She Made Homemade Gummies

Our Syd has looooong been obsessed with gummies. Like really. They're her favorite thing EVER. She's always thinking about them. Every time I ask for grocery shopping requests, that's the first thing that comes out of her mouth and I have to make her tell me something more reasonable to eat for lunch. She collects the empty wrappers from whatever gummy candy she does manage to manipulate people into buying her. She traded away lots of premium Halloween candy to Will in exchange for all of Will's gummies.

She LOVES gummies.

Obviously, the kid's obsession with store-bought junk food is no end of annoying to me, and so every now and then we've tried different DIY versions. We've done the Glee Gum's Make Your Own Gummies kit twice, and working with carageenan is pretty awesome, but Syd did not find the texture or flavor to be similar enough to her junky, yummy, store-bought gummies. For a while Syd was also pretty into trying to make her own gummies (mostly inside soda bottles, because she REALLY wanted a giant gummy soda bottle) using flavored Jello and extra gelatin, but those always tasted like lightly-flavored plain Jello--barf!

I thought that I had the ultimate solution when I read Confectionery House's gummy recipe, especially because they also sell a starter kit with all of the ingredients included. I splurged on the kit, had Syd pick out a couple of molds and a candy flavoring, and one evening (which explains the crappy lighting in these photos--sorry!), Syd made herself a batch of gummies:

mixing the gelatin 

pouring the gummy solution into the molds

The recipe was super easy to use as written, although I think that the instructions to add the flavoring oil "to taste" really made us go wrong. Syd was squeamish about tasting the liquid gummy solution and stingy with the flavoring oil that she knows is super expensive, and so although the gummies looked perfect--

--and their texture was absolutely spot-on--

--she did not like the way that they tasted:

Without enough flavoring oil, they basically taste like straight glucose, which is not a taste that I recommend:

the face of a man who does not like what he is tasting

Syd solved the problem somewhat by adding powdered citric acid to make the gummies so sour that you can't taste anything else:

We have enough of the supplies left to make another batch, although Syd isn't very enthusiastic, discouraged as she is by this first try. When we do try it again, however, I'll supervise better and make sure that she uses plenty of flavoring oil--I'll even taste test it like you're supposed to!--and I'm hoping that more flavor, combined with the spot-on texture, will be a winner.

I mean, I guess? It's not like this recipe is health food, although I guess we're avoiding the preservatives and most of the food dyes. But I do think it's valuable to show Syd that good homemade versions of whatever she likes CAN be made, even if the store-bought crap is still cheaper and more convenient.

Personally, I'd still love to play around with other DIY gummy recipes, especially ones that use natural sweeteners and healthy ingredients, although I'm not in love with the idea of putting in all that work only for the kid to turn her nose up, as I suspect she would, due to the fact that they're not going to look and taste like sour gummy worms or whatever. 

But winters are long, so maybe we'll give it a try one gloomy, chilly day. If so, here are the DIY gummy recipes that I've been collecting for us:

• gummy polymer chemistry. I like that this recipe includes the science lesson that explains polymer chemistry. That would make it a good science enrichment for our gloomy, chilly day!
• homemade healthy gummies. I like the idea of using these gummies to sneak in ginger, cod liver oil, or whatever other superfood I want the kids to have against their will. You think they'd notice if I made them some raw garlic gummies?
• Jello soda bottle. This is one of the kinds of YouTube videos Syd watched that made her really want to make her own. I do feel like we could use this recipe to make a gummy soda bottle--maybe that will be Syd's motivation to try the recipe again! Or possibly the giant rainbow gummy cake would be more her speed these days...

So that's the order of operations, the next time I can tempt Syd away from the candy aisle and into the kitchen with me:

1. Retry this recipe with more flavoring oil, until we have a good, authentic gummy recipe in our pockets.
2. Try out healthy gummy recipes until we've got one that Syd likes, even though she'll never admit that she likes it as much as she likes sour gummy worms.
3. Use one of those recipes to make some of the ridiculous gummy novelties that make the kids eyes grow big. I will not stop until someone has said "Wow!"

