Colour Matching with Paint Chips.

Lately, Little Miss Salean has been taken with matching. She pulls out a sheep from both her puzzle and her farm, showing me pointing "look, same!" Socks are matched, Pictures in books, balls, even patterns. We were watching Sesame Street and they were counting red mushrooms with white dots, she ran and grabbed her red ball with white dots, pointing to show me it was the same.  I decided to take advantage of this natural curiosity and made a colour learning game with paint chips and cups. 

 I cut up a paint chip for each primary colour, red, blue and yellow. I found three plastic cups and covered them with construction paper of matching colours (I had to use a crayon to make the red, as oddly our package of construction paper did not have red in it). I put the paint chips into another cup and showed her what to do, naming the colours.

I was quite surprised, she really took to it and got all but one in the right cups. She quickly realized her mistake and corrected it. 

After a couple of rounds, she got a bit bored with the colour matching and just started dropping them into random cups. It occupied her for about 10 minutes, though, which is a fair amount of time for a busy 2 year old.

Even though she can not say the colours, I am hoping this little game will teach her to recognize the three primary colours, and then we can move on to some secondary ones, like green, orange and purple.

Hope everyone is having a great weekend!

~Natasha.

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Lemon Chip Muffins

One day last week, I got to go to town without the toddler. Taking advantage of the trip, I stopped at the Bulk Barn, one of my favourite stores. It is hard to go in there with 2 kids, because their carts are to small to put the baby car seat-carrier in, it is difficult to carry the baby or push a stroller and a cart at the same time, and it is even harder to allow the toddler to walk because it is very enticing for little fingers; rows and rows of bins filled with sweets and surprises, at a perfect height for a little one to get into! 

Anyway, last week, I got to go in a take a peek around. I found a new treat! Lemon flavoured baking chips. I decided to get a handful or two just to try them out. When I got home, I figured the best recipe was chocolate chip muffins, with a minor tweak, of course. HERE is the recipe I used. 

Without the contrasting chocolate, they look a little plain, but they turned out delicious! I had one for breakfast for the next few days, as did Little Miss, of course.

The little one liked them, but I wouldn't go so far as to say she loved them. She ate about a half of one at a time. Mr Picky didn't like them, of course. It is the lemon, he thinks it tastes like dish soap.

Either way, I will be making this one again. I have enough lemon chips for a do-over and we always have chocolate chips on hand so I will try those as well. Maybe they will get a better reception that way.

Hope everyone is having a great week!

~Natasha.

Inside Out Chocolate Chip Cookies.

I have been doing a lot of baking lately, muffins for breakfast, cookies for Mr Man to take to work, and rolls for meals. Instead of making the same few recipes over and over, I have been trying out some newer ones that I have been finding around the internet. This one is a backwards chocolate cookie, I found the recipe HERE. 

The first thing you can notice is that mine are a lot gloppier than the original bakers. This is because she states they have to be refrigerated for 2 hours and then rolled between the palms. It was 8:30 PM, and I was tired from chasing a toddler all day and taking an hour and a half to get an infant to sleep. There's no time for waiting around, they have to go in the lunch bag at 4 AM, so I just scooped them onto the pan and baked them off.

My cookies ended up a little flatter because of this, no big deal. I found these cookies tasted better the next day, after they were cooled. They had a more chocolatey taste. Mr Picky liked them, but said they were a little to sweet to be an everyday cookie. The recipe will go into my remake file, but it probably won't be one I use right away. 

Have a good week, everyone!  

~Natasha.

Winter Storms

As I mentioned before, we have been getting a lot of winter storms this year. We actually had a green Christmas and up until mid-January it looked like we were in the clear...then the tides turned on us and we have been getting dumped on since. Our city declared a state of emergency in one of the older sections because there was literally no where to put it, they had to shut everything down so it could be removed. We have had two more storms since.

Each storm has dropped between 30 and 50 cm, which is 12 to 20 inches. And we have had (that I can remember) about 5. As well, we have had quite a few snow days that have just dropped between 5 and 10 cm (2 to 4 inches). These pictures are from February 25th, when they called for 10 cm but we ended up getting 25.

