The Secret Caramel Apple Recipe of Your Dreams

1/2 cup butter
2 1/4 cup brown sugar
1 cup light corn syrup
1 1/2 tsp salt

Bring to a boil.

1 14oz can sweetened condensed milk
1 tsp vanilla

Boil until it reaches exactly 235 degrees.  Take of heat.  Cool to 190 degrees.  Dip scrubbed Granny Smith apples.  Cool on a cookie sheet/silpat or Pam sprayed parchment.  Cover with chocolate and toppings as desired

Makes about 15 apples.

Around the World: Great Britain

We studied about Great Britain while in Lake Tahoe, CA on vacation from our vacation. . . because I'm crazy.  But really, I knew we'd have to spend a lot of time in the hotel room with a napping baby so I prepared with some "quiet" activities.  Plus, we would have Grandpa as a resource to talk about his missionary experiences in England and tell stories about our British ancestors.  Which is what we did for FHE along with our "friend" from  the Friend magazine.

Tea Party with herbal tea and Scottish "scotty" shortbread cookies

We made tea cups out of half a plastic egg, button, and ribbon

We recreated Stonehenge using sand from the Lake Tahoe beach

Crafts included melty bead British flags (a huge hit!), a coat of arms, and Queen Elizabeth, Paddington Bear, and the Loch Ness Monster puppets.  We compared the Loch Ness Monster to Tahoe Tessie.  We never saw her though!  While doing our crafts we listened to the Beatles and bagpipes.  Thank you, Pandora!

Croquet anyone?

Here are just a few of the movies we watched (remember: lots of quiet time in a hotel room):

Valiant, Great Mouse Detective, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Wallace and Gromit, Robin Hood, Sword and the Stone, and our favorite YouTube "Girls of the World".

Our food choices were limited in Lake Tahoe but we managed to scrounge up English muffins with lemon curd, Cadbury chocolate, and fish and chips.  That's probably the only British food we would want to eat anyway!  No haggis, thank you very much!

Around the World: Sweden

Summer is here and it's time to go around the world!  Our first stop--Sweden (via California where we're visiting family).  Unfortunately, I wasn't quite back in the swing of things and didn't take many pictures or record the books we read and movies we watched, so here's the abbreviated version.

We couldn't visit Sweden without a trip to Ikea.  I don't shop at Ikea often and every time I do, I wonder why I don't.  The place is amazing!  We had lunch in the cafeteria and it was divine: Swedish Meatballs with lingonberry jam, lingonberry soda and we had to try Swedish chocolate.  Delish!  Ikea has and adorable kid care center.  Why can't every store have one?  Only problem--Sabrina was too short by a half inch.  Dragging her through Ikea was not so fun.The kids center should be made for kids her size.  Plus they have like a one hour time limit.  Definitely not long enough to do some serious shopping.  Sorry Ikea, but you need  to adjust that.  Anyway, so many amazing things and I could have done some serious damage if I wasn't on vacation.  And bonus: they have a food area where I stocked up on tons of Swedish food so I wouldn't have to make it myself (since I was on vacation).  Cookies, candy, lingonberry everything--score!

Swedish Pancakes with Sour Cream and Lingonberry Jam

For FHE we read about a girl from Sweden and made Swedish chocolate balls (chokladbollar) for FHE treat.  Yum!  The Friend magazine has a whole series on kids from around the world.  Perfect!

Dala Horse ornaments

  We learned about the Northern Lights but our finger printing craft was a bust.  I thought I would save money and make my own finger paint.  It didn't show up on the paper, cracked and flaked off and made the paper curl terribly.  I couldn't even get a picture of the finished product.  Too bad because t could have turned out really pretty! But it made for some messy fingers!  We did listen to some cool music while painting, "Above the Northern Lights" by Mannheim Steamroller, "Aurora Borealis" by Steven Price, and "Aurora Borealis" by Rojo.  Thank you Spotify!

Messy Fingers

Of course we read Pippi Longstocking by Astrid Lindgren (check out this awesome version illustrated by Lauren Child of Charlie and Lola fame) and watched the movie that I loved as a kid.  It definitely could use a remake though!

Pippi Hair (Sabina's hair turned out the best, of course)

Making Pippi cookies (gingerbread)

Dala Horse watercolors, Swedish Chocolate Cake and Swedish Girl coloring

We fell in love the Girls of the World series on You Tube.  We learned about life in the Swedish countryside on Kid World Citizen.  I think I love Sweden.  It's the first country that we've studied that I thought it might be really cool to live there (or at least visit).

