Q: What do I do with my kid’s art projects? They’ll be upset if I toss them out, but I’m being squeezed out of the house by an army of cardboard creations!
No, this isn’t a question from a blog reader. It’s the question I ask myself the eve of every curbside recycling pick-up. You see, our home studio overflows with art projects. Which I consider a very good thing. Bring on the creativity! But eventually, space runs out and reality rears its ugly head. My house overflows with paper, tubes, and boxes connected with sticky webs of tape. The shelves are packed, and I haven’t seen the top of my coffee table in 7 days. Worse, we don’t have any room to make new projects!
Alas, I have a few unpleasant options to choose from:
Option 1: Toss the projects. This usually backfires because my kids routinely root through the recycling bins for building materials, resulting in “MOM! Why did you toss my 10 car tissue box train!?!?” Or they catch me carrying the stuff to the trash and plead with me to keep the 45 pieces of pipe cleaner jewelry that have been hanging on the living room doorknob for 5 weeks.
Option 2: Have the kids decide which projects they’re ready to toss. I sit the kids down and tell them how proud I am of their projects. I explain that it’s time to let the shoe box fire station go because we all need to be responsible and keep the house orderly. My kids of course understand and don’t argue with me. They dispose of the projects and even offer to tidy up their rooms as well. Um…in the spirit of full disclosure…I must admit that I’ve never actually had any success with Option 2.
Option 3: Wait until they’re not looking / asleep and sneakily dispose of the projects. This is what happens most often I’m afraid. However, it’s surprisingly difficult to turn your back on an oatmeal container cat staring dolefully at you over the rim of a recycling bin hidden in the backyard. And then there’s the inevitable “Hey, where’s the swimming pool I made for my Shopkins?” A ferocious interrogation ensues until you finally confess you tossed it because you had to clean up. Even while you’re rationally defending the tidiness of your household to the indignant artist, you secretly feel like a horrible monster for tossing your child’s creative vision. Sigh.
In 2014, I blogged about one solution to project clutter. It’s a customized project book made out of an inexpensive photo album. You can read about it here.
Last weekend, however, I came up with another solution! I created an Instagram account. Now, anytime a project needs recycling, I just upload a photo of it to my Instagram.
There the project remains, forever validating my kids’ imaginative musings. It’s a fun gallery documenting their tremendous creativity AND a digital representation of one less job for Mom the Recycling Cop. Bonus! Grandma and Grandpa can follow our Instagram to see what those clever grandkids are up to.
The Project Project hasn’t been running very long, but I can already see and feel a difference in the house. Projects are recycled without a fuss because they’re not getting tossed out. They’re simply changing into something that can be seen and shared with others. Also, I love these projects! I honestly feel bad when they have to go. Now I can revisit them all the time.
Want to see a truly FANTASTIC Instagram art project? Check out this fashionista mother and daughter crafting team!
We are truly honored to bring an old friend back to the blog today. Remember Hope, our kid tester? The last time we saw her, she was testing 
The kit includes: 1 instruction book, practice paper, 3 cartridge pens (xtra fine, medium, and xtra bold), 5 ink cartridges (red, green, purple, blue, and black), 1 classic dipping pen with metal nib, 1 small bottle of black ink, 4 tubes of gouache (red, white, blue, orange), 1 paint brush, 4 gift tags, 4 bottle tags, and 8 note cards with envelopes. After reading the extensive list of supplies included in the kit, I searched the exterior of the box, the interior of the box, the instruction manual, and pretty much everywhere else for a suggested age range for the product…
Upon opening the instruction booklet, which was titled Calligraphy the Easy Way by Diane Foisy, I was pleasantly surprised to find a ten page history on calligraphy’s origins, purpose, and more recently, its decline, and those who are attempting to keep the art form alive.
With the ending of that section, in bold letters, it said “History has shown us that calligraphy will prevail.” I’m not sure about you, but to me that sounded a bit sinister, a bit secret society-ish. There was nothing exactly wrong with the statement itself; it just felt a bit chilling for a craft kit instruction booklet.
On that page, it also mentioned directions for using a “classic stylus”… nowhere else in the kit is this mentioned. Perhaps it is referring to the “classic dipping pen,” but if so, that was not made clear.
Needless to say, I was not very adept at creating even these simple lines. When I was making these lines on the practice paper provided, the ink went right through the paper. When it did not go through the paper, it bled on the surface of the paper, so it did not make clean lines like those pictured in the booklet.
The booklet ended with a brief piece about the history of illumination, a type of medieval calligraphy done mostly by monks, and a few pages of flower templates that the author encouraged you to copy and use in your own designs.
I was so excited to use this product to make something beautiful with calligraphy, but instead I felt inadequate and mocked by the instruction manual. I should’ve been the one mocking the inadequate instruction manual. Since it was called (and I quote) an “instruction book,” I felt that I should have been instructed, not loosely guided by numbers and arrows. On the plus side, I gained a new appreciation for Charles Dickens’ incredibly long novels because he had to write them with one of these pens!
