Wint-o-Green Snowflakes

Just a quick post since I have been quite busy the past week with moving, unpacking, mothering and extra children in my home yesterday and today! I want to show you what we've been up to, but not yet... and maybe not til next week since this week yet I am heading away with Alexa for Black Friday Shopping!!! :)

Today we made these Lifesaver Snowflakes. (this morning before we got into making the craft, Sammy knew we were going to be making a craft. He asked me three different times, "when are we making the hover-craft?" I didn't here the first part of the question the first time but did hear 'hovercraft' which caught my attention because I thought it was funny he knew about hovercrafts... then I caught it the 2nd and maybe third time and realized he was calling our craft a hovercraft! LOL. Too cute!)
Here is Luke, first painting some tongue depressors white:Sammy finally getting to do his hovercraft!
I found the idea on Perpetual Preschool. We did two batches of the craft today - this morning with Luke and Sammy and then this evening with Travis, Bradley, Elijah and Sammy did it again too. (Travis and Bradley's Mom, Miriam is a good friend of mine - she is on her honeymoon this week! Yea! So between her Family and some of her friends, we are taking turns watching the boys!) I think they are quite pretty and they smell nice too -- the kids enjoyed eating the ones that came broken too!I was hoping to find a package of regular lifesavers in a roll, small ones, but only came across a pack of these ones... it took 2.5 packs of them b/c I used tongue depressors and not just popsicle sticks...but that's okay!

Blog Candy -

If you are a paper crafter...etc, click Debbie's site (which I found off of Cindy's blog) to enter to win a wonderful huge package. (if you aren't interested, but have time, enter to win it for me!)

Click here to enter: Passion for Crafts

Win 1 of 3 Quilts!!

You could win this quilt today!! Go to Old Red Barn Co. for your chance to win 1 of 3 beautiful quilts...


Side note - we are moved in and getting boxes unpacked left and right... more to come about that later. Have a great week!

Veterinary Prop Box

When I was in Early Childhood Education one of my assignments was to create a Prop-Box for children ages 3-5. At the time I also worked at a Veterinary Supply Warehouse in the Returns Department where I collected and kept all sorts of odds and ends that were non-saleable. So I made a Veterinary Prop Box for my project.
Since we are moving this weekend, out came this box (a pet kaddy) from our under-the-stair storage and today I took it out for the boys to play with. So much fun!
This prop-box is filled with rubber gloves, bandages, doctor kit things, diagrams of a canine's entire body... it proved to be a fun activity this morning!

noodles

On Friday Kung Fu Panda came out on video and so we now own it. Jason and the boys watched it on Saturday afternoon while Gabriella and I went to Luci-Ann's birthday party. They watched an extra on the DVD about noodle making and maybe using chopsticks. So that night for dinner, Elijah wanted Ramen Noodles with chopsticks. I can't use chopsticks really; but Elijah didn't do so bad for using them more as a "scoop" and quite enjoyed himself.

Thank You Lily and Connie

Lily and Connie (Alexa's Girls) also gave me a gift when they left last week... apparently as soon as they decided to get a gift for me, they went straight to the "cake" making section of Michael's... so thoughtful and very impressive with how these three items go well together.(again, Blogger is getting a bit annoying when it's flipping my pictures. sorry about the tilt of your head to see this correctly. Any idea why it's doing this?)

wall art

When we were at the Scrapathon a couple weeks ago, as soon as we finished our "Be Merry" make & take all the girls wanted to do another one, but there weren't any tickets left, meaning no more kits to purchase and make. I talked to the woman who put that make & take together and arranged for her to put a different kit together for the girls. So they paid $5 for a kit to put together this. I really like it!

