Art Project Roundup

We've been in full swing over here crafting up pretty pink things for Valentine's Day. The full scoop and "how to" is over at Chalk In My Pocket, but I thought everyone would love to see a few photos of Claire and the end results of some of our projects.

Spray Paint Valentines
   


DIY Block Stamps



Our little portrait artist is still creating lots large bodied stick folk. We made up these gift tags for Linda and Sandy for their belated Christmas gifts. The alphabet stampers have gotten so much use - thanks GrandBob and GranC!

This whole other blog took off a lot faster than I expected so I've need the help of my trusty assistant. I think I might photograph things too much - every time Claire draws something she takes off to fetch her camera.

How to Make Homemade Apple Chips

 
Yummy! A crunch, sweet Valentine’s Day that's not loaded with sugar – what a delicious, simple and healthy afternoon treat these were! Package ‘em up pretty and I think they’ll make a lovely gift for someone special.

Valentine’s Baked Apple Chips

Thinly slice apples (really thin, or you’ll be cooking these for HOURS). This would have been a good time to whip out the food processor but I was lazy.

Lay out your slices and put your kid to work with some heart shaped cookie cutters. If there isn’t too much “core” or seedy bits, the punched out hearts can be baked too! Dip all the slices in some freshly squeezed lemon juice to prevent browning (optional). Claire loved the dipping…and licking her fingers after each dip (guess, we’re keeping these for ourselves!)

The food photography is just for you Caca, step by step LOL!

We baked the apple slices on some parchment for an hour and 10 minutes in a 250F oven. Some of the thicker slices took a few minutes longer. Once they are lightly browned, pop ‘em out of the oven and let cool. They’ll crisp up in no time and are totally delish.

They also make fantastic love goggles:

Front Door Valentine's Wreath (and why you should consider using our back door)

I do believe that everyone needs a glittery, poofy pink wreath on their front door.

This is probably proof that I've been sniffing too much polyurethane while finishing our staircase.

Three stairs down and at eleven to go...I'm sure there will be lots of crafty goodness to share in the coming weeks as this home improvement project wraps up (or as I get tired of sanding). I've got to keep this kid occupied so while I'm slaving away, Claire's been whipping up some Valentine's Day decorations.

Merry Christmas!

I sure hope your family had a wonderful Christmas, we celebrated with a big family gathering, lots of delicious food and much laughter. Watching Claire just enthralled by all the magic of Christmas was the best gift of all.

And snow?! Well we certainly got that. Our first storm of the season, and what a storm it was. Our family left late on Christmas day rather then risk getting caught in the blizzard. We were sorry to see everyone head out early but I won't lie and say that spending boxing day in PJs sipping eggnog and eating random leftovers wasn't fun.

I'll be so sad to take down our tree and decorations this year. Claire was so excited to help out. If there was a surface that could be covered in ornaments or greenery she was all over it! We spent evenings leading up to Christmas cutting snowflakes out of coffee filters, making evergreen wreaths and garlands and generating huge messes of glue and glitter for our paper punch ornaments. By the way - shatterproof ornaments are a fantastic invention, Claire helped me string them up everywhere! I'll have to post a tour of all our decorations but if you look carefully in the background of these photos you'll catch a glimpse of our handiwork.

I have a feeling that tossing the tree this year might be a bit of problem considering Claire is STILL decorating it. To make letting go easier, I'm thinking of having her string it with some popcorn and cranberries for our bird friends. We can watch them feast and enjoy the tree just a little longer without having pine needles underfoot in our living room for another month. Let's hope this works, otherwise there are going to be lots of tears or a tree up in February over here! I'm not sure which is worse!

If I'm not blogging before the New Year, let me take the time to wish you and yours a healthy and happy one!

Coming Soon to a table near you...

Meatloaf is not my strong point but last year I saw NotMartha's monster meatloaf and had to give it a try. Of course I was lacking in both a freaky gelatin hand mold and decent meatloaf recipe. So I winged it.

Meat, oatmeal, onions, carrots, zucchini, eggs, spices, ketchup, tomatoes...why oh why did I not write down what went into this DELICIOUS creation?! My best meatloaf ever and no way to recreate it. Ugh.

