Jell-O Suncatchers

Back before Easter, I was flipping through the newest issue of Family Fun Magazine and found this fun idea to make "plastic" sun catchers using gelatin and food coloring.  Fun, right?

I asked the kids if they wanted to try it out and they gave me kind of a hard time about it, but eventually gave in when I told them they could squirt in the food coloring.  Food coloring is fun!

So we gathered our materials:

• A box of unflavored gelatin
• Some food coloring
• Some glitter
• Some plastic plates
• Little bowls (make sure they are heatproof so they don't collapse when you add boiling water)
• Spoons for mixing
• And some boiling water (I was in charge of water).

First we put an envelope of the gelatin (which is icky smelling stuff) into each of our little glass bowls.

Then I carefully added 3 Tablespoons of boiling water to each.  The steam came leaping out of my Pyrex measuring cup at one point causing me to spill a full spoon of boiling water over my hand - ouch!  Be careful!

The kids diligently mixed until the gelatin dissolved in each bowl.  It got a bit lumpy here and there, but with more and more mixing, the lumps eventually went away.  I tried zapping one of the bowls in the microwave for a few seconds to see if that would help and - oh my - that was not a good idea.  There was a lot of frothing and bubbling.  Very frightening. I wouldn't recommend it.

Once we had the gelatin powder all dissolved the kids added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl and mixed that in well.  Somehow everyone ended up with very green hands.  Not sure whether that was an accident or intentional.

Then we poured each batch of colored gelatin onto an individual plastic plate.  I had these strangely shaped rimmed plates.  Bigger flatter ones would probably be easier to work with.  It was hard to peel the dried gelatin out of the corners of these.

Anyway, we spread the hot gelatin mixture out on the plates and then added a few drops of a contrasting color and swirled it around on a few.  We also dusted the surfaces with a little bit of glitter.

Then we waited overnight for the cooling, drying process to take place.

The next day I peeled the almost dry (it was still a little rubbery) result off of the plates and laid them out to dry the rest of the way.  You can see the swirls on the surface of the finished product and how they got a weird bendy, organic-type shape to them.  I think this was because of the weird plates.  If you had bigger ones and could just pop the dried disks off, I bet they would stay flat.

In the magazine, they said to cut the dried "plastic" into shapes.  But when I tried that with the blue one, it was too brittle and cracked all along the edges.  Maybe if I had tried when they weren't quite dry it would have worked better.  Or if I had a decent pair of scissors.  Or talent.  This picture is supposed to show the cracking.

I like the effect of the bendy circles anyway.  I think they have a blown art-glass sort of feel to them.  This one reminds me of the sun.

This was a fun project, but sort of dangerous and tedious for the kids.  They liked the coloring part, but the boiling water part was sort of nerve-wracking and the waiting-for-things-to-dry part wasn't fun at all.  But the final results were really cool.

Food Children are (almost) Willing to Eat

I made this great Salsa Chicken in the crock pot last night.  Sprout ate a bite of the chicken and declared it to be "not my favorite chicken (which would be nuggets, thus the picture) but not bad."  This is high praise indeed and the grown-ups thought it was quite delicious.

I didn't take a picture of what we actually had.  Too busy eating.

I know it's not fun...but having the kids not throw themselves on the floor in fits of agony over how horribly disgusting their dinner is is about as good as it gets some days.



Slow Cooker Salsa Chicken
Put the following into a slow cooker (mine is 4 quarts):

4 Frozen chicken breasts  sprinkled with
1 packet of low sodium Taco Seasoning
1 can of Cheddar Cheese Soup
1 cup of salsa (I used Chi Chi's Mild)
1 tiny can of green chilis

Turn the cooker on low for 6-8 hours.
Shred the chicken up in the sauce.
Serve over rice and topped with sour cream if you really feel fancy.

Snow Day

We, like most of the East Coast, are in the midst of a big big BIG blizzard.  So Tater and Sprout are home from school.  Again.

