catching up

Sorry to have been away from here for so long. I've been cooking and crafting and general mum/work/life stuff.

 a sunny day on the soccer field

But not writing here. And I've missed it. And I have so much to catch up on.

Did you all have a wonderful Hallowe'en? Ours was fairly low key.  A couple of weeks prior to Hallowe'en our town had a pumpkin fest.

I entered the fares and wares competition with a couple of things - pickles and chutney and won a 2nd place ribbon for my peach chutney. The boy had fun looking at all the amazing carved pumpkins in that competition and eating chocolate ghouls.

My man isn't really into celebrating things like Hallowe'en but with a Kindergardener in the house we still had to do some decorating.I managed to make a paper skeleton with help from here. The boy got a pair of spooky glasses from his Auntie and wore them after swimming to scare people at the swimming pool.

And we carved a couple of pumpkins. Our boy visited a very muddy and wet pumpkin patch with his class and then carved a pumpkin at school which made a trio of jack'o'lanterns outside our front door. And our boy decided to go trick or treating as a tiger shark this year - so I got out his great white shark costume from last year, fixed a new tail on it, painted stripes on the back and head and changed the red gills for white gills and hey presto - a tiger shark costume.

And I made a batch of pear muffins from a recipe from tea and cookies. They are yummy and a lovely, portable snack for little goblin hands.

Pear Muffins (adapted from Tea and Cookies)

2 tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/4 cup spelt four
1 1/2 cup rolled oats
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup pear apple sauce
4 egg whites, lightly beaten
1/2 c plain yogurt
3/4 cup agave
1 apple, peeled, cored, and cut into a small dice
1/2 c dried cranberries
1/2 c chocolate chips
Preheat over to 375°. Mix all the dry ingredients together (baking powder and soda, ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, spelt flour and oats). Stir to blend and make a well in the middle.

Lightly beat the egg whites until they are foamy and hold a bit of their shape.

Add the yogurt, pear puree, and agave to the bowl with the flour mixture and sir to combine. Add the egg whites and gently fold into the batter. Add the diced pear, dried cranberries and chocolate chips. Mix briefly to incorporate.
Spoon the batter into greased muffin tins. Top each muffin with a few slices of pear. Bake for 25-30 minutes. The tops of the muffins will brown slightly, but the insides will remain moist.

a rare sighting

T has been working his way through a number of Hallowe'en costume ideas since last Hallowe'en. Last year he was a monster truck. He started off with astronaut (and I thought - great, that'll be easy to do) and moved on through batman, dump truck, and other things I don't remember anymore and about 2 months ago he came up with the idea of being a shark. A great white shark. With big teeth. So I waited for him to move on and he didn't. A couple of weekends ago we shot off to the fabric store to find some shark costume stuff - grey and white fleece and some foamcore from the arts and crafts store. In a meeting at work one day, I doodled a pattern after a search on google yielded one out of print pattern. Then last Tuesday at the supper table T said, "Mummy, it's our Hallowe'en party on Thursday and I need you to make us something yummy to eat" at which point D and I looked at each other and went - "you/I need to make his costume!". So Tuesday night I made the tunic and attached one white tummy bib, 2 flippers (arms), 1 tail fin and 1 dorsal fin. I cut out a hood

and Wednesday night I attached foamcore teeth, eyes and gills and made a small orange fish and attached it to the shark's mouth.

  

 Thursday morning the fish was removed by T because it didn't have eyes. And when I went to pick him up at daycare I discovered he'd removed most of the shark teeth "because they were broken". Grrr. And then T told me they were having another party the next day and he wanted another costume for that. And when we got home he said he wanted to go trick or treating as a caterpillar. So I told him he better get busy making his caterpillar costume. After a bit he reconsidered things. And decided he would go as a monster truck again. In the end he didn't wear a costume to his Friday party and on Sunday morning I asked him if he wanted me to fix the teeth on his shark costume. So I made new felt teeth and he was happy to be a shark again. I took him to the local mall for a quick trick or treating session and then we met up with his little pal C (big green butterfly) and they went on a running tour of their neighbourhood until they collapsed with thirst and hunger and exhaustion - those candy bags were heavy!

And on the way home, T announced he would go trick or treating as a shark forever! So maybe there will be another sighting of the rare Horseshoe Bay shark next year.

monster truck hallowe'en

Ok - so I wanted to make a really amazing costume for my little guy for Hallowe'en. He came home over a month ago from daycare telling me he wanted to be a backhoe for Hallowe'en. And just when I'd figured out how I was going to do that he changed his mind and now wanted to be a monster truck. The challenges - it had to be a costume he could wear at preschool and that would stand up to rain (you know - rainy west coast weather!). Everyone's suggestion started with a cardboard box but I thought that the preschool element eliminated that as a possibility. So I went with foam sheeting. And being a monster truck, it had to have big, big tires (to roll over and smash the cars!). So I started with the tires. Two foam sheet circles and a cushion foam circle cut out and covered with black duct tape - times four.

I put chrome duct tape in the middle of the tires to simulate the center of a real tire.

Then I attached the tires onto another foam circle to attach them to the truck body (in hindsight I wouldn't do this again - just tack the tires onto the foam). Then I cut out the truck bodies, and painted them.

I googled a flame template to copy onto the truck body - as T wanted flames on his truck.

I discovered, by accident, (D dripped water onto the truck body and it ran) that the paint wasn't waterproof. So then I covered the truck body with clear packing tape. I sewed shoulder straps and side straps onto the foam body. And then came the attaching the tires to the foam body. I tried sewing through the center

but T ripped off the first tire in about 2 seconds (leading to a regrettable mummy moment of yelling at T but midway through the yelling I realized that if T could rip off the tire that quickly, the design was flawed and would not work in the preschool setting. I put T in his room until I calmed down and then apologized to T. I was haunted by the possibility that I had wrecked T's enthusiasm for Hallowe'en and his costume but he bounces back so much faster than me.) So I tried velcro and glue (here is the costume covered in books trying to get the glue to stick)

and in the end the tires were glued, velcroed and tacked onto the foam body and they held. T loved being the only monster truck that we saw trick-or-treating and lots of people loved his costume. It didn't match the picture I had in my head of how I wanted it to look but it worked for him so I guess it was a success. Next year he wants to be Batman!