Valentine Craft - Tissue Paper Jars

This is a really simple, inexpensive little craft. You will need glass jars with their labels removed (we used a couple different sizes of baby food jars), elmer's glue, tissue paper and brushes.

I started punching the tissue paper into heart shapes but quickly decided that was a pain in the butt. Instead I just cut it into small irregular shapes and they worked great. Water down your glue a little and have the kids start painting the outside of their jars with the glue (start on the bottom). Then, just stick on tissue paper overlapping each piece and brushing on more glue until the whole jar is covered.

We found the regular brushes worked better than the foam brushes which tended to rip the tissue paper. Let dry for a few hours in the sun and tie a ribbon around the top.


We filled jars with candy and pencils and sent them home with the kids for Valentines Day, but this craft could be made for any event simply by changing the color scheme.

Yesterday - in Photos

Things to note:

• The kids are out of school yesterday, today and Monday.
• That's a lot of kids at my house (10-12 all day yesterday if you count the neighbor boy who would not go away).
• Though cold outside, the children went in and out a minimum of 47 times yesterday. That's a lot of wet snow pants.
• I had an unannounced home visit yesterday right before lunch. She stayed to observe 10 kids eat lunch and to make sure I was not serving pop tarts and root beer. The house was a mess of suitcases for Mom and Dad and winter gear for a colony of children.
  
• Sophie and Grandma made the sugar cookie dough. Sophie dressed her American Girl doll in her little apron and brought her down to watch along with all of her baking supplies.
  
• My parents flew into town Wednesday night. Their plane was not delayed as they came from the West, not the East. I am so happy they are here!
• Max and Sophie both received packages yesterday from Grandma Erickson. More darling clothes for Sophie and Max had to wait as all of his gifts were wrapped for his birthday next week.
• I had parent teacher conferences on Wednesday and Thursday.
  
• I have two complete opposite kids in school right now. For one child, the conferences are glowing, happy things. For my other child, the conferences reduced me to tears of frustration.
  
• I was so tired last night that I fell asleep before 10pm in my lovely bed with warm flannel sheets.
  

Sweet and Sassy Basket for Charity

A good friend of mine is on the board of The Southside Family Nurturing Center and asked if I would be willing to put together a gift basket for their upcoming fund raiser auction.

Could I do this for a living please? It was so much fun to make pretty little things, hunt up just the right basket and accessories and arrange it all in a way that will hopefully cause some wealthy patron to want to snatch it up for Valentine's Day. I love how it turned out though I did notice the typo on the list of items - oh well. Click on the photos to enlarge.


This is the pretty little headband I made for the basket.

Recipe: Thai Chicken Salad

This salad is divine - sooooooooo good. It has a lot of ingredients, it does. But it is so worth it. It may be my favorite new salad ever. Yesterday I ate it for lunch, dinner and a late night snack.

Here's what you need. Keep in mind that I was making one HUGE salad to take to book club and another HUGE salad to have here at home. It makes a lot of salad (I doubled the recipe below).

• 4 large garlic cloves

• 1/4 cup soy sauce
• 1/3 cup fresh lime juice
• 2 tablespoons sugar
• 1 tablespoon smooth peanut butter
• 2 teaspoons chopped peeled fresh ginger
• 1 1/4 teaspoons hot chili paste
  
• 1/4 cup vegetable oil
• 3 purchased roasted chicken breast halves, boned, skinned, shredded (I just bought chicken breasts, cubed them and then cooked them with some chili paste and olive oil)
  
• 3 cups shredded Napa cabbage
• 1 cup coarsely grated carrot
• 1 cup red bell pepper strips
• 1/2 cup thinly sliced red onion
• 1 big bunch cilantro
• 1 bag bean sprouts
• 2 medium cucumbers, halved lengthwise, thinly sliced crosswise
• 1/3 cup coarsely chopped roasted salted peanuts

• 1 bag rice noodles
  

Cook noodles in small pot of boiling water for 3 minutes. Drain; cut noodles in several places and then put outside in the snow to rapidly cool.

Puree next 7 ingredients in your food processor or blender. With machine running, gradually add oil and blend until dressing is smooth. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Dump into big bowl. add your red onion to the same food processor and chop it up. Add to dressing.

