Cozy Kitchen Moment: Homemade Banana Bread.

One of my favorite memories as a kid was the wonderful smells of the kitchen as my mom baked her homemade bread. I've never had another homemade bread quite as delicious as hers. Her white, banana, and zucchini breads were always my favorites as a kid and my tastes haven't changed that much as an adult. However, now I love the opportunity to make them for my family. My oldest son, age three, loves to help me make dinner, bake tasty treats, and he even loves to help me do laundry. (The last one, I will never understand.)

While we don't make banana bread very often as bananas rarely make it long enough to get over ripe, we did have the chance to bake some earlier this month. I thought why not share the recipe with you all?! But I should forewarn you all. While I DO actually have a REAL FULLY measured recipe for you all, I didn't completely follow it. My husband loves and hates this about me. I rarely measure things and even when I do I almost always change something about the recipe. Nothing quite ever tastes the same twice in my house.

I'm officially naming my banana bread:

12 Hour Banana Bread
(Because you'll be lucky if it lasts that long!) 

First things first...
Always read through all of the directions before you start making something so you can be sure you have all of the ingredients on hand.

(Oh yeah, I forgot to do this before I made it last time. Will include variation at the end.)

Preheat your oven to 350 F or 175 C
Lightly grease your bread pan whatever way you want to.

(I use canola oil with a paper towel to apply it.)I use a 9x5

Grab a big bowl and combine flour, baking soda, and salt.

In a different bowl cream together butter and brown sugar (YUM!)

I highly recommend setting your butter out first thing so its easier to cream.

Add in your beat up eggs, vanilla, and smashed bananas to your
creamed sugar and mix em' up.
(please tell me you caught the despicable me reference in my recipe card above?!)

Place the wet ingredients in with the dry and stir it all up till everything is moist. 

Bake in your oven for 60-65 minutes.

If you poke a toothpick in the middle it should come out clean.

Now for the hardest part.... Let the bread cool in the pan for 10ish minutes.

If you don't it will break apart. Trust me, I know.

After you've let it cool at least a few minutes turn it out onto your cutting board and DIG IN!

In theory it will last up to 10 days in your fridge...But not in my house. Ever.

You could add nuts or chocolate chips to this if you want.

I don't as my husband is allergic to nuts and doesn't like chocolate chips in his breads.

Plus then I'd have to limit my son on how much banana bread he ate.

My "oops I don't have everything to make this but 

I promised my son so I'll make it up" variation.

So when I made this back on 9/13 I didn't have enough bananas or brown sugar.

I had 2 medium ripe bananas and 1/3 cup brown sugar.

I packed the brown sugar just the same and then topped it off with regular white sugar.

When I added my wet stuff to the dry stuff it wasn't moist enough.

Normally I would have added some milk to the batter till it was the right consistency. However, one of our friends was over who is dairy free so I added some water instead. 

It all turned out just fine and only lasted 12 hours.

Mommy Needs Coffee!!!

My dear sweet husband loves me to bits and pieces but he HATES that I drink coffee.


I can't help it! I just really really love a good cup of coffee.
And some days....Mommy just needs coffee!


I haven't been drinking it as frequently lately as I had been simply because 1) I am saddly out of good creamer 2) I am running really low on filters and 3) I know how much my husband really doesn't like it. (Notice number three is in third place ;) ...I love you babe!)


Well today I REALLY wanted a good cup of coffee...but when I buy coffee I buy the whole beans.
I do this cause then I can stick them in the freezer (as I am the only one who drinks coffee) and then they stay fresher longer. Only problem with that is I typically want to sit and enjoy my cup of coffee when baby monkey is napping and the bean grinder is SUPER loud and ends up waking him up without fail...every time. ugh.


I tried my hardest to just have a cup of tea and though the tea tasted good (tea a friend brought home from Africa for me :) yum!) it just didn't cut it. Mommy Needs Coffee!






So in desperation of needing coffee and making sure that Monkey continued to nap... I did this!

I took the B&D coffee grinder into the mudroom, closed the door, and ground up the beans!!!
Now with baby still napping and coffee by my side I'm ready to work! Catch ya later blogging world! :)

Domestic Diva FAIL

Well all in one day I went from being Domestic Diva to Domestic Disaster!!!

