If you’ve been following along on Instagram, we spent a quick 36 hours in Rocky Mountain National Park last weekend. On Saturday we took an ambitious hike – click through to see more photos and details.
We are big fans of curating Easter baskets that are fun and educational. For example, last year the boys went bonkers for their bug-themed baskets.
This year we are deep into all things letters and numbers. Admittedly, these theme doesn’t sound that exciting, but as you’ll see below, there are a few basket-worthy items that would serve the dual purpose of being fun/enjoyable while being educational.
Do you have any good number or letter ideas for a basket? If so, we’d love to see your ideas in the comments!
At the beginning of the year, I encouraged our readers to “make with me“. In that post I shared a few of the many benefits that you may get from picking up a hobby, and I gave you a few simple suggestions for how to turn your hobby into a regular habit (that’s good for you!).
If you follow our Instagram feed or have been a long-time reader, it’s no surprise that my primary hobby is knitting. I always have a project (or ten) in the works. While I don’t need the encouragement to knit more, I’m taking this resolution as a nudge to share more of my projects, in their many phases, on the blog. And if you’d like to find me on Ravelry, my username is winterfoliage.
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Have you ever used potato stamps before? The idea is super simple : carve a shape into the smooth side of a cut potato, dip it in paint, and print it on paper!
Today we created a simple project inspired by Swimmy, a book written and illustrated by Leo Lionni.
Lionni is said to be the first children’s illustrator to use collage as his main medium. In this book, the illustrations are printed. And, on many of the pages, you can see that the same stamps are used over and over again, as in these examples with the fish.
Swimmy’s story is relatively simple. He stands out from his school of fish, but sadly one day they are all eaten (except him!). He ventures out into the ocean and sees many wonderful sites. Eventually he finds another school of fish, and this time he teaches his new family a way to work together and protect themselves.
If you’ve never read it before, we’ve included a video of the story above. But really, there’s nothing better than reading aloud to your kids, and it’s nice to have the book on hand to discuss the artwork and how to use a couple of stamps to make a complex image, so we suggest picking up a copy from your favorite bookstore or the library.
You’ll see that we focused our work on the pages of Swimmy and his school of fish. But there are many beautiful illustrations in the book that you could recreate (my other favorite is the seaweed printed using doilies).
I prefer keeping projects simple, because I often believe that that helps little kiddos create beautiful artwork without too many complications, confusing steps, or accidental blunders (like mixing all of the colors and just getting brown!). In an effort to keep this project simple, we used just two stamps and two colors, EXCEPT at the last moment when we added a black Swimmy to our pieces.
The nice thing about using Swimmy as inspiration for these projects is that the kiddos can stamp a school of fish going in any direction. As you can see in the original work, fish are swimming up, down, and all around.
And as you can see from our pile of work above, stamping takes a bit of practice. At first the boys wanted to stamp and slide the potatoes. Similar to how they would slide a paintbrush across the paper. It took a little bit of help and some practice to get them comfortable with stamping and lifting the stamp straight up.
This is a great project for making a book “come alive” for the kids. Imitating art found in books is a great way to expose kids to different techniques. It encourages them to start questioning how different pieces of art are made and gives them the tools to start making their own original pieces!
Happy International Women’s Day!
If you’re a lady or wanna be a lady, I hope you’re doing something good for yourself today. If you appreciate the women in your life, I hope you’ll let them know. And no, not by whistling as they walk by (unless they like that?).
We thought we’d take this day as an opportunity to highlight some of the women-related books that we love.
Potato, patato. However you pronounce it, we’re excited to call this tuber our ingredient of the season. Ah the potato, always the side-dish, never the main dish.
We think this vegetable gets a bad rap as being full of carbs and too bland (without a boatload of salt and butter) to be the centerpiece of a meal. We’re hoping to change that this season with a line-up of simple but delicious meals. Just a little something to bring spuds into the limelight and inspire you to give them a second (or third!) look. We’re also hoping to entertain you by putting the potato to work in a few unexpected ways…
At the beginning of the year, I encouraged our readers to “make with me“. In that post I shared a few of the many benefits that you may get from picking up a hobby, and I gave you a few simple suggestions for how to turn your hobby into a regular habit (that’s good for you!).
