Yesterday was my 36th birthday, and my fantastic husband put in the extra effort to make it a great one. After being taken out for a chai and a free treat (Free Treat Day! at Starbucks) by my friend Shauna in the morning, we sauntered up to Family Place for a good hour of play for Kale and Bonnie before wandering home. Shortly after arriving home, Ross showed up, and sent me to THE SPA with instructions to do what I wanted and just be home for 3:30. Um. Kthxbai.
After a facial and seriously, the best massage I have ever had in my entire life (no kidding, no really, you need one too), I poured myself home in the blazing sunshine just in time to collect my adorable son from his bed as he woke from his nap. We three headed off to look at a house (meh) and then hit the store for some ingredients for the dinner I had made for me – gnocchi with sun dried tomatoes, chives, and garlic, and Roquefort salad with handmade dressing. Then it was off for a winetasting at The Orange Room with Mark from River Market, Karen the Winebard, and my friends Will and Briana.
All of this cavorting has had its toll on me, apparently, as I awoke this morning with an incredibly sore throat, swollen glands, and a cough. Go me. However, the custom made jeans I ordered arrived today! Happy birthday to me love me! More on those in a future post – I am washing them as I type and will post a review soon.
Anyway, I’ve taken a number of pictures this past while and wanted to do a picture roundup to share them all. I also have a verrryyy special treat for my mom and mother in law at the end of this post. Apologies if the pictures aren’t of the highest quality. Although we do own a point and shoot Sony digital camera, we never seem to have charged batteries (and it sucks anyway), so all I take pictures (or video) with these days is my iPhone.
Mouth full of grapes
Mooki and Kale chillin' on the couch watching the hockey game
I made some homemade play dough (now called “Kale-Dough” at our house) for Kale this morning. We chose baby blue as the colour – he pointed to the blue food colouring so okay by me, blue it is. He was pretty insistent about helping me mix it, and pretty insistent about having a go with it at the table as soon as it was done. Kale has played with play dough before at Family Place and enjoyed it, especially rolling it out and squishing it between his fingers but this was his very own blob of play dough to do with as he pleased.
I recently bought the Duktig 7 piece baking set from Ikea to go along with the pots and pans that Kale already has and it comes with a rolling pin, some cookie cutters, and some baking pans, and so I thought some play dough would be fun to make “cookies” out of. Kale is into kitchen stuff of all varieties and I think that’s awesome. Also on his current wish list? A tea set from Green Toys like the one his friend Moira has, and I’m currently scouring the web looking for plans to build a kitchen out of wood or some sort of Ikea Hack.
I plopped Kale into the seat and then had to wash my hands, so I gave him a plastic knife to stab the play dough with. He demanded another utensil after stabbing the play dough, and then another, and another, until eventually, he had 6 or 7 knives and forks and spoons on the table. He spent the better part of 45 minutes stabbing the dough with the utensil, making a “porcupine” and then asking me to re-roll the ball so he could do it again.
Kale Dough is a H-I-T. Although I warn you this video is a little anti-climatic. This was about the 4th time he had two blobs to stab.
Play Dough Recipe (I used 1/2 – it made an ample amount):
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
4 tsp cream of tartar (available in the baking/spices section of a normal grocery store)
2 tbsp oil
2 cups boiling water
food colouring – I used 6 drops to acheive baby blue
Mix all the dry ingredients together, then add the oil, water, and food colouring. Mix it really well and then turn out on a floured surface and knead until really smooth. Keep adding flour a bit at a time until it is the consistency you want.
Posted by Jen | Under Daily, Jen, Kale
Saturday Sep 6, 2008
I remember certain toys from growing up and its those toys I want to re-create for Kale. One of them was felt boards with all sorts of other pieces that you could put on the boards and create stories and pictures and the felt pieces would stick to this flocked backing. I did some research today and found out this was called Fuzzy Felt, and was created by a woman in 1950 in Britain. Its not particularly shocking I was exposed to this toy given my heritage. Ross, on the other hand, doesn’t remember this toy at all, and his earliest toy memory was Hot Wheels. I have a feeling that I can likely MAKE a knockoff of this toy myself… and just need to figure out what type of fabric to use for the background boards – I think some short velvet might just work. Hmmm…. stay at home mom business? I wonder…
Anyway, I have little time today as instead of working at the computer, I instead decided to go shoe shopping and bought myself a cute little pair of suede wedges:
But fear not, friends. Here is an adorable video of Kale discovering himself for the first time in the mirror. Please excuse the extremely DORKY conversation I have with him, and the ridiculous way I say “baby”.
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