I covered my free-handed hand (get it?!) in ketchup and provolone cheese and served up the gruesome feast to Claire and Dan.

Clapping hands followed. Ok. I'll stop now.

We'll also be revisiting the witches fingers recipes. I am totally adding some of our homemade strawberry jam to the nail beds and "stumps." We brought some of these down to the "Grands" last year and although the looked rather disturbed eating them, the plate came home empty.

Have I mentioned Claire wants to be a ghost for Halloween? Is it wrong to send your kid out wrapped up in a blanket? It IS what she wants...but I had grand plans of turning her into a tree with the miniature birdhouses we bought. She was admiring a pair of brown cowgirl boots at Old Navy today, maybe we'll go for a cow girl look!

Santa's Visit!

Claire must have been a good girl this year, Santa and company brought lots of gifts and I'm predicting a year of very exciting play!

Pretend play rules supreme right now, Claire especially loves imitating things she sees around the house. In her new play kitchen, she's making mean cups of tea for Daddy every night and we've had many treats of "happy cake" delivered right from her "hot hot oben or mikeywave." If you don't blow out the pretend candles (over and over again) the chef gets very upset. The play kitchen is a HUGE hit, just the right size for her to reach everything and attractive enough for placement in a corner of our dining room.

Huggy Baby, Teddy and Baby Baby have a nice little set up going in the living room with a choice of pack and play, bouncy seat or table side high chair (which looks remarkably like cousin Aidan's seat!). Claire's little play table is set up right near her kitchen for meals with her stuffed friends or parents.

Claire received a fantastic set of cutting foods (velcroed wooden fruits and veggies) which she cuts up and washes before throwing the whole lot in her pot for stew. These mixed up wooden meals are quite delicious especially when served by a 2 year old wearing a chef hat and apron. I'm hoping to grab a photo of Claire in her full cooking regalia today...cross your fingers that she's into them, there is no forcing a 2 year old to dress up if she doesn't want to!

In other playtime fun, the nuts and bolts are still a challenge in the wooden toolbox Santa brought. Daddy's help is sought out for those, but she is a pro with the hammer and nails enthusiastically fastening on layers of tabs and nailing them together. Dear Melissa and Doug - we LOVE you and all your wonderful wooden toys!

Thankfully even with all the excitement and new toys it doesn't look like a Toys R Us explosion in my living room (well, anymore). Right after Christmas I pared down what we had out and it really seems to focus Claire on the whole play - put away cycle.

Resetting the Kid

Dan asked me last night what grand plans I had in store for Claire today. The answer was simple.

None.

After more then 20 hours in the car over the past week, bunches of new toys and many family visits, we all could use a break. As Dan eloquently put it, a "oh, you're resetting Claire."

So for the next few days we're taking it easy at home, playing with some of the new toys (I'll share some tomorrow!) and just plain relaxing. I'll be rebooting my kid back into the rhythms of our day...wish me luck. If all goes well, I just might have Huggy-Baby tell you all about some of Claire's new playthings tomorrow. Hint, look in the background...

Mommy! Dat's a BIG Bird!

We love our "tweets" around here and I'm loving Claire's long toddler sentences! She spied this red-bellied woodpecker (yes, red-BELLIED...some ornithologist missed an anatomy lesson) and has been yapping on about the big bird "dat fwies and eats awl da yums, he ees big!"

Claire wakes up every morning waiting to make "anjewels" in the snow and informs us about the phases of the moon: "when iz dark 'den 'deres a moon. Yook! a biiiig moon, Woooooow!"

Photos from Christmas are here, there's a few more floating around I'll collect and post another time, but here are two of Claire and cousin "Moo-cheal" enjoying a sleigh ride with McManda. It reminds me a lot of this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wtz5rJ78pTQ

Monster Meatloaf and Other Creepy Baking

Claire's still too young to appreciate Halloween and all the fun spookiness surrounding the day but Dan and I really enjoyed a couple of creepy meals this past weekend.

