Every Day Bread

Feeling Crabby?

Make Crabapples!

Homemade Sand

Are you on the sensory bin craze? If you don't know what a sensory bin is you can google it for about a million ideas. It is basically an "invitation to play" in a bin. Usually thematic. Usually based on the idea of encouraging imagination. Usually considered educational. Usually tries to improve fine motor skills. All good things, I suppose. I have not been on the sensory bin band wagon, for several reasons... 

1- it looks like ALOT of work.

2- I think it would entertain the boys for five minutes and then I'd be annoyed with all the aforementioned work I put into it.

3- I'd need to invest in a bunch of miniature toys.

4- I'm not so sure kids need help with their imagination.

Well, today called for an emergency activity... So I made cloud dough (me and play dough don't get along, but that story is for another day). Essentially 7 cups of flour and 1 cup of oil. I used canola oil because then I don't have to worry about when they eat it, because they will. You can use baby oil if you don't have this problem. I used some old old rye flour and so it has a nice sandy colour. I added a little peppermint extract to make it smell good. And dumped it in a small tub with some dinosaur toys and Popsicle sticks. Um... It has now been half an hour and the play is still going strong. Granted the original "dinosaur habitat" idea has degenerated because now there are alphabet magnets, spatulas, and tractors involved. But whatever. In conclusion, this was fun but I am not going to start setting up a new one daily, or even weekly. Hopefully the dough will last awhile, but first I have to find the lid to the container! 

Choo-choo!

Another book project! "Freight Train" by Donald Crews is a favourite in our house. If you love trains and rainbow colours and fantastically simple artwork then get this book. 

In the summer I was given two huge old rolls of newsprint paper. Huge. And I thought this book would make a perfect collaborative art project with the boys. We had a snowy, no school holiday, so I finally pulled a roll out of the shed. The inside of the tube is full of spider webs and dead bugs, but the boys thought that was cool, so whatever. Anyways, I let them pick a page from the book to copy (thankfully they both wanted the same page, so there was no fight) and off we went. The boys painted the background on their own (I traced a trestle bridge for Jacob to paint over) and then I cut out each train car, in the correct colour, and the boys each picked three to complete. They carefully copied the cars in the book. Then we did the tender and engine together because they did fight over who was going to do the best part. After it was hung on the wall it was noticed that we forgot the steam so I let them sponge it on with strict instructions to NOT paint the wall. Surprisingly they didn't paint the wall. 

Here it is:

Afterwards Jacob insisted on making a smaller pencil drawing all on his own. Here's a cute picture where he is working on it. It turned out fabulous, by the way.

I told you it was cute! What a little sweetie!!

Learn to Draw... Learn to Build...

I am officially in love with the Ed Emberley books, and I've only seen one. Jacob LOVES copying the pictures in it and then he took the book and used the drawing instructions to build the pictures out of blocks. This was all his idea! I just love it when creativity takes over like this.

Learn to Draw...

... the Ed Emberley way. There is a whole series of books by Ed Emberley and I finally got one from the library. Jacob loved it! And so did I, since my artistic skills are always being requested, and I am, quite frankly, not good at drawing trains, construction vehicles, farm equipment, or trucks.

Here is the book we got: 

Here is a fire truck I drew and Daniel added onto.

Here is Jacob's fire truck, complete with burning building. I didn't help at all.

Then he drew a fire breathing dragon.

Awesome. 

There are hundreds of pictures in this book, each one with step by step instructions. Basically, he says, if you can draw a few basic shapes you can draw anything. I can't wait to try more of this book and some of his other ones!

Blown Away

So when I heard of this great kids' book called "Windblown"  I knew I just had to request it from my library. I'll let the pictures speak for themselves (mostly).

Jacob copied every page in the book. The snail and chicken were my favourites. 

Then he got creative.

A cement truck. 

Then Daniel decided he wanted to get involved.

A baby lamb.

So much fun. I saved the pieces to play again another day. 

Note: We are drawing using dry erase markers on clear page protectors. 

My Knights in Shining Armour

Before and After... Knight Helmets

Here's the pre and post painted shots of the kids' knight helmets for Halloween. As you can imagine I have spent a lot of time threatening them that if they wreck them before the big day they don't get to go trick or treating.

I am so amazingly thrilled with how these turned out.

Here is the amazing tutorial! 

