greetingarts

appreciating it all

Two weeks ago was teacher appreciation.  I took a few days off work so I could help with setting up posters and decorations at the start of the week, and the faculty luncheon on Wednesday.  It was wonderful to be back in the classrooms, and I was surprised at how easy it was to fall back into the volunteer thing!

I sewed some ruffled streamers for the decor, made Jessica's Chinese Cabbage Salad (again!  I love this dish), and baked three dozen devil's food cupcakes, decorated to look like apples.  I saw the idea on a blog some time ago, but I can't for the life of me remember where now.  Anyway, I thought they turned out quite well, and even though it was super hot, there was a minimum of frosting droopage.  I used mini pretzel rods for the stems and fresh spearmint for the leaves.  The cupcakes turned out quite moist, too.  I love my two-tiered cupcake carrier that I bought years ago.

For our past and current teachers, I crocheted some pencil bookmarks with perle cotton and a steel crochet hook (one I inherited when my grandma passed away, I thought about her as I was crafting), and knitted an i-cord pencil keychain charm.  No patterns, I saw the bookmark online a while ago but just winged it, and then made up the keychain pencil as I went along.  I made five gifts in all, but forgot to take a group photo.

We only have one more Monday left of this school year, and by the end of this month, we'll officially be on summer break.  It's been a very difficult year for me personally at home, at the girls' school, and adjusting to work.  I'm really looking forward to slowing down, enjoying my girls, and clearing out the clutter in my house this summer.  Well, maybe not the last thing so much, but I'm sure I'll be happy *after* it's clean.

love the earth baby

Five years ago, something felt weird after we gave Rebecca a bath and got her ready for bed.  My due date was tax day, so it's not like wasn't expecting it, but still - I wasn't quite sure whether or not my water had broken (I know, dumb, right?)... my parents were already here to help out, so my husband and I decided to go to the hospital (20 miles away) just in case.  But first, I wanted things to be as normal as possible for Rebecca, so I decided to read to her as usual before leaving.  She chose a long one, her favorite at the time, The Lorax.  And then, less than six or seven hours later, Jessie was in my arms.

So it seems only fitting that for two years, Jessica has wanted to have a Love the Earth party for her birthday.  Well, actually, it started as a Save the Earth party, which was supposed to entail all her guests going to the beach to clean it up and collect trash.  Instead, I made Earth cupcakes for her preschool class (with heart liners), along with plantable flower tags as party favors.

I can never quite get my cupcakes to be just the right size, not too flat but not overflowing, but these were passable.  The ocean was white whipped frosting with almost half a bottle of blue food coloring (could probably have used even more), and some green blobs on top were the land masses.  It all turned out not too shabby, pretty much the way I envisioned.  My geography was never any good, so don't look too closely.  Just call it artistic license.

 
Last week the girls and I made some paper and sprinkled seeds in towards the end of the process to make these plantable tag party favors.  Super easy, fun for us to do, and a big hit with the preschoolers.  I'll explain more about these later, I took lots of pictures along the way.  Good summer vacation project, too, when playing with water is a big plus and getting wet isn't a big deal.

Oh, happy birthday, Jessie, baby.  Five is so big.  And still so little.  Blow out your candles and let me wish for you to always know and feel how much I love you.

Disneyland, here we come.

a rafter of turkeys

Got stung by a bee on my right hand Saturday around noon, and it just now stopped looking like a balloon and I can finally say it's about 98% back to normal.  Of course, then I went and snipped a piece out of my middle finger on my left hand about ten minutes ago.  Sigh.  Sometimes I feel like I should just call it a day and crawl back into bed.

Anyhow, luckily I'm not hosting Thanksgiving dinner this year, and I got all of the supplies ready in advance for the craft I taught to Rebecca's 2nd grade class this afternoon.

The girls helped me get 25 kits put together, complete with all the ingredients...  One sandwich creme cookie, some candy corn, a chocolate bell, two mini M&Ms of the same color, and a cinnamon red hot.  Add a dollop of chocolate frosting, and you end up with a cute little turkey guy.

