Fun Times

This was posted on an online forum I'm a part of, and I thought it was so great that I should share.

This little girl’s mother is a computer specialist from Helsinki , Finland . While her daughter is sound asleep, she creates a completely different world from whatever she can find around her home! What a truly fabulous imagination!

http://www.bluesalley.net/Fans/AdeleEmerson/default.html

Fruit Collage

I was trying to do a make work project with Big N the other day (it's getting boring in the house, we're running out of things to do, SPRING COME SOON!!!) we were looking through the flyers and decided it was time to make a collage.

Big N and I flipped through and she pointed out all the pictures of fruit, together we cut them out and pasted them on some construction paper. We then went over again and again what all the fruits were. Now, I would have loved to post a picture of how wonderful our creation was, except about an hour later it got ruined by the Big one herself in a colouring frenzy. At least it passed the time for an hour or so.

It's Almost March...

I didn't get near as much accomplished this month as I had originally planned, who knows why, other than a lack of motivation.

But, I have a few things on the to do list for March. Most importantly I write an industry exam on the 12th that I desperately need to pass. So, the next 12 days of my life WILL be devoted to studying (well, after the kids go to bed). Other things I'd like to get accomplished involve:

1. Planning Big N's 2nd birthday party

2. Buying a birthday present for my 3 year old niece.

3. Finishing the taxes

4. Organizing the master bedroom (I picked this room because there isn't a ton of work involved).

Maybe I'll get started tomorrow. If I could get these things off the list ASAP then I could expand the list. Although I really really do need to study. Ugh, I hate studying.

Slow Cooker Love

With two under two, it can be difficult to find the time to make dinner (especially around the 4pm witching hour), so the slow cooker became my best friend. After having four very unsuccessful meals in the row, my slow cooker has failed me. I stumpled across this blog http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/ and have since tried a few of the recipes.

We had this one today:

Peanut Butter Cup Cake

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com/2010/04/slow-cooker-peanut-butter-cup-cake.html

I made a few very small variations and all in all I would call it a success.

Ingredients:
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup sugar, divided
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup creamy peanut butter
1/2 cup milk
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup boiling water

Directions.

Use a 4-quart slow cooker coated well with cooking spray. In a mixing bowl, combine flour, 1/2 cup sugar and baking powder. In the microwave, melt peanut butter for about 30 seconds, and then add to the mix along with milk, oil, and vanilla. Stir really well to combine.Spread this mixture into the bottom of your slow cooker.In a separate bowl, mix together cocoa powder, the remaining 1/2 cup of sugar, and 1 cup boiling water. Pour evenly over the peanut butter batter in your cooker. Cover and cook on low for 6 hours, or until the top has set and an inserted toothpick comes out clean. Let the cake sit uncovered in an unplugged crockpot for about 20 minutes, then serve warm in dessert bowls.

When scooping out these "cup cakes" I thought they were going to be really really sweet, but they turned out to be just the perfect amount of sweetness, enough to feel satisfied, but not overdone in regards to sugar intake.

In the hoopla of todays events (a gathering of my brother, sisters, nieces and nephews) I forgot to take a picture, but give it a try, and you can see what it looks like for yourself.

We LOVE Muffins!

Big N absolutely loves muffins. I love them for their ability to hide vegetables and for the easy breakfasts that can be done in an instant. This week we made carrot raisin muffins as Big N loves having bits of things to pick out of her muffins.

We've altered quite a few recipes to come up with this one we like:

Ingredients:

3 medium eggs

½ cup of all-purpose flour

1 cup of whole wheat flour

1 ½ cups of shredded carrots.

¾ cup of granulated sugar.

½ cup of raisins.

½ cup of milk

½ cup of melted butter

2 teaspoons of cinnamon

1 ½ teaspoons of baking powder

½ teaspoon of baking soda

½ teaspoon of vanilla.

