Homemade Sugar "Cubes"

These are not really cubes, but they are decorative lumps of sugar for your tea or coffee ( and they could be cubes if you wanted that shape).

2 Cups granulated white sugar

2 Tablespoons water

In a mixing bowl, combine the sugar and water. Stir until all the sugar is evenly wet. Press sugar into silicon candy molds or mimi ice cube trays.




Make sure to pack the sugar down firmly. Turn upside-down, removing the molded sugar from the trays onto a flat plate. Do not touch the shapes until they have dried out and hardened. Leave them uncovered overnight.

Store in an airtight container.

The Lots of Love Bento

This was the first time all school year that Blaze and I had lunch at school. Usually we leave at lunch time, but today was the school Valentine's Day party after lunch.

Here is the special heart-theme bento that I made for us to share:



My sweetie had to go out of town early this morning, and won't be back for a week. He has a week-long job excavating a shell mound in a National Park, which requires him and the rest of the crew to camp out in a tent for the week. Before he left, though, he did show me a picture of the Valentine's gift he ordered for me.



I am so excited, because a little tea kettle was the last thing I wanted to add to the supplies for my picnic basket, and this one is really cute!

Happy Valentine's Day!

As I was looking for material on YouTube to use for our upcoming science unit about ears and hearing, I found this Valentine sign language lesson from Signing Time.



I really like vintage Valentine cards, so I printed off a few that I found online, using cardstock, to use as decorations on the tinsel tree in Blaze's room.



This is a very simple way to make ornaments. Just glue a loop of ribbon to the back of the cards and then make a frame around the card, using either glitter glue or gluing on decorative trim. The red tinsel-like trim is my favorite. I had saved it from a package I received for Christmas.

Cute Cheese for Boys

At the beginning of January, the blog Cute Food for Kids featured a post titled, "Babybel Cheese...Just for Girls".

http://www.cutefoodforkids.com/2011/01/babybel-cheese-just-for-girls.html

The little cheeses were adorable, and perfect for a little girl's lunchbox, but they made me think about what I could do to make a boy-friendly version.

Here is what I came up with:



I did not use the same precision tools she did. I just used a paring knife and a pair of kitchen shears. I also used a long lighter to melt the edges of the wax for the hat brims, so they would stick. The eyes are brown mustard seeds.

Some New Steampunk Entertainment

DH ordered Soulless, the first book in The Parasol Protectorate Series, for me just before Christmas, so that I'd have something to read on our trip to Illinois. I liked it so much, that when we got back I went to the bookstore to buy Changeless, the next book in the series. I spent quite a bit of time searching the store, before asking a salesperson for help, because I really wasn't sure what genre it fit into. There is mystery, romance, vampires, werewolves, and a little steampunk, all beautifully blended together. As it turns out, it is shelved under "Sci-Fi/Fantacy".

I have really been enjoying the witty, but somewhat abrasive, main character in these books!

Here is a sample of the first book, a passage read aloud by the author:








I am currently more than halfway through Blameless, the third book in the series, and already looking forward to Heartless, which will be released July 1st.




The On-Line Victorian Dress-up Doll:

http://www.orbitbooks.net/soulless/


Gail Carriger, the author of the books, has a wonderful website, that can be found here:

http://gailcarriger.com/index.php





Two fun new music videos and how they were made (because I really like that sort of thing):

Experiencing Braille

Yesterday afternoon, we took a little field trip to the downtown library, so I could show Blaze what real Braille books are like.



The massive tome he is feeling, with his eyes shut, is The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe written in Braille, because I wanted him to realize that books of every kind can be made that way. What we actually checked out, was Strega Nona, by Tomie de Paola, because it's a simple story, that he is already familiar with, which will make it easier to read both in printed words and braille.



We also checked out one book that was not written in Braille, but was about Louis Braille.

Reading the Annotated Alice

This week, as our bedtime story, we began reading Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, from The Annotated Alice.



I purchased this copy from "The Collector's Corner" of the Friends of the Library Book Sale a couple years ago, and I'm now very glad I did. Blaze is enjoying the silliness of the story, while I'm learning a lot from the annotations on the side column of each page.

Here is a perfect example of that:
"Bathing machines" had been mentioned in the book Starcross, which we read recently, and I had just imagined that they were beachside dressing rooms on wheels. The Annotated Alice goes into much greater detail on the subject, explaining that they were drawn by horses, down into the water, so as to provide more privacy for the bather. The doors of the bathing machine would be left open after the bather entered the water, to block the view from shore.





Alice Failing:





The Muppets Jabberwocky: