Clover Lane

Soft, chewy, buttery breadsticks are a hit at this house, and something easy, cheap and filling to make for the evenings we have friends over and a snack is necessary.

I put these ingredients in my breadmaker (I have a Zojirushi Breadmaker):

1 cup warm water
1/4 cup oil
3 cups of bread flour
1 tsp. salt
3 TBS brown sugar
2 1/2 tsp active dry yeast

Once the dough cycle is finished, I roll the dough onto a 10 x 12 lightly buttered cookie sheet.
Using a pizza cutter, I cut the bread sticks into 24 pieces.
Let rise for about an hour.

Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes.

When breadsticks come out of oven, I drizzle this mixture on top:
4 TBS melted butter
1/2 tsp garlic salt

Then I sprinkle with Parmesan cheese and serve with pizza sauce for dipping.

Before June is over, I need to post a few memorable events:

Abbey "graduated" from her second year of sewing class.  Her lovely teacher has a fashion show with all her students at her home.  Abbey modeled the last item she made, a dress that I adore:


Her teacher makes these little tea cookies, and Abbey craved them all year:

Our normal regular everyday days, consist of bike rides, mostly after-dinner bike rides.  Riding my bike with a baby on the back is my favorite thing to do in the whole world.  What will happen when I can't jam Patrick into this seat anymore?  And trust me on this one, he is really stuck in there.

This year we joined the city pool, which is just blocks from our house.  The older kids can ride their bikes and go on their own, and Patrick and Andrew love all the action, unlike me who leaves with a sun/noise headache every time.  (I'm not complaining...it is a bargain for sure, and we are lucky to have such a nice, convenient, neighborhood pool.)




And the week after school let out we hit a big amusement park, and it was a long fun day.  The kids dragged me on all the roller coasters, even Andrew, who just made the size cut off by one tiny hair on his head, no joke.  That kid...he went on ALL of it.  Nothing was too scary, tall, fast, upside-downish.  He sat with me on the tallest roller coaster, and we were both sort of crying on the way up, but on the way down he was sending out whoops of joy.  I wasn't really crying but thinking, "I am way too old for this, really, what am I doing to my poor body?"

Andrew was a good enough sport to come down to Patrick's level for a little while.  Patrick was adorable of course, and was crazy about it all.  He would sit on these little kid rides, and point at the big coasters, and huge upside down twirly things and say, "Me go on those!"






No more 'fun mom' for me. I have to draw the line somewhere, and there it is, straight up in the air.

On to July...
the 4th of course
Boston
Cape Cod
college visits
more bike rides
the pool
raspberries, blueberries, blackberries
school supplies before everyone else takes the good stuff...

Abbey and I have big expectations this summer.  Hers is the higher stack!  I started out with a little disappointment, but I'm on a roll now.
I read about 3 or 4 chapters of this book (Cutting for Stone), maybe a little more.  Too raw (crude?) for me.  You can tell me to stick with it and I will give it another chance:
Gave up probably too quickly:
 Here is an excerpt I adored from the book and read over and over again:

(Matt is missing in this photo shoot-I think he was having more fun at target practice with his BB gun.)

We arrived back from a summer vacation to Seaside, Florida very very late Saturday night, and we are all experiencing some pangs of readjustment.

I am always on the look out for cute place mats.  I just cannot use cloth mats!  I would have to wash them every day and I do not want to add to my laundry load.

The plastic ones I find always seem boring and outdated so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

Using Picasa, I made a collage for each member of my family.  I selected a bunch of different photos of each of the children...great vacation memories, baby pics, funny faces, etc...created a collage, and then using the Text feature, wrote their names on them.  The kids love these place mats!  Each photo seems to bring up a topic of conversation at the dinner table.  "Remember when Dad made us hike up that mountain?"  or "We had so much fun at that reunion!"

