Homemade Candy Corn and Candy Pumpkins

You know how fruit always tastes so much better when you pick it fresh from the tree? Well, we discovered the same thing is true for candy corn - minus the tree, of course.

Our gumdrop supply was running a little low, and my oldest was having a listless sort of afternoon, so we decided to tackle another one of the recipes from our "must try" file. Given the season, candy corn seemed like a logical choice, though in truth, it has never been one of my personal favorites. All that has changed now though, thanks to a recipe we found at the Homemade Dessert Recipes site.

It's a pretty simple process. Just boil corn syrup, sugar, and butter for five minutes.

Stir in a little vanilla, and a mixture of powdered sugar, powdered milk, and salt.

Add some food coloring, and knead the dough until smooth. We started out using thin gloves, to keep from dyeing our hands, but I found the gloves a little awkward to work with, and chose to go without. It's not the first time this week I've had multi colored hands anyway.

Once the dough was smooth, we rolled it into thin ropes, and pressed them side by side, in the desired color pattern.

Then, we cut them into triangles with a sharp knife, and smoothed them out a little more by hand. Cutting them this way, half of them ended up upside down, as far as the colors go, but they still looked very candy cornish.

The dough was pretty stiff, and rolling it into ropes proved a bit difficult for the children, so we switched to making pumpkins, instead, by forming the orange dough into balls, and sticking on a tiny bits of green dough for stems. They were a lot easier to make, and they are just as tasty.

When my husband got home, I had a difficult time convincing him our little treats were homemade. They have a texture very much like the store bought candy. And the flavor, as I mentioned, is just like candy corn - only so much better.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Real Life S'mores - No Felt Required

There have been quite a few posts out there in Mom Blog Land lately, that have had to do with indoor campfires, and felt s'mores. They look like a lot of fun, but they also reminded me there was something we neglected to do with the children this summer.

Since, my husband had a day off in the middle of this week, one of those use-it-or-lose-it vacation days, we loaded up the minivan, and headed for the woods. Please note - in western Montana, that means a two minute drive out of town - so it wasn't exactly a grand scale adventure, but still...

Thanks to all of you who made cardboard, and felt s'mores over the last few weeks. We'll probably play camping, and make some sometime this winter, but I'm so glad we didn't miss out on making the real thing. I'd forgotten how good fire toasted marshmallows taste.

It's great to be a homescooler.

Harvest Time - stART

For our stART (story + art) project today, we read Harvest Time by Mercer Mayer. Since it is a "First Readers" book, and contains a nice list of story related words to learn, we decided to recreate the list with sugar cookie letters.

But first, because we wanted to make this an art project, we divided up the dough, and added some fall colors. We used cocoa for brown, and then used some red and yellow food coloring to make the rest of our colors. We also added in some fall flavors - a bit of maple syrup, and sprinkles of cinnamon, ginger, and cloves.

Then we mixed the different colored, and flavored doughs together, and rolled them out. This made a really pretty marbled sort of dough, from which we cut the letters for the our vocabulary words.

The more we mixed, and rerolled the dough, the more the colors mixed together, until finally, we had a solid, sort of cranberry color.

We baked the letters, and a few leaf shaped cookies, and hopefully this afternoon, we'll practice vocabulary, and then have a snack. I sampled a leaf, just to make sure the flavors worked together, and I think I have a new favorite fall cookie - yum!

Be sure to check out the other stART projects for the week, at A Mommy's Adventures.

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Magazine Collage Fall Letters - A Preschool Craft

Our paper bag owls looked a little lonely hanging above the dining room door, so the little ones pitched in to spruce things up a bit.

First, they tore my fall edition of Tea Time Magazine to bits (gasp! I know - but it arrived in July, so it's been pretty well read).

They brushed watered down glue onto pieces of card stock. Cereal box cardboard would have worked better, but we were out.

Then, they covered the glue soaked paper with pieces from the magazine. I had gone through the pile, and sorted out the most fall looking scraps. And although, I had to keep reminding them to place the pieces, so the pretty sides were showing, it led to a nice discussion of which colors are fall colors, and why.

Finally, after the papers were completely covered, the girls painted on another layer of glue. They enjoyed painting with the glue so much, that each girl made two sheets, so they could paint some more.

When the collages had dried completely, I cut them into letter shapes, and a few leaf shapes, and clipped them to the twine, with the owls, using paper clips.

The owls look more complete, the little ones have learned how to spell fall, and I have a nice reminder of all the great recipes I still want to try out from the Tea Time Magazine - if only I had remembered to copy them all out before the ripping started!

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Stuffed Felt Car - Take One

Have you ever had one of those great ideas, that's just brilliant - until you realize it's not? That's what happened to me with this little car.

The children have really played a lot with the water bottle dog, I made a while back. It's held together pretty well, considering it's construction paper, and plastic glued, and taped together. But, I thought it might be fun to make something similar, only a bit sturdier. With Christmas vaguely in mind, I decided to try making a stuffed car on wheels.

I found a cute car coloring sheet, and printed it out in a little smaller size, so the wheels were about the same size as a milk cap.

I traced it, and cut it out the pieces to use as a pattern, for cutting the felt.

Once I had the felt arranged the way I wanted it, I hand stitched everything in place, and stuffed the car, thinking that later I could walk the kids through the process. They could certainly hand stitch felt pieces together, maybe this could be something they could make for each other.

Then, I prepared the wheels, the same way I had for the dog, with straws, wooden skewers, and milk caps.

I attached the straws to the bottom of the car with hot glue, and a few stitches.

Then, I added the wooden skewers, and stuck on the milk caps, and felt wheel pieces, hot gluing them in place.

The car rolls really well, and I was pretty happy with it until...

...I looked at it from the front.

But, I can already visualize the next model, and it's brilliant...

It's great to be a homeschooler.

Owl Cookies

These fun fall cookies are super easy to make.

1. Start by mixing up two batches of sugar cookie dough. Add 1/4 cup of maple syrup to one batch, and 1/4 cup of cocoa powder to the other.



2. Roll the chocolate dough out, into roughly a rectangular shape.



3. Form the maple dough into a thick play dough type rope, the same length as the rectangle of chocolate dough.



4. Place the maple dough on top of the chocolate, and wrap the chocolate dough around the maple.



5. Wrap the dough in wax paper, and refrigerate it for a few hours.




6. Slice the chilled dough into 1/4 inch thick slices.




7. Place the cookies by twos, overlapping them slightly, onto a lightly greased cookie sheet.




8. Press M&M's into the middle of the cookies for eyes.




9. Press a cashew into the overlap of the cookies for a beak.



10. Bake the cookies for 10-12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit.



11. Allow to cool slightly, before removing from the pan with a wide spatula.



12. Enjoy!

It's great to be a homeschooler - especially on the first day of fall.