Please don't laugh at me too much as I honestly share with you my domestic fiasco with you.

I had planned on getting up on time today (Dowe and I have been sleeping in a little the last few days.)  so that way I could shower, feed Monkey, then go do grocery shopping. I hadn't been shopping in a while and I wanted to know I had time to do everything I needed and wanted to do while I was gone. Well that didn't go so well. I've been having horrible nightmares again and last night was no different. This one was so bad I will not even tell Dowe about it. Blah. 

So instead of getting up I took comfort in my husband's arms. (Thank you sweetie!)

When I finally got up, showered, dressed, fed Monkey, and headed out the door I had less than 2 hours. So I drove across town, got cash from the ATM and made my first stop. Old Navy. 

Dangerous place for me as I use to work there. So its easy to get chatting with the people that still work there that I know as well as the fact that there was a 50% off clearance sale going on! The whole reason I went in there was to exchange a few things of Monkey's that I wanted to get in a bigger size for him. (crossing my fingers that we can get two summers out of these clothes...)

So I did what all I needed to do there without too much of a problem and without taking toooo much time.  Then to Walmart where I needed to get two things for Monkey's birthday aquarium, thread for husband's pants so I can finish hemming them, and shampoo for me. 

I grabbed the stuff for monkey and checked out totally forgetting the other two items...Dowe called me about the thread thankfully and I went back in to get it but still forgot the shampoo. :(  I then went to  get groceries and ran back home. I did pretty good with all of the groceries but I got back home with only around 15 minutes to make lunch, have Dowe eat, and leave for work on time. I planned on making taco salads which wouldn't take any longer than the meat to cook and throw everything together. Dowe worked on unloading the groceries while I started cooking. Monkey desperately wanted mommy so I threw him in the Mei Tai Carrier and away we went executing my plan for lunch. I had the ground beef cooking, Monkey was trying to watch daddy walk in and out of the house unloading groceries, and I was working on cutting up a tomato when *SLICE!!!* I cut my thumb wide open! UGH! I was using a serrated  knife and I wasn't using a cutting board. Then to top it off the juices from the tomato burned inside my cut. Dowe got monkey off my back and dealt with him while I tried to get the bleeding to stop. He then got me all bandaged up and asked if I was going to need stitches (still no real verdict on that but I don't THINK I will need any) and ended up leaving late for work. Blah! 

Then Monkey didn't nap well at all and was fussy pretty much all day long. Thankfully he loves being in the Mei Tai and was happy to be in there more than not today. We walked to the park and played for a while. He's now in bed and I have to go make dinner...oh yeah...another fail on my part tonight...Because of the sliced thumb I didn't have time to make dinner to send with hubby for at work so I'm off to make some dinner now. ugh.... ready for this day to be over with and to just go lay down in bed.

Tootles Blogspot World.

Domestic Diva

A few friends of mine have this little mini contest between themselves as to which one is a Domestic Diva. Bek, Biz, Rah, and Rebe who happen to all be related (first three are sisters last one is their cousin) are constantly trying to out Diva each other. I find this little contest a total riot! But today I am a Domestic Diva! I completed my first major sewing project since like 5th grade all on my own! WOHOO!!! Also I hemmed 2.5 of 6 pairs of Dowe's work pants. I ran out of the right color thread so I have to finish that yet but at least he wont get in any kind of trouble for not wearing his work pants now that he has 2 pairs hemmed.



I promised pictures so here they are! I am sorry that I didn't take more as I was working on the project. I will have to upload a picture of Monkey in it a little later.



Fabric Cut and Ready to Sew!



Completed Mei Tai. Outside.



Complete Mei Tai Inside.




Totally loving this already. I wasn't sure how Monkey would do being "worn"as he hasn't fit in the sling my mom made for me in quite some time. However, he did great! He actually really enjoyed himself "dancing" with mommy while I did some dishes. We put on some loud crazy up beat music and I bounced slightly while I washed the dishes and he wiggled around with me :)  Looking to maybe eventually put these up on my Etsy shop as well. :) 
(still unsure as to when my launch date will be but trust me I will let you all know!)