This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

 

A Pinterest Kind of Valentine's Day

Yes, I'm hooked. Pinterest is my new favorite thing. And if you've been hooked too then you may have seen these ideas pop up around Valentine's Day, or Love Day as many are labelling it now :)

The first project I tackled were these Red Velvet Cheesecake Brownies from "The Novice Chef". Hers were much swirlier than mine on top, but overall, not bad. I think I'd change the recipe a bit if I were to make them again, they were a little dry, but they did work very well with her Red Velvet Cheesecake Milkshake idea which we made as well with the scraps.

The second project tackled was this very cute little snack butterfly.  My son's teacher asked me to provide a 'healthy snack' as part of their Valentine's celebration.  So the butterflies aren't specifically for Valentine's Day, they are good for any class snack.  Cute, healthy and easy to do!

Finally, I saw the Heart Shaped Cinnamon Rolls idea.  I used my Super Easy Cinnamon Buns recipe (no yeast, done in under an hour), but instead of rolling the dough into one log, I rolled it in evenly at both ends towards the centre.  Once the buns were sliced, I just pinched the bottom into more of a point and sat them in the pan in such a way to hold their heart shape.  My kids were so happy to have fresh cinnamon buns for breakfast on Valentine's morning.

No picture but, for dinner I picked up some red heart shaped tortellinis from Costco.  Cute and yummy <3
 

100 Day!

My son had 3 assignments for 100 day this past week. 100 Day is a much celebrated event in the primary grades. You can't just let the 100th day of school pass by without a lot of hoopla you know.

His 3 assignments were:
1. Make a poster using 100 something, the more creative the better
2. Wear 100 something to school
3. Bring a collection of 100 something

My son's  100's:
1. The Poster

I took a picture of the school principal.  We used scrapbook paper from my craft box and he cut out 100 ties.  Behind the ties are scrapbook border stickers to be the tie racks.  I was super proud that he would do all that cutting and make something like this.

2.  What he wore

Thank you Pinterest for this idea.  100 googly eyes glued on with applique glue.  I used a fabric marker to draw around it to make this 100 Eyeball Alien Shirt.

3.  The Collection

See the ziplock baggie - it's full of hockey cards, of course!  What else would my favorite little hockey player bring as his collection?

All and all a successful 100th day of school!

 

This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

ABCinema

I love movies and trivia - so when I stumbled upon this last night, I was hooked. This animation artist has put together a 56 second movie alphabet. Each picture is a clue to a movie, going in alphabetical order. My husband and I watched it a number of times to figure them all out and even then there were a few I couldn't get (I think O, M, T, U, Y, Z stumped us). Take a look:
ABCinema from Evan Seitz on Vimeo.

Mama Made Dress for Boo

I picked up this polar fleece material from the remnants basket last year.  I had in mind that it would make a great winter dress for my dear daughter.  Being me and not one to follow patterns so much, I thought, it can't be that difficult to make a little A-line dress.  And it wasn't.  At least, not after I found a tutorial via Pinterest.  (I can't say enough about Pinterest!  Loving it!).  The tutorial I found at From the Blue Shed (thank you!) confirmed exactly what I thought would be true.  If I just trace one of her current A-line dresses a little bit bigger, I could make a new dress.  She was also kind enough to mention things like 'clipping along the neckline and sleeves' to finish those off properly.  Her dress  has beautiful pockets on it, which I didn't do.  I did take her idea of making one sleeve fasten with a button - so cute!
My daughter saw me start this in the evening before her bedtime and knew it was for her.  The first thing she did in the morning was find the dress, pick it up and say, "oooh!  pretty!  mine dress!"  and promptly demanded to wear it that day.  (BTW - this was literally that simple to make, I made it in one evening, and that included fixing the fact that I first sewed it together with the back on backwards - the result of sewing tired, but the sewing did relax me, so it all evens out).
Here's my daughter modelling her dress in the early morning before going to daycare - we leave the house before 7am each day, hence the darkened windows and sleepy eyes.

Yes, she did get into modelling for me, and turned around to show the back, but would only pose for a couple of pictures - the life of a 2 year old!

*On a side note, we've been getting more than a few comments lately about how much people think our daughter looks like Boo from Monster's Inc - the big brown eyes, the ponytails...it was once I put this dress on her that I realized how right they are!  Take a look:

This Moment

{this moment} - A Friday ritual. A single photo - no words - capturing a moment from the week. A simple, special, extraordinary moment. A moment I want to pause, savor and remember.

20 years ago - give or take...

Yesterday the song of the day for my middle schoolers was Metallica's "Enter Sandman". I realised that Enter Sandman came out in 1991 - 21 years ago. Really! Does it feel like that long ago? But I guess it was. It was huge back in high school. My husband's 20 year high school reunion is this year, which means mine is coming up next year. Here are a few of the 20 years ago this happened headlines:
-First website published - August 6, 1991
-Magic Johnson announced he was HIV positive - Nov. 1991
-Kristi Yamaguchi wins Olympic Gold - Feb. 1992
-Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love get married - Feb. 1992
-Silence of the Lambs wins Best Picture at the Oscars - March 1992
-Top songs of 1992 include: I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred, Achy Breaky Heart by Billy Ray Cyrus and End of the Road by Boys II Men
-Queen finds a new audience with the success of Wayne's World featurning Bohemian Rhapsody
-Aladdin, the Bodyguard and A Few Good Men were also on-screen
-Jay Leno started hosting The Tonight Show in 1992
-"Melrose Place" and "Barney and Friends" were both new shows on TV in 1992
-Seinfeld first aired the episode "The Contest" but Seinfeld wasn't in the top 20 of shows on TV - the top 5 shows of 1992 were 60 Minutes, Roseanne, Cheers, Murphy Brown and Home Improvement
-Kevin Nealon took over Weekend Update on SNL in the 1991/1992 season - other players included Dana Carvey, Chris Farley, Phil Hartman, Victoria Jackson, Mike Meyers, Chris Rock and Julia Sweeney

Cookie Monster Cake

 This is my daughter's second birthday cake.  She is loving Sesame Street right now.  The cake was really easy to make.  I used a deep circle shaped Pyrex casserole dish to get the height of Cookie Monster's face.  The eyes are 2 cupcakes that I frosted completely in vanilla icing.  I used mini Oreos for the centres.  The blue colour was probably the most difficult to make.  I used the Wilton's Food Dye for that and it's still not quite dark enough, but probably could have been if I'd been more patient.  The great thing about this cake is that I just piled the icing on, no worries about how messy it looked because Cookie Monster is quite messy!  To get the mouth, I just used a butter knife to cut out a mouth shape and stuffed it with my Banana Chocolate Chip cookies.  I also broke a few and scattered them on the cake plate to finish the effect.  I think she liked it, don't you?