Fun with ice

We are learning all about snow and ice this week in my Preschool class something that my students are not very familiar with here in southern California!
For our science lesson i filled regular balloons with water until they are about the size of a large grapefruit and placed them in the freezer.
That was Monday, today  Wednesday we got them out!
The children got to feel how heavy they were and how cold they were.  I took off the balloons by placing them in some warm water for about 10 seconds.
Each child had their own shallow tray for their ball of ice. I passed around a bowl full if ice cream salt and the children took turns sprinkling "sodium " in their ice.
Next I handed out eye droppers and small cups of watercolor paint.
As the salt melted the ice it created channels and the children could see them when they squeezed out the colored paint in the ice.
This activity kept nine 3,4 and 5 year olds completely entranced for an entire hour!
They loved sharing their colors and watching the transformation taking place in their ice and their friends ice!

Confessions of a competitive swimmer

I have been swimming at the gym for a few weeks now and it really feels great to be back in the water again!
I can still do all four strokes ( with butterfly i only attempt one length at a time. I am worried someone might think i am drowning and jump in to save me!)
flipturns are easy peasy lemon squeezy!
My problem is the majority of the people swimming at the same time as me are content to swim steadily and consistently and slowly the entire time.
I tried to do that and it just doesn't work for me. When i try to swim slowly my technique falls apart and i feel like i am flopping around in the water!
My other issue is that my competitive side creeps up on me and i want to race! Yes you the Octogenarian in the next lane who can get to the other side of the pool first!
Oh dear ...what does this say about me...

Green Hair and Breadsticks

<p>I recently have been revisiting a sport that I spent 10 years of my much younger life participating in....Swimming.<br>
I swam from age 8-18, 5 days a week, 2-4 hours per day!  All through high school my hair was a lovely shade of green something that was repeatedly pointed out to me by whoever sat behind me in class!
Swimming that much also gives you an insatiable appetite and my friends and i were a little obsessed with Pizza Hut Breadsticks!
When i graduated from high school i gave up swimming i was suffering from major burn out and needed a break, i just didn't know it would be a time 19 year break.
So why start swimming again now ....long story ....
I was enjoying working out at P4L Fitness in Temecula their classes are amazing. If u want a total body kick butt work out they have it all.
However i went ice skating for my lovely Rowenas birthday and fell with all my weight on one knee!  Within 10 mins i had a massively bruised and swollen knee!
So as per doctors instructions no exercise for me for three months!!!!
I finally broke down and joined a gym that has a pool, Sarah swimming part duex....

Christmas 2011

Yes I really only seem able to post one blog a year! I keep telling myself that I will write more and then life takes over and there is this little thing called sleep that I am rather fond of!

So It was Maddies turn to pick the Christmas tree this year and due to our busy weekend that meant heading out to search for a tree at 8:30 in the morning on a Saturday so that we would have the tree home before tennis and other activities.

The first tree lot we came to did not open till 9am, same with the second....the third tree lot we found just so happened to be a Lowes store so that is where we got our tree!

We had an unfortunate incident with our tree this year....it fell over smashing all of my favorite glass ornaments into hundreds of tiny pieces. There were two that I will miss the most, one being a hand painted map of central London, it reminded me of all the places I had enjoyed visiting when I lived there....

The second one was another hand painted glass nativity scene....

Thankfully my lovely sister-in-law who is an interior designer came over and helped us recreate a beautiful tree that she is going to have to help me with every year!

Of course trees and ornaments are not what Christmas is all about so no use crying over spilt milk or smashed ornaments!

So lets see if I can manage another post before Christmas 2012!

Fresh Homemade Bread

Fresh Bread...is there anyone who can resist a fresh, crisp crackling loaf of bread coming straight out of the oven...it is one of those heavenly smells.

Our family is big time into bread, usually the french loaf variety that we buy from Fresh and Easy. It is one of the kinds that you par bake at home so in 6-8 minutes you have fresh bread. My family LOVES the french loaf so much that we were going through at least one a day between breakfast, sandwiches for lunch and the occasional side for dinner.

So why am I the big bad mommy who has decided to take away the lovely white french bread and make everyone eat whole wheat/whole grain bread??? Because I want us to eat healthier and develop good eating habits that will last a life time that's why!!

I first heard about the authors of this book on another site called simpledailyrecipes.com when I was searching for a healthy blueberry muffin recipe. (side note get the blueberry muffin recipe from Jill's site they are amazing!!)

So Jill had some Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day recipes on her site so I tried them out and fell in love with how easy it was to make bread this way. I was even more excited when they came out with a second book Healthy Bread in Five minutes a day!

These recipes are sooooo easy, they require only a quick mixing of the ingredients and no kneading!

The first recipe I tried was the 100% Whole Wheat Bread, it contains no white flour at all just 7 cups of whole wheat, Vital wheat gluten, yeast, salt and water.

