This isn’t exactly Bronte, but if you are looking for a light and easy girly read, then pick it up. I am warning you though, it took me about three quarters of the way in for me to actually start to get into it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the first three quarters, it was just that it was a little too light. There wasn’t a lot of story going on, mostly just shopping and ignoring mounting debt and threatening letters from banks and such, not a lot to make me really care about the main character – I actually disliked her a bit, and I definitely didn’t care enough about other characters to even remember their names. Fortunately, this changes by the end of the book, and I’m actually excited to pick up the next few books in the series. Oh, I should also mention that the story takes place in England so there are all sorts of cute English-y expressions like “oh, sod it!” and “bloody” this and that. I seriously caught myself talking in an English accent in my head a few times… I am SUCH a dork!

Long story short: It’s a must read. Tough out the lack of substance in the first couple hundred pages (don’t worry, it will take no time at all) and you’ll end up wondering what’s going to happen to Rebecca Bloomwood next. Also, its a great series to get all your girls into!

Warning: Val says there is a really terrible movie out, based on the first two books. She advised that I NOT read it for fear that it would turn me off the books completely. Once I’m done the next book I think I’ll check it out, just out of curiosity… I’ll let you know what I think.

Sophie Kinsella actually has quite a few books, you can check them out on her page: Sophie Kinsella’s Amazon Page.

Have you read any of Sophie Kinsella’s books? Have you seen the Shopaholic movie? What’s your fave chick-lit book?

*Excuse the low res photo – my daughter was taking photos today and I couldn’t track down my digital camera, so I used my Blackberry. Lemme give a totally unpaid plug to Fuji for making an amazing, yet affordable digital camera that I can let my two year old play with – yes, it’s shock proof (drop it all you want!), water proof (seriously!) and dust proof – did I mention cute too? I am not kidding…. google it, it’s the best camera I have EVER had. Yes, there may be ‘better’ (more MP etc) but this is for people who care about durability as well!

Ok, lemme preface this by saying that if you thought that my post “The Only Bread Recipe You Need’ was a a bit of a cop out, being so easy and all, then you need to stop reading! This fun modification on that super easy bread recipe is totally low-rent, low-budget… what ever you wanna call it – but it tastes SO good! My husband, who has eaten tons of homemade bread (I bake bread about 1-3 times a week!) said to me, and I quote:

This is the best bread you have EVER made. You can stop playing around and experimenting and just make this, all the time, for me.

Recipe:

4 cups white flour

2.5 cups whole wheat flour

1.5 tbsp yeast (if it’s traditional yeast, stick it into the water for a few minutes first)

3 cups warm water

1.5 tbsp kosher salt

3 packets maple & brown sugar oatmeal

drizzle of real maple syrup if you have it! (about 2-3 tbsp should suffice)

Mix all the ingredients with a big spoon or a stainless steel spatula. It will be gooey and messy so don’t get our hands involved! Cover with saran wrap and let sit in a warm, draft free area for 40 minutes (or 30-35 mins in the oven on ‘bread proof’). Once it’s about doubled in size and all spongy, it’s ready. Preheat oven to 400F on convect bake (or 425 F bake in a normal oven). Line two sheet pans with parchment paper and dust with flour. Sprinkle 1/2 cup or so of white four onto the top of the dough to make it easier to handle. Use a knife to cut the dough in half in the bowl. Pick up one half and shape it into a ball, the outside shouldn’t be gooey, so add more flour if needed. Set onto one prepared sheet pan. Do the same with the other half of the dough. Don’t worry about it not being perfect. It will look gorgeous if it’s more natural and misshaped. Cover with a clean tea towel and let rise for about 20 minutes. DO NOT leave it to rise on the preheating oven, it’s will get to much heat! Feel free to cut some slices into the top of the loaves, I think it looks neat! Bake for 22 minutes. Allow it to cool on a wire rack for at least 15 minutes before cutting into it. Enjoy!

