Fit for an Elf

BUDDY BREAKFAST:  Today started out a little crazy. While I was in the shower, CJ came upstairs and called at me, "Can we have the Buddy breakfast this morning?"

Ugh. Yes. That. What was I thinking promising him we could do that today?

"Yes," I called. "Tell your dad to put some boiling water on."

After I got out of the shower CJ called upstairs saying, "Dad said 'No.' "

I yelled downstairs that I'd promised CJ that was his breakfast today (he'd been asking for a couple of weeks now), and on the pot of water went. 

The breakfast is inspired by Buddy the elf, from CJ's favorite Christmas movie, "Elf." Buddy really, Really, REALLY likes sugar (it's an elf thing, apparently). He's forever pouring maple syrup into and onto things, and in once scene in the movie he makes breakfast. The ingredients? Spaghetti, and the items pictured below.

Once the noodles were done, the kids poured maple syrup on. LOTS of maple syrup, 'cause that's how ya do it.

Next up? Sprinkles. Because sprinkles make EVERYTHING better!

Then it was time for some mini marshmallows and a liberal serving of Hershey's chocolate syrup.

Atop that: A handful of M&Ms, of course. 

And to top it all off, a Chocolate Fudge Pop Tart crumbled on top. 

Isn't it glorious? (insert gagging noises here)

Bee got two bites into it and called it good. I had to steal the plate away from CJ after about four or five bites. He would have eaten it all (shudder, shudder). 

So there, we've done it, and now we don't have to ever do it again. Until maybe next year. ;)

MARKER MAKER:  We took a field trip to Capitol Hill today, and while there, visited the very interesting Value Village in the neighborhood. (It's on three stories, in a decrepit old building full of interesting shoppers and employees.)

Annabelle spied a Crayola Marker Maker kit on a shelf in the toy section. Per Amazon, it's $40 for a brand new one. We paid $2.99 for a darn near new one! (Annabelle went through it carefully in the store, and saw the kit was intact, so score!)

Once we got home, she got right to production, carefully reading the directions and lining out the equipment. 

There was a color chart in the kit, and using their formulas, she was able to produce some pretty colored pens. It required careful measuring.

When the 'formula' was ready, she dipped an absorbent swab into it. It wicked up the color, and then the swab was transferred to the marker tube, in which she'd already inserted a nib. 

The marker was then capped, and voila! Custom colored marker!

A pretty eggplant was her first creation. 

We even experimented with my commercial grade food colorings, and made an edible ink marker!

DEAL O' THE DAY: Look at the book we scored for 99 cents at Value Village today! Super cool - and by the publishers at Scientific American, no less. 

And once CJ and Annabelle read it, we'll donate it to Rick's third grade classroom, so other kids can enjoy it.

SPACEX POSTPONED:  No fresh fruit or Christmas presents for the astronauts on board the ISS. Today, SpaceX announced their cargo resupply mission is postponed until January. Bummer!  They cited So we'll have to wait until 2015 Well, the big ol' 

Sugar Coated

COOKIE KOOKY:  No blog post Tuesday evening, as I was crusted over in powdered sugar for about 9 hours yesterday, making it a bad idea for me to be near the computer.

Yesterday I put together 30 cookie kits, each of which involved a hand cut sugar cookie, a Rice Krispies treat, a double handful of white fondant (made from scatch), and three other fondant balls (brown, red and green, which I whipped up). The kids helped assemble bags of assorted candies for decorations. And then about 10:30 p.m. I started decorating gingerbread cookies (kinda creepy Star Wars ones) I'd baked earlier that day, as a couple of teacher gifts. 

This morning at 6:50, we loaded all the cookie kits into Kennedy's car in the dark, rainy alley so he could take it to his classroom. 

Meanwhile, we spent a couple of hours in Shoreline today at classes - the kids' last of the year (2014). It was ugly sweater day, and Annabelle was resplendent in a horrid pink acrylic number from the 1980s. In very blurry progress is a pendulum/physics experiment.

We tore out of science class about halfway through to get down to Kennedy's classroom to help out with Operation Melting Snowmen. He was already underway with the first group of 14 (first grade) students when we arrived.  They took to fondant sculpting like ducks to water. :)

Once their masterpieces were complete, another dozen plus students rotated in and got in on the fun. It was fun watching them walk out at the end of the day, a parade of proud artists with their edible creations. Sweet!

ON THE HORIZON: Set a reminder alarm for Friday morning at 10:20 a.m. Pac Coast time, as that's when an attempt at rocketeering history is going to be made.

Friday, SpaceX will be launching a Dragon spacecraft to the International Space Station, its sixth such mission. Fortunately, that has become nearly routine at this point. The big news is, instead of becoming really expensive garbage after lift off, the Falcon 9 rocket used to launch Dragon is (hopefully!) going to fly itself back to Earth and land on a platform floating in the Atlantic Ocean.  In a Tweet a few weeks back, SpaceX founder Elon Musk called the platform an "autonomous spaceport drone ship."  Yeah, that sounds LOTS cooler than 'platform.'

If it works, it will be a HUGE step toward slashing the cost of spaceflight, and less cost means more missions. It could be a game changer. 

SpaceX has succeeded in bringing first stage boosters back to Earth on two prior occasions, but not to this platform, and they haven't recovered one yet. Musk has publicly put the odds at Friday's landing working at 50 percent or less. He's more optimistic about future attempts, with the ultimate goal of spaceflight with reusable rockets.

Coverage of Friday's event starts at 9:15 Pacific Time on spacex.com and NASA TV. 

