How to Ripen a green tomato

http://www.wikihow.com/Ripen-Green-Tomatoes
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023104247

While harvesting our tomatoes in the garden we accidently cut a green one. No worries thanks to wikihow we saved the tomato.

Day one:

We put it in a brown lunch bag



Day three

Day five:
I took it out and let it finish ripening on it's own

DONE!:

Cleaning a Vacuum roller

From realsimple.com

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023104096/

So I love my dyson. Despite their claims to always keep suction it doesn't always pick up. Especially if the roller part is full of stray strings from bead or fabric projects, human hair and lots of American Girl doll hair. I saw this pin and thought I'd try it out. I figured it would be faster then. As you can see I have a piece of magazine in my vacuum and a sticker on the top :)

Anyway  I tried

and then FORCED the stitch remover.

Then said, "screw it" and pulled out my scissors. 

Much faster.

All in all: Good idea- doesn't work. I'll continue to use my scissors

Flounder Craft

http://family.go.com/printables/article-1017462-little-mermaid-printable-flounder-3d-papercraft-t/
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022596739/

Since Haileys Birthday is Little Mermaid I found this paper Flounder craft to hang along with my jelly fish.
We added a string to him so that he could be "swimming" in our tent for the party

The directions were simple enough: Print, color, cut and glue back together. The only tips I can give you if you refuse to print the instructions like I did because you didn't want to waste paper is this:
 *The top fins have an extra part that will eventually line up with the top of flounders head- You're going to want to stripe that yellow and blue. Not all blue like I did and then try to cover up my mistake by cutting out the spots that were supposed to be yellow and then accidentally cutting too much.

*Other tip: Flounders face pokes OUT... not in. hahaha

Cupcake Fondue

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023063987/
http://hoosierhomemade.com/cupcake-fondue/


We are having a doll party today. It's just something fun to do to bring my daughter and her friends together during the summer. We enjoyed watching the Kit movie, doing their hair and the dolls and playing a bunch of minute to win it games. The winners would get first choice in cupcake fondue.

I woke up this morning and made 36 mini cupcakes. I put them in a sealed container once they were cool to keep them from drying out and getting stale.  After we finished our games we settled down (hahahaha) and I got out my cupcake tins and placed small amounts of frosting, sprinkles, chocolate chips (sugar free :)  ), and crumbled cookies in the different sections.

Well..sort of. I don't know what we did wrong- maybe my cupcakes were just too awesomely moist that they just had to fall apart when we tried to dip them? We ended up icing them by hand and just dipping them into the sections that way.

Minute to Win it games

So I've only heard about this game show. Never watched it. I don't exactly have a lot of *down time* I search "party games" because my daughters having a dolly and me party and we needed some extra fun ideas to get he girls moving. I took two different pins for "minute to win it" games and chose the ones I thought looked the best. and added our own.
**For privacy of other people I only show pictures of my kids***

So we took the girls in teams of two to play. They had to go up against each other to see who could win in one minute.

http://www.housingaforest.com/tag/minute-to-win-it/
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023035445

We took:

The cards and bottle game:

I didn't have a glass starbucks bottle, so I had to use a cup we got from Disneyland. The point is to see who can blow the deck of cards off first---all but the last one. Amazingly enough, this was a little tricky. If you blow too hard they all fall off. Too light, nothing.



The booty shaking

We took two boxes of zip locs, emptied them out and cut down the opening JUST a bit. Then we added  those pom poms (other people use tissue boxes and ping pong balls- I'm working with what I've got guys!) I taped ribbon to the sides so we can tie them around the girls waist. Each girl has 29 pom poms in their box. The one who has less in at the end of one minute wins

---Hilarious to watch and try---

and the bite a bag game.

This one takes talent. They have to squat down (no hands!) and bit the edge of the bag. As they go the bag gets smaller and smaller. The girl who gets the farthest in the shortest amount of time wins.



Then we have:

http://happyhomefairy.com/2011/06/06/minute-to-win-it-games-for-summer-fun/
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022803885/



The cereal puzzle game:

We took two fronts of a cereal box and cut them into a puzzle. First team to put it together correctly wins.

The cup and Straw game

Each girl has their own cup and straw. They must blow their cup across the table first The first team with everyone (or most) people done wins.


We also added the egg relay.

The prize if you're wondering was first dibs on the cupcake fondue

Peel, seed & cut tomato

 http://pinterest.com/pin/146155950377555357/
http://blog.williams-sonoma.com/how-to-peel-seed-and-dice-a-tomato/

We have a wonderful garden that we started back in April of this year. It has so far been very successful. We've got so many tomatoes and squash and corn plants that I don't exactly know what else to do with them.

We decided with the very first picking we were going to make either ketchup or spaghetti sauce. Both called for peeled tomatoes turned into paste- You can't see my face but I'm sitting there going "crap"
The first of our Tomato plants have produced several small tomatoes. I thought for a while about what to do with them. We were going to make ketchup for fun

PEEL

Start by making an X on the base of the tomato with a sharp knife. Drop the tomato into a boiling pot of water for 20 seconds and drop them into a bowl of cold water. This is called "blanching" After a minute you should be able to just peel off the skin. Mine worked great, however  I don't know if it's that I left mine in for 45 or that my tomatoes were already pretty mushy (yay procrastinating on making the ketchup when the tomatoes looked good two days ago!), but mine went horribly wrong.

