Day 131: Garden Transplanted

So, I am really proud of our potted garden.  I do have 1 concern though, I may have planted leaf lettuce, instead of head lettuce :/  If that is the case, I am going to have 10 pieces of lettuce... I guess time will tell!

Today though, we transplanted our garden into bigger pots.  We have been watching them grow now for quite awhile and I finally realized, they have outgrown their temporary housing and it was time to get them ALL into bigger pots.  So, on Friday, Penny and I went to Home Depot and got some more dirt and today, in 40* weather, we laid a drum liner on the floor in the kitchen and transplanted our broccoli and lettuce into larger pots.  Now, of course, it is going to freeze tonight (and possibly tomorrow night) so I have 4 big pots full of veggies in the house, and i'm hoping the cat doesn't get hungry in the middle of the night, because I will have 2 pissed off kiddos tomorrow!

After we transplanted the veggies, we went to the computer and found coloring pictures of each of the vegetables and I printed one out for each of the girls.  Then, I had them each color their pictures, and I used them to make plant markers.  I need to find a way to protect them from weather- any ideas?

Then I got to use my AWESOME new glitter pens that Mike got me for mother's day to write the names on the sticks.  I got some pretty exciting things for mothers day, especially crafting stuff- like 50 foam brushes!!!  YAY!!! and a TON of glitter glue pens :)  9 of them, the nicest glitter pens i have every used too.  These are mommy's glitter pens hehe.

Day 130: The Healthiest Ice Cream..

Well, by now, you all know that I am constantly on the look out for something fun to do with the girls, and today, we made shake ice cream.  Some of you may have seen it circulate on facebook, because that is where I found it this week.  It was intriguing because I knew that I readily had all the ingredients on hand.  I didn't take a picture, because, well, this is basically EXACTLY what it looks like.  Ours may have been a TAD softer than this, but darnit, it works. (This photo came from the Confessions of Crafty Witches facebook page... as does the following recipe)



I will add 1 thing to this "ingredients" list for this - OVEN MITTS, or really heavy duty winter gloves, because shaking this bag of ice makes your hands frigid in a hurry!  To change it up a little, I also made one batch using strawberry extract instead of vanilla, and it was VERY yummy.  So the "Vanilla extract", i would replace with "your favorite extract"... i am seriously contemplating chocolate something or other :-p

Now, for why I call this the healthiest ice cream- you have to shake the bag for ~8 minutes! And I did one batch with Penny and one with Iris.  Let me tell you what, I burned all the calories in the ice cream just by shaking that darn 5# bag of ice!

I can honestly say, both Iris and Penny were so excited to make ice cream today.  They love anything that involves helping me in the kitchen, to the point that i have them clearing the table lately, and they think it is awesome!  (wonder how long I can expect this to last? hehe) So getting to pour cream, and sugar, and extract into a bag and mix it up, then getting to pour a bunch of salt into ice, they thought it was so neat!

And, as promised, here is the recipe.  Enjoy!

Ice Cream In A Bag Less Than 10 minutes  ~Frisky

This is old I remember doing this back in school when I was little and when I do it with my kids they are amazed how fast it is lol 

Here is what you will need to make homemade ice cream in a baggie:

2 Tablespoon sugar
1 cup half & half (or light cream)
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup coarse salt or table salt(I used canning salt)
ice
gallon-sized Ziploc bag
pint-sized Ziploc bag

Mix the sugar, half & half and vanilla extract together. Pour into a pint-sized Ziploc baggie. Make sure it seals tightly.

Now take the gallon-sized Ziploc bag and fill it up halfway with ice and pour the salt over the ice. Now place the cream filled bag into the ice filled bag and seal.

Make sure it is sealed tightly and start shaking. Shake for about 5 minutes (or 8 minutes if you use heavy cream.)

Open the gallon-sized bag and check to see if the ice cream is hard, if not keep shaking. Once the ice cream is finished, quickly run the closed pint-sized baggie under cold water to quickly clean the salt off the baggie.

Open the baggie and pop in a spoon.

Hope you enjoy your homemade ice cream in a baggie as much as we do!

Day 129: Downward Facing Dog...