]]> http://www.ladybonesonline.com/blog/blogger/dirty-qwerty-by-ysabella-loren/feed 0 http://www.ladybonesonline.com/blog/blogger/another-10-free-wordpress-plugins-i%e2%80%99ve-got-and-you-need http://www.ladybonesonline.com/blog/blogger/another-10-free-wordpress-plugins-i%e2%80%99ve-got-and-you-need#comments Thu, 09 Sep 2010 21:33:09 +0000 Lady Bones http://www.ladybonesonline.com/blog/?p=569 Maybe I’m a little plugin happy right now… but I’m loving all these add ons! If you are using something that I haven’t listed yet, please let me know in the comments. Okay, here are another 10 WordPress plugins I’m using:

1. ALL IN ONE ADSENSE AND YPN: Inserts Adsense or YPN ads into your posts in either a random position or a preset position. Easy to set up, give it a shot here.
2. DBS BACKUP: You’ve gotta back up! Usually it takes some disaster to convince a person to start backing up their work, don’t wait for that to happen to you. Grab this simple plugin to start backing up your work automatically and you’ll sleep better at night. Get it here.
3. FREECHARITY.ORG.UK WORDPRESS PETITION: Now this plugin is only useful to you if you actually want to run a petition on your blog. In my case, I’ve got a petition for Google Adwords to start treating it’s customers better because of a little incident that involved them terminating my account without warning or explanation and basically treating me with complete disregard after happily taking my money for the past year. You can read more about this whole ordeal in this post. Since this happened to me, I’ve done a little research and found that many other Adwords customers are experiencing similar treatment and so I thought I’d start a petition. This plugin was so easy to set us and words beautifully. You can see it in action on this page, and grab the plugin here.
4. NETWORK PUBLISHER: This plugin automates the tedious process of promoting your new posts on your social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and tons of others. Just follow the super easy instructions to set it up to interact with all your other accounts, and then set up the options. For me, whenever I publish a post, this plugin posts a link to it on my Facebook wall and Tweets it out to my followers on Twitter. This is a fantastic time saver! You can grab it here.
5. OPEN IN A NEW WINDOW: This is pretty straight forward. You want people to stay on your site as long as possible, but you want to offer useful links to other info and products around the web right? Well, you can always modify each link to open in a new window when you initially set up the link, but in my case, I imported fifty or so posts over from Blogger and I’d rather not have to go back and fix all of them! I am already annoyed at the job ahead of me of importing and relinking all my images! You can get the plugin here.
6. PERMALINK FINDER: If you’ve done some restructuring and your blog is too big to go and check all the links, this plugin will set your mind at ease. Instead of displaying a 404 error to your reader, it will search for a page that is most similar and display that one. Hopefully this will lead to your reader finding what he or she wants without being the wiser. Also, spiders will see a 301 redirect and change their databases to lead to the new page in searches. Ahhh… You can get the plugin here.
7. PRINT FRIENDLY: This is a very nice thing to do for your readers. This plugin ads a customizable print link that allows the reader to print just the article, without side bars and comments and ads. They can also chose to remove images in the article or print as PDF. You can get the plugin here.
8. SIMPLE AUTHOR HIGHLIGHTER: If you reply to your commenters, then grab this plugin to highlight your responses so that readers can quickly scroll through the comments to find yours. You can get the plugin here.
9. QUOTE COMMENTS: This plugin ads a two little links to each of your comments that say “REPLY” and “QUOTE” so that commenters can quote and reference or reply to other comments. This makes the train of comments make more sense when reading. You can get the plugin here.
10. STATPRESS RELOADED: Get real time stats for your blog, including number of visitors, page views, spiders, feeds and reader info such as: operating system, IP address, referrer and search engines including the search terms used. This might be a little snoopy, but use your new found information for good not evil, okay? Get the plugin here.

From the time I started this post a few weeks ago, and now – when I’m finally getting around to finishing it, I’ve installed soooo many more awesome free plugins! I’ll definitely be sharing them all soon, so be sure to check back soon! I’m also going to share the plugins that I’m using on my webstore at Two Crafty Chicks which are more suitable for e-commerce sites and online stores.

What plugins are your faves? What am I missing?

Melt and Pour soap making is a fantastic instant gratification craft.

I’m a busy mom, usually crafting while my daughter is napping or after she goes to bed at night, so I like to be able to completely finish a craft in an hour or less. Even if I have a few hours, I’m just the type of person that doesn’t have the patience or the attention span to work on one thing for too long! I want to see the end result fast! Melt and pour soap making is also SAFE, which is important if you have little ones running around. Just make sure that you buy a high quality soap base and oils and you’re on your way to fast and easy soap making. There are some great companies both locally and online that carry all you will need for your soaps. You’l also find all sorts of things in your pantry… you’ll see just how easy it can be! Here is a basic recipe that you can use to make endless variations from.

