July 21, 2011

"What We Like About You" Video

This past weekend, my husband's side of the family had a short family reunion.  The last day of the reunion we celebrated my mother-in-law's 60th birthday.  We had a family party with brownies and ice cream and bingo for the kids.  As part of our gift, we made a video of the grandkids saying 60 things they liked about grandma or favorite things they do with grandma.  Each grandchild said 3 or 4 words, with props or acting out the word.  The babies who were too small to speak just held signs or a sibling said the word for them.  It turned out to be really cute.

This idea was not my own. When my mom turned 60 a short while ago, she was in Albania on a church mission (see their mission blog), and so we had to do a long distance celebration, and my sister Emily thought of this cute idea and did it with her kids.  I just stole it.  Modern technology made it really easy to get video from sisters-in-law living far away, and then I compiled it, putting the words in alphabetical order just because, and added transitions, titles, and music.

You could adapt this idea to do a video for any special birthday, anniversary, to say thank you to teachers at the end of the school year, or any time you want to let someone know how special they are to you.

This youtube video doesn't have the opening letter to grandma or the background music it originally had, but you can get an idea of what we did by watching it.  And look at the cute boy saying bubbles.  Isn't he adorable?


July 12, 2011

American Girl Doll Apron




Maren had a slumber party with 2 of her cousins last friday, and she wanted to do a fun craft.  Since all of them have American Girl dolls, we thought it would be fun to make something for them.  While browsing on amazon, I noticed they have craft kits for making doll aprons, and I thought "Hey, that would be fun!" but I didn't want to spend $15 a kit.  I was thinking of how to make aprons easily so the girls could do a lot of the work, and I remembered a "simple sewing" Klutz book Maren found at a yard sale that has a "dish towel apron" project and thought I could do the same sort of thing with washcloths for the dolls, which would be a lot cheaper than buying the kit.  Now aren't you glad I explained all that?

Anyway, on to the project.  And forgive me for being lousy at giving adequate instructions, but you can probably figure it out by looking at the pictures, right?

I bought bright pink washcloths at WalMart for $1.88.  I also bought matching ribbon and some fun iron-ons.

First, we sewed ribbon on one edge.  (except I don't have a picture of this because the first time we made one I forgot and we ended up using iron on tape to stick the ribbon on later.  But sew it on if you remember)



Next, we folded it up about a third of the way and sewed down the sides and sewed 2 pockets.



Then I flipped it over and folded the other 2 corners down and sewed diagonally to make a pocket to slide the tying ribbon through.






To finish it off we ironed on some flower decorations and put the ribbon through.

Ta-da!


With guidance, the girls were able to do most of the sewing on their own.  I did the sewing down the sides because the thickness made it a bit tricky.  Maren also thought it would be fun to buy matching hand towels to make aprons for themselves, but we just didn't have time.

July 10, 2011

Summer Slush


yummy 


Every year my mom would make this slush for summer eating.  She would freeze it in large pans and we would just take chunks out with a fork when we wanted some (when we were older, not little kids of course) and pour lemon-lime soda over it.  And if you let it sit for a little bit, and get just the right ratio of soda to slush, it will mix up into a delicious slushy treat.  Mmmmmmm.  It reminds me of home whenever I eat it.

And just as a side note, if ever all of your grown up kids but one are visiting back home, but the last one can't come because she's stuck in Kentucky, and you're having dinner together, eating some of her favorite food (perhaps grilled salmon and fruit salad) PLUS delicious slush (which just might be what puts her over the edge), and she happens to call during dinner, don't tell her what you're eating all together and what she's missing out on, because she might feel really homesick and cry the rest of the night and remember it for a long time.  Hypothetically.

Recipe for Summer Slush:

4 cups sugar
6 cups water
Boil 3 minutes and cool

Add:
1 large concentrated orange juice
Juice of 3 lemons
48 oz. pineapple juice
5 mashed ripe bananas

Mix and freeze

I usually put the bananas in the blender with a bit of pineapple juice and blend it smooth before adding it to the other ingredients.  When the slush is all mixed, pour it into two 9x13 pans (or more) and put in the freezer to freeze.   I used to just add orange juice, because the recipe my mom gave me just says 1 large orange juice, but I learned recently that what she meant was 1 large container of frozen orange juice concentrate thawed.  I thought my sister was crazy when she was making the slush last weekend with concentrate, but she turned out to be right.  Weird.

To serve, just use a fork to get small chunks of slush, put them in a glass, and pour lemon-lime soda over the top.  I usually have a straw and a fork in my cup to drink and eat at the same time.

Joshua asked me for a glass of slush yesterday, and I gave him some.  He then quickly drank all the soda and left the slush in the cup.  I told him that next time he could just ask for soda if he didn't want the slush and that seemed like a crazy new idea to him.  Silly boy.  So I guess not everyone likes slush as much as I do.

July 6, 2011

Crazy Kids Drama Camp

3 years ago, my daughter was enrolled in a week long arts camp at a public school with a few friends.  The camp was cancelled for 3 days because of a crazy guy the police were trying to catch who had keys to all the schools.  I was sad my daughter didn't get to go to camp with her friends, so I invited them over to do a drama camp at our house.  We played some drama games and video taped a 5 minute version of "Jack and the Beanstalk". The kids had a great time, and loved watching themselves on the TV.  And that's how "Crazy Kids Drama Camp" was born.

The next year the kids came over for 3 hours a day Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  We thought of different fairy tales, raided our halloween costumes and dress up boxes, and tried to put them all together.  Our final product was 25 minutes long, complete with commercials.  It was entitled "Pickle Chicken, a Fixed Up Mairy Tale".  

This year, our production was called "The Wonderful Writer of Loz" and was part of an "Enchanted Theatre" TV show.  It ended up being 32 minutes long, so I won't post it all, but I wanted to share a few parts.  One of the girls was the hostess of "Enchanted Theatre", and sat in a armchair in front of the fireplace. She introduced the show at the beginning, and closed it at the end. Her parting words were "Join us next week for our presentation of "Egg White and the 7 chickens", and the kids thought it would be funny to make a trailer for that show, so I thought I'd share that. 


The kids are very creative, and come up with all sorts of silliness to put in the show.  Although I usually present a basic outline, all the dialogue and such is on the spur of the moment.  Sometimes the show goes in a different direction than when we started, and so by the end some earlier parts don't make sense, but the kids don't seem to care.  I think their favorite part is making the commercials.  They come up with a product and how to present it all on their own.  Occasionally I'll throw in a few suggestions (the boys shot an "invisible steak sauce" commercial that was completely nonsensical) but most of it is their own work.  Here's a commercial they did for "Get There Right Now Programmable Shoes".




Actually, I think even more than the commercials, the kids like to see the bloopers I put at the end of the movie.  In fact, sometimes I think they mess up on purpose while we are filming so that there will be bloopers to put at the end.



As you may have noticed, we seem to think chickens are funny around here, and so in each show we always try to have a chicken.  The first year, Joshua was a chicken that laid golden eggs.  The next year he was a chicken that laid magic wishing eggs.  This year, our friend William took over the roll of chicken and was the wicked witch's devious chicken servant.  Now to start planning for next year . . .