Kool-Aid Bag Giveaway

Time for back-to-school shopping already! It must be. Just look at the grocery store. The slip-n-slides, goggles and floaty toys have been replaced with folders, paper and backpacks. So okay, it's back-to-school how do you score a Kool-Aid pencil bag? (We have 3 pencil bags to share! "Oh-yeah!")

Leave us a comment and tell us how you are going back to school "earth friendly" - just make a list - and tell us which is your very favorite! That's it. You can add your comments to this post until August 31st at 9pm MST. We'll post the winners on the blog, so check back to see if you got a bag and to find out how to contact us. (We'll put all comment-ors names into a hat and select randomly.)

Here are a few of the cooler things I've seen so far:

• 100% Cotton Canvas backpacks (organic)
  
• Kool-Aid Drink, Pencil bag (recycled)
  
• Lunch bags (reusable, lead free, cotton)
  
• Cool Sigg Water Bottles (reuseable, worth saving your allowance for)*

*Something to think about: Sigg water bottles cost more than the cheaper bottles, but they don't leech stuff from plastic into your water. Using a reusable bottle like a Sigg means you're not creating waste each time you drink a bottled water from the store, gas station, wherever.

Good luck!

How to Make Pancakes

Pancakes are pretty easy to make and if you coordinate with the "cook" in your house, you can probably take over cooking a meal with these little beauties.
PANCAKE INGREDIENTS
(Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook, pg. 72)
1 C Flour, 1 T Sugar, 2 t Baking Powder, 1/4 t Salt
1 Egg, 1 C Milk, 2 T Cooking Oil, 1/2 t Vanilla (optional)

Add the dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking powder and salt) into a mixing bowl, give this a quick stir to combine. Next break the egg into a bowl (in case the egg is bad then you don't ruin the flour and everything) using a fork, gently mix (break the yolk) then add the egg to the mixing bowl (don't mix it in yet). Add the milk, oil and vanilla. With a wire whisk, mix until combined. There might still be a few lumps of flour here and there, this is okay!
HOW TO COOK THE PANCAKES:
IMPORTANT: DON'T GET DISTRACTED OR THEY'LL BURN!
Be careful around the stove, turn it off when you're done and make sure the grown up in the house knows you're cooking. Have hot pads nearby.

1. Put frying pan (no-stick or black skillet) on the stove on low medium heat 4-5 setting
2. Add a bit of butter to the pan, like the amount you use to butter your toast (repeat this each time you fry a pancake). Use the spatula to spread the butter around.
3. Take a 1/2 C measuring cup and spoon out some batter and pour it into the pan creating a circle the size of a saucer. When cooking more than one pancake try not to let them touch or they make the Godzilla size pancake that is not fun to flip, or has to be cut and is not a thing of golden fluffy beauty on the plate.
4. When they start blowing bubbles (see the image below) - well when the bubbles actually start popping you're ready to flip the pancake and you won't end up with batter everywhere. Slide the spatula under the pancake and flip it over.
5. Cook until golden. Give it 2-3 minutes before you flip it over to check the color. If your unsure if it's done cut it open to see if it's still doughy. You'll get the hang of how long it takes to cook them.
6. Turn off the stove and put the pan on hot pad to cool and serve the pancakes warm with butter and syrup.

Pancakes ready to be flipped.

Alice In Wonderland Gallery

Welcome to the Alice in Wonderland gallery. We hope you enjoy your stay. More art will be posted as it is sent in from artists of all ages.

1. "You can learn a lot of things from the flowers..." by Suzanne Nikolaisen

Art Challenge: Alice in Wonderland

Have you heard about Tim Burton's version of Alice in Wonderland?
Image courtesy Walt Disney Pictures and Wired.

