Days 228/229

Ok, it is obvious, i have BURNT OUT on writing this blog.  It is the thing i dread most in the evening.  Just when I sit down to stop thinking, i have to think about this.  I honestly, truly, dislike it.  But, hey, I set a goal, and I am 229 days into it, and I need to get back into this.  Because I only have another 136 days and I am DONE with it.  Which also means we only have 4 months left until 2014!  holy crap, where does time go?  Well, look at my blog.. that will probably tell you where my time has gone.

So, day 228:

I love getting the kids involved in the kitchen, as you know, especially when it is something that I know they can do almost on their own.  Making biscuits is probably one of the EASIEST things to do in the kitchen, most certainly when you use shortening and a pastry blender, the work is so simple!  Well, the girls and I made biscuits yesterday for dinner (we had Chicken and Noodles, from a FB recipe and they were AMAZING!") and the biscuits were probably the best I have ever made.  They were fluffy and flaky and they took all of, maybe, 5 minutes to bring together.  2 cups self rising flour, 1/2 (if i remember correctly) cup of shortening, blend that together with a pastry blender... something that the girls were easily able to do.  mix in 3/4 cup of milk until everything is moist and the dough pulls from the sides of the bowl.  turn it out onto a floured surface, work it until it is no longer sticky (i think it took us maybe 30 seconds total to do that part), and then roll it out to 1/2 inch thickness.  A few years ago my dad and Mike made me these awesome guide rails (2 of them) to help me easily measure 1/4 inch or 1/2 inch (one side is 1/4 inch thick, one side is 1/2 in. thick) That makes it SO easy for the girls to help roll because they can't dig into the dough and make huge divitts in it.  Then, we used a canning jar ring to cut the biscuits.  They made perfect 1/2 inch thick biscuits. We baked them for 10 minutes @ 450 and they were PERFECT.  There was 1 left after last night's dinner haha.

Day 229:

yesterday penny found out that her symbol this year in school is the Snowman.  She is VERY excited for this.  She has wanted a symbol since last year when Iris was assigned the moon for the year.  She has been looking forward to finding out what her symbol will be since we started talking about preschool early this year.  Well, today, Penny asked me if she could make a snowman for craft.  I wasn't about to tell her no!  She has never come up with her own craft idea, and she is so excited about her snowman that we were going to make snowmans come 95* temperatures or snow... well, we had 76* temps and sunny, but we still got the crayons out and the construction paper and made snowmen.  Penny's snowman actually turned out to be her "name" over and over again, but hey, she got involved and was VERY excited about it!  Even Coraline got in on the action and made a beautiful green/white drawing on a piece of light blue construction paper.

220-227

Seriously, when was the last time I updated this blog?  what day of the year are we on now?  I am going to have to do some research before I even title this post... BUT... I can say, happily, we have done craft EVERY SINGLE DAY since the last update.  And all but two have been that silly pirate ship!

It had to have taken us at LEAST five days to finish the pirate ship.  I can't remember if it was 4 or 5 days of building the thing before it was finally ready to sticker.  Which Mike and the girls did beautifully.  As soon as it was "done" they both asked when they could "decorate" it... so, I broke out the brand new Sharpie markers that I got at BJs on Friday :)  Always a win there hehe.

So, after that, yesterday, we made "apple prints"  I cut 2 apples, one in half through the top and one in half through the middle.  I gave the kids some paint, some paper, and some paint brushes.  My thought was "Use the apples as stamps" the girls idea was smear brown paint on the paper then paint the outsides of the apples... Oh well, it kept their interest for a bit.



Today, we made CAMO CUPCAKES! in honor of Duck Dynasty Season 4.  I knew they were going to take awhile... i had no idea they were going to take SO long!  4.5 hours of cupcake making and UGH i was exhausted.  I sent Mike a text telling him "either pick up a pizza or we're having Mac n Cheese for dinner" we had Mac n Cheese lol.

but, here is the link (if you have FB) and here are the directions:
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151634151173487&set=a.10150413750383487.413354.689188486&type=1&ref=nf

I started out with 2 box mixes, one chocolate, one white.

Divide the batter into 4 bowls.

1: White batter.

2: White batter with green food coloring and a dash of chocolate batter.

