keeping tradition

Well, I'm not really following any kind of family tradition.. but I know it is often a traditional thing to do that gingerbread house before Christmas. Isn't it? Is this your tradition?

This year I bought the kit.. and added to it with all the left over candies bought for J's cake. E and I decorated over two days and here's the result. It's been 4 days now and we haven't had so much as a nibble.. we'll see how long we can hold out.

snowpeople

Another fun Christmas craft that a four year old can really get into. Take white paint (white ink pads work the best) and use your finger pad to print the face and your thumb to print the body. Then add a carrot nose, clothes and last use your favourite sharpie to add the face and arms! So many possibilities with this one!

good old paper crafts

We've been getting back to basics this year. E is learning all about sissors and J is learning all about grabbing and ripping so this is a perfect year to break out the paper.

flower power

Remember the paperwhite bulbs? Well I'm glad we planted two that's all. One still looks just as it was pictured the first time around, the other looked like this only a few days after it was planted.



and already is looking like this:



Not to shabby for less than 2 weeks! I'm betting there be paperwhites come Christmas! Arr!

as good as its gonna get robot cake

After all the dreams I had of buying an icing spatula and making fondant, as well as trying to create the perfect shade of grey icing. I completely bailed and made up a batch of Butter cream icing and used my trusty butter knife to do the job. We must have bought 10 different types of candy at Bulk Barn the other day and in the end.. used 3 of them.

So I need to say that's not at all what I expected our robot cake to look like.. but hey. It's a cake.. and it should be edible.. so I'm done and very happy I've rinsed out the icing bowl and can start to recover from the self induced sugar high.

I guess I should sign up for the Cake Decorating class at Michaels before my husbands birthday in February and try all my fancy ideas then. Right now, I'm off to bed.

Robots

With J's second birthday right around the corner I needed to decide on a theme and cake.. which came at last to a battle between Batman and Robots. Now if you ever need to choose between the two I'd love your thoughts but in the end Robots seemed to win. So I'm about to embark on a new adventure. The challenge of The Robot Cake. For inspiration I found these amazing cakes by typing 'Robots' in the search at Google Images.



This white cake with the chocolate wafers is my favourite so far but I'm hoping to incorporate bits from all three. If I succeed I'll post the outcome. If you enjoyed these Robots I found some great Robot Party accessories at a wonderful blog called Wendolonia. She's amazing!



This calls for a trip to the Bulk Barn and I know just the 4 year old to help me!

no seriously. how long will my kid actually PLAY with it?

When E was more interested in the drapes and utensil drawers than any of the toys we had.. I started buying more toys. I was hoping if I kept her occupied she'd forget all about that utensil drawer. Yeah, right.

When J came along he was much more interested in the plumbing systems in every home and building he went into and he was fascinated with every vent cover he saw. It was a very long time before I was able to pee without that dreaded feeling that he would choose this moment to stuff his leg down a vent, or the TV remote.. and so on. So what did I do? I sought out more toys.

After 4 years of medicating with toys I have two conclusions. First- no amount of toys will distract my monsters if they choose to chuck that tiny My Little Pony down the central vac opening.. and second Wedgits is a fabulous toy. It seems to capture the interest of both a 2 year old and 4 year old almost every day. Thank you Wedgits. Thank you.

Here's a look at what E did in the minutes it took me to write up this post:

Rockin' that lunch box!

If you haven't already see or heard about the Goodbyn Lunchbox then here I am to tell you about it!! I started seeing design blogs post about the design and practicality of this months ago and it seems to be taking the market by storm.
With lots of room to put all your child's snacks and food/drink for the day it's a hit with moms, and kids love that it comes with stickers so they can personalize there own byn. Check out at www.goodbyn.com or at www.bellylaughs.ca for more info.