a place for your tooth

Don't tell my sister I told you this. She's so cute. She's student teaching kindergarten right now so I called and asked if her classroom teacher had a cute little thing she sent home lost teeth in.

Miss A: what?
Mama Bee: For when the kids loose teeth at school.
Miss A: Kids loose their teeth AT school?
MB: All the time.

There's something about math class that makes kids want to sit and wiggle a tooth. Eventually they pop out. I used to send the tooth home in a snack bag ziplock. I'm classy like that. Bee and I discussed it and came up with some little felt pouches for holding a tooth.

I'm sending some off to her and a few to Bee's kindergarten teacher. This was my hand-sewing project for out trip last weekend. Bee made up about 8 as well. She plans to sell hers. Of course.

They are a fun little size and would make placing your tooth under your pillow easy. It could even hold a shiny golden dollar in the morning.

I think the tooth fairy will like these better than a ziplock, I know I do.

playdough shape cards

I'm devouring the book, Creative Activities for Young Children. Again. This might be the third time I've read it.I have the 5th addition, but it looks like it's up to 8 now. I didn't read most of my own college text books, but I picked this text book up at a friends library sale a few years ago and love it.

Here's an idea from it. I made up a set of laminated, card stock- should last at least all year- cards. Each has a shape in outline form. Kids can roll out play dough snakes and create the shape. I added the names of the shapes because I think everything should be labeled. I made these up in word, it took 5 minutes.

Bee wanted to try them out. Lou wanted to play instead.

Both were rather focused. Bee did all 8 cards.

Playdough worked really well, but I think that laying some kind of cereal or snack would work. Also, pom poms or little pebbles could have been laid on the shape. There are lots of possibilities.

sorting mats

When I was student teaching, my supervising teacher told me that teachers are great at begging, borrowing, and stealing. I hope we're only stealing ideas .. and sometimes random items like jumbo straws at steak and shake (great for a science project showing viscosity). Here's an idea I stole this week.

Sorting cards. I was talking to Lou's teacher for next year (Bee's teacher last year) and she was getting ready to go photocopy some sorting mats. I went right home and made a set. She plans to have kids glue their sorting items to the mats (beans, peas, pom poms, etc), I made a reusable set. I printed them out on old file folders (my poor man's card stock- hubby has a seemly endless supply of old file folders at work). They were the first thing I laminated with my new laminator this weekend!

Lou did a little sorting for me. He decided to sort by color:

By animal:
And by size:
I'm thinking these would be great for a number of themes and different items to sort. I decided to stick to 4 sections for my 3 year olds. You could do 6-8 sections for older kids. When you have kids sort, don't tell them how you want them to sort. Let them pick the characteristics. Are they going to go by size, color, shape, etc? They may surprise you and come up with some really creative ways to sort.

As you like it dress

I had so much fun on this one. I got to work with Jessica from Happy Together again to test out a pattern. This pattern is called the "As you like it shirt or dress" and is now available in her shop.

I made Bee a dress using two of the optional elements, the tiered skirt and the one piece top.

It passed the spinability test, a requirement at our house.

Bee and I had discovered this jersey knit a few months ago and I hadn't come up with the right dress for it. It's a bit on the thin side. The top of this dress is lined and the skirt is so full that it worked out great. It's bee so hot, this fabric has turned out to be a great choice.

The most fun part of the pattern is the back. the straps are long and come together in a big bow.

My sister took these photos for me. I guess that means these are from July, when she was down for Bee's birthday.

I also made one for a friend. This was actually the first one I made. I followed the pattern exactly. The top is one of those cross tops (which always slightly reminds me of a nursing top).

She selected the fabrics. Cupcakes and blue.

