Colored Salt

Being a stay at home mom is a lot of fun for me. I am always trying out new activities to keep me stimulated creatively and as a side point to keep my kids entertained. Don't you know... I only buy my kids toys I would want to play with! Today's activity was colored salt. Really I would have liked it to be sand, but I used what I had on hand.

I started by dividing the salt into 3 bowls. I added a few drops of food coloring to each bowl. then mixed to get the color spread throughout.

 After I got all three colors - I chose red, yellow, and blue - I spread out a sheet, dumped out the sand toys, and let them at it. My 15 month old had a lot of fun with the shovels and dragging his fingers through it. My 3 year old had more fun scooping it up and letting it trickle off his shovel. They were very serious during this activity. I think the weird factor of playing with a sand like substance in the house threw them off. Either that or they had their thinking caps on.

After about 40 min the salt was all over the place but I brought out our handy dandy vacuum cleaner and that tidied things up real quick.  

Canning Carrots

One of my newest obsessions is canning. Yes, I know.... I'm weird, but what can I do. I was born in the wrong century. I have canned quite a few things so far and I am getting more adventurous. Although today I kept it simple. Carrots. Yup Just plain ol' carrots. I started with about 8 pounds of carrots.

Peeled them....

and used my food processor to slice them....

With the help of a very cute assistant

 While I did all that my jars were in the canner getting hot. Hot jars are very important especially if you don't want smashed jars. hen your canning its important to have everything ready before hand so you are not running around looking for a lid or a ring or a measuring spoon while things are bubling and boiling. Being neat, clean, and organized are key to canning. 

I started with ½ tsp kosher salt in each jar. 

then using my funnel I added as many carrots as I could pack in (I used the cold pack method) and poured over that hot water. 

wiped the rim, put on the lid, and screwed on the band. 

One of the sort of annoying things about canning is that you actually can not do the assembly line method. You need to do one jar at a time and put in back into the canner before filling the next jar. The reason is to avoid the jars getting too cool. Again, cold jars = exploding jars. cold jars = bad news bears! So one at a time they go until they are all happily in the canner ready to get processed. 

The procedure from here is cover and lock pressure canner, bring to boil, let steam vent for 10 minutes, and then put on the weighed gauge and process for 30 min. Well, the time for quarts is 30 min and I did pint and a halves but I still process for 30 minutes since no time was given for pint and a halves and better too long then not long enough!

30 minutes later I turned off the fire, let the whole thing cool down before taking off the weight, and opening her up. 

Don't they look pretty!

Now you may ask what are you gonna do with them....

Well that is a post for another time...

Patterns and Colors

At 7:50 each morning my two big boys go off to school, leaving behind their two little brothers. It is then up to me to somehow fill the hours till 5pm when they are reunited.

Today's activity was Mega Blocks. A dear cousin to the Lego but much easier to build with for little hands. 

For my 1 year old this simply means working on his fine motor skills by building towers. For my 3 year old on the other hand I need to make it a little more interesting. Since we have been working on patterns, I thought this would be a good opportunity to practice with a visual aid. I designed this worksheet for him, and he really enjoyed it!

His job was to copy the pattern on the paper using the blocks. He did it in two ways. At first he put the blocks on the paper in a row to follow the pattern. 

After he grew comfortable with the idea, he began to build the towers and configurations separately.

All in all it was a great activity. He spent around 40 minutes figuring out the different patterns. We are definitely going to do it again! Especially on the rainy days to come. 

 

A Toy Story Cake for Jack

Jack is my adorable nephew. He makes me laugh all the time. Jack is turning 5 and requested "Hudis make my cake, Mommy. You help." Who could say no to that??

If this were a post on how to make the most amazing, adorable, fun, and true to theme Toy Story party boy would I have a lot to write about. My sister put together the cutest party ever!! Luckily for me my job was just the cake.

My awesome sister!

We decided to do a 3 tiered cake using a different character as the theme. so the top would be a Buzz layer, the middle a  Jessie layer, and the bottom would be for sheriff  Woody. 

Step 1: Bake two round cakes of each size. 10" 8" and 6". If you are using cake mix, bake one mix for each 10" and one mix will be enough for a 6" and an 8" so you will need a total of 4 mixes. 

Step 2: Fill and stack each size and frost with a crumb coat. Use a cake plate for each cake.

Step 3: Refrigerate each cake for 20 -30 min

I usually work in shifts in order to fit everything in my fridge, so I do fill, stack, and frost the 10" put it in the fridge. Then fill, stack, and frost the 6" put it in the fridge, then the 8". So by the time I am done the last cake the first one is ready to be covered in fondant.

Step 4: color about 36oz of fondant a golden yellow. I mixed lemon yellow with orange to achieve the desired color. Roll it out and cover the 10" cake. I used a roller tool to emboss stitching in a grid pattern. Mix about 2-4 drops of red food coloring with 1-2 tsp of water and paint over the embossed lines. To make the letters roll out white fondant and add black fondant in blobs sort of like this:

Then use cookie cutters to cut out the letters trying to get some black and white on each letter. Attach to cake with a moist paintbrush. Tint 2-3 oz of fondant a gold brown. I used some of the leftover yellow mixed with brown. Roll out and use a 5 point star cookie cutter to cut out two sheriff stars. Roll tiny balls of fondant for the point of each star. Attach with a moist paintbrush. Paint the stars with gold luster dust. Attach to cake with moistened brush on both sides of the child's name. 

Step 5: Roll out 24 oz of white fondant to cover the 8" layer. using different amounts of black fondant form freestyle blob like shapes to make a cow pattern. attach each black patch with a moistened brush. Be careful you place them since it it very hard to remove the black traces from the white fondant. 

Step 6: Tint about 10 oz of fondant a bright green color. I used kelly green with a little leaf green mixed in. Roll out and cover the cake. Tint 3 oz purple. Roll it out and cut stars in different sizes. Do the same with white fondant. Attach stars with a moistened brush. I made 2-3 stars in each size and color. 

Step 7: Prepare cake plate by gluing 3 14" cake circles together. cover with a red bandanna. Place the 12" circle on top of that. 

Step 8: Insert dowel rods into the bottom two tiers for support. Stack cakes and put on prepared cake base. Insert a sharpened  chopstick (use a pencil sharpener) or kabob stick into the top and hammer it through all the layers.

Step 9: Pipe colored frosting around the edges where each cake sits on the next tier. I used green white and yellow. Attach plastic figurines with frosting. Insert star candles on the top and pipe around toothpicks. 

Enjoy!