Noodle Ice Cream

The kids' Grammy was in town recently and like most of her visits, this meant the craft bin would be restocked with some type of to-do project. I always know when a crafty activity is about to take place when my mom begins to pull random objects out of her bag like Mary Poppins. The project for this weekend was pasta coloring.

I’m pretty sure the last time I colored food was over two years ago so we were in major need of a pasta rainbow growing on our counter top.

[Few things are as nice to look at as a beaming pasta rainbow]

A couple weeks after the visit from Grammy we pulled out the multi-colored pasta and enjoyed a make with the neighborhood children. To stay true to the season, we made “noodle ice cream.” To do this we needed white round cardstock circles to mimic scoops of ice cream (I used a 2 inch circle paper punch), brown triangle shapes to mimic ice cream cones (cut with scissors from craft paper), white school glue, cardstock folded into cards to glue our creations to and of course the colored noodles to symbolize various flavors of ice cream.

The older kids had fun inventing their own new ice cream flavors and some of the little ones had fun digging their little mitts into the noodles while mixing colors.

Yum! The final creations looked good enough to eat; we didn’t however, the combination of paper, glue and rubbing alcohol was sweet on the eyes but probably not so much on the tummy.

To color your own pasta or rice you will need:

Uncooked pasta or rice

Rubbing alcohol

Food coloring

Zip lock bags and

Paper towels or old rags

Fill zip lock bags with rubbing alcohol and food coloring, one bag per color of course. (The amount of rubbing alcohol you add will depend on how much pasta/rice you are coloring. I like the liquid to just cover the solid, the solid will soak up much of the alcohol while it’s “marinating” if you use this technique.)

After giving the filled bag a good shaking you may decide to add more coloring if you want a more saturated look (especially with the purple if you are coloring yellow pasta). After shaking the noodles around for a bit, let them soak in the liquid while moving on to your next color. When your pasta is reaching the desired color, lay the pasta flat on your rags or paper towels to dry.

Drying time typically takes a few hours. Once the (now inedible) food is completely dry you can begin a colorful pasta collage or bag it up for the next rainy day.

Hello Spring: Ladybug Release and Brunch

To welcome spring, we decided to have a ladybug release party and brunch with all our friends.

The brunch was pot luck style so everyone brought something yummy to share. The ladybug portion of the celebration involved the release of 2,000 ladybugs. The second I cut open the net bag they had been stowed away in, the bugs were crawling out all over me then one by one they started flying off into the air or unto the body of one of the many preschoolers who surrounded me.

Once all the bugs had evacuated the bag, I carefully sloughed off my body, any remaining bugs and the kids went ladybug hunting, searching the grasses with magnifying glass at hand.

We also had bug rubbing plates as an additional activity or for those who didn’t appreciate the possibility of being covered with the spotted insect but most of the kids didn’t mind at least getting within an arms length of bug examination.

I think this ladybug activity is seriously one of my most favorites to date! Since the food was pot luck the event cost a mere $10 for the bag of 2,000 ladybugs which I picked up at my local garden store. Worth every penny indeed!

A word of advice: if you do this acivity at home make sure all the kids are gathered around ready with their empty baby food jars and magnifying glass at hand before cutting open the bag. Those lady bugs won’t be waiting around for an audience before flying off into the wide world…(or a couple feet away in a sunny patch of grass). Also make sure your camera is charged and strapped around the neck of an assigned photographer. That way you won’t have to send one of the parents in your home on a camera hunt while the ladybugs have their best camera face on. (Of coarse I am coming up with this scenario completely off the top of my head, I have a good imagination ;)

Most pics here were taken by a couple friends of mine, Katie Murihead and Trent Covington, who were both gracious enough to take photos of the event.

Snow Globing!

For our last group make project we made snow globes.

