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.

More Halloween Ideas

My friend Jen, who is one of the Funnest Mommies around, sent me some pictures of Halloween crafts that she has done with her kids and I just had to share them with you.

First up are these super-cute Sesame street pumpkins. How awesome are the Elmo and Grover-o-lanterns? And the Mr. Potato Head totally rocks, too!

She made them with fake craft pumpkins so they can be used over and over and she suggested using battery operated tea lights to light them up.

She even sent me this link to a site with other Sesame Street themed pumpkins. So fun!

My kids would have LOVED these back with "Melmo" was their favorite character EVER.

Then we have this completely awesome pumpkin patch cake. She got the idea from Family Fun Magazine (always great), but I think her execution gets bonus points.

I wish I had a picture of the graveyard cake I made a few years ago for Sprout's birthday. I might have to recreate it. Similar idea with a chocolate-frosted sheet cake sprinkled with chocolate cookie crumbs for "dirt". Instead of the pumpkins (which are SO cute) I used Vienna Finger Cookies and frosted them with white icing to make the gravestones. I put them across the cake and put one letter on each stone to spell out "Happy B'day". I think there were also some gummy worms sprinkled around. I was quite proud of it.

Anyway - I was sharing Jen's stuff...so the other thing she sent me was these little craft-y pumpkins made with rolls of toilet paper wrapped in fabric. So clever. Another Family Fun idea involving very few "ingredients" and a great end product!

Thanks to Jen for sharing all these great ideas!!
Yay - my first contributor!!

Do you have any fun ideas to share?? Send your ideas to me at kjbassick (at) hotmail (dot) com and I'd be happy to post them!

Spooky Window Treatments

How fun is this?

We were at home yesterday. An in-service day...following a day off for Yom Kippur = desperate for things to do!

Even though it is not yet October, we decided that it would be a good idea to get started on Halloween decorations.

Yet again we started with an idea from Family Fun Magazine. They suggest doing this with cardboard. I thought poster board would be infinitely easier.

We carefully measured our upstairs windows. This is unlike me. I usually eyeball it and wing it. And then regret it and rig it. This time I was smart and patient and measured. And promptly left the paper with the measurements at home. Oops.

Luckily my intermittent dyslexia (which kicks in when I am attempting to tell someone my phone number and I blank...) didn't strike and I was able to remember that the windows were each 33" X 64".

We went to Target and found black poster board for $0.69 per sheet (which rang up as only $0.57 each...ka-ching!) Each sheet was 28" x 22" so I figured we could stack 3 together with a slight overlap and end up in the 28" X 64" range.

Aren't you glad I am sharing the specific numbers since your windows will totally be a completely different size? I just want to show off how good I am at math. Impressed?

We laid the sheets out and taped them together with packing tape. Then the kids each drew Jack-o-Lantern-ish faces on the boards. Sprouts window has a seam down the middle, so she did it as one big face. Tater was doing two separate windows.

Then we (I) cut out the holes. I did offer to let them cut. They didn't want to. Really.

Is it some measure of progress on the Zen-Mommy front that I didn't yell at Sprout about sitting on the table until after I took her picture?

After we (I) cut out the faces, the kids took white tissue paper and taped it over the holes. They each did a "Dracula" face and used red tissue on the "blood".

Tater felt the need to use the longest pieces of tape he could possible tear off.

I wasn't all that zen about that.


After all of the holes were covered with paper, the faces were ready to hang up.

How happy is this kid?

We used masking tape to stick the finished faces into the windows. Of course, since I didn't actually measure the sheets as we taped them together, the first three were a few inches too long. But we rigged it to fit. Improvisation is our friend.

Sprout's window. Now her room is like a cave. No light is getting in there. She can peek out through the eye holes if she wants a glimpse of the outside world.

Tater decorated our guest room (his room is in the back). He is sad that he can't look at the faces all the time.

I suggested he could sleep in the guest room, but he was freaked out by the double bed. And the fact that we call the room "Grandma's Room". Like she might sneak in at any moment. Scaaaaarrrryyyyy!!

Now we are all set for Halloween. Although I think that the kids are on a roll now and will want to keep going. Tater had some interesting ideas last year. I wonder what he'll come up with as the month rolls along.

This was a fun, easy project that took up a decent chunk of time. And the final results are, I think, "spooktacular"!

Homework Helpers

The kids started back to school last Monday, and then promptly had a four day weekend. So now summer is officially, unofficially over!

In preparation for the first day of school we did our normal school supply shopping. Sprout is quite the connoisseur of school supplies, and is in possession of the world's largest collection of novelty erasers. I am thinking about submitting her to the Guinness Book of World Records. But regardless of how many pencils, pens and erasers (shaped like ice cream, and lipstick, and small animals, and hearts, and...) she has, there is always a thrill when "the list" arrives and we have to hit the Target to stock up for the year.

I have to say, I share in the thrill of the hunt for just the right notebook. And of course, an excuse to hit the Target is always welcome!

This year, we added some extras to our shopping list. I saw these homework cubbies in Family Fun Magazine and thought they might help the kids focus on getting through the dreaded homework hour (hopefully keeping it from becoming the homework four-hour-nightmare...)

We started with a cardboard presentation board and cut it in half height-wise (I did the cutting - utility knives + children + neurotic mother = too much for me to handle.)

After we had two half-height boards, I scored an additional line down each seam (described in the directions from FF Magazine, so that the cubby can be folded up with "stuff" inside.)

This picture shows Sprout holding the (closed) utility knife and ruler. Just to show you how...I did the cutting, but couldn't figure out how to take a picture of my own hands...

The lines are just scored through the top layer of cardboard so that the board can fold.

Like this...

After the cutting, we covered the inside of the cubby/board with contact paper.

Sprout was so traumatized by my inability to line things up correctly that she decided not to cover the outside of hers. Tater went along with covering both sides. We had to re-score the folds on his from the outside so it would fold with the covering on.

Then we used mounting tape to hang up hooks and supplies inside the cubbies. Each kid has a little white board to write down assignments or reminders, one side is covered with cork squares so they can pin up things, and they each have a pencil box mounted with Velcro so that they can take it down to get the pencils out.

Here is Tater's finished cubby:


And here is Sprout's. She is very excited about her protractor.


They were so excited when they finished these that they immediately went and got some workbooks to do a trial run. They were both sitting on the porch with their cubbies up, working on crossword puzzles or something...


Then they realized school hadn't started yet and they went to watch some Phineas & Ferb.

I hope these will be fun for them to use when they are doing real homework.

Maybe I need one, too. And some fun pencils - and an eraser that looks like a hamburger - and a protractor...