6.09.2010

We All Scream For Ice Cream!

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Last week we made Ice Cream to go with our Alphabet Summer work!

This was so easy and doesn't require a machine or a lengthy list of ingredients. Here's all you need to whip up your own icy treat:

Half and Half
Whipping Cream
Sugar
Vanilla
Salt
Ice
4 Qt. Baggies
4 Gallon Baggies


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Mix 2 cups whipping cream, 2 cups Half and Half, 1/2 cup sugar, and 2 tsp vanilla.

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Pour 1 cup of mixture into each Quart sized baggie. Squeeze out any air.

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Put the Quart baggie inside a gallon baggie. Fill gallon baggie with 1/2 cup coarse salt and ice. Close baggie.

Then adorn your winter gloves in June and shake that baby up for 5-10 minutes.

Josie helped with this part for .05 seconds before I was left to do all the shaking.

After you're done shaking, you'll have super yummy frozen ice cream!

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I was just as excited that it really froze as Josie was! Great lesson about liquid turning to solid!

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We halfed the recipe and still have a ton left over. It refreezes well and tastes great!

6.08.2010

Just For Papa Moose

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Josie has a lot of strong men surrounding her and covering her with prayer.

She has awesome Grandpas and 2 fabulous Great Grandpas.

But since the first time she met her Papa Moose (my Mom's Dad) she was smitten.

It's a deep rooted, crazy kind of admiration she has for him.

And nobody is allowed to sing her the Moose Song except him.

Which is why she was especially proud on our last garden check when we spotted this:

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Back in March, while we were in Arizona with Papa Moose, he and Josie planted some pumpkin seeds.

He gave strict instructions for daily watering, lots of sun, and plenty of singing to make her pumpkins grow.

And in the quiet of our last night in Arizona, with Josie sleeping soundly inside, a little switcheroo let her wake up to a sprouted pumpkin plant outside.

She was so excited, I knew there was no boarding our plane without that baby pumpkin plant in tow.

The plant made it home and when the garden was ready, we planted it and hoped for the best.

It was dry and scraggly. I was convinced it wouldn't grow.

And when I tried to find it a couple weeks later, I couldn't remember where I'd planted it.

Poor Josie was sad I lost her "Pumpkin Babies".

And then just last week, where there were no pumpkins before, we spotted this:

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Cute, Tiny, Sweet, Little Papa Moose Pumpkins.

All the way from Arizona.

And not just a few. We're talking a ton of baby pumpkins on this thing!

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I won't lie, I teared up when I saw them.

I can't figure out how they made it. I was so sure it got eaten up.

I guess all that singing paid off.

6.07.2010

Alphabet Summer - 1

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We started our Alphabet Summer this week and it was just what I was hoping for!
This week we did I and L.
We've never worked on writing letters before and she did pretty well.
On the drawing page she just tried to write the letter without the dots but she wasn't very interested in doing much else.

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We did a page for her Alphabet Book.

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And I'm pretty sure the fact that I told her we were making ice cream after she did her book work had nothing to do with her lack of concentration!

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This ice cream project was so easy and fun! Not to mention it tastes just like an Ice Dream from Chic-fil-a!
For L we did her book work and a letter in her Alphabet Book then made lemonade.

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I promise I brush her hair every few days! Poor baby.
And for Craft Thursday we just copied what Meg did.

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I'm trying to teach her to finish what she starts so we ended up working on this together. I loved how it turned out!

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I thought the week went great. It was nice to have a plan for those days and accomplish it.

This week we are doing T and M!

6.04.2010

Wine Drinkers Needed!

For the longest time I've been wanting to make a wine cork corkboard.

I've been saving wine tops for 6 months, but wasn't getting close to having enough.

Then enters my Mom and my sister!

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The last time my Mom was in town she delivered two plastic bags full of wine tops that they had saved for me!

Surely I had enough now!

I took down this painting from our dining room that I hate.

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I bought it the year Andrew and I got married and loved it, but it is so dark in our already super red dining room. I figured the frame was pretty and it would make a huge corkboard.

Unfortuantly, I only got about 1/2 way done when I ran out of wine tops. This thing is seriously huge!

I've already informed Amber she can't drink boxed wine for awhile, but I think I'm going to need to enlist a lot more wine drinkers if I plan to finish this anytime soon!