We had our traditional Snow Storm French Toast for breakfast.  I assume that's what everyone makes with the eggs, milk and bread that they hoard pre-storm.

We have watched a ridiculous amount of TV.  Again.

The snow is blowing sideways and so I am hesitant to let them go outside to play.  Not to mention that Sprout has a "boot" on her broken foot and therefore can't wear a snow boot.  Seems like frozen toes would be unavoidable if she goes out.

Right now they are playing with a mixture of cornstarch and water and food coloring (3/4 cup cornstarch + 1/3 cup of water + a few drops of food coloring = weird slime).  I fear that they will have blue hands for several days. Smurf-like.

Yesterday, during my pre-storm preparations, I bought this new Pillsbury cookie dough.  It has only the ingredients that you would actually put in cookies if you were motivated enough to bake them from scratch.  So when I asked the kids if they wanted to bake the cookies they said, "YES!" Of course.

So Sprout said, "Can I mix them?" as she grabbed the whisk.  Um...there's no actual mixing involved.

Then Tater said, "Can I measure things?" as he went to get the measuring spoons.  Nope...no measuring either.

Sprout: "Can I scoop them out and roll the little balls?"

Nope - pre-formed.

Sprout: "These cookies are NO FUN."

Sorry.

We put them on the tray and did the little fork crosses on top and they are in the oven now.  I am guessing they'll think they're more fun in about 15 minutes.

There are a bunch of coupons available on the Pillsbury site (for other products, too) and if you Google for Pillsbury Simply Cookie Dough there seem to be some coupons there, too.

Happy sort of baking.

Teacher Gifts - Candy Pretzels

This week we are still deep into preparations for Christmas.  Sprout had her Winter Concert on Thursday night and she performed brilliantly in the chorus and orchestra (cello).  The layout of her school "cafetorium" is such that about 10 people in the front row can actually see anything, so my pictures of the actual performance are awful.  But she sure was cute!

Saturday brought the "Storm of the Century" to Southeastern PA and we spent the day alternating between shoveling the driveway and working on our teacher gifts.  As my shoveling technique leaves much to be desired (mostly I desire not to have to use it!) I will tell you about the gift project instead. 

Candy-covered pretzel sticks!

I found a cute little Christmas Tree candy mold at Michael's for $1.99 and figured that melting couldn't be all THAT hard. 

So I also got these little melty candy things. 

We dumped a bunch of these into a plastic bowl and melted them in the microwave, following the directions on the package.  About 2 minutes at 50% power seemed to do the trick for us.  The result was this stuff that looks very much like melted crayons.  Yum.

I always thought that the candy resulting from melting and forming these things would be completely gross - like white chocolate, which I hate.  But it is actually quite delish if you can get beyond the color factor.  Much less waxy than I would have expected.  And with something crunchy and/or salty...mmmm....

I put the kids to work putting little dots of the different colors into the molds to make "ornaments" on the trees.  They used toothpicks to drop the red and green into the molds and did a very nice job.

They are a good work crew.  And very cute.  Especially in their jammies.

The melting and dotting of the red and green took a little while, especially since they were also (of course) watching something on TV.  But it seemed like on a jammie day in a blizzard, you should be allowed to take your time.

See how un-control freaky I was being?  Good, right?

Once the dots were done and had set for a little while we melted some white (with speckles in it...fancy!) and filled the mold about 1/3 of the way up.  They each did three and didn't even fight about it.  I love this project.

Then we took pretzel rods and rolled the ends in some of the melted candy. 

After the first batch I just started dipping them in the little bowl, which was actually a little easier.

Then the dipped pretzels went into the molds, so that they were about 3/4 of the way up the little trees, and then we covered them the rest of the way with melted candy.

We had to prop the ends up so the pretzels weren't flipping out of the mold while the candy hardened.  The Brookstone catalog worked nicely.