I find Jessica's patterns so easy to use. They all have step by step directions with photos at almost each point. She explains things well and I think even a beginner could sew from them. She already has us working on the next pattern. Bee will like this next one too.

canning corn and eating blooms

I keep hearing people say it's not worth your time to can corn. Freezing is better. Well, I've been freezing the corn as well as other garden goodies and I'm going to run out of room. As it turns out, canning corn is about the easiest canning out there! I haven't tasted it yet, but I can't see that the taste will make the difference.

You can cut the corn off the ear before or after it's been cooked (cold/raw or hot pack). Add 1t optional canning salt to each pint and process. Easy enough. Corn needs to be processed in a pressure canner for a good amount of time. My canner manual said 55 minutes at 10 pounds for pints.
I used both cooked and uncooked corn and the uncooked corn was much easier to cut off the ear. Much easier. I will be doing more corn next week.

Onto the blooms- I have heard that blossoms are delicious. Bee is growing a crazy vine that only flowers. It apparently does not bear fruit. We decided to pick the blossoms the other morning and try to cook them. We thought it was a cucumber plant, but it is a volunteer, so it really is just a mystery. We picked 8 or so. Bee took this picture while I was cooking.

I don't know the right way to fry them. I cleaned them and tore them open gently. I removed the stamen. It may be edible, I don't know. I treated them like a green tomato; dip in milk, dip in a dry mix (bread crumbs, seasoned salt, corn meal, spelt flour, wheat germ, flax seed meal) and pan fried in some olive oil.

They were pretty and pretty yummy. I don't know if it was that they were yummy or that it was just another vehicle for eating fried 'stuff.' Here they are with eggplant.

vegetarians close your eyes- an update

I finally got to the beef neck bones. I first wrote about the mystery meat here. I finally thawed them and open them up to take a peak. There was a good bit of meat on them. I treated them like ribs and used my favorite rib marinade. I threw them on the grill, although they took a year a half to cook. I ended up finishing them up in the oven.

Should I ever end up with these in my monthly meat allotment again, I'll put them in the crock pot. I was also told that the bones made a good stock. I made up some of that too after we cut off as much meat as we could. I then sent the bones over to my neighbors dogs. I heard there was a fight over them.

Here's the marinade I used: 1
/2 c soy sauce, 2 T lemon juice, 2 T olive oil, 1 T brown sugar, 1 T garlic powder

I just received an email that the pick up tomorrow is includign pork shanks. hmmmm. I am learning a lot through this meat endeavor.

1st day

The day has finally come. Bee is off to kindergarten! Apparently, she grew up at some point.

She wanted to practice waiting for the bus. She doesn't ride the bus. She should really watch out for pirates! (These shoes have been a sore spot. She has to wear a shoe with a sock to school. That limits what shoes you can wear)

This is one little pirate who was not so sure about his sister going to kindergarten.

She remembered that she should get a Schultuete for the first day of school. Being in kindergarten means you have a good memory.

She took this little treat to her teacher. She ended up being really embarrassed about it and I gave it to the teacher.

After drop off, the 1st grade parents threw a little 'boo hoo' breakfast for the kindergarten parents. They passed out these tissue packages. Lou took several packages before I stopped him.

Two more weeks and Lou and I are back at school!

I'm a winner

I may not have won the race this weekend (and Bee and Lou think I might each run). In fact it was not my best time and I came in like 323 rd place out of 565 female runners. That sounds better than 640th place out of 950 total runners. I got to run with a friend so it was more enjoyable. The best part was that it was easy. Last 5K race I thought it was a little hard. It was hot and I was by myself. This time I thought, "oh that wasn't bad!" That's good news because next month I am running a 10K..... then in October, it's the half marathon.

I didn't win the race. But, what a surprise when I checked my email this morning and found out that I won something from Expect Moore. Last week she had 'Pocket week.' I added my ultimate teacher bag to the linky party. I won this pocket watch stamp from Sweet Grass Stamps.

I am thinking a really cool letterbox! That reminds me, we are discovering geocaching. It's like letter box meets technology. More on that sometime soon. Sometime when I have my own computer back.