To the Apple Orchard, Nine Years Later

I have long campaigned with the children for a four-day school week, so that we can take a day trip or have a relaxing day at home without fuss. They've never gone for it, because they know good and well that this will only mean more work assigned to them for the remaining four days, but this semester I reworked our entire work plan scheme to have fewer daily assignments and more "due by the end of the week" assignments, and as part of the process I gave us a four-day school week.

I love it. The kids do, too. I should have insisted upon it earlier.

Mind you, some weeks we waste that free day on a Monday, making up work that the kids just didn't get done by the previous Friday, but overall it's been a dream to have that day in the plans, and not have to shuffle everything anyway every other week because obviously we've always taken day trips.

And one of our favorite day trips is one that I've just realized we've been doing for NINE years now! Check out the tiny little peanuts that I took on our first trip to an apple orchard in 2009:

They've grown in so many ways--

--and yet haven't changed at all...

To be fair, eating apples right off the tree IS the best part of the apple orchard:

Of course, as late in the season as we tend to go, it is a little harder to get your hands on them:

Oops. You're not supposed to take off so much stem and leaves, but she did pretty well considering that she had to leap for it:

We did a much better job getting the high ones back in 2013, the year that we convinced Matt to go with us:

Fortunately, we did have a helper on this day, too:

 This was Luna's first trip to the apple orchard, and she had herself a wonderful time:

During our picnic lunch (apples, of course, and things to spread on apples)--

--the kids were goofing around and discovered something brand-new about our beloved doggy that we've had for almost two full years now:

Why, that doggy loves apples!

Turns out that she'll even learn a new trick for an apple!

The kids had so much fun getting Luna to do tricks and rewarding her with apple that I had to ready-reference real quick to make sure that it's okay for a dog to eat, like, an entire apple in one sitting.

Thank you, Google!

An important part of the apple orchard experience is paying too much for a Jack-o-Lantern pumpkin:

New this year, however, was the snack shack, which has never actually been open when we've visited before. Obviously, then, we had to buy an apple cider slush, a piece of apple pie, and an elephant ear. Take a bite, pass it on, and repeat!

Another important part of the apple orchard experience is coming home with waaaaay too many apples.

Or at least, I thought that I was coming home with way too many apples, but 1) I now have not a toddler and a preschooler, but a tween and a teen (and a DOG!), and 2) at a garage sale over the summer, I bought one of those apple peeler/slicer/corer thingies for a VERY low price, and I brought it out for the kids when Will complained about peeling an apple. They never listen to me when I tell them that you can eat the entire core, and that the peel is full of fiber.

The chickens, at least, have been thrilled with all of the apple peels and cores that they've been getting, and we ran flat out of apples in one week. Before I could make any applesauce. Before I could bake a single pie. Before I could juice anything. Before I could dry apple slices or make apple fruit leather or apple butter. Before the kids had even gotten tired of eating umpteen apples a day and keeping the doctor away!

And that's how nine years after our very first trip to the apple orchard, we've now become the family that makes the trip twice in one season.

I hope they have the snack shack open when we go, because that apple cider slush was VERY tasty!

Movement and Grace: Scenes from the Ballet Classroom

Syd has been dancing ballet since the age of four. It's one of the governing passions of her life. It's the only extracurricular, other than Girl Scouts and our volunteer work, that she chooses. She loves ballet, and I love watching her dance.

Indulge me in the matter of a few photos, then. Syd's ballet program only invites parents into their classroom for one week every semester. I agree with this policy (me!!! Who NEVER agrees with anyone else's rules!!!) because Syd, at least, finds the presence of parents, in particular her own, super distracting and does not enjoy Parent Observation Week, but for me, it's the only week each semester that I get to watch my kid in class--AND take photos and videos of her!

You're luckier than my friends and family, in that here I'm only going to #mombrag with the rare photos that I could catch of Syd without her peers identifiable in the frame, an especially challenging strategy in that I highly suspect that Syd chooses her placement during Parent Observation Week to be as far from her Mom's giant camera as possible.

