Stuff We Make

Raised Garden Beds

2013-04-02T20:13:00.002-04:00

With some reluctance I’m trying raised bed gardening this year. I like the flexibility of traditional gardening where I can change the configuration and location of my plants each year. However, I have been mulching with grass clippings. This works great as long as I have enough clippings to smother out the weeds. Unfortunately, I don’t and the grass composts into the soil faster than I can cover the whole garden. When I put grass clippings in the garden, I’ve been adding weed seeds and cuttings that just make more weeds. I’m on a never ending weed treadmill. So I’m going to reduce the area I mulch with grass until it matches the amount of clippings I can produce. I am planning on making my own raised beds and filling them with a sifted soil/compost mix that I’ll sterilize with the method from the University of Guam.

Since I’m just trying out raised bed gardening, I don’t want to put in a lot of time or money making beds. So I decided to make my beds out of scrap wood. The most easily available scrap wood is old packing pallets. However, I have spent way too many hours of my life busting apart pallets and removing the nails. It’s not worth my time! I came up with a way to use pallets by sawing them instead of pulling them apart.

I sawed along the edges of the pallet stringers (see red arrows in figure). This leaves me with a number of short boards about 12 inches long. I used a pneumatic staple gun to attach the boards to two approximately 2x2 boards. The 2x2s are rip sawn to size from the packaging of snowmobiles and riding lawnmowers. I made two sides ~6ft long and the other sides ~2ft long. I had to trim the last board on each side to fit. I screwed the 2x2s together at the ends. I intentionally placed the vertical boards on the inside of the 2x2s so that the weight of the soil would press them against the 2x2s. If I put the vertical boards on the outside, the weight of the soil would pull out the relatively weak staples.

Because these beds are made of untreated lumber, I expect them to only last a few seasons in contact with the ground. By then I’ll know if I want to keep on with raised bed gardening and make more permanent beds.

Campfire Cake

2012-08-16T12:09:00.001-04:00

I made a campfire cake for our seven year old's campfire birthday party!

The "rocks" for the campfire are chocolate raisins and Jelly Belly "Belly Flops" Irregular Jelly Beans from Dollar Tree. The campfire "wood" is honey wheat pretzels. For the fire, I happened to have some largish orange Hanukkah candles I'd bought on clearance a while back. I frosted sugar cones for the trees. I think the fire will look great when it's lit! I tried to elevate one of the cones with a pretzel rod for the tree trunk, but the frosted cone was so heavy that we had a couple of "Timberrrr!!!" incidents, so I gave up on raising it up. For the tree to the right of the tent I did break off the cone a little to make it smaller, for variety. I frosted "grass" around the edges of the cake and used green sprinkles and nonpareils to make the grass on top more interesting. The tent is made from two chocolate Pop Tarts.

Update:
Here's my happy seven year old with his blazing campfire! This little redhead makes me happy every day!

Graduation Cupcakes

2012-05-18T17:53:00.000-04:00

My cousin Joey is graduating, so our girls (ages 9 & 11) made some graduation cupcakes to celebrate! We got our inspiration from What's New, Cupcake? by Karen Tack & Alan Richardson.

First, we frosted a batch of cupcakes in Joey's school colors. My go-to cupcake recipe is Starlight Yellow Cake from Betty Crocker (1991). To make a graduation hat cupcake topper, just invert a small peanut butter cup, and affix a chocolate square with a dollop of frosting. You could also use chocolate dipped cookies, but the ones I found at the store were too rectangular, so the chocolate squares worked better for us. We snipped up some Fruit by the Foot for the tassel. We melted a bit of chocolate to stick the tassels to the mortarboards.

Happy Graduation, Joey!!

Homemade Popsicles

2012-02-24T23:02:00.003-05:00

Our 9 year old wanted to make clownfish popsicles using the instructions from PBSKids. However, she decided to use red Kool Aid instead of orange juice. So they are very dark red clownfish.

Crayon Wrapper Mosaics

2012-02-15T11:57:00.001-05:00

Remember how Daddy and two of his short friends peeled the wrappers off of a gazillion crayons? If I had been making crayons, the ripped up wrappers would have gone in the trash. But when Daddy's in charge, the trash becomes... art!

Our favorite nine year old patiently made these crayon wrapper mosaics!

