Not pancakes (but possibly even better)

Pancakes seemed like a good idea on a cold, snowy, February, nearly-pancake-Tuesday-anyway day. However, we had only a piddly amount of flour left. Very piddly - not much more than 50g. I hadn't checked before announcing the plan to Z1. (Clearly I did not learn my lesson from the not-gingerbread fiasco)  Things were looking grim.

I Googled "what can I make with 100g of flour" (in my wish for more flour than we had, I misread the scales) while Z1 stood disconsolately on the chair beside me, gazing at the flour that was not going to be a pancake in the bowl. She also kept putting her hand in it which I found somewhat irritating but flour does feel kind of silky. Google did not solve my problem.

I turned to Pinterest, recalling a single serving chocolate chip cookie recipe but came across these three ingredient Nutella brownies before I found the cookie recipe. Only ten tablespoons of flour were required. With trepidation, I got my measuring spoons and spooned out my flour - just about enough. Hurrah! I told Z1 we would make brownies instead. It was all good. We'd even just bought a new jar of Nutella. It was then that pure wonderful began. I remembered we had a jar of non-Nutella, non-hazelnut chocolate spread. It was bought when I was alerted to the fact Nutella wasn't allowed in school 'cause of the nuts. It wasn't very nice and nobody ate it...until now.
The brownies began to smell very lovely in a short space of time and then we ate them warm from the oven with the chocolate chips still melty. Z1 gave them 58 marks out of 10. (I really must work on her grasp of numbers, fractions and rating scales.) They were also rather delicious, possibly even more so, after they had cooled. 

The satisfaction of using the jar of sweet brown not-Nutella and the tiny bit of flour is immense.


Credit where credit is due: My recipe can be downloaded from here but I adapted it from Schoochmaroo's recipe at Instructables here.

The joy of jingly bells

The wreath did not start well.
The coat hanger I was planning to use had been commandeered as a poker for a hair-blocked drain.
My brave trip to Dollarama for some materials after a day full of ballet, Advent calendar creation, Spiderman birthday party and overtired bedtime for the Zeds ended in failure when I discovered our local Dollarama closes two hours earlier on Saturdays than it does during the week.
The pair of pliers I employed for shaping a fresh coat hanger into a wreath shape was an unfit tool for the job*
Z1 seemed a lot  more interested in Garfield on the telly and Z2 was very tired.

However, I bribed the Zeds to think persuaded the Zeds that making a wreath would be a lot of lovely fun. Well, actually, I got Z2 to nap to cure his terrible twos and only had to bribe Z1.

Complete wreath

Z1's decoration materials

Our wreath is made of a coat hanger, tinsel, jingly bells, pipe cleaners and pine cones. It is adorning our porch and I am delighted. It did not capture Z1's attention at all, though, despite the sparkly tinsel. She liked the jingle bells and, while I was out in the damp air hanging the wreath, she gathered the materials you see here to make her own decoration.

In progress              Complete      

It's a Christmassy wind chime and is now prominently displayed alongside the wreath. I declare Conquering Christmas, day 2 a success.

*or perhaps I am not very good at using pliers and/or shaping coat hangers

And we're off!

The day dawned, cold and overcast with an icing sugar sprinkling of snow on the ground. After a ballet class, a short restorative visit to the bee bakery, some eggy sandwiches and dispatching Z2 off with the husband to get a birthday present for the party we were due at later, Z1 and I were ready to start to conquer Christmas. Dun dun daaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!

I'd woken up thinking about ways of perforating egg box craters so that they could be easily torn off as Advent calendar doors. I'd envisioned intact egg cartons* glued closed after placing the chocolates inside, with the egg craters projecting upwards from the lid as well as down. Dear readers, this is not how egg cartons are made (at least not the ones I have). With easy stacking in mind, rather than easy Advent calendar making, they have flat tops. To further annihilate the feasibility of my plan, the egg craters are not sealed off from each other fully, so just turning the box upside down was not an option.

Oh yes, the egg cartons
were not identical

I sat down at the kitchen table with the egg cartons in front of me to figure out what to do. I tore the lids off along the seam and put the egg crater parts upside down on the table. I decided they could be glued onto some cardboard from one of those cereal boxes I'd saved. Another obstacle became apparent - one of the egg cartons had raised bits so that it didn't sit flat. Pah! I attacked it with some venom using a scissors and cut the cereal box to size as a tray for both cartons. I drew around a coin for number labels for the craters. Preparation done.

