Confessions of a Red-headed Stepchild: White, the Color of the Week

This week has really felt like fall, weather wise! We finally have been in the 60's instead of the 80's, and I have finally turned off my air conditioning. You might find it weird that I would have the ac on in 80 degree weather, but our townhome that we live in has a flat roof so it is hard to keep cool. Luckily though it keeps heat in really well, and even though the weather can be in the 40's outside my house will be a pleasant 69 degrees without having to turn the heat on. This is great because gas can be so expensive! All this wonderful cool weather called for some fun activities, and some comfort food. Our color of the week was white, and this is what we did for it:

Sunday: We went apple picking at Steffan's Orchard in Conway with my brother-in-law Darren, his boyfriend Matty, and Matty's kids, Celest and Ru. We went later in the year than we did last year, we found out that most of the trees had been picked clean. We got our share of wonderfully delicious crisp apples though!

My kids love apples, especially Ares, who ate around 3 of them throughout the time we were there.

After apple picking we all went for a delicious dinner at Gambino's, and it was so much to eat and catch up with family. We were there for quite awhile just enjoying each others company!

Monday: Kyle and I spent the afternoon cleaning and airing out the house. We then made one of our favorite soups, copycat Panera broccoli and cheese soup, along with some homemade bread. YUM! Here is the recipe from when I made it last year. It is delicious! While the soup was cooking, Ares and I started work on the apple pie from the apples we picked on Sunday. I decided to make Caramel Apple Crunch Pie. We sliced the apples, added the ingredients to the apples, mixed it up, and put it into the pie. I then made double the crumble to put on top, then added the pie crust. It made our whole house smell divine! My friend Nick was over at the house helping Kyle and I with some financial budget, and I gave him and his boss our first slices, and they gave their stamp approval. Shortly after the kids and Kyle gave their approval as well! This pie was much better than the one I made last year.

Tuesday: For our science project for this week I had the girls make their own butter. This went better than what I had done so far for the color white this week (ask you can obviously see from above).

What you'll need:
Heavy Whipping Cream
Baby food jar with lid

1.) You fill the jar half full of heavy whipping cream. (We made a little bit of a mess with ours!)

2.) Then shake it for about 10 minutes, or until the cream is thick and sticking together.

3.) Pour out the remaining milk (this is buttermilk), and then put the butter in your hands and run it under cold water to get off any buttermilk. Add a little bit of salt and roll it into the butter if you want too. We didn't because I think it tastes better without. Then you put it back in the jar and you have butter. If you notice, homemade butter is a lot more white than store butter.

The rest of our day was very quaint. I helped Ares with his homework after school, like I always do, and then surprised him with a new book for him to read. This book was very special to me because the books I had found the day before are old (published in the 40's- early 60's), and they belonged to my Dad, and possibly one of my grandparents too. The book I had him read was "Fun with Dick and Jane", and he loved it! He said he liked it better than some of his other books.

Wednesday: This day was just so blissful! After school I took the kids to Riverside Park because I knew there would be geese there. I was hoping to see snow geese, but all we could find while driving around the river were the Canadian Geese. The kids tried to get close to the geese, but they had other ideas.

We also found a squirrel hole in a tree, and all the kids wanted their turn to see what was up in it. Sadly, Ares said there wasn't anything in it.

When we got home the house smelled wonderfully of dinner that was cooking in the crockpot. For dinner I had made white chicken chili, and it was absolutely delicious!

For dessert I made Pumpkin Spice White Hot Chocolate, and it was heavenly! Everyone loved it!

After we finished our yummy dessert, Ares wanted to play a game with Kyle called Small World. I just learned how to play this game just a few days prior, and was in no position to be helpful to Ares play the game so I just watched. Brigid tried to help play too.