If you don't have mini M&Ms, you could use mini chocolate chips, too.  I got the idea here.  And *my* very own brilliant idea was to use the containers from my kids' favorite Shrimp Wonton Soup (can you tell they love it?  Why yes, I had no problem coming up with 25 containers!), because they were too good to just toss in the recycling bin.  This afternoon, the kids constructed their turkeys on top of the flipped over lids, and then when it was time to go home, they just turned the empty containers over so that those became the lids and the lids became the bottoms, and brought them home that way.  Hmmm.  Doesn't sound so earth-shattering when I write it all out, but I thought myself quite clever...

Here's the other art project Rebecca brought home, a recipe for leftover turkey casserole, in a cute, decorated turkey paper bag.  I definitely moved up this year, not like when she was in Kindergarten and her father and I didn't make the Top 5.  No, this year, I made it on to every single feather.

Happy Thanksgiving, whether you're American or Canadian, or not.  Because, really, there's always something to be thankful for, isn't there?

no random number generator for me

Lately, I'm figuring out I'm a pretty low-tech kinda gal.  Excel is nearly giving me a migraine (I think I'm going to scrap it in favor of pen, paper and a calculator), and it took me nearly an hour to format a simple little table in Microsoft Word.  So when it came to picking a winner, I just wrote the names down with a Sharpie on little strips of paper, folded them in half, and threw them all in a spider basket for the girls to choose.

Don't worry, this is just the mixing part.  Right after this picture was taken I made Rebecca close her eyes.  And the winner is... Katie!  Whoo hoo!  We've been blog friends for years (?!) now, and I'm hoping she'll post a picture of her little cuties eating those grit cakes she plans on making with the egg molds.

Thanks to everyone who played along, it was fun hearing from a lot of you for the first time.  Hope it helped to break the ice, I look forward to hearing from you more often!

yummy bear & bunny eggs, want one?

It took me only about six years to realize that the Korean supermarket almost right next door sells those really cute Japanese bento box accessories and things that make kids' lunches a real treat.  Colorful plastic picks for fruit or cheeses, reusable bamboo utensils and kid-sized chopsticks, and molds for rice and eggs.

I really hoped these would turn out decent, that they wouldn't be too fiddly and difficult to work with.  And guess what?  They were a breeze!  I've shaped rice with them, too, and everything comes out great.  So happy! 

I did some searching on the internet and found a few tips for using these molds.  You want to shape your eggs while they're still hot, and the molds should be wet when you start so nothing wants to stick.  After you put the egg in (a smaller size works well, I used the Large ones from Fresh & Easy, they're a bit smaller than Super AA or Extra Jumbo or whatever they have at the huge supermarket chains and Costco), I dropped the whole mold into a bowl of iced water for a few minutes.  The eggs popped out with no problem whatsoever.  The only slightly less-than-easy part is that you kind of need to have the egg yolk more or less in the center of the egg, and that can be achieved by turning and rolling it in the water while it's boiling.  I did the dishes as I was cooking the eggs, so I reached over and spun them with a spoon every few seconds or so.  No big deal.

I was so pleased with the way these worked out that I went back and bought an extra set of the bunny and bear molds to give away.  I figured, I've had so much luck and happy mail lately, it's time to return the favor.  I'm resisting the urge to turn this into a Box Tops giveaway, but I *am* still the Box Tops lady and if you have any you don't need for your own kids, please, please consider sending them to me, don't throw them away!

Anyway, leave me a comment if you'd like to have the egg mold, I'll probably pick a winner over the weekend.  No hoops to jump through, no questions to answer, I'd just like to know how many of you are out there... and maybe how you found me, how long ago?

Oh, and isn't that cursive handwriting fabric cool?  I think I'll make a journal cover out of it.  Or maybe a lunch bag.  Oh, who am I kidding?  It's going on the shelf and will be lucky if it gets cut and put to use before Jessie starts 3rd grade.

gummy yummies

I'm trying to clean out my pantry lately, because we have too many old boxes and cans of things that haven't been used in ages.  Cous cous, Spam, some things I don't even recall buying.  Dear sister, did you give me a box of instant flan like a decade ago?  I think I moved it here from our old house.  I don't even *like* flan.  Maybe I should give it back to you at the baby shower...

