Wanna Make Something of It?

Five Little Pumpkins--From a Trader Joe's Cereal Box

2011-10-28T17:29:00.001-07:00

I made this last year as a home school preschool teaching tool to go along with two different Halloween-themed poems. It's made from construction paper and a Trader Joe's "Joe's O's" cereal box, turned on its side and inside out.

The pumpkins can be folded down one at a time--lots of fun for toddlers and preschoolers! The little witch is mounted on a Popsicle stick so that she can "ride by" in the first poem.

Here's what the back looks like--the long, skinny cardboard flaps anchor the pumpkins in place once they are folded down and back.

I use this little visual aid in conjunction with two fun Halloween poems for young children. The first is one that I remember from my own preschool days!

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sat on a fence,
and a witch came riding by (witch rides past the first 4 pumpkins).
"Oh, ho, ho, I'll take you home to make a pumpkin pie." (Fold down 5th pumpkin.)

Repeat with 4 little pumpkins, 3 little pumpkins, etc., folding down one pumpkin each time.

Final verse:
No little pumpkins sat on a fence,
and a witch came riding by,
"Oh boo-hoo! There are no more pumpkins, so I'll have no more pie!"

Five Little Pumpkins

Five little pumpkins sat on a gate.
The first one said, "It's getting late."
The second one said, "There are witches in the air."
The third one said, "But we don't care."
The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run!"
The fifth one said, "Isn't Halloween fun?!"
Then, "Whooooo" went the wind and out went the light.
And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight. (Fold down pumpkins as you say this line.)

For more Halloween poems, songs, and finger plays (including several other poems starring 5 pumpkins), check out this great page.

Happy Halloween!

Make a Single Serving of Chocolate Cake...Now!

2011-06-04T13:19:00.000-07:00

Craving chocolate? I found this recipe from Eggland's Best in the back of a magazine--you know, in that section of the magazine where they advertise mail-order, elastic-waist pants? Hmm...come to think of it, maybe the proximity of these two ads was no coincidence! I might need to order some of those pants if I keep making this recipe!

If you've got 5 minutes, some basic ingredients, a mug, and a microwave, you can make a single serving of decadent chocolate cake! Right this minute! One caveat: the mug will get messy, so plan on a little scrubbing!

Here is a link to the recipe--no need for me to reinvent the wheel by reproducing it here. Enjoy!

And yes, all of you culinary eagle eyes, that is basil in the photo. I didn't have any mint and had to improvise. And no, I didn't eat it the basil--at least not with the chocolate!

Lego / Duplo Flowers

2010-05-30T09:16:00.001-07:00

You never know when you're going to need to make a flower out of Legos. If you ever find yourself in a tricky predicament that only a Lego flower can remedy...well, here you go! No tutorial required. Just stack the Duplos up, hand the finished flower to your toddler, and watch her expression of delight as she pretends to inhale their fragrance.

Babysitter Thank You Gift

2010-02-01T17:18:00.001-08:00

Around the holidays, I put together a gift basket for my mother's helper, a junior high aged neighbor who comes over to play with my toddler once or twice a week while I work on projects around the house. I thought I'd share the contents of the basket with you here just in case it might give you some ideas for gifts for your own babysitters. Here are the contents of the basket (unfortunately, I didn't take a photo of the assembled basket...):1. A stainless steel water bottle (this was the first item that I bought, and its shapes and colors offered inspiration for the rest of the items in the basket).

2. A pair of brightly-colored slipper socks.

3. A journal and some pretty pens.

4. A fabric-topped jar full of gumballs.

5. Fun stickers

6. A French memo board (not pictured)

I think she liked it. She said it was, "Cool". Does cool still mean cool?