Instructions:

Preheat your oven to 400°F (200°C).Combine the flour, cinnamon, baking powder and baking soda. Beat together the eggs and the granulated sugar. Add the shredded carrots, raisins, milk, and melted butter; mix thoroughly. Add the flour mixture and stir until the dry ingredients have moistened. Spoon the batter into twelve greased muffin cups. Bake for 20 minutes.

The BEST Chocolate Chip Cookies

I've baked a lot of chocolate chip cookies in my day, but by far the BEST recipe I've found comes directly from Chipits. Who knows chocolate chips better than the people who make them??

http://www.hersheycanada.com/en/recipes/recipes/detail.asp?id=3544&page=1&per=25&category_id=6&product_id=3&CategoryPage=true#content_area

CHIPITS Chocolate Chip Cookies

Ingredients:
3/4 cup (175 mL) butter or margarine
1 cup (250 mL) packed light brown sugar
1/2 cup (125 mL) granulated sugar
2 eggs
1 teaspoon (5 mL) vanilla
2 1/4 cups (550 mL) all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon (5 mL) baking soda
1 teaspoon (5 mL) salt (we omit this)
1 package (270 g) CHIPITS® Milk Chocolate Chips
1 cup (250 mL) chopped nuts (optional)

Directions:1. Heat oven to 375°F (190°C). 2. In large bowl, beat butter, sugars until fluffy. Beat in eggs and vanilla until creamy. 3. In medium bowl, mix together flour, baking soda and salt; add to butter mixture. Stir in milk chocolate chips and nuts, if desired. Drop by teaspoonfuls onto ungreased cookie sheet. 4. Bake 8 to 10 minutes or until lightly browned. Let cool slightly; remove from cookie sheet to wire rack. Cool completely. Makes about 5 dozen cookies.

Big N and I LOVE making cookies, for the baking part, and the eating part. We made a bunch of these the other day and they lasted in the house for three days. Perhaps a sign we should go on a diet?

UFC 33 Party!

All in all, the birthday party was a success! I would say all our hard work paid off as all the boys were very impressed with how pretty our party was and it gave Big N and I lots of things to do.

I was given some good advice, that in order to make the party a success its great to put the same effort you would put in for a children's party. So that's exactly what we did!

It started with the beer glasses. We made 33 cut outs and glued them on every glass. We used these for both drinks and decorations.


I had Big N paint some canvases in a black/orange theme to go with the party.

I wasn't exactly sure what we were going to do with these come party time, but we ended up setting them on the mantle. We are going to do something else with them and make them a permanent fixture in the room in the near future, just to figure out what we want to do now.

UFC 33 Victory in Vegas was our entire theme. We made a pretty banner and hung it over the fireplace.

Unfortunately most of the pictures turned out crappy, our rec room is very hard to photograph because it is so dark down there. But, you get the idea. Lots of orange and 33's.

The key piece that brought the entire party together was this:

Our awesome UFC Octagon Cake made by our friends over at Le Bon Gateau http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Le-Bon-Gateau/301304152923

I'm in envy of the talent that is required to make such beautiful cakes!

The Gift

Big N and I have been working on the gift from her and her little brother for her Dada's birthday. So far we have a photo album, and 12 pictures painted. If you guess what we're making, I will be impressed.

Here's the start of the project:

I'll post the step by step final project when we get it complete (hopefully tomorrow, we're running out of time!)

A quick post

We did a few crafts today, but instead of posting about them, since I really should get to work on my assignment, I'll post about a random activity Big N and I did the other day. Big N was being quiet while I was putting her little brother down for his nap, so I knew she was up to no good. I arrived to find my leather sofa covered in hand lotion. Usually, I would be upset at this, however, I must have been in an incredible mood that morning, as instead of immediately wiping the mess up, we took our time to create some lotion art on the sofa.
We drew circles and squares to learn our shapes, and then we started getting creative.

Big N titled this one "Nana".

Overall, it was a pretty hilarious activity, and now I must say, my sofa is just that extra bit softer than it was before, a nice couch conditioner I think.