Heart-Shaped Crayon

2012-02-14T17:02:00.000-05:00

When I came back from a weekend in Pennsylvania for our eleven-year-old's piano performance, I walked in the door to find a clean house, dinner in the crock pot, flowers on the table and happy children! (Maybe I should go away more often!) Our nine year old was so excited--she'd been making crayons with Daddy. He took a break from making alligator and leopard crayons to cast this big crayon for me, using a soap mold to make it heart shaped!

Maybe next year we'll make heart-shaped crayons for the kids to give to their school friends for Valentine's Day. This heart was palm-sized, so we'd need to find a smaller mold unless we happen upon a giant stash of crayons in the meantime! Also, we would need to create a cute little label so the crayons wouldn't be mistaken as candy. This was the first year that our kids were not allowed to bring candy to school. Luckily, I had a stash of bouncy balls, glow sticks, and kazoos I could use this year, but I'm thinking ahead for candy-free ideas for next time!

We Make Music!

2012-02-13T10:07:00.000-05:00

Suzuki Piano Book 2: Minuet 2 (Minuet in G major) from J. S. Bach's Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach

“Hacking” a Crayola Crayon Maker

2012-02-12T19:20:00.015-05:00

I got a brand new Crayola Crayon Maker at a garage sale for $3. It requires a light bulb that is not included as a heat source. However, they do include perfectly good crayons for you to break up and melt. This seems odd to me. Anyone in the target market for the product will have plenty of old crayons, but not everyone has a 60 watt small base candelabra bulb. When I finally got around to using the unit, I didn’t feel like going out to buy a bulb. So my daughter and I decided to improvise. We decided to use the molds from the set (in regular crayon and animal shapes!) and melt our old crayons on the stove in a tin can double boiler.

It is necessary to use a double boiler. DO NOT simply melt crayons on the stove. They will overheat, smoke, and catch fire. To make a spout on the can, I snipped the top about 1 cm and bent the flaps out.

If I put the can straight in a pan of boiling water bubbles will form in the concave space underneath the can and cause it to bump around. So I put a tin can lid with can opener holes punched in it. This elevates the tin can and allows the bubbles to escape without shaking the can.

I placed the lid in the bottom of an old saucepan and put the tin can with a spout on top. I then fill the pan with about 1 cm of water.

We peeled the labels off of our leftover crayon stubs and sorted them by color.

We placed the crayons in the tin can and turned the heat on. If you are going to melt different shades of crayons in the same tin can, start with the lightest shade first, because the leftovers of a darker shade will tint the following color.

I placed the mold into the holder on the crayon maker. This is a convenient way to hold the molds upright. When the crayons were completely melted, I used pliers to hold the tin can and pour the goop into the molds. When the wax was hard enough not to slosh out, I placed the molds in the freezer to accelerate the cooling process for 5-15 minutes. The crayons popped right out of the silicone molds.

How to Make Your Own Telescope

2012-01-25T16:36:00.003-05:00

This post is brought to you by our favorite eleven year old!

I had a very big science assignment to make an optical instrument and write an instruction manual. I chose to make a telescope (it was originally meant to be a Galilean Telescope, but that didn’t work out). Here’s how I made my awesome zebra print telescope!

Materials to find/buy:

A concave/convex lens. I got mine at American Science and Surplus.
A big double convex lens. I got this by buying a magnifying glass and snapping off the handle. This needs to be much bigger than the concave/convex lens.
Two mailing tubes- one should be bigger than the other, but the difference in size shouldn’t be ludicrous. It would work best if the tubes were fairly close in size to their intended lenses. Notice I said fairly- they just need to be very roughly estimated.
Foam
Cloth. Make sure it doesn’t clash with your telescope’s color.
Patterned duct tape. Preferably peace signs, zebra print, pink, or lime green, but if you’re a guy you might want something different. I suppose that you could use paint (but that’s not as cool as duct tape) or not decorate it at all (and THAT’S just plain lame).
Foamy stickers. Read Step 6 to determine if they are needed.

Steps:

1. Hold your lenses, big one farther away and little one near your eye. Look through the small lens and move the big lens closer and farther away. When you see maximum magnification have someone else measure how far away the lenses are. REMEMBER THIS NUMBER!!!