We waiting about an hour to make sure they were really and truly dry and hardened and then carefully (oh so very carefully) popped them out of the molds.

Not bad, right??

I figured out later that popping them into the fridge briefly made them a little easier to get out of the molds.  I am guessing that you could put some kind of non-stick into the molds to make them come out easier.  But then wouldn't the candy be greasy??

We also made green ones and red ones, with the other colors for the "ornaments".  

Then there was some extra melted candy stuff leftover so I hunted around for something to put it on.  I came up with graham crackers. I think potato chips would have been quite fab.  Wish I had had some.

I dressed them up with some sprinkles.  I also tasted a few to make sure they were good.  I am all about quality control.

I had purchased some cute little candy boxes, but once I realized that there were more teachers requiring gifting than I had originally planned, we moved on to plan B - some cellophane bags that I had left over from last year.

I put one of each color tree in the bag, and then two of the graham cracker squares (which filled in the bottom nicely, I thought).  I tied the tops with gold ribbon, but then I remembered that I had some jingle bells left from some other project from years ago.

And then when I was digging out the jingle bells (and dropping them all over the floor, scaring the dickens out of the dogs), I found some silver pipe cleaners, which were also left over from some other project.

So I put the bells on the pipe cleaners and made these funky little twisty things out of the pipe cleaners (wrapped them around a pencil).  I think the final embellishment is quite Martha.  Even though I am so totally NOT.

These are all packed up now for the kids to take to school tomorrow.  I am so hoping that there is no droppage or breakage.  But I know that taking them in myself is way too control-freakish.

Awareness is the first step.  Right?

This candy-molding thing was fun.  I would totally do it again - but it would need to be for some occasion where we give the results away.  Because really, yummmmm!

Traditions and Obsolescence

I come from a family steeped in tradition. Not like the Mayflower or anything, but what we do when. What we eat. How we celebrate. All full of traditions.

One of the traditions we have is that on Black Friday, the kids and I build gingerbread houses.

Once Sprout and I went to a fancy gingerbread decorating event at a fancy schmancy bakery. And that was way fun. But the next year, when we tried to go back, the fancy schmancy bakery had gone belly up (the nerve). There we were, wandering the streets of Downingtown wondering what we were to do to fill the gaping tradition void (for the tradition that had been started only the year before).

Luckily our wandering led us to a store with Gingerbread House kits. And that has been our traditional mode of gingerbread house construction for lo these many years.

This year, we were a little late on getting the houses built. We were busy doing stuff like this. That's Sprout sitting in Tony Romo's locker. Eat your heart out Jessica Simpson! Tater and our favorite Texan are sitting in Jason Witten's locker. How fun is that?

They didn't actually sit there all week. But we were traveling home from Dallas on Black Friday and, strangely, Southwest isn't big on building Gingerbread Houses during the flights.

But today we finally had some time and went to Target (oh, Target...how I love you) where we purchase two of these fine Gingerbread House kits ($9.99 each).

With...wait for it...premade icing!

Now, if you have no experience with the powdered Royal Icing that usually comes in these kits, that may seem like no big deal.

But, really...big deal. Last year I attempted to use spray icing. I do not recommend this. Too squishy. Too slide-y.

The pre-made icing was an excellent upgrade to the already convenient nature of the kit. So convenient in fact that my darling children decided that, after the initial construction phase, they did not need me to help.

Sniff. I am not needed. I'll be over here feeling sorry for myself. Or, maybe taking pictures.

Sprout was carefully doling out her candies. Attempting to use as few as possible without me noticing her evil scheme to have lots of leftovers to eat.

I'm on to you...
She was also trying to watch Star Wars while building. Multi-tasking with frosting can be trouble!

This guy has trouble written all over him. Or maybe that's frosting. Definitely frosting.

I think the end results were quite festive. This one here is Tater's. The one at the top is Sprout's. I did manage to get her to put most of the candy on - but it wasn't easy!

The tradition carries on. Despite my apparent obsolescence.

