Busy Bakers

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: The kids have a big art project this week. Once again, they're participating in the Edible Book Festival hosted by the Shoreline - Lake Forest Park Arts Council.

Last year was their first time participating. They made a cake based on the classic "The Little Prince,"  by aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, but if featured a figure of Prince, the musician, and some of his lyrics, instead of the standard prince from the story. 

They have decided to go with a musical inspiration again this year. The book they're doing a play on is "Horton Hears a Who," but instead their Horton hears The Who. (Puns are encouraged in the event.)

CJ baked two big chocolate cakes yesterday that will serve as the base for The Who's stage.

Annabelle spent a lot of time sculpting an elephant and rock stars of of modeling chocolate they made. Below, she's working on Roger Daltry's head.

And here she's sculpting Pete Townsend's sizable nose.

CJ sculpted some tree trunks and tops, some shrubs, and a seat for Keith Moon.

They have made good progress, but have a lot more to do. It's going to be tight making their Saturday morning deadline.

DONE DEAL: It's definitely worth noting that CJ has completed all of his assignments for the Western Aerospace Scholars program he is fortunate to be a part of. For it, he had to complete two essays (one about why space should or shouldn't be explored, and another about a potential career in the aerospace industry). He also tackled two gnarly math problems (one about the escape velocity for a launch from the sun and another comparing the costs of launching a Saturn V vs. a SpaceX Falcon Heavy). And he took two quizzes.

He's still awaiting grades for his second essay and math problem, but he got 100 percent on his first essay, As on both quizzes and an A on his first math assignment, so I think he's in pretty good shape. 

The second part of the program involves a week long camp this summer at The Museum of Flight. We should know the date for that by the end of this week.

Projects

BOXING DAY: Saturday morning, we finally got around to constructing the bee hive kit that's been kicking around our basement for a few weeks.

It was a super straightforward process. The kids can tell you more about it.  Annabelle is up first: 

In building our own beehive, we were able to see just how the hive works inside and out. The wooden box is divided into removable "frames", which hold the bees and honeycomb. Making the frames from wood and glue is a rather tedious process, but absolutely necessary for the hive to begin. The outside part of the hive is a rather simple wooden box, with special attachments to limit the number of bees that can enter and exit at once (usually rotated during the summer and winter, when numbers swell and falter respectively). Building the hive was a good experience overall and definitely worth the minimal amount of effort it took.

And here's what CJ had to say about the endeavor. ...

Recently, my family signed up for PerfectBee, a service that offers a course about bees (and subjects such as their biology, honey-bee honeymaking behavior, hive rituals, etc.) After doing some reading about honeybees in PerfectBee's course, we ordered some bee equipment (alongside some honeybees, of course) so that we could have the bees make honey for us at home. After the equipment arrived to our house, we started construction, in front of our garage. The first part of this construction mostly consisted of gluing and hammering together wood pallets, to contain the fake honeycomb frames. The second part of the construction involved gluing and hammering together the actual honeycomb frames, with large amounts of both small-size and large-size frames being made.

SPROUTS: We are happy to report we have some itsy bitsy pepper and tomato plants in progress after our seed-planting efforts a couple of weeks ago.

Annabelle captured this photo this morning, when she and CJ were watering them.

BOARD: Since it's a new month, we had to go install the birthday board we do at a local learning center.

We thought it would be fun to do a kite-themed board for April. All of the kites were from different colored paper. The tails are made from chenille sticks (pipe cleaners), and I got wired string at a local craft store.

We used some cut sections of a dollar store pool noodle to put behind the kites to give them some lift off the board. 

The cloud is cardboard covered in cotton, stuffed with plastic bags. Annabelle did the face, of course. (BTW, the birthday kids' names and dates are purposely obscured in the photo above.) 

DONATION: Saturday morning, we put the finishing touches on some Star Wars cookies we donated to a local school's auction. 

We were happy to hear the platter sold for $70. 

We always have a little fun with them - like Stormtroopers that are pink or have a Ziggy Stardust lightning bolt.