Tanner Creates

Every year our homeschool support group does a Hobby Share Day where various parents share a craft or hobby that interests them with a small group of children. This year's groups included cake decorating, electrical circuits, geocaching, crochet, pysanky, baking, origami and preschool.
For those of you that homeschool, this field trip is always the best attended of all the ones we offer in a year and one I highly recommend you try with your groups.

Anyways, back to our Hobby Share. Tanner decided to try his hand at cake decorating. The class lasted 90 minutes and they were practicing different techniques by decorating cupcakes. He learned how to write, outline a shape, make stars, leaves, and some type of flower. The highlight of the day was making a Westie. To quote Tanner, "My mum made me go through all the stress of making a dog. It was actually very interesting." He was feeling tired by the time they got to the dogs and was thinking about skipping it but I talked him into persevering. He was glad after! LOL

Here are a couple pictures of his creations:

Creating Wherever We Go

My kids have been creating like crazy so I thought I would spend the next few days bragging on them!

These pictures are from our trip to my Mum's a couple weeks ago.

This first picture is one T took of an abandoned building up the hill at Hedley mine.

While at my mum's the kids were delighted at how much snow was still outside. They especially loved the big snow pile next to my mum's where the snowplow had been pushing the snow all winter.

 The kids built a fort in the snow bank with three rooms. Here is N posing in it. For those of you wondering - yes, he did have his snowpants with them and wore them playing outside. He had come in dripping wet so went back out without his snowsuit for pictures as the roof was starting to collapse in places and they wanted to get pictures while they still could. Below is another picture of one of their passages.

Creating Memories

My eldest son's birthday is coming up and that has me back into cake mode, thinking and planning his birthday cake. We used to do all ice cream cakes from Dairy Queen. Then one year I made one myself. The kids were so impressed, I have been making them ever since!
Overall, they are a delight to do. I really enjoy the challenge, and they love the memory of helping make it and of having it as a centrepiece.
Warning to those of you new to this: expect it to take a LOT of time, especially for your first few cakes. And some cakes are, by design, much more intricate and time-consuming. If you plan to make a theme cake, you need to plan accordingly!

This cake is the first homemade theme cake I ever made, and now I laugh at how simple it was. However, it was enough to impress my children, and it got me started on making homemade cakes. It is a space shuttle, in case you can't tell! I used liquorice strings to outline the shapes, and smarties to decorate it. Confetti sprinkles decorated the sky. The part that most impressed the kids was the sparkler boosters.

This cake is the first shaped cake I ever made. It is two crossed lightsabers for a Star Wars party, in case you can't tell. The kids were extremely impressed, I think mostly by the size of it. Each lightsaber is one 9 X 13 cake halved vertically, then lined up, making the lightsabers each over two feet long! I covered it all with white icing then used red and green liquorice strings to outline the different parts of each lightsaber, and gum drops for the buttons. I used spray-on food colouring to make the actual glowing part. Just be sure that you cover the parts around where you are spraying or you will find yourself scraping icing off and redoing parts of your cake! Can you tell that is experience is talking?

I have taken great pleasure in doing these for my kids and look forward to sharing more cakes with you in the coming weeks!

Honouring My Mum

My mum is an amazing woman and and an amazing volunteer.
I am in awe of the amount she gives of herself, serving on and with different committees and groups to enrich the lives of all in her community and her world.
Apparently I am not the only one who feels that way.
Last week the kids and I had the privilege of going home to attend an appreciation dinner held in my mum's honour for her years as mayor and community volunteer.

Thank you Mum for all you do, and for the example you and Dad have set for your kids and grandkids of what true community service looks like.
We love you!

Creating a More Positive Car Atmosphere

The kids and I made a journey up to my mum's this weekend. We used the trip up to learn about distance and time estimations by playing a game estimating distances to the next town. I had to admit i had an ultimate, non-academic purpose in mind - focusing them on short--term goals so they would whine less about how long the trip takes! LOL

Here were the rules:

1) As we left each town we read the distance to the next town on the mileage sign, then everyone estimated how long they thought it would take to reach the town (each person had a minimum five minute increment, unless the next town was really close, in which case we did two minute increments). 