As if there aren't three other Moms with giant cameras sitting right next to me. She's not the only embarrassed kid, I assure you!

This is one of Syd's ballet teachers this year. She was her sole ballet instructor last year, and Syd and I were absolutely thrilled that she got her again this year, too. Honestly, out of all of the ballet teachers that Syd has ever had in this program, both faculty and college ballet majors, this college student is the best teacher that Syd has ever studied under. She is the best teacher, in any subject, that I have ever seen. She's extremely demanding but still encouraging, she motivates the kids, is quick to correct and to praise, gives each of them tons of attention, tells them stories about her own ballet experiences, and teaches them the choreography that she's learning for her own performances. She hands down leotards that she thinks might fit them. Sometimes she even does their hair. She advocated with the head of the program to cancel pre-pointe class on Halloween so that the children will have time to trick-or-treat. Every time she interacts with the children, it's easy to observe what a gifted teacher she is, and how invested she is in the kids' growth and well-being, and how she enjoys their company and really sees them for who they are as individuals. She is exactly the mentor and role model that you would want for your tween girl in the world of ballet.

Also, my kid is the best stretcher in class. Just saying.

Excuse how grainy and blurry my photos are. You would think that a ballet studio would be well-lit, wouldn't you? Well, I'm here to tell you that it most certainly is NOT.

Jazz is a new class offering this year. Syd does not prefer it, and likely wouldn't choose to go if I didn't encourage her to, but I LOVE it. They dance to music that has a drumbeat! And guitar! And a melody with words! And I usually know the words! Because it's usually Weezer!

Ballet at this time of year is even more exciting, because we are well into rehearsals for the university's yearly production of The Nutcracker. Syd will be dancing the role of a party guest this year, and although she's pretty bummed to be cast as a male character for the second year in a row, meaning that she has to wear pants and a wig instead of a beautiful dress and her long hair styled into ringlets, the silver lining is that I don't have to learn how to use a curling iron yet, and my well-practiced performance bun is a thing of beauty and majesty.

And even if she's not dancing the part that she most wants, she's still dancing--on the big stage, to the music of a live orchestra, in front of hundreds of people, and with her friends. It's the thing that she most loves to do, and whether I'm backstage or in the audience, I'll get to do what I love most, too, which is watch her being happy.

The Endless Possibilities of Retired and Council's Own Girl Scout Badges, IPPs, IPAs, and Fun Patches

It's an open secret to those who invest ourselves in Girl Scouting that our kids can still earn retired badges. Badges come and go as interest and society dictates, and badges such as Invalid Cook and Beekeeping went, and badges like Robotics and Digital Movie Maker came.

Rather, those retired badges are still there, they're just not being made.

The rule of thumb in Girl Scouts is that once official, always official. Mind you, there are a couple of naysayers (in every group, aren't there always?), but the vast majority of us hold to the rule of thumb that this tradition of badge-earning is one of the treasures that connects the community of Girl Scouts across time, and if a Girl Scout in 1957 was able to earn the Dressmaker badge, then so can her sister Scout in 2018.

The main advantage to this is that one can choose badges from over 95 years of Girl Scouting, offering kids a much wider variety of topics to study and skills to explore. Girl Scouts are guaranteed to find something that they're passionate about. Highly-motivated high achievers can't possibly max out the possibilities for their level.

Because, of course, why wouldn't you encourage a kid to explore outside of what's currently on the market, if she's interested? Why would you hold a child back from adding depth and breadth to her accomplishments, if that's what she wants?

And then you end up falling down the rabbit hole, too, because you have to research retired badge requirements, figure out what's level-appropriate as the level ages changed over the years, and before you know it you've ended up joining several Facebook buy/sell/trade groups for Girl Scout stuff, and you keep your used copies of old Girl Scout badge books at hand so that when someone lists something, you can look it up real quick in case you need to snatch it up before someone else does.

