dreaming of bread

Simply put, we need to find time to make bread at home soon.

Katie and I took a cooking class when we were in Paris last October.  We made amazingly delicious bread.

No, seriously ... really. good. bread.

 

We walked back to our apartment and bought two rotisserie cornish hens, an Orangina for KT, red wine for me and ... well, this might have been the best meal we had that trip.

because #10 is the playmaker that's why

kaitlyn the red-rimmed reindeer

because

apparently all mermaids are well-endowed.

Came across this picture which I had stashed away last year. It made me chuckle then, and it still does...

the fingerprint kid

Picked this book up the other day at the flea market for a quarter.

I remember this book from when I was a kid. Did you have one?

Katie gets a little messy with the ink pad, but is really loving the step-by-step directions.

do 5-year olds think blondes have more fun?

At Katie's end-of-the-year open house she tells me, "Mama, I drew a picture of you and me, come see!"

I have to say I was excited. She is a Papa's girl. And, I am often reduced to the status of chopped liver when he is around. So any time she singles me out in his presence I have to admit I do feel special.

She guides me around the corner and there we are...

Both blonde with blue eyes. And, looking like we just came from a mother and daughter tanning salon.

Don't get me wrong I LOVE this picture. I'm trying to get her to paint me a tiny version so I can slide it under the glass of my desk.

We just got her class journal and I really like looking at all the different pictures she's drawn throughout the year.

I'm trying to cull down the artwork I keep, taking pictures of the stuff I like but it is difficult as I have two art-producing machines and I don't want to slow them down!

folding madness

Fact: Katie is getting good at origami.

Fact: Katie loves to mass produce things once she figures them out.

Mama's solution: Put this skill set and passion together and transfer it to something more beneficial for the culinary needs of our family.

Wontons.

Mo was not happy watching us, and ended up joining in.

Her start was commendable, painting water on the edges very carefully.

Then she would just scrunch the whole thing up. And "fold" it over a bit.

"Ta da!" she would proclaim.

The meat tended to slip out of the Maddie creations a bit too easily after being boiled, but they were all edible.

Usually wontons are made with shrimp and ground pork, but I often make them with turkey because it's easily available at my grocery store and is a tad healthier.

Turkey Won Ton

1 lb. ground turkey

1 tsp. salt

1 tsp. sugar

1 Tbsp. soy sauce

1 Tbsp. oyster sauce

1 Tbsp. minced onion

1/4 tsp. sesame oil

2 tsp. sherry

8 water chestnuts diced

4 large Chinese mushrooms diced

1/8 tsp. pepper

1 green onion stalk chopped

1 egg

2 packages of wonton skins

Mix ingredients well. Make wontons using 1 tsp. of filling per wonton.

You can check out YouTube for some tutorials on folding wontons.

up next: 1,000 cranes

Miyo made Katie a paper swan last year. Katie's eyes lit up and she has been filled with origami thoughts since.

Later, our friend Lyndsay got Katie some origami books and paper as a gift and Katie was plain giddy.

The problem: I pretty much suck at origami. Katie wanted to make things like an elephant that involved 40+ steps and I was at a loss.

We checked out some new books at the library that looked like they might be more promising for two uber-novices.

I attempted the first project in the "Origami for ages 4 and up" book... and FAILED.

The books sat around until Katie found a DVD in the Trash Origami book (awesome concept by the way).

And, it was like (heavenly) "Ahhhhh!"

I set her up on my computer and she was off to the origami races.

She's actually getting pretty good. Making little envelopes and her new favorite: jumping frogs.

Katie and her fleet of jumping frogs

So, in the end the key was not to get an easier book for mom, it was simply to bypass mom altogether.

ushering in spring

If you've been to our house the last couple of months, you probably saw our Winter Wreaths.

It was quite the crafting adventure for me and the Little Wickies.

The girls collected pine cones at the park and then I went out and purchased my very first glue gun. I then diligently glued all the pine cones to the wreath.

The next morning I picked it up, and all the blasted pine cones fell off.