SPEAKING OF SPACE: On the way to Shoreline this morning, CJ started peppering me with questions about travel to Mars, radiation, and the Van Allen radiation belt(s). I love those types of spontaneous questions and conversations! :) 

He wanted to know whom the Van Allen belts were named after. I told him I thought it was an American astronomer, but turns out Mr. James A. Allen was a physicist. The belts, always at least two, but sometimes more, are zones of charged particles surrounding our Earth. They were discovered in 1958, during NASA's Explorer 1 mission. 

Checking out the effect of radiation in the Van Allen belt on Orion was an important part of its test flight a week or so ago. There's still no way I've read about to mitigate the amount of radiation astronauts would be exposed to on a trip to the Red Planet. Until that happens, the moon or an asteroid is as far as we're going.

ON CALL:  Today I (finally) learned about an on-going campaign of Col. Chris Hadfield, our favorite Canadian astronaut. 

Hadfield is responding Instagram posts and Twitter Tweets asking him science questions. You just have to put a #PersonalRocketScientist hashtag in the question, and hope that the Hadfield team finds it interesting enough to respond to. Here's a short video about it:

More information is on his Web site,http://www.personalrocketscientist.com/ . Though it says it's for children in the UK and Ireland, if you read the fine print, they're welcoming questions from 'round the globe.

Naturally, I'm going to ask the kids to come up with something to ask the Colonel. Stay tuned!

Snow Many Snowmen

SHOW ON THE ROAD: Today was a bit different for MPA. The kids and Christian were on their own, while I headed to a classroom down south, to spread a little seasonal magic ... and powdered sugar. :)

Oldest son Rick took me up on my offer to lead his class in a lesson in the fine art of fondant. I thought some 'melting snowman' cookies would be a fun project for third graders.

In preparation, I baked a couple dozen Really Big sugar cookie bases, and sculpted some Rice Krispies spheres (for their heads).  I also loaded up yards of parchment paper, cups and cups of sprinkles and candies, and about 30 pounds of fondant. 

We started today with me telling the kids my once upon a time when it came to sugary stuff. I was a writer and photographer for a newspaper for 20 some years, and I was assigned a story about making holiday cookies and I had to come up with something to photograph so I made them. Introducing the Gingy family. 

 I told the kids how much fun I had making them, and how, during the process, each one of them, in my own mind, started to have a name and personality - a back story. (For instance, see Suzy in the green dress up front? She is So Not Happy to be at this family gathering.)  From that experience, I was hooked. 

I shared lots of other examples of past projects with the kids - sports cookies, seasonal cookies, My Little Pony and other character cookies. I showed them video game themed cookies, and ones inspired by movies.  I shared with them photos of my space shuttle cookies ... 

and told them how, incredibly, my cookies wound up being eaten INSIDE two space shuttles!

I ended the introduction by showing them a photo of the first ever batch of melting snowmen cookies I ever made, and told them that's what they'd be working on today.  

Overwhelmingly, the kids were really jazzed about it, but I could see a couple were a bit overwhelmed. I know many kids (well, people in general) think art isn't their 'thing' and they're not artistic. I assured them that this was going to be Big Fun, and that absolutely anyone could do this, and no two snowmen would or should look alike and the great thing about making stuff like this is you get to eat your mistakes. ;)

The kids went to recess and came back, and then we had a 20 minute or so session talking about logistics. I asked the kids how many of them had ever helped prepare any food (from carrot sticks to cupcakes). everyone raised their hands. I talked to the kids about the three things that are paramount when preparing food for other people. Obviously, you want it to taste good, and if it looks good that is a bonus. But the third, and actually most important thing is that the food is SAFE - that it doesn't make anyone sick. And so, we reviewed how to be safe while preparing the cookies.

The other thing we talked about is the joy of preparing food for others. Since there were cookies, candies and other sugary treats involved, initially, the kids were super focused on how quickly and soon they could eat all this stuff. 

I held up the raw materials, and pointed out how large they were - bigger than any one person should eat, and beyond that, told them that when they were done, they were going to want others to see it - that it would be a shame to eat it and deprive others of seeing their art. I think they were skeptical, but it was time for them to go to music.

One other thing we talked about was their future snowmen's faces. I did a quick lesson on drawing cartoon eyes and eyebrows and how that would basically drive the whole personality of their snowman. I also assured the kids who weren't comfortable drawing the eyes that candies would be just fine, and that accessories could help tell their story, too. 

While they were gone, Rick, an adult volunteer, and I got everything ready and then the wonderful chaos ensued. :)  

As a class, I talked them through getting the fondant over their snowman's base and head, and after that, they were pretty much left to their own devices. I was so impressed with their creativity! 

I was super happy to see even the most (initially) reluctant kids were totally into it, and every single one of them was embracing the individuality of the experience.

I had a number of kids approach me individually to ask how to do this or that, and was happy to be able to offer quick tricks and tips. In the end, each and every one of them was so darn proud of their creation. They quickly went from wondering when they could eat it to acting very protective about them and deeming them presents for their parents or Santa. :)

Each and every one was a masterpiece. Here is a small sampling. ...

This sweet snowman is holding a soccer ball. 

And this one is playing a Nintendo DS.

This snowman is holding a heart and has a present close at hand. ...

The little girl who made the snowperson below made her a redhead. I showed her how to texture the hair so it looked more like hair and less like a helmet. In fact, I used the tops of their ugly 'woodgrain' desks as a talking point about texture. I pointed out to them how in nature things aren't all flat and smooth like that - they're bumpy and crooked. 

I love the bow the student added to the hair!

Naturally, there was one student who used Every Single Element available to him. Check out how he even integrated the plastic knife!

And, of course, when I got home, CJ and Annabelle got to make some snowmen with the leftovers. :)

A fun day, and I'm looking forward to doing the same with Kennedy's class.