Posted at: It's So Very Creative

Lazy Vegetarian Recipe #2: Tomatoes & "Beef"

2010-01-26T17:30:00.002-08:00

I came up with this recipe in an attempt to imitate one of my favorite dishes from a local restaurant. It's turned out to be a regular fixture in my weekly meal plans. (I've even made a magnet for it in my meal planning magnet set!) This yummy recipe is both vegetarian and vegan (egg and dairy free), and it's a snap to make! It includes two unique ingredients which may be new to you: Quinoa (an ancient, high-protein grain), and "Beef-Less Strips". For more info. about quinoa, please see the note after the recipe.
Vegetarian "Beef" & Tomatoes--Serves 4 (With Some Rice Left Over)

Ingredients:

A splash or two of olive oil
2 yellow onions, chopped
1 cup white rice, uncooked
1 cup quinoa, uncooked
1 package "Beef-less Strips" from Trader Joe's
2-3 Roma tomatoes, diced (can omit if out of season and just use more tomato sauce)
1/2 to 1 jar prepared tomato sauce
1-2 splashes of ketchup
Salt/pepper to taste

Directions:

Place 1 cup quinoa in a large pot. Rinse the quinoa once and drain to the best of your ability. (Quinoa grains are teeny-tiny, so...good luck!)
To the same large pot, add 1 cup of white rice and 4 cups of water.
Place pot on the stove on high until the water boils rapidly. Once water boils, stir once, cover with a lid, turn heat to low, and set timer for 15 minutes. While rice/quinoa mix is cooking, start on next steps:
Splash a little olive oil in a large frying pan. Cook the onions in the oil over medium heat until they are soft and transparent (around 5 minutes).
Add the vegetarian "beef" strips to the onions. Use the side of a wooden spoon to break the "beef" strips in half, as they're quite long straight out of the package. Stir and cook for a few minutes until "beef" starts to brown a bit.
Add the diced tomatoes. Stir until softened.
Add the tomato sauce (anywhere between 1/2 jar and 1 jar, depending on how "saucy" you want your dish to be). Add a splash or two of ketchup (just for a little zing) and salt and pepper to taste.
When the grains finish cooking, serve "beef" and tomatoes over the rice/quinoa mixture. Enjoy!

A Note About Quinoa:
Quinoa (pronounced “keen wah”--also spelled “quinua”) is an ancient, high-protein grain that you can buy at specialty stores like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods. One of the great things about quinoa is that the cooking instructions are identical to those for white rice (quinoa cooks in 15 minutes, and the grain to water ratio is 1:2), so you can easily pump up the protein in recipes just by adding quinoa in place of some of the white rice. (Quinoa tastes a little bitter, which is why I chose to mix it with rice in this recipe.) When quinoa is cooked, you will see little white “squiggles” in your food that look like teeny tiny worms. Don’t worry; they are not worms! I repeat: not worms! If you can’t find quinoa at your local grocery store, you can omit it from this recipe and just use twice as much rice.

This Recipe Has Been Posted at: A Soft Place to Land

DIY Muffin Tin Marbled Crayons

2010-01-12T16:00:00.000-08:00

I first saw this idea in a book called The Tightwad Gazette. If you've never read this book series (there are three volumes in all), I recommend it. The author writes well, and she makes everything--even composting dryer lint--entertaining.

These large crayons are a nice size for little toddler hands to grab, and they are a wonderful way to use up broken crayon tidbits. For this project, I bought a new box of 48 crayons at Dollar Tree, but I think in the future I'd stick with Crayolas (see note below). I think these would make really cute party favors for a toddler birthday party--just be sure to distribute them as the kiddos walk out the front door unless you favor ankle height marbled crayon wall "murals"!

Making these crayons is a piece of cake (cupcake?) Start by removing the papers from the crayons. I found that the easiest way to do this was to tear a thin line at the seam from the tip of the crayon to the base. The whole paper came off in one big piece this way.

Break the crayons into thirds or fourths, and separate them into color families. Place each color family in a separate cup in a muffin tin. This is important; if you mix too many colors together in one cup, you'll make a lot of mud-colored crayons! Once you have your color categories, mix the crayons around a little bit within each cup so that the shades of each color are distributed within each cup (this helps to create the marbled effect).

Place the tin in a 300 degree oven. After about 2 minutes have passed, start checking on the crayons every 1 to 2 minutes. Pull the tin out when the crayons have melted to the point that you can't see any more individual crayon shapes (basically, you want liquid in your tin).