We did have an unfortunate incident with some roof slippage on Tater's house. And I was summoned to help with the repairs - so I guess I do still have some role to play. Whew!

Next year I am going to break out the spray icing again so there will be lots of repairs for me to help with. Gotta stay relevant!

Cookie Decorating Event - December 6th

I wanted to let you know about this great event that benefits one of my favorite charities. Mommy's Light helps kids who have lost their mothers (sob) remember special traditions that they enjoyed with their mothers when they were alive (sob again).

They are also some of the most wonderful and committed women you will ever meet, working tirelessly to help these kids. I do some volunteer work in their office each week and I am in awe.

The Embassy Suites in Valley Forge, PA is hosting a Holiday Cookie Decorating Party on Sunday, December 6th from 2 - 4PM and the proceeds will go to Mommy's Light to help them do all of the good work that they do.

I can't get this little flyer to be any bigger - but hopefully if you click on it, it will get big enough to see the details. I will list them out here just in case...

When? December 6, 2-4PM

Where? The Grille at Chesterbook - Embassy Suites Valley Forge
888 Chesterbrook Blvd, Wayne, PA

How much? $15 for each adult/child set (1 adult + 1 child)
$5 for each additional adult or child

What? Hot chocolate, decorating holiday cookies and making holiday crafts.
Entertainment by Sally's Music Circle and a special visit from Santa!

How to Sign Up? Call 610-407-7106 OR e-mail Liz.Iozzi@Hilton.com by December 1st.

We'll be there.

Tater will be the one running away from Santa.

Slumber Party

First, I have to get all braggy because I am excited that I am now a contributor over at Chesco Moms. So, it isn't that I haven't written in more than a week. I just haven't written HERE. Which is inexcusable, yes. And yet, I am making excuses.

But I did want to share with you the events of last Friday evening when, in honor of Sprout's 10th birthday (with which I am still coming to terms), we hosted our very first SLUMBER PARTY!

And yes, there was even actual slumber involved!

So, let's run through this in chapters...

Chapter 1: Arrival

We had sent invitations to 5 of Sprout's friends, so our total planned number was 6 including Sprout herself. The invitations were for 5:30.

Except apparently they weren't. My friend and assistant, the lovely Ms. Jess arrived just before 5:30, but no kids. Not even one. And then it was 5:45, and I was getting a little nervous.

Did I write the wrong date on the invitations? (Because it is entirely possible that I would).
Did they all catch the Swine Flu? (Although I would guess they would call if they did).

Tick. Tick. Tick...Tick.

And then at 6:00 all of the kids arrived en masse. So apparently I got the date right, but the time wrong. Oh me, you suck at planning...

Chapter 2: Dinner

Tater and Mike (aka Daddy) stayed and had some of the pizza and chicken fingers (that had arrived just before 5:30 and were now approaching old). Yum. Then the boys took off to go see Disney's A Christmas Carol so they wouldn't get a whole bunch of girl germs on them.

Wine was poured. No, not for the kids. Courage was mustered.

Chapter 3: Make-Overs

In preparation for this momentous event, I procured for young Sprout the vast array of cosmetics shown at the left there. Yay for Ulta! This monstrous kit was only $19.99 and I think I may need one of my own.

I figured that I would de-mystify make-up for her, she can play with it as much as she wants. She can't wear it out of the house for a few years, but she can play.

And I can borrow it. Woo Hoo!

Anyway, we set up two chairs and Ms. Jess and I set about making over those innocent little faces. Not that they needed it, but it sure was fun. Ms. Jess even brought her own can of hot pink hair spray, because that's the kind of girl she is.

So here is Sprout before:

And here she is after.

Most notable surely are her raging red lips. For all of the other girls we carefully applied sparkly pink lip gloss with Q-Tips, to be sanitary and not spread illness all about the place. But Sprout felt that since the make-up kit was hers, she could go full-on with the lipstick and applied her own.