2) Whoever won that round was owed a dollar by Mum (great motivation to keep them all playing! LOL). 

3) Whoever currently had the least amount of money got to choose their time frame first so that they all got turns at having first dibs at the most likely times.

4) Once your time rolls past, you were out of the competition. So, for example, if Tanner said 2:23 and Nicolas said 2:28 but we arrived at 2:24, Nicolas would win as Tanner's time had already rolled by.

5) The clock kept ticking at unscheduled stops (taking photos, pit stop) unless Mum called a delay, in which case we added the stop time and recalculated. The only time I called a delay was when I took a 15 minute nap, so we added 15 minutes to everyone's totals when we resumed travel.

6) If the town is one we plan to stop in, the stopping point is where we calculate to. If we are just driving through, we calculate at the entrance to town, where the "Welcome to... " sign is, or equivalent.

 It worked well, and by the time we arrived Tanner had earned $4, and the others $5. The only reason Tanner was down one was that we stopped to photograph the mountain goats he saw, and that meant his time expired by the time we got there! LOL Best of all, I think they are getting a better idea of how times and distances work, so we managed to roll a math lesson in while bringing the whining WAY down!

Creating an Organizer

I have decided to create a home organization binder this year as one way of getting myself more organized and in control of my daily life.
I have often tried to do all these tasks on the computer before, but find it is not practical. The computer is not portable, a pain to get out every time I need to check something, and increasingly it is occupied by children working on schoolwork or games!
I decided if I was going to have a binder I wanted it to be pretty. I was not finding what I wanted until I was at a crafting garage sale and found a great chipboard one. The binding on it was already covered in pretty pink fabric. Perfect!

The next job was to find some paper I liked to cover it with. Luckily I have a daughter who also crafts as none of my extensive collection co-ordinated with the binder. However, she had a book of paper that I just LOVE that all co-ordinates and she very generously shared with me.

I chose a patterned piece for the outside covers and a teal one for the inside. Incidentally, the teal and green were our wedding colours. How cool is that?

I decoupaged them in, then added two coats over the paper to try to seal it a bit better so it would hold up. The key to successful decoupage, as in so much of life, is PATIENCE! Use thin layers and let it dry completely before adding the next one.

Next I added ribbon to trim the edges. This part was a bit tricky as my ribbon was not as thick as I would have liked. For those of you who preplan supplies, choose a 1" ribbon, then you can just fold it around the edges and be done with it! I attached my ribbon with Sookwang sticky tape, making sure to fold it over the edges of the binder to protect the paper edges from catching and ripping off. I started where the paper joins the cloth and worked one piece of ribbon around the top, outside, and bottom edge of each half of the binder.

See how the bottom and outside edge have a nice narrow border?

Next I used ribbon on the inside to make a thicker border as the ribbon wasn't wide enough to cover the inside edge well.

I figured out the hard way that I should have done the outside edge top to bottom first, then cover it with a horizontal piece. Why? Because it is hard to fold in the ribbon on the second end to the exact spot you want it. By doing that order you only ever have to fold one end, because the final ribbon piece, the vertical one close to the binding of the book, wraps around the whole book and is just doubled over on top of itself so it doesn't have to line up to a nice spot. See?
On the first one I did below, the ribbons didn't match so nicely, and my pretty rose is to hide my messy corner where I ended up with sticky strip and no ribbon!

Finally I added some Stampin' Up Vintage Roses to the front and voila! I was done!

My pretty binder has me all excited about getting organized!

Creating Memories

My daughter and I took advantage of the Groupons we found last fall and spent the afternoon at a paint your own ceramics place. I expected to be there about an hour, and I was dragging her out after THREE hours!

Painting was a lot of fun, but the best part was spending time with my daughter. She loves colour, she loves creative expression, and she loves spending time with her mummy! We had a wonderful afternoon together. She made a butterfly box for her dresser and a cereal bowl, and I decorated a container for the sponges and dishbrushes by my sink so I can get rid of my plastic one.

Pictures to come after we pick them up next week!