Sensitive Ears

My whole life I've had a love-hate relationship with earrings.  I love the way they look, especially dangling ones. But I could never wear them very long because they made my ears hurt. I guess I have some kind of metal allergy. Looking for earrings that might work are an even worse pain than actually wearing them. Even when they're advertised as "nickel-free" or "for sensitive ears," they still never worked. Then I stumbled on a solution. Plastic earring hooks.

I just removed the old hook and replaced them with these. Also, clean with Neosporin (kill the all the bugs!). Admittedly, they're not as stylish as metal hooks and they are a little more snug on my ear lobe, but I wore a trial pair this evening and after several hours I haven't had to take them out yet! I'm so excited! Jewelry making hobby, here I come!

For those of you with sensitive ears, here is the site I found the earring hooks at: http://hypoallergenicfindings.com/newplastic.html

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Hot Cross Buns

Hot Cross Buns, Hot Cross Buns

One a penny, two a penny 

Hot Cross Buns!

The girls have been listening to nursery rhymes on Starfall and I thought it would be fun to make hot cross buns.   Apparently Hot Cross Buns are a spiced English bun traditionally served at Easter time.  The recipe we used is from this site. I'm just going to put down what we did

INGREDIENTS
Dough
2 1/2 teaspoons active dry yeast
3/4 cup warm milk
3 1/4 cups all purpose flour
1/4 cup plus 1 teaspoon granulated white sugar
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon allspice
1/4 teaspoon cloves
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
1 teaspoon salt
4 Tbsp butter, softened
2 eggs, room temperature (if taking right out of the fridge, let sit in warm water for a few minutes to take the chill off before using)
3/4 cup dried cranberries (you're supposed to use currants and maybe chopped candied citrus peel but having neither of these on hand we just used dried cranberries)

Egg Wash
1 egg
1 Tbsp milk

Frosting
1 teaspoon milk
3 to 4 Tbsp powdered sugar

Mix together the dough and let it rise.  Shape into little rolls.  You can cut crosses in the top but I found that very hard to do for some reason.  Brush with egg wash (this makes them nice and shiny!) and let rise again.  Bake at 400.  The other recipe said to bake 10-12 minutes but we ended up baking them closer to 20.  I'm not sure if its just my oven or what.  Take out and let cool.
Put frosting ingredients in a ziplock bag.  Mush them together to make the frosting, adding powder sugar until it's a nice thick consistency. Cut off one corner of the ziplock bag and squeeze out frosting crosses on the rolls.

We thought these were pretty good, though the girls were reluctant to eat the cranberries.  Also, they were a bit dense because my dough wasn't rising for some reason.