Combine chicken, cabbage, carrot, pepper, and cucumbers - add to the bowl with the dressing and toss. Arrange atop noodles, sprinkle with peanuts, and serve.

New Duds and More Snow

The kids got a box of new clothes in the mail this week from their grandparents. Don't you just love packages? Me too.

I'm going to start calling Sophie sassy pants - wait I think I already call her sassy pants. Her little friend at school made her a picture and wrote on it "Sophie is so fancy". This is her new outfit -so cute and sassy!


People, I only have one daughter and she is still letting me style her - I intend to enjoy every minute. I am aware that the day will come all too soon when she will turn up her pert little nose at all of her little girl clothes. Sad.

Max's new coat is super awesome especially since it has been a raging blizzard here for the last few days. I think I shoveled three times today and it has piled up again. Sigh. You are beautiful snow. I just wish I did not have to shovel or deal with 500 wet mittens, coats, snow pants, scarves and hats every single day. Also, I need a good pair of snow boots that are simple to slip on. Several people have recommended Uggs. Are they Minnesota worthy? Are they worth the price? My clogs are not serving me well in the snow.


I want to curl up with Pride and Prejudice tonight, but I need to finish a project and clean up downstairs aaaaaand read the book club book for tomorrow night. Crap - gotta go!

Valentine Craft - Collage Hearts

On Friday we made these cute heart collages. You will need cardboard (mine are from Amazon.com box inserts), black paint, lots of punched out hearts in the same size, paper and glue.

First paint your entire piece of cardboard black.


Try not to get black paint on your hands. Calvin managed to get it all over the front and back of his red shirt. The shirt may been doomed.


Give each child a half sheet of paper and have them start gluing hearts all over. You want to cover the entire surface by overlapping the hearts. Use lots of glue both under and over the hearts. Some of the kids used paint brushes to spread the glue, some used their fingers.


When you are done, it should look like this. Except it won't because I made that one.


Yours will look more like this - if you happen to be 5.


Your table will look like this.


Let dry during nap time.

Print out a heart (about 5X7) and tape it to the back of your collage. Here's where you can benefit from my mistakes. Print the heart out first and have the kids collage on the back of the heart. It will save you a step.


Now just cut out the heart using kitchen sheers as it will be pretty thick.


Glue the heat on your black cardboard and you are done. Beautiful!

Such a Positive Person

Soooo, I just woke up after going to bed at 2am. I found out that someone had uploaded the entire four episodes of the new Emma onto YouTube and once I started watching, I could not stop! I am a bit groggy today and somehow all the caramel corn is gone - that is alarming.

Sophie was awarded student of the month this week for always being such a positive person. They obviously have never tried to get her out of bed in the morning. She was pleased with her spoils and that made me happy. Sophie loves school - I do not think there is a single thing she does not like about it.

Someone sent her two books by mail a few weeks ago Saved at Sea and A Basket of Flowers. Was it you? There was no card or name on the envelope. Thank you anonymous person.

Recipe: Caramel Corn

I am warning you now, this recipe is deadly. Don't come whining to me if you make this and then a day later have a flash of clarity where you realize you have just munched your way through two sticks of butter. I don't want to hear any complaining because you will have enjoyed every crunchy, sweet, melt in your mouth bite. Go on - I dare you.

• 1 cup butter
• 2 cups brown sugar
• 1/2 cup corn syrup
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 5 quarts air popped popcorn (I don't have any idea how much that is - I just popped a whole bunch)

1. Preheat oven to 250. Place popcorn in a very large bowl.
2. In a medium saucepan over medium heat, melt butter. Stir in brown sugar, corn syrup and salt. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Boil without stirring 4 minutes. Remove from heat and stir in soda and vanilla. Pour in a thin stream over popcorn, stirring to coat.
3. Place in two large shallow baking dishes and bake in preheated oven, stirring every 15 minutes, for 1 hour. Remove from oven and let cool completely before breaking into pieces. (I was eating this waaaaay before it cooled. In fact, I took a sample every time I stirred it - strictly for quality control purposes of course.)