Archive for the ‘Seasonal Activities’ Category

Deluxe Gingerbread Houses

Monday, December 15th, 2014

deluxe-gingerbread-housesLook at these deluxe gingerbread houses! It’s incredible what people can build out of gingerbread, frosting, pretzels, and candy. Every year there is a gingerbread house competition at the Davenport Hotel in downtown Spokane, WA, and every year I’m impressed.

If you look at the first picture, there is a treehouse structure with a pretzel rope ladder. There must be some form of candy that looks like rocks, because it was used to build a lot of this scene. The sign says “Jellystone Park,” and Yogi Bear is included in the scene. A pretzel cabin and a camping area with tents rounds out the scene.

deluxe-gingerbread-houses-2This one is obviously about famous landmarks. They used mainly plain gingerbread, with frosting and candy embellishments. The sand at the bottom of the pyramids is undoubtedly crushed graham crackers.

gingerbread-houseThis is a nice gingerbread house. The roof is covered with mini-marshmallows, as well as the snowy ground. Chocolate garage doors, pretzel embellishments, and a shoelace licorice candy fence surrounds the scene.

gingerbread-waterfallThis waterfall scene is so extravagant that its ingredients are out of my league. I think fondant was used, and I hear it is difficult to work with. Nevertheless, it is a gorgeous scene!

gingerbread-snow-sceneOkay, this one is more manageable by real humans. The snowy scene incudes two dog sleds with dogs, a regular gingerbread house with pretzels for logs, and white frosting covering the ground and Oreo cookies for a hill in the background.

gingerbread-pickup-truckThis scene is fun. It has a pick-up truck driving up a ramp to the cabin. Even though there is snow on the ground, there is greenery around the house, probably shaped out of fondant. It looks like the basic structure of the pick-up truck is made out of graham crackers, covered by fondant.

gingerbread-carHere is another scene that is ridiculously complicated and impossible for mere humans like us to attempt. I’m sure the creator of this one is an expert with fondant because the car that is in the air is a masterpiece of perfection!

If you want some humorous tips on building gingerbread houses:

If you want to see how I failed at building a simple gingerbread house:

 

25 Christmas Gifts for Children to Make

Friday, November 28th, 2014

25-christmas-gifts-for-children-to-make

Here are 25 fun Christmas gifts for children to make. Twig frames, clocks, bottle cap magnets, and more! They look beautiful and can be custom-made for friends and family:

  1. Twig Frame: Hot glue twigs to a frame. Gorgeous and simple. Make sure to choose a picture to put into the frame.
  2. Clock: Make your own clock by getting the parts at a craft store. Stain or paint the wood, drill a hole for the clock parts to be mounted, and decorate.
  3. Bottle Cap Magnets: Cut circles of paper and decorate them with markers. Glue into bottle caps, and put magnet backing on them.
  4. Pottery: Get some self-hardening clay and a toy pottery wheel, and make some pottery.
  5. Basket: Purchase a basket-making kit and weave a basket.
  6. Decorated Candle: Glue tissue paper onto a jar with a candle inside.
  7. Box of Homemade Cards: Have children decorate homemade cards with card stock paper, cloth fragments, glue, and markers.
  8. Soap Shapes: Use a cookie cutter to make soap shapes.
  9. Shape Books: Create shape books for younger brothers and sisters with paper, a stapler, and construction paper.
  10. Dolls and Pillows: Cut out shapes of felt, stuff them, and sew them together. Add embellishments. (Here is another example)
  11. Pop Bottle Bird Feeder: Make this simple bird feeder with a pop bottle for the bird lovers in your family.
  12. Crazy Hat: Decorate a crazy hat for a younger sibling.
  13. Costume: Make a simple Bible costume, Egyptian costume, Greek costume, or Roman costume to give away as a gift to someone who enjoys theater.
  14. Embossed ornaments: Make some embossed ornaments with an embossing kit. Here are some tips for success in embossing.
  15. Roman Coins: Make Roman coins for someone who likes that time period.
  16. Clay Sculpture: Sculpt a shape out of clay that will delight the recipient. Sculpt a fish for a fisherman, an apple for a teacher, or a pie for a baker.
  17. Coat of Arms: This would be for older children to sew, or you can have younger children glue felt shapes onto a shield shape.
  18. Toy Trebuchet: Get a toy trebuchet kit and have your child put it together for a younger sibling.
  19. Framed Poem and Illustration: Write an original poem and illustrate it. Frame both the poem and the illustration. (These can be heartfelt and poignant or downright silly.)
  20. DVD of a Puppet Show: Have your child write and perform a puppet show, using the video camera on the computer. Burn the show onto a DVD and give it to a younger sibling or to Grandma.
  21. Cross Mosaic: Get an unfinished wooden cross from a craft store and glue tiles onto it. Great as a wall hanging.
  22. Canvas Bag: Decorate a plain canvas bag by sewing embellishments on it or making a design with fabric markers.
  23. Decorated Ornaments: Make faces on regular Christmas balls with any crafts supplies lying around your house. These look goofy!
  24. Box of Snowflake Cards: Make a box of snowflake cards by poking holes and sewing white yarn into black card stock paper.
  25. Framed Textured Art: Create textured art by gluing pieces of fabric together to form a pattern. Frame your masterpiece!

