Homemade Orange Chile Pepper

The brother's daddy and uncle both had their birthdays last month, so we needed to stock up on gifts. It needed to be homemade (by the boys, of course), use mostly things we had around and be fairly quick to make, since the weeks before the birthdays were insane work wise. Tall order?

Nah.

Both daddy and his brother love to grill, so we made Orange Chile Pepper for meat hot off the grill. I had some oranges left over, so I used a vegetable peeler to get the skin off and a knife to scrape the remaining white pith off the back. Then I finely minced the peel and left it on a plate on the counter for a day or two. Voila, dried orange peel!

Then big brother and I took a trip to Ikea one Saturday afternoon and (among a select few other items, naturally) bought two of their spice mills.

While daddy was at going for a run, the boys took to their project. We got our dried orange peel, some coarse sea salt, black pepper and whole dried red chiles.

We started with some salt, then added the orange peel. We didn't really use a recipe, the boys and I pretty much eyeballed it.

 Add some black peppercorns and then some hot chiles.

Screwing the top back on the mills, giving it a few shakes and adding a tag - done!

Actually, that was too easy. Even for us. Luckily we had picked up some simple gray oven mitts at Ikea. We grabbed some fabric pens we had, and the boys drew a design, each one on one side of the mitt, so both mitts have big and little brother's artwork on them. It's a cat standing at a grill, btw.What, your cats don't usually grill your dinner? Ha.

Of course we also had to come up with the matching card. A quick Pinterest search later, we made these BBQ cards where you can actually open the top of the grill. That's fish on the grill. Guess the cat went to get himself another beer then...

So, now I have some time before I need to come up with a father's day craft...

What kid-made gifts have you done recently?

Swenja

Still here... and a holiday recap

Yes, it's me. Still here. Still too busy by day and too tired by night. Still trying to get too many things done at once.

Right now it's a demanding job, Apartment Therapy's January Cure (and while I enjoy that I have to say that no, I did not manage to deep clean and organize my entire kitchen in one weekend, not even close to that), family things going on, big brother learning to play the guitar, little brother learning to swim and a party planned for February. Among other things.

But really, if I wait for a better time to blog again, I might never get around to it.

So here's just a brief hello and a little recap of our holidays, before the first month of the new year is over...

Luckily, I started early, and made a plan. Otherwise I would have never managed to make so many gifts. I did eventually give up taking photos of all the pretty little things and wrapped gifts, but I did manage to give something handmade to everyone on my list.

Such as these simple little barrettes, covered in fabric scraps. One of the easiest things and so much fun.

For coworkers, I covered the buttons in more grown-up fabrics and glued them on oversized paperclips instead.

We also did out tradition Advent calendar, and this year I included quite a few activities, such as reading Christmas books, baking, making Christmas cards or, in this case, having a tea party - complete with a tin teacup, a bag of winter tea and some anise cookies.

The complete calendar just before being wrapped up. I always forget that doing 48 packages is more work than 24, even if's mostly the same things.

The kids also made a lot of Christmas gifts. This year their main gift  to their friends and grandparents was using porcelain markers on mugs. Ikea sells these miniature sized white mugs that were perfect for their friends, and we did larger ones for the grandparents. That is a cat on the mug, in case you didn't notice...

We didn't get more than two types of cookies done this year, but we did make a double batch of the dog biscuits to give a way to our four-legged friends. I bought some lined kraft paper bags and used the stamp from little brother's dog party last year to make labels that we attached with red and white bakers twine. One of those things where  a good blogger would have gotten a nice picture of. Oh well.

Of course I also sewed part of my Christmas gifts, like this soft cloud pillow, made from fleece blankets. And yes, that is a 7, and not a 9. For some reason German seem to prefer cloud 7 to cloud 9. Go figure!

My favorite sewing helper. Especially when he's sleeping right on the fabric I want to cut...

Then it was time to pick out our tree...

... and trim it. Little brother insisted on hanging four ornaments on one branch.

For the first time since big brother was crawling, we also pulled out the wooden pyramid that my dad built some 30 years ago. It works with votive candles and the boys were pretty good with it, so we might just make this a tradition again.

Finally, Christmas Eve - presents! We didn't get much this year, the boys got books, little brother got the guitar and camera (kiddie camera) from his wish list, and big brother did get his one big wish, his very own laptop. We got a used one and he uses it to run the same software they have at school. Not really getting any more real toys this year, meaning no games, Lego, Playmobil, cars and such was also a nice break, because really, they have enough of that already. With all the handmade things and sibling gifts, the packages still added up and there were more than enough things for everyone to open.

New Year's we had neighbors over with their kids, which was nice. The boys had fun decorating for the party with lots of silvery and glittery things.

So here's to a happy new year!

Now it's back to working, enjoying the simple things (and the snow we're having more than enough of) as well as organizing and cleaning up the house before the weather gets nice again and we'll spend more time outside.

What have you been up to?

Swenja

{kid craft} bookmarks

We haven't done any kid craft posts in a while now. Actually, there are a couple of reasons. There's things like summer and big brother going to school soon. But also it just got too much to do, photograph and post every week - and I realized I wasn't really doing this for the kids anymore. So we do some school prep instead these days, and just head out a whole lot, enjoying the time we don't have to do something while we still can.

Every once in a while we still sit down to do something though. This week big brother went to a friend's birthday party and since we bought a book as gift, we figured we'd do some of our tried-and-true bookmarks to go with it. Little brother did these as sibling gifts for Christmas, and we also made dog-themed ones as party favors.

