Two New Additions

There are two new little additions to my family. My cousin-in-law had her TWINS last week!! That means I've been hard at work making lovey blankets for them to cuddle, and hats to adorn their adorable little heads.

I got the idea for the lovey blankets from a woman I follow on Instagram and this pattern on Ravelry. They have an elephant themed nursery so I'm going to make an elephant head from here (which I also found on Ravelry) to put on the lovey blankets instead of the lamb like the pattern. I was watching the last episode of "Smash", sniff sniff :( , while working on them the other day.

The hats are a Tunisian crochet pattern and yarn that I found buried in one of my yarn bins. I totally forgot that I had bought that yarn to go with the free pattern from the shop along the LYS Tour two years ago. It's still cute none-the-less, and I can't wait to see how it works up. It was a pain to wind since the beads can't fit through a regular ball winder; so I had to wind it by hand off of the swift.

I'll post pictures of the finished projects in a few weeks. What are your favorite projects for babies? What projects are you currently working on? I love to hear your feedback!

This is How My Garden Grows (May 2013 Update)

I have been so busy lately that I have been horrible at weeding my garden, and planting seeds this spring. Thankfully rhubarb doesn't take much care so I already made a rhubarb pie!

The raspberries are trying to take over the whole garden area. I've been pulling shoots out of every section lately. The bees are busy pollinating, which is what I like to see! There are already too many berries starting to grow that I can't count them all. :) In the picture, don't mind the patch of dandilions that currently occupy the raised bed.

This year I'm trying out those Topsy Turvy tomato growers. I hope that having them in a sunnier spot will produce more red tomatoes instead of being left with a bunch of green tomatoes in the fall. A bonus is that while out for a walk around the neighborhood a couple weeks ago, I found a table with FREE tomato starts! I'm Dutch, so anything free is awesome!

Another new addition to my garden this year is the strawberry tower. I got the idea when I was on a field trip to Seattle Tilth with my pre-k class. I figured it would be easy enough to DIY so I drew a mock up on Google SketchUp first, and then handed the plans over to my Dad. Thanks to Stacy for the strawberry starts to put in it! I'll transplant the rest of my strawberry plants after they finish producing fruit this summer.

Last but certainly not least, is my flower bed. Which has actually been getting more attention lately than the garden. I noticed dahlia shoots coming up so I weeded around them. I had to cut/pull out some of the vinca ground cover to give the dahlias and iris more space to grow! I aslo took out the sticks that were supposedly supporting them as they grew, and replaced them with tomato cages since I won't be needing those this summer. A nice addition of rabbit poop fertilizer, and they're growing wonderfully. Now if only the slugs would stay away from them. :(

I'm hoping that blogging about my garden gives me more motivation to finish weeding so I can plant more. What have you planted in your garden this spring? What would you like to grow in your garden?

Birthday Cupcakes

So I settled on baking mocha cupcakes with raspberry buttercream for my Dad's birthday.

I used the mocha cupcake recipe that I found here from Pinterest (of course!). 

 

The raspberry buttercream I adapted from my "taste. Cupcakes" cookbook. I found it at Sam's Club, and originally bought it solely for the Advocaat buttercream recipe; which I will post at another time. Anyways, here is my version of raspberry buttercream.

Raspberry Buttercream Frosting
Yields enough to frost 12 cupcakes

3/4 cup (1 1/2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
2 1/4 cups confectioners (powdered) sugar
3-5 Tbls. seedless raspberry preserves or jelly

Using a stand mixer or a hand mixer, beat the butter until it is creamy. Sift in the powdered sugar and beat until smooth. On low add in the raspberry preserves until desired taste and color is achieved. Either spread or pipe onto cooled cupcakes. Enjoy!

These were the best looking from my batch. Note to self: get piping tips for better results! I also got to use the DIY Cake Stand that I made in this post. :)

I love to hear your feedback! Please comment if you try this recipe. Or what have you baked lately?

Dad's Birthday Choices

My Dad's birthday is tomorrow so I've been scouring my cupcake book, and Pinterest for ideas of what cake/cupcakes I should make for him. His favorites are raspberry, coconut, and coffee.

So far I'm either making cinnamon rolls or scones for breakfast. The cupcake choices are as follows: coconut with raspberry butter cream, mocha with raspberry butter cream, or mocha with espresso butter cream. Such a tough choice!

It helps that he has a sweet tooth, hmm probably where I get it from, so he'll enjoy whatever I end up choosing. I'll post pictures of what I chose tomorrow.

Pinterest Recipe Mash-up: Mini Maple Bars

Last weekend my best friend made mini doughnuts from tube biscuits then filled them with banana cream and topped them with a chocolate ganache. So I decided to try my hand at these easy-peasy doughnuts for the church potluck this weekend. I used the doughnuts from biscuits from here, and the maple glaze/frosting from here. I added an extra teaspoon of mapleine to the glaze because I thought it needed more maple flavor.

My test batch...these didn't last long though! 

48 doughnuts all fried up! It only took an hour to cut, shape, and fry them.

44 doughnuts ready to go to the potluck! Yes, I ate the "ugly" ones that weren't presentable enough. :)

No surprise that all of these got eaten at the potluck, and I got a lot of compliments on them. Have you tried baking anything from Pinterest lately?

Valentine's Day Crafts

I love February and Valentine's Day! Everything is decorated in pink and red with hearts. There's so many craft ideas on Pinterest that there's not enough days in February to do them all. So here are a few of the crafts the Frogs have been working on.

We learned about symmetry when we made these glitter paint hearts for our bulletin board.

Crayon melting on a hot plate is always fun! It's also an easy craft when the other teacher is sick, and you're by yourself at the last minute.

These are the simple heart flower Valentine's I made for the kids with the help of my Cricut. :)

I made heart chains to decorate the classroom.

Pink bubble prints were a hit! Note: poke a hole with pin so if they try to drink it they can't, but it still blows bubbles. :)

These TP tube heart stamps were a hit as well. Sadly, they didn't hold up too well after this one got done.

Simple yet cute hand print Valentine that the kids gave their parents.

Pipe cleaner and Cheerios bird feeders were another favorite project. One girl reported back the next day that the birds were eating the Cheerios.

 What crafts did you make for Valentine's? I love your feedback!

Winter Crafts & Activities

Now that winter is almost over, here are a few of the crafts and activities we did in the Frog class.

Lick and stick snowman pictures. Sorry, it's sideways.

Doily snowman picture. We hung these on their lockers. Again, sorry it's sideways.

We also made borax crystal snowflakes which I posted about a few weeks ago. The kids also had fun playing with the shaving cream snowman in a bag activity.

The beginning of February was literacy week at our school. We had fun reading The Artist Who Painted a Blue Horse by Eric Carle and we painted funny colored animals, too! We also read The Mitten by Jan Brett, and decorated a mitten and made animal puppets to tell the story. Finally, for our assembly we retold the story of Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak, and the kids loved making wild things masks. I wish I could post a picture of all of them because they were SO CUTE! Although, I'm slightly biased since they're my class. :)

These are just the few crafts and activities we had time for. I found tons more on Pinterest that I wanted to use, but there isn't enough winter! Maybe I'll use those next year.

What are some of your favorite winter crafts and activities with kids? I love to hear feedback!