Here’s how we did it (notice ingredients in bold text):

First we wanted to attach our miniatures to the lid of the baby jar. (Miniature trees and snowmen came from the craft store). Rather than gluing the objects directly to the lid, we glued them to a stack of 4 poker chips which I had pre-glued to the lid beforehand (after I had lightly sanded the lid). Our baby jars had a pattern in the glass on one end of the jar which would have distorted our winter scene so having the poker chips as leverage solved that problem.

We used hot glue to attach our objects to the poker chips but I think I would recommend using a waterproof sealant if you want to keep the globe as a real keepsake. The only downside to using glue like this is you might have to wait an hour or two before the next step whereas hot glue dries in seconds.

We set our lid aside while we added distilled water to our baby jar. We filled the jars as much as possible while still allowing the objects to fit inside with no water spilling over. Just before attaching our lid—objects affixed—we added a few pinches of chunky glitter and a drop or two of glycerin. The chunky glitter is easier to see than fine glitter and it is heavy enough to fall to the bottom. The glycerin slows down the speed of the falling glitter (I found this in the supermarket pharmacy by the way). We were careful not to add too much glycerin to avoid clumping up the glitter.

Lastly, we ran a ring of hot glue around the inside of our pre-assembled lid and then screwed it on tightly.

A great project for a last group make if you ask me. Thank you again to all my lovely make supporters! *tear* You guys are the best! I’d love it if you come back to visit the blog periodically as we share our at-home making adventures.

Happy making.

p.s. please excuss my lack of photo documentation!

Snowy Days Ahead

Hi friends, I hope you all had a great holiday and that you are enjoying the New Year so far!

For the January Make I thought we'd celebrate the season by making our own mini snow globes. The fee for this Make will provide your child with all the supplies necessary but if you'd like your scene to contain something other than a snow covered tree and snowman figure OR if you'd like a globe larger than that of a baby jar sized container then feel free to bring your own plastic miniature trinkets and/or larger jar to assemble.
LET'S MEET: In the church primary room on Friday the 22nd of January at 10am
FEES SHMEES: $2 cash per child/per snow globe

RSVP: On or before the night of Wednesday, January 20th. To do this, leave a comment under this post or send me an email (see sidebar). This will ensure their will be enough supplies for everyone attending.

ALSO: This months Make will complete a years worth of Make activities and it will actually be the very last Make! I am so grateful to everyone who has participated and supported the Make group whether it has been through attending the group or simply taking an interest to the things that have been posted here. I will continue to use this blog to share some of the activities and projects my kids and I are doing in our home as well as some other goodies. And, as always, feel free to submit your own kiddie projects or parental goodies, I'd be more than happy to post all about it or provide a link to your blog regarding the details.

Well that about covers it...Happy Making!

(image credit)

Stay at Home Make

We will not be having a make for the month of December so instead I thought I would share a recipe for an easy stay-at-home-make; SNOW ICE CREAM!

This might gross out some of you because it involves eating real fallen snow. If you're like me, however, as long as it's not yellow, I don't do much to stop my kids from a chomping on few flaky handfuls. I learned this recipe from my mom who made it for me a many snowy days when I was a kid.

You will need:

• fresh, clean snow
• milk
• sugar
• vanilla

I did no measuring but if you want to be precise the internet is full of recipes. I added milk to the snow until it became the consistency of soft seve ice cream then I added sugar and a bit of vanilla...time for a taste test...you might need a little more sugar, milk or vanilla...it's up to you. Enjoy!

P.S. Paula Deen's recipe contains sweetened condensed milk in place of milk and sugar! I haven't tried it yet but I am pretty much game for any recipes involving condensed milk.

Well Fed Villagers

I must say that the stone soup activity we had this month might be my favorite make to date—definitely in the top 3!

The kids became the town villagers as they participated in telling a version of the Stone Soup story by placing pictures of veggies in our paper pot.

After that we made the real thing starting with just a few large stones. Everyone contributed by adding their own ingredient to the pot (pics don't do justice).

