Red Stamp

No one is paying me anything or giving me anything to write this post.  I just like to share the cool stuff I find with you all from time to time.

I suck at thank you notes.  I mean, really, really suck.  It's not that I'm ungrateful, I'm just really busy, and for some reason finding a stamp is as hard in this house as finding tape or a pair of scissors that is still suitable for cutting fabric (seriously, family, lay off Mommy's scissors!).  Excuses, excuses, it's one of the things on the short list of things I wish I could change about myself (we don't need to get into the rest of that list, it's depressing...  But I'd like to be in a single digit size between now and when I die, and also I really would like to cure my chronic foot-in-mouth syndrome).

And then I found out about Red Stamp, and everything changed.

Red Stamp is an iOS app.  You download it free from the app store, then you give it permission to muck around with your photos and your contacts, and BAM!  Instant thank you notes.

Seriously, look at the one I made from our Halloween picture in like 33 seconds:

Or this one that I sent to my mother-in-law after our trip to Chicago:

Or this one I sent to Uncle Doug and Aunt Kathy:

Once you've designed your card, you can email it, text it, save it to your camera roll, post it to Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or you can pay $1.99 to have Red Stamp print it and send it to your recipient in the actual mail!

I am using the heck out of this thing.  Sure, the same functionality is available from a variety of websites (I've used Shutterfly for the past several years to do our Christmas cards, for example), but this app is so quick and so slick, and it makes sending personalized thank you notes so easy, that I have officially run out of excuses.  I don't have to plug in my camera, upload to my computer, walk uphill both ways to the post office...  I just choose the cute layout (and they have a lot of cute ones!), choose the picture, change the text, choose the recipient, and hit "MAIL IT!"

The other thing that I love is that they're something that the recipient will actually keep and enjoy, rather than just reading and saying, "Oh, that's nice," and tossing away.  (Actually, I keep every single personal piece of mail I get, from letters to thank you notes to Christmas cards, but I'm crazy like that.  Most people don't.)  I wish I had found the app before we left the Jack Hanna show, because I would've taken a picture of the kids.  I found it later that same day.  I just happened to have taken a picture of the logo on the wall and the screen to blog about it. 

So, there you go.  I just made your holidays a LOT easier if you have an iOS device.  You can just email me the thank you note. 

Carrot Cake Pancakes

I adapted my favorite oatmeal pancake recipe to make carrot cake pancakes this morning.  They got four thumbs up!  (It looks like a long ingredient list, but it's mostly spices).

Happy Easter!


Carrot Cake Pancakes
 
Makes about 18 pancakes

 

3/4 cup oat flour (pulse rolled oats in food processor or blender - 1 c oats = 3/4 c oat flour)
1 cup all-purpose flour
4 tablespoons brown sugar
2 teaspoon baking powder

1 tsp cinnamon (or to taste)

1/4 tsp nutmeg

dash ginger

dash cloves
3/4 teaspoon Kosher or coarse salt
3 tablespoons butter, melted and cooled

1 1/4 cups milk
1 cup finely shredded carrot
2 tablespoons honey
2 large eggs, beaten

 

Optional:

chopped pecans

raisins

Whisk the dry ingredients (oat flour, flour, brown sugar, baking powder, spices and salt) together in a large bowl. In a smaller bowl, whisk the butter, milk, shredded carrot, honey and eggs together until thoroughly combined. Gently fold the wet ingredients into the dry ingredients. Don't overmix.

Cook on a hot griddle or in a skillet.  If desired, spoon batter onto griddle, then sprinkle raisins and/or pecans onto the top of the pancake just before flipping.

Serve the pancakes hot, straight from the skillet or keep them warm in a low oven.  Serve with honey and Greek yogurt, maple syrup, or sweetened cream cheese.

This is the best way to get a serving of veggies in before noon!

Baby Cakes

My friend Sarah shared a VERY cute idea last time I saw her, and my friends Jim and Karen used it this weekend.

Instead of having the ultrasound technician tell them the baby's gender during their 20 week ultrasound, they had her write it in an envelope and seal it.  They kept the envelope for weeks, showing enormous restraint that I, personally, do not possess.  Finally, Jim brought it over to my house on Thursday, and I went to the nearest bakery as quickly as possible to remove the temptation to peek.  I instructed the bakery to make the filling between the layers of white cake pink for a girl and blue for a boy.