Big question would my girls eat it? (I have one daughter who shall remain nameless who had declared that whole wheat bread makes her gag!)

So you mix all the ingredients together and put them in a NON-airtight container, I chose one like this as it has a vent in the top.
Next you leave it out on your kitchen counter for 2 hours until it looks like this!
Now you can use the dough straight away but if you refrigerate it first for a couple of hours it is easier to handle. The next step is easy you just cut off enough dough to make a 1 pound loaf, roughly 1/4. You form it into a loaf and leave it to rise covered for 90 Min's. I put mine on parchment paper so that I could place it straight in the oven after rising. When there is about 30 minutes left in the rising time preheat your oven to 450 and put a baking stone in the oven to preheat as well. I use our pizza stone it works really well for me. Right before baking I cut slash marks in the top of the loaves and brushed them with water. I then sprinkled a combination of ground flax see and whole flax seeds on top.

When you put them in the oven you need to have an empty baking pan on the bottom shelf. First I put the bread on the stone, and then put 1 cup of hot tap water in the pan on the bottom shelf, the steam helps the crust become crusty. After 25 Min's of baking I remove the parchment paper and put the loaves back in for 10 more minutes.

This is what they look like when they come out!
They next need to cool completely on a wire rack.

Verdict from the girls....Apparently it tastes just like french loaf!!

I highly recommend this book, I got it for around $20 on Barnes and Noble.com and for you British folk, there is a version printed especially for you available at Amazon.co.uk called Five Minute Bread!

Happy Baking!!!

Christmas Trees - yes I am behind on everything!

So I fully realize that I am writing this approximately 45 days too late but I have just been sorting through my photos and found the ones of the Christmas tree.

Every year a different sister gets to choose the tree, last year was Rowena, the year before Madeline and this year was finally Naomi's turn! She was still six at Christmas time and I am sure you can imagine her excitement when she learned this was her year!

She made sure her big sisters knew this was absolutely, completely, 100 percent her decision!

So off we went in search of the perfect tree...

Got to love shopping for Christmas trees in short sleeves/shorts and flip flops! Madeline is such a California girl!

We walked up and down many aisles until..... she found the one she wanted!One thing I notice when I am walking around the mall/shops at Christmas time is how perfect so many of the stores trees are. Every ornament/bauble/ribbon is perfectly color coordinated and the pristine trees shine with the pride of their own perfection.

Our tree is nothing like that and I love that it is nothing like that! We have many old ornaments on our tree. Not necessarily nice old ornaments but ones that I made at vacation bible school at First Baptist Church in Fallbrook and somehow they have survived the years intact!

Also Father Christmas (English way to say it) or Santa Clause (American way to say it) leaves my girls a new ornament every year in their stocking. These ornaments are very random to say the least, he is often very good at getting them something that they are really into for that particular year.

One of my favorite parts of bringing home the tree is the excitement of just getting the ornament box out of the garage to bring in the house! The girls are just itching to get their fingers on THEIR ornaments. They always say things like "oh remember when I got this bear/dog/ballet shoes etc etc..." They each remember whose ornaments are whose and can be quite territorial about placing them on the tree.

I have a few favorites also like a glass ball that has a map of London (because I remember walking around those places) and a glass ball with the nativity scene on it (because that is what Christmas is all about of course!).


So in the end our tree ends up looking like this!

A colorful representation of all our individual personalities on one family tree!

Leaf Printing

What kind of a crazy mom takes her kids outside, gives them leaves, rocks, fabric and a big piece of wood and says lets make some art? ME!!!
So I have one of Maddie's friends here this week as part of my daycare and so I have planned a few art activities to keep us busy this week (because otherwise life with 4 kids around would be boring right!).
Anyway, we started off with a nature walk, they each had a paper bag and we collected an assortment of leaves, pine cones and bright red berries!

When we got home we went into the back garden and I told the girls to find as flat a stone as possible like this!

Next placed a long piece of MDF on the ground and gave them each a piece of unbleached natural muslin. The instructions were to place the leaf on a piece of paper (protects the wood from color) and place the fabric on the leaf. Next smash the the living daylights out of the leaf with the rock! The noise of 4 children banging rocks on a piece of wood was tremendous to say the least (I think my eardrums fell out!) but they all had a blast. As the leaf is decimated it releases it's beautiful autumn colors onto the fabric making a unique looking print!

They all made one square and one small rectangle. The smaller rectangle was mounted onto colored construction paper and laminated to make a book mark!

This was a fairly easy, inexpensive, and fun craft. The materials were made by nature or I already had them plus the girls all had a great time!

By the way the original instructions for this project called for a hammer to bash the leaves with, hmmm 4 kids with hammers, I'm not that crazy!