On our crusade to enjoy Minnesota and be a part of the community we accepted an invitation to an event my friend Shandai is involved in… The Abundant Harvest out on the Walker Open Field. But after parking (super affordable – 3.50 for the day, which since we left early in the day we handed to someone waiting in line to purchase their ticket to park.) and unpacking we were first distracted by the amazing statues and modern art in the park area across the street from the actual museum. 

Ken and the kids

There was a variety of modern art pieces… my personal favourite was the giant spoon with a cherry fountain!!

A unique fountain

The boys loved what they called the slides knotted together!

NOT to be climbed on!

And don’t forget the Memorial Garden with the arches and flowers…

Plants galore!

There was just so much to see! And the weather was perfect when we got there for looking… hot by the time we left. I am surprised at how much EMANUEL loved the art, hunting to find the labels to have us tell him about them. I think that he is going to LOVE his Aunty Shandai’s work when he gets to see it! She is very into the modern art and is VERY creative. 

This was another favourite of Emanuel’s

Of course we took plenty of pictures and actually skipped a few exhibits to move on to the main attraction… well almost! First we got waylay-ed by something very important – making our own craft! These kids are always on the look out for a new craft! Today they got to make their own books/journals using paper, a hole punch, rubberband and a dowel. So easy and easily something I can collect the supplies for to make MORE of. So, maybe for Christmas they can make a few for people to receive at Christmas! 

Craft time

Completed books! Bree told me that these are actually done with cheap chopsticks… so now I just need to source some out… and some LARGE elastic bands!

Ken and Echo got bored with the whole thing and wandered off to pillage a closing fitness themed booth that was giving away balls and flying discs. So Miss Echo got herself a to scale (for her) soccer ball and daddy made sure all of the big kids ended up with a disc each to loose er play with. 

Note the soccer ball!

And THEN we made it to the original outting – The Swatch Team‘s Abundant Harvest! There were performers, fresh vegetables and of course handmade bags with tags and food to take home. Each tag was typed on a traditional typewriter… My favourite on ours was “Try Something New” as that has been our motto since getting here! There were so many beautiful and varied bags, one person was talking about how theirs was made out of repurposed plastic bags… We settled on three… a lovely purple and pink larger bag that had actual food products in it and two smaller ones that just had seeds. So we now have carrot and tomato seeds for our garden next summer. 

I am going to put ALL my event photos in another blog entry to be seen AFTER this one!

Trinity and Echo are BOTH in love with their little pink and orange purse with its lovely flower on the front. I personally am dying to find out if the ones we picked are knitting or crocheted! I am hoping that someday I can be a productive part of something as amazing as the Abundant Harvest! 

We of course had to check out the person in the giant costume… And the musicians. It was getting way too hot for us by the time we saw the belly dancers but I am sure they were amazing! Keep in mind this picture and all the others – next entry!!

Belly dancers

So we wandered back through the garden to the van at this point… 

w A wedding party

It was definitely an amazing visit to the Walker Museum and we still haven’t seen the actual museum! Maybe the next free day? The girl at the book making stall thought there was many different free days and opportunities for crafting and such on the grounds. Something to start looking into to be sure as we ALL had fun! 

The night before we made sure we checked out the blue moon in August! The kids worked with Ken on their Mars mini lapbook that we purchased from Currclick until it got dark enough to see the moon outside. It took a little explaining to get them to understand that the moon is not to look BLUE but that it was an odd occurrence to have TWO full moons in the SAME month. So of course it was observation journal worthy! Our family goal is to fill each off the kids’ books with illustrations and descriptions of anything they feel like drawing. Should be interested to see what they deem important enough to be included over the next year!

Today we also uncovered the kids’ desk. I am slowly working at creating a usable space there. After all we need to have somewhere for the kids to access the internet when they earn time. 

With a lovely visit and drinks thanks to Bree my day was darn near perfect! 

Another angle of the spoon

What a weekend! Definitely kept me hopping. There were a few lovely surprises, lots of terrific friends and family stopping by and of course a nice and extended birthday party for Ken.

