Scooby-Doo Birthday cake

As you've guess we're really into Scooby doo! around here right now. After pinning about 10 different Scooby cake ideas we decided on one, just the top and middle tier though- I didn't care much for the blue tier. First we had to buy the toy figures ($10 at ToysRus compared to $16 on Amazon). Which we chalked up to her being a birthday present from us. First thing I did was take the number of tiers down from 3 to 2. I baked  two 6 in and two 8 inch vegan chocolate cakes. I let them cool. After that iced them. Then it was time for fondant fun. I had to make my own this time around because one of the kids is allergic to dairy. No worries... there is a pin for that. Which is my new saying.

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022222555/
http://seddy5.typepad.com/blog/2010/05/how-to-make-marshmallow-fondant.html

**Quick note : Make sure you really powder and butter the surface you're working on! and make sure the fondant is tough- not too soft (like melted marshmallow)**

1. Marshmallows - they can be big marshmallows or mini ones, either one works fine.
2. Powder sugar
3. Food coloring
4. Vanilla (or any flavor really)

 Take a handful of marshmallows in a microwave safe bowl. Add a bit of water (and some flavoring) and mix it up a little.  Heat up for 10 second intervals. mixing as you go.

 After that I added a bunch of powdered sugar (the original blogger does not specify). Butter your fork while mixing the two together. You want to have it REALLY stiff or when you try to put the fondant on the cake it will turn out like this:

You can add the food coloring after it's formed in a white ball or before. It didn't seem to matter. Now it's time to decorate! I have my colors (lime green, purple, orange,  neon blue, and pink). While working with the fondant I constantly added powdered sugar to keep it from sticking. It got to a point though that I flipped the fondant mat onto of the cake just to insure it wouldn't rip.

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023725172/
http://cakecentral.com/gallery/1273760/scooby-doo-wedding

It was apparently a wedding cake originally- I would have put Daphne and Fred on the top for that...buut that's just me. All in all it was a very inspiring cake and I liked it (obviously).

for the strips, I just rolled the fondant out and placed it over the white fondant. The balls are the same- roll them and place them in a pattern.. The flowers are fondant cutters I own

Photo props
Party games

Cleaning cookie trays

onegoodthingbyjillee.com
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915022770758/

So my cookie trays have been through a lot. When I got mine they were already hand me downs from when I lived at home.   The one picture above is only one I've used for 8 years.

Here are my pans before:

Using 1/4 cup baking soda and enough hydrogen peroxide to make a paste I smeared it all over the pans and let it sit for an hour.

After about 45 minutes of scrubbing  with an SOS pad they looked like this:

We were getting there but I felt like the baking soda paste was just like Dumbo and his magic feather. Like the paste was just there for looks.. so with the other half of the smaller tray I only used the SOS pad. I got the same results (not as shiny though (see bottom half of picture below).

An hour and a half and 2 SOS pads later.... My arms are killing me!!

It really works- but man does it take a while





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Toilet Paper Turkey's

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023798985/
http://www.busybeekidscrafts.com/TP-Roll-Turkey.html

What you need:
google eyes
scissors
yellow, orange and red construction paper
glue
toilet paper roll

This craft is a cute and easy keepsake. Once you've got an empty toilet paper roll handy (in a house of 4 that's not hard at all!) Trace your childs hand in Fall colors (red, orange, yellow). Much to my crafting embarrassment I have no red construction paper so we had to color white paper red. With Christmas around the corner I better stock up on some.  Have your child (or you) cut out the hands and glue them to the toilet paper roll. To make the beak kind of bend the toilet paper roll & cut a snip in it. Glue google eyes and add the gobbler under the beak (I had to use sharpie).

Thanksgiving Learning printables

TURKEY COLOR BY NUMBER

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023558845/
http://crisscrossapplesaucelearning.blogspot.com/2011/11/color-by-number-turkey.html

So I thought the one I originally pinned would be too easy for my second grader. Thankfully there were a few others to choose from and so I chose the subtraction page for her. Then we printed them out and I gave them to the girls to color and show off.

As you can tell they are taped to my cupboards for decoration since you can't really find much to deck your house out with.



PILGRIM COLOR BY WORDS
http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023728370/
heidisongs.blogspot.com


Again, super easy for my second grader...but we enjoyed coloring them our own way more.


THANKSGIVING BOOKLET
 http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023500926
http://littlekinderwarriors.blogspot.com/2011/11/thanksgiving-fun-freebies.htm

I thought this booklet was kinda cute. I liked how it wanted the child to figure out the missing word and spell them out. Although I wish I had looked through it fully and just printed pages I want. I thought it was silly that they couldn't eat hot dogs for Thanksgiving...why not?? Anyway we'll skip that page and maybe add a few of our own ideas in.

Scooby- Doo pumpkin

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023771708/
http://www.cartoonjr.com/scooby-doo-pumpkin-patterns/scooby-doo-pumpkin-pattern/

Alright, I'm a day late and if people are following me and wondering where I've been, the answer is simple: Stomach flu. Yep the plague hit our house after visiting family who were still contagious and didn't know it.

So if you haven't guessed from previous posts,  the girls are really into Scooby-Doo! right now. So our pumpkins must be carved according to costumes. I went to the main page of the pin and printed the Scooby pattern. So... I can never actually see the stupid dots when I use a pattern the "correct" way. So I make up my own. I end up trimming the paper down and tracing the lines on with a sharpie.  After that I carved the pumpkin out.

For Velma and Daphne I had to find a coloring page, crop it to just their heads  and enlarge it in paint (go to print set up- make sure the page prints vertically, and enlarge the image until it is the full page). Then I cut out the images piece by piece and sketched in what I needed. This is where it got tricky, because I wasn't sure where to carve without knocking the whole thing out. I think it was the combination of feeling better from the stomach flu but then getting allergies from the weather change. So I cut the hair outline out, leaving a small gap so that the whole thing wouldn't fall in and called it a night. The girls did a great job on their pumpkins, right??

HAPPY HALLOWEEN! We hope you had a safe and fun one!

Shaving cream rain cloud

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023286130
http://classroomcollective.tumblr.com/post/16986789221/weather-fill-the-cup-with-water-put-shaving

Alright it has begun to rain here in California. Nothing crazy- but it's finally feeling a little like Fall. To explain to Hailey how the rain for lack of better term works I showed her this pin. We took a clear cup of water and filled the top with white shaving cream.

Then I took blue food coloring and began to drop the food coloring onto the clouds. I explained how the clouds fill up with moisture in the air and eventually the cloud becomes so full that it has to rain

 (and then the food coloring began falling out!).

Learning to tie shoes

Part of Kindergarten homework is a month worth of activies that the stuedent does and checks off.  This is the 3rd time "tie your shoes" has shown up and the first time I've attempted to teach my youngest how. Through the help of two pintrest pins we're on our way.

first I took an empty cereal box, cut it open and folded the longest piece in half. I taped it down and traced a shoe onto the board. Then I kind of drew a "shoe" onto it. After that we added holes with a pair of scissors and  laced the shoe up. After that we took a black sharpie and colored half the laces (this way the kids get the idea of which string it which side)

http://pinterest.com/pin/195765915023699000/

 Once our little cardboard shoe was made, we watched the video- 3 different techniques on how to tie shoes.

http://www.onecraftyplace.com/2012/10/16/teach-your-child-to-tie-shoelaces/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+OneCraftyPlace+%28One+Crafty+Place%29

Out of all of them the bunny ears was the easiest for her!