Playing w/ Sand & Flour

I have to rave a little about how wonderful "My Little Sandbox" is! I ordered it from amazon for my little Susanna (4.5). She's into playing with little things. See those horses watching her? They carry on the most elaborate conversations & gallop all over. Anyway, this little mermaid sandbox was right up her alley. She spent quite a bit of time raking it out with the little rake-I think that is her favorite part.

Then, she arranged everything "just so." The mermaid & all the little things came with this. She added in a polly pocket doll so she'd have a friend. She also added another turtle so the turtle would have a friend. LOL. The sand is such a pretty sparkly blue.

And, here is my combination birthday and Mother's Day gift: a Bosch mixer & blender set. I am so excited to have this. My dh tried to get me to order this last year, but I resisted. I love making bread by hand. But, our fourth baby loves to be held a lot and hates to be put down ( I do use a Moby wrap, but find it awkward to cook with her in front of me & on my hip, she's getting her hands in everything), so I was buying bread more and more and we were often finding ourselves out of bread. So, firstly, my dh came across a local farmer (who we buy hay for our horses from) that grows, dries & sells 2 kinds of wheat berries and rye berries. He sells it to a granary for $4.oo per 50 lb bag!! I've been paying 29.00 from a co-op. We're paying this farmer 10.00, though. I'd rather the farmer make some money rather than the middle man. Same thing for milk-we buy from a local farmer. It's become a very satisfying quest to locate local people to buy from. Anyway, this little area is now my bread-baking center. We got the mixer from TheUrbanHomeMaker. They've got great service & I try to order from her since her dh died last year. I got the grain grinder from her also-awhile ago. I also use her bread recipe. The recipe for the mixer makes 5 to 6 loaves of bread.

So, I tried it out yesterday. Wow! We made kefir shakes w/ the blender. And I made 5 loaves of bread. It did all the mixing & kneading work while I was getting dinner ready w/ Alyssa on my hip. And I did get to do some kneading when I was shaping the loaves, so i was glad-and it's much easier dough to work with now, too. I use all wheat flour, so it's more heavy & dense than using white flour, but the dough this time was very light & pliable. Another nice trick is SAF yeast. I've never seen this kind before, but got it from the same website. You only have to let the bread rise once! That saves a lot of time. So, I am very happy with this & very thankful to my dh for finally convincing me to get the Bosch mixer.