Million dollar idea....and a picture

Know what i'd pay good money for? Tessellation cookie cutters. Shapes that you can cut out, and when you do, the negative space is a shape too, so there's not much waste. Not just any shapes of course.....seasonal ones. Nothing comes up when I Google it.

And here's a picture so that no one has a fit over the post/picture ratio lately. Here's Parker in her Pilgrim paper hat from school. They also made little vests out of paper bags. And they all assigned themselves "Indian names" (shouldn't that be Native American?), and hers was Hopping Rabbit.

Weather report

Ugh, it is cooooooold and nasty here. Sunday evening it was in the 70's and people were dining on restaurant patios. We woke up Monday morning, expecting maybe 4o's, and it was 24F! Then yesterday evening the freezing rain and sleet started and has continued off and on. The roads are a mess and many schools were canceled today. But not Parker's! Since I had some very pressing errands to run, I took her to school about an hour late. There were some slick spots, but everyone was driving like turtles, so there were no troubles. It's the hares you have to worry about. Or the combo: hare most of the time, and then deciding all of a sudden to be a turtle when they get on an bridge.

Anyway, when it was time to get out of the car, I told her,

"It's so cold outside!! We should have worn hats."
And she said,
"Why? We look just fine."

Christmas cookies

Sometime in September, I signed a volunteer form at Parker's school saying I'd be willing to provide baked good for various school events, and this week they held me to it. Her school has Spaghetti With Santa every Christmas, which is a fundraiser spaghetti dinner (and dessert) and Santa is available to have your picture taken with. Excuse my bad sentence structure.

Since Parker LOVES to cut things out with cookie cutters, I decided to try making decorated sugar cookies. I've assisted with this before, but never done them on my own. I told a mom I know with a 2nd grader what I was doing and she laughed and shook her head and said "newbie!". I guess by the time they get to 2nd grade, everyone just does slice and bake.

Here's Parker, doing one of her favorite parts. It's difficult to slow her down enough to fit all the cuts close together, and to not mangle the cookies after they're cut with her hot little hands. I felt like I spent a lot of time saying "wait! don't touch! Wait! "

I decorated all but a few of them, and let her give it a try. She did pretty well with piping on the icing.

Adding sprinkes, the best part.

I did snowflakes, angels and snowmen, and Parker did some hearts and leaves. I just did crazy designs on top of them since that was the most fun, plus I figured if I made them look sort of strange, no one will ask me to make them for their baby shower. I also added white sanding sugar on top of that for sparkle and crunch. I thought they turned out really well!

Garden update

For the first time ever, I planted a fall garden. The Texas Gardner magazine raved about how it was so easy and the best time for gardening in Texas. I planted some late zucchini and grew several before the frost got it, and I've recently harvested my first broccoli! I am still really shocked that I was able to grow broccoli, but it's been no trouble at all. It looks just like the kind you get from the store:

Dog Can Hop - Parker Reads!

Monday evening, Parker read her first book on her own. Her teacher sends home little 6 page booklets with them, along with a popsicle stick that has plastic eyeballs glued onto it so we can point out the words or just have it follow along while we read. Usually we just read these together and we'll have her sound out a word here or there, or just talk about beginning or ending sounds. During dinner the book was on the table, and she got it and slowly sounded out the title. She was so proud of herself! And we were very proud too. She made it about 4 pages in sounding out the words until she got frustrated, but I'm counting it as reading the whole book on her own.

Christmas is coming

More busy time around here. I just don't know where my time goes these days. Our schedule has changed somehow, and the timeslot I used to use for blogging has been taking up with something else I guess. I'm not sure what. It might be that ever since we 'fell back' from Daylight Savings Time, Parker's sleep schedule has been out of sorts. Some days she sleeps until 7:30, some days it's 6:30. This morning it was 6am.
We are counting the days until Christmas. Literally....Parker has 3 Advent-type calendars that she's using to count down. She goes to see Santa on Friday to officially lock in her gift requests. Last friday was her Christmas program at school. It's impossible to get good pictures or video in the sanctuary, but I do have a picture of her in her outfit.

Her face was clean for the performance, but it has candy cane all over it in the photo. She really enjoyed singing with her classmates up on stage - they did 5 songs and acted out the story of Jesus's birth. Her job was ringing bells at the very end, and she did great.

We have most of our decorations up, and Bob did his usual 'green tree' out front.

Progress Report

We got Parker's first progress report of the year today. She will get 2 more, in February and May.
Here's what it said:
Mastered Skills:
Making Plans/collaborative play
pretending
drawing, painting
music, movement
sorting, matching, identifying patterns.
Emerging Skills:
Reading
Writing
Number recognition
Comments and Suggestions for home:
"Parker loves to participate. She is a pleasure to teach and very popular with her friends. Parker loves to read. Read to her daily focusing on comprehension and sequence. Let her follow your finger for direction. Parker is writing more and more every day. Let her write your family's names and start wriging her last name. Encourage her to write simple notes to her friends. She enjoys this activity.
Parker can count to 30 by rote. Put a calendar at her level on your fridge. She enjoys counting and this will help her with number recognition.