If you follow our Instagram feed or have been a long-time reader, it’s no surprise that my primary hobby is knitting. I always have a project (or ten) in the works. While I don’t need the encouragement to knit more, I’m taking this resolution as a nudge to share more of my projects, in their many phases, on the blog.
This pattern is Goldfinch by Andrea Mowry of Drea Renee Knits.
Have you heard of Fire Cider*? Some consider it a magic elixir others consider it crazy hippie medicine. No matter where you stand on the topic, we can all agree that it’s a bit hard to swallow without a good dose of honey.
This is a post has been on the back-burner for a while. I’ve been wanting to write it and share one of our trusted winter elixirs, but at the same time, I don’t like to spout magic without having a bit of science to back me up.
In the end, I decided to share a recipe for fire cider along with a few links and a suggestion that you do your own research into food as medicine.
I’m a little bit obsessed with my new winter jacket. (Sarah’s probably snort- laughing right now as she reads that; “a little bit” would be the understatement of the season.)
I tried to talk her into buying one of these for her last Nepal trek, and it was so obvious that I really wanted one for myself. Picking up on my hints overt gushing, I received this awesome gift for Christmas!
What it is? It’s the LOKI Mountain Extreme Hoodie.
My obsession is due mainly to the built-in mittens. Now that I’m always adventuring with kids, I find that no matter what gloves I’m wearing, I have to take them off multiple times during an outing to help the little guys with something or other. I’m always worried that I’m going to lose a glove during these moments and the last thing that I want is the trouble of having to go back and hunt for the crucial item.
Enter LOKI apparel: it’s made to simplify our gear needs. The jackets and hoodies have built-in mittens and face masks. Now I can walk out the door with just my coat and not worry about the losing anything. LOKI also sells a puffer that looks great, and I’m intrigued by the lighter weight zip-up (it could be perfect for spring and fall hikes in the mountains!).
I’ve skied, hiked, and sledded in this coat. It’s so cozy, and the fit has been great whether the gloves and face mask are on or off. Honestly, it’s the best active “mom” jacket around. Now I can adjust goggles on the lift without worrying about losing my gloves. And since that’s my biggest worry, I’m one lucky bum.
The only little change I made to my jacket was to add some conductive thread to make them touch-screen compatible for the moments when I want to take a quick phone pic without removing the mittens. You can see the thread in the photo below – I used quite a bit to make sure that I had a good connection between my finger and phone. I wasn’t ready to sew into that brand new thumb material yet, but I’m testing it out this weekend on a ski trip – if I like it, then I may go back and clean up my sewing job to make something that’s more refined.
If you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out one of our very first DIY posts on the blog!
I love a good spice cake. In my book, there’s only one way to improve any good cake : make it portable! That must be why the whoopie pie was invented.
If you’re unfamiliar with a whoopie pie, let us introduce you. These are small treats made by sandwiching frosting between two small circular cakes. Most commonly, the cakes are chocolate and the frosting is vanilla, but I always felt lucky when I found a place selling the chocolate pies with peanut butter frosting!
Growing up in PA, it was common to see individual whoopie pies wrapped and for sale at farmer’s markets and near the cash registers of mom & pop markets. If you’re in Philly – stop into Reading Terminal and pick up a whoopie pie from the Amish stand. You can thank me later.
Today we’re sharing a recipe for ginger whoopie pies with cream cheese frosting. This recipe comes from the cookbook (appropriately named) Whoopie Pies. While this is still a fairly common whoopie pie flavor, that book is filled with a wide variety of cake and frosting options for mixing and matching.
Ingredients
Instructions
The cookbook comes with a candied ginger frosting recipe, if you want to go whole-hog with the ginger.
Personally, I love pairing these cakes with a simple cream cheese frosting. Beat together 8 oz cream cheese + 1 stick butter + 2 cups powdered sugar + 1 tsp vanilla. Spread a generous layer between two cakes.
In my opinion, these are cakes that get better with age. Give them a few hours or even a day for the flavors to meld, and you won’t be disappointed.
As I mentioned, these are super portable cakes. We had a friend over last week that packed an extra one for the slopes… pass these out on the chairlift, and you’ll become a legend.