It does help that nearly all of the badges that I've bought in this way are cheaper than the new current badges. I have bought a couple of more expensive ones on ebay, because I'm of the opinion that if my kid is interested and motivated enough to do all the work to earn a badge, then I can shell out the occasional Hamilton to buy it for her. But I'm pretty sure that even those I could have scored for a couple of bucks if I'd just waited and kept my eye out.

In my opinion, if your kid is super interested in earning retired badges, you do need copies of the old badge books. I mean, there used to not be a Cadette level. And then there was, and you could tell which badges were for Cadettes because they had a yellow border. And then they didn't, but they did have a tan background. And then there were Junior badges that came out, and some of those had yellow borders. And some of them were also identical to the Cadette badges, but they had different requirements. And then Interest Projects came out, and they were rectangles, and Cadettes can earn them, but so can older Girl Scouts.

You see why I prefer to just check the old badge books?

Here are my go-to badge books for the Cadette and Senior levels:

• Cadette Girl Scout Handbook, 1960s-1970s. This is mostly a girl guide, but includes badges in the back. These are the yellow border badges, but the later Junior badge book, below, has many of them reissued with different borders and backgrounds and requirements. If I find a Junior version of a Cadette badge that my girl wants to earn, I buy it and have her use the Cadette requirements. 
• Girl Scout Badges and Signs, early 1980s. This book has both Junior and Cadette badges in it, with the Cadette badges differentiated by having tan backgrounds. By using this book and the previous one, I can generally identify and find the requirements for all the Cadette-level badges that one tends to find available to buy.
• Cadette and Senior Girl Scout Interest Projects, 1980s. Here is where the IPPs enter the picture!
• Interest Projects for Girls 11-17, 1990s. The badges in this book are basically identical to the ones in the 1980s version, BUT the requirements are different. 

Here are a couple of good (and free!) online resources:

• Badge Fairy. Badge Fairy isn't interested in the Cadette or Senior levels, and so the pdfs of badge requirements are for Juniors, not Cadettes, but you can buy the tan-background Cadette badges here and use one of the Cadette badge books to get the requirements.
• Palo Alto Girl Scouts. This old website has text versions of the requirements from Interest Projects for Girls 11-17. 

Every now and then, I'll hand the badge books off to my kids and ask them to look through them and tell me any badges that they want to earn. I make note of those and keep an eye out for them. These old badges, though, tend to just get listed in batches by whoever is wanting to get rid of them on whichever of the Facebook groups that I'm in, so I also will buy badges that I just think that my kids would be interested in, or that I know will fit into our upcoming studies. I buy many of the science-themed badges, for instance, and many of the outdoor skills ones. I buy a lot of the craft-centric badges for the younger kid, and the animal-centric badges for the older kid. 

Here is what I actually have on hand right now, waiting for a kid to earn them:

 

These are Cadette level, so they're for the younger kid. From the top left, they're Dressmaker, Conservation, Animal Kingdom: Water Life, Animal Kingdom: Reptile and Amphibian, World Heritage, Swimmer, Eco-Action, Rock and Mineral, Wildlife, Science Sleuth, Do-It-Yourself, and Computer Fun.

See all those varied science selections? They'll be incorporated into our schoolwork. Dressmaker and Swimming fit into the kid's current interests, and Conservation and Eco-Action are good outdoor badges.

The below badges are IPPs, so both girls can earn them through age 17:



From the top left, they are The Lure of Language, Architecture and Environmental Design, Horse Sense, Textile Arts, Outdoor Survival, All about Birds, Museum Discovery, Computers in Everyday Life, Inventions and Inquiry, Invitation to the Dance, Folk Arts, Games for Life, Water Sports, Digging through the Past, and Rolling Along.

I have a lot more of these, and a lot more variety, because the kids can be earning these until they graduate--who knows what the older kid is going to be interested in three years from now, or the younger kid five years from now? I generally try to get what I think they're interested in now--animals and history for the older kid, crafts and games for the younger kid--and I also collect IPPs that have academic possibilities or will get the kids outdoors or active.

