Kai and the Cookie Press

Kai came to spend the night with us, which was a special treat. She informed me that she was most looking forward to "delivering cookies." The last time she spent the night with us, Regan was visiting as well. We made sugar cookies and decorated them with icing. When Craig got home, he and Kai took plates of cookies to our new neighbors.

I've since purchased a cookie press, so we decided to try that. I found a recipe for spitz cookies that promised 6 dozen cookies. Kai was able to operate the cookie press, making lovely shaped cookies like these:

Oddly, they moved around on the pan during cooking:

But since they kept their shape, even moving around the pan in the oven (which is sorta creepy), so in that respect the recipe was a win. 

Here we are set up to decorate:

And decorating:

But remember that 6 dozen cookies? We ended up with 191 cookies. The end result:

We delivered 6 dozen cookies to the neighbors. Kai has a plate full of cookies to take home. And Craig took a tupperware container full to work today.

Kai Projects: Food and Paint

After establishing that I would be staying with her today, Kai informed me that she wanted to do "a food project" and then a "paint project." We turned to Pintrest, starting on the board where I keep ideas I want to try with her.

Kai's focus on "a food project" forced her to skip interesting looking projects like making bouncy balls and colored soap in favor of an apple flower. Here she is, with our inspiration on the iPad behind her:

A closer look at our finished project (ours has a raisin and nut mixture because we've run out of plain raisins):

After her snack, Kai was ready to move onto her "paint project." She selected the picture of herself with bottles of flour paint on Pinterest, so we repeated an earlier project. 

We mixed flour, kosher salt, and water in a big bowl until we had a thick, paint-like consistency. (We didn't measure anything, I mostly allow her to scoop or pour the ingredients into the bowl and mix them up. We discuss whether the miture is too thick or too thin and I help her determine which ingrediants might help.) Using a funnel, I transferred the "paint" into our bottles. 

Kai added food coloring, I mixed the paint, and she screwed the lids in place. She managed to only knock one bottle over, but the paint was thick enough that it didn't even spill. 

Here she is, outside, with her art:

Kai Projects: Carefree Crafts Day

When I initially signed up for a monthly craft subscription, I tried three different companies. We continue to get my favorite, Carefree Crafts. When Kai was home every day, we had to ration the projects with other homemade projects. But with Kai starting daycare, spending more time with Maurico, and finding favorite homemade crafts, we've fallen behind. We spent today binging on Carefree Crafts.

Here is Kai, wearing an old Carefree Craft we had to move to make room on our drying rack downstairs:

We started with a homemade craft - an oil and water mixture with glitter and food coloring:

Then our first Carefree Craft, from the December package, Kai is stringing buttons on a pipe cleaner to make a candy came ornament (You may notice the gingerbread houses in the background, a sure sign that we are a bit behind on cleaning up our craft area.):

Next, a waterless "snow globe" ornament:

After we woke up from naps, we moved into the January, winter wonderland, package. We made this handy penguin ruler for measuring snow...too bad we don't get snow here:

Here, Kai looks thrilled showing off the chalkboard sled and the ruler again:

We made snowflakes from coffee filters, markers, and water (still folded up in this picture):

Here, a snowman coaster:

And finally, a mitten window hanging:

The worst part? There were more crafts today that I didn't get decent pictures of. It was a craft filled day. 

Kai project: Fruit butterfly

We looked on Pintrest for our "food project". A butterfly made with apple slices, a carrot stick, raisins, and pretzel sticks caught Kai's eye. We made our own version with what we have on hand - apple slices, blackberries, raisins, and peanut butter. 

I put the peanut butter in a bag and squeezed it out on the plate to make the antenna. Kai loves peanut butter, so the proportion is wrong for the butterfly but better for getting her to eat the creation. 

Here's what we made:

We couldn't get the raisins to balance on the lowest part of the wing, so I added the last of the peanut butter directly to those apple slices instead. 

Kai Project: A Jello Play Dough Assembly Line

Kai's going to school some days now, so today was our first day together since Christmas break. Her first request? Jello play dough. We have an assembly line process to make five colors of play dough. 

We only use about a third of a box of jello, the rest goes into salt shakers we use for other projects (jello is a fun powdered paint or food coloring for just about anything, and I love the way it smells). First we mix the ingrediants in a pan:

1/2 cup water

1/2 cup flour

1/3 package jello

1 T oil

1 T salt

1 T cream of tartar

It looks like this:

Kai watches me cook the first batch, but while I'm cooking later batches, she works on the previous color. Stirring over medium heat, the mixture will turn into a ball like this:

I find this part really odd. If the heat is too high, you may get clumps. You can either stir faster or turn the heat down and stir until smooth. It will still turn into a ball in your pot. I turn out the ball into a bowl with about 1/2 cup of flour:

While this is cooling, I wash the pot and Kai prepares the ingredient for the next batch. She is able to pick the next color and open the package of jello. I help measure the rest into the pot for her to mix. While I cook the next batch on the stove, she kneads the flour into the ball. Or rather, she "folds it in half, smushed it flat, and sprinkles flour on top" as I repeat these instructions... But she's learning. 

