Egg Carton Spiders

Lately my two boys have been into spiders and bugs.  It might be the enjoyable fact that we have 50 gajillion boxelder bugs outside our front steps which they love to smoosh.  I have thought about teaching them to have a greater respect for God's creatures but I hate boxelder bugs.  

In any event, I thought they might have fun making their own spiders so I saved up some egg cartons and grabbed some pipe cleaners at the dollar store.  Hooray for the dollar store!  I used eyes that are craft eyes for stuffed animals because I had them on hand but you could use googly eyes, which are also available at the dollar store.  

We made baby ones and Daddy ones.  We also made Mommy ones but I took the pictures before that happened.

The kids loved it!

6 Minute Microwave Caramels: Super Easy!

My internet travels recently led me to a recipe for caramels that you can make in 6 minutes in the microwave--no candy thermometer needed.  (You can retrace my steps by going here and here.)

I whipped these puppies up today and they were WAY TOO EASY.  These could easily be the fastest way to satisfy a candy craving ever.  I almost put melted chocolate on top, but I refrained.

All you need to do is mix the following in a microwave safe bowl.  I suggest one with a handle so you don't burn yourself when you have to pull them out.

5 T. butter
1/2 c. corn syrup
1/2 c. white sugar
1/2 c. brown sugar (or 1/2 c. white sugar + 1/2 T. molasses)
6 T. sweetened condensed milk.

Microwave for 6 minutes, stirring every two.  Pour into a greased 8x8 pan and cool in the fridge.

Eat.  Hord.  Let your kids poke them with a spoon (Don't ask).   I suppose you could cut them up and wrap them in wax paper, but that seems like a lot of effort to me.

More Fun with Baking Soda

So, here is another pin I made an effort to replicate recently.  (Ok, not really recently, this was back in April.  I'm just a little behind on my posting.)

You would think that we have had enough of baking soda and vinegar based on the volcanoes and our cabbage experiment.  Fortunately, toddlers never find the chemical reaction dull.

Source: Uploaded by user via Katherine on Pinterest

I'd say it was pretty successful.  And easy, which is my standard for any entertainment.

The Blankie Jar

From the time Kimball was 6 months old (or so) he has had a blanket named Blue.  It was a small piece of blue fleece with knotted tassels around the edges.  It became pretty ratty and occasionally lost one of the tassels, which was cause for extreme trauma.  On these occasions I would perform the necessary repair surgery to reattach the missing tassel.

Sadly, Blue was lost this last December when we took the boys on a trip to ride TRAX.  I suppose it was inevitable.  Although we had been successful on various recovery missions in the past--no such luck this time.

I thought it would be more tragic than it was for Kimball to lose his Blue.  But he handled it well enough.  He refused all attempts at making replacement, and even the backup Blue we had on hand for just such an occasion was insufficient in his toddler eyes.  I thought the days of the blankie had passed.  I was wrong.

A few months later Kimball adopted a new blanket.  I suppose such bonds take time and cannot be artificially created.  This new blanket is two pieces of yellow flannel that is tied together in tassels around the edges.  

This is the only photo I could find of the new blanket.

One night, soon after the adoption of the new blankie, Kimball began to cry in bed.  This was not a normal cry of I'm bored and don't want to go to bed.  He sounded genuinely upset.  Bryce rushed to his aid and I heard a cute conversation wherein Kimball sniffled that a piece had come off of his new blankie.  Bryce resolved this issue like any good Dad and told him that Mom would fix it in the morning.  They put the piece in a "special" place on the book shelf.

In the morning I was up before Bryce and Kimball bounded upstairs to tell me that his blankie needed to be fixed.  I got out my suturing kit (i.e. needle and thread) and we went to retrieve the missing piece.  We hunted and hunted but I couldn't find a thing.  I told Kimball that he would need to wait until Dad got up because I didn't know where the piece was.

Soon enough Bryce was up and brought me the missing piece of Kimball's precious blanket.  It was a thread!  That's right a measly piece of thread.  You know how flannel frays a bit with wash?  Well, Kimball's blanket is flannel and quiet frayed where the pieces have been tied together.  One of the threads had come off and he wanted me to sew it back on.  

What did I do?  I sewed it back on.