Since the younger kid is a Cadette and the older kid is a Senior, and by the time the younger kid is a Senior the older kid is going to be an Ambassador, these IPPs are also really nice because they're badges that they can still earn together. That's fun!

Other things that they can still earn together are the fun patches that have requirements. A fun patch isn't official, so it goes on the back of the uniform vest, but many councils offer patch programs that have requirements, and these have been some of the most valuable learning experiences for the kids. They spent more time earning the I Promised a Girl Scout I Would Vote patch than many Girl Scouts spend earning official badges, and the Solar Eclipse patch was an entire summer's worth of study, culminating in a two-day pilgrimage to the total solar eclipse.

You can buy council's own badges and fun patches by calling a council, or sometimes online, but I like to buy them when I travel. The older kid has already earned all of the council's own horse badges that I bought from Middle Tennessee when we were on our Spring Break trip to Nashville last year (and if I'd been thinking ahead, I would have bought her the Senior ones to earn, too!), and the kids have almost finished earning that Hurricane Relief patch from Texas (they just need to finish our personal disaster kits).

I bought the sewing and space patches from the Girl Scout shop in Huntsville, Alabama, right before we went to the older kid's Space Camp graduation. I bought the wildflowers patch in Columbus, right before we went to the GIRL 2017 national convention. They all have requirements to earn them, and the space and flowers patches, in particular, will be easy to incorporate into our studies. The Senior badge at the top is sort of a council's own Aviation badge; both kids earned the Cadette version this year, and it was amazing and they loved it.

The main problem with council's own programs are that they're hard to find and the council doesn't always keep up with them or stock the badges/patches. Here is a fairly recent list of council's own programs, but lately, my again, my main strategy is just to check out any council shop where I'll be traveling, and see if they have any programs that the kids might like.

Here's what the older kid's vest looks like with all of the council's own and retired badges mixed in with the current badges:

You don't have to organize your Girl Scout's vest just like this, because the badge police aren't real. But you can easily see the retired Cadette badges with yellow borders, and the three council's own IPPs that I decided to place with the Senior badges, since they're similar in shape. In with the diamond Cadette badges you can see three council's own badges, and an official Make Your Own badge, which the older kid designed on the official site two days before it shut down. The Make Your Own badge is still official, however--it's even included in the Senior Girl Guide that the kid bought last month!--so I'm running an experiment. I bought two sets of blank Cadette and Senior badges from Rae's Creations, and I'm hoping that my kids can hand embroider on them, or maybe just draw their badge design on with Sharpie. Or use inkjet printer iron-on transfer sheets?

Stay tuned!

Just for funsies, here's what the back of the older kid's vest looks like:

You can see that her fun patches, which I have absolutely crammed together, overlapping when possible, are a combination of event patches, rewards for service projects, a couple of souvenir patches from troop activities, incentives from the product sales, and patches that had requirements to earn them. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Float patch was fun to earn, as was the Garfield Trail patch, and the Country Music Hall of Fame patch. There are a lot of happy memories on the back of that vest!

Our Girl Scout troop runs co-op style, and the kids do most of their badge-earning independently, or sometimes in small groups. My own two kids always have at least one badge that they're working on. When they finish earning it, they choose another! I present all of their badge options to them simply by having them included in the badge section of their Girl Guide to Scouting. Each girl has all of the badge books for all of the current badges in her book, alphabetized, and I photocopy the badge requirements for every retired or council's own badge that we own and put each one in, also alphabetized, AND I do the same for the fun patches that have requirements to earn. I really like that it gets them involved in new interests and doing new activities that I wouldn't necessarily choose for them. For instance, right now the older kid is working on the Senior Cross Training badge, and is therefore working out independently four times a week(!!!), and the younger kid is working on the Cadette Screenwriting badge. She wanted to watch the original Jurassic Park last night, ostensibly so she could take notes, so we did, and tonight she wants to watch Jurassic World, but this time she thinks that we should make dinosaur-themed snacks to eat while we watch.

Gee, being a Girl Scout is SO hard!

