An Adventure in Hawaii

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A Hawaiian welcome - BlossomsAndPosies.com

A word or two from Mrs. Brown…  It has been non-stop fun for the Browns since early April! First we had a series of wonderful visits from family, then Abbie performed in the world premier of a musical, and then we hopped on a plane to Hawaii! We had all sorts of grand plans for posting from Hawaii… Abbie learned how to make a lei, and we even hunted down lei needles (ever heard of those?) Alas, a lack of flowers (the trees were all picked clean for Lei Day!) followed by a computer disaster, changed those plans. We are […] Read more »

The Mini Pizza Battle – comparing three crusts

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We love pizza at our house. We sometimes make it from scratch, sometimes frozen (since we live too far out for pizza delivery), and sometimes we make miniature individual pizzas. We especially like minis for lunch. We have used many different bases for our mini pizzas, and thought it would be fun to taste test some of them next to each other. We didn’t expect a landslide victory but the verdict was unanimous! Read on… The Competitors We pitted three bread products against each other, fresh tortillas, pita bread and English muffins. The Process To keep it simple we just […] Read more »

When the Pollen Flies: How We Treat Seasonal Allergies

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Dealing With Seasonal Allergies - BlossomsAndPosies.com

This is a post by Abbie, with motherly comments from Mrs. Brown. Because being a mother is Mrs. Brown’s favorite thing to do. Like many people in the spring, I have seasonal allergies. They’re annoying. How we figured out I had allergies When I was five years old my family went to a church that had a humongous oak tree in the back yard. Under the oak tree there was a playground that I used to play on every Sunday once the service was ended. One afternoon in the spring I was playing like usual on the swing when the […] Read more »

Coloring Eggs With Natural Dyes – Brown Eggs vs White Eggs {an experiment}

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naturally dyed eggs (brown vs white) - blossomsandposies.com

We love family traditions. Everyone looks forward to our traditional Easter breakfast! Each year we serve homemade Crumb Cake (Grandma Brown’s recipe) and colored hard-boiled eggs. Some years we keep it simple and just buy food dye from the store to color our eggs. The table is lined with little cardboard boxes with holes, and cups with bright vinegary liquid. But other years we make the dyes ourselves. This year we decided to make our own dyes again. We thought we’d try a little experiment while we were at it, and dye both brown and white eggs.  Some people dye […] Read more »

Good Friday – A Day to Reflect

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Today is Good Friday for Western Christians (non-Orthodox). It’s a day in our house when we read the story of Jesus’ crucifixion and death.* On this day we stop reading when the tomb is still full. And we ponder what it would have been like to be there, to have not known what was coming. On this day we each choose a spiritual discipline to help us focus. We don’t lay down rules about it. We keep it personal, meaningful. We will not be posting any new projects today, but we did want to share these with you. Here are […] Read more »

How to Grow Mint from Cuttings

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We recently were given a bunch of spearmint that was from the grocery store. It looked a bit wilted so we trimmed the ends and stuck it in a jar of water on the windowsill. It perked right up and even started growing! A few weeks later the mint was covered in roots. Time to pot them up! You can start with mint from the store, or mint cuttings from a friend. If you plant your rooted mint outside, be careful because it can be very invasive! We like to add fresh mint leaves when we use teabags to make […] Read more »

How to Make Perfect Hard Boiled Eggs

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How to make perfect hard boiled eggs - BlossomsAndPosies.com

With Easter around the corner, egg-y recipes and crafts are popping up left and right. This got us thinking about hard boiled eggs, one of our favorite ways to eat eggs. Hard boiled eggs make a quick snack or lunch with loads of protein, and taste great cut up in salads or mashed with mayo for egg salad sandwiches. You can eat them for breakfast too! Hard-boiling eggs is a basic kitchen skill. They seem easy, but they can be fussy… shells cracking, green rings forming around the yolk. Here is how we boil eggs so that they are cooked […] Read more »