I resorted to tying the pine cones down with twine. Then we sprayed it with mass amounts of glue and had at it with glitter and beads.

This week we "Spring-ized" the wreaths by painting the pine cones.

Our wreaths are like the ghetto version of Dana's beautiful acorn wreaths that she painted and then repainted.

happy year of the i-don't-care-it's-a-good-reason-to-eat-steamed-fish-and-peking-duck

We got together tonight with some friends to celebrate Chinese New Year.

Now, to be honest, I'm pretty much what you would call a "banana." I know way too little about the actual holiday, or about Chinese history and heritage in general.

I do however, know and appreciate a good Chinese dinner.

Katie and I made some New Year treats during quiet time.

No these aren't traditional Chinese fare. They are just sugar cookies with what I think is a symbol for "spring."

I found a tutorial here.

We used an entire bottle of red dye and the icing still looked bubble gum pink.

My characters generally looked more like fleur-de-Lis, especially the first half dozen or so.

But, they tasted yummy and our friends seemed to enjoy them.

Happy Chinese New Year!

card sharks

Katie has been talking about Valentine's Day for awhile now. We started a list of people she wants to send cards to.

The list has grown and grown. I warned Katie that we were looking at a lot of cards this year.

We decided to have a little card-making party to tackle the task.

I think the kids had fun. But, you wouldn't know it looking at these pictures.

Making cards is apparently serious business.

Looking through my pictures I have zero smiling faces.

But they did make some great-looking cards. I like seeing the creativity. Lia even made a pop-up card! I wish I had taken a picture of it.

Katie made a series of very uniform cards, very unusual for my more-is-better girl.

Maddie was a card-making machine and made more than 20 cards.

Mission complete.

you know how sometimes the box

is better than the toy?

This week we got a U.S. map to put behind Maddie's door. It was too big so I trimmed it to fit.

Katie took the scraps while I was cleaning up breakfast and getting ready and made this.

That would be her own tape measure measuring 0...

...to 60

All morning she was running around the house measuring things in what I call the "Katric" system.

The increments are a bit larger than traditional inches, e.g., while I normally stand an impressive 62 inches, I'm only about 57 "kinches."

me try sew

That pretty sums up my level of needle-and-thread literacy.

A while back we were lucky to receive some scraps of fabric over at rice babies. She was even so sweet as to include a note offering to sew the pillows together once the girls had colored them.

Apparently my lack of sewing skills has permeated the greater blogosphere.

We had a bit of a slow afternoon so I let the girls have at it with some fabric markers.

Maddie would only color on that left-hand window for some reason. I even tried turning the fabric to face a different direction thinking she was coloring what was closer to her. But alas, she kept coloring the same window.

After, I suggested -- to the girls horror -- that we sacrifice a little-used stuffed animal to finish off our pillows.

In the end I climbed up into my linen cabinet, brought down a vacuum-packed bag and found a pillow that we weren't using.

My finish work on the pillow is -- well, let's just say it's sub-par.

But the Little Wickies don't seem to mind.

quiet time

Mo sleeps in the middle of the day. She is also somewhat of a light sleeper.

This means Katie and I do "quiet" activities during this time. I use quotes because I'm not sure anything a 4-year-old does ever qualifies as quiet.

We generally do a lot of outside activities like gardening, chalk, etc.

I saw this the other day and thought -- perfect.

Self portraits by Mama and Katie.

"The circle in the middle is my belly button... and those other two circles are my nipples."

Nice.

What do you do during "quiet time?"

taking flight

Katie loves making things with construction paper. She figures out how to make something and the next thing we know -- she goes into mass production -- and we have dozens upon dozens of that widget.

Recently she has been making airplanes.

And, she has been unstoppable. They become daily "gifts" to family members and friends. She even put them inside choice valentines this year.

I feel so bad throwing away Katie's art. So last week I surprised her by taking five of my favorite airplanes that complimented her green and purple room and did this.

She was very excited.

This one is my favorite because it has flames coming out the back.

Now at bedtime we lie down and look up, blow some "wind" at the fleet and watch them glide around.