Cool the crayons completely. I made these in the winter, so I just placed the tray on a table on the back porch and they hardened quickly. You can also cool the tin in the freezer for a few minutes. Once they have hardened completely, pop the crayons out into your hand or onto a soft dish towel (so that they don't break).

That's it! My one complaint about this batch is that a clear layer of wax rose to the top when I cooked these, so that the first few scribbles with that edge of the crayon didn't produce any color on the page (frustrating for my toddler, who is still unclear on the concept of coloring). I think this may have been the result of using cheapo crayons. Remember as a kid how the freebie crayons in restaurants never drew as smoothly as the Crayolas at home? Once in a while, you get what you pay for! I'd recommend stocking up on Crayolas during back to school sales in the fall if you plan to make these for a big group.

Have fun!

Posted at DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land

Four Easy Chocolate Candies to Give as Gifts

2009-12-13T18:26:00.000-08:00

I've always been dazzled by the elaborate candy recipes that I've seen in magazines. But the truth is that I'm a lazy cook; if a recipe involves a candy thermometer, fancy-shmancy ingredients, or virtually any culinary skill at all, I'm not making it. Over the past few years, I've put together this little grouping of 4 easy-to-make sweets that I give to neighbors as holiday gifts. Many of the ingredients are used in more than one of the recipes, which simplifies grocery shopping. The amounts listed here will make enough for 9 quart- sized gift bags, each containing a mixture of the 4 goodies. This chart lists all of the ingredients that you will need to make all four of the sweets (I apologize for the blurriness--I had to paste in a photo of my chart because it's so tricky to add a real table in Blogger). Recipes for each treat follow.

Rolo Pretzel Turtles

Ingredients
1 bag (56 pcs.) Rolo candies
1 bag (16 oz.) mini pretzels (you will have plenty of pretzels left over for dipped recipe below & for snacking)
1 bag (6 oz.) halved pecans
1 bag (12 oz.) white chocolate chips (you will only use a tiny portion of the bag for this recipe, but the remainder is used in other recipes).

Instructions
1. Preheat oven to 300 degrees.

2. Unwrap the Rolos. This is the most time-consuming step!

3. On a foil-lined baking sheet, make several rows of pretzels (leave a wide margin between them). On each pretzel, center a Rolo candy and place a pecan on top:

4. Bake at 300 degrees for exactly 3 minutes. While turtles are in the oven, place white chocolate chips in a Pyrex bowl and set the bowl on top of a saucepan full of water on the stove (bottom of bowl should touch water). Turn on the burner to bring water to a simmer.

5. After 3 minutes, remove turtles from oven, and carefully press straight down on each pecan until the chocolate "oozes" out around it (see photo below). Pressing straight down is important--if you press to one side, the pecan will slide off and you'll have a gooey (yet delicious) mess!

6. Stir bowl of white chips until they are melted. Once melted, dip a fork in and drizzle over turtles. I do this in long strokes to make a "stripe" on a whole row of turtles at once, and then go back the other way. This is not an exact science--some turtles will get big blobs of white chocolate on them, and then you'll have to eat those "mistakes". It's a tough job, but someone's got to do it!

7. Chill in refrigerator until hardened. I like to use a spatula to transfer them to dinner plates so they will fit in the fridge more easily.

Thanks to my client and friend, Valerie, for introducing me to this insanely delicious recipe!

Winter Bark

Now that your white chocolate has melted, you're already halfway to making winter bark! This is a Martha Stewart recipe that I have "lazified" by using chocolate chips rather than chopping gourmet chocolate by hand. (Note: if you're making all four recipes, don't bother washing your semi-sweet chocolate bowl when finished with this recipe, as you can use this bowl again for cluster recipe below)

My ingredient list (which works just fine for Martha's recipe):
1 bag semi-sweet chocolate chips (not all chips are created equal--taste test first)
8 ounces (1/2 jar) salted. dry roasted peanuts
Several large dollops of melted white chocolate chips from recipe above (save a little for dipped pretzels)

Martha's instructions can be found here.

