100,000 and a Giveaway!

I've been watching my blog statistics carefully for the last couple of days.  I noticed that my all-time pageviews were climbing toward 100,000 and I wanted to do something special as soon as I reached that memorable number.  Today is the Big Day!

I started my blog in April 2011.  That month, I had 1065 pageviews.  Over the past 19 months, my readership has grown steadily to the point that I am now regularly seeing 300-400 pageviews a day.  I am so grateful to all of you who have read my blog and helped me reach this milestone.

To express my appreciation, I'm going to choose one of my followers to receive a $20 gift certificate to scrapbook.com.  If you're not already a follower, scroll to the bottom of the blog and click on the blue "Join This Site" button to be entered in the giveaway.  I'll announce the winner on Christmas Day.  Good luck and thank you all!

Craft Stick Snowman

As you know, I am a HUGE fan of snowmen.  Recently, I shared some of my favorite snowman crafts.  Because you can never have too many homemade snowmen, here is another.  Isn't he adorable?  

Materials: 10 craft sticks, white glue, scissors, black paint, white paint, orange foam (or cardstock), orange Stickles, 2 googly eyes, ribbon, sequins, and black cording.

Begin by gluing 8 of the craft sticks together, side by side.  When the glue is dry, paint the sticks so that the top 1/3 is black and the bottom 2/3 is white.  Paint the remaining two craft sticks black.  (I only photographed one.  There should be two.)

Cut the orange foam to make the snowman's carrot nose.  Coat it with Stickles and set it aside to dry.  When everything is dry, wrap the ribbon around the sticks so that it covers the division between the black and white paint.  Glue it in place.  Glue one of the black sticks to the front of the snowman, covering half the ribbon.  Glue the second black stick to the back of the snowman, also covering half the ribbon.  This forms the brim of the hat.

Add googly eyes, a carrot nose, and a piece of cording to form the snowman's face.  Decorate the hat with round red sequins and green leaf-shaped sequins.  Glue a piece of cord to form a hanger.   

This is Trevor's snowman.  (Mine is the one at the top of the post.)  He is incredibly proud of it and plans to enter it in the fair next summer.  I was really happy when he suggested that. I've trained him well if he's thinking about fair entries in December. 

I'm predicting a blue ribbon!

Trevor's Art-It

Trevor has been doing a lot of drawing recently.  He's always enjoyed drawing, but in the past his drawing has been mostly creating and decorating his own mazes, designing fun golf courses, or drawing imaginary chain reactions.  Then all of a sudden, he started asking me what I want him to draw.  After 50+ suggestions, I was totally out of ideas.  I tried having him come up with his own ideas, but he wasn't interested in that.  So I printed out some drawing games to spark his creativity, including this Monster Draw and this Roll-a-Miro.

Both are versions of art activities that have been around forever.  I did something similar with my students back in my teaching days, but it's something I've never done with Trevor. He was SO excited to try it.  Basically, there are two different ways to play.  You can simply roll one die, check the chart to see what shape you'll use for the first body part, then draw it. Or, if you use two dice, you can play a competitive game similar to Cootie.  We did the non-competitive drawing activity rather than make it a game.  Here's one of Trevor's first creatures:

 

And here's one of mine:

After we played a few rounds, Trevor announced that he wanted to make his own version of a drawing game and that it would be called "Trevor's Art-It."  We headed to the computer to make the grid.  He carefully selected the body parts and the color schemes for his chart, then we printed it out.  Then he designed each of the shapes, incorporating ideas from the two other sheets and adding his own ideas.  He asked me to copy his shapes onto the chart, as he didn't want to mess up on the paper and have to start again.  Here's his finished Art-It.

He was beyond thrilled with the final product.  We immediately played a few rounds of Trevor's Art-It. The first time, we both rolled the same color scheme:

 

Here's one more set of drawings:

 

 

We had so much fun with these!  Best of all, they have really sparked Trevor's creativity and he's no longer asking me for ideas of what to draw.  Win-win! 

Cupcake Wars (Part Two)

As you might recall, we held a family Cupcake Wars competition back in September.  Trevor and I picked 12 ingredients and printed each on an index card.  We taped a grid onto the floor and put an ingredient in each box.  One by one, we tossed beanbags into the grid to determine what each of our secret ingredients would be, then we each made our cupcakes. Trevor ended up using two additional secret ingredients for his final cupcake, which left four ingredients in the grid after our competition.  

Grandma came to visit the next day.  Trevor was so excited to show her the grid of ingredients and to have her taste the cupcakes we'd saved for her.  He suggested Grandma try throwing beanbags to see what her mystery ingredients would be.  When hers landed on pineapple and grape jelly, she said she would accept the challenge.  She hasn't delivered her cupcakes yet, but we patiently await them.

That left two ingredients unclaimed.  

I asked my mom to take the two index cards plus a lime and a chunk of cheese and leave them on my sister's doorstep with no explanation.  Mom agreed, but said there was no chance that Kari was going to accept the challenge, as she hates lime, the rest of her family won't eat cheese, and they were leaving on vacation within a week.  Mom was correct.  Kari had no interest in making a lime and cheese cupcake. Drat.