This time, I marked a simple sheet of paper with lines every 5cm, showing big brother where the bookmarks would be cut. He then just colored using pencils and drawing all kinds of things for his best friends, carefully writing their names as well. There's the birthday boy in soccer uniform with a soccer ball, another friend with a cat and then one with his dog (no, that yellow thing is not a bee, it's Sammy the dog...). He took it very seriously.

The finished picture. With the, er, enthusiasm and frequency that my big boy likes to draw, I'm surprised you can actually see what it's supposed to be. No, make that amazed. I know, others draw the most gorgeous pictures at age almost 6, but hey, for my boy this is truly great. And I love that he took the time to pay attention to detail, think about what each of his friends would like and try his best in getting there.

Little brother on the other hand was busy being cranky. Sharpening pencils, getting in the way, whining and just being a general nuisance. Until he remembered he could take several pencils at once for coloring.

Am I the only one who thinks we have a tired little artist here?

Big brother joining the fun.

Once finished, I cut the paper into strips and laminated them, punched holes and tied on matching ribbon. Easy.

We also made some from the other drawings they did, which turned out rather cute, too.

Seems like we'll have enough bookmarks over here to last us the next few weeks...

Happy crafting,
Swenja

{kid craft} Quick Father's Day Idea

Yep, another quick one today. It's just another week spent running around from one activity to the next and oh, there's still things such as work and a household and all that. So we sat down Monday afternoon to do some crafting for daddy (who hopefully won't read this tonight so he'll be all surprised tomorrow). I came across this idea here and while I liked the look of the shoe prints, covering shoes with some sort of paint didn't seem like such a brilliant idea when you're pressed for time. Although I'm sure the brothers would have loved it.

Instead, we opted for tracing daddy's shoes and the brothers' feet onto card stock and cutting that out. Over here we have the same saying, but instead of your father's shoes, it's following in your father's footsteps. So even though we could hardly trace around daddy's feet without him noticing, I think the brother's cute little feet complete with cut off toes, courtesy of big brother, are really cute.

And basically, that's all there is. Trace, cut, arrange your design and glue it to a piece of paper. Now, you could get all professional and print something on it with a computer. But did I mention I was busy? And there was some sunshine out there, waiting for the brothers and their bikes? 

We ended up just writing "in daddy's footsteps" on the paper and the brothers wrote their names on it while I added the date. It was funny to see that big brother's foot is already half the size of daddy's!

So honey, if you are reading this: we love you lots and please, do act surprised tomorrow, ok?

Love,
Swenja

{kid craft} flower birthday cards

I'm trying to teach my kids to be thoughtful. To be old-fashioned maybe. If it's someone's birthday, you bake a cake (or a cupcake), you pick flowers and you write a card. You might even make a little gift. It's not about the money you spend, it's not about showing that you care. It doesn't matter if you're invited to a party or if someone is likely to think of your birthday. It's the way we do things around here.

So we made cards for some upcoming birthdays. These would also make lovely Mother's Day cards.

My boys not being big on drawing, we decided to do simple pop-up cards. We cut slits in a plain white card, folded them in and glued another plain card to the back to hide the cuts.

The brothers punched out flowers, but of course you could also make your own. Except that it would have taken us until midnight to finish a single card then. Besides, they were fascinated with the hole punches.

Glue the flowers on your popup stems.

And color some grass, sky and such around. They weren't too motivated about this, but they did try.

More flowers to be added.

Big brothers finished card. Well, almost finished, we also wrote some birthday wishes on it and he added his name. Don't you love the green clouds?

We also used some flowers to decorate the front of the card.

Little brother decorating his card.

Big brother ended up making a popup drawing, too. Those are cats, in case you didn't immediately notice. Their ears are folded back, he told me. Oh, and they're cut with pinking shears because that makes it looks like fur. Ah. Ok.

The boys are excited about giving out their homemade cards. And that makes me happy.

Cheers,
Swenja

{kid craft} Kate's paper cup poppers

Would you say it's cheating if a craft takes you literally two minutes and can be done while cooking dinner? All with stuff you're likely to have around? It feels a bit like cheating. After all, the whole purpose of my kid craft series was to sit down with the brothers every week and have them practice all the nice, non-destructive things you can do with paper, scissors and glue.

You could of course argue that the whole purpose is for the kids to have fun and enjoy making things instead of just buying things (or getting bored). In this case we've found a new favorite.

I have to thank Kate of MiniEco for these. In case you haven't seen her newly released book, go check it out . Seriously, go have a look. I'll wait until you're back.

See? Told you it was great. What I love most is that it's got lots of craft ideas for boys. I thought it was funny how many crafts were photographed with girls, because really, this is finally a craft book that's not pink or frilly or requires precise coloring in the lines. But if you know Kate's blog, you wouldn't have expected anything pink or frilly. In fact, this is so great that I got to flip through it exactly once before the brothers ripped it out of my hands, announcing the things they wanted to do and taking the book with them to preschool the next day. It's been there ever since. 

Big brother's preschool teacher was equally impressed and has already done a few of the crafts with the kids, so I have a hard time catching up. When he came home with one of these paper cup poppers cups, little brother wanted do have one, too. Which is why I had to do this right now mommy, while making dinner. Luckily I had a paper cup in my kitchen left over from Easter, ballons are always in the kids' stuff and a yellow (of course) felt pompom wasn't hard to come by either. 

Oh, and a daddy home early who happened to be nice enough to do the actual crafting, as in cutting the bottom off the cup, pulling the balloon over the opening and securing it with clear packing tape (as opposed to the rubber band Kate suggests). Done. 

The brothers went off, happily shooting felt pompoms all over the living room, crawling under the couch and scrambling to catch the pompoms before the cats got hold of them.

I have a feeling I should plan some more time for next week's craft.

Happy crafting,

Swenja