Old Glory Run 5K

 Rain or Shine.  When I sign up for these events and see rain or shine on the form, I never even give it a second thought because, of course, it is going to be shine.  Well, joke was on me this morning, it was rain.  And not just sprinkles. It was heavy rain.  

It didn't stop us though. 

See, we are still smiling at the end!

Tie Dye Easter Eggs - Pinterest Buster

Soak the hard boiled egg for a few minutes in vinegar to ready the shell to take up as much dye as possible. Wrap the egg in a paper towel securing it with a twist tie.

Put a few drops of food coloring randomly on the paper towel.

Spritz with a spray bottle set on mist to make the colors bleed.

Leaving the eggs in the paper towel, set them in front of a fan until the towel is dry.

Open them up and if they aren't completely dry leave them in front of the fan for a few more minutes.

These turned out stunning!

They have a sort of night time, celestial sky look to them.

Dying Easter Eggs with Cool Whip - Pinterest Buster

This was so simple I wish I had known about this when my kids were little.  

Put a container of Cool Whip in a cake pan.  Dot with several different colors of food coloring.  Swirl the color around with a tooth pick, not too much though or it turns laundry lint grey.  We wore gloves for easy clean up.

Roll the hard boiled eggs in the Cool Whip until they are completely covered.  Let sit for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, take the eggs out and gingerly rinse them in a bowl of water so as not to disturb the color.  Allow to dry and they are good to go.

Give the leftover Cool Whip to your chickens.

Easter Bunny Origami - Pinterest Busters

A Tale of Two Bunnies

  The first one had over 20 steps to make this little bunny basket that will hold small trinkets.  Cute on the web site, but didn't work for us.  

Dancer would say this pin is busted.  Maybe if you are skilled in the art of origami, but for the beginner this is not a winner.

Second bunny had only nine folds and we successfully made a whole fluffle of bunnies.  The bunny stands up and you can brighten up your Easter table by using them as name place cards.  We have to say that this pin is winner, winner, bunny dinner.

Cinnamon Roll Easter Bunny - Pinterest Busters

Pinterest - the little corner of the world where everything is beautiful and perfect. One of the things our homeschool co-op likes to do is see if all that perfection is real or a ruse.  This week we tackled a few Easter pins. 

Since our co-op is three boys, we tend to navigate towards food pins and tried the cinnamon roll Easter bunnies.  The boys bravely opened the cans of premade cinnamon rolls.  Those things scare the crap out of me, but they didn't even flinch.

They spread out the rolls for the head and cut one roll apart to have dough for the ears.  The directions stated to leave a space in the middle of the ear to allow for the dough to grow.  Pop them in the oven following the baking directions on the can if you haven't already thrown the can away.

After frosting we added a couple chocolate chips for eyes and a nose.  They turned out pretty cute and delicious.

We would call this pin a success because, even if you make the ears to short, you have cinnamon roll bears.

Celebrating National Days

There is a national day for just about everything under sun. They range from the common, such as, Grandparents Day, that even gets a mention on most calendars, to the uncommon celebration of the rather morbid National Life Insurance Day. Over the last couple of years we have added celebrating these days into our homeschool.  We mostly focus on the days that are food related or one that can be celebrated with food. The first reason for the food focus is our co-op is teenage boys, who are always looking for something to eat, and secondly, teenage boys are not interested in making a craft that goes along with a theme.  There might be one, or maybe even two out there, but I don't know them.

In the last few days we have celebrated National Milkshake Day, I recommend peanut butter

and National Cheeseburger Day.

There are lots of websites out there to tell you what day it is, here is one to get you started National Day Calendar. I can tell you, I have my eye on the up coming National Ice Cream Cone Day (19th) and National Corn Beef Hash Day (27th).  

The Four Pound Hamburger and Three Pounds of Fries

Yep, that right, a 1-2-3-4 pound burger.  The boys in our co-op like to eat...a lot...and often. We thought, "Why not combine one of our favorite shows on the Travel Channel, Man vs. Food, and their seemingly hollow legs?" Our hypothesis was - is it possible to make a burger big enough along with fries to completely fill them up?  I'll tell you at the end.

First, the burger had to be made.  This took about 1 1/2 hours.  Thinking that they wouldn't be able to get down straight burger because it would be too dry, Dad mixed in a couple of eggs and crackers making it sort of like meatloaf.  He patted in a cast iron skillet because it would be too big to flip and it had to be cooked in a pan that could also go in the oven.  Before it hit the oven, he fried it on the stove to get the bottom done and then baked it in the oven.  After baking it was "flippable" so out of the oven came the burger.  Back on the stovetop it was flipped so that both sides were fried.