Friday night of course, marked the start of Ken’s weekend lan party. We had a nice group of guys over – Sean, Fydo, Ted and Nathan (though Nathan didn’t make it over until 11 or so after he was done work – he works afternoon/evenings). I guess they mainly played WoW but everyone seemed to have a great time, though they ate a batch of my frozen sugar cookies for a snack – with permission – so now Ted and Ken have to replace them for me! Yay!

Ken received some rather nice gifts – a couple movies, some alcohol and of course from Ted – Master and Commander the BOOK! Definitely an inside joke – Ken HATES the movie – so for Christmas Ted got it for him on Blueray and now the book! The look on his face was PRICELESS!

Saturday morning was a treat for the whole family – Grandma and Mike came up for a visit WITH Harley!!! Silly puppy stole a sugar cookie off the table when I walked away for a moment but otherwise was a lovely, well behaved puppy. The boys went out into the backyard and ran wild with the dog. Mom brought Ken a lovely gift – a US flag in a flag box… oh and an ornate over the top desk decoration!

US Flag!

Then to top it off they treated us to McDonald’s which was a first in a while for our family… Trinity had apple slices with the skin on and did so well! Since we did not have time for the play area as a treat we all went to PetSmart with Harley and grandma treated us to a brand new catfish! A big one (and once the tank is cleaned up better I will take a photo). Harley was on her best behavior there but the REAL star of the show was this guy:

TURTLE!!!

That’s right an honest to goodness TURTLE!!! Young I guess, only 8 yrs old but AMAZING. The guy let the boys touch it and everything. Although Trinity’s favourites were not the fish or the turtle but KITTENS! She went almost crazy looking and talking to them! Makes me wish we COULD have one, but in this rental they do not want us to have any 4 legged pets. So once we are in a new long term rental or even bought our own place I am definitely going to see what I can do!

Kittens! (Gavin)

Harley the Not So Little Puppy!

Sadly with the addition of Kitty the 2nd two of our neons disappeared! We figure they died and were sucked up into the filter. Since 2 neons is just not ok for this family – what sort of a school is that? – we plan on waiting until Thursday to let the tank settle and tidy it up a bit and then go back and get some more neons. A fun field trip for the boys as we can go through and talk about the different animals, see if they can count them, etc etc.

Last night Karyn and I sat down and scrapbooked – I had ordered some photos for a few Trinity related events ages ago and had the paper and no idea what to do with them. Karyn brought her Cricut and we worked out some really lovely pages. I explained to her my idea of how I want our Christmas cards to turn out and she seems to think she can help me out with a template. I find that is one of my main problems with making cards and pages – I often have an idea of what I want but can’t execute it! Although I would LOVE a Cricut!!!

From Our God-daughter Isabella's Birthday Party

Trinity's Birthday Party

Easter

Of course our biggest source of excitement and mess was the pumpkin carving party! Chris and Chris, Karyn, Ted, Sean and Fydo all were around for the momentous event. We had a total of 4 nice sized pumpkins to gut and carve. 3 were done on Saturday, one left for tonight for Ken to work on.

Ready to Go! (Gavin left)

Chris did the carving while the kids “helped”. I am not sure who had more fun, though it was obvious out of all the boys that Zander was the most dedicated to getting every little bit of the ickies out of the pumpkins.

Zander and Daddy

Aunty Karyn

The Carving Pro!

I am hoping to get some pictures off the kids in costume this week with the carved pumpkins, just have to find a spare moment and a nice spot in the house to do it. Oh, and convince Trinity that tutus are not torture! She is unsure of the poof.

Pumpkins and Kiddos (Zander left)

We had a nice assortment of snacks and a lot of visiting time.

Mmm Snacks!

And tonight a nice tray full of pumpkin seeds  to roast for latter. I  roasted those tonight and tomorrow plan to make more beans before starting my serious Christmas baking. And of course, here is our recipe:

Step 1: clean the seeds. When you are carving your pumpkin, separate the seeds from the pumpkin flesh and strings. Was them well (usually putting them in a big bowl of water and rubbing them between your hands is a fast way to clean them) and let them drain in a strainer for about 30 min, then spread them out on a baking pan. Now just use a hair dryer to dry them quickly!