And the end result?

Five balls of delicious smelling play dough and one flour covered munchkin making crazy faces at me. 

Gingerbread Houses

Today, I decided to try making gingerbread houses. Aside from the resulting complete exhaustion, I think our first attempt went pretty well. Of course, I didn't plan ahead so we used the remaining Halloween candy and anything else we could find in the pantry to decorate our houses. Here they are:

Mine is mostly starbursts, mini starbursts, jolly rancher sticks, fruit roll ups, caramels, and coconut chips (on the roof). [Is it obvious that I grew up in a brick house?] Kai's is...well...everything I used plus most of her Halloween candy.

I used a recipe I found online for the gingerbread, modified for the fact that we only had fresh ginger (the equivalent is basically TONS of fresh ginger for powdered). I found a recipe online for the frosting too - egg whites, cream of tartar, and powdered sugar. 

I didn't use a pattern for the houses; I cut them out free form. Kai's fell in a couple times before I got it to stand. I think a pattern might be helpful, but our pieces got distorted a bit as Kai helped put them on the baking sheets. A pattern would not have solved that problem. 

Kai Project: Bottle Caps

We've been saving bottle caps for a long time now. I finally decided to try this project with Kai - stringing bottle caps on string. I wasn't up to the challenge of letting Kai handle a hammer and nail, so I made holes in the bottle caps while Kai organized them by color:

Kai worked diligently on her project (always improving small motor skills):

This is how my project turned out:

And my second one:

And Kai's (this picture taken at Kai's request "to send to Grandma Judy"):

Of course, I may have slightly destroyed the backside of our bamboo cutting board (oops!):

Notes:

We put a drop of Elmer's glue on the end of the string to keep it from fraying. This worked the best of our other attempts to create a "needle".

I suggest washing your bottle caps so that you and your child(ren) do not end up smelling like a soda/beer/cider factory exploded on you. 

Protect your work surface!

Kai Project: Puffy Paint

Today, we decided to try this project from Pinterest:

As usual, we edited the recipe a bit. We mixed:

4 cups flour

1 cup salt

1 cup baking soda

4 cups water

It was rather thick and difficult to mix:

After putting that mixture into our bottles (a slightly messy adventure as the mixture was too thick to go through our funnel), we added a packet of kool aid to each bottle. As we mixed, the citric acid in the kool aid had the expected reaction with the baking soda in our paint mixture (that's the reason I added baking soda to the recipe). Several of the bottles came close to bubbling over the top:

By mixing, we kept them from spilling over the top:

The end result is a lovely smelling, puffy paint:

My picture (I'm not terribly creative, but I wanted to try it):

Kai also tried using her fingers to mix the colors together to create additional colors:

Kai Project: Fun with Fruit

Continuing with our food project theme, we made fruit skewers today.

We used a variety of fresh fruit and dried fruit. Apples were hard for her to push onto the chopstick, but the bananas were so soft they broke apart as she pushed them onto the stick. Fresh grapes, dried cherries, fresh oranges, and dried appricots were the easiest for her to work with. 

After we made fruit skewers, Kai smashed the bananas and I chopped the remaining fruit as small as I could. We added jello and made these "gummies" (Kai's name for fruit snacks).

Kai Project: Faces

Following the food project kick we've been on, we made faces for lunch. First, Kai made a pizza with a face:

For dessert, I sliced an orange, an apple, a banana, and found grapes for noses.

As you'll see, Kai made one happy face and one sad face:

Kai Projects: Rainbow Bread Butterfly

Today's food project selection was a butterfly made from a slice of bread, cream cheese, and fresh fruit. Substituting what we had on hand (and what Kai likes), we used rainbow bread from yesterday, peanut butter, and dried fruit.

After I trimmed the rainbow bread, Kai spread peanut butter:

The finished project:

Kai Projects: Flour paint

We started with simple flour and water:

After transferring the mixture into our bottles, we added food coloring:

Kai painted outside (for easier clean up):

She wanted "glitter" for her surprise for Grandpa, but I talked her into using baking soda and citric acid (if I haven't written about my purchase of 10 pounds of citric acid, I should). We put it in a spice container I saved for crafts:

The results have been entertaining. Unfortunately, I cannot seem to post a video from my phone. I'll have to see if I can add those later.