May the Cookie Be with You

Last year I learned that May 4th is Star Wars Day only that very day so I was determined to make the most of it this year (and give you a head's up).  The Christmas before last, I got these adorable cookie cutters in my stocking and I've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to make some cookies.  I scaled down my original plan of 4 flavors of cookies (lemon storm troopers and almond boba fetts got the axe). down to two - vanilla Yoda (recipe from the Lovely Cupboard) and chocolate Darth Vader (from Bake at 350, my cookie guru). Having tasted both, I definitely see the appeal of the dark side.

I baked a half-batch of each recipe and added a few drops of green and just a bit of blue to the Yoda dough.  Although the cocoa makes a fairly dark dough, you'll also need to add a few drops of black to the chocolate dough to get the proper Darth Vader color.  The cookie cutters are a little finicky. If you don't flour your cutter before each and every impression, you will end up with deformed characters and lose ten minutes of your life picking dough out of the crevices of the cookie cutter with a toothpick.  But most of mine came out nicely and the fun impressions means there is no decorating once they are out of the oven!

The vanilla cookie recipe is meant to be sandwich cookies and I think some lemon curd would really make this cookie. Oooooooh, and Darth Vader ice cream sandwiches!  You can cut out the cookies without imprinting them to make a smooth reverse ...I know what I'll be doing next year.  But for now, 

May the 4th be with You.

DIY Kid's Science Kit (with Download)

So I'm great at making gifts for babies and pretty good with adults, but I have absolutely no idea what anyone between the ages of about 5 and 21 would possibly want for Christmas. The worst, for me, is the "tween" (side note: when did that become a thing?  I'm pretty sure no one ever called me a tween when I was 11).  Since Geoff has a brother and sister who fall into that age group, it took be a while to come up with homemade present ideas.  Eventually, I just decided to make something I wanted to play with and hoped they would like it.  And what do I think is the most fun thing ever?  SCIENCE!  

There are a lot of so-called science kits out there, but you'd be surprised how many include fake microscopes.  I knew I could do better and include all the gee-whiz experiments I've encountered over the years.  After scouring the internet (I highly recommend Science Bob for all sorts of experiments you can do with stuff already around your house and Home Science Tools for more complex projects), I came up with 28 projects that I thought (hoped) were appropriate for supervised 8 and 11 year olds.  To me, science is all about making your own observations so I streamlined the instructions, added some questions and places for the kids to write their own observations, and a "What's Happening?" section to explain the science behind each experiment in a kid-friendly way.

Then I assembled as many of the necessary components as were safe to ship and would fit in my box and topped it with a personalized notebook for each child.  My kit included baking soda, balloons, bar magnet, borax, chocolate bars, clear plastic cups, coffee filters, compass, cork, corn starch, corn syrup, epsom salts, food coloring, glitter, index cards, iron nails, liquid soap, metal washers, needle, pennies, plastic stir sticks, salt, skittles, soy sauce packet, straws, string, tape, white glue, and wire.  You could include more or less, but I wanted to ensure that they would be able to do several of the experiments on Christmas day without having to go to the store.

If you want to make your own DIY science kit or just try out some of the experiments, you can download my workbook here: http://goo.gl/5WMmJ. It contains directions for cabbage-based pH testing; making your own bubble solution, play dough, slime, bouncy ball, and invisible ink; turning a chicken bone into a rubber bone; using paper chromatography to separate out the dyes in candy; copper plating nuts and bolts; making a Cartesian diver; building a hoop plane, balloon rocket, oatmeal container camera, worm composter, compass, pinwheel turbine, solar oven, and mousetrap marshmallow catapult; determining the strength of chocolate bars; turning leaves into skeletons; testing for photosynthesis; dying carnations and carrots; making staltactites and stalagmites; and my very own at home DNA extraction that I do with students every year.

I hope you enjoy the PDF I put together and let me know if you have any other links to great home science projects!

DNA to Cuddle

Yesterday we went to a first birthday party for my boss's daughter.  Since her mom is a geneticist, I thought it was high time she start learning about DNA.  Thankfully, I have had my eye on this knit DNA model for quite a while and was just waiting for the opportunity to make it. It took a couple hours each night over the course of several evenings, but was a pretty easy.

Knitting Nerd info: The coolest thing about this pattern is that you actually knit the tube into a spiral using a series of increases and decreases.  I used an M1 increase instead of the YO called for because it mean't that I didn't have to deal with the holes created by the increase.  To make sure that the nucleotides were evenly spaced, I shoved a DPN through each nucleotide and positioned it on the sugar-phosphate backbones.

The birthday girl thought it was neat and colorful, but it was really the biggest hit with the adults!  Now everyone wants one.

May the Fourth Be with You

Happy Star Wars Day!!  I didn't know that it was Star Wars Day until I saw all the greetings flying around Facebook this morning, but I knew I had to find someway to use these adorable cookie cutters I got for Christmas.

I just made cookies last night (more on that soon) or else I would have made some of these super cute chocolate shortbread cookies.  Instead, I cut out some slices of bread and painted them with food color to make croutons to add a little crunch to the mushroom-quinoa bake I made for dinner.  Yoda was my favorite.  Look how cute he was perched on top of my salad.

p.s. What do you think of my new header and layout?