pinterest idea

Kayla and I made these for decorations for a church party. The idea is based on the book Look What I Made with a Leaf by  

Morteza E. Sohi

pinterest idea

We've been making salt dough hand prints every January since 2010 (when Jared was 3). The kids already love being able to compare their hand size to previous years.

Salt Dough recipe: 1 part flour, 1 part hot water, 1/2 part salt.
Example 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, 1/2 cup salt.
Make sure the water is hot. Cold water will be harder to kneed

Kneed in food coloring to desired shade. Sprinkle a little flour on the top before your kids put their hands in the dough. The dough will be less likely to stick to their hands that way. Let dry for at least a week before moving. Flip over and let other side dry.

pinterest idea

Handprint wreath: This is probably not the first time this has ever been done. But I haven't seen it like this before.

pinterest idea

I'd say a year of school has improved Jared's handwriting just a bit!

candy land party

Jared and Kayla are having their birthdays this week! Jared is turning 6 and Kayla is turning 4. We had their party this weekend. It was a candy land themed party.

Come on in! Passed the giant Lollipops!

And have some food!

 I came up with this cool idea to keep the napkins from flying away. I just took one side of the napkin package off so the rest of it could still hold the napkins together. It's way better than putting a rock on top of the stack!
 
 There were five games to go along with some of the lands in Candy land. First for the chocolate swamp they played a guessing game where the kids could either win a chocolate chip or a mini chocolate cupcake.
 
 Kayla got a chocolate chip. She was not pleased..
 
 For the Lord of Licorice they had to eat a licorice without using their hands as fast as they could.
 For the peppermint forest we had a race where they had to keep a mint candy on a spoon as they ran.
 Grandma nutt had a toss game where they threw balls into a box decorated with peanuts. I don't have any pictures of the kids playing this one, but they loved throwing the balls into the box!
 Later the babies enjoyed playing with the box
 
 And finally a gumdrop guessing game where they had to figure out how many gumdrops were in a jar. That one was funny because there were 166 gumdrops and none of the guesses were even close. The winner guessed 103.
 
 Cake time

 
 And presents
 
 Disassembling the decorations
 
 It was a great party! Thank-you to all who attended and Happy Birthday to Jared and Kayla!

It's strawberry season. I love strawberry season! Fortunately we live close to several strawberry farms where we can go pick our own berries for super cheap. I try to do that as much as possible in June. Today we got about 23 lbs, which I thought was pretty good. Jared was even helpful this year and filled up his own bucket with ripe berries all by himself!

For the last couple years I've used our strawberries for fruit smoothies and fruit leather. Then earlier this year I discovered homemade fruit snacks and love making this too. But my newest discovery is sorbet. I've made two batches now and it's heaven. If you want to check out the recipe go here. I used lemon juice instead of orange (and only about a 4th of it), didn't add any water, and juiced the berries so there was no pump since we have a pretty cool juicer.

But today I was pureeing berries for smoothies and it occurred to me that I should post to pinterest this nifty trick I came up with a couple years ago. It's tricky to pour puree into to freezer bags. You can very easily spill if you don't hold the bag right and loose all that precious strawberry puree. So, now I put my freezer bags in a cup so it stands up while I'm pouring into it. There's much less risk of spilling then. Plus its easy to see how much puree to pour into the bag because you just need to go to the top of the cup.

Next project; Strawberry pies. Especially since tomorrow is National strawberry rhubarb pie day!