BASIC SOAP RECIPE:

• 1 lb soap base cut into cubes (get the best quality base you can afford)
• 1-3 tsp fragrance or essential oils
• 2-3 tsp other additives & botanicals
• 2-5 drops colour

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Get all your ingredients out and ready, it’s your mise-en-place and you’re the soap chef. Silicone molds are best because you don’t need to oil and they can handle hot soap without warping. If you don’t have silicone molds, oil your molds and set them out on a wire rack. The air circulating under the soaps will help them set faster. Set out measuring spoons, stirring spoons, fragrances and other additives like exfoliants, dyes and shimmers.
2. Now chop up your soap base into one ounce-ish cubes. This makes the soap melt easily and it’s easier to measure too. Put the cubes into a microwaveable measuring cup. Make sure to fill above the 16 oz line because when it melts and fills in the space between the cubes you will have less than what it looks like. Stick the measuring cup filled with soap into the microwave and turn on at 50% strength. Depending on your microwave and the size of the cubes you cut, this can take from 2-5 minutes - keep an eye on it! You don’t want your soap to start boiling. (NOTE: In the photo I am making a much larger batch than 16 oz.)
3. Get all your other ingredients out and ready, it’s your mise-en-place and you’re the soap chef. Silicone molds are best because you don’t need to oil and they can handle hot soap without warping. If you don’t have silicone molds, oil your molds and set them out on a wire rack. The air circulating under the soaps will help them set faster. Set out measuring spoons, stirring spoons, fragrances and other additives like exfoliants, dyes and shimmers.
4. Once the soap is all melted, take it out of the microwave and set it out on your counter. If you are doing a really big batch, you can take it out while there are still a few chunks, and they will melt sitting in the hot melted soap base. If your soap base is really hot, let it sit out for a couple minutes. I usually wait until a film forms on the top and then I pull off the film with a spoon and set it aside in a plastic container. If you add essential oils when your soap is too hot, you risk evaporating some of it away. One it has cooled enough, add your fragrance, colour and other additives. If you’d like your additives to suspend in the soap, you’ll need to allow it to cool and thicken just slightly before pouring into the molds. I usually let the soap cool until another skin forms on the top because I hate to warp the molds! We use some silicone molds and some other molds that are more of a hassle, but we like the shape! Take off the skin and then pour into your molds.
5. Allow your soap to cool and set completely before removing from the molds. If you are in a hurry, a few minutes in the freezer will usually do it! Once you release the soap from the molds you can leave them as is, or package them in some plastic wrap, cellophane or paper. There are so many creative ways to package your soaps, so look around online and have fun

Have some fun playing around with this basic recipe. I’ll be posting a list of suggestions for additives and specific fragrance blends soon, so be sure to check back! Remember this is the most basic recipe, that you can manipulate any way you want to make some awesome unique soaps – just check out Two Crafty Chicks for some examples and inspiration.

I’ve got a lot of zucchini in my house these days, and zucchini bread is a great way to use it up! It’s my friend Val’s fault that all this lovely zucchini has found it’s way into my home, as she has become a little gardener this year. It’s not only zucchini either, she’s been bringing over onions, garlic, green beans and strawberries too! Her zucchini’s are HUMONGOUS! One yielded over the three cups I needed for this recipe, but I just tossed in the extra half a cup. This recipe is from a book I found at a second hand store (such a great place to find cheap books – of course I was able to find it on Amazon – they have everything!) called “Ideals Gourmet Treasury Cookbook“. It’s from 1979, so I made a few changes to make it a little healthier. Here is the recipe for 2 loaf pans:

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 1/4 cup wheat germ (sub. spelt flour, oat bran or whole wheat flour
• 3 cups flour
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp cinnamon
• 1/8 tsp nutmeg (I just grate a little into the bowl, no need to be too precise)
• 2 eggs
• 3/4 cup sugar (or half sugar and half sugar alternative ie. Splenda)
• 2 tsp vanilla
• 2 tbs light oil
• 3 – 3 1/2 cups grated, UNPEELED zucchini/courgette (about 1 1/2 lbs)
• optional: 1 cup chopped, toasted nuts (walnuts are classic!)