3: Equal parts chocolate and white batter.

4: Chocolate batter.

Mix the different batters together until you get the colors you want. I ended up with a lot more chocolate batter than the rest of the colors, but I ended up making a few plain chocolate cupcakes to use it up.

Line a cupcake tin with paper liners.
For the batter, you can either use spoons and dump little blobs of each color into each wrapper, or you can get fancy and use pastry bags. I chose to get fancy with bags. It makes filling the cupcakes tins a little easier and a little less messy.

Just drop a bunch of blogs in each wrapper until they’re all about 3/4 of the way full. Bake according to the directions on the box.

Once the cupcakes are done baking, pop them out of the tins so they can start cooling.

I used this recipe for icing.

Diving the icing into 3 bowls. Keep one batch white/ivory. The other bowl you will add a little bit of green food coloring and a little bit of cocoa powder until it’s the desired color. The last bowl you will add cocoa powder until it’s the desired color brown.

For the fancy swirled icing, take 3 pastry bags. Fill each bag with it’s own color of icing. Take all 3 bags and put them into 1 larger bag with a start tip in it. 

Pipe a swirl onto the tops, and you’re done!

So, I bought the icing.  But, yeah, everything else was the same. 

The kids helped mix the batters and i was able to have them help me fill the cupcake holders.  It went really well, honestly.  We mixed the icing, and I let the girls hold the bag while i piped the icing onto the cupcakes.  so much work, but they were so excited that it made it worth it.  and mike was shocked that we made camo cupcakes when he came home from work haha.

218/219

So, I haven't forgotten the blog.. however, this craft has turned out to be a bit of a bitch.  We bought a pirate ship from Five Below a few weeks ago.  Well, i tried putting it together and failed miserably.  I couldn't even complete step 1- i couldn't get the four pieces to stick together... even with Iris' help.  It was a disaster.  So, tonight, Mike started.  He had to use hot glue, a hammer, a knife, Elmer's glue, and possibly some blood and sweat and he got the first and second step together... finally.  It isn't going to be pretty, but it is starting to go together.
On a side note- this is made for six year olds.  So far, the pieces have been warped, cut backward, and they don't stick together... i want to see a six year old make this thing :-p

4 Days to catch up on

Sorry about the delay- I will admit, I was in a bad mood Saturday and just did not want to blog.  Sunday/Monday I honestly just forgot until about 10:30 when we were getting ready for bed, and last night, I didn't get home until 10 and was EXHAUSTED.  So, without further delay, here they are:

Saturday

Well, Saturday was the first saturday of the month, so if you are a follower of this blog, you know what it means: HOME DEPOT DAY!  I know that the kids are actually starting to look forward to going to Home Depot each month.  They can't wait to see what is going to happen and they love it!  I am seriously starting to think about picking up a job at Home Depot lol.  This month, the kids got to make the "Rent Me Hourly" trucks... We have gotten good at this process too, we realize that we take the wheels home with us put them on AFTER they've dried.  The kids couldn't wait to get them on.  Iris' truck is sitting on the couch right now. They are well loved toys.

Sunday

Sunday slipped away from us quickly.  Penny ended up falling asleep before dinner and didn't wake up until after 7 a.m. Monday!  So, Iris and I made bathtime finger puppets out of an old rubber glove.  I cut the fingers off, and we decorated them with Sharpie markers.  I made a little girl, Iris just colored red blobs on them, but, they have played with them in the tub every night since Sunday :)

Monday

I had a Pampered Chef meeting to go to last night, so the girls worked on Sticker/Coloring sheets.  Penny won a felt coloring sheet at our family reunion on the 27th and I thought it would be a neat craft to let her do since she has never gotten to do one of those felt coloring pages.  In the big bag of stuff that Ama gave the girls, I found some Princess foam stickers, so I gave Iris markers and stickers and told her to make something pretty.  Here is what the girls came up with :)

Tuesday

Last night, Mike told me he had a sweet tooth and asked me to bring home some goodies from the Pampered Chef meeting.  So i loaded up a bowl of all sorts of sweets, and he ate some last night and took some to work today.  Well, the girls saw the cupcake this morning before we drove him to work and they wanted it.  It was going to be a disaster since it was hot in the venue last night and the icing had melted all over the paper, so i told them we would bake a treat today.  Thankfully, I usually keep a box or two of cake mixes/brownies/etc in the cupboard for just these occasions.  Today, we made swirl brownies.  Iris made the brownie part- she got to add all the ingredients and mix them all together and then Penny got to make the swirl topping.  Penny helped plop all the topping onto the brownies and then both girls swirled it in with a little help from me.  I must say, they are good bakers, they were delicious brownies!