While that was cooking he sliced the bun.  In this case the only bun we could find big enough without having to make our own was a Kings Hawaiian round bread.

Toasted his bun in another frying pan.

Took it out of the oven when the liquids ran clear and it was cooked completely through.

Next came the layers of cheese. By now this behemoth smelled so good it could have been used as a torture device for getting people to talk.

Slapped on some mayo and a lettuce leaf.

Gingerly laid that bad boy on the bun and deposited a few rings of onion on the top.

Pickles on the side, three pounds of fries and lunch was ready to be served.

Ready to dig in.

We sliced it into wedges and 

they started eating.  

So can our boys eat a gigantic burger and a pound of fries apiece? 

The answer is......

no.  

They put a really good dent in it, but they just couldn't finish it.

As an aside, looking at the picture now it looks like they were throwing back a  beer with it, but that was innocent apple juice. It was a fun lunch and they were quiet the rest of the afternoon. Perhaps they were napping.

Homemade vs. Store Bought OREOs

Our homeschool co-op is all boys and they like to eat so we do a lot of cooking when we get together.  The mom's don't complain either ;)

  

We were talking and realized that you never hear about people making homemade OREOs.  So the boys tried their hand at it.  The recipe they made was from the web site momables.

They cut them out with a shot glass (or a two table spoon sampler as Spark calls it) which was the perfect size.

The verdict?  If you have a hankering for OREOs, then buy the real thing.  The homemade are delicious, but they aren't OREOs, they taste more like the chocolate waffle cookies I made as a kid.

Grilled Cheese in the Oven - Pinterest Busters

Our Helmets Required co-op got together for another round of Pinterest Busters, this time trying out if you can make a good grilled cheese in the oven.

After readying the sandwiches as you would to make them in a pan, we put them on cookie sheets.  We tried regular metal sheets and the Pampered Chef stones.  Put the sandwiches on one sheet and cover them with another.  The oven was preheated to 350 degrees and we popped them in.

About 20 minutes later, about the time I could have made at least 20 sandwiches on the stove, we had six flat, pale, dry sandwiches.  We put them back in for about another 5-10 minutes and they did brown up a bit, but again they were dry.  They did work better on the metal sheets than the stones.

Dancer cranked the oven up to 400 degrees and that sandwich did turn out looking more like a proper grilled cheese sandwich.  We could probably play around with the temperature and the type of cookie sheet we used to make them better.  However, our recommendation is, if you have a frying pan and a burner, make them on the stove not in it.  We would call this pin semi-busted, yes we made grilled cheese, but it was substandard.

The boys also made TF2 (Team Fortress 2) steam game sandviches.  Sandvich, it's suppose to sound Russian.  What they wanted to know is if the sandvich tasted good.  Surprise!  It did!  I think that was a creative way on their part to ensure lunch during co-op ;) 

Quarry Walk

We live near the "Granite City," named so because granite was, and still is, a huge industry in the area.  This quarry was started in 1863 by two Scotsmen and closed in 1950.  The park opened to the public in 1993.  I will use the term "to the public" loosely because it is a popular swimming hole and my dad has pictures of him, and many others, swimming and picnicking her in the 1940's.

Besides being able to "legally" swim in the 116 feet deep quarries, there are several miles of groomed walking and skiing trails.  It was beautiful to wander through the trails and pick up a few geocaches while we are at it.   

On this trip we were with our homeschool co-op Helmet Required friends.  

At this quarry, one of 20,  these two geese were almost across to the other side.  We took our cameras and started taking their picture (the beauty of the place is not captured on these photos).  As we were snapping away, they can swimming over to us and we swear, started posing.  As soon as we put our cameras away, they swam off.   Hmmm, a little wild life vanity?  

Minecraft Bakery

Endermen

Cake, that all it has for a name, cake.

Creeper

The bakers.  Now let the eating begin!

Christmas Party!

Another tradtion, again because we did it last year, was the Helmets Required Christmas party.  They were barely in the door before the present opening begain.

We made pizzas in various Chirstmas themed shapes.  This is a snowman in case it isn't obvious.

This is how boys celebrate.  Three chairs lined up playing games for hours on end.  A good time was had by all!