Making Homemade Granola

So- one of my wishes this year- to be less domestically challenged. Do not get me wrong, I can cook and my house is always clean (especially with the hubby gone). It is amazing- when he leaves- things are more manageable- or in reality- I have a little more time to do the things needed! Not that I would want to deploy him in order to keep a tidy household- lol.

My goal is more about improving some of the domestic areas. I will never be like the lady in the picture above. I am lucky if the counter is not covered in remnants of the recipe, the floor doesn't need to be swept and my hair isn't sticky from gosh knows what.

So- this first 2 weeks of the year so far- I have not eaten out for dinner once. Really here in Germany it is not that difficult to avoid that. It is expensive to eat out (thank you crappy Euro rate), it is always a big production to go eat out (they are super slow paced here) and the snow has been so bad no way I want to venture out anymore than I have to (especially at night).

I have cooked many new meals so far this year! I will do a separate post on them. I made chicken parm that is delicious (thank you my fabulous FRG co-lead Katie!!!!), perfected some stuffed shells, and also am going to attempt later today some homemade granola to send downrange to Lee. Exciting.

So cooking is slowly getting there! My goal is to have at least 12 new recipes down, so then when Lee gets home, there will be new things for me to cook. After 10 years together, it seems like the same old same old for dinner a lot of nights. He is the adventurous one that will decide on chicken for dinner and then go online and find some totally awesome recipe to make using the stuff we have in the kitchen. I want to be like that. More adventurous. More comfortable trying to cook new stuff.

I also want to be more creative this year. I want to actually learn how to use my sewing machine. I can barely sew a straight line with that thing. I am hoping my mother in law will spend some time when she gets here helping me to really learn the functions of my machine and what I can do with it. On my short list of to-dos I am hoping to check off, homemade burp clothes that I found on another site and really want to make!!

A HUGE undertaking I am hoping to tackle, quilting. Nothing fancy. My girlfriend Katie makes these wonderful simple (according to her) quilts. She set out step by step directions and I am determined to follow them. I would love to learn to quilt. Luckily there are like 5 of us that are determined to quilt and some willing teachers stepping up. So hopefully that will get started soon.

Eventually- I want to be so comfortable with sewing- that I want to buy an embriodery machine and make cool stuff. Maybe a side job that would still allow me to stay home?? Hmmmm... But that is a long way away right now!

I did do one new project this week though!! I learned how to make these awesome message boards!! My neighbor Denise sat down with us and showed us how to do it! It is actually really easy and I look forward to making some more. I will be sending this one to Lee for him to put up in his room in Iraq...

(picture is up on top of blog)