Goodbye Amy and Fran

On Tuesday we had to make our last trip over to Superstore to get many food items that Fran and Amy wanted to bring home with them. Cake mixes, ingredients to make spaghetti, cinnamon, pie plates and boxes of pastry ingredients to make apple pies, lemon-pie filling...etc. They are really keen on duplicating some of the things we made together! I think it's great! :) And I hope it works out well for them. for their last few meals I made sure to make things they loved, so we ate steak, KFC and spaghetti was their last meal:
After dinner on Wednesday, we had a time of goodbye and gifts. The girls just spoiled us! Gabriella got this new outfit she is wearing in the picture; Jason got an Apple iPod; Elijah got Shrek the Halls DVD with Donkey stuffie; Samuel got an outfit for his Teddy Bear (he liked to play with their bears with them in their room)Gabi kept hugging Amy over and over again and Elijah did too. I was crying before we even opened the gifts.Amy and Fran also spoiled me. They gave me an assortment of gifts that included a glass Fairy, picture frame, glitter, rubber stamp set, stickers and this Pink Cordoroy 12x12 scrapbook kit! (the pic flipped itself again, so sorry and it's a bit dark)We are going to miss Amy and Fran. They tell us not to miss them though because they will be back. Most Students say they will be back, but this is different. I am sure they will be back. Even within the year. Fran and Amy went from here to Toronto for 5 days before heading home to Beijing (like all of our Chinese girls do) and they have called me every night so far from their hotel room. They are buying me gifts while at Niagara Falls and will use the gifts as a bargaining chip with their Mother to come back so they can give them to me! LOL. They also left a few things in their room that they shouldn't have...another bargaining chip ;)
Anyway - Amy and Fran - we will miss you and hope to see you again!

Caramel Apples

Like last year at this time with Moeko in our house, this Fall I wanted to make caramel apples with my kids, Amy and Fran. Amy and Fran are on their way home this week, so this activity is on my list of things yet to do with them. So at our little 'farewell' dinner at Grandpa and Grandma's last night I brought over a bag of caramels to melt and a bunch of trick or treats to add to the apples... yummy fun!

Halloween

May (Liu Chen Yu) (from my last homestay this year) sent me an email this week asking for pictures showing our Canadian Halloween... not that I wouldn't post this anyway, but MAY here you go! Lots of pictures from Halloween and this past week doing Fall activities... wish you were here to have fun with us too!
First we all got dressed up in our costumes at around 4:30 and then headed to Grandpa and Grandma's house. Here we are in the van; Gabi is Eyeore from Pooh, Elijah is a fireman and Samuel is a Bee...Fran is a clown and Amy is a Princess. This is Amy and Fran's very first time to dress up and for Fran to have her face painted!we went trick or treating in our new neighbourhood too and met many of our new neighbours; then we went to a local church for their Harvest Party. It was great with 2 bouncy castles, games, lots of candy...and friendly people!
This is the "cake" Fran won during our first game we played "cake walk":Rockstar Daddy with not-so attractive smile, LOL and our favourite Bumble BeeFishing gamepumpkin cookie decorating:by this time is was close to 8:30pm and Gabi hadn't napped well at all, so she just plunked herself on the floor and layed therea jumpy castle that the kids went on again and again:All this for free with a donation of candy... they even got another bag of treats when we left close to 9:00pm. What a fun time! Happy Halloween!

The Great Cookie Exchange

On Wednesday I went to a cookie demonstration/hands-on evening with some Ladies from Church. Tina, from my church, is quite the Baker. She often does classes for a Gourmet Food Store and the past few months has started offering our Church Ladies an opportunity to come to a trial-run class before she has to demo her class for the Store (does that make sense?)... anyway, I was able to attend this trial run Cookie Class and gratefully was able to bring Amy and Fran along to join in! We didn't have to just watch Tina make the different cookies, we were able to do it hands-on for many of the recipes showcased that night. :) Not only did we get to sample the recipes, but we each took home a tray full of goodies to start on our freezer stash for the Holiday Season approaching rapidly! :) Here's what we did:

Espresso Brownies made in mini muffin pan... topped with a chocolate glaze and decorated with 24k gold!upclose view of them:Spicy Twin Thins made with a bit of lemon zest and different spicesCoconut Macaroons - carefully shaped into a pyramid and then dipped into chocolate
we also made a sweet/salty Caramel Popcorn (not shown), Cranberry Marzipan Blondies (the white squares on the pan) which are sooooo good; World Peace Cookies (chocolate cookies on the pan) and something we didn't have time to actually make ourselves were Meringue Cookies - but Tina had the equivalent already made for us to take home; she had the meringues shaped into Christmas Trees, 'kisses' and nests to fillFran and Amy were SO happy to go to this class with me; they had talked to their Mom on the phone before we left and she had wished she could come with us too...

carving

On Wednesday we carved our pumpkins...Again this year Sammy wasn't so sure about touching the guts; he preferred to use a spoon to scoop them out'ooo, what's that?'Sammy's singing jack-o-lanternWhen Fran and Amy got home from school, they carved their pumpkins; an experience for the first time!Elijah loved the bowl full of guts, so he played with it the entire time the girls carved their pumpkins...'oooooo, gross!'