INSTRUCTIONS:

Preheat oven to 350F (for convection cooking 325F). Lightly grease 2 loaf pans and dust with flour, then set aside – if you have silicone loaf pans, you can skip this step, lucky you! Mix together dry ingredients in a bowl, except the sugar and nuts (wheat germ, flour, baking powder, salt,  spices). In a separate bowl,  or in your stand mixer, beat the eggs until light and fluffy. Add the sugar, oil and vanilla to the eggs. Mix in the grated zucchini and then the dry ingredients, including the nuts. Combine everything until you have a lumpy, wet mass. Pour into your two prepared loaf pans and give them a tap on the counter top.  Check wit Allow to h a long bamboo skewer at 55 minutes. Cook until the skewer comes out clean. (Convection cooking will take 10-15 minutes less, so keep an eye on it! Allow to cool 5-10 minutes before turning out of the pans and onto a wire rack to cook.

As a side note, I drastically reduced the oil used in the original recipe so don’t feel guilty if you’d like to spread a little butter or margarine on a slice! Yum!

A little shout out to my new twitter friends @JaneCWoods , @coachingconnect and @louisebiz who happened to be tweeting about courgettes as I was writing this post!

It looking like it was going to be a dreary, rainy day on Saturday so I thought I would make some Play Dough (Playdoh) for my two year old daughter, Ysabella. I remember at least one occasion that m mom made homemade play dough for me when I was growing up and I think it’s imprinted in my brain that ‘it’s a mom thing to do’. I’ve made play dough a couple times myself: one time I was playing Cranium and we realized the clay was too dried out to use so I threw some salt, flour, water and food colouring on my counter top and mixed it up, and another time I made some for Bella using that basic recipe that I had in my head from my childhood. This particular Saturday morning though, not being in any hurry, I thought I’d research a better recipe – mine had been a little grainy and dried out really quickly.

Of all the recipes I came across, the best one was this no cook recipe from “Our Red House” blog. I made a couple little changes, but you can see the original recipe here. I had three stainless steel bowls going at once, so that I could make three colours. The following recipe is enough for one batch of one colour. I ended up with tons of it, so I split it into containers and gave a set to two other toddlers that live in my building. If you are just making some for your family (1 or 2 kids) and want several colours, I would suggest doing HALF of the recipe, per colour.

INGREDIENTS:

• 2 cups flour
• 2-4 tbs Cream of Tartar (because I made three batches, I only had enough for 2 tbs in each and it worked fine)
• 2 tbs oil
• 1 cup salt
• optional – 10-20 drops food colouring (depends on the colour you want to achieve)
• optional – 1/2 – 1 tsp of fragrant or essential oils (you may want to skip this part if you are worried about kids eating it, but it’s a really nice touch. I used watermelon for the pink, bubblegum for the blue and lemon for the yellow.)
• optional - body safe sparkles
• 2 cups boiling water

DIRECTIONS:

Put all the dry ingredients into a bowl and blend. Add fragrance and colour. Pour boiling water over dry ingredients and stir with a big spoon. I’m sure you can do this in a stand mixer, but I didn’t think of it at the time. If you are making several batches at once, add the boiling water to all of hem, then stir each one, taking turns. The mixture is really hot at this point, so it’s not safe for little helpers yet. Leave the lumpy mass to cool for a little bit, and don’t worry if the colour isn’t at all mixed in yet. When it is cool enough to handle, knead until it makes a soft, smooth dough and all the colour is mixed in. At this point, you can get some help from little hands.

I split each batch into three balls, put each ball into a plastic Zip-lock bag and put that bag into a container. I’m sure some plain old Tupperware will work too. I’m definitely going to make some Satsuma orange, melon green and grape scented purple! My daughter never really puts things in her mouth but if this is a concern for your little one, consider investing in some food safe flavour oils or using a Kool-Aid drink mix pouch for the colour and flavour. Personally, I think it might come back to bite you if you let your toddler eat the play dough when you make the special handmade stuff because they may not know that the play dough at daycare or friends houses might not be edible. I’m sure the stuff won’t taste that great anyway, I’d imagine it would be very salty.

*NOTE: The Cream of Tartan is a pretty important ingredient in this recipe. Not only does it change the pH of the play dough, extending it’s shelf life, but it also makes the texture nice and smooth (the salt can make it quite grainy). I used half the recommended amount because that all I had on hand, and it turned out lovely, but in the interest of an extended shelf life, I’ll aim for the whole 4 tbsp. from now on.

