среда, 31 августа 2011 г.

По многочисленным просьбам!

Добрый день! Меня уже не раз спрашивали о рецепте рулетиков из баклажанов. (Раза три или даже четыре! А это составляет более тридцати процентов моих посетителей. Значит много.) И сегодня я решила с вами им поделиться. Кухня для меня роднее на русском языке, поэтому сегодня буду общаться на русском.))

Для рецепта нам понадобится: баклажаны -2шт, болгарский перец - 2шт, помидоры - 3шт, морковь - 7-9 шт, грибы - чем больше тем лучше, лук - 2шт, сельдерей - 2 палочки (по желанию) петрушка, чеснок, майонез, соль, перец, уксус, сахар, яйца - 3шт, для обжаривания баклажанов. Количетво ингридиентов примерное.


Почистить, порезать, приготовить все овощи. На фото сверху показано как я режу баклажаны. Параллельно к столу легко сохранить нарезаемый лист ровным. У меня из одного баклажана выходит 10 -12 листов, иногда и больше, в зависимости от "фигуры" баклажана. Нарезанные листочки обжариваются во взбитом яйце с солью и перцем, на среднем огне. Чтобы баклажан успевал протушиться полностью, желательно накрывать крышкой.

Мелко нарезаный перец я отваривала с помидорами, солью, сахаром, уксусом и оливковым маслом. Впринципе, если вам известен рецепт лечо, то состав один и тот же. Добавляя этот, зараннее приготовленный соус в морковь с луком, которые тушатся на огне, вся начинка становится вкуснее. Когда овощи будут готовы добавить предварительно обжаренные с луком грибы. Перемешать, посолить, поперчить, добавить зелень петрушки.

Готовые листочки баклажана смазываем чесночным "кремом" (у моей Лианы всё крем) в состав которого входит майонез, чеснок, соль и перец (я добавляла немного греческого Йогурта, для того чтобы уменьшить количество майонеза в рецепте) кладем приготовленную начинку и сворачиваем.

Если перед подачей на стол вы планируете их нагревать (они идут как холодными, так и горячими), рулетики можно посыпать тёртым сыром.

Должна предупредить, что на исчезновение рулетиков уходит гораздо меньше времени, чем на их приготовление!))

Приятного Аппетита!
 

понедельник, 29 августа 2011 г.

Back to school 2011

Last week our kids started a new school year. I don't want to start complaining again how fast this summer zoomed... but I do want to agree with a saying, my sister told me, that life is like a toilet paper, towards the end it goes by faster. Same with the summer. It feels like there was no August...

Anyway, like any other new school year, this one began with some photos. I love to see how my girls change every year. Here are their photos on the first day of school this year:



My sweet eighth grader and sixth grader...


And here they are on the same spot just three years ago:

What a difference three years make! I wish I could have them at this age a little longer... And here are some more photos from Alena's first day:



And a few more Suzanna's first day (couldn't photograph them two together, since they leave one hour apart):


Last year Suzanna won two of the drawing contests! And now both, their yearbook and a student handout book have her drawings on the cover. Congratulations sweetie!

And one more thing for today is a layout I made weeks ago, that was also waiting for journaling to be printed. By the way, Liana realized that it took me way to long to write journaling and she decided to add some of her own, right onto the page with a green permanent marker. How exciting. But I got lucky. My orange journaling spot perfectly covered it. (I just had to scraplift one of Marie-Laure pages)

I just love my quote stamp set. It's so easy to add a little something to the page with a stamp.


Here is another one. Dresses up an empty line perfectly.


And I do like that notebook border punch too:


Best wishes to all of you who had to go back to school this year!


Check previous post for the video. Thanks.

воскресенье, 28 августа 2011 г.

Hello new school year!

I made a little slide show for my students. I loved how our first day of school in Ukraine always started on September 1st and was always such a big holiday. Flowers, music, uniforms, first bell... I wanted to add that little bid to their memories. (Blogger didn't want to cooperate with me today, so I HAD to make a separate post for this video)

All the best wishes to you in a new school year! Love you!

вторник, 23 августа 2011 г.