2. Now you need to experiment with your tubes. Mark a section on each tube that is the measurement that you figured out before. So if you measured 4 ½ inches, you need 4 ½ inches of each tube. Saw out these sections.

3. If you’re going to duct tape this telescope, you better do it now! Wrap the tubes in duct tape. If you’re going to paint it, wait. If you’re not going to decorate it, CHANGE YOUR MIND NOW!!!

4. Trace the outline of your small tube onto a piece of foam. Cut it out with a craft knife. Then, trace the outline of your small lens onto the circle of foam. Then cut it out with a craft knife. Yes, the tracing, NOT the lens!

5. You need to work fast at this point to prevent the hot glue from hardening before its put together. Your foam should look like a donut right now. Run a line of hot glue around the donut hole, and then quickly and carefully insert the small lens into the donut hole. Straighten it.

6. If the difference in size between the big lens and the tube is significant, then repeat step 5. If not, then stick some foamy stickers near the edge of the inside of the tube and glue the lens straight into the tube. The same goes for the small tube/lens. If you think you need to because the lens and tube are way different sizes, then use the foam donut method. If not, use foamies.

7. Wrap about 2/3 of the end of the small tube in cloth that doesn’t clash with your duct tape. I glued, wrapped, glued, wrapped, etc. Do this until there is enough cloth covering the tube that the tubes slide easily and they are snug.

8. Stick the tubes inside each other. The cloth covered end should be the end that’s farther away from your eye.

If you’re painting the telescope, you should do it now. Otherwise, happy telescoping!!!

Teaching Kids about Sound Waves

2011-10-16T19:08:00.002-04:00

For Sunday Science this week, Daddy got out the function generator to teach the kids about sound waves. David and I could hear sounds up to about 14-15 kHz and the kids could hear sounds up to 17 kHz. We suspect that Mr. Two Year Old could hear higher frequency sounds, though, as he was covering up his ears when no one else could hear a thing!

Rocket Cake

2011-08-15T19:51:00.003-04:00

I made a rocket cake for our six year old's birthday today! The big flash at the bottom of the cake is not a camera malfunction--it's six lighted birthday candles, powering the rocket for lift off!

Cake Plans: Family Fun
Recipe: Black Midnight Cake (Betty Crocker, 1991). This is my go-to chocolate cake recipe. It calls for cocoa (a staple in my pantry) rather than unsweetened chocolate (which I buy only on occasion), so I always have the right ingredients on hand. This chocolate cake is super easy and better than a box cake any day!

2 1/4 cups flour
1 2/3 sugar
2/3 cup cocoa
3/4 cup shortening
1 1/4 cups water
1 1/4 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs

Beat on high for 3 minutes, bake at 350 for 40-45 minutes.

Photo Puzzle

2011-07-21T15:14:00.011-04:00

I used Mathematica to create an interactive photo puzzle using pictures of our kids!

Download the free Wolfram CDF Player to play with this interactive photo puzzle. You make a move by clicking on a piece next to the empty space.

Source code from Yu Sung Chang's PicturePuzzle Wolfram Demonstration. Also see Jon McLoone's SliderPuzzle, another cool Wolfram Demonstration.

Mulching the Garden

2011-07-21T08:05:00.004-04:00

A friend of ours gave David some spoiled hay for mulching the garden. Now our five year old really believes we live on a farm. We've got a giant garden, a raspberry patch, some apple trees, six chickens, and a freckle-faced redhead who wears his John Deere shirt whenever it's clean. I guess all we needed was a few bales of hay to make our "farm" complete!

Taylor Swift Folders

2011-07-19T08:34:00.002-04:00

Remember last year's Taylor Swift folders? Well, our favorite ten year old is at it again. Last time we laminated Taylor Swift onto a bunch of two-pocket folders. This time, our soon-to-be fifth grader is using Mod Podge to stick Miss Swift and silvery glitter on her otherwise blah 10 cent folders. Stay tuned... I noticed some Harry Potter pictures in the collage pile!

Cheap Chocolate

2011-05-08T20:32:00.003-04:00

We found solid 1 pound milk chocolate Easter Bunnies on sale at Walmart for 75% off. That comes out to $0.87/lb for chocolate. We bought a dozen. They can be cut up or grated for baking. Our 10 year old likes to melt chocolate and dip strawberries or pretzels in it. Much cheaper than chocolate chips!

