My son's preschool class had been learning about silkworms this Spring and he was allowed to take some home on the last day of school. He was so excited. He has spent a lot of time observing his silkworms and predicting what will happen next. He checks on them several times a day and reports any new developments. It has been a neat experience for all of us to watch the silkworms change into moths and to learn about the life cycle of these unique creatures. My 5 year old has been very responsible in taking care of his "pets". Twice a day he feeds his silkworms Mulberry leaves that he picks from a tree in our yard, and then after checking on them makes sure his silk worms are in a secure location. They have to be kept out of reach of our two year old and 3 year old. If you have a toddler you know why… they really do get into everything. Two of our silk worms already transformed into moths and fell in love. The next thing you know we have over 100 silk worm eggs. They haven't hatched yet, but we are waiting to see if they do. I'll let you know if our silk worm adventure continues into another generation.
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The boys and I made some personalized tea towels for gifts and had a lot fun in the process. Actually, Daddy helped too. He was the Transformers expert. My five year old really got into it, creating Transformers designs. I would love to take credit for this idea, but I saw it on a favorite blog, I Can Teach my Child. To make these towels, you can purchase finished kitchen towels and attach the handmade design or make homemade towels. I made homemade towels since I had lots of fabric on hand. Supplies needed: Tea towels or fabric to make towels Cotton fabric for artistic design T-shirt (fabric markers) Pinking shears sewing machine I bought two natural colored fat quarters and cut them each into 4 sections with pinking shears. I needed 7 pieces of fabric for the boys to color. I used pinking shears to help prevent raveling. The boys had a lot of fun coloring the fabric pieces. Make sure to use t-shirt (fabric) markers so that the drawing will not wash out of the fabric. I used one of my towels as a pattern and cut the new towels out with pinking shears. I folded the edges over once and hemmed them. I figured by cutting the fabric with pinking shears, I would reduce raveling so I didn't turn the edges under. If you have time, I would turn the edges under. I pinned the artwork fabric to the tea towel and sewed it in place with a simple straight stitch.
I made the boys homemade trick or treat bags this year. They have already used them a couple of times for Halloween parties and they have held up well. I found some templates for pumpkin carving and used them for stencils to make the Halloween designs on the front of the bags. I bought pre-cut felt letters to make it easy. I love this owl. I am going to make an owl trick or treat bag for our youngest (next year - he's still young for candy so I didn't stress out trying to get three of these done).
I used a stencil to cut out the design for the front of the bag then I used felt glue to glue the design down.
I bought pre-cut felt squares at the craft store. I used a whole square for the front and back. I cut a square in half legnthwise for the sides. Then I placed the cut side piece on a pre-cut square to cut the correct width for the bottom piece.
I cut two full legnth strips for the handles.
Once you have all of your cut pieces you are ready to begin sewing. First sew the handles to the inside top portion of your front and back panels.
Next sew the sides together leaving a little room at the bottom to sew on the bottom panel.
Sew on the bottom panel and you are done. Happy trick or treating!
Linking up at Create With Joy
I took the boys to a local zoo (one hour from home) last week since they are starting school soon (the oldest already started school) and summer will be coming to an end. I wanted to have a really fun day together and make lots of wonderful memories - and we did. They had a blast from the moment we arrived until the moment we left. It is a small zoo that is easily explored in a couple of hours. We saw some exhibits more than once. They were so excited about the rain forest that we had to tour it twice. There is a really nice playground, water play area, and picnic area adjacent to the zoo so we made a day of it and spent the afternoon playing, eating, and having fun. The boys were on cloud nine and we didn't have a single melt down, even when they were hot and tired. We did have two sleepers on the drive home. So much fun does bring on exhaustion. They couldn't resist sitting on this tiger statue. My oldest said "Don't worry Mommy the tiger isn't real. He won't eat me." The boys love the wallaroos. The wallaroos were resting when we visited them. They are completely enclosed in a large fence, but I am amazed at the short fence along the sidewalk in the wallaroo exhibit. Visitors walk through a large heavy door to enter the wallaroos pen, but then the fence inside is so short. Last summer we came with some friends and a toddler climbed over the short fence and started walking around the wallaroos pen. His Mom quickly stepped over and grabbed him. The wallaroos must be harmless for the zoo staff to trust them with such a short fence. It does make for excellent wallaroo viewing. One of the highlights was the carousel ride. Our youngest had to watch most of the zoo from his stroller. He seemed ok with this arrangement and didn't complain until the very end. Then I dressed him in his swim suit and walked him around the water play area until he decided he was wet enough and ready for a nap. The older boys played for a long time in the water play area. I'm surprised I didn't have three sleepers on the way home. Even bigger was the gift shop. I rarely buy them anything from gift shops. We just don't have much wiggle room in our budget for extra splurges and I want them to really appreciate the things that they have and receive as gifts. I could tell that they were amazed by the gift shop and all of the animal toys and they weren't begging too much, a little, but not too much.
They were so good on this outing and I knew it would mean the world to them if they got to buy something at the zoo. Then I remembered they had some birthday money in their spending envelopes in my purse. I've never given them their money to spend before. I always saved it for them, until recently I thought about putting some of it in spending envelopes for them. I handed them each the cash to buy their animals and they excitedly approached the cashier and bought their new treasures. We sat down at the picnic tables to eat lunch, but there was too much excitement with the new toys - lunch would have to wait.
