Kids in the Kitchen: Weekly Wrap-up

 The boys have been hit by the baking bug. Especially the older 2. And they are testing out their new found skills and freedom in the kitchen.

Rylan woke up early for 3 days in a row this past week and made breakfast for everyone. 

He made waffles, blueberry oat muffins and peanut butter waffles. I didn't get many pictures- I am not a morning person....

Lakin wanted to make granola bars for snack, so Rylan gave him a hand with reading the recipe and measuring everything. Lakin manned the spoon. 

 

Cale made soft pretzels to go with dinner one night.

 

And Rylan made carrot cake for dessert. 

 

He has been pouring over my cookbooks and Allrecipes. He has a long list of fancy desserts he wants to try and make. 

 

Some are simple, like chocolate pudding. But others, like Tiramisu and  Black Tie Mousse Cake (like from The Olive Garden) are a little more involved.

And finally, last night Cale made meatballs for dinner for the meat eaters of the family.

 

What have your kids baked lately?

Art and the School Room

 A couple years ago I got each of the boys a canvas to paint on. Since artistic interest and ability have changed so much since they first painted on them, I decided to start over. I repainted them all white- using wall paint since it is what I had on hand...

Cale and Cohen picked their subjects and got right to work. Cohen chose a warm and cool color pattern with his handprints all over. Cale chose to do a melted crayon picture. 

 Lakin also wanted to do his right away. He splatter painted on his canvas using tempera paint cakes. I also traced his silhouette onto contact paper before he started.

Here is Cohen's finished project! I love how it turned out.

And here is Lakin's. The contact paper didn't hold up to the wet paint, but I think it looks kind of neat the way the silhouette turned out.

The main reason I wanted to redo these now was to fill empty wall space in our school room. The new room is almost wall to wall shelves with a lot of wall space up high, but not large enough for our big wall maps.

 Our Friends painting went above one shelf, but I had a couple other spots I wanted to fill in with the kids art work.

Here are Cohen and Lakin's hung up above our science and math items. 

Cale's will take a few weeks to finish first and Rylan is still narrowing down his subject. 

Annika got to do a canvas of her own too. This is the first time she's used paint. 

She only tasted it once...

 

And this is the face she gave the brother to told her she wasn't supposed to do that.

This Week's Wrap-Up

 I had plans to start back to school this week. We had been off for 2 weeks  and were relatively settled in. Then Paul had to go out of town for the week,  one of my boys has night time issues and was up until midnight almost every night. And, well, school didn't happen. But that's okay. 

We did a lot this week though- from home. Cale remembered his goal of 5 dinners a month and realized he had only made 2. And it was 3 days to the end of the month. So he got to work. Monday he made us garlic bread.

 On Tuesday, he tag teamed with Rylan to make apple cheddar muffins. And Wednesday he made lasagne again.

Paul tilled me up 2 rows before he left for the week and we planted peas, onions, lettuce, spinach and radishes before I ran out of room. 

 

Now if I could only keep the chickens out of the garden!

 

We are enjoying the spring-like weather....with blooms everywhere. 

 

We have a couple of these flowering magnolia trees which I have always loved. 

 

Monkeys in trees....

 

Down the road from our house is a little community center and park. 

 

We spent 3 afternoons there this week.

 

The boys made a dam in the creek. 

 

And Annika and Lakin made friends with the cows who came to watch them play. 

 

Storms are coming today, and Paul is on his way home. So we are inside, playing Rummy-O, Pay Day and Rylan's made up game.