New adventures

Well, by this weekend, this little guy will be a new member of our pet family:

His Mama was part of a group of stray Shih Tzus that were picked up by animal control.  Mama gave birth to him and four siblings two days later.  We were lucky enough to be able to adopt him and will pick him up this week.  We are cat people - always have been, so becoming dog people, as well, is a little nerve wracking.  His name is currently Mercury (the foster family named his whole family after Greek or Roman Gods.)  We're changing his name, but we are in family negotiations as to what his new name will be at the moment.  My choice is Oliver (and we'd probably call him Ollie).  We are open for name suggestions.

Oh, and on the way out of the shelter one day I met a persian cat named Muki...I adopted her too.  Yikes!  I have to pick her up today!  Holy moley!  I'm out of pet adopting control!!  I think her name is going to be Kiko (pronounced Key-ko) - Julianna's suggestion.  We'll see.

Welcome along the ride for our new adventure!  

**biting finger nails**

Homemade Puffy Paint

On Monday, I saw a post about Homemade Puffy Paint on Sizzle Bop's Facebook page.  (Sizzle Bop is a great site if you have a highly distractible person living with you. They have a lot of encouraging information.)  It only required a few ingredients and it looked cool, so I thought it would be a good activity to add to our afternoon.

Ingredients:
1 cup flour
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
water

Mix all the dry ingredients and then add just enough water to make it the consistency of pancake batter.

We divided it into 4 small baggies and added food coloring to them.  Seal (Double and triple check that the zip has locked.) and squish to mix the color in. Snip a small corner off and get creative on a piece of paper. (We just used construction-type paper.) After your creation is made, put it in the microwave for 30-60 seconds until the paint is set and poofy.  If your artist is a little heavy handed with the paint, it will probably take closer to the minute mark.  Start with 30 seconds and add on from there.

Before microwaving

After

See?  Poofy!  (Some of the water will bake out.  Don't be alarmed if your page comes out a little wet.  It dries.)

This was a fun project and is great for these cold Winter days when everyone is stuck inside.

Introducing...

Miss Mini-Imagination, aka my 7 3/4 year old daughter, Julianna.  We finally have her blog started.  Her main focus will be American Girls, Barbies and crafts...and hard to tell what else!  Feel free to stop by and say hi.  

The Pajama Chef - Cookie making time

The Pajama Chef came up with a money making idea before the holidays...sell homemade cookies.  We decided on decorated sugar cookies and snickerdoodles (Oh, what a time we had with the snickerdoodles!  I was so disappointed with how they turned out. :-/  The last day of filling orders I ended up having to try 5 different batches before I could get some that didn't bake in little balls.  I am planning on replacing a few of the orders we filled...guess I better get on that! If you have a foolproof snickerdoodle recipe, let me know.)  She made an advertisement to send to potential customers, filled out the order form as the orders came in and we were off!  She did quite well for her first business venture.  

Okey dokey.  Here we go!

Hard at work.

Looking good!

Yum!

Her "French Chef" face.

Whew!  That was some hard work. Off to deliver the first four orders.

Thank you to all who bought cookies.  We really appreciated your support!  

Happy New Year

Here is a note that Julianna gave me in church the other night.  Lol

 "I have a bad feeling about school this year."  

Let's hope this isn't a sign.  ;-)