I have to admit, I really wasn't sure we would have enough veggies to make a substantial pot of soup but the veggies just kept coming and coming before we knew it we had a feast of a meal that was actually pretty friendly to our taste buds!

Thank you to everyone for the fabulous and tasty make!

Stone Soup

( image from etsy seller ForEvelyn)

For the make this month, I thought we could get cozy with some yummy stone soup. What is stone soup you ask? Why, it's soup make from stones of course...(and maybe a little magic sprinkled about for flavor)!

We will read a version of the story Stone Soup, which tells the fable of a small group of poor villagers who work together to build a delicious soup that ends up feeding their once starving town. After reading the story we will all participate in making our own soup starting with just a stone. Each child will have the opportunity to add their own ingredient (which they will have brought from home) to the pot.

While the soup simmers the children will either color their own "stone soup" coloring sheets or they can participate in a little free play. When the soup is ready we will all sit together for a lovely stone soup lunch date!

I will also provide bread, crackers and cheese, as a soup side—you really don't want to miss this one! See you there.

LET'S MEET: In the church kitchen, Friday the 20th of November at 11am

FEES SHMEES: In place of cash this month please bring an item or two from the grocery list below. Please prep food items if necessary (wash, cut, chop, etc).

RSVP: On or before the night of Wednesday the 18th of November please leave a comment on this post or by email (see sidebar). If possible, please share what food item you are planning to bring.

GROCERIES: If you would rather bring an item that is not on the list...that is fine too! Here are some options...

• 6 red potatoes (cut in slices about 1/4-1/2 thick)
• 3 carrots (peeled and sliced)
• 1 zucchini (sliced)
• 1 summer squash (sliced)
• 1 onion (diced)
• 3 cloves garlic (mashed through a press)
• 1 stalk celery (sliced)
• 1/2 bell pepper (sliced/diced)
• 1 cup green beans (thawed if frozen)
• 1 large tomato (chopped up)
• 1/2 cup peas (thawed if frozen)
• 1/2-1 cup corn (thawed if frozen)

Pretty Pumpkin Recap

If you weren't busy eating glue then you were using it to decoupage tissue paper onto little pumpkins!

To make these at home for your autumn decor, here is Charissa's 'pretty pumpkin' recipe:

• we-be-little pumpkins which you will cover with squares of torn...
• tissue paper using...
• white glue (thinned with water) and fingers or craft sponge. Top it off with some...
• glitter (optional)

Thank you Charissa for putting on such a great autumn time make!

We-Be-Little Pumpkin Project

Some of our long time makers (and their mom) have been ever so generous to host the October make for us. Check out the details from Charissa below!

Hello friends,

What better way to celebrate the month of October (need I mention Halloween?!?!) with some genuine homemade kid-made table décor? For the make, we will decoupage We-Be-Little pumpkins with tissue paper and glitter.

These colorful little creations will be a major hit with our makers. If you are able to come to the make, you will be helping your child rip tissue paper into small pieces, and glue it to their little pumpkins with a craft sponge. Then we will finish it off with a dash of glitter for a true Halloween look.

I must warn you that your fingers and hands will probably get very sticky from pushing tissue paper onto the pumpkin, so be prepared with an apron or old shirt and baby wipes to stay neat and clean. I hope that you will all come and join us for our make!

LET'S MEET: in the church primary room Friday, October 23rd at 10 am.

RSVP: on or before the night of Wednesday, October 21st. To do this, leave a comment on this post or please send an email to charissaspendlove[at]yahoo[dot]com

FEES-SHMEES: $2 cash per child/per pumpkin.

Sunny Sunflowers

We had a great time at the September Make. Mason’s mom, Lis taught us how to make sunny sunflowers using paper plates, crepe paper and real sunflower seeds. Lis even concocted and engineered a creative way to build a stem out of paper (leave it to a product designer). If you were unable to attend this make would be a great craft to try at home. It’s as easy as ONE…

TWO...

THREE...