Anyway, so I was looking for a way to use up the box of lemon-flavored Jell-O and found a recipe for gummy candy.  Unfortunately, I can't remember where I found it so I can't link to it, but I do remember what the ingredients were.

 

1 package of instant Jell-O, any flavor (you'll want to use the kind that has sugar in it, no need to be healthy here, you are making gummy candies, after all)

3 envelopes of unflavored gelatin

a generous 1/3 cup of water (that means put a little bit more than 1/3 of a cup)

You melt all of the ingredients together in a small saucepan, then spoon into your molds.  I used some IKEA silicone ice cube trays (filled only halfway) and a chocolate candy alphabet mold.  I had to work quickly, since this stuff really is sticky and starts to get difficult to pour.  But I'm sure you can remelt it by heating it up again, too.  When they've solidified after just minutes in the refrigerator, you just pop them out and into the nearest open, impatiently waiting mouth.  I didn't have any trouble removing them from the molds, since they're rubbery and bendable (both the molds and the candies).

This totally reminds me of the Rainbow Finger Jell-O my mom used to make for potlucks when we were little.  Almond (white) Jell-O and layers of red, green and yellow goodness.  It was always so hard for me to wait for each color to solidify.  Rainbow Finger Jell-O and watermelon baskets, those were my mom's standbys.  Remember, Mom?

The girls had a great time with this, although Rebecca now says (after greedily licking the spoon and fighting over the saucepan), that she doesn't like the taste, just the smell.  That's quite all right, Jessie likes the gummies enough for both of them and will be more than happy to eat the whole batch herself.

cupcakes for dinner

April Fool's Day!  Good excuse to have some fun.

I made the girls (and Daddy, too) cupcakes for dinner.  Meatloaf batter, mashed potato frosting, minced carrot sprinkles.  Really fun and Rebecca ate two.  Extra bonus, the meatloaf cupcakes bake in 15 minutes, instead of the 55 minutes that a regular meatloaf takes.  I just might do this more often.

Celebrate something every day, right?

last of the valentine loot

Before I say goodbye to Valentine's day, I forgot to show you some things we made.

A mousie for Rebecca's teacher, based on Robert Mahar's pattern.  I used two layers for the heart on the bottom, to give the mousie something more substantial to stand on, and so the cute Swiss cheese holes would show up better.

And for the principal, librarian and other staff, Jessie helped me dip some store-bought cookies in dark chocolate and fancy them up with Valentine sprinkles. 

She took some Princess valentines and drew a little happy face in the "To" section, and painstakingly printed a "J" in the "From" area.  So sweet.  This one was one of her last, she was getting really tired.  She made around 25, and we gave all but one away.  I wish I'd thought to take a picture of the whole batch, I can't get enough of her cute little scribble faces with the huge eyes.

Quite a haul for her first valentine party, don't you think?  Enough loot to rival Halloween... almost.

after-Christmas sale on cranberries?

If any of the grocery stores have them on sale, I'm there.  People, you must try this recipe.  I mean, it can hardly even be called a recipe, it's so simple.  Water, sugar, cranberries and a stove.  They turned out so well, are so festive, and took a minimal amount of effort. 

Even my husband, who really doesn't get all fired up about anything that isn't red meat or seafood related, could probably have devoured at least half a bowl of these little gems on his own.  And quite possibly did.

I've got one more bag of cranberries in the fridge, and I'm totally making more of these for New Year's Eve.  Won't you join me?  I'm telling you, you won't be disappointed.

artichoke head

Happy Earth Day!

For dinner, we're going to eat the largest artichokes I've ever seen.  I think it's going to take at least an hour to steam, and maybe about that long to eat... dipped leaf by leaf into a little sauce made of mayonnaise, mustard, lemon juice, salt and pepper.  So yummy!  And guess how much they cost me?  $1 each.  A dollar!

Too bad I missed National Artichoke Heart Day on March 16^th.  Oh well, I guess we're making up for it today.  Better late than never, right?