Two layouts

Today I wanted to share two layouts that share the same design element - circles with butterflies (I first saw that idea on Jennifer Gallacher's layout and my first LO is basically a scraplift of her page). One LO was done about a month ago, but I was waiting for the journaling on it, and the other one was just done over the weekend.

I've read one of Ali Edward's articles before, where she encouraged people to repeat designs. First of all, nobody will probably ever notice that, and second of all, the point is not in inventing new things every time we create, but in preserving memories and telling our stories.

I've said it before, I love 12x12 format. It gives you so many more options for design and photo placement on the page, but there's something about 8.5x11 that let's you finish a page so much faster. I always feel a little braver starting with a base that has just a couple of inches trimmed of the sides.
Loving my butterfly stamp set by Martha Steward. Sometimes it feels like any page could use a butterfly. I guess having 3 girls has something to do with it.

I printed my journaling on a card and placed it in the pocket. This is a good way to hide some notes you don't want everyone to see.


The journaling card easily slides out of the pocket, and since it was longer than the pocket I didn't adhere that overlay paper alongside of the pocket to give space for the card. (If it makes any sense.)


For my second page I used almost exclusively papers from one of my favorite stacks by DCWV (except one that I punched circles of).


This is a very simple LO, with two studio photos. As you can see, photographer didn't do a very good job on taking those photos, making them way to dark. But these are two of not very many pictures I have of Alena in that age.

For the title I used a word sticker by Colorbok. Love that sticker set. I has nice fonts and it is in brown. For some reason I have hard times using black letter stickers on my pages.

Journaling paper strip had to be stitched in place, because that pretty glitter paper just didn't want to hold anything.

Got to go enjoy our last day of summer vacation with my kids! I had a whole lot of plans for today. Seems like I'm trying to fit it in everything we haven't had time for before. I wish we could stretch this day and make it at least 72 hours longer. (Sorry working people) Have a wonderful August twenty third!

пятница, 19 августа 2011 г.

Very random... and very long

1. Next week on this very day my kids start school. This is very sad. I'm not saying that going to school is sad. They like school (I was always super excited to go on the first day, when I was a kid), the sad part is that summer is coming to an end. Here is one of my favorite pictures of the summer:

2. Last week my lovely sister-in-law shared a recipe of a salad with me. The ingredients didn't sound very promising, but I decided to make it because it was healthy and because Katya said it tasted good. We made it with my children and I should say we really liked it. Will definitely make it again.


For the salad: Mix corn, canned black beans, cut up tomatoes, canned red peppers (I cut one pepper and cooked it in tomato juice with oil, vinegar, sugar and salt) and onions. In a separate dish mix crushed garlic, lemon juice and olive oil. Add salt and pepper to your desire. Thank you Katusha!

3. Speaking of Katya, I have a layout to share with you that Katya made before. It's a very sweet page of her adorable son. (Страничка сделана Катей )

4. My lovely kids are very much into cooking right now. Into shopping too, but that's not what I was going to talk about, even though there was a little story on that subject also. Okay, I have to tell it now. So, Alena was trying some clothes on at the Kohl's. She came out of her dressing room and decided to grab a smaller size of the same top she tried on. When she came back, the door of her dressing room was locked. There was this one lady that decided to use her room, even though the other four were empty. We waited... and waited... and waited a little longer... It seemed like she had to try on every item from that department. Two of each! Well, she finally came out and Alena went back in, but Alena's stuff disappeared. That lady found empty hangers and hung Alena's clothes that she came to the store in, back on the rack. Now, I have to attach a picture to the story.


... or three.

4. Back to cooking. So, my girls have been cooking or baking something every single day for the last two weeks. Kids wanting to cook - that's mothers dream come true! This week they made some delicious cookies, biscuits, salad and pizza (with a dough from the scratch. Actually they made pizza twice. The first time I "helped" them by telling them to cook the pizza crust first and then add toppings. Yeah,... All that effort Suzanna made by making pizza dough... It tasted more like pretzel with pizza toppings. Sorry, Suzanna.) I am very proud of them. Thank you girls!


