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. 

Cheese Faces

Today, Kai picked a picture of faces made from Baby Bell cheese from Pinterest for her "food project." This one required a knife, so this was primarily my project. We had two pieces of cheese, so Kai picked out two faces and I did my best to recreate them. I used chia seeds for the eyes and leftover wax for the mouths.

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. 

White Elephant: Crazy Wrapping

For Craig's office white elephant gift exchange, the theme was crazy wrapping. I had been wrapping gifts at home all day, so I decided to use the remnants to create his wrapping paper. I made a quilt, basically:






I tried different lacing methods:






And this is how the final gift looked:

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.