Piece de Resistance

So it's not a masterpiece, and definitely not my best work, but to cap off our animal week we made this caterpillar cake. Thank you to my sweet sister Leisa for this fun cake pan! This is one of those projects that I'm excited to try but once I start, I get discouraged because it's not turning out the way I expected and when I'm halfway through I don't care how it looks anymore I just want it to be done. Thankfully for me, I have small children who clap their hands and say "good job Mom!!' when I'm finished. :)

A perfect book to go along with this cake is "The Hungry Caterpillar" but sadly, we don't have it. So we are reading a cute book called "You're My Little Love Bug"

I hope you enjoyed animal week. Next week we'll start celebrating St. Patricks Day!

Good Clean Fun

Alright, this is where I can show everyone that I really don't come up with these cute ideas all on my own. Some projects I have seen years ago and can't remember where, and others like this cute activity I have found from other wonderfully creative people out in blogland.

Christina, at A Family filled with Love & Fun had this super cute idea---Bathsoap and Markers. We didn't make the bath markers (because that's usually our sidewalk paint) But we loved the idea of bathtub crayons. To go along with our animal theme, I decided to turn them into cute animal bath soaps.

To get all the wonderful instructions on how to make these cute bathsoaps/crayons visit Christina's website here.

(She has a lot of great and wonderful ideas so check out her blog!)
---She used Dove soap. I used Ivory (because it was white and inexpensive) but it seemed a little too soft. I think I'll try it again with Dove this time.

Next up: Homemade suckers. We had a lot of fun making and eating them! If anyone out there hasn't made homemade suckers, I hope I can motivate you to try it. It is pretty easy, but does require a few things like a candy thermometer, candy extract, sucker sticks, and sucker molds. (If any of you neighbors want to try before you buy, you are more than welcome to borrow mine)

First: Mix 2 cups sugar, 2/3 cups light corn syrup, and 3/4 cups water in saucepan. Stir over medium heat until sugar dissoves. Bring mixture to a boil without stirring.

When syrup temperature reaches 260 degrees add color.

Do not stir; boiling action will incorporate color into syrup. Remove from heat at 300 degrees (or when drops of syrup form hard, brittle threads in cold water.) ***After boiling action ceases, add flavoring and stir. Use caution when adding flavoring to avoid rising steam.

Pour syrup into lightly oiled candy molds

or onto greased cookie sheet and score to mark squares. When cool, break into pieces

and dust with powdered sugar to prevent sticking. Store in airtight container.

Here are our finished bear suckers. We wrapped them in "Cling" wrap and put in a cute vase on our counter.

To go with our animal theme, we have also read the 3 Little Bears, and our Berenstein Bears books. We have also checked out some Bearnstein Bear movies from our local Library as well as The Swan Princess to go with our Swan Cream Puffs from Tuesday's post.

Up next: We'll start getting ready for St. Patricks day by making some Wee Leprachauns and Clover stamps.

Animal Theme

Since this past week has been rainy and grey, I thought it would be fun to do some animal themed snacks and crafts. So here's a little peek into what we did this week.

For lunch we had Octopus and Seaweed
We just made up a package of Ramen Noodles, dyed with a little blue food coloring (in the water before noodles were added) Then made hotdogs and split with knife to form legs, then used mustard to dab on some eyes and a smile.

Next we made bathtub floaties. I took this idea from Family Fun. Click here for instructions.
Then for dessert we had Cream Puff Swans

Just make cream puffs like normal. Spoon some batter into a plastic sandwhich bag and snip off a small corner. (Mine was a little too big, so this swan has a huge head!) Then squeeze batter out of bag into an "2" (This way you have a head and the bottom sticks into the bottom of the cream puff) . Then spoon remaining batter onto greased baking sheet into rounded mounds and bake. When they have cooled, split in half. Remove the insides from the bottom half and add swan head (the #2's) into bottom half. Fill with pudding. Then cut the top half into half again, making "swan wings" Add "wings" into the bottom and dust with powdered sugar.

We also like to read books so in keeping with our animal theme we read a book entitled "Animal Babies in ponds and rivers" and The Ugly Duckling.

Still to come: Homemade suckers in animal shapes, bathsoaps in animal shapes, and animal sun catchers.

Welcome!

Hi everyone and welcome to my new blog Snacks-n-Crafts. I wanted a place where I could keep track of all my fun snacks and crafts. I wanted it to be an organized and easy-to-use reference for future crafts as well. I hope you'll enjoy this new blog.