Blue Eggs and Christmas Trees

Nile & I attended a Santa's Workshop craft event for kids. Nile loves art and crafts and he's been asking me to find him some art classes to attend, so I was excited to learn about this little event. The kids got to work with wood and clay and make various holiday crafts. Nile painted a few really cool wooden ornaments for the Christmas tree. And there was a visit from Santa. (Nile didn't seem too fussed. He looked at the other kids and said: "I'm pretty sure that's just a guy dressed up as Santa Clause")
We had fun.

Nile & Zola

We got our christmas tree up last night! It was lots of fun. We had our friends Zola and Gina over and we decorated the tree and put lights up all over the house.

Decorating the tree was a real exercise in letting go for me. I am usually really anal and meticulous about the decorations and how they are put on the tree. But with two wild, very enthusiastic four year-olds helping out it was pretty hard to control what went where and I just had to let go and let them have fun. In the end the tree looked considerably different from how I would have decorated it - but the kids had so much fun. ( I actually considered re-doing it after Nile went to bed but I think i'll just leave it).

This is our fifth Christmas with our sad little four ft. tall fake tree - I think we'll get a real one next year. I've collected so many ornaments over the years that I need a bigger tree to hold them all.

Voila!

Some of the treasures created by the kids at the Christmas craft workshop.

Nile working with clay - he loved it!

Nile's Advent Calendar
We got a Playmobil Advent Calendar this year & he is loving it (although the temptation to rip open each and every box seems to be quite overwhelming for the little guy!).
We keep it right beside the bed so he can open up the little door the moment he wakes up!

You get a new piece each day and at the end you have a nice little Winter Wonderland scene.
Nile had the *brilliant* idea to put a white sheep skin under the scenes it looks like snowy.

Here's our scene so far .. Isn't it pretty?

And Finally .. I just had to include a photo of these amazing eggs. I got them from a farmer in Glade (nearby) who sometimes orders cakes from me. In the fall he brought me almost a dozen GIANT zucchinis! I'm not sure if you can really tell in the photo but the eggs are a gorgeous shade of blue and they are tiny. and delicious.

Choo Choo!!

'Tis the season for gingerbread.

NIle & I have been making gingerbread creations. It all started out the day after Halloween when we went to Safeway to check out the Halloween merchandise that was on sale. Nile fell in love with a gingerbread Halloween Haunted House. We bought it, brought it home, assembled it and he decorated the whole thing on his own. It was a really fun project.

So, we decided to tackle a Christmas Gingerbread Train next.
It was a bit more challenging to assemble, but really fun to decorate.
It came with WAY to much candy - so my little OCD child decided to organize all the extra candy by color (pictured above).

Ta-da!

The original Halloween House that started it all...

Yummy Times .. Puzzle Mania

Puzzle Mania runs in our family. Me, Nile & Rania all love puzzles... and my grandma liked them too. The other night right before bedtime I got the wild idea to start on a 1000 piece puzzle with Nile. That's by far the largest puzzle he's ever worked on. I thought it would be a fun project to work on together (he's really good at puzzles!). After about half an hour Nile got tired & bored and requested that we go to bed. But by that point I was already obsessed...So he had to drag me away from it

The next morning he didn't seem particularly interested in the puzzle, so I worked on it alone for a while and then called Jess and James to see if they'd be into working on it - and they were! so we worked on it for 2 days & got it done. It was really fun and Nile regained interest towards the end when we were in the home stretch.

Fun Project!

I baked a delicious chocolate cake from the Whitewater cookbook for the occasion.
Puzzle sustenance: Chocolate Cake and Almond Milk. Yum!

All Done!

Here's a funny little video of Nile. He's been really into Spiderman lately & literally climbing the walls.

Thanksgiving & Halloween

Happy Thanksgiving!
Nile & Zola admiring the Pumpkin Pie

Nile being generally excited about Thanksgiving ..
I made a Turkey (my first!)