5. Today Alenka surprised me with pancakes in the morning. Oh, she also made a bed for me the night before. It was so sweet of her. Am I missing something? Was it a mother's day in August that I didn't know of? There is Christmas in July, you know. Or was it "mom-I-really-want-a-cell-phone" kind of act? Either way, thank you sweetie. Here is my coffee break:


6. Another proud moment for me this week was when I watched our girls sing at the youth conference in VA. You can listen to it by clicking HERE. Click on the video, and they start singing on minute 27. And another one HERE they start singing on minute 49. Don't judge Suzanna by picking up a microphone half-way through the song.

I don't have a picture from that day, since I didn't go and finding a good photo of these four is a little hard now. (That I-can't-act-serious age)

7. I would like to end this by saying Happy Anniversary to very close to me people. These two people met in the late sixties, got married in 1974, got seven kids, moved to US in 1993, got four more sons and one more daugter, nine grandchildren and still as happy as on the picture, just not as young:
We love you Mom and Dad! God bless you and give you many more happy and healthy years!

понедельник, 15 августа 2011 г.

Week in the Life - done.

Almost. I will explain later. Anyway, I just wanted to share my project that Ali Edwards and many of us were doing the last week of July. About it being almost done - I did journaling for first three days, but decided to share this project anyway, and finish journaling later. On the pictures of the project it looks like every day has a journaling page -that's because I moved second page for the rest of the weekdays to take pictures. (smart... I know...)

Here is my finished Week in the life project:

I didn't want to upload too many pictures, so I made collages of pages (sorry for the picture quality here).
I tried to make it as simple as possible. And least expensive too. For my divided page protectors I ordered 4x6 photo collages with 2 pictures on each. I used one quote stamp set throughout the whole album and a few punched out tags that I made in Picasa to give it some common thread.
I didn't do the large collage on the right hand side, because I really wanted white paper to see through that divided page protector.

Also, I used only four pieces of patterned paper for the whole thing.

For Saturday I used 2 divided page protectors, since I had way too many pictures I wanted to include. And for Sunday... I left my battery charge at that park, we were on Saturday, and my battery died. So, there were NO pictures taken on Sunday at all. But that didn't stop me from finishing the project. So, I used photos from two previous Sundays - it was close enough.

My album is not very thick, so I plan on adding next WITL project to the same album. (I will probably change the color of it to cream or blue to match interiors).

Thanks for stopping by! Hope you join Ali Edwards next time around, if you haven't done this project this time. Take pictures. Write down little life stories. Record your memories. Share with others. Repeat.


четверг, 11 августа 2011 г.

Got my pictures

Good morning! I don't know about you, but I think there's no better time of the year then August. Warm days without the heat, cooler nights, tomatoes in my garden, back to school shopping -love it so much. Today's LO is not about that, but I just felt like I had to mention my love for this time of year.

Here's my simple layout:


This page started with inspiration from Keisha Campbell's layout. I love her graphic look and the way she designs her pages.

And yes, my pictures have finally arrived. So, I have plenty to work with now. Apparently, they came in the mail yesterday, and my husband decided to give them to me just this morning, saying he didn't want me to stay up late again. Yeah... just don't tell him I wrote about it here.
This is the mess on my table as I was starting to sort them out:


Hope to be back tomorrow with another page. Enjoy this wonderful weather!


понедельник, 8 августа 2011 г.

Photo challenge - brown

I've been a lot busier last week then expected. A whole lot! But I guess busy is better then boring. There was definitely no time for that.

Finally back with collages that we made for our last challenge. Six pictures of brown things around your house - was the theme. I could keep taking more and more pictures of brown things around my house, but then it would make a "twenty six photo" collage instead of six. Here is mine:

And I guess, I wasn't the only super busy person last week since I received only one collage by e-mail. But, I should admit, I was kind of happy that no one else send it in since Lora's collage was just so totally awesome. I loved it! Lora, the prize is yours. Here is Lora's collage:



This challenge inspires me to make a LO about our home. I hope to make it someday, but for now I'm so glad that at least my Week in a Life Project has some of that documented.


Yes, I did have some time to work on my Week in the Life Project, which happened mostly at night. I have ordered my pictures yesterday (after a long-long time of choosing, editing, planning, collage making process), and can't wait to put it all together.


See you later! Hopefully with a finished project!