Winter Olympic Recap

The Olympics are big in our house.  I love the patriotism, the culture and the stories.  Mark loves the non-stop, on-three-different-channels, sports. Each Olympics (thanks to pinterest) gets bigger and bigger.  So, without further ado, the Lisonbee Family Winter Olympics 2014.

(cue Olympic Fanfare here)

The Olympic Rings (hung over the TV)

The night of the opening ceremonies we have a tradition of eating food from the hosting country.  I was a little intimidated by Russian food, but it turned out pretty good! (unfortunately, I didn't take pictures--I just wanted to eat!)

Plov: rice and beef dish all cooked together
Pirozhki: mashed potato filled rolls
Zapekanka Iz Tsvetnoy Kapusty : Baked cheesy cauliflower
Medovik (Honey Cake): the easy version and very similar to Eclair cake
We watched the opening ceremonies and played Olympic Bingo. Definitely made the parade of countries go faster.
Everyone's favorite event was ice skating (except Mark who loves curling) so the girls skated along.  We did tons of Olympic printouts--mad libs, word searches, graphing, coloring, word tracing the entire two weeks

The Saturday before the end, we hosted our own Olympic events.

Finding Greece and Sochi on the map to map out our torch route

The Torch relay

Bobsled Team 1

Bobsled Team 2

Hockey

Figure Skating

Snowball Ring toss

Ski Jump (I'd been waiting for this ever since we got the wii!)

Ski Slalom

Quick break for some art work

Speed skating

Pom Pom curling (the favorite event)

Medal Ceremony

Extinguishing the torch

 See you in Rio!

Somewhere Over the Rainbow Party

 It’s a good thing we don’t do birthday parties every year.  I think I might have a heart attack.  I love simple birthday parties.  I really do.  But I had too much fun planning (AKA “pinning”) this incredibly fun Wizard of Oz party that I couldn’t help myself and I may or may not have gotten a little out of control.  It doesn’t help that I think The Wizard of Oz is one of the greatest films of all time.  It does help that the Young Women had a big Wizard of Oz night just before I got released and I rescued A LOT of decorations from premature death in the garbage bin.  I’m all about recycling. 

Here is the front yard.  The sign says “Bell out of order.  Please knock.”  When Mark walked up to the house he asked, “Why doesn’t the door bell work.”  Sigh.  The “bricks” are made with sidewalk chalk paint and a roller.  Incredibly easy but three cups did not go as far as I thought.  Probably a good thing since it was 100 degrees when I was painting.  And please note that the door adornment is not keeping with the theme.  At least I showed some restraint.  Even though it really bugged me.

 Here are the inside decorations.

 

"Look, they're here."

Most of the party come from this Lady.  She really saved the day. The party started with craft.  The winged monkeys destroyed the Emerald City.  The girls had to build it using play dough, glitter, jewels, and beads.  I was surprised how many of them had never seen the movie and had no idea what I was talking about.  So sad!  But I fixed that! 

 

Glinda came to deliver an urgent message.

The Wicked Witch scrambled the Scarecrow's brain and had to put it back together again to receive the next clue.  The girls had to dance to "If I Only had a Brain" and then one at a time, had to pop their balloon to get the clue piece.

The girls weren't too excited about popping balloons.

 The puzzle clue told them the Witch stole something and put it on ice.  They had to melt it to retrieve it and return it to the owner.

  It was heart bead that they returned to the Tin Man.

 And then played pin the heart on the Tin Man to receive their next clue.

 The next clue was a letter from the Cowardly Lion that said the Witch had stolen the clue.  They would have to use water balloons to slow her down and get the clue.  Good thing the Witch was armed with silly string.  Some of those girls have quite the aim!

 Their next clue told them to find the Witch's broom and bring it to the wizard.

 Who congratulated them on a job well done. Then Glinda told them all they had to do was close their eyes, click their heels together and say "There's No Place Like Home" three times.

 

And then time for for cupcakes!

I must say they turned out adorable and were super easy, my favorite kind.  I was surprised that girls even went crazy for the fruit rainbow!

 

 Next was opening presents.  And they we still had an hour left of the party!  They were a lot faster than I expected! 

 

We painted our nails with Ruby Red Slipper nail polish.

 Some girls wanted to work on more of the Emerald City.

 

Logan was a real hero and come straight from band camp to do some face painting.  Aurora said it was her favorite part of the party!

 

 Our goody baskets of poppies, rainbow lollipops, Glinda's Bubble Potion, Glinda's wand, an apple and rainbow chalk.  Whew, what a party!