Iti s time to start preheating the oven. Turn it on and set it to 275 F

2. Spread the seeds on a cookie sheet and season them.

Spread the seeds evenly over a cookie sheet and lightly baste the seeds with melted butter, margarine, or vegetable oil.  There are many variations.  Here are the most popular, in order or popularity (we chose Halloweeny since that is what we had all the seasonings for):

1. Savory: 4 tablespoons melted butter, 1/2 teaspoon garlic salt and 2 teaspoons Worchestershire sauce
2. Lemony: 4 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon ‘Mrs. Dash” or lemon pepper
3. Halloweeny: 4 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon cinnamon, 1/2 teaspoon ground ginger, 1/2 teaspoon salt,  and 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice.
4. Spicy: 4 tablespoons melted butter, 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper, 1/2 teaspoon thyme, 1/2 teaspoon salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper
5. Natural: 1 teaspoon sea salt or other salt, 4 tablespoons melted butter

3. Roast the seeds.

Heat them in a 275-degree oven for 10 to 20 minutes until golden brown. DO KEEP AN EYE ON THEM, checking every few minutes and stir about every 5 minutes. Some ovens run hot and it can be as little as 10 minutes or as long as 30 minutes to roast them. Sprinkle with salt and serve hot or cold.

For milder flavor, simmer the cleaned seeds for about an hour in salted water and fry in deep oil. Or mix a tablespoon of oil or margarine to each cup of nuts and roast them at 250 degrees for 10 – 15 minutes until they’re golden. Sprinkle them with salt.

Mmm Seeds!

Tonight’s pumpkin story: From Seed to Pumpkin by Wendy Pfeffer. Terrific illustrations it explains everything from how the plants get water to what the different leaves do in nice, simple terms.

From Seed to Pumpkin

The boys and I spent some time today working on our pumpkin lapbooks… the outsides are not done but I am very happy with the interiors! This marks the end of our P is for Pumpkin study so now we are spending  the rest of the week doing HALLOWEEN!!! I am not sure how complex of a book we will make but I am sure it will be fun, maybe B is for Bat or something of the same idea???

Emanuel's Pumpkin Lapbook

I got the basic Pumpkin set up from a free lapbook. Some of the links were dead so we improvised: For the rhyme Peter Pumpkin Eater we found another link for puppets, and instead of the section making words out of the letters for pumpkin we found a prayer to include. We took full advantage of the boys’ interest in perler beads and made pumpkins (Emanuel made HIS into a jack-o-lantern). I also hunted down a picture of a hedgehog with pumpkins that I will get pictures of tomorrow for the back cover. They are VERY happy with the resulting books!

Sewing has not been a priority this weekend BUT I have made some progress on my Santa and Ken has PROMISED me a plethora of patterns this week to get me caught up with all my ideas. I am looking forward to having my site properly running… then I have to start with advertising and the like… but it will be a NEW challenge and I LOVE those!

Fuzzy but You Get the Point

Since tonight is my local stitching group chat night and I have perler beading to do I really must get a move on! But all in all a busy and HAPPY weekend!

Mike and His Wee Girl

I have to say the biggest accomplishment today was the completion  of our first major lapbook… Colours and Shapes. This one has been worked on for weeks… doing a bit here, a bit there and mainly just going over concepts we had covered the previous year when we used the Calvert PreK curriculum. We covered everything from specific colours to colour blending, from simple shapes to making pictures out of shapes. I don’t know that I would let another non seasonal lapbook take so long but for our first truly major project I am very happy with it.

Books for in Pocket on Reverse Side of Flap

I am not sure if I have ALL the links but I do have some for sure:

The match the colour pockets, make a train from shapes seen on the top, mixing colour mini book, our colour mixing experiment, the rainbow the boys coloured, I can draw shapes book and then you can do a search for a colour wheel. We had a lapbook I got for free from Currclick to make up more of the activities and the rest was made up by us. I am sure I can hunt down more links if someone is interested! The next book will have much more organized links I am sure!