Dipped PretzelsI came up with these as a way to use up the last of the white chocolate (and some more of the pretzels). While your white chocolate is still in liquid form, dip one end of pretzels in chocolate, tap on edge of bowl to remove excess, and place on a dinner plate. Place in fridge to harden. Use a light hand when dipping in chocolate, as too much chocolate will "glue" them to the plate! One year I used the "grid" shaped Snyder's pretzels and thought they looked like little frosted windowpanes.

Peanut ClustersIngredients
6 ounces (1/2 bag) of semi-sweet chocolate chips
1 bag butterscotch chips
8 ounces (1/2 jar) salted, dry roasted peanuts
1 cup Rice Crispies or generic equivalent

Instructions
Now that you have a bowl all covered in chocolate, it's a great time to make peanut clusters! Using your already-chocolate-coated bowl from the winter bark recipe, combine chocolate chips and butterscotch chips. Microwave on high in 30 second intervals until melted & smooth. Mix in peanuts and Rice Crispies. Working quickly (because the clusters start to harden quickly) drop by teaspoon onto waxed paper (or onto dinner plates). Chill in fridge to set completely.

A variation on this recipe was given to me by a former coworker. (Photo note: for the clusters in the photo, I used more Rice Crispies and fewer peanuts than the recipe called for, so your clusters may look "peanuttier"!)

A Gift Wrap Idea for the Goodies
Divvy up an even mixture for each recipient and transfer the candies to quart sized Ziploc bags. Tuck each sealed bag into a small paper lunch bag. Fold down the top of the bag and cut the edge with scalloped scissors. Punch two holes through the folded top of the bag, and thread through a seasonal ribbon. Finish with a gift tag, if desired. (This year, I just added a white address label to the front of the bag with the name of the recipient on it.)
Happy Holidays!

These recipes have been posted at Simply Sweet Home, Today's Creative Blo g and A Soft Place to Land.

Lazy Vegetarian Recipe #1: Easy Banana Nut Oatmeal

2009-11-04T10:21:00.000-08:00

Got two minutes? Then you can make this yummy, energy-packed breakfast! You don't need to buy "instant" oatmeal; real oatmeal cooks almost instantly in the microwave.

1. Pour some oatmeal in a microwave-safe bowl. Don't measure, just pour.
2. Add milk to cover.
3. Add almonds, walnuts, and banana slices.
4. Microwave on high for 1 min. & 10 seconds (you may need to adjust the time for your microwave).
5. Drizzle with just a touch of real maple syrup.

Enjoy!

Disclaimer: Although there is no spoon in the picture, I strongly suggest that you use one.

This post has been linked to Foodie Friday. Stop by for lots of food goodness!

Easy Fall Fabric Flower Pin

2009-11-02T09:29:00.000-08:00

Some pregnant women find that the nesting instinct kicks in during their 9th month. Though I definitely spent a lot of time nesting when I was pregnant with my daughter, what really kicked in for me was my crafting instinct. I made a year's worth of handmade birthday cards (using double-sided tape, since my adhesive product of choice--rubber cement--was too toxic to use). I also made a whole bunch of these fun little fabric flower pins. Why? Who knows. But aren't they cute?!

I used several online tutorials to create these pins, as I couldn't find one tutorial that included all of the elements that I needed.

To make the petals, I recommend this tutorial from Sew Blessed.
To make the pointed leaf, use the (petal) instructions from this tutorial from Polka Dot Pineapple.
To make the yo-yo in the center, use this tutorial from Heather Bailey.
To finish the pin, I sewed a bead in the center of the fabric yo-yo and added a felt circle and a pin back to the back of the flower.

I can almost guarantee that you can whip up one of these cute pins in less time than it took you to read this post! These are a great way to use up smaller fabric scraps, and they would make fun holiday gift toppers, hostess gifts, or stocking stuffers.

This post has been linked to the "I Can Make That" party at Just a Girl and at DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land. Stop over for more handmade gift ideas.