SEED:

 

In order to de-seed the tomato cut it in half and with a finger scoop out the seeds--- See... Mine were really mushy by this point and I don't know if the type of tomato makes a difference (we grew "celebrity" tomatoes) Dice: after removing the white part of the tomato with the tip of your knife, cut it into strips and then into cubes. Mine are *perfect* HAHAHA Oh well. I tried to puree them-- that didn't work either. There just wasn't enough of them. So I ended up having to toss it :( truly sad moment.  The original post is great for people who aren't procrastinator!

Math Worsksheet: Balance

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023046765
http://mrstsfirstgradeclass-jill.blogspot.com/2012/01/balance-scale.html

With Summer upon us, I really don't want the girls to forget what they have learned over the year. I remember the end of the year Hannah was working on "balancing scale" worksheets in math. I printed a couple pages off from the  site and let her have them. They were done before I could blink....now what?

Healthy teeth diorama

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022961101/
No original source :(

As I've mentioned once before I'm a bit necrotic when it comes to healthy teeth. I've had plenty of bad experiences and even gone to court against a dentist. I saw this pin and thought it would be cute to go along with another pin (the orange book:  http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022945829/)
to do to show the girls how to brush and floss their own teeth properly. To be honest between each book, the best one was the "Brush, Floss, and Rinse" book for teeth- although I disagreed with their "brush then floss" I had always been taught by the dentists we go to to floss first THEN brush because it's like vacuuming then dusting-pointless.

HEALTHY TEETH:
There was no directions, so I took it a step further We cut a piece of yarn for each girl and called it "floss" in between each tooth.

We talked about how food gets caught in your teeth and on the grooves (tops of the egg carton) and how flossing only gets in between. How you need to brush each tooth really well (we used my hair brush as a tooth brush) to get all the food off your teeth to prevent cavities or "Sugar bugs"

Another fun thing we've done already :Brush your teeth sign

Since the orange book wasn't just about teeth (in fact only one page was really about teeth the rest was about keeping germs away and eating healthy)
HEALTHY BODIES
We re-went over our food pyramids and talked about wheat foods are health for their teeth and bodies.

SPREADING GERMS
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022279412/
http://totallytots.blogspot.com/2011/10/touch-feel-learn-healthy-habits.html

I'm in love with the way this mother taught her son about germs

She took a spray bottle and sprayed her sons hand calling it the germs. Then they shook hands and her hands were wet. Meaning he spread his germs.

She taught him to sneeze into the bend of his arm or a tissue. She took a tissue and sprayed it with water (after they dried their hands from the previous demonstration) and shook hands. Their hands were both dry meaning no germs were spread.

Next she spread cocoa powder on his hands and hand him run them under water.

She took bread (and me being cheap got a clean white towel) and had him wipe his hands revealing that although his hands looked clean they were still  dirty.

Then he re-washed using soap and water and his hands were clean. Reminding him that he should use soap and water to wash away germs.

 Clean!!

Mickey Mouse Oreos

http://cropacabana.blogspot.com/
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915021951686/

We love Disney in our house. My husband really likes Mickey Mouse. So we went out and bought some Oreos- double stuffed are best (and oreo minis). Then we heated up the red candy melts and dipped the cookies in. We let it dry and added the ears by breaking a mini oreo in half.

added yellow buttons for Mickeys pants and white polka dots for Minnie. We also added yellow bows to each one of Minnie's ears.

***If you found this helpful, funny or anything else. Please follow me! I get kinda lonely :( ****

Betty Crocker Crepes

http://www.bettycrocker.com/recipes/french-crepes-suzette/c99321c4-940a-4189-ae5c-9b53d99b321e
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023035392/

1cup Original Bisquick® mix

3/4cup milk

2eggs 

 

 

OPTIONAL:

1/4cup butter or margarine

1teaspoon grated orange peel

1/4cup orange juice

1/3cup sugar

1/4cup orange-flavored liqueur 

 

Mix eggs, bisquick and milk together in either a bowl, or I prefer a large measuring cup with a spout to pour easily. Heat the  frying pan in between 6 and 7. When it is ready, coat the pan with some butter and pour in about 2 TABLEspoons of mix while doing a circular motion to spread the mix. I keep mine off the heat to prevent it from cooking too fast

Use your spatula to run it around the rim of the crepe and flip. After it's taken off you can either dip it in the orange sugar butter (that you heat until mixed- not boiled) Or you can do like my mom and put butter and powder sugar- it's not healthy but it's good :)

 

 

Try to make sure you dont get it too thick in the pan

 

And then I ripped my second one :)

My two did not like the orange flavor and growing up on a particular taste and feel for crepes, I didn't like it much either. I think that using Bisquick was much better than regular flour the way mom made

Wooden spoon prevents boiling over?

http://diyhshp.blogspot.com/2011/10/did-you-know.html
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022909113

 If you look at the photo you can see a bit of water spilling over the edge- not like it typically does though. Probably because even though I felt like I was filling the pot "a lot" it wasn't enough to make it spill over a lot.

So we cook Spaghetti very frequently in our house. It's cheap, it's easy and well, tastes good (especially with baked cheese on top). Now I typically don't over fill my pot in the first place and after I place the pasta in I turn it down to 7 and let it cook. But a long time ago I didn't.  I would try to wooden spoon thing and it didn't work.

One thing I found interesting is that the bubbles actually formed up around the spoon and created enough of them to spill over more.


********* Another try***

 It still was spilling over. Maybe not as much as it does without, but still spilling

Alright, We had mac and cheese last night.