HAPPY Halloween

Okay, so I don't like Halloween. I'd prefer to be the Scrooge with my lights out, hunkered down in the basement with my own big bowl of candy that I'm not sharing. But hey, I have kids, and I'm just not that mean. We made some Halloween decorations that are HAPPY so no kids will get scared when they come to our house. Happy pumpkins and happy ghosties. 

So I printed out a bunch of pumpkin faces that I cut up and the boys kind of did a Mr. Potato Head thing and made their favourite faces. And then we carved them. And by we I mean me. And it was just as much NOT FUN as I remember it being the last time I carved a pumpkin, which was probably 20 years ago. But the boys were happy. (Daniel's is a piggy pumpkin, not sure why)

My poor pumpkins. I don't know what I did or didn't do, but it is still one day before Halloween and they are caving in on themselves. Between that and multiple meltdowns today, I was inspired to make the crying baby pumpkin. So much for happy!

We also made some ghosts out of small pop bottles that will (hopefully) look cool with glow sticks lighting them up. They are happy too. And they were more fun to make than the jack-o-lanterns. I'll post a picture of them when I post a picture of the boys with their costumes... So check back!

Some More S'Mores?

Okay. I admit it. This is another idea I got on pinterest. The pinterest ones were prettier, but I let my kids make them instead of doing it myself.

You Say Tomato...

I say tomato sauce! Yes, I know I rarely (okay pretty much never) blog about something other than my kids or dessert, but not today...

In previous years I did not have much success with making tomato sauce. It was either way too much work for a couple jars or way too watery. This year I planned not to make sauce because I knew I'd have a baby and I didn't want to plan on spending a bunch of time making something mediocre. So, because I like tomatoes, my plan was to plant two cherry tomato plants instead of my usual 4-6 beefsteak tomato plants. Well, I went to the peavy mart greenhouse and, can you believe it, I couldn't narrow my selection down to two plants. I bought three: golden cherry tomatoes, black cherry tomatoes, and a regular old red cherry tomato plant. And this is what happened over the summer:

The golden cherry tomato plant took over our deck. It was crazy. The vines crawled under our deck across the floor of our deck, and nearly made the stairs impassible. When the first frost was coming, I cut all the vines with tomatoes off because I had nothing to cover it with.

The black cherry tomato plant was so heavy with fruit that it tipped over and Jeff had to tie a rope around the shed to hold it up. 

The so-called patio cherry tomato plant was labelled wrong, and though the plant itself didn't grow very big it sure produced a lot of mid-sized tomatoes all squished together. 

On top of this, we were asked to take care of and help ourselves to our neighbour's normal cherry tomato plant. It grew so thick that when the frosts became constant the middle of the plant survived and kept growing delicious tiny tomatoes.

Now what? Truly the only answer is tomato sauce. I've now made three batches. They are all a little different due to using whichever tomatoes were ripe, but this sauce is tasty and easy.

My first batch I cooked and then put in the blender. The next two batches I blendered the tomatoes and onions before cooking. I found this easier since putting hot things in the blender is sometimes dangerous (ask me how I know that!). If I owned an immersion blender I would probably cook it up first, then blend. Anyways, here is how to make it:

Fill your large crockpot (slow cooker, whatever you want to call it) with tomatoes. Don't peel them. Don't seed them. Quarter them if they are big. (Now throw them in the blender if you and blending first... Filling up the crockpot is just how I measured how many tomatoes to use.) Add your onion. This batch I used four small ones from our garden. Then add all this stuff:

Big splash of olive oil

4 tbsps brown sugar

1 tbsp minced garlic

1 tbsp dried oregano

2 tsp salt

1/2 small can tomato paste

The tomato paste helps thicken it a little and also makes your sauce look more appealing if it is made mostly out of black and yellow tomatoes. Seriously, the first batch of sauce is a little weird looking since I didn't add the tomato paste.

Simmer in that pot on low for 8-10 hours. (I put it on high for the first hour to heat it up faster). Cool and spoon into jars. Safe to freeze for one year! One pot makes about 6 pint jars and takes very little effort. Two pint jars is a meal for us. Don't freeze stuff in those big mason jars, they crack (ask me how I know this!). Also tastes good as pizza sauce. I think I will be sad when the sauce runs out before next season and I have to buy it from the grocery store... Though I think I still have enough tomatoes left to make one smaller batch! Yum.

Disclaimer: I got the idea to not peel the tomatoes and blender them before cooking from someone at church. She's been making her sauce this way since forever. Then I surfed the internet for seasoning ideas and came up with this combo myself. Feel free to edit. I think it could use some parsley!

Rock On Samuel!

Here's my little Samuel... Already 10 weeks old. We had the swing in the kitchen and he hated it... good thing he seems a little happier in this rocking chair! 

Happy 5th Birthday Jacob!

Holy moly the boy is five! He was quite sure about what he wanted for his birthday. The only gift he wanted was Fruit Loops and he wanted a smartie cake (specifically with smarties inside the cake and a five on top made out of smarties).

So we had Fruit Loops for breakfast and then we were all cranky because we had a massive sugar high and the subsequent crash. This is why we don't have sugary cereal! But it was so worth it to see him this happy.

We waited to have cake until after his favourite supper (fajitas). My kids don't eat cake. They lick the icing off and that is it... Which works great for me because I don't like icing so I just eat their cake. Anyways, I decided to make the cake part a Rice Krispie cake with smarties mixed inside. Both boys thought it was delicious... Also way easier to do the whole cake the night before this way. 

We had so much fun celebrating him on his special day! 

There Be Dragons!

Another book inspired project that the big boys have been wanting me to do with them is dragons from "Jillian Jiggs." We've been waiting to get a cardboard box that would work and we finally got one that when I cut it in half worked perfect.

ROAR!!

Let Them Be

So I have been doing a lot of research and learning lately about early childhood education. I'm not really going to get into my insights or opinions here, however, TODAY I learned something pretty profound all on my own.

I found THIS activity and thought it looked like fun. Painting fall trees using egg cartons to stamp leaves. This appealed to me because neither of my big boys like any arts and crafts that require getting their hands messy, so finger painting or hand/foot prints are always out. Plus I love the colours of fall.

So I painted two trees so Daniel could stamp one and Jacob could copy the other. I put the appropriate colours out on a tray for them, cut up an egg carton, and had everything all set to go before I called them to the table. NOTE: they have been asking to do a craft for awhile, it has just been hard for me to get organized. Anyways...

This took Daniel about 4 seconds.

Jacob painted his tree, not listening to me at all, and then spent 2 seconds stamping the leaves.

I was annoyed. 

Then Jacob wanted my other pre-painted tree and gave it some "pokey" branches and a face before adding the leaves. 

Notice the addition of green paint that he asked for.

Meanwhile, Daniel wanted to paint his own tree and I ended up with this masterpiece entitled "Daniel (who has a beard) Hugging A Tree" ... I love it. 

I begin to realize that I should just back off and let them be.

And then when I back off completely I get this beautiful piece of artwork. 

"For Mommy" he says. I want to cry.

And this. When Daniel saw Jacob's dragon fly he asked for another paper and he painted "The Dragonfly Gets a Bandaid at the Hospital" ... And that is his signature at the top.

Stupid fall tree with stamped leaves. My kids' original, no mommy help or direction, paintings are way more awesome and totally worth hanging on the wall.

Plum Perfect

So... We've been here five full summers now. 

The first summer we didn't even know we had a fruit tree.

The second summer we had small green balls on our tree and had no clue what kind of fruit it was.

The third summer we picked and ate 7 tiny delicious plums. 

The fourth summer we had a whole dozen plums. Daniel ate them all.

And this summer...

Birthday Kake!

Ok... So I look a little crazy in this picture... Don't worry, my hair was just having issues... Severe issues. And yet I am sharing this picture anyways.

Jacob and Daniel put 11 candles on for me... I think it looks great!

It is a two layer devil's food cake with caramel icing in the middle and fudge frosting on top and KitKat bars around the outside. Trust me, it is as delicious as it sounds.

KITKATKAKE

My Three Boys

These brothers definitely love each other a lot! I sure am blessed to be their Mama.

Someone New in the Kitchen!

Welcome home Samuel!

Playing Trains

Peanut Butter & Chocolate Cupcakes (and smiles)

Here are some pictures of those cupcakes from my last post. Before baking. After baking. And cut in half, you can see the yummy peanut butter middle. I need to make these again.

And for some reason I let the boys buy these at the corner store. Basically a ring pop (giant sucker) except instead of being on a ring it was on Mater teeth (from the movie Cars). Ridiculous and sticky. Please don't buy these ever.