The problem?  This new flannel blanket is frayed everywhere!  Do you know how often one of those silly threads comes off?  Almost daily.  And you have another thing coming if you think that I will be sewing threads back onto fraying flannel for the next  . . . whenever! 

That's when I came up with the blankie jar.

It's an old pimento jar that Kimball gets to collect pieces of his blankie (i.e. threads) in.  He often finds random threads and declares them "pieces of my blankie".  What do I care.  At least I don't have to sew them back on.

Not 2 Minutes After I Cleaned the Floor . . .

That's shredded cheese and chocolate milk in case you were wondering.  He looks so pleased with himself.

I Won! I Won! I Won!

There are a lot of great giveaways on the internet.  I don't always enter because I never win.  But perhaps my luck has changed because I recently won a prize from my friend Stephanie Peterson's Website, cheftessbakeresse.blogspot.com.  Woot!

I won the following spice mixes that she has designed herself and a fun apron.  I am looking forward to trying the spices.  But that would, of course, require me to start cooking again.  I'm sure it will happen some day.  The kids can't live on chicken nuggets, cheese, apples and chocolate milk forever.  Or can they?

The Real Reason It All Fell Apart

You may have noticed that my Self Reliance Experiment has dropped off the face of the earth.  Well, there is a reason.  We're expecting!!  And when you have morning sickness all day long, food (storage) is the last thing you want to be thinking about.  Hopefully it won't be too long before food starts sounding appetizing again.  My poor family; they went from Mom cooking food storage to not cooking at all.  Yikes!

The Wisdom of Cookbooks

I have a lot of cookbooks.  Most of them were part of my grandmother's and my mom's collections.  Some I have no idea where they came from.  Like this one:

This cookbook is from 1971 and was put together by the women of the Calvary Baptist Church in Denver.

It has some interesting things inside.  Like recipes from Mrs. Richard M. Nixon and Mrs. Dwight Eisenhower.

There is also this nice ditty from the section on casseroles:

I also like this kitchen prayer.

 THE KITCHEN PRAYER

Lord of all pots and pan and things since I've not time to be
A saint by doing lovely tings or watching late with Thee
Or dreaming in the dawn light or storming Heavn's gates
Make me a saint by getting meals and washing up the plates.
Although I mist have Martha's hands, I have a Mary mind
And when I black the boot and shoes, Thy sandals, Lord I find.
I think of how they trod the earth, what time I scrub the floor
Accept this meditation Lord, I haven't time for more.
Warm all the kitchen with They love, and light it with Thy peace
Forgive all my worrying and make my grumbling cease.
Thou who didst love to give men food in room or by the sea
Accept this service that I do, I do it unto Thee.

Cookbooks are such a snapshot in time.  I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find a section for men only in a cookbook published today.

Or a poem on how to preserve a husband . . .

 HOW TO PRESERVE A HUSBAND

First, use care and get one.  Not too young; but tender and a healthy growth.  Make your selection carefully and let it be final.  Otherwise they will not keep.  Like wine they improve with age.  Do not pickle or put in hot water.  This makes them sour.  Prepare as follows: Sweeten with smiles according to variety.  The sour, bitter kind are improved by a pinch of salt of common sense.  Spice with patience.  Wrap well in a mantle of charity.  Preserve over a good fire of steady devotion.  Serve with peaches and cream.  The poorest varieties make be improved by this process and kept for years in any climate.

. . . or recommendations as to what men love.

What cookbooks do you love to read?

What's the right kind of soap for making bubbles?

I decided to do a post on whether you could make a good bubble mixture from an ordinary store brand dish soap or whether you needed to use Dawn.  I had two large jars of bubbles mixed up--one of each kind.  I went to go find my camera and returned to the above.

Yup, Toddler #2 dumped both jars out.  That's nearly a quart of bubble mixture that is now on my steps.

Perhaps this will explain why I haven't blogged in nearly a week.

I'm in! I'm in! I'm in the Dino Squad!

My three year old is really into Dino Squad.  If you don't know what that is, it's a TV show from about 5 years ago in which some teenagers turn into dinosaurs.  Recently, my little guy has picked up the theme song.  Here he is singing it (please ignore all my laundry in the background):

And, just so you can compare the original.