You know, I think it is not so much the fact that I have to blog that keeps me from blogging.  Even though i am no longer having picture "issues" i think i avoid blogging because the pictures take so long to upload from e-mail to the computer, then load from the computer to Blogger, then organize on blogger... Yeah, it is probably sheer laziness, but i just don't enjoy doing that part.  Obviously the writing isn't what keeps me from doing it, I love to write about as much as I love to talk hehe

Days 212/213

212:  The girls decided to finish their Cinderella/Minnie mouse pictures yesterday.  I have been feeling super under the weather this week, so, I let that be craft yesterday.  Honestly, they were back at it today, starting on the second sheets in their coloring boxes.  Those were MAJOR hits!


213: Christmas in.. August?  Yup, that's right, we made Christmas ornaments today.  I was at Hobby Lobby today looking for white pottery to try that "sharpie marker and bake it" craft thing.  Well, as I was roaming the aisles, I found these ceramic- preglazed- bulbs.  I decided to try the idea on something small scale first, so i picked up three bulbs.  I used a mini muffin tin to hold the bulbs in place while they baked (350 for 30 minutes) i think i would do them for 40-45 minutes next time.  The ink MAINLY set, but not completely.  If you look closely, the g in Lustig started rubbing off after it cooled off and i tried to see how "permanent" it was.   Pre and post- baking photos follow...

Day 211: I have no idea

Well, don't ask me.  We had a conversation that went something like this:
Me: Well, let's see what we should do for craft today....
Iris: No, I know, i'll get everything we need. (runs to craft room comes out with Construction paper, paper punches, scallop scissors, and crayons)
Me: What are we doing??
Iris: Making a headrest!

Well, here is her headrest.. i don't know, but it kept her busy for almost 45 minutes and she is VERY proud of it.

Day 209/210

Sorry about last night, COX exploded and we didn't have internet for 90 minutes... i won't even go into the nightmare of trying to call tech support lol.

Yesterday, we pulled out a craft that Ama got the girls.  Two boxes of big princess/Minnie coloring pages and markers showed up in a bag that she gave us.  Iris adores Cinderella and Penny is addicted to Minnie, so, they were definitely a home run.  Penny is really working on her coloring.  I am seeing that she is understanding the lines of the pictures and where things start and stop much sooner than Iris did.  Now, i'm not saying she stays anywhere near the lines, but when she puts her mind to something, she gets the general shape and boundaries of the picture.

Iris is still in her monochromatic phase, so when she is coloring a picture, whatever color she starts with, the ENTIRE picture has to be that color.  She is getting much better at staying in the lines.

Day 210: Barometer

So, I saw this in Family Fun 2 months ago and I've wanted to build this ever since. I couldn't quite figure out the "needle" so I had to have mike's help with it.  It turned into a family craft, and it was VERY easy.  The best way we could figure out how to get the girls involved was to rip a piece of construction paper in half and give one girl the "sunny day" to color and the other "rainy day".  While they colored, Mike made the barometer, and i was the "assistant" for anyone that needed help.
Supplies needed:
Glass Jar
Balloon w/ neck cut off
Rubber band
2 straws
Glue
Construction paper

First, you stretch the balloon over the neck of the glass jar, then you secure it with a rubber band.  Next, you stick the two straws together to make it really long.  Mike cut the tip of one of the straws in half before he glued it to the top of the balloon, i'm not sure why though.  Once it was glued on, we stuck a construction paper "arrow" into the end of the straw.  Finally, we taped the Sunny day to the Rainy Day and hung it on the wall.  Barometer complete!

PS- Iris' Rain, AMAZING!  She made rain clouds with rain coming down.  I was really really proud of her, I know Mike was too :)