YUMMY

If you know my daughter, you know she is not shy at all. A couple of weeks ago she took off to the neighbors house to see their daughter, who is 20 years old (yes Madison is 4). Madison came back awhile later with a plate of food and said that she had been over cooking with Miss Christa. I tasted the food and it was delicious so I begged for the recipe and she willingly gave it to me.

Spinach Ravioli/Pot stickers/Won tons - I don't really know what to call it except YUMMY!

• 15 ounces ricotta cheese
• 1 cup mozzarella
• 1/2 Parmesan cheese (the recipe that she gave me did not say 1/2 of what so I just guessed and poured some in)
• 2 cups fresh spinach (finely chopped)
• 1 large egg
• salt/pepper to taste
• lemon zest to taste (I liked the kick of the the lemon so I added zest from a whole lemon.)
• 2 tbsp garlic (I used garlic powder and just sprinkled some in)
• won ton wrappers
• 1 tsp paprika (ha ha...I am just realizing that I forgot to add this in mine)

Mix all the ingredients (except the wonton wrappers). Place 1 tbsp of filling in center of the wonton. Then brush the edges with water. Fold and pinch edges. (I bought the small wrappers so instead of folding the wrapper, i just put another wrapper on top - yes you do have to use water so that they will stick together). You can boil or pan fry. (I pan fried them).

I did not make anything to go with these....as I ate about 8 of them as they were still cooking. This was my first attempt at making them. They were not the prettiest thing in the world but they were DELICIOUS. I do have some of the mix left over so I am going to try it on a tortilla in the morning and warm it up for breakfast - I hope it tastes as good tomorrow as I hope that it will.

Freebies - Coupons - Crafting

So recently I have become addicted to Frugallivingandhavingfun.com This is an awesome website and shows you how to get alot of samples for free and coupons for things you use all the time. You might wonder, what would cause the sudden interest in saving money, well that answer is simple....The lack of money. Our Air Conditioning went out at the house and yes it will cost over $2000 to replace it, yippee...so now we need to make up the money some how...so I am going to be resourceful and save us some money. You should really visit this website. I wish I had the time to dedicate to clipping coupons to the point that I can go get a full cart of groceries and only spend a few dollars. That is my dream because I could then use that money for other things such as heating and air conditioning.

Due to the lack of finances, I have also decided that I am going to be more crafty as this will help me save money. For instance, I went through Madison's huge box of crayons and pulled out all of the broken ones and I decided to use them rather than throw them away. Here is what you do to make new/fun crayons.

• get a small muffin pan and divide the crayons up into the muffin tins. You can mix the colors to make a multi colored crayon or use all similar color crayons (both are great).
• Preheat the oven to 350 degrees and cook the crayons for 10 minutes till they are all melted.
• Remove the muffin tin from the oven - do not stir the melted wax - and let the wax cool all the way.
• Dump the newly formed crayons out of the tins.
• Have FUN!!! (Victoria - by "Have Fun!!" I mean now you can color with these crayons.)

Madison was so excited to see her new crayons and those were crayons that she would have thrown away. (yes the cheap crayons work just as well so have fun!!) I got this idea from a magazine....What I really want to do is find some tins that have letter shapes so I can spell out Madison's name.

I will try to post some more crafty ideas later but I am working on a few projects and want to see if they work before I post them. Plus, I don't want to ruin the suprise for a lucky friend of mine who will hopefully be on the receiving in of some of my new found craftiness.