Painting went smoothly. I had sponge tip brushes, we had red, green and sparkly pink paint and I cut out the number labels while Z1 painted away. We discussed whether ninjas were real, where they learned to be ninjas, whether our neighbour is a ninja and if teenage mutant ninja turtles really exist as we worked.

Once the paint was dry we stuck the number labels on. The relief I felt when I realised that we didn't need to fish any particular number out at any given time as they didn't need to be in order was disproportionate to how difficult that task would have been.

Colour-coordinated

Z1 expertly filled each egg crater with two Hershey's Kisses, colour-coordinating them carefully. The three silver-coloured sweets mentioned in the previous post? Well, two went into the day one egg crater and one went into Z1's mouth. She was remarkably restrained in her   begging requests for sweeties.

As I squeezed the glue around the edges of the cartons ready for the base to be attached, Z1 said it was very like We're Going on Bear Hunt. I am sure she is right but I have absolutely no idea what she meant by that, even after her explanations.

With that, it was done. My morning musings on perforations were ready to be put into action. I got a pin and began to carefully pierce evenly spaced holes in the first crater. I quickly realised that I most definitely did not have the patience to do this for 24 craters and that I was not even sure it would be an effective method of making the craters openable. The pointy scissors was nearby so I decided to make larger holes with that, through which Zed-sized thumbs could be inserted to rip off the top (formerly the bottom) of the egg craters in order to access the chocolate in a slightly more violent manner than I had pictured. Some craters were a bit too squishy from wet paint to do this. This will be dealt with when we get to those craters. Z1 was eager to open crater number one. The thumb insertion method worked with a bit of help from me. Once I decided that the opened crater looked like a volcano (rather than a torn egg carton), I felt a lot better about this method and, as I type, am pleased I used the phrase "egg crater" rather than "egg hole" throughout this as it ties in nicely with the volcano idea.

So, with a heart bursting with pride, I present to you the first craft in the Conquering Christmas series, our delightful, beautiful, volcano-reminiscent Advent calendar made from egg cartons.

The finished product complete with torn
open hole where '1' used to be. Z1 didn't completely
cover the cartons with paint. So there.

*I've settled on cartons rather than boxes

Z1 is Unpredictable

I recently had a day where I was going to have to do some work but also occupy Z1. I've done it before  with no advance warning and it was fine with the simple provision of some paper, a few pens and a treasured permanent marker ("Treasured" because I tend to be wary, for obvious reasons, of letting her use it in normal circumstances). I had the radio on, I gave occasional praise and advice on her drawings and we passed a pleasant few hours.



Folded, cut and ready to colour

This time, however, I knew in advance and was proud of my preparation. I was looking forward to some pleasant hours. I came across these easy to make paper houses and got quite excited, to be honest. I thought Z1 would love them and was slightly concerned that I was going to end up with a metropolis of paper houses that I would not be allowed to throw out. I practised in advance and had them ready for her (see left) when the time came for me to work.


The finished products

She seemed enthusiastic and we were both working away for...oooh...nearly 2 minutes, I think when she brought the blue house (which was the unfolded one in the above picture, if you're wondering) to me. It's hard to see there but she did draw smoke coming out of the chimney, which was a nice touch, but then she just scribbled. No flowers under the windows, tiles on the roof or suchlike. She did ask to do the second but I think she was just pleasing me and I found myself disappointed that I wasn't going to acquire a hamlet of paper houses, let alone the aforementioned metropolis.



Bat number 1: complete

Alternative craft

 I showed her the link up there to inspire her but she just asked me to draw her a bat, so I did. She coloured it in, cut it out, taped it to the message board and asked for more. (She went on to become distraught at her lack of bat-drawing skills but she was mostly just hungry for lunch)



Z1's photo of the paper houses

So the hours passed, more bat-filled and less house-filled than I had anticipated and then, out of the blue, she took the houses again, lined them up, and asked if she could take a photo, so here it is.

Credit where credit is due: the idea and instructions for the paper houses came from Single Married Mum's blog