Mike took on craft today.  Iris wanted to make a dog, and he came up with these styrofoam dogs with pipe cleaner legs.  The girls really seemed to enjoy it, from what I could hear while I was making dinner.

They decided to use knitting needle to make pilot holes in the styrofoam to make jamming the pipe cleaner legs/tails in much easier... on a side note, that vase of knitting needles that I inherited have come in handy for craft more so than knitting, but hey, they are getting used at least :)

To finish them up, they put cotton ball heads on them.  I like the little ears that mike managed to mold out of the cotton balls.

So, the craft:  Iris made the dog that is standing straight.  Mike's dog has a curly tail.  And Penny made the dog that has taken yoga :-p

Day 128: Pizza

I have been thinking about it quite a bit lately, and i've realized that coming up with an "organized" craft every day is getting costly.  So, i've been trying to work through some crafts that we've had in the house, and I've been trying to think outside of the Hobby Lobby/Jo-Ann's boxes... Today, I was making pizza for dinner, and I figured, what better way to get the kids involved than to let them make a design on the pizza!

Iris loves to slice olives with the Pampered Chef Egg Slicer, so that is always a great way to get her involved in making anything.  And both girls love peeling veggies, though Iris is a bit better at actually getting things peeled at all :-p  I pan fried a piece of bacon for a mouth, drained a can of pineapples, we peeled carrots and sliced olives.  (basically, these are the makings of our standard pizzas, well aside from the carrots, but to make a Pizza Face, we needed hair!)

And here is the end product.... if it tells you anything, there is only 1 piece of pizza left that will be eaten for lunch tomorrow :)  Oh and check out the carrot goatee lol

Day 126: Glitter Fish

What a day!  I left the house @ 7:30 this morning, and FINALLY got home around 4.. then it was dinner, bath, and bed.. but between getting home and making dinner, I had to squeeze in craft.  I thought about some fun things we have done, and I know that the girls have really enjoyed playing with foam and sequin  so I pulled out a bunch of sequin and cut some fish shapes out of glittery foam.  Then I handed the girls glue and a cup of decorations and told them to have at it.

I was shocked at how little Iris added to her fish, but she did a very good job making a fish that looks like a fish... Then there is Penny haha.  I love seeing how her imagination works.  I really enjoyed seeing her so focused today, using the glue completely by herself, and keeping it on her fish even!

Day 125: Sticker Book

When Penny and Coraline had their surgeries last month, their aunt came to stay with us for a day so that I could jog back and forth to the hospital as needed.  She has been an amazing force in helping us keep up with crafting projects while the girls are with her or while she is here, and she came totally prepared for craft so that I didn't have to think about it at all.  One of the crafts that she brought was 2 sticker books full of make your own faces... god, that sounds creepy saying it like that! lol... but they are blank faces, and they have stickers full of earrings, bracelets, lips, eyes, eyebrows, finger nails, rings, necklaces, hair bows, glasses, etc.

I gave the girls each 2 faces and enough stickers to go with each.  Iris did a very good job with her pictures, she was even concerned about her accessories matching as she was putt the stickers on.  Penny did a great job too, until it came to the face, every thing went crazy at that point.  Eyes are on in different ways, a mouth upside down, etc.  I was almost afraid to take a picture of it, because it was a little frightening to look at, but if I have to experience, well then, you all get to too! :-)

Day 125: Bath Craft

UGH!!!! @#$%^*&!(!! Yup, that sums up the first craft attempt today.  We were going to make rainbow popcorn.  I even took the girls to the store to get butter since we ran out.  We got home, I started making dinner and could tell i was loosing the girls.  So I told them to both sit down.  I get the oil started on the stove, pour the popcorn in and all of a sudden Penny is FLIPPING, i mean, blood curdling, screaming, crying, in pain sort of melt down.  Well, there went the popcorn!  It only half popped and burnt :-/  Well, there went craft for today because that was the last of the popcorn!

After dinner, once Mike got home, we rushed them up to bed, because the meltdowns were continuing.  But, since I hadn't planned on anything else for craft, I was racking my brain trying to figure out a craft, and it came to me.  Body Paint!  GLITTER body paint!  And do you want to talk about easy and fun... GLITTER BODY PAINT!  2 simple ingredients: Aloe and GLITTER!

Set Up:

During:

Aftermath/Bath: