Flannel Friday ~ Baking

This past week, my storytime theme was baking, which is one I like to do around this time of year when everyone is busy baking delicious treats for the holidays.  I have several fun activities to share with you that I love doing at this program.  It’s such a magical storytime and the kids always enjoy it so much.

I made a cute little oven out of a shoe box covered in stainless steel looking contact paper.  I added construction paper burners and oven door.  Stored inside, and ready for any storytime, are all the supplies you need to make some delicious pretend cookies (I can’t fit the mixing bowl and spoon, however).

In the box is a recipe card, pretend flour (I just printed off a flour box and stuffed it with cotton), a sugar bowl, cup of milk, salt (old film canister), ginger, a plastic egg, tub of pretend butter, measuring cups and spoons, cookie cutters, piece of felt to be the batter after mixing, rolling pin, baking pan, oven mitt, timer, sprinkles, and pretend frosting bag, flat cookies, stuffed cookies that are decorated on one side.

We discuss why a recipe card is important and what usefull info you can find there.  Before class, I make sure to have the square of tan felt (the cookie dough batter) already in the mixing bowl, so when after the ingredients are added all you have to do is dump the felt batter out, I put our felt board on my lap to act as a table for the kids to roll out the dough on.  Each kid takes turns adding ingredients, stirring, rolling out the dough and making the shapes with the cookie cutters.

Then I put the flat cookies on the pan and put it in the oven and set the timer for 2 minutes.  (secretly dump off the flat cookies at this time and put the stuffed ones on the pan-the stuffed ones should be hidden in the oven before class starts)  I’ve found that with practice you can time this perfectly so that the timer ends as soon as you are done reading Maisy Makes Gingerbread by Lucy Cousins.

When the timer goes off, I grab my oven mitt and pull out the cookies! Mmmm, they are so yummy and puffy now!  But before we are all done we have to make them look beautiful.  I have the kids take turns adding frosting and sprinkles.  This activity never fails to delight both children and adults alike at storytime.  It works great for all size groups, with larger groups each child takes a turn doing one thing, with small groups kids can have multiple turns adding ingredients, stirring, rolling, cutting out cookies, and decorating them.

Super fun!

The other felt board I want to share with you today is a brand new one I added this past week based on the book Cupcake by Charise Mericle Harper.

This story is so cute and funny and fit in perfectly with my yummy baked goods themed storytime.  The story is about a cupcake who thinks he is too plain and boring with just a white frosting top.  So with the help of his candle friend they try all sorts of different toppings, including pickles, an egg, peas, pancakes, a squirrel  and even spaghetti!  Definitely worth checking this book out 🙂

You can find the rest of the Flannel Friday round up at Courtney’s blog Miss Courtney Meets Bobo

Gingerbread Delights kit releases + Freebies

I have a fun new kit in the store today at Scraps N Pieces.  It’s called Gingerbread Delights and is full of all sorts of yummy elements and papers that are perfect for scrapping your holiday baking and decorating!  The kit also includes an awesome gingerbread house making kit.  You can either print the pieces to make a hybrid project or use the pieces to enhance a digital page with your own personalized gingerbread house.  🙂

This kit will be on sale for 40% off through Dec 14th so grab it quick!

Check out the awesome pages and freebies from my CT!

By Robin:

By Wendy:

Wendy also has a freebie word art on her blog for you 🙂

By Dani:

Dani also has a fun word art cluster for you:

By Leah:

By me:

We went to the Botanical Gardens for their yearly gingerbread house show. It was such an amazing time, this was the first year that in addition to view the beautiful gingerbread houses on display, that kids could also make their own house. They also had a train ride through the gardens. It was such a magical experience that we went back the next day with friends!

Getting Ready for Christmas

The girls (mostly Fiona since Lexi’ still new to all the Christmas excitement/insanity) have been pushing to put our tree up and lights on the house.  It’s been rough around here with all the pneumonia, yes Dan and my mom got it too 😦  so us adults are a little less enthused about Christmas then normal.  But we put our tree up last week and the girls had so much fun seeing all the ornaments again and playing with them and accidentally breaking them.  My trusty glue gun is always at the ready on tree decorating day.  Lexi especially was amazed with all the excitement, last year she was just a little over 1 so this is the first year where she can really participate in all the fun and activities.  Once the ornaments were on the tree she ran around it batting at all of them and pulling off the little gold horns so she could pretend to play them.  Despite the fact that the tree takes up a huge amount of valuable floor space in our living room, I have to admit that it does look really pretty.  We still have to put lights on the house and are hoping to do that tomorrow as it’s supposed to be a little warmer out.  Neither Dan nor I want to spend tons of time out in the cold just days after getting over pneumonia.  I REALLY don’t want to get sick again!

On Friday night we went to the annual gingerbread making party at church, again this was Lexi’s first time going and she had so much fun.  Everyone brings their own graham crackers and frosting and then a ton of candy to share.  So in the end you wind up with a cool assortment of tasty decorations for your gingerbread house.  I wasn’t sure how Lexi would do, I pictured her either having a great time and making a cute little house, or eating a ton of candy and going bizerk.  Fortunately it was the former.  She actually sat in her chair for a good hour putting gum drops and Hershey’s kisses all over her gingerbread house/lean-to.  As Fiona worked on her house (and for the whole 40 minute drive home) she narrated the story of the gingerbread men who live in the house.  They eat only gum and candy peas, one of them can’t afford a bed to sleep on, and they have bat toys (courtesy of a friend who brought in a Halloween gingerbread house kit).  She made these few facts into a lengthy and drawn out narration that would make Thoreau proud–seriously did anyone finish reading Walden’s Pond in high school?

The Christmas fun continued on Saturday when we decorated sugar cookies.  Again I was surprised with how well Lexi did, she’s usually so active that I didn’t expect her to be patient with cutting the cookies out, waiting for them to bake, and then decorating them before having a chance to eat any.  But she really enjoyed it.  Our cookies turned out very nice, and I found a new recipe that actually makes soft sugar cookies that even taste good.  Ours always seemed to be really hard in the past.  It is hard to find the cookies, however, underneath about two inches of frosting and assorted sprinkles.

Saturday night was an exciting night for the girls because in our neighborhood Santa comes by on a flashing fire truck to bring kids presents a couple weeks before Christmas.  Unfortunately for Lexi, this turned out to be a terrifying experience.  Too bad Santa has to be so weird looking to most kids.  And it’s also strange that a 6 foot tall bunny poses less of a threat to my children than a guy with a beard (I mean Dan’s dad has one it’s not all that unusual-maybe it’s the bright red suit?)  Anyhow, it was very exciting when we got the call from one of Santa’s elves telling us that he was just minutes away.  We headed outside and watched for the flashing fire truck.  Santa comes riding in hanging on to the back of the truck “HO! HO ! HO!”-ing the whole time and ringing a bell.  Then he hopes off receives the girls’ presents from an elf and hands them over.  Fi was excited, Lexi was screaming.  Then he’s off again on the back of the truck frantically ringing his bell on the way to the next house.  I guess it’s events like this one, and Halloween, and being down the street from the beach that make living in this house with foundation problems, more worth it.  The girls ran inside with their gifts and Fiona immediately started playing with Lexi’s gift while Lexi went off to color.  Oh well, we tried.  P.S. don’t tell the girls but mommy dropped off the gifts at the fire station a week before Santa’s visit.

Lexi’s first art class (and my new CT position)

To begin with, I am excited to announce that I am on the Creative Team for Shel Belle Scraps.  This means that I will be receiving her newest scrapbooking kits, before they are available to the public so that I can make a couple pages to inspire others to try her kits themselves.  I’m really excited to be on her team and am looking forward to working with more of her beautiful kits.  You can find all of her available kits at the Stuff to Scrap store.

The first kit I worked with as a member of her Creative Team is called “Baked with Love.”  As you can probably guess it’s great to use with baking themed pages but is also versatile enough to use for anything you would like to scrap.  Images are linked to her store.

The two pages I made with Shel Belle’s kit “Baked with Love”:

The first page is Fiona (yes, she looks just like Lexi!) several years ago at our old house. In fact in these photos she is just a couple months older than Lex is right  now.  This was the first year she really got into making and decorating cookies.  She had such a great time and obviously enjoyed eating her cookie at the end.  I’ve been working on back scrapping to get pages made from before I started scrapbooking.

The second page features photos I took this weekend.  While Fi was in her art class, I peaked in on the little kid class to see if the same teacher that Fi had was still there, Miss Kate.  She was such a great teacher and had so many fun projects, many of which we still have hanging up at home.  She saw me and Lexi peaking in and commented on how much Lex looked like Fi.  Lexi is just a little younger now than Fi was when she started art classes at the museum.  Miss Kate invited us in to make a leaf with the rest of the class for the last couple minutes before class was over.  Lex was so excited and walked right in and sat down with Miss Kate to work on her leaf.  She helped to roll the paint onto the print and then rub the paper over the inked leaf.  Miss Kate then gave her oil pastels to color it with.  I really can’t wait until Lexi can start art class.  She loved her little preview, also it will give us something to do while Fi is in class. It’s hard for Lex to hang out at the museum for an hour and a half without getting into some kind of mischief.