We did not make our projected mini field trips to the library and the thread store but made a family run to Michaels to check out the Perler bead options and to stealthily pick up a small kit (1.50) to go into Emanuel’s stocking this year (pirates!) and a set of tweezers (under 3.00) for the twins. I also ran into Toys R Us where I got a terrific deal on some Word World merchandise. If you get the chance and live in Alberta do go check out for clearance items. The Word World big sets are still 30.00 but the 3 bird characters – owl, duck and bird and their eggs are marked down from almost 8.00 a piece to under 3.00! So I picked up all 3 for a little over the price of one originally AND of course caved and got the bag. It still blows my mind that gift bags are 4-5.00 but these reusable shopping bags 99 cents. Granted it has the store name on them but they are so cute! This is Zander’s Christmas present since he is the most vocal about words and letters… I hope he still is when Christmas comes around!

What a Deal!

With the weather chilly and the boys restless we sat them down at the table and had them bead to their hearts’ content. Emanuel messed about but decided not to leave anything to iron – he wants a Pocoyo though, but done WITH Daddy. Gavin and Zander each made leaves to paste in their Fall lapbooks… and then got creative – Gavin reproduced the two dinosaurs I printed out in his own colours and Zander started the first of 6 pieces to make his very own 3D cube!

Boys' Creativity!

I was mainly busy baking today – Trinity’s Oatmeal applesauce cookies, another batch of beans, sugar cookie dough and a new recipe!! Banana chocolate chip muffins… of course a hit! I found the recipe online so here you go:

Banana Chocolate Chip Muffins

1 1/2 cups flour

2/3 cup sugar

1 1/2 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

1 cup mashed ripe bananas (about 2 large)

1 large egg

1/2 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup milk

3/4 cup semi sweet chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350 F. Line 12 muffin cups with liners. Mix flour, sugar, baking powder and salt in a large bowl. Mix mashed bananas, egg, melted butter and milk in a medium bowl. Stir banana mixture into dry ingredients just until blended (do not over mix). Stir in chocolate chips.

Divide batter among prepared muffin cups, filling each about 3/4 full. Bake muffins until tops are pale golden and tester inserted into center comes out with some melted chocolate attached but no crumbs, about 32 min. Transfer muffins to rack; cool.

Banana Chocolate Chip!

Ken managed to put together an ornament kit we had received a few months ago in a package of craft supplies. I plan on putting it with a mesh bag that is decorated with the mini cross stitch I did and give it to out god-daughter. Apparently it was a bit of a pain in the bum to make but I think it is rather cute (not too sure on the mouth though!).

Little Flutterfly

I did some beading myself late last night, a larger piece that I can’t show that is a Christmas present for a dear friend… all the pieces to assemble a die for a little boy in California, another top (though I REALLY need better, pointier toothpicks) and another dinosaur! Tonight I am hoping to get a start on furniture and a lion.

Top and Dino

Die Pieces

The big excitement tonight was a new game to celebrate the finishing of the lapbook – red light green light! We all won! And of course ALL got excited. (that is symbolized by the traffic light symbol in their labook)

Red Light Green Light (Zander left)

Trinity’s accomplishment for the day was to give it a go with a baby fork… she seems quite enamoured with it, almost enough to relinquish her ever ready spoon. She is growing up so quickly!!

Working With a Fork!

I have started a new stitch, I don’t think I will post it here as it contains basically a swear or at least REALLY obviously hints at one… BUT I will post it over in my patterns when I have done it up – as one of the ones for sale (I think we figured 2.00). That is another bit of excitement for me – Ken is hoping to get my free patterns up by tomorrow with the for pay ones following close behind. He thinks he has finally resolved the problem with paypal and the site. I will be announcing this over Twitter and Facebook. If you want to follow me over Twitter I am: Ayjah on Facebook Lisa Reinsch-Johnson. In fact, I post my updates on this site each night on those two sites as well! So feel free just be sure to send me a message on Facebook saying that is why you want to be added!

I am still waiting on Ken for the ok on my pumpkin and apple pies recipes. He is determined to find a pumpkin one from scratch… but with time running out we shall see – I am partial to using the one in the Company’s Coming Holiday book. That will mark the end of our pumpkin unit and shift us into the Halloween fun! Where has the time gone???

Can You See the Frost!! Brrr