Then Saturday, BJ picked up the cake and again with the temptation!  I thought of half a dozen ways to peek, but I didn't.  Karen picked the cake up Saturday night when she dropped me off from my birthday celebration, and we waited some more (longest.  weekend.   ever...) until she cut it at her son's birthday party on Sunday afternoon.  I had sent an e-mail to the guests instructing them to wear pink if they guessed it was a girl, and blue if they guessed it was a boy.

Karen and Jim have three wonderful little boys.  And she's pregnant with...  A GIRL!

The best part was watching and hearing everyone react to the news.  Her oldest sons hugged each other and jumped up and down.  You would've thought they won the lottery!  And everyone cheered and cried and hugged and laughed.  It was such a cool moment.

It almost makes me want to have a fourth so I can have a baby cake!

Hooray babies!  Congratulations Jim and Karen!!!

Soccer!

Yesterday's soccer game was cold, wet, and rainy. BJ and Grandpa Bob took Mary Grace while I stayed home with the little ones. But we had amazing weather and a wonderful turn out today! Uncle Brandon brought Lucy and Jane, and Grandma Susan came down from Grammaland, and Grandpa Bob came again, and BJ, Claire, Jack, and I were there. All that support had an unfortunate side effect - Mary Grace was as likely to be smiling and waving at the sidelines as she was to be looking at the ball. At one point she gave us a double peace sign like Richard Nixon. I wish I'd gotten a picture of that!

Jack actually fell asleep for a while at the game. I'm looking forward to that reflex where they hold their breath when you blow on their face going away (within the next month or so). It makes it uncomfortable for him to be out in the wind.

"I... can't... breathe!"

Claire needs a little improvement as a cheerleader. I got her a pair of orange pom poms to match Mary Grace's team's shirts. She mostly likes to pick the individual strands of pom out of them.

It used to be twice that size.

All of this activity isn't doing anything for improving the girls' sleep. It's 9:30 and they're still upstairs yakking.

She's the tall one with the ponytail.

It was so cool for Mary Grace to have so much support on her first weekend of soccer!  What fun!

I feel like we've done nothing but eat and play soccer this weekend.  BJ decided that he wanted to make beignets this morning.  We started the dough last night, then put it in the fridge after it had risen.  We tried frying them in a pan on the stove this morning, but the oil got way too hot and they were burnt on the outside and raw in the center, so he ran out to Walmart to get a Fry Daddy. 

It probably would have been cheaper and healthier, in the long run, if he'd just picked up a dozen donuts instead.  I keep thinking of things I can fry.  It's a new toy!  The pamphlet that came with it had a recipe for quesadillas that I'm dying to try.  As if quesadillas aren't bad enough with all that cheese - let's deep fry them!  I told him before he left that it was kind of a foolish purchase for two people who had been dieting for a year and a half, but he was determined.

The beignets were awesome.

Next weekend I think we're going to try jelly donuts.  I remember my Grandma Betty making donuts once when we spent the weekend at her house when I was a kid, and I thought it was magical.  They can't be that much worse than pancakes, right?

What I did during naptime...

I get these grand ideas about things, generally having to do with a craft or the house, and I'll go out and buy (or ask for, in this case) all the supplies, then when it comes time to execute the plan, I get stuck.  I become afraid to proceed because the final project isn't going to look the way it looks in my head, and I know I'll get frustrated, so the supplies will just collect dust for years and years until I finally suck it up and go for it.

The latest project?  Framing photos.  I take thousands of pictures, and occasionally one turns out well, and I have wanted to turn the wall in the living room into a gallery of family photos since Mary Grace was born.  My brother got me a whole bunch of black frames from my Christmas list in 2009 (but now that I think about it, it might have even been 2008!) and they've just sat in my cupboard waiting for me to get over my fear of failure and do something with them.

Last week I ordered a bunch of prints from Shutterfly (LOVE!  Shutterfly rocks), and they arrived today, so I spent Jack's nap finally hanging them up.

I think it turned out pretty well...  What do you think?

Pay no attention to the messy house surrounding the pictures.  That's what happens when I don't spend Jack's nap straightening up.  (I did get the dishwasher loaded before I sat down to post).

BJ hasn't even been home to see this.  What do you think he'll say?  Will he appreciate the mad decorating skillz, or will he worry about all the holes I put in the wall? 

It's not quite what I pictured, but it feels cozy to me.  It feels like home.