Tag Archives: dinosaurs

Taking time out – Mother’s Day

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What more can you ask for, for Mother’s Day but a relaxing time with family. That is exactly what my day was like yesterday. I got my favorite flowers – tulips in amazingly bright colors and a Raclette set (see yesterday’s post) from the hubby. My son made an amazing flower and wrote the nicest things about his mum. Isn’t it amazing how the simplest things from your child can bring out so many emotions of happiness?

Sean is 5 years old and is in Kindergarten, for non-US folks 1st year in primary school. They made a flower and each petal is an adjective to describe their Mum. His said “My mom is….Artistic, Good Cook, Helpful, Pretty, Smart, ? we aren’t sure what this last one is”

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This is now hanging in my office (note to self – mod-podge does not work well with ink). He also wrote a note which just in case I will add the translation and my comments are in blue ;-):

  1. She is as pretty as a beautiful butterfly.
  2. She weighs 1 pound and is 5 feet tall (for starters…why would you put this on a note such as this – right??? Anyway, I thought it sweet that I was only  1 pound 🙂 )
  3. My mum’s favorite place to go is the mountains. (which is so true)
  4. I think my mom is really funny when she takes a shower (I think I need to explain to my 5-year-old that I don’t think that was exactly the right meaning of the question, oh dear…the honesty of a 5-year-old 🙂 )
  5. My mom is so smart, she even knows how to sew (I was surprised and delighted that he considers my craftiness/sewing as being smart)
  6. I like it best when my mom hugs me (I do too, he gives the best cuddles)
  7. I wouldn’t trade my mum for toy Lego (well wouldn’t you know that I am more valuable than his Lego’s)

Again it amazes me at the thought and perception one already has at 5. Love all my thoughtful gifts.

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The rest of the day was wonderful, quilted my Madrona road challenge quilt top (just in time for the guild meeting last night…will post details tomorrow), went to the Durham Life and Science Museum and then had fun sharing projects at our modern quilt guild meeting which is now held at Spoonflower (my favorite place to visit at the moment). I really enjoyed having a laid back kind of day with the family!

I hope you all had a great time too. I would love to hear what made it special so leave a comment or a link to your blog and I will come and take a look. To finish up I will leave you with a couple more photos from our visit with the Dinosaurs.

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Art projects for your kids: Making Cards

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It has been a chaotic first full week back at work this week, I definitely got writers block this week. For the first blog of the week, I wanted to start sharing art projects I do with my son. Doing art projects with my son helps us do something together, I am not really a “play” kind of person – so this give me some mummy time, and I hope it allows him to be creative later on in life.

About 12 months ago, I stopped buying children’s birthday and thank you cards. Instead my son and I make the cards. Our favorite cards are monster birthday cards, each one is unique. We start with a standard white card, a body for the monster made out of adhesive foam. Then for the arms, hair and legs my son helps by instructing me the shape he wants and he colors in the arms, legs and hair. We add glue on eyes.

For his birthday recently we had a dinosaur theme and went to the Life and Science Museum in Durham. For the Thank You cards, I got my son to draw dinosaurs on adhesive foam using dinosaur stencils. He then helped cut out the pieces and we added spots.

Inside we used fabric for a background and color card for the area in which we wrote our note. We also included a photo of the child in the card so they have memories to keep as well.

Today, he was off to a girls birthday party, we decided to make the card match the strip birthday paper we used. We added flowers to the card, using left over buttons I have from the Four Seasons Quilt. My son was able to cut the strips, choose the buttons he wanted to use and do all the glueing (with supervision).

I think this helps add a personal touch to the kids gifts we give.

I would love to see and hear what you do with your kids. I will continue sharing other art projects we do and some of the products/books we have – we are trying to recycle when we can.

Never fail cupcakes

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I am still recovering at home from my sinus surgery. This week has been a little more painful than usual, which makes it a little hard to do all the things I wanted to accomplish this week. I have wanted to make updates to posts, with regards to craft projects and the new backyard project, but first I have to finish them somewhat to take photos. After all a photo speaks a thousand words and that is not happening this week unfortunately.

So in the meantime, its been a week or so since I posted recipes. I have recently been trying out some recipes for cupcakes – one specifically for my son’s 5th birthday. Cupcakes, I find a lot of fun as you you can experiment a lot with them and usually end up something all will like.

I have a never-fail recipe I use as a batter starter and from there I get creative. This recipe is very easy to double if you want more than 12 cupcakes.

Vanilla Cupcake Batter (from New Zealand Edmonds Cookbook)

125g butter
1 tsp vanilla essence
1/2 cup sugar
2 eggs
1 cup all purpose flour
2 tsp baking powder
1/4 cup milk

Cream butter, vanilla and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs  one at a time, beating well after each addition. Sift flour and baking powder together. Fold into creamed mixture. Stir in milk. Place 12 paper cupcake cups in a muffin tray. Spoon mixture into the paper cups. Bake at 375 degrees F (190 C) for 15 minutes or until the cakes spring back when lightly touched. Transfer to a cooling rack. When cool decorate as desired.

Chocolate cup cakes
Omit 2 Tbsp of flour. Replace with 2 Tbsp of cocoa (unsweetened).

Here are some of my creations using this batter.

Lemon Cupcakes with Lemon Cream Cheese Frosting

Use the Vanilla Cupcake batter above. Once cupcakes have cooled, use a corer (like an apple corer) and take out the center. Fill the center with lemon curd. To make the Lemon cream cheese frosting:

Mix in a bowl, 2 Tbsp of melted butter, 1/4 cup cream cheese, 1 cup icing sugar (confectionary), 1/2 tsp grated lemon rind, 1 tsp lemon juice.

Frost the cupcake.

Dinosaur Cupcakes (my son’s 5th birthday party cupcakes)

For this recipe, I again used the vanilla cupcakes but I switched out the all purpose flour with white whole wheat flour and added 1 cup of milk chocolate chips. This made a chocolate chip cupcake.

 

From there I made vanilla frosting and sprinkled that with green sugar or chocolate frosting with hundred’s and thousands (colored sprinkles). I purchased little dinosaur cupcake toothpicks for decoration.

  

By the way, I loved this double cupcake tin from Crate and Barrel – it provides a way of carrying 24 cupcakes.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Cupcakes

For this recipe, I used the Chocolate flavored cupcake batter above. I placed the batter into the cupcake cups and before baking pushed a mini Reeses peanut butter cup into the center, then spooned ~1 tsp of batter over the peanut butter cup. Bake following the directions above.

Frost with Peanut Butter Frosting. Freeze 12 mini Reeses cups for 10 minutes. Use a fork or a rolling pin and break up the mini cups. Top each cupcake with one of the broken peanut butter cups.