Sweet! Potato Pancake Recipe

I have to share this recipe with everyone. I found it at That's Not What the Recipe Says. These pancakes not only contain healthy sweet potatoes, but were yummy, fluffy and cooked without burning (that last one could just be that I found the sweet spot on my stove dial, I'm not sure).

I had 1.5 cups of sweet potatoes so I made 1.5 times the recipe. It made A LOT of pancakes, so if you are feeding an army (or growing boys), this is the perfect amount to make. And if you haven't yet discovered medallion-sized pancakes (use your tablespoon measure to pour them), they are "just my right size, Mommy!" as Lily says.

I like cooking with whole wheat flour, but I was afraid to ruin such a huge batch of pancakes by substituting too much, making them dense and soggy, so I did 1.5 cups of white and .5 cups of whole wheat flour. They turned out great, like I said.

Oh, and I added some nutmeg, cinnamon and vanilla, because they seemed a little blah without some kind of flavoring. It's up to you whether you do that, and how much. I thought they were delicious, but then again, I am partial to the smell of cinnamon and nutmeg cooking. Smells like holidays and home.

The caramelized bananas added a nice touch to them and I didn't need syrup. The kids didn't quite catch on to the whole eat-it-all-together thing, but at least they ate some of the bananas, which frankly shocked me.

Crafty MOPS has a New Look!

I am experimenting with a different template. I felt that the other one lacked...personality. Let me know if you have an opinion about this new look.

National Novel Writing Month

The goal: 50,000 words of a novel in 30 days. Did I say great words? Did I say Great American Novel? Nope. The goal is just to get the words onto the paper. You can fix it later if you want to. Or not.

I did NaNoWriMo last year for the first time. And in case you are gathering your thoughts to come up with excuses, let me just say: if I can do it while living with my in-laws in a conflict-heavy situation and only having access to the computer for a couple of hours in the evening, then so can you!

If you have a story idea or unwritten novel inside you (and honestly, I think a lot of us do), I say GO FOR IT! It was a lot of fun and a decent challenge. It wasn't impossible by any means, but it was enough of a challenge to make me feel I had accomplished something by the end. Which brings me to another reason I loved NaNoWriMo: As a mom, I don't get a lot of chances to accomplish something as momentous as writing a novel. My greatest life's work (my kids) is always in progress, and it felt REALLY good to finish something so challenging.

If you've already decided you might like to try this crazy thing, go to the website and sign up. Be sure to register for Charlotte as your home region so you can join the discussion boards and see the calendar for the write-ins and parties that are planned. Also for moral support.

Because the people around you, while they may be supportive, will not understand your struggle to reach your 2500 word goal for the day. The message boards are a great place to go to find others who not only understand, but themselves are struggling to keep up. And to find people who will encourage you and tell you that yes, you can do it!

One last thing about NaNoWriMo. I would not have made it last year without Write or Die. It is a little free program that plays an annoying noise if you stop typing for a certain amount of time. You can set goals for yourself and set it to different levels of strictness. Here is a link: http://lab.drwicked.com/writeordie.html.

If you decide to do NaNo this year, let me know! I would love to do this with someone I know.

Two Flower Crafts

I find so many cool craft ideas on the internet, and never have enough time to do them! So, I'll list them on here every now and then in hopes that someone can benefit from them. If you try them, let me know!

Here is a neat idea: some origami flowers made from baby wipes and paper towels and colored with food coloring. Very kid-friendly.

And here are some hair clips with felt flowers.

Yesterday's Craft and Blog issues

So I hope you enjoyed yesterday's journal making. I'd like to know how they turned out if you decided to close the sides at home. I decided to take the staples out of mine and stitched the whole thing on my sewing machine with a longer stitch (so the paper wouldn't have too many holes). It turned out great! Here is the tutorial I based the project on.

Several of you said you had commented on the blog for the giveaway, but there are only two comments on the blog. I'm wondering if I am having technical difficulties. Also, someone else said they had signed up as a follower, but I don't see her there. If you are one of those people, would you check the blog and email me if you see yourself or your comment there? That will help me a lot. Also, if a few of you could comment on this post and email me to let me know you posted, that would help, too. Thanks!

Our First Giveaway!!!

Congratulations to Amy Epley, who won the drawing for "Jesus Loves the Little Children!" Keep tuning in for more giveaways.

So I made this felt...what would you call it?...creation :) It's on a 6" wooden embroidery hoop. I called it "Jesus Loves the Little Children."

CCC MOPS, you can win it by posting a comment below by 11 pm on Wednesday Sept 30. I will announce the winner at MOPS on Thursday. If you are not there, I'll still get it to you.

Journaling

I started my first diary when I was 12, at the suggestion of someone at church. We were moving to France, I was about to be a teenager--what better time to start recording my life? I would have loved to show you my beat up diary with a teddy bear on the cover, but it is in a bin with a good chunk of my other journals, buried under a stack of other (heavy) boxes. About half of my entries ran something like this: "We had potato soup and cheese for supper. It was good." The other half were about a boy who liked me and the silly, mushy letters he kept sending me. As a matter of fact, maybe I should dig it out just to read some of those letters again! :) Then, over the years, I filled several volumes with more boy entries, none of whom wrote me mushy letters. Isn't that the way it goes? But the entries I really cherish are the ones I started after I met God at the age of 16. I kept track of what God was saying to me, through the Bible, through others, through my experiences. Those are the REAL journals, the ones where I recorded what was important. I have kept the habit of recording what's important to me, maybe not as regularly as some do, but I figure an irregular record is still better then nothing.  You can see by the picture above that I like all different types of  journals.

 And below are some photos of my most recent journal, which is mostly about being a mommy. I record things the kids do or say that I want to remember, but I also write about my life so that Lily (or Ian) can read it later and know that I struggled with the same things they do. Maybe they'll cut me some slack for the ways I mess up, too. :)

Anyway, I say all that to introduce our craft this month. We'll be making journals from cool paper, and I'll tell you more about that at our next meeting. But I wanted you to already be thinking about what you will do with that pretty journal. As you may have already noticed, I have links to some journaling prompts over to the left. You might look through those to get some ideas.

So whether you want to use your journal for just jotting things down, for recording your prayers, for keeping track of your kids' cute sayings or for something else entirely, it's yours, and it's there to be used. Don't let the pretty paper intimidate you into letting sit in a drawer unused.