Art Challenge
Fall down the rabbit hole and take a photo or sketch of you and merge it with another picture or two to come up with an Alice in Wonderland themed picture. (If you don't want to use your picture, just create something with the theme) If you're not using Photoshop, but maybe magazine clippings to create a montage or if you decide to sketch or paint, take a picture of your art. Send images to nikolaisen at yahoo dot com. All submissions must be PG or will be discarded. I'll post the images as I receive them. Can't wait to see what you come up with! (PS please send original art and list any image sources used - thanks!)

For Photoshoppers:
Just a tip about how to do this using Photoshop. Photoshop allows you to have layers, as discussed in the first lesson. Maybe you take a great picture of your favorite tea cup and open that, consider that your background. Next take a photo of you. Open the photo and copy and paste it onto the teacup photo. Next select the eraser (shaped like a pink pearl eraser on the side toolbar) and start erasing the background surrounding you on the photo. You'll start to see the teacup emerge from the layer underneath your photo. You can change the size of the eraser in the bar across the top of the screen under the "brush" dropdown. You can zoom in to get a clear idea of what you need to erase by going to the view dropdown at the top of the screen and clicking on zoom in (CMD + on the Mac, I think CTRL + on the PC) to get back to seeing the whole image select "fit on screen."

S.O.S.

No this doesn't have anything to do with the Jonas Brother's but it does have to do with family. Recently there has been a lot of talk about ancestors at our house and my husband and I have begun to search for our missing ancestors (a.k.a. genealogy) , and through that found a family history challenge for all ages on wiki. family search.
https://wiki.familysearch.org/en/Main_Page from there click on the highlighted words "family history activities page" in the News and Updates section.

The Summer of Sleuthing Challenge has links to make family trees (standard or Tigger-iffic versions), as well as a coloring page and tips on interviewing relatives. That could get awfully creative! Maybe you could make a book, or a family newspaper, or a video, or a slideshow with pictures and music? I have even seen journals that have questions in them so one can write things down. Sometimes it is hard to think of things on the spot, for the interviewer and the interviewee. The important thing is to start asking questions like any good sleuth would do!
They also suggest keeping a journal of your finds and experiences, perhaps with your family.

Several years ago my dad interviewed his mother over the period of a few days. He thought of some questions to spark her memory and just let her talk while the video recorder ran and if they needed to they checked dates and added it the next day. That is really priceless to me now, especially since none of my children got to meet my paternal grandmother. She passed away when Lauren was a baby and we lived overseas.

Here comes a story (forgive my wordiness).... I didn't get a long well in my teenage years with my maternal grandmother.Later in my teens one day, just as an experiment - you know, the kind that adults tell you to try to bridge the generation gap - I asked her what she did when she was a teenager for fun. I think she was a bit surprised, and I didn't know if I really wanted to hear, but as she told me about her and her friends gathering up things from their homes and riding horses to the beach and roasting corn in a fire, I found myself very interested and realized my grandma was kind of cool. She had done a lot of things that I could see myself being interested in. I knew that I got some artistic talent from her, but didn't think, or refused to think, there was anything else until then - we were actually kind of alike! (Including the fact that we both thought we were right. My mom, wisely already knew this. :) Not that I ever went and roasted corn on the beach, but the way she described her outings with friends reminded me of myself and my group of friends. I was able to see her in a way I never had before and my heart softened towards her from then on, even if we never became chums. I just kept finding more and more things we had in common. Even after she passed, going through her things with family (a lot of rocks- no wonder we all love rocks- it must be genetic!) and then reading some of her journal and a paper she had written about cats for a class she took in her 60's. I realized there are a lot of things I admired about her life, from her fearlessness to her unashamed quirkiness. Quirky is okay- we are all quirky in our own ways, aren't we?

Perhaps you might have time during your family vacation to ask a few questions? It doesn't have to be a huge production, but learning a few things about our family members can really help us appreciate them. Not to mention, it gives us a glimpse at ourselves that we may not see. A-AND using the dates from your family tree can direct you to some historical fiction at the library that might give you a better idea of what life was like when your grandma was growing up. What if she was a little girl when Kit Kitteridge was? Everyone has a story...