Check out our monster-hand meatloaf:

I was inspired by not Martha but didn't have the hand mold that she had. I decided to wing it and free-formed our Freaky Friday meal, and it came out awesome! The provolone on top really gave the hand a blistered skin-like look and I made my red onion nails thick and pointy. I've also come to the conclusion that the only way I'm making meatloaf in the future is to freeform it - this is the BEST meatloaf I've ever done, bye-bye soggy meatloaf pan!

I've got grand ideas for alphabet meatloaf when it's time to learn some letters...or maybe some miniature meatloaves shaped with cookie cutters? Have I gone meatloaf crazy or what?!

I'll post a recipe for these creepy witches fingers tomorrow - check out the ridged nails and realistic knuckles! Spoooooooooky, Creeeeeepy, very Halloweeeeny! We brought these to a Halloween party (with jellybean nails) and also to GrandBob and Gran-C who found them deliciously scary. I *love* Halloween :-)

Happy Halloween!

Phew! I have five minutes to make it before November 1st rolls on in - HAPPY HALLOWEEN!



We had a great Halloween with our little fairy (or ballerina if she had her wings off) and spent the day celebrating with friends and enjoying tons of sweets. Mmmmmmm....

My personal favorite photo is of Claire and Daddy playing outside together, but there are tons of cute ones in the slideshow!



Enjoy the slideshow!

Happy Birthday USA!

Don't these little splatters look just like fireworks? We used our patriotic marker colors to create a Happy Fourth card for our bloggy friends - enjoy! We'll be spending the day swimming (hopefully the weather will hold out) and gorging on BBQ goodies like watermelon. We had a little watermelon appetizer today, Claire's favorite fruit.


Some more goofy watermelon pictures below or here in the Picasa Album - like the HUMONGOUS slice? Heehee...this is a photo worth framing ;-)

Happy New Year!

One of my many resolutions is to post more to Claire's blog. I've been slacking a bit according to the aunties!

        

So here's a photo from the Christmas card session, I wound up going with the hooded sweater as you can see here. But I didn't want this photo to get lost - I just love the sun shining on her hair and the catch-lights in her eyes!

Have a happy and healthy 2009 from all of us :-)

PS - I hope YOUR resolution has something to do with commenting more on the blog, especially <ahem!> Grandma Caca who finally has a new laptop!

Our Christmas Dinner Adventure!

Ingredients for a Christmas adventure:

• a smoking oven from that toy your toddler hid in its depths
• a stomach bug that said toddler shared with Grandma Caca who now cannot leave the couch
• a grocery store that closed earlier than expected leading husband to announce:

"Honey, let's play Food Network challenge!"

Oh my gosh.

So...we have no where to cook the giant 24 lb. turkey, two of the four burners in the stove are acting wacky and the root vegetables, all the appetizer ingredients and drink mixes are missing. The only side dish I ha d pre-made were mashed potatoes and lasagna.

Dan was resourceful and grabbed a bunch of acorn squash, mozzarella. tomatoes and pre-made seafood dip. He did this while the store employees followed him around ushering him along. Thank goodness he made it INTO the store, they were turning people away at the door since they wanted to get home to their own families. And in case you were wondering, a store clerk had told Dan they closed at seven earlier in the day, well that clerk was off by an hour.

I have to say that dinner turned out great, even if it wasn't what we planned! We had a bunch of apples and pears so we stuffed the acorn squash with fruit and raisins (and drizzled 'em with a healthy dollop of butter, sugar and bourbon). The mashed potatoes reheated well on our wonky burners and I baked the lasagna and sweet potatoes in our microwave/convection oven. GrandBob and GrandCeil arrived with mini-quiches and brussel sprouts which rounded out the meal. I had a nice stash of frozen peas with mushrooms in the freezer so we served those rather than the garlicky string beans. We did the turkey on the grill (having enough propane to cook it all 3.5 hours was our own little Christmas miracle). All I can say is the creation of this meal was quite the culinary adventure.

Of course the best part of our celebration was gathering the family together! I hope you enjoy all the Christmas photos in the slide-show below. It was so nice to have everyone together, especially the little cousins! There are plenty more photos from Aunt Laurie and McManda's cameras. Hopefully those will be added shortly!