Now, back to that assignment.

Procastination at its Finest!

I have a confession, I am a procrastinator. I have an assignment for my accounting designation to complete by noon on Wednesday. I have not started. Instead of starting, I've been making blog posts. I will complain to my husband tomorrow that I have too many things to do and never enough time when in reality, I have procrastinated. I have three hours tonight that I will commit to this assignment.....beginning in 15 minutes.

Heart Ravioli

Valentine's Day wouldn't be complete without something special for dinner. Now with two kids having somewhat of a cranky afternoon, the plans I had thought of didn't quite pan out as expected, however, we were able to make some heart shaped ravioli, thanks to the inspiration found here http://littlethingsbringsmiles.blogspot.com/2011/02/valentine-inspired-dinner-party.html

Big N and I made our dough and somewhat co-operated long enough to get some heart shapes cut out. We filled our dough with a sausage mix (we didn't have any cheese on hand, so it was straight sausage and onion ground up).

We pushed our hearts together and came up with these lovely ravioli pieces.

Combined with a homemade sauce (tomatoes, onions, garlic, spinach, red and yellow peppers and carrots) we had quite a delicious meal. Now, if only there was time to actually make dessert as planned. It must have been quite enjoyable though as I too forgot to take a picture of the finished product.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Typically, I'm not one to really care about Valentine's Day, but since I'm at home with the kids this year, it gave us something to look forward to, something to celebrate. Over the past few weeks we've been busy doing an endless amount of heart crafts, and today, we finally got to showcase all our hard work to Dada.

We hung our Tissue Paper/Cardboard wreath at the top of the stairs, along with our painted cardboard hearts.

We cut heart shapes out of our paintings and turned them into a mobile hanging off the light over the table.

We hung banners of hearts across the windows.

All in all, our kitchen/dining area was fully covered in Valentine's Day paraphernalia.


It was made complete by the roses Dada brought home. I would say our decorations turned out pretty good. It's a good thing the next event is only a few days away, as we wouldn't have space to put all our crafts if we started working on Easter right now.

Hand Flowers

I'm not sure where the idea for the craft we started the other day came from. We started outlining heart shapes, and somehow that turned into outlining our hands, which we then cut out and turned into flowers. Perhaps I'm dreaming of spring just a little too much?

It started as this, and I had a few thoughts of what I was going to do with this. I was originally planning on something Valentine's Day related, however, other than my flower being pink and white, this is about as close to Valentine's Day as we got. We cut out numerous versions of Big N's hands and taped them all to a piece of cardboard.

We then put another piece of cardboard in the centre to make our flower complete. Big N painted the center part of the flower, and it turned out wonderful!

We curled the petals in a little bit to make it more "real." I love all crafts that involve parts of my children that are always changing.

Love Wreath

I've been impressed by a number of wreaths I see all over the place, so today Big N and I decided to turn our front door a little festive for Valentine's Day.

We returned to our old school routes and decided to make tissue paper flowers. For those of you thinking that tissue paper isn't going to last on our front door, you're probably right, but it only needs to last until Monday, after that, we can move to our birthday wreath.

We started with one big flower and put it on our branched wreath that we had lying around to decide how much time and effort we really wanted to put into this craft (i.e. how long Big N would sit still for).

You'll notice Big N's feet flying through the top of the picture, that told me I had a limited amount of time to finish. So, we quickly put two more little flowers on the wreath and then took it to the front door. All in all it turned out pretty good.

Dada didn't say anything about it when he came home, so that means either 1. it's pretty enough or 2. he's a man and didn't notice.

Love is in the Air!

With the big heart day coming on Monday, Big N and I have been doing our best to get in the love spirit. That, and learn the difference between a heart and a circle (seems we still have some ways to go there). Prior to this blog we made numerous cards and crafts for the important people in our lives, however, we didn't take any pictures. So, going forward, we'll have more pictures!

