Under Construction

Geography lesson

This came home from school yesterday. Hilarious.

Caramel apples

Biscuit and I were home alone this weekend so we made a little treat. It started when I sent Biscuit into the produce area at the grocery store promising her I'd get whatever piece of fruit she wanted. How was I to know that she'd find a (TWELVE DOLLAR) caramel apple at kid height plus a packet of apples slices with caramel dipping sauce?

Luckily I knew there was whipping cream in the fridge about to go lumpy so we made a quick batch of salted caramel (recipe can be downloaded on this post), stuck some forks in our $1.50 worth of Granny Smiths and had caramel apples in less than an hour. Amazingly, this did not extract her first loose tooth.

Two tips:

Do not look over your shoulder to say something to a kid while spooning molten caramel over an apple. Caramel burns hurt. For days.

Do not leave caramel apple a room temperature for 24 hours and expect the caramel to remain in it's appointed position. It will slump.

And a bonus tip:

The extra caramel poured into a pan is much better than the caramel apples ever were.

Scherenschnitte

Anyone know how to pronounce that? Probably my cousin Kathy. Anyway, papercutting.

I got this adorable shirt for Biscuit at the Carter's Outlet (turns out they have girl clothes as well as baby stuff).

It reminded me of this Iowa tea towel I think I found at a thrift store that now hangs in Biscuit's kitchen.

Which of course reminds me of the awesomeness of this blog (lots of free patterns) and makes me want to do papercutting.

Instead I'll be making a hat/scarf set out of the most obnoxious fleece you've ever seen. Don't want the kid to freeze in France. We leave in less than 10 days and it's supposed to be cooooold.

I've had this project in my head for a long time

This is step two. Biscuit and I did step one over the summer and then I went on complete crafting hiatus. The falling leaves prompted me to get to work. It's hard to leaf print in the winter.

I'm hoping this mini burst of productivity will continue long enough for me to get this project done.

Halloween Hangover

First off, thanks for the sweet comments on the jack-o-lantern oranges and the costume. I've reached new heights of blogging laziness not replying to comments when there are only three but still, love 'em. And the costume comments got Biscuit back on board with the most adorable costume ever and now she's planning to be a vampire next year.

An aside, in discussing Halloween with a 6-year-old on the phone today Biscuit described vampires as "scary" and "they bite people" and also, "they don't have very much blood so they suck it out of other people." Clearly she's familiar with the canon.

Trick-or-treating was a short lived affair. After visiting our two friends in the neighborhood and a few  other houses Biscuit wanted to race home to give out candy. She sorted it and grouped it and after getting over a bout of shyness started dropping the carefully selected candy combos into the bags. The only tears were shed when she had to go to bed before the candy was gone.

Eight houses yields precisely 16 pieces of candy. Biscuit was thrilled she had "so much" candy and promptly ate 3 pieces last night. One in her snack today and she was down to 12. I told her she could eat all she wanted today and anything she didn't eat I'd throw away OR she could have one piece/day until it was gone. You're going to be shocked....she opted for the former. She's not big on delayed gratification.

I taught her the intricacies of pixie stick consumption, stole a corner of a mini Twix and within an hour or so one banana dum dum and a Twizzler had been trashed all everything was gone. She was hyper all night. Any relation? By the way, does anyone like Twizzlers? I think they are the grossest things ever and even Biscuit was so unimpressed she tossed it. Who buys these nasty pieces of plastic?

So, HOORAY for not having to fight about Halloween candy.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on the secret mommy stash of candy we bought ostensibly to hand out and Mr. H is giving himself a sore jaw chomping through the roasted pumpkin seeds.

No complaints about this Halloween.