Aquarium at Cannon Beach

Wednesday, September 10th, 2014

aquarium-at-cannon-beachWe visited an aquarium at Cannon Beach called Seaside Aquarium. You can feed otters and see several octopuses, lots of anemones and other fish, and a petting zoo. It’s a small aquarium that has been open for over 70 years. It’s not really at Cannon Beach, but at a nearby town called Seaside. If you’re taking a vacation at Cannon Beach, it’s only about 15 minutes away. Two of my children loved feeling the sea stars and sea cucumbers with their fingers.

anemonesThe aquarium has one large room surrounded by glass aquariums. It has another room with the otters. In the main room you also have an area with a red octopus swimming around. What I’m saying is that if you expect a large elaborate aquarium, you will be disappointed, but if you expect something small, you will be delighted.

aquarium-at-cannon-beach-2The aquarium around the edges of the room is all salt water, with colorful eels, anemones, and shellfish. Rocks are covered with living creatures.

cannon-beach-aquariumMy son Stephen is my biologist, and he has always loved living creatures. He was glued like a magnet to the petting zoo area of the aquarium. He would watch how creatures responded to his touch.

aquariumHe also loved having a hermit crab tickle his fingers as it walked across his hand. He spent nearly an hour touching the beautiful and intriguing sea creatures. My daughter enjoyed touching the sea creatures as well.

hermit-crabMy other two sons preferred not to touch the sea creatures, but to look at them from a safe distance. They looked at the calm swaying of the tentacles of the sea anemones. They watched the fish swim around in the water.

cannon-beach-aquarium-2One tank had a lot of sea stars. The stars are sort of prickly to the touch, and their mouth is underneath. A sea urchin was also in the same aquarium, but it was so prickly that it felt like a pin cushion.

sea-starsHere is the fabulous octopus, the terrible monster of the deep. It reminds me of when we studied 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, where the octopus attacked a submarine!

octopusHere are some squid eggs. The long white sacks are filled with eggs, and the parent squid dies shortly after laying the eggs.

squid-eggsWe had a great time at the aquarium at Cannon Beach. The next day my daughter asked if we could go back because she loved it so much!

Tide Pools of Cannon Beach

Wednesday, August 27th, 2014

tide-pools-of-cannon-beachThe tide pools of Cannon Beach were beautiful. Here are some pictures we took on our recent vacation to Cannon Beach. You have to look up the tides of Cannon Beach in order to find out when the low tides are, so that you can find the tide pools. There are no tide pools at high tide because the ocean is covering the area. It’s only when the tides retreat and leave behind pockets of water that you will find beautiful creatures residing in their midst.

tide-pools-of-cannon-beach-4If you go to Haystack Rock (the triangular rock jutting out of the water), you will find the best tide pools there. We went at three different times of the day, and there is a big difference in what you see. When we went in the afternoon, there were lots of people, and it was hard to find even one sea star. We finally found one, and after half an hour at the tide pools, we had located about five sea stars in total. There were lots of anemones and hermit crabs.

tide-pools-of-cannon-beach-2The second time we went was in the early morning around 6am, which is a much better time to go. Not very many people were there. We saw a large crab and many other creatures we hadn’t seen the previous afternoon. Best of all, we saw maybe 50 different sea stars, all hugging each other and overlapping sometimes. It was beautiful. Up on the rock you could see puffins nesting, if you looked closely with binoculars. I’ve always loved puffins, so this was a nice surprise.

barnacles-at-cannon-beachThe sides of the rocks were covered with barnacles and other shellfish. The rocks were alive, as you could hear them clicking shut. My son saw a couple of mussels opened, and he touched them before they retreated into their shell and snapped shut like a Vanus Flytrap!

tide-pools-of-cannon-beach-3Here is my daughter picking up a hermit crab. She liked the hermit crab to walk along her hand. After playing with it for a while, she placed it back into the water.

hermit-crab-cannon-beachKelp covered a lot of the rocks as well. In the early morning, you could pull back the kelp like a curtain to find crabs, fish, and other sea creatures that were hiding from the light.

kelp-of-cannon-beachMy husband went to the tide pools at 3am one night when he couldn’t sleep, and he said the tide pools were spectacular! He saw enormous sea stars that were two feet across. He saw crabs that scurried away when he shone his flashlight on them. The colors were beautiful as he shone his flashlight on the sea creatures in the tide pools in the middle of the night. Unfortunately my husband didn’t take a camera with him, and the tide pools themselves were an unexpected surprise.

starfish-at-cannon-beach

As we sat around the campfire one night, my son Stephen wanted to hear more about the tide pools in the middle of the night. My husband’s description seemed incredible, and we wished we had another night in which to grab flashlights and explore the tide pools when they were thriving with so much life!

sea-stars-of-cannon-beach