Spiderman
First Nile wanted to be a Prairie Dog for Halloween, which I thought was really cute but I was slightly stressed about how to make a prairie dog costume.. The he suddenly changed his mind and wanter to be a pirate, which delighted me because it's easy and cute. But that was short lived and he switched to Spiderman and stuck with it - he has been absolutely obsessed with watching OLD spiderman cartoons from the 60's on youtube .. So I picked him up the costume while I was in Chigago & he was thrilled with it. He wore it all over town for the week prior to Halloween.

On Halloween night we went to the Waldorf School for the Halloween Journey - this is our third year going to it and we love it. It's very magical.
The we came home, threw a chicken in the oven, did a quick round of Tick-or-Treating and then ate roast chicken for dinner. It was a fun night!

Nile's Art Project
we traced his body and drew his bones

Chickens & Chicago.

Pink & Shiny
A cake made by a lady from Kentucky.

I just returned from a week on the outskirts of Chicago where I was taking a course with Colette Peters (Amazing Cake Celebrity with a hugely successful shop in NYC..http://www.colettescakes.com/wedding_cc.html) at the Wilton school.

I learned so much! I got a scholarship to attend the course (http://www.lesdames.ca/scholarship_recipients.htm) & it was hugely valuable.. It was very humbling to learn from an absolute pro and realize how much i still have to learn. There were women there from all over the country & the world..Costa Rica, India, Holland, Vienna, Peru, and me from Canada.

My absolute favorite of the student cakes - made by a woman names Eva. Aren't those bugs awesome combined with the pink frilly look?

My Gum paste Flowers!
The Result of 2 full days of work!

Cakes made by students in previous classes..

My Class!
It looks like a Gum Paste Sweat Shop.

My Cake!
It's quite gaudy & busy.
I wanted to make something completely different than anything i'd ever made before. and i generally tend to do pretty simple cakes. We had two days to work on it - the assignment was to make a cake utilizing all the skills we learned over the course of the class... So, it's not really supposed to be entirely cohesive.

Me & Colette Peters!!
Getting my Diploma, which I intend to frame & hang in my kitchen!

These are some OLD pics from when Nick & Nile had chickens
(sadly they don't have them anymore because all got eaten by coyotes) ...

Nile enjoying a FRESH egg from the coop.

Eggs!!

A cute video of the chickens .. it was shot sideways but you can still see them .. & hear Nile's always-amusing commentary.

I Used To Love Doing This When I was A Kid

Step One: Dig a Hole in the Back Yard.
Step Two: Pour Baking Soda into the Hole
Step Three: Pour Vinegar Over the Baking Soda

Step Four: Watch the Volcano Magic Happen

We Even Added Orange Food Coloring to the vinegar so the "Lava" would be orange.

Nile LOved it .. Poppy too.

Pears!!! We have a pear tree and the front yard & it has been ABUNDANT this year. we have been eating pears, giving away pears, making pear churney & pear butter and putting pears in our oats every morning.

Nile & Zola Enjoying the Bounty

Sidewalk Art

Autumn is Here!!
Nile climbing the pear tree

Nile in front of my LAST wedding cake of the season!

Happy HALF Birthday Nile!!!

Sweet Nile is 4.5 today!!

We had originally planned to have a party for his half-birthday (since he declined my offer for a party when he turned 4). He actually seemed excited to have a party this time, but i wasn't on it and completely forgot to organize anything. Oops.

The plan had been to have half a cake and other things to eat that were halved like deviled eggs.

Instead we chilled out on the grass at the Saturday Market and ate pizza and watched people juggle. Nile seemed to enjoy it.

In other news, he has decided that he wants to be a Prairie Dog for halloween. Random!! NIle is the little king of randomness. He's been working on his prairie dog noises (apparently they go: "Yip Yip" who knew).

I am just so in love with my sweet boy - we are having so much fun lately. He is absolutely adorable & really into dinosaurs.

Happy half-birthday sweet boy!

oxoxox