The morning started with the snow below the windows. By about 1:00 PM, it was over the windows!! This is not blown into the screen, this is actual accumulation. Our windows are about waist high to Mr Picky, and he is 6 feet tall, so these windows are about 3-4 feet off the ground.

The above is the snow outside Salean's bedroom window. This is not started in a spot that had snow plowed from the drive way, nor is it in a spot that it drifts into. This is purely snow just dropped onto the ground and piled up. Poor Mr Picky had to climb over our porch railing into waist high snow piles to shovel out the windows. He said if he left it, they would leak when it started melting. 

Mr. Picky got home around 11 AM, we are glad he came home early this day the roads were getting terrible. I took this picture at about 2 PM. All that snow on his truck had been dropped in 3 hours.

And finally, my car, which appears to have gone missing. It hadn't been cleaned off at all during the storm. This was taken around 2 PM. Around 3:30, it suddenly stopped snowing and the sun came out, it turned into a beautiful day!

This was hopefully the last major storm this winter, although not to jinx it, we usually get one good one in March. Altogether, our city has had about 185 cm (74 inches, or 6 feet) of snow drop since mid-January

Please, Mother Nature...no more snow!!

It's almost Spring have a good week, everyone!

~Natasha.

Chocolate Chip Cookies

This month, we have had a lot of winter storms. A LOT of winter storms. In between storms, it has been bitter cold, so we have been stuck inside most of this past month. So what are two girls to do but bake! This past week, we made chocolate chip cookies, a very simple recipe that I have been making for years. I originally got the recipe from a Kraft What's Cooking magazine, but you can get the recipe HERE. 

Once again, I premeasured the ingredients,. She got a little antsy and tried to dump everything in at once, so I had to hold her back until the butter and sugars were creamed. Here she is pouring the eggs in.

In go the chocolate chips. We just used up a spare half package, there were a bit to many, some cookies were packed full.

Scooping. I set my spoon down to take the picture, and she had to fill it and pass it back to me.

More scooping, she really got into it. 

Cookies, deliciously baked. Mr Picky came in the door just as they were being pulled from the oven, perfect timing on this stormy day! We ended up getting 25 cm when they were only calling for about 10. We are glad he decided to come home early and be safe, and help eat the cookies!

Finally, the best part, eating the cookies. They are really good fresh from the oven. The batch didn't last long!

So, if you ever find yourself stuck inside on a stormy day and in need of a treat, whip up this recipe. It is quick (only takes about 2 minutes in the mixer once you get everything measured out), Yum.

And we are hoping for no more snow!!

Have a good day, everyone!

~Natasha.

Homemade Butter

This one is being posted a little late, we did this activity on pancake day, February 17th. I decided for dinner I was going to make buttermilk pancakes. They were a super flop, so I am not going to post that recipe. I found this quick recipe in a Chatelaine magazine a few years ago, it said to use a blender but my blender didn't work; after whipping the cream it just spun and spun doing nothing else. So, at the time I threw the half completed concoction into my mixer and made quick work of it. 

This is an easy recipe, you need one ingredient and one tool: whipping cream and a mixer. Pour the cream into the mixer with the whisk attachment and turn it on. 

I started it on slow until it thickened up some, just for the mess factor Once it became cream, I turned it up to full speed.

Above, it is cream. About 2-3 minutes into the process. By this time Miss Salean became bored and wandered off. 

About 6-7 minutes in, it looks like cream still but turning yellow. Starting to curdle. Best to put a towel over it now, because the change is coming shortly. 

Suddenly, after about 10 minutes, it separates into butter and buttermilk!  By this time she wandered back, but still did not have much interest in it. 

And finally, the butter is fished out of the buttermilk and squeezed to get all the excess out I put some on a cracker, but she refused to try it. She did, however, enjoy poking it with a knife!

Later in the day, we used our buttermilk and butter for our pancakes. They tasted good, but looked horrible and didn't raise very well.

I am sure someday this will make a great science experiment to teach with, but for now it just looks cool, and is actually a little cheaper than buying butter in the store.

Have a good week, everyone!

~Natasha.