Harry Potter is celebrating a birthday shortly, which is the only excuse we need to bust out our hats and robes and do something Potter. You might recall our 
The cookbook contains 10 chapters and 150 recipes. While a traditional cookbook organizes its recipes under chapters like main dishes, salads, and sides, the Unofficial Potter has chapters like “Recipes from a Giant and an Elf” (Rock Cakes, Bath Buns, Treacle Fudge, Kreacher’s French Onion Soup, etc.) and “Good Food with Bad Relatives” (Lemon Pops, Knickerbocker Glory, Roast Pork Loin, Mulligatawny Soup, etc.).
It didn’t take long before the use of our fingertips turned into the use of our full fingers (and some of our hands) in order to make sure we fully incorporated the butter into the dry ingredients.
After folding the egg and milk into butter mixture, we slowly mixed in the raisins. This was the only time we both grew concerned about the rock cakes. The batter seemed really thick and tough to mix. After a short while, my son didn’t have the strength to fold in the raisins so he passed the spoon over to me. Even I had a hard time making sure the raisins were fully mixed in!
We slid the cookie sheet into the oven for 25 minutes, turning the sheet once in the middle of the baking cycle. Once the rock cakes were lightly brown on the bottom, we pulled them out and set them on racks to cool. The next morning, Dr. Dana and Marissa’s office test confirmed…the recipe is a winner!
Rock cakes have the appearance and consistency of a scone, so they would be perfect as a morning treat with a cup of coffee or eaten in the afternoon with a spot of tea. My son and I brainstormed other filling options to use in place of raisins and we came up with dried fruits, such as cranberries, cherries or blueberries, chocolate chips, or perhaps just including a splash of vanilla extract to the dough. You could also skip adding anything and eat plain rock cakes with a pat of butter and glob of your favorite jam or jelly.
As I lined two baking sheets with parchment paper, my son measured and combined the water, sugar, and cream of tartar in a small pot. He asked for help with the corn syrup as it looked to him to be hard to measure correctly. I happily obliged to avoid a sticky syrupy mess. We followed the directions carefully, stirred the mixture constantly and used a candy thermometer once our concoction was bubbling. We watched the candy thermometer slowly rise in temperature, stirring every once in a while.
All was going well until the mixture reached a temperature of about 250 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s when I noticed our whitish clear blend suddenly started turning brown.
There was also a distinguishable burning smell being emitted from the pot. I knew this was not good, but we decided to follow through until the mixture was at 300 degrees Fahrenheit, per the recipe. Once it hit that temperature, I turned off the burner and we added the citric acid. As soon as the mixture had cooled and stopped bubbling, we took turns dropping teaspoon sized circles of the candy onto the baking sheets.
Total fail. Acid drops are supposed to be yellow or yellowish-white, not dark brown almost black. The smell of the candies also reaffirmed what I already knew: the sugar had scorched and the candies were a bust. On a dare, Dr. Dana tried one of the burned candies. I think this image says it all.
Attempt #2. I consulted Google to find suggestions or ideas from others who have suffered similar fates with their candy. Apparently sugar is very easy to burn, so you have to be cautious when your mixture starts getting close to reaching 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Armed with this new information, I set forth to try again.
Not wanting to give up, I tried the recipe for a third time. Did I finally find success? Maybe.
The third candy attempt definitely had a yellow appearance, smelled like lemons, and hardened into round-ish discs. The acid drops were sour to the taste, but not overly sour like I had expected. What we didn’t anticipate was once we put the acid drops into our mouths, the candy adhered itself entirely to our teeth! It was quite alarming. Here are Dr. Dana and Ian captured at the very moment the acid drops adhered to their enamel like a vise:
My takeaway from trying to make acid drops is that I’m a baker, not a candy maker. I offer a round of applause to those who can make candy because, alas, it is proven that I cannot. I’ll officially hang up my candy maker hat and leave the job to Honeydukes.
My sous-chef squeezed the juice out of the zested lemon using our handy lemon/lime press, and then he added the sugar and water to the pan. After bringing the mixture to a simmer, we turned off the heat and added the lemon extract. We let the mixture cool down a bit before pouring it into our popsicle molds, then we placed the molds into the freezer.
Many hours later, we gave the lemon pops a taste. Delicious! The combination of the lemon zest, juice and extract along with the added sugar gave the lemon pops a nice sweet and sour flavor that almost tasted like limoncello liquor. But trust me when I say that these popsicles were absolutely alcohol free.
I won’t send you process photos because Katie’s stove is way cleaner than mine. But I will say that this recipe is straightforward, easy, and can be made in a single pot. The ingredients are sugar, unsweetened cocoa, cornstarch, milk, cream, butter, bittersweet chocolate, vanilla, and a pinch of salt. Though simple, there is a bit of cooking magic involved in the final stove top stage – the recipe transfigures from a chocolate liquid to a thick, velvety pudding. Mmmmm.
How does the Unofficial Potter pudding taste? Awesome. The milk, cream, and butter in the recipe make it rich, but not too heavy. The consistency is great too. Very smooth and creamy. Ian had a taste and found the chocolate pudding to be quite…bedazzling.