Over the next few weeks, I thought about the lime and cheese challenge on and off.  I couldn't let it go- I really wanted to see if it was possible to make a yummy cupcake featuring both lime and cheese.  So I decided to try.  Of course, I could have gone the easy route and used cream cheese or mascarpone or even ricotta.  But that isn't much of a challenge and not in the spirit of Cupcake Wars.  So I used this:

 

Again, I could have taken the easy route and incorporated the goat cheese into the frosting. But no.  I wanted to see if I could include it successfully in the cake itself.  My plan was to make a basic yellow cake batter, cut the goat cheese into small pieces, and mix the pieces into the batter.  I thought it would bake up sort of melty and swirly.  I zested some lime into the batter and baked.  The cupcakes came out of the oven looking and smelling good.  I immediately brushed the tops with a lime syrup I'd made while they were baking, then I set them aside to cool.  

I make a very good lemon buttercream frosting, so I substituted lime juice and zest for the lemon in my usual recipe.  Then I candied some lime slices for garnish.  Here's the finished lime and cheese cupcake:

So, how did it taste?  Well, let's just say that the frosting was fantastic but the cupcake itself was definitely not.  While I'd expected the goat cheese to melt and swirl, it actually dried up into chalky little chunks that clumped up in the otherwise tasty cupcake.

Eaten on its own, the cake part was not very good.  However, the frosting was excellent and did a good job of masking the weird cake when eaten together.  All in all, a fun experiment! I'm just glad I didn't actually get lime and cheese for our original Cupcake War, as I would have lost for sure.  (Oh yeah... I lost anyway....)

Cub Scout Astronomy Night

Back in my teaching days, our school had Space Week each December.  The whole school got into it and we had so much fun.  It was definitely one of my favorite weeks each year.  My 5th grade students did an in-depth study of our solar system, then each wrote and illustrated a children's book.  They then read their books to the K-2 students.  I really regret not scanning (or at least photographing) my students' work.  Some of the books were stunning and incredibly impressive for 5th graders.

There are a lot of things I miss about teaching.  Space Week is one of them.  So even though I have a zillion things to do this month, I pushed all those commitments aside and volunteered to plan and run an Astronomy Night for our Cub Scout Pack.  I planned the evening around the three requirements the boys needed to do to earn an Astronomy belt loop:

1. Demonstrate how to focus a simple telescope or binoculars.
2. Draw a diagram of our solar system, labeling planets and other objects.
3. Explain the following terms: planet, star, solar system, galaxy, Milky Way, black hole, red giant, white dwarf, comet, meteor, moon, asteroid, star map, universe.

We started the evening with Space Bingo.  I took the 14 terms from Requirement #3 and added 11 more space-related terms to make 25-item bingo cards.  However, this wasn't ordinary bingo.  I didn't call the actual word- I read its definition and the boys had to figure out which word to mark on their cards.  By the end of 5 rounds of bingo, the boys were fairly confident with what each term meant. 

   

Next, I divided the boys into two groups.  One group headed outdoors with Steve and his telescopes.  Steve is an extremely knowledgable amateur astronomer and was able to share so much information with the kids.  We were blessed with a beautifully clear night and a great view of Jupiter.  The kids loved it.  Each boy had plenty of time to practice focusing a telescope (Requirement #1).     

Meanwhile, I stayed inside with the second group.  I used the boys to create a living model of the solar system.  One boy, representing the sun, stood still in the center of the room holding a big hula hoop over his head.  Another boy, holding a globe, rotated and revolved around the sun.  We talked about what each rotation represents (day/night) and what each revolution means (a year).  We added a moon (holding a ping pong ball), who revolved around the earth while the earth was revolving around the sun.  We talked about what each moon revolution represented (a month).  The remaining boys represented other planets in the solar system. We talked about our living model, then drew a diagram on paper (Requirement #2).

Finally, we discussed what astronauts take with them into space.  They quickly mentioned there is not a lot of room to pack.  One way to conserve space is to pack dehydrated food.  I told the boys that we'd be having a pretend space launch at the end of the evening and that they'd each be packing a dehydrated snack.  Each boy carefully measured 2 T. of a mystery dehydrated substance into a baggie.  They were dying to know what they'd be eating!
 

After each group had done all the indoor and outdoor activities, we came together for a game of True/False tag.  I explained to the boys that I'd say a sentence using one of the 14 key terms from Requirement #1.  If it was true, they would run one way.  If it was false, they'd run the other.  Each team tried to tag the other members.  They boys loved it and it really reinforced the information they'd learned during the bingo game.

Next up was an award ceremony.  All of the boys successfully met the three requirements, so they each received their Astronomy belt loop.  Hurray!

Finally it was time for our snack, but first we had to pretend to blast into space.  We talked about the fact that water is a by-product from the fuel cells on the space shuttle.  We also discussed the difficulties of pouring water in an environment without gravity.  So instead of pouring the water, the boys had to use the syringe to suction it and carefully add it to their mystery snack.

    

They zipped their bags closed and kneaded it to rehydrate the mystery food.  Then we snipped the corner off each bag and they slurped their food.  At this point, most of them still had no idea what they were eating!  In fact, if a big sister hadn't told them, I don't think any of them would know that they were enjoying vanilla pudding.

What a fun night!