New Jersey State Dinner

Submarine sandwiches
Marinated tomatoes and red onion
Cranberry Splash Sierra Mist
Saltwater taffy

5552 miles!

Road trips are so fun! We recently returned after a 5552-mile journey across 13 states. When my sister told us of her wedding on September 12, I started checking prices for airline tickets. It's expensive to fly six people halfway across the country! We decided to take our Nissan van with over 200,000 miles. We have a motorhome but gas alone would set us back about $3000. We decided to tent camp our way to Minnesota, over to California and back to Arizona. The night before we left we saw an ad for a tent trailer on Craigslist. Early the next morning we took a look at it and bought it. I'm so glad we did! It gave us extra room for storage as well as a comfortable place to sleep. It was an adventure!

Arizona

New Mexico

Santa Fe Trail Museum in Springer

Kansas


Front Street in Dodge City


Iowa



Minnesota







South Dakota



Wyoming











Utah







Nevada








California

Back to Arizona

New York State Dinner

Buffalo chicken wings
Brooklyn bialys
Delmonico potatoes
Waldorf salad
New York egg cream
New York cheesecake

This has been a fun way to get the kids to try new foods. Our oldest likes new food but the younger three can be rather resistant to change! Tonight's dinner was hit and miss. I let the younger ones try the buffalo wings but they preferred the wings with no hot sauce. My older son thought they were hot but ate a bunch anyway because he said they were so good. The kids all loved the bialys. Only my husband liked the potatoes. That surprised me. Who wouldn't like potatoes in a creamy sauce topped with cheese? I guess since my kids have never liked scalloped potatoes, I shouldn't have been surprised. Everyone liked the Waldorf salad. I went the traditional route and made it with only apples and celery with mayo. The egg cream drink was a miss with everyone. It is a little strange--club soda with a little whole milk and chocolate sauce. Cheesecake is always well liked! I had to use a regular pie pan since my springform pan is back in Oregon.

Weekend Decorating Project

I've become obsessed with decorating shows. I had my wisdom teeth out a week and a half ago and I spent several days in bed watching DIY and HGTV. It was great!

This was my weekend project. I had a nasty, cheap bookcase I was using in the bathroom. The bathroom is quite small and the bookcase at least fit the space. I finally decided to go with a travel theme for the bathroom and got an idea on how I could disguise the ugly bookcase.


I sanded it and stained it. The stain didn't take like I wanted it to but it worked out in the end. I went shopping at Goodwill on their 50% off everything day and bought an old brown leather suitcase and two pillow shams. At JoAnn Fabrics I bought some upholstery tacks and three baskets (at 50% off--yay!). I cut up the suitcase and cut strips from the leather. I used the upholstery tacks to attach them to the bookcase. I used the material from the pillow shams to cover the back of the bookcase. I used decoupage glue and it seems to hold fine. My husband helped me take apart the handle so I could reattach it to the side. I printed out some pictures of vintage travel labels and decoupaged them to the sides. It was a fun project and turned something plain and boring into an interesting piece!

New England Lapbook

Here is our first lapbook of our study of each state. In order to break down the information into manageable portions, we decided to study each state by region. Our first region was New England which includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode island and Connecticut.


For each state we made three mini-books. One book of symbols including a picture to color of the state bird and flower, state quarter, state seal plus two other symbols such as state insect, gemstone, shell, folk hero or tree. Our flag mini-book includes statehood information such as date admitted into the union, the state's nickname and motto. Our map mini-book includes information on the capital, postal abbreviation, products of that state, the origin of the name, geography and climate. We also looked at pictures of each state online and in books (our 8 yo son was excited that I came home from Goodwill last week with a book full of photographs from New England) and found some musical montage videos on You Tube of the New England area.

On to the Mid-Atlantic states next--New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and Maryland! I see New York-style cheesecake, hoagies, Philly cheese steak, succotash and crabcakes for dinner in the coming weeks.

Rhode Island and Connecticut State Dinner

NY System Hot Weiners
New England coleslaw
Coffee milk (official state beverage of Rhode Island)
Connecticut apple pie

This dinner was a hit! The kids loved the coffee milk. I made my own coffee syrup using this recipe. I made it with decaf coffee. Our boys who prefer cold hot dogs actually liked these hot dogs topped with mustard, meat sauce, chopped onion and sprinkled with celery salt. We are enjoying eating our way across the US!

State of Massachusetts Dinner

Boston baked beans
New England-Style Clam Chowder
Corn muffins (official state muffin)
Green salad
Cranberry juice (official state beverage)
Boston cream pie

The kids weren't so thrilled with this dinner. At the last minute I bought a can of clam chowder for my husband. My oldest son likes it but only at restaurants. Go figure. The Boston cream pie was a hit, but when is a dessert not? I liked the baked beans though! If I ever made them again, I'd go with salt port instead of ham hocks. We had to eat very carefully because of all the bone fragments throughout the beans.