I am in very, very much trouble in the near future.

Unfortunately, I am not going to show you the other girls, because they aren't mine and I don't know how their parents would feel about that sort of thing, but trust me, priceless. Many sparkles were involved.

Chapter 4: Craft Project

We ordered these very cute monster pillows from Oriental Trading. The fleece pieces have little strips that the kids tied together to put the front and back together and they came with the stuffing and face parts.

Unfortunately I didn't have the right kind of glue, so there were face parts everywhere except on the pillows. But it was fun while it lasted.

The girls were giggling and chatting and comparing cell phones (!) Ms. Jess and I attempted not to eavesdrop. Sort of.

Chapter 5: Cake

I purchased an unfrosted 1/2 sheet cake (effectively wigging out the bakery department at the Acme), and the little cardboard circles that bakers use to display cakes.

I cut the big naked cake into 8ths, so that each child (plus Tater) would have their own smaller naked cake. The cakes were placed on the fancy little circles and passed out to the girls along with tubs of frosting, spreaders, sprinkles, and decorating icing.

And so they set about decorating their own cakes.

Ms. Emily decided that she didn't really want to decorate her cake and entertained herself by eating her naked cake without a fork. This set a dangerous precedent for later, as you will see.

Sprout applied a liberal layer of vanilla frosting and attempted to created a waterfall of blue. I took the blue away from her, much to her dismay. Mean Mommy. But she was still smiling.

Here is the finished product for one of our other guests, I believe it was Ms. Maddie.


And about 30 seconds later, THIS was Ms. Maddie.


Need a fork?

And then about 10 seconds later, Ms. Maddie's twin sister, Ms. Lexi got in on the action.

Oh my.

Of course the other girls thought this was HYSTERICAL and they continued to face plant in their cakes to the wailing laughter of the crowd. Ms. Jess attempted to be of assistance by pulling their hair back and pinning it.

And then their hands went into the remaining frosting tubs and there had to be an intervention and some serious frosting removal.

I never really want to have to investigate the nostrils of another woman's children in this kind of detail again. Just sayin'.

Chapter 6: Singing

While all of these shenanigans were going on, I quickly frosted the last piece of cake (8 pieces - 6 for the girls - 1 set aside for Tater = 1 left over) into a quick "real" birthday cake so that we could sing to Sprout.

I only put one candle on it because of the very real fire risk of children randomly sticking their faces into cakes. Safety first.

Then the kids went down into the basement and commenced some enthusiastic Guitar Hero/Karaoke. Eye of the Tiger and Living on a Prayer never sounded quite like that before.

Meanwhile, Ms. Jess and I attempted to remove the wayward frosting from every kitchen surface. Rug, table, dog.

More wine may possibly have been drunk. More courage mustered.

A couple of our guests had early morning soccer and left around 10:00. I had to make Sprout drag herself away from the singing to say good-bye.

Because Ms. Jess is violently allergic to dogs, she had to leave me to go home and breathe. I allowed her to go. I am a nice friend.

Chapter 7: Movie

Luckily, Mike and Tater returned from their movie excursion just moments later. Reinforcements!

Around 10:30 we had the remaining partiers in their jammies and sleeping bags and draped all around our family room. Tater joined the girls (who kindly accepted his presence with no fuss) and the lights were all turned down/off. And then they settled in to watch Aliens in the Attic.

I retired to the office to do some work. Really.

There was giggling and laughing. A few requests for water.

At midnight they told me the movie was over and I took Tater up to bed. He asked if he could read. Um, no.

The girls were really winding down, they watched some of the special features/deleted scenes/bloopers type stuff.

I did more work. Really. Why are you looking at me like that?

At 1:11 I finished my work and went out to check and it appeared that everyone was asleep except for the birthday girl. I gently removed the remote from her hand and clicked off the TV and went to bed.

