To wrap up our “What’s Cooking?” week, we made Salad People (the title recipe of our kids’ cookbook) for lunch today.
Is it bad that I pretended the “people” were saying “aaaaaaaahhhhhhh!” while I was cutting the pear bodies up so the kids could eat them…?
Yesterday we made some green playdough using our usual recipe and one of the lemon-lime Kool-Aid packets we found.
Now the strawberries can have leaves!
After the girls had played enough with the dyed pasta, we made Sunrise Lemonade (from Salad People.)
It was a pretty simple recipe (I had to make “simple syrup” – just a mix of equal parts sugar and water – before we started) and the manual juicer I bought worked really well (though the kids needed some help for that step!)
The verdict? Lots of thumbs up, and requests to make it again very soon!
Then for dinner tonight (we were on a roll) we made Sweet Potato Surprise (also from Salad People) and Lollipop Chicken. (That recipe was from a Parenting magazine at the dentist’s office this afternoon. I shamelessly begged them to make a copy for me.) The surprising bit was that my children ate dinner. It’s amazing how calling something “lollipop chicken” and serving it on a stick makes it so much more appealing!
We left the pasta to dry thoroughly overnight, and look how fabulous the colors turned out!
I decided to use chenille stems (pipe cleaners, as they were known in my childhood) instead of yarn so we wouldn’t have to worry about using a yarn needle or anything to string the pasta shapes.
I won’t buy food with artificial dyes anymore, but I have no qualms about using dyes for our summer of crafts! I thought we could try making colored pasta shapes for stringing necklaces.
I found lots of different “recipes” for coloring pasta, all of which contradicted each other. So I just winged it! We put about a cup of pasta in each freezer bag – 1/2 cup each mezzi rigatoni and rotelle (wheels). Then I took a toothpick and put some of each color on the inside surface of each bag. Finally, I poured a tablespoon of rubbing alcohol into each bag.
The girls helped me squish the bags around (I made sure they were well sealed!) to distribute the color, and then we let them sit for a couple of hours.
Once we thought the colors were deep enough, we (well, mostly I) spread the pasta out on baking sheets covered with wax paper. The girls were excited to watch, but Anna thinks the pasta is stinky. The rubbing alcohol is rather…pungent. But the pasta dried very quickly, and I imagine will be put to good use tomorrow!
(And my fingers are only a little colorful.)
Oh! And we found apple raspberry frozen juice concentrate, so hopefully that will work for our sunrise lemonade. (Lemon-apple-raspberry? Could be good, could be n0t-so-good. We’ll find out tomorrow!) We also acquired a few packets of lemon-lime and berry blue Kool-Aid. The lady at the checkout seemed fairly taken aback when Carolyn told her we were using it to make playdough. I suppose that’s not really a “normal” thing to do with Kool-Aid…
This week’s theme is “What’s Cooking?” This means that most of our “crafts” are going to be of the edible variety! This evening for dinner we made our homemade pizza dough, and I had two eager helpers. I didn’t have any free hands to take pictures, but the two girls in oversized aprons (Carolyn wore one of mine and Anna wore Carolyn’s) were pretty darn cute!
Yesterday, we planned which of the recipes in Salad People we want to make this week, and managed to get most of the ingredients in our shopping trip this afternoon. I still have to find frozen cranberry juice concentrate – all that store had was cranberry juice cocktail.
It’s been a while since I posted any of the silly things my kids say. I feel a bit sad, because all of the adorable learning language things that I made note of with Carolyn, have been lost for Anna. But, all is not quite lost – she still comes out with mispronunciations and silly things now and then. So, without further ado…
Heard Friday at the pool:
My brother (Dan) and my sister-in-law (Genevra) were over swimming. All afternoon: “Uncle Dad! Aunt Ge-evra! Look, I’m pedaling around the pool!” (She can definitely say ‘n’ sounds, so I’m not quite sure where Uncle Dad came from. And Aunt Ge-evra is just adorable!)
Also. Carolyn has a pair of “gobbles”. You know, the things that keep water out of your eyes in the pool?
And then this afternoon at the library:
Little Girl: “Hi! What’s your name?”
Anna: “Anna.”
Little Girl’s Dad: “Alma? That’s a nice name.”
Anna: “No, Anna. ‘A’, ‘n’, ‘n’, ‘n’, ‘a’!”Um. Well, I suppose Annna would sound just about the same as Anna. Looks a bit odd. But, it’s still a palindrome!
Carolyn passed Red Cross Learn to Swim Level 1 today! I am so impressed with the amount of hard work she put in to her class these past two weeks – her water confidence has improved by leaps and bounds, and just today she was jumping off of our backyard pool’s diving board with only a life vest on. (She started out with two noodles. Then one. Then realized that she could probably do it with no noodles. Which she did. Repeatedly.)
And Anna’s new-found confidence in the water, while exhausting, is fun too. She “pedals” all around the pool in her little yellow Puddle Jumper life vest, “as fast as I can pedal!”
As hard as it is to spend the better part of the morning getting ready for and at swimming lessons every single day for four solid weeks, I think it’s well and truly worth it!
Today’s project is a good example of why you need to flexible when planning kids’ crafts. The plan was tissue paper flowers:
I thought they would be pretty easy, and sort of an instant-gratification thing. But they were completely beyond Anna’s abilities, and Carolyn didn’t like how hers turned out compared the ones I made to demonstrate what we were doing.
So, now I had a bunch of cut-up tissue paper, frustrated kids, and some time to fill. Luckily, I also had green paper plates left from Anna’s birthday party, wax paper, and tape. Oh, and glue! I cut out the middle of paper plates, cut a square of wax paper, taped it to the back of the plates, and let them glue tissue paper all over the wax paper.
And now we have pretty tissue paper flower suncatchers!
It’s been hot here. Really hot. No-air-outside-to-breathe hot.
So we invited a few friends over to swim this afternoon, and had tons of fun. I don’t know why I don’t do this more often…
And Anna, who had earned the nickname “barnacle baby” since she clings to you with a death grip in the pool, suddenly realized that her life vest will, in fact, keep her afloat. And she started “peddling” (her word) around the pool like a little fish. All over the pool, including in the deep end. With me following.
I am exhausted.