Cake Trick

I am going to share  a secret that my cousin shared with me :)

Adding instant pudding (just the powder - dont make it) to a boxed cake mix makes it wonderful!

You do not need to add any extra liquid either. I try to match the flavor of the cake with the pudding. For white and yellow cake I use vanilla or lemon (just because I like lemon) :D

Popsicle Stick Puzzle #1

These came out okay, but they could have been better.

Some things I will do different next time.

• Thicker paper instead of coloring book paper
• Colored pencils and not markers (markers made paper soggy)
• Wait until the glue is dry before cutting the sticks apart (you will see the smudges, lol)

Here is how you make popsicle stick puzzles.

What you will need:

• Picture
• Elmer's Glue
• Scissors and Exacto Knife - not pictured
• Popsicle Sticks
• Crayons, Markers, or Colored Pencils
• Sharpie - not pictured

I picked out a picture I like. You might want to print small pictures out on cardstock or draw your own instead of using coloring books.

Flip the pictures over and glue each popsicle down leaving a small gap in between the sticks so that you can use the exacto knife to cut them apart later. 

              

After I cut both of them apart I flipped them over and numbered them with a sharpie. 

Mulan

Disney's Facebook reminded me how much I love Mulan!

“My, what beautiful blossoms we have this year. But look, this one’s late. But I’ll bet that when it blooms, it will be the most beautiful of all.” - Fa Zhou from Mulan

And who doesn't love Mushu?!

All These Things I've Done

I am not a big Young Adult fan. I think the genre is too broad and half the time the books are just not developed as well as they should be.

I was incredibly pleased that this book DID NOT fall into that category. I did not write a large review, but I remember the whole book reminded me of the Great Depression. While some parts of it were exaggerated other parts where completely plausible that our current economy and political situation could be in the early stages of heading down that same road. 

Synopsis compliments of Goodreads:

In 2083, chocolate and coffee are illegal, paper is hard to find, water is carefully rationed, and New York City is rife with crime and poverty. And yet, for Anya Balanchine, the sixteen-year-old daughter of the city's most notorious (and dead) crime boss, life is fairly routine. 

It consists of going to school, taking care of her siblings and her dying grandmother, trying to avoid falling in love with the new assistant D.A.'s son, and avoiding her loser ex-boyfriend. That is until her ex is accidently poisoned by the chocolate her family manufactures and the police think she's to blame. 

Suddenly, Anya finds herself thrust unwillingly into the spotlight--at school, in the news, and most importantly, within her mafia family.

 

T

T is for Tomato.

Tomatoes are one of the daughter's favorites! She loves them. Like S, there were so many options for T. Trains, Tree, Tractor, etc.

We started with a red marker. I told her to draw a circle and color it in. She did not handle coloring in well with a marker so we moved to crayon. The leaves on top is her thumbprint in green paint. :)

S

S is for Stars.

I had many ideas for S, spiders, sun, stars, etc. So I let the little one decide and she wanted stars.

We glued down black construction paper for the sky and then made the stars out of squeeze glitter glue. I made a couple of stars hoping she would try, but she just decided to do dots *shrugs*.

R

R is for Rainbow!

I love rainbows, they are just so pretty and bright.

I like to switch up the materials we work with. What better way to make a rainbow than dyed rice! Which also starts with R. WIN! lol.

I wrote a post about how to dye rice. It is really easy and I have lots of pictures.

We did it one layer at a time and went slow. It was almost like working with glitter but no where near as messy. We added shredded cotton balls for clouds.