You have heard me talk about using the collage feature of Picasa before...it is the same method I use for making my blog headers and my scrapbook pages.  It is so fun, easy and best of all free.   For a tutorial on how to make a collage you can go here, or here for a step-by-step easy video tutorial from Persnickety Prints.  You can also use a different program (i.e.Photoshop), OR just use a single picture if you don't want to bother with fancy digital stuff.  If you want to make it even easier, you could pick up a few 11 x 17 size papers, and have your children make their own drawings.

I called my local printer and decided to go with an 11 x 17 size.  That seemed to be a good size for a place mat, and it was easy and cheap for them to make color copies and laminate those color copies because it is a standard size.  The color copies were $1 each, and then to laminate each of them was $3.  $4 for custom place mats!  Not bad!  They also told me I could just email the collages to them, which made the whole process extra easy.

I did this about 5 years ago (using just a single picture that I brought in to be photocopied, before I was familiar with photo editing software) and the place mats held up for a good 3 years.  They are easy to wipe off with soap and water.  The copy place told me that they use 5mil laminate which makes them durable and sturdy.

Here are some tips and ideas:
1. I made a collage using the automatic "Mosaic" feature...that throws all your selected photos together into a collage automatically. (I chose plain white for my collage background.)  Once that collage was created, (after you hit the Create Collage button) I selected that collage, and also selected a scrapbook paper, pressed Collage again, and using the Picture Pile feature, centered the finished collage on the scrapbook paper.  That is how I got the scrapbook paper edge around the collage.

2. Sometimes the copier will cut off a small bit around the edges...ask!!!  The copy lady told me I would lose about 1/4"...it didn't matter because I had the scrapbook paper behind my collage, but without it, it might have.  Keep that in mind.

3. Remember in Picasa you can select your own custom collage size.  You just type in your dimensions.  (Horizontal size first.)  Again, I used 17 x 11 because it was cheap and easy.
4. I think for this size, I could have used less pictures.  I overloaded my own placemat and some of the pictures are tiny.  The ones that turned out best are the ones were I selected not more than 30 pictures.

5. And of course, the possibilities are endless.  Wouldn't it be cute to type in manner reminders?  Or the family dinner blessing?  You could make seasonal place mats also, with fun summer or fall colors, or a holiday theme.

Update-2015 and we still use these almost daily!  They look great and have held up well.

Lisa Leonard, in addition to her beautiful and popular jewelry designs, (I wear this necklace all the time), came out with a decor line.  These beautiful things are so perfect for gifts...magnets, bowls, baby spoons, wall hangings and more, all personalized with whatever words/names you want to add.

Here is what I gave Abbey for her 8th grade graduation.  We have a favorite song called "Keep on the Sunny Side" and I thought she would love a little daily reminder hanging in her room.

It's officially summer.  The school year has come and gone so quickly.


The last day of school was All School Mass and the award ceremony. Matt must have been tired from all the walking up and back to get his accolades.  Even Andrew received an award...not the one he wanted but I like his competitive spirit.  The award was a Fitness Award, and he earned the second tier...no doubt he will be practicing his chin-ups and push-ups this summer.

We are saying good-bye to a priest at our parish who is leaving to be a pastor somewhere else.  The kids have LOVED him and he has made a huge difference in the school community.  He interacts with each of the kids and they feel comfortable enough to talk to him and joke with him...such a great thing in the junior high years especially.  Each class, Preschool-8th, presented him with a gift.  I don't know how he held it together, because I was dabbing my eyes.


I don't know how these kids keep track of their phones.  Isn't it funny how they are apt to misplace just about anything else but these?


Ummm...no way!  Could you imagine?  That would get scary. We compromised and he had a sip of orange bad boy juice, and was in heaven...

 One of the boys brought his guitar...

..and after awhile all their parents picked them up and they were all gone, and hugging and yelling "Good-bye!" like they would never see each other again.  It was the easiest party ever, and so enjoyable.  Mostly because, like I have said 1000 times before, these are the nicest, most polite, well-mannered kids ever.  Not ONE problem, not ONE issue.

Endings and beginnings...so exciting, and bittersweet, and scary and fun all at the same time.  It never stops feeling that way I don't think, for the rest of our lives, whether we're 14 or 42.