Guhguh's Famous Carrot Cake

My mom (with help from O) made a delicious carrot cake for E's 1st birthday party. After my mom decorated it with white icing, I put pictures from the different phases of E's first year around the edge of the cake with a #1 candle in the middle. O decorated the cake with blue icing and candy. We were pleased with the end result, and next year we'll let E help us decorate her cake.



Since my mom is locally famous for this delicious carrot cake, I thought I would share the recipe.


3 cups sugar
1 1/2 cups Canola oil
2 cups whole wheat flour
1 cup plain flour
3 tsp baking soda
3/4 tsp salt
6 tsp cinnamon
6 eggs
5 cups shredded carrots

Preheat oven to 350. Add sugar and canola oil together in a large mixing bowl. Add dry ingredients one at a time. Mix well by hand. Beat eggs with a whisk in a separate bowl adn add them to the mixture. Gently mix in the carrots. Divide the mixture into 3 9 inch layer pans, which have been sparayed heavily with BAker's Joy nonstick spray. Put in the oven and bake for 35 to 40 minutes. Let the layers cool on cooling racks for 10 minutes. Gently remove from pans. Let layers cool a little more before icing.

Icing

1 large package low fat cream cheese (8 ounces)
1 stick of butter
1 box confectioner's sugar
1/2 tsp cinnamon
2 tsp vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts

Enjoy!

Changes

I will miss my ballerina princess enjoying her Montessori homeschool because she's now attending a REAL Montessori school! She started school last Tuesday, and she loves it. I miss her so much, but I know that she is having a great time and is learning so much. Her class and all of the materials are amazing. Her teachers are great, and she loves them. I'm so happy that she is spending more time with other kids and has more opportunities for making friends.

This is how I amused myself after E, Elliott, and I got home from dropping O off at her first day of school :)


O refuses to tell me what she does at school if I ask her, but if I don't ask her, she'll gradually share details. She loves to wash dishes, and she was very excited about cleaning a mirror and shining shoes. She also said she did the spindle box, and she came home with several sheets from the metal insets.


This blog will be changing a little...although, not that much since I really haven't done much Montessori work with O in a few months (we had to move the Montessori shelf out to the garage since the baby was pulling up on it, and it's on casters and top heavy...also, we just don't do much "school" work in the summer since we spend most of our time outside on the beach and in the lake). I'll be posting about all of the various activities (mostly Montessori inspired) that I do with E, the art, nature, and cooking activities that I do with O in the afternoons, product reviews (about 4 coming up fairly soon along with a couple of giveaways), and handmade gifts (I'm WAY behind on this...I still haven't posted about a couple of handmade gifts from last Christmas).

Thanks for reading!

Happy 1st Birthday, E!

E's 1st birthday was last week...I can't believe that my baby is one! She started walking 2 days after that, so the past week has been a busy one with lots of changes (in more ways than one...more on that in another post). We are adjusting to our new normal and finding new rhythmn to our days. I apologize to the people who have emailed and commented with questions...I am weeks and weeks behind in responding, but I hope to catch up soon.

Here is E's birthday ring. I printed wallet sized pictures from 4 different phases of her first year and cut them out to use the birthday ring and her birthday cake. I love how it turned out!

I bought the birthday ring from The Wooden Wagon (before O's first birthday).

A Pretty Bouquet

O recently spent the day with her grandmother, and when I picked her up, she was SO excited that she had picked a bouquet of flowers for me. I loved how they put the flowers in a jelly jar with a shell tied around it for decoration. So simple and pretty.

All About Red

I've recently started taking down the bags (one at a time) from O's color hunt game to teach E her colors. She LOVES exploring the objects in the bags, and I think she may know the color red (although, she hasn't said the word red yet).

I love how she put the bag on her arm to wear it like a pocketbook.

She was especially enthralled with the red hairband. (I had to watch her very closely because she was very tempted to put it in her mouth). She was very persistant in trying to put it on her wrist to wear like a bracelet.

Her persistance paid off, and she eventually got the hairband on her wrist. I love to watch her when she is so focused on a task. I love that she persisted until she accomplished her goal and never became frustrated.


Btw, you may notice that E wears a lot of tie-dyed shirts...our craft activity during our beach trip was tie dying shirts. I took lots of E's stained and plain night shirts and play shirts and made them beautiful. I love tie-dye!