-------------------------------------------------
My comments:
If any of the teacher blog readers out there have a link to a fun calendar I can print to hang on the fridge, send it our way. We accept PDF's too. I assume I'm supposed to count days until this or that with her? She really does love counting. "Mommy, listen to me count to 30!" is a favorite parlor trick. Of hers.

I was a little surprised to learn that Parker couldn't identify all her numbers....although that's not really something we do much. We've been playing Go Fish quite a bit, and she seems to know everything except 12 and 13 and is a little iffy on 6 and 9. My cards only go up to 13 though. She knows nearly all the lower case letters too....we also have Go Fish cards for that. She really enjoys card games...we even have a rummy type game where you do sequence with pictures (she needs some work on sequence and comprehension too). Even when we put together puzzles, she like to make that into a card/domino type game by dividing up the pieces and taking turns trying to 'play' your puzzle piece.
Here she is doing 'homework'. Her teacher frequently sends home little activities like this, where match the uppercase letters on plastic caps to the lower case letters on the pumpkins. We also have little reading phonics books coming home every couple days. Lots of homework for a preschooler! She enjoys all of it though, mainly because it is usually one on one attention from me or Bob.
She really does love writing, although she is very resistant to the idea of writing 'notes' to her friends at school like the teacher suggests. Not sure why. She did write "gum" on my grocery list yesterday, and also another hyphenated bathroom type word that isn't really blog material.
Our home is covered in post-it notes, and the tips of all my markers and smooshed, but she's having fun and learning, and there are lots more office supplies where those came from.

Today's artwork

Last year, to encourage the students to draw and write, Parker's teacher let the kids use Post-it notes to write on, and then post them around the room...'labeling' things. Parker hasn't forgotten about it, and she will occasionally get the Post-it bug again and do a series of labels or drawings.

This morning, she had the idea to trace around a skull eraser she got during trick or treat, and then fill in the details. Pretty clever I thought.

Freehand drawing the features



The entire series. No idea why she chose this place to post them.

Close up detail

Back at it this afternoon, in Sleeping Beauty dress and Hannah Montana wig.

By the way, this is my view on most days.....me looking from the kitchen, and Parker the raccoon climbing up the barstool and poking around in her basket of junk, or my basket of junk (much more fun) or finding pieces of paper or twist ties or junk mail or other treasures. Between her subject matter, her love of found objects and her personal style, if she decides to be an art major, she's going to fit right in.

more complicated cooking

Last week I decided to try making sushi. I read a post on a forum where someone said it wasn't all that hard, so I thought I'd give it a try. I think I still have a long way to go before I can get mine to roll up as nicely as what you get at a restaurant or store, but they were pretty tasty, and a nice treat without paying $6 for a little snack.

Parker loooooves directions. She's looking at the rolling diagram on the back of the nori. (you knew I had 'help' with this, right?)

Pressing out the rice....

There's nothing Parker loves more than sprinkling. She's sprinkling black sesame seeds on the roll. We should have done this when it was flat, really.

The finished product:

They were very tasty. I used avacado, cucumber and (fake) crab sticks. The fist roll (pictured above) turned out HUGE because I used too large of a sheet of nori, but it still tasted pretty good. I did a few more, and added shrimp. It's tough not overstuff them with filling.

Lots of cooking

For some reason, I've been doing a lot of elaborate cooking (elaborate for me) lately. With help of course. Actually, most of what I do is assemble, but still, it's been complicated assembly.
First up was treats for the Pumpkin Carnival. My friend Holly made these and shared the recipe/assembly instructions. They are JUST as delicious as they look. The picture of the finished treats is actually Holly's picture...she did a nicer presentation.

They consist of the following ingredients:
Butter Crisp waffle pretzles, Hershey's Hugs (B&W chocolate), and Reeces Pieces .

You put a Kiss on each pretzel (I cut them in half...it was a better ratio for me), and put them in a 175 degree oven until soft looking, and then schmoosch them down with a piece of Reeces. Then pop them in the fridge for about 10 minutes to set.

The finished product. Holly used plain chocolate for some of them.

Next up....sushi!

Trick or Treating

Halloween has come and gone. Phew, that was tiring. For at least 2 weeks we've been doing pumpkin carnivals and activities at school, etc etc. What will Christmas be like?

