Banana RagaMuffin Recipe

It's Valentine's morning and I decided to make some banana muffins for my favorite little loves.  I mashed my bananas and started assembling ingredients only to remember that I had used up all the sugar earlier this week and hadn't restocked yet.  That is not impressive #housewifing at all. The bad news is we live off the beaten path and "civilization" is 10-20 minutes away, depending on what you need.  The good news is I live next door to my in-laws and my mother-in-law is always well stocked on things when I do an oopsie and am in the middle of a recipe. I'll admit, this is not the first time I've called on her for items out of her pantry. So I texted her and O ran over for the sugar.  Save!

The music was loud and we had a pretty good dance party going on in the kitchen. Baran was doing dishes and whenever he does, the music is blasting.  I'm cool with that, I mean my tween is doing dishes.  We both have some pretty sweet moves too.  We were listening to this song.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6a1XvA97kE "Cause we all right, and we ok.  And we gonna make it to another day.  Just hold on to what you believe. Don't let go." While I was waiting on my sugar and dancing to the beat, I decided to tidy up the kitchen and dump the coffee grounds into my compost bowl.  I am a multi-tasking queen. And yes I make my own dirt in the compost bin, even if its just freezing into a big pile at the moment.  Oops again, I dumped my coffee grounds into my muffin bowl I had started instead of the compost bowl. Major #fail. 

I was so surprised at this recent turn of events that I screamed.  Kind of like the scream when you see a huge spider. The boys came running and were grossed out by the coffee grounds in their Valentine's muffins so I had to start over.  The good news is, I didn't have to do the walk of shame and ask my MIL for more sugar.  I hadn't added it yet.  God's grace is so wonderful!  This is what happens when I try to cook before I have consumed enough coffee.  #oofta

So, here's my recipe. I know its says banana bread, but you can put it in muffin tins and cook it for 20-23 minutes and it pretty much rocks just like that. I typically cut the sugar in half.  Hey, bananas are sweet and trust me, the boys don't even miss the extra sugar. O also likes an oatmeal cinnamon crumble on the top so I combine about 2/3 cups of oats, 1/4 cup brown sugar, 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1 TB melted butter to make the crumble to add to the top once they are in the muffin tins.

So, if you are feeling a little ragamuffin-ish, I highly recommend giving this a try after you are properly caffeinated.  Now to go make pot #2 and give some muffins to my in-laws. Happy Valentine's Day and Don't Let Go!

A Slinky Valentine

Valentine's can be a lot of fun to make.  Last year we made pom-pom monsters. O loved making those and still would rather give some-THING instead of candy so we decided to do a slinky this year.

They were pretty simple.  We found a big bag of slinky's that were reasonably priced in a party supply store.  I used blank business card stock for the card and made a message with address labels.  

If you have Avery 5160 address labels here is a printable.  Use a paper hole puncher in the upper left corner.  Add your message to the back and slide on the slinky.  

A super easy project that a second grader can assemble himself and no sugar involved. Woot!

Happy Valentine's Day!