Volcano Fun

A few weeks ago, O told me that she loved volcanoes. I asked if she remembered making a sand volcano last summer, and she didn't. So, we made another one!

First, she filled a water bottle 3/4 full with lake water. Then we built a sand volcano up around it. She put blue food coloring in the water (blue is her favorite color).

Then she put 2 tablespoons of baking soda in the bottle.

I poured in the vinegar, and we watched our volcano explode!

We made it explode several times before O started experimenting with putting sand in the bottle, etc. This was such a fun activity!

Putting Objects in a Large Container

E is REALLY into putting objects into containers and then taking them out again. Since this is her area of interest, I've been focusing on this for most of her activities. When I saw this large container at my mom's house, I knew it would be perfect for E. (the container came from Sam's Club and held pretzels). For the first couple of weeks that we had the container, we just put various objects in it and rolled it around on the floor and shook it. This was a lot of fun, but not as much fun as it could be...

So, I asked Elliott to cut a square hole in the side (I try to avoid cutting things with large knives, if at all possible, since my finger incident). After he cut the hole, I covered the sharp, plastic edges with duct tape. I gave E a basket of toys and showed her how to drop them in and then take them out of the hole.

I love that this container is large enough for her to use a variety of toys and objects that are not chokable.

Blink Card Game

Many months ago a reader of this blog commented that she thought O would enjoy the game Blink. Ever since then I've noticed the game in WM or Target when I walked down the game aisle, but I couldn't bring myself to spend 5 or 6 dollars on it (I'm thrify by nature). I was thrilled, however, to buy a brand new game from the 2nd hand store for 1 dollar! I bought this game when we were on our way to the beach, and we had a great time playing it all week. It says it's for ages 7 and up, but O (at 4 years old) was able to play easily with help from me. Here's a description from Amazon...

It's faster than you think
Two players race to be the first to play all of their cards
Players quickly try to match the shape, count, or color on the cards
The first player out of cards wins
Fast and portable, Blink is instant fun for everyone


This game reminds me very much of a card game that I loved to play with my mom as a child...Spit. Not a very nice name, but SO much fun :) So, I have to say that even though I wasn't willing to spend 5 dollars on the game, I do think it is worth 5 dollars. However, it's even nicer to just pay 1!

Velcro Sandwich Activity

E LOVES O's play kitchen and all of the food in it, so I thought she'd enjoy having some wooden/velcro food activities on her Montessori shelf.

I put a wooden sandwich with fillings that attach via velcro in a basket on her shelf. She was very excited when I showed her this activity. She had fun pulling the sandwich apart, and she was not very interested in putting it back together again. We worked on labeling the bread, pickles, cheese, and tomato in the sandwich and the colors of everything. I plan to put different wooden food items on her shelf each week to keep it interesting for her.

Stacking Wooden Bears

I recently introduced these stacking wooden bears to E. She loves to tear them down, and she's learning to stack them. We discuss colors, body parts, animals (cat, bunny, dog), and clothing (shirt and pants) while we play. I bought this toy from a 2nd hand shop for O a couple of years ago for about 3 dollars. I encourage you to shop for toys and clothes at 2nd hand shops if you want a great deal!

Spelling Words with Necklaces

O recently got these necklaces from a pinata at a birthday party and has had a lot of fun making letters out of them. She was using 2 or 3 necklaces to make each letter, so we challenged her to make a 3 letter word which meant she had to make each letter from just one necklace. She enjoyed this task, and we helped her figure out how to do it :)

E's New Trick

She's started crossing her fingers during meals. She's quite proud! I love all of these little things that she does that are just so cute :)

Kids in the Kitchen...Apples and Onions

O, E, and I are reading Farmer Boy by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and we are really enjoying it! (I enjoy reading the Little House on the Prairie books just as much if not more than O) Almanzo's favorite dish is Apples and Onions. Since O and I had never heard of such a combination, we decided to give it a try!

First, O peeled the onion. I chopped the onion and sauteed it in butter until it was translucent.

O washed the apples with Veggie Wash.

Then we cut the apples together.

I sauteed the apples and onions until the apples were soft and added salt to taste. I was surprised by how good this was! O was pretending to be Eliza Jane (Almanzo's oldest sister) and declared that apples and onions were Eliza Jane's favorite dish, too!


And here's a look at O's supper tray...apples and onions, sweet potato chunks, avocado, salmon, and rotisserie chicken. I love serving O's meals in trays like this one.