  So cute, right?!
  
So many fun designs to decorate these wings with!  
Again, I did not come up with this idea myself.  But is was something I HAD to try.  To check out the AWESOME tutorial of how to make this, check out Gingerbread Snowflakes!  For my hanger(where the butterflies are hanging from) I actually used soddering wire and used my jewelry tools to bend the nice loops to hang each butterfly from.
I still don’t know how Pam knew that I was jones-ing to make something with metal and that I was needing something to detract the birds from my garden!  I had always heard to dangle CDs in your garden to detract birds.  I am hoping this gives the same result!
I’m actually going to make a few more because I love this one so much (and I REALLY REALLY hate the birds in my garden!  I swear if they eat the strawberries that I’ve never been able to grow, but are growing so well this year, I will have to turn to more drastic measures.  Truly if they take just one bite out of each of my tomatoes, again this year, I will probably be just as mad.  Seriously, if you are going to ruin a tomato, eat the whole darn thing in the first place!!!)!
Rebecca
PS Pam, I can’t wait to find out what you think of my butterflies!  Thank you so much for the inspiration!!

Don't forget to add your creativity to our Wednesday's Creative Inspiration!!  Thank you!


As always, joining in the fun on some linky parties:
DIY Day, ABC and 123, Persimmon Perch, My House of Giggles, New Nostalgia, A Silly Little Sparrow, Tip Me Tuesday,  Today's Creative Blog, My Frugal Family,