Kids Cooking

Cody and Tyler are always asking to help out with the cooking, strangely enough not so much with the washing up.

This week both boys helped with Cookies, and Cody made Cheese Puffs.

More cheese please

Check out my puffs

More cookies please

Cake pops - Part 2

So, we continued with cake pops on Sunday since the kids lost interest the first day. Tyler was very interested in helping make the icing, though after a few whips, he was ready to give up!

After we got the icing ready, we tried dipping them but proved to be a little thick. So, i had to play around with the consistency. Not sure i'm liking this cake pop product. To keep the kids interested, i suggested we decorate with sprinkles. Not sure who got more sprinkles.. Cody or the cake pops!!

Anyways, so, we managed to make a bunch of cake pops. It's not terribly hard, but it's not terribly good either. Super sweet, so i might have to come up with my own recipe or less sweet version. But again, it's for kids, so i might not try so hard! :) besides, cake pops are really glorified leftover cakes!! Ingenious idea!!!

He went and got a chef hat.. cute..

Sprinkling on the sprinkles

Our finished product

Tyler proud of his work

Doesn't look that appetizing to me..

Cody Completes Swim Level 2

Cody is following in Tylers footsteps or should that be in his flippers and has just completed his level 2 swimming.  He is still working hard on improving his stroke but he can easily swim a length of the big pool now.  The smart money is on Summer 2014 for him to beat Siew Gin in a 1 length race !!

Check out the strokes he can now do

Fun with cake pops

As part of my research for the kids' birthday cake options, i thought about making cake pops. Because the normal way of making cake pops(mushing the cake and putting it back into a ball with icing) sounds like eating chewed up cake, i was more interested in the cake pop machine, which i got for a bargain price of $8.99!!!

When the cake pop maker arrived in the mail, the kids were very excited. They were quite excited about the batter and filling up part but waiting 4 mins for the cake pop to cook proved too long a wait!

Anyways, my first batch didn't quite make the perfect sphere that i was looking for. 2nd batch was a little better. I think more experimentation is needed!!

Oh, yeah, the kids lost interest before i got to decorating. So, maybe an activity to be continued tomorrow!

Corn Maze at Anderson Farms

Doing the corn maze is one of my favorite things to do in the fall. Since Tyler was going to have a playdate with his friend Matthew, and we haven't seen them for some time, i thought it'd be nice if we went and did the corn maze together! It was the perfect place for 4 active boys to run around!!!

We only did maybe 1/3 of the maze as it soon got boring for the boys to walk around randomly. But they seemed to have had a blast doing all the other activities there!

The boys minus Ryan

good friends reunited - so happy to see each other

Experience maze the first time

Looks like they are running from the scarecrow

Corn for my show and share in school!!

Sad face..

My husband and his attempt to do me over

trying to catch a bull

trying his hands at lasso

Family pic!

Tyler having his turn

We missed a few spots on the maze, daddy

A few weeks ago, there pumpkin plants were still around

Need any more cheese with that smile??

Looking for the small pumpkins

Cody found his itty bitty pumpkin

Tagging along with the big boy

Fall season, so pretty!!

Trip to Fort Collins Discovery Museum

Tyler had a day off from school this week, so I took him and his friend Kristen to the Fort Collins discovery museum.

This was actually better than I thought it was going to be based on the website.  There was a lot of interesting exhibits and they were all hands on, not to mention they didn't charge us $2 for the tornado simulator!!

Highlights were the real life rock band, so you could all play instruments together, raising the piano, bite on a straw to hear music and catch and tag a bird.

Ready to check out the museum

Bird tagging 101

We are not in Kansas anymore

Trapped?

Enjoying our homemade pizza at the bar

Recent sewing projects

So, i haven't been talking much about my sewing classes but I've been taking more classes most of the summer and i just finished another 5-week class.

I've made a few more stuff. So, here are some pictures.

A pencil skirt and jacket

The pencil skirt is pretty straight forward but we learned to do the invisible zipper on it. The jacket on the other hand was a tough project. It had darts and lining and sleeves and all the crazy stuff. And of course by the time i was nearly done, we found that the jacket was too big on me, so we had to undo everything, made the sleeves smaller, decided we didn't want the shoulder pads. We didn't count how many weeks it took us, but we were happy our teacher didn't charge us for the extra classes. It would have been a VERY expensive jacket!

The vintage dress

I did this dress in my latest class as a personal project. I had bought the pattern and thought it looked pretty easy. Took me 5 weeks!! It looks quite ok but the front this a little weird..

I've also sewn a cape for Tyler as he's been running around with a polka dot fabric tied to his neck. I did an applique on it too! I'll have to take a picture of it! :)