Pot of Gold Cake

2011-03-17T15:49:00.001-04:00

It's super easy to make a St. Patrick's Day "Pot of Gold" cake! Simply make a bundt cake, frost it generously with chocolate frosting (I reserved some frosting to pipe on details like the pot rim and some shamrocks). Fill the "pot" with chocolate coins, and there you have it! So easy!

P.S. Check out our other St. Patrick's Day posts!

Leprechaun Trap

2011-03-17T15:33:00.005-04:00

How do a couple of eight year olds go about catching a leprechaun? With a little help from Family Fun!

Here's how my favorite eight year old and her buddy made a leprechaun trap!

The girls made a rainbow out of construction paper, and glued it to some cardboard from a cereal box to help it stand up better.

For projects like this, I keep some Elmer's Glue in a Cool Whip container and have the kids paint on the glue with q-tips. The wide shape of the Cool Whip container works great when more than one kid is trying to use the glue at once. I just put the lid on the container and pull it out again the next time we have a "gluey" project!

Take a look at Family Fun's Rainbow Cage Drop instructions to see how we assembled the trap! I helped the girls affix a bent clothes hanger to the back of the trap. We fastened thread to a small Dixie cup in covered in batting and strung up the cup on loop in the bent hanger. The other end of the thread is weighted down by some promotional golden coins we use for play money. You'll need something with a bit of weight to hold down the string, and the container you use for a "trap" can't be too heavy.

A Hagrid Lego figure made for a perfect leprechaun! The girls made a golden path to the treasure with vintage bastel folie that my in-laws brought back from Austria years ago. (I couldn't find a local source for bastel folie, so if you aren't in the mood to go to Europe for your kids' craft supplies, I'm sure a golden glitter path would entice the leprechauns just as well!)

I'm sure that Hagrid Leprechaun is pretty greedy... Look! I think he's about to grab the booby-trapped coin!!

P.S. Check out our other St. Patrick's Day posts!

Tie-Dyed St. Patrick's Day Cookies

2011-03-16T21:35:00.001-04:00

I'm not particularly a fan of pre-made cookie dough, but when I saw some tubes of Christmas sugar cookie dough on clearance for 50 cents, I had to snag it (The stuff didn't expire for like six months, right? Wait--I'm not going to think about that too much.)

So take some sugar cookie dough (with green Christmas trees on it), two eight year olds, and a half an hour on a Saturday morning. Set the eight year olds loose with a rolling pin and some cookie cutters. Help them with the hot hot oven...

...and voila! You've got tie-dyed St. Patrick's Day cookies!

Now all you've got to do is watch out for the sneaky leprechauns!

P.S. Check out our other St. Patrick's Day posts!

Wacky Day

2011-02-11T09:49:00.010-05:00

Eat your heart out, Willow Smith, it's Wacky Day at fourth grade today!

I knew there was a reason I had saved those rad scrunchies from 1988!!!

Vintage Baby Leopard Costume

2010-10-29T13:57:00.001-04:00

For Halloween this year, my baby is wearing a little leopard costume that my mom made for me in 1977!

My little leopard was smiling until the tin man poked him in the head with his funnel hat. Oh well! I love this picture anyway! Hermione (age 10), Jaguar (age 7.93), Tin Man (age 5), and Leopard (13.5 months).

Upcycled Workbench

2010-10-26T13:37:00.035-04:00

I made a new workbench out of an old industrial sewing machine table.

The table was in the corner of a basement full of old furniture at a tag sale. The sellers said to just haul the table away for free. Unfortunately, it didn’t come with the sewing machine attached.

I removed the motor, pedal, and large zinc diecast base. I saved the zinc for metal casting and stashed the big motor (with a pulley!).

Because of the big hole where the sewing machine sat I had to cover the top surface. The table sat in the basement for a year until I found a piece of scrap wood that was large enough to cover the table and strong enough to be a workbench top. I used a ¾ inch plywood sheet from a discarded jet engine crate. However, it had sat in the weather too long and was too rough to make a good workbench top, so I covered it with a scrap 1/8 inch plywood sheet. I screwed the ¾ inch plywood to the surface. I didn’t use any fasteners on the 1/8 inch plywood. I used cheap construction adhesive to attach both pieces of plywood and weighted them down with cinder blocks and electric motors from my stash.

