Banana Crunch Muffins

Ok, muffins are an excuse to eat cake for breakfast. I've decided and it's official. Muffins are just another word for cake-that-you-eat-first-thing-in-the-morning. and these muffins.... i could eat them for more than just breakfast.

Created by the butter queen Ina Garten, introduced to me by sister Heather, and devoured by my husband. They are dense, delicious, and oh so tasty Banana Crunch Muffins.

Earlier in the day, I felt like making some comfort food for dinner and turned to these home made sloppy joes. They were yummy. I had two to prove it. but that's not important. What i wanted to point out was that I had just cleaned up my sloppy joe mess so that i could start on my muffins. First step... putting all the dry ingredients into my trusty Kitchenaid mixer. 

FAIL. My first step and i spill about a cup of the ingredients all over my mixer. This is what a mixer looks like when you have somehow missed the gigantic mixing bowl and need to take it out and scrape the stray ingredients back into the bowl. Don't worry, I washed my hands... or did I?

I wish i could say this was my only blunder. I'll keep you posted. Moving on...

Bananas. yum.

Now smash them to pieces and add them to a milk, egg, and vanilla mixture.

These muffins are so darn fancy that once the dry and mashed banana/liquid ingredients are mixed you gotta dice some more bananas! dice away.

There's always one point during my baking that Rob leaves this...

and gives me a visit in the kitchen. This time I decided to put him to 'work' and let him dump the bananas I diced into the mixing bowl. Instead of dumping, however, he wanted to scrape every slice off the cutting board one by one.

 After about 3 pieces I retracted my offer for him to help and dumped them all in quite haphazardly.

I'm fan of anything that includes coconut. Big fan. So here i go to reach for my coconut and here is the result.

 What is wrong with me?! 

I open the pantry and I get powdered sugar all over my oven, tea  pot, and muffin pans! You should know that it is the Donaldson (my mother) in me that makes this happen. It's in my genes to spill, break, and be loud in the kitchen. Where did the powdered sugar come from you ask? Well here's the scene.

Even after I thought I was so good the week before by going through my cabinet (having to stand on a chair to reach) and getting rid of expired stuff and reorganizing baking vs. canned stuff. I can't win. Who reorganizes and then has stuff fall over. It wasn't falling out of the cabinet before. I made things worse by organizing? ugh. once again... moving on.

This looks better. So close to the end. added the coconut, granola, and banana.

Prebaked goodness...

and baked goodness...

Seriously, these are the best home made muffins I've ever had. I think Rob liked them too :)

 

 

Eat cake for breakfast. It's good for you. I promise.

The House That Built Me....

I moved onto dear Little Washington Lyndell Road with my family when i was 1 year old. Ahhh, I remember it well... I consider myself lucky to have lived in the same home my entire childhood. My parents still live there and they are the main reason why I love the house so much. 

With about 2 acres of lawn to mow surrounded by forest us kids got generous and gave them the gift of hard work for christmas. We packed up some cash money and a note saying that they had all of our hard work for a weekend to help them with projects they have wanted done for some time.

The result.... girls watching babies plus 5 minutes of raking and two wheelbarrow trips to the bonfire... exhausting, i know. also included was 12 hours of men hacking, chopping, chain sawing, axing, pulling, weed wacking, burning, and 4 wheeling :)

Our day started at 6am with this... sledding on dew covered grass hitched to a 4 wheeler.

which always ended like this... Now that was fun to watch.

First on the list for the boys to dismantle was the dreaded clothing line. Thanksgiving football almost always results in injuries and having this in the end zone has never helped... good bye dear clothing line. I call this one "take up your cross and walk".

This thing was a true hit. Not only did it make Josh don a child's life vest, working gloves, and Scott's old skate board helment, but it produced loads of fun getting air over jumps, putting girls on the back to show them how brave they were, transporting brother from one destination to another via the front rack (NOT SAFE!!), making Finlay cry cause he thought mommy's screams were bad ones when she was on it, and ultimately turning boys into men... what a handsome devil.

luckily the men had the girls around to feed them junk while they worked. morning snack... cinnamon rolls.

Oh i almost forgot to highlight the 4 wheeler sledding attire. 

the guys did so much work throughout the day it's hard to try and show you all that "work day" entailed... here are some highlights...

some serious weed wacking. that thing had a saw at the end. weed wackers have saws? maybe it's not even a weed wacker... who knows. it wasn't strapped to my chest.

Rhododendron pulling... this was a monumental moment.

lots of chainsawing..

there was some posing for the camera

high fives.. we all need encouragement. Finlay's got it.

sweating...

more chainsawing..

baby watching. my personal favorite...

shoveling..

broken tools a many...

swingin...

 and watching while swinging...

kisses...

 

snacking...

oreo crumb faces...

being buds with cheeks full of chocolate cookies of various kinds....

aaand back to the chain sawing...

oh wait... back to babies... this is Sully. 10 days old. you'd think he'd be a little more help.

Max being sure work is being done outside...

thankfully Laird pulled his weight at 6 months old and did some laundry...

would you rather hold a chainsaw or Sully... I choose Sully

Meredith holding little Sully :)

my how quickly these photos have turned from many work photos to sleeping baby photos...

I give up. Here are some cutie pics of Laird.

Is he not the most handsome guy around!?

Alright fine, back to work. This is the end result of their hard work in the front yard... so many bushes removed. Should have taken a before and after photo.

still happy after hours and hours of manual labor

Work day complete. Here they are with their broken tools. Should us girls have taken a picture with happy babies to show our hard work?

I can hear Rob snoring in the bedroom. that must mean he worked especially hard..

Well folks, it was a bit overwhelming doing this post with so many pictures of an entire day. Enjoy these few. If you think this is a lot i have about 200 more here that i get to browse. I have serious problems with taking too many photos. Poor Dan exclaimed at one point during the day... "what is with this family and photos!" Sorry Dan.  As for the rest of you, I promise my next post won't have any chainsaw pictures.