Here was her lunch on Friday. I made a special Jack O' Lantern sandwich, and also included some roasted pumpkin seeds from when we carved her pumpkin (are you rolling your eyes yet?). She ate exactly 1 bite of her sandwich.

I was actually a little worried about her, because all she ate for her entire lunch and snack at school was a box of raisins. And she never eats raisins. And for dinner she had only broth with a few noodles.
But when time for costumes and trick or treating came around, she was more than ready. Her costume was Strawberry Shortcake. I was able to talk her out of being Hannah Montanna....this year anyway. If you click on the picture, you can see I've dotted little freckles on her nose and given her rosey cheeks.

Bob and the neighbors all walked the kids around in a group, and we (the moms) were shocked that they were gone for well over an hour! They came home with lots of candy and treats and had a great time running around outdoors in their pj's while the adults visited. Parker was up WAY past her bedtime, but she had a great Halloween.

Quick fall pictures

I haven't posted in a while....so here are some quick pictures I've taken this week. Our maple trees out front have started showing fall color and they look so good! I even saw a neighbor out taking pictures of them. None of the rest of the trees on the street are showing color yet, so ours are a burst of color when you turn the corner.

This afternoon we carved Parker's pumpkin. Like last year, she put together a design on the computer, then transferred it, then we cleaned it out and carved it. She seemed to have a longer attention span last year.

Tonight she was SUPER excited about tomorrow being Halloween. She was giddy and full of energy despite having a very long full day. I do not envy her teacher tomorrow.....it's picture day, AND Halloween. Can you imagine?

It will probably be saturday sometime before I can get pictures posted of her in her costume. Just though I'd mention that so the loyal readers aren't up all night hitting 'refresh'.

Weekend notes

It was another super busy weekend around here. We had the neighborhood garage sale, and I babysat some of my neighbor's kids as a favor. I warned her in advance that Bob would be watching the TX/OU game, and I was not responsible for any new language they acquired. Luckily he remained mostly in control and of course was thrilled with the results. When the final seconds ticked off the clock, the threw open all the door to the house and blared The Eyes Of Texas and the fightsong for all the neighborhood to enjoy. I was happy he didn't streak down the street and jump in to the lake.

After that we went to a pumpkin patch to take some photos and pick out a pumpkin for school.

We've been working on our fall decor....here's a shot of the outside. Who knew there were so many choices of hairstyles for scarecrows? In the front bed, we have one with pigtails and one with curly hair. I'm refusing Parker's requests to change their hairstyles. I indulge her quite a but, but I draw the line at scarecrow hairdos.

The zinnias are looking awesome like they usually do in the fall. Next year I might try something a little different.

I planted some things for a fall garden....here's my zuccini plant. It's huge and has a couple small zuccini's on it...but they're growing pretty slowly. I also have a couple broccoli plants, which haven't done much yet, and our jalapeno is still going strong, with tons of peppers. I also have arugula and mixed greens planted in pots near the house. I like using the arugula on my pizzas, but the mixed greens are sort of a pain.

Next weekend I'm hoping we'll do some tree shopping. The back yard could use a little more shade, and we have a couple dead ones we need to replace. Stay tuned!

Catch up

It's been a busy couple weeks again. Bob and I went on a weekend trip to celebrate my birthday and my parents came and stayed with Parker. From what they all told me, things went well. We have had a rough few days of Grandparent Detox though....Parker quickly grew accustomed to having all her wishes met and constant attention paid to her, and it wasn't easy re-adjusting to real life with boring busy mommy.

A couple weeks ago Parker announced she'd prefer drinking her juice out of a teacup. I tried to offer her a coffee cup, but she specifically wanted a teacup....like her little tea party set has. I got her these kind. I hope it's all she thought it would be.

We had a happy visit to the mailbox this week. Parker's cousin Emily's cats sent her a letter showing off their Halloween costumes. Parker's favorite part was that they 'signed' their names in little green cat footprints. I have no explanation as to why she is wearing wings. She wore them constantly for 2 days. Every time she turned around, they would swipe clean the refrigerator or a counter top, knocking all the clutter to the floor.

And this picture will interest about 2 readers (if that) . I made potato pancakes last night. I had some leftover mashed potatoes, so I figured this would be a nice way to use them. The green stuff is fresh parsley. Parker and Bob both ate one, but weren't exactly blown away. I thought they turned out pretty good.

drapery pictures

At loooooong last, the new draperies were installed today. This portion of the room is nearly complete. We still need a table and lamp for inbetween the chairs, throw pillows, and some rippled glass for the door, but this part is mainly done.

BEFORE

AFTER

Close up swatch of drapery fabric


And here's a cute picture of Parker dressed up in a Hannah Montanna wig and makeup at a recent birthday party. She wants more than anything in the world to have long straight hair.

Her confusing questions of the day was, "Does only God know what is inside your shoes?"