I recently made a Spiderman Birthday Cake for my oldest son. This was a really fun cake to make. I used a recipe for fluffy yellow cake from Annie's Eats. It worked well for layering large tiers and was a fairly simple recipe. I made three batches of this cake batter to fill two 12" layers and two 8" layers. I used two wooden dowel rods in the center of the cakes to help hold the layers together since they were large.
I frosted the cake with an easy buttercream icing and used paste food colors. I used almost a whole jar of Christmas red to achieve the bright red. I piped the black webbing with an icing bag using more buttercream icing. This icing was great for spreading on the cake, but I would use an icing with shortening next time for piping because the icing was a little drippy and hard to use.
My husband made the silhouette of New York City by rolling out gum paste which he had colored grey and cutting out an outline of the city.
He even made the Brooklyn Bridge and I used a fine tip to pipe the cables.
Check out the dirigible. Such a creative husband!
We just celebrated our little guy's first birthday. I made him a large sheet cake with a #1 cake on top. The cake is a delicious homemade chocolate cake with chocolate icing. I made a simple buttercream to frost the #1 and colored some of it blue to pipe the border and letters. I then placed large confetti candy sprinkles on the sides of the chocolate layer and on the blue border.
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I don't know why, but I have never thought of creating a maze on the sidewalk for my boys. (Maybe I'm lacking a creative gene.) My super creative husband made some intricate mazes with sidewalk chalk. (affiliate link)
This was a great activity. Our 4 year old loved the challenge and the feeling of accomplishment when he solved each maze.
The younger boys didn't get into solving the mazes, but they loved being outside.
Today is my 36th birthday. My sweet sister Rebecca baked me a cake last weekend and gave me this cute apron. She had it embroidered with my website name, Home Ec @ Home. One of these days, I will film some vlogs (video blogs) and this apron will be perfect. Thanks Rebecca!
My sister and brother-in-law recently hosted a Yo Gabba Gabba party for my niece's birthday. They made their own shirts and favor bags. My sister even made the cake. She ordered hand made cake decorations from Etsy. The pictures are so cute, I had to share.
This is a guest post written by my sister Catherine. She recently had twins and has been buying formula like crazy to keep up with them. This article is about her research involving name brand formula versus store brand. She is also a pharmacist and mother of 3.
With the twins' increased nutritional needs as they grow, their formula supplementation has increased and they are eating us out of house and home! (With brand name formula, anyway.) We intially used brand name Similac Advance we had stockpiled before their birth when CVS had 30% off employee discount days, combined with $5 manufacturer rebate checks on each can. That wasn't bad. Then we were getting it at the regular 20% off emp discount (which basically made it the same price as Wal-Mart & other big discount retailers, but CVS was just more convenient since Matt was already there) + rebate checks. Alas, we ran out of rebate checks last week. I then bought a big container of Similac for $21 at Wal-Mart, which only lasted about 3&1/2 days since we are feeding 2 babies 6 oz bottles every few hours. The next time, I ran out in a formula emergency to the closest grocery store to our house, HEB (a TX chain). I noticed they had a store brand of the Similac Advance for $11.88 for the large can vs $21 for the same size of the brand name, a greater than 40% savings. I broke down and bought one can of the generic to try out. (I had never used generic on any of my kids before) I found that it mixes well, the twins eat it with the same vigor as the name brand, and, in fact, their stools are more regular with the generic! This morning I went back to HEB and bought 3 more large cans to get us through the next several days, including our trip to Naples, FL this week. I didn't want to run out there since I don't think they have HEB. Which got me thinking and researching... Q: Does the same company that makes the HEB formula make other store brands in case I can't make it there? (One of the reasons I had always had a brand allegiance to Similac was that I could find it at any retailer that sold formula and know that my baby was being fed the same thing. I didn't want to introduce something new constantly, and chance gas, fussiness, etc...) A: Yes! I called the 800 # on the back of my formula can, which rang PBM Products, a USA company. I spoke to a rep and found out they make pretty much all of the store brand formula. (And it recently won another huge lawsuit against Mead Johnson, the maker of Enfamil, who had deceived customers into thinking that its product was somehow nutritionally superior to the store brand.) Q: Were there any additional coupons that could help me save even more on the store brand? A: Yes, I filled out an online form which will supposedly give me a $3 off coupon and I think I can call and request it monthly. (And I read on one blog that I may be able to get 2/month since I have twins.) Here are some links where I got my info: http://iamwickedcheap.com/2010/08/05/free-sample-parents-choice-walmart-brand-infant-formula/ http://www.pbmproducts.com/default.aspx http://www.storebrandformula.com/default.aspx Maybe you already knew all of this, but I found it to be eye-opening and exciting. I am hoping to largely use store brand formula from here on out till the twins are on milk. It shoud save us a ton of money! |
Welcome to Home Ec @ HomeHi, I'm Faith, a former Family and Consumer Science teacher turned food blogger. I love God, my family, and food. You can usually find me in the kitchen preparing family friendly, homemade recipes and taking lots of pictures. This website uses marketing and tracking technologies. Opting out of this will opt you out of all cookies, except for those needed to run the website. Note that some products may not work as well without tracking cookies. Opt Out of CookiesFan Favorites
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