We took it upon ourselves to decorate some cookies to send with dada to work. We made our cookies with a basic sugar cookie recipe (which I'm not sharing because they really weren't the greatest cookies), rolled them out and used our huge cookie cutter collection to make some Valentine's Day shapes.

We used this recipe for our icing:

Ingredients
1 cup confectioners' sugar
2 teaspoons milk
2 teaspoons light corn syrup
1/4 teaspoon almond extract
assorted food coloring

Directions
In a small bowl, stir together confectioners' sugar and milk until smooth. Beat in corn syrup and almond extract until icing is smooth and glossy. If icing is too thick, add more corn syrup.
Divide into separate bowls, and add food colorings to each to desired intensity. Dip cookies, or paint them with a brush.

We spent the afternoon decorating our cookies, and they looked great!

Dada came home from work today with an empty container, so it seems his co-workers didn't mind that the cookies themselves weren't as delicious as I had hoped they would be.

Birthdays!

In the upcoming months, we will be celebrating numerous birthdays. We start the birthday season off in one weeks for hubby's 33rd birthday. I highly doubt he will be looking at this blog, so I'll post some of the details of the celebration.

It took some time to decide on a theme, since the birthday boy has many different interests and hobbies, but the winner ended up being UFC 33: Victory in Vegas. So far the invitations have been completed and sent out to all his friends.

Stay posted in the coming week to see more ideas for the upcoming celebration.

After some googling, I found out that this was the worst UFC fight in history, so here's hoping that the party turns out much better than that.

Popcorn Cookies

Big N and I were watching a little Caillou one morning after an exceptionally early wake-up (i.e. 5:15am) where Caillou made cookies. So, I asked Big N if she wanted to make cookies, and she said yes and immediately walked to the kitchen. I then asked her what kind of cookies she wanted to make, giving her the options of chocolate chip or oatmeal, she responded popcorn. What the heck is a popcorn cookie? So, I googled it, and sure enough there are numerous recipes for popcorn cookies. We wound up here http://www.tasteofhome.com/Recipes/Popcorn-Cookies and followed this recipe:

Ingredients

1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1-1/4 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
Pinch salt
2 cups popped popcorn, lightly crushed
1 cup (6 ounces) semisweet chocolate chips
1/2 cup chopped pecans (omitted)

Directions

In a large bowl, cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda and salt; gradually add to the creamed mixture. Stir in the popcorn, chocolate chips and pecans.

Drop by tablespoonfuls 2 in. apart onto greased baking sheets. Bake at 350° for 13-14 minutes or until golden brown. Remove to wire racks to cool. Yield: 2-1/2 dozen.

Now, I must say these cookies were surprisingly delicious right out of the oven. However, even in an air tight container they got rather hard. Perhaps cooking a little less may have helped it out. Who knew Big N could have her way and make popcorn cookies.

The Original Works of Art

I mentioned in my last post how my cousin mentioned that she loved Big N's works of art, but I didn't show off how awesome they are.

I was at Michael's on Boxing Day (buying a last minute Christmas gift needed for the next morning), and happened to come across a pack of five 11x17 canvases on sale for $20. Then, when I got to the checkout, I got 50% off my entire purchase, so each one of these canvases ended up costing me like $2. Being on mat leave, I try to be pretty economical with the activities N&N do, since in reality, it's just something for us to do to pass the time and enjoy each others company.

I had an idea that I would have Big N paint the canvases for the artwork in the playroom. This was our first big painting project. She was a little timid at first, but soon she realized that I wasn't going to hinder her creativity and got right into it.

We ended up painting four pieces, two of which hang over the couch in the play room and the other currently resides on top of the shelf.

This was the first piece, which turned out great.

Then, I think Big N got tired, and this is all I could get our of her for the second piece. She had also seen that there were many more canvases, so I think she just wanted to get her hands on them all. We ended with this piece, which is also a favourite, because Big N's little feet prints are throughout it.
This was a random piece that Big N created as she just slammed her hands on the canvas. I quickly took it away from her, as I think it's perfect just the way it is. Maybe someday we can add little N's handprints to it.