P.S. Want to follow along with my craft projects, books I'm reading, road trips to weird old cemeteries, looming mid-life crisis, and other various adventures on the daily? Find me on my Craft Knife Facebook page!

Upcycle A Valentine Candy Box into a Concrete Mosaic

I freelance over at Crafting a Green World, an eco-friendly crafting blog. Every now and then, on a non-regular basis, I'll share one of my favorite tutorials with you..

...such as this one! I originally published this concrete mosaic from a Valentine candy box tute here at Crafting a Green World.

Whether your Valentine's Day consisted of a romantic evening with your loved one or an evening alone with your pain, it very likely involved a box of chocolates. Even if you make an effort to avoid frivolous expenditures and excessive packaging, that heart-shaped box of chocolates is hard to avoid.

No matter your best intentions, you'll likely find yourself on February 15 with an empty box larger than your head, made from bleached cardboard, with a non-recyclable plastic tray (topped with another non-recyclable piece of corrugated cardboard) inside, and non-recyclable paper wrappers inside that.

I don't have a ton of help for the paper and the plastic, but that heart-shaped cardboard box? I know exactly what you should do with that! You are going to make yourself a concrete mosaic for your garden or yard. Here's how you're going to do it!

Supplies

Empty Valentine Boxes. The heart-shaped Valentine boxes automatically make awesomely adorable molds, but any sturdy cardboard box will work. Be warned that a box made of flimsy cardboard will bend and bow and likely give way under the weight of wet cement, so stick to super sturdy cardboard.

Portland Cement Or Another Comparable Brand. I like Portland cement, and I know exactly what ratios I like best with it, but you're welcome to use your own favorite brand of cement. Even better, hit up your local Freecycle and find someone's half-used bag of cement that they're giving away for free--that can become YOUR favorite brand!

Playground Sand. You don't necessarily have to mix your cement with sand if your mosaic will be decorative only, but you should mix in two to three parts sand when making a mosaic stepping stone.

Chicken Wire (optional). I did not use chicken wire for the concrete mosaics in this tutorial, but if I'm making a larger stepping stone, I will put a layer of chicken wire on the bottom of my mold, then pour the cement onto it. It makes a stepping stone just that little bit stronger.

Tesserae. These are the little doohickeys that you embed in the cement to make your mosaic, and you can use anything! In this tutorial, my kids and I are using a combination of store-bought glass tiles and a bunch of multi-sided dice from my homeschool stash. You can also see a broken plate in a couple of the pics; every time my kids break a piece of my Fiesta Ware (sigh...), I set it aside for a future mosaic. I didn't go for it this time, but at the rate my kids are going, I'm going to be able to mosaic a full-on Roman bath by the end of this summer.

  

Directions

1. Mix and pour the cement. Mix your cement according to the directions on the package. My Portland cement calls for sand in a 1:2 or 1:3 ratio with the cement; I used a 1:2 ratio for this project.

2. Place the tesserae. This is time-sensitive, in that you can only place the tesserae while the cement is wet enough to place them, but you don't have to move as quickly as you do with plaster of Paris, say. Unlike with plaster of Paris, however, here you do have to make sure that you've embedded each tile well enough for the cement to grip it; give each one a wiggle and make sure it's worked in well.

    

3. Let cure. This takes quite a well, depending on your weather. When we made these particular stepping stones, it was the one nice day before another string of cold, wet days, and so it took these stepping stones two full weeks to cure, even though they were kept indoors. Be wary, as the stepping stones will get more fragile before they strengthen--try to unmold them from their candy boxes too soon, and you'll be bummed when they break apart in your hands.



4. Unmold the stepping stones. By the time your cement is mostly cured, you can safely peel the wet cardboard away from the sides of the mold, and then remove the bottom of the candy box when the cement is fully dry. Buff any dry cement off of the tiles and shine them up, and your stepping stone is ready!

  

 If you want your stepping stone to last indefinitely outdoors, you'll want to seal it, but even without that added measure, your mosaic should happily endure for several seasons.