Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts
Showing posts with label kids. Show all posts

Kustom Frames for Fathers Day

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It's always hard to think of something to give Clay on Father's Day. He doesn't do a lot of the common fatherly stuff that people think about with dads: no fishing, no golfing, not really into TV or main stream sports, doesn't have an office job (no ties here!), and he's mostly a vegetarian (no BBQ tools needed!).
So what to do? Here is Clay in a "nut"shell: be builds traditional hot rods, at Clayton's Hot Rods, and likes to surf. Pretty simple. When I came across the Father's Day craft Car Nut Frame, I pinned it, decided to put a Kustom spin on it and created a few with the girls for his "office" - the workshop.
Below is the end result. Check out the original Pin here: Father's Day Car Nut Frame from Kaboose.com. We sourced the frames on sale (love that!), from local craft shop Beverly's. I loved the look of the distressed barn wood; we lucked out with that. Then we went into daddy's shop and grabbed a collection of old, rusty bolts, screws, washers, and a few fuses. The girls placed them on the frames where they wanted them to go and I helped to place the glue for them. We used Aleen's Original Tacky Glue to glue the items on. It dried clear and held all of the bolts, even the heavy ones, on very securely.
I printed up some photos and wa-la our Kustom Father's Day Frames!


 

Cheesemaking with the Faves

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Ricki's Cheesemaking Kit - For Mozzarella and Ricotta

A few weeks ago, we bought a fun cheesemaking kit from a vendor at our local Farmers Market - Mountain Feed and Farm Supply. This kit makes 30 1lb. batches of either motzarella or ricotta cheese. It comes with everything you need besides the milk. It was a lot of fun and very easy. Our cheese came out pretty good; it tasted great, but did look a little funny. Not bad for the first time though.

From milk to grilled cheese, the whole process took us about 45 minutes to an hour. One piece of advice we got that I thoug was useful to share - if you buy organic, to be aware that Clover brand tends to be more pasteurized than regular milk due to the nature of organic milk. The instructions say not to get 'Ultra pasteurized' milk. So for first time success, you might want to try regular (non-organic) milk. I ended up using half organic and half regular, because you need a gallon to make one 1lb of cheese and I only had a half gallon in my fridge.

Here are pictures of some of the steps - heat, stir, melt, and stretch!

Step #1 Get cute helpers. :-)



Step #2 Heat milk to 90 degrees. (The kit comes with a thermometer.) Once it reaches 90 degrees F, remove from heat and stir in rennet solution with an up and down motion for 30 sec. Cover pot and leave for 5 minutes.






Step #3 After 5 minutes, check the curd. It should look like custard with a clear saparation between the curd and whey. Ours looked close enough, but I believe it should have been a bit more solid. It might have been an issue with the organic milk I used. The suggestion in the instructions was to let it set for a few more minutes. We did this, and this was the closest we got to the pictures in the instructions.

Step #4 Once the curd sets you cut it with a knife, that reaches the bottom of the pot, and place back on the stove and reheat to 105 degrees F. While reheating, slowly move the cures around.






Step #5 Once you reach 105 degrees F, take off the burner and continue to slowly stir for 2-5 minutes helping to make the cheese firm. The longer you stir, the more firm your cheese will be.

Step #6 Water Bath Method. There are two options to the third heating round. Microwave or Water bath. We don't have a microwave so opted for the Waterbath. In another pot we heated water to 185 degrees F. We ladeled the cured into a colander, folding gently as we drained off the whey. Once all of the whey was drained, we dipped the colander into the hot water several times. Then we took a spoon and folded the curds, helping them to become more cheese-like and elastic. You'll notice it become stretchable.
Step #7 When it became stretchable, we removed from the liquid and pulled a bit. This step didn't work out for us like the picture, but good enough to do some stretch like action with the cheese mass. We formed a ball and returned it to the water to help it cool.

Ta-da! Cheese!







And what do you do with the cheese! Tomato soup and grilled cheesers, of course!

Bath Fizzies!

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For Valentines Day we got the girls little gift bags full of pink goodies including a nail file, lipstick pen and a pink lip bath fizzy. These bath fizzies are always such a hit with the girls. I have gotten them before and they always add an extra element of fun to the bath and make the girls (and bathroom) smell so good. This particular lip one made the whole bath pink and smelled wonderful.

As usual they wanted to go get more and as usual I said, why don't we figure out how to make them? I found tons of resources online about making bath fizzies (also called bath bombs).

Here are a few of them:
- Recipe from TeachSoap.com
- Recipe from Martha (Is there anything she can't do? She had me glittering everything this past holiday.)
- Recipe from MakeLotion.com (Simple Recipe)
- Recipe from ehow.com (This is the one I am going to try.)

Cool Video:

* I love the music during this one...get's you all pumped to make fizzies!

It took me a while to find the citric acid, but eventually found it at a local health food store. The last thing for me to find is the witch hazel. I hope to make them this weekend and post my outcome. Wish me luck!


POST PROJECT UPDATE
We made the bath fizzies! A few notes for the next batch.
  1. Make sure all ingredients are in powder form. I will ground the Epsom salt into a flower like consistency next time.
  2. Work with the die. We tried to make purple fizzies. Not sure that I added enough and the accidental addition of the yellow coloring probably didn't help the poop like color.
  3. Fragrance. The two tsp is a lot. I used essential oils (a combination of what I had laying around). I will be more prepared next time with enough of one smell. I might even try fragrance oil rather than an essential oil. (Etsy looks like they have some good suppliers of that Etsy Fragrance link. They also have citric acid.)
Overall, very fun and they fizzed when added to the bath. So mission accomplished.
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