Chapter 8: Sleep

Chapter 9: The Morning

At 7:30 in the morning, Tater came to my bedside, poked me and asked, "Do you know where the girls are?"

My first though was, "OH NO - They are gone!"

But then I suggested that he check the basement. And he found them.
Whew.

I got up around 8 and my rock star of a boyfriend (aka Daddy) had gone out and gotten donuts, bagels and (YAY!) an iced coffee. He is awesome.

So the kids ate donuts. They rejected the bagels because we didn't have cream cheese. Drat. And then they went downstairs to play.

Chapter 10: The End

Parents came for the remaining partiers around 9:30 and found them in the midst of a rubble of toys and dress-up clothes in our basement.

Party favors were these super-cute little monster boxes (coordinated with the pillows), with candy and a little LipSmacker Lip Gloss inside.

Sprout and Tater and I cleaned up the basement later in the day.

By late afternoon there was little evidence that anything exciting had taken place.

But Sprout was smiling all day!

Election Day

Today was election day. I am sorry to admit that I was an irresponsible citizen and did not go and vote in my local elections. But I would like someone to explain to me whose idea it was for the kids to have the day off for election day. Is that supposed to make it easier for me to vote?

Um...no. It does not.

We spent the morning waiting for a service to come and clean our carpets. I will not name names, but I was not happy when they did not arrive within their allocated 4 hour time window. So I told them to forget about it. I was tired of waiting and it was noon and we were all still in our jammies.

Spending the day in our jammies isn't a bad thing. We are big fans actually.

But today seemed like a doing day. Except that it turned out not to be.

We started out by not having our carpets cleaned. Progressed to not going out for lunch. Not going to order the cake for Sprout's birthday. Not picking up the movie for the same party. Not getting the gifts for her class. Not really going anywhere beyond our cul-de-sac.

Inspired by my burning desire to get the candy OUT OF THE HOUSE, we did try this science experiment. We used Skittles. We dipped each Skittle in water and drew a line across a strip of coffee filter with the melty color.

The wetness of the Skittles in no way dissuaded my children from eating them. So, the whole idea of this activity as an alternative to eating the candy was a bust. Should have dipped them in spinach. They wouldn't have eaten them then!

Anyway, then we stuck the striped pieces of coffee filter into plastic cups with a little water in the bottom. The bottoms of the strips were in the water, but the stripes were above water.

The idea here is that as the water is sucked up into the coffee filter strip it causes the colors to separate out into the individual dyes used. Unfortunately, this process was not at all exciting to watch. Slow. Watching water seep. Boring.

We went outside to play, and when we came back a while later, the strips looked like this.

The top one was yellow - which stayed yellow.

The next one was green - which separated into blue and yellow. Cool!

The next one was purple - which separated into blue and red. Also cool!

The other ones were orange and red - they didn't do much.

The kids looked at these and said, "Hmmm. Cool." and then went to watch some SpongeBob. So I can't say this was a huge success. But it was sciencey. And we tried.

As I said, while we were waiting for our colors to separate, we went outside to play. Both kids started to ride bikes and scooters, but then Tater found his kite in the garage and asked if it was windy enough. It didn't seem like it was, but we decided to give it a shot anyway.

He was so excited he never stopped to take his helmet off.

First we had to get out the kites. We have four. We have never successfully flown any of them.


Then the launch. Run Tater...Run!

Sprout decided to just watch...and strategize.


OK. Maybe just a little more running...


Maybe uphill would work better...

Uh oh...wipeout...

Take a little break...relax...rewind...

Then run some more...

That boy ran and ran and ran...and the kite never quite took off. But he was smiling and laughing and having a great time.

Then his big sister asked if she could try. And up it went.


And he wasn't even mad. They were both so delighted to see a kite IN THE SKY that for a moment there was no competition. No "it's not fair!"

She even let him hold the string.
It was a beautiful moment.

I guess it was OK that they stayed home. Even if I didn't get to put my vote in for Registrar of Wills.

Whatever that is.