Hope you enjoy making this for your kids! It would make a great gift too, and I am going to a toddler birthday party at the end of this month so I may make a bigger batch with more colours and some accessories as a birthday present so check back for updated pictures!

I recently read Anthony Bourdain’s “Medium Raw” so I thought I’d share my impressions. I feel like I should first say that I L-O-V-E  Anthony Bourdain. He’s snarky and opinionated and likes food and booze and that’s my kind of person. I absolutely love his show “No Reservations” which is where I know him best from. I haven’t read “Kitchen Confidential” (yet) which was his first non fiction book, I think.

SIDE NOTE: He did write some non fiction too, which is I think pretty common for people who party and do a lot of drugs – you can do a lot of thinking when you stay up for a few days and I bet he though he was super deep and creative – I wonder what he thinks of his books now that he’s sober… I gotta head to Amazon and find them one of these days and see if they are any good!

Anyways, “Kitchen Confidential” was a huge success, especially among chefs. I remember seeing one of the cooks at a restaurant I used to work at a million years ago with the book, and he was definitely loving it and it’s honesty and attitude and drugs and booze. I had no idea who Anthony Bourdain (ok – I’m going to stop using his full name now, screw SEO, he’ll now be referred to as ‘Tony’ as I imagine I would refer to him if we were having a beer and a smoke together – both Tony and I have quit smoking, but when I imagine us meeting, we smoke) was at the time, but I remember this specific incident because I’ve always been interested in books and food and eating and I made a mental note to check out the book – guess I shoulda wrote it down hey? So now it’s 10 years later, and his next book “Medium Raw” has come out, I now know who Anthony Bourdain (last time) is, and I know I love him so I excitedly pick up the book.

If you were thinking that in the ten years between the two books, he was perhaps, working on the book, you’d be mistaken. The book reads like something he dictated to someone over the course of a weekend and a couple bottles of booze. Yes, he does have a natural way with words and storytelling and a good vocabulary so the book is certainly readable, but I felt a little let down. The book really feels like a money grab, like Tony now prefers to stay home with his new family so he threw a book idea at Harper Collins knowing they’d bite and he’d get a nice fat paycheck and be able to resume his post as Mr. Mom.

The book doesn’t follow a timeline, or any other natural sense of organization which is extremely off-putting. It just feels so thrown together. There are some trademark snarky comments here and there but they are a little watered down to say the least. Perhaps fatherhood has mellowed him out? The worst part, I imagine, for people who loved “Kitchen Confidential” is that he prety much goes back on everything he says in that book. Basically, he says “forget ‘Kitchen Confidential’ – I was a mess and it was a load of crap” and although, like I said, I haven’t read it, I felt hurt for the people who looked at that book like some sort of underground bible for kitchen crews everywhere. They finally had this voice, this strong, loud voice, to speak for them and now he’s making them feel like idiots for having looked up to him and taken him so seriously. He even takes back the “no fish on a Monday” thing.

Tony certainly takes advantage of his ability to actually write a book and have it published, regardless of it’s merits, to verbally assault a couple people who have pissed him off over the years. Unfortunately,  I didn’t know who the heck he was talking about and you probably won’t either. He calls the chapter “Heroes and Villains” and pretty much takes two shots at someone then offers a softening compliment, along the lines of “this person writes terrible crap, but I have to admit, he/she is a great writer”.  Who is this guy?

Final thoughts: Anthony Bourdain’s “Medium Raw” is not the Tony you know and love, but it’s a watered down version of him that isstill an enjoyable read overall, if only for the occasional glimpses of the “Old Tony”. The writing itself is good, and you’ll probably learn a couple new words, which is what they tell you to look for in a book, in grade 4 anyway.

PROS: Easy style. Great vocabulary. A couple juicy stories. Use of the word ‘clusterfuck’ and ‘douche bag’ is always appreciated.

CONS: Disorganized. Too personal (who the hell is Gael Greene?). Too P.C. in places. Too nicey, nice – I mean he actually puts Jamie Oliver on his list of heroes. Yes, you read that right. Personally, I adore Jamie Oliver, but for Tony to do a complete 180 makes me wonder, who is he now? Really, it’s probably my fault for being so unwilling to accept that he’s changed as a person – but I swear, I saw the old Tony on the Travel channel like, 2 days ago, so you can’t blame me for being confused!

Overall => READ IT, it’s still Tony…