I attached a lower shelf made of more ¾ inch plywood jet engine crate.

The only things I needed to buy were the carriage bolts for attaching the shelf (I didn’t have the right length in the Fastener Cabinet of Wonders) and the construction adhesive for gluing on the top. The paint was, of course, a mistint. Everything in my 2-car workshop is slowly turning olive drab. It’s beginning to look a bit militaristic down there.

You can tell the age of anything in my workshop by the color of the mistint can in use when it was painted or acquired. Rustoleum Rusty Metal Primer=2000-2004, Light Chocolate Cream=2004-2007, Olive drab=2007-present.

Edible Animals

2010-10-14T11:27:00.005-04:00

At our local fair there's a hilarious "Edible Animals" contest. This year David threw together a creepy little spider...


Edible Animal Spider. Cephalothorax=Delicata Squash, Abdomen=Cucumber, Legs=Overgrown Okra!

Those jalapeño fangs bite!!! I love the triceratops David made for the fair in 2008. How's that for a creative way to use zucchini?

Edible animal triceratops made from Greyzini Zucchini

That year, when our oldest was seven, she made an Edible Animal Wasp for the kids' contest. She used an eggplant for the body, and a weird yellow squash cut in half lengthwise for the wings.

And last, but not least, I give you "Greeny the Field Snake," 100% designed and constructed, start to finish, by our younger daughter for the 2008 Fair. Not bad for a five year old!

All these silly animals remind me of a couple of books we've checked out so often, it's almost as if we own them! Food Play and Fast Food, both by Joost Elffers and Saxton Freymann.

Excuse me now, it's lunchtime, and now I'm in the mood to play with some food!

Awesome Banana Bread

2010-10-13T14:43:00.001-04:00

Why does this nine year old look so tired? Well, on the day our entries for the fair were due, she got up extra early to work on just one more entry! Such motivation! Such determination! I love this girl!

She made "Awesome Banana Bread" for the King Arthur Flour Baking Contest. How did her banana bread fare at the fair?

Ladies and gentlemen, we have a first place winner!

Not bad for a nine year old competing against a bunch of teenagers! All the entrants had to follow the same recipe. This banana bread was aptly named--it really is awesome! We will definitely be adding this recipe to our repertoire!

Awesome Banana Bread
Recipe by the King Arthur Flour Company
2 large eggs
1 cup sugar
1/3 cup vegetable oil
1 cup ripe mashed bananas (2-3 bananas)
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon nutmeg
2 2/3 cups king Arthur All-purpose flour
1 cup plain yogurt
1 cup of chopped walnuts

Preheat oven to 350˚F. Grease and flour a 9 x 5-inch loaf pan.

In a medium size bowl beat together eggs, sugar, and oil. Stir in mashed bananas. In a separate bowl, whisk together baking soda, baking powder, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg and flour. Quickly add all the dry ingredients to the banana mixture. stir in yogurt and nuts. stir just until combined. Pour mixture into prepared pan.

Bake 1 hour. let bread rest for 10 minutes. Remove bread from pan and cool on a rack.

Scarecrow

2010-09-16T13:53:00.001-04:00

Two years ago, our little brown-eyed girl won a big blue first place ribbon at the fair for her scarecrow, "Cowboy Cupcake."

His mustache is above his nose--isn't he great?! I love his wristwatch and his cupcake belt buckle. We can't wait for the fair this weekend!

Birthday Train Cake

2010-09-09T22:32:00.004-04:00

For my baby's first birthday today, I tried out my new Nordic Ware Train Cake Pan.

I was impressed that the detailed little cakes released from the pan so easily. Phew! I decorated this cake super fast, before rushing to get the kids off the bus and heading off to piano lessons.

My little buddy boy liked his train cake...

...and the little cupcake-sized cars were perfect for him to cram two-handed into his mouth all at once!

For a larger party, I think it would be fun to make a loooonnng train cake. It could wind all over the place if you really went crazy. You could even pipe the names of individual guests on each train car. The train cars are about the size of a large muffin, so each little cake is just the right size for one party guest! Also, I'm thinking about a Christmas train cake, a Spooky train cake... How about a Love Train cake?!