Overall, Big N loves painting, so expect to see a lot more posts about it in the future.

Shower Gift

Big N loves to paint, little N likes to watch her. After a comment by a cousin on one of Big N's paintings, we decided to put her skills to work, and make a baby shower present fit for a prince, or princess as the case may be.

I purchased six 5x7 canvases at the dollar store to put to use, what use, I wasn't sure, but they came in handy for this purpose. I had big N paint three of the canvases using the colours of the new baby's nursery.

Yes, painting nude does reduce some of the clean-up. A quick bath washes most of the paint away.

After the painting, I wasn't sure exactly what I was going to do, but I decided I would paint the remaining three canvases black, because I wasn't a fan of the white backgrounds. After some discussions with my mom, and numerous quick emails back and forth, we decided that this what how our gift should look.

Now with a little glue, we stuck the pieces together and made on wall hanging that the recipient can hang whichever way fits the nursery the best. She's receiving her gift this weekend, so lets hope she likes it!

Butter Tarts!

I've always been into baking. I love Christmas, for the sheer chance to make hundreds and hundreds of cookies without feeling guilty that I will eat them all. A few weeks ago, N&N and I embarked upon our first new baking adventure, BUTTER TARTS! I must say, I'm a huge fan of butter tarts (without nuts!!!), but because I don't usually make pastry, I was always afraid to try.

I should remember to save websites with recipes that I enjoy, for it seems I can not find the recipe for the tarts we made, but they were DELICIOUS! We used the Tenderflake Perfect Pastry recipe for our shells, and it turned out wonderful.

We've since made tarts a second time, but they didn't turn out near as good. Note to self, SAVE RECIPES THAT ARE GOOD!!!!

Play Dough Fun!

I like to do at least one fun specific activity per day, be it an art piece, a craft, or baking. I peruse a lot of blogs to find interesting activities and try my best to come up with fun pieces.

One cold day we decided to make play dough.

We used this recipe from http://www.playdoughrecipe.com/cream-of-tarter-playdough-recipe/:

Ingredients:

2 cups of plain flour

2 cups of coloured water
1 Tbsp. of cooking oil

1 tsp. cream of tartar

1 cup of salt

Directions:Place all of the ingredients in a medium size or large pan. Cook slowly on medium-high and stir it until the playdough thickens. Keeps best in the fridge in plastic containers. This is simular to the traditional playdough recipe.

This recipe takes less than 10 minutes.

The only problem we had was that I could not for the life of me find my food colouring, so we ended up adding some green glitter to some of the play dough.

The problem with cooking with a toddler, is that its very hard to take pictures without things getting ruined. We did lots of activities with our play dough, including making Elmo (I never said I was actually artistic).

We ended up rolling out some of the play dough and making Valentine's Day ornaments to send to some of our family and friends for the big day. After two days of drying, we were able to sit down and paint the dough, but for some reason, it appears I didn't take any pictures of the finished product. So, you'll just have to imagine how great they looked!

A Space to Play

After purchasing our house almost one year ago, we've taken the plunge to make our upstairs living room a very kid friendly space.

This is what our living room/playroom looked like when we purchased our house:

And this is what the space looked like prior to us embarking on making it our full fledge play room:

We've done a lot of work in this room, including turning that window into a patio door. This is what our space looks like today:

We still have more work to be done, but we're slowly getting a room that we can use as both a playing and living space. I'll show details of some of our projects in another post.

Welcome!

I've done it, I've finally embarked upon the world of blogging. I'm three months into my second year long maternity leave and will be using this blog to show off the joys, trials and tribulations of being home with two under two.

My children, N&N are 22 months and 3 months old respectively. I'm an accountant by profession, but am trying my best to break out of my right brain thinking and find the joys of using my left brain with my children.

Over the next few days there will be several posts showing off what we N&N and I have been up to for the past three months. Hope you enjoy!