Pancake Tutorials: Jonah and the Whale

Jonah 2:17

Now the Lord had prepared a great fish to swallow up Jonah. 

And Jonah was in the belly of the fish three days and three nights.

Summer is getting closer (Yippee! Soon no more lunches to pack or early alarm clocks!) and I have two super easy, fun Jonah and the Whale video tutorials showing you how to make the Whale and a pancake boat on a stick.

I thought this would be great for a lazy, summer afternoon pancake art project with your kids or maybe even a small group VBS project.

These are my sketches so that I could decide on how to create the videos

Tutorial to make the Whale

 Tutorial to make the Boat on a Stick

 

Here's a little "Behind the Scenes" on making this video

* I painted my nails for this video and didn't actually wait long enough for the polish to dry before making the pancakes.  So, I had to make an extra whale fin when I realized that there was nail polish on it! Ooops!

 *My little helper (aka:my daughter) kept eating all of the finished demo pancake whales for the videos every time I wasn't looking. Therefore, I had to keep making more and more and more.....my little helper didn't mind! LOL!

Happy Summer and Happy Pancake making   :)

Light Saber Fights Before Coffee

Hot Fresh Coffee.  Ooohh I LOVE those words!  Don't you???? Yes please!  I especially like to slowly drink a cup before tackling anything in the morning.  However, do children care about HF (hot fresh coffee)? Uh, no.  Nor do they see the need to stare out the window in complete silence while trying to "wake" up.  No. No. Not an understood priority to them.

So, I say this to introduce the fact that on one recent early Saturday morning (before finishing a cup of HF), my kids decide to have a light saber play fight in front of me while humming the Star Wars theme nonstop.  Yes, nonstop. Oh my! I think they were certain that I would be impressed by their light saber skillz but come on, watching that much activity before my brain even defogged just doesn't work.  Finally I announced that I just couldn't take any more of the Star Wars theme song which they in turn looked at me in shock.  Really?

So as you can guess, Star Wars (with Angry birds) are my kids newest obsession these days.  I still find it odd that these two things were able to combine somehow into Angry Bird Star Wars characters. Weird, but cute at the same time.

For about 2 weeks my daughter wanted me to make her hair look like Princess Leia every morning for school. All I can say is that was way too stressful to fit into the fast paced morning routine that I'm not sad that phase is over....or at least I think it's over.  We'll see.

My daughter made these little Star Wars/Angry Bird characters recently that she has sitting on her window sill.  I so love them!

 

We even colored Angry bird faces on notebook paper, cut them out and taped them to red balloons.  I think I liked them more than my kids did. Oh well. 

I'll be curious to know how long this fad will go.....so long as they don't have light saber play fights before my morning coffee, I'll make it :)

Blessings,

Jenni

Sidewalk Chalk, Fashion and Frowns

I learned something new about sidewalk chalk and fashion from my little girl recently....just check out this little boot. I mean, Wow!

It used to be a Hum-Drum Brown color.

Now however, it's been transformed with a few strokes of sidewalk chalk, into something that's totally blue and fabulous!

*Note: this masterpiece was created while I wasn't looking.

And then, in addition to that previous masterpiece, was this one........

Ok, I have to ask myself  is "Someone" mad at me?????

So I asked for an interpretation from my little girl (of course ) and here it is:

This is a ladder to a twirly slide AND it goes all over the world! Wow!

BUT, the little girl and her sister had to go take a nap 

instead of going down the incredible slide.  

How sad. However, their cousins were really lucky

 because they got to go on the slide. 

Well that's good right? Someone got to enjoy your chalk slide!

Ha!Ha!

Jenni

Treasures in Pockets

It's that time of year when my kids go outside a lot and all sorts of "treasures" get stuffed into their pockets.

I've accidentally washed all sorts of things in the washing machine and I suppose that flowers wouldn't be so bad, right?

These photos were taken recently during a really beautiful day at our local park. Spring is slow in coming this year but it's making lovely progress!

 

Springtime!

May I introduce my little bunny friend to you? He's been bringing smiles to us all by visiting and hanging out under our pink, blooming flower bush on a very regular basis.  I can't say if it's the same bunny every time, but I'll pretend it is. 

I tried to sneak up on him with my camera  the other day but he ran off before I got a picture.  So, I moved on to plan B. where I snapped this photo of him with my telephoto lens through the kitchen window. Alright!

With Spring in full bloom, my kids often want to play outside after school and I don't know if it's just me, but I find it really hard to coral them back inside for homework. I think my kids sort of "check out" of school this time of year mentally.

Anyhow, my point is, getting homework done and staying on our regular school schedule is really a chore in the Spring. School work and early bedtimes are just so much easier in the winter when it's dark out and they play inside after school.  Staying Inside....now those are the key words!

I suppose were all ready for summer's non-scheduled life honestly. Sleeping in...no more packing lunches..no more frantic laundry late at night washing clothes for next day and so on....

Yep, I love Spring but boy is it rough on our daily school schedule! Does anyone else agree here?

Blessings,

Jenni

Going Backwards a Bit

Did you have a nice Easter? We had a group of about 20 friends over for a potluck after church, which I really enjoyed.  One of the gals brought over these edible egg bird nests.  Aren't they so cute! She told me that she saw the idea on Pinterest.

And speaking of eggs, we had maybe our first ever big color dye spill this year while decorating Easter eggs....blue color was everywhere (on clothing, the walls, the chair, the table, the floor-yikes!)  I was ok with it though surprisingly because it cleaned up without staining anything (woo-whoo!)

I'm going backwards a bit here with these photos of our Valentine's tree. I just wasn't ready to take down the pretty lights after Christmas....so I decorated it for Valentine's Day and then for Easter too.

I didn't snap any photos of the Easter tree which I just put away yesterday.  My daughter didn't want me to take down the tree yet and I considered decorating it with sunflowers (which she suggested) for summer but in the end, I decided it was probably time to let it go.  Funny thing is though, she hasn't realized that I took the tree down. Hmm?

I'm a little cheap sometimes and I didn't really want to spend any money on the decorations for this tree.  So other than buying some red garland in an after Christmas sale, I just looked around the house for something to use for ornaments.

I made these ornaments by layering foam heart stickers that my kids didn't use anymore.  Pretty simple!

These little heart ornaments I made by twisting red garland into heart shapes. Well, Ok, I know...I won't win any decorating awards but it was nice and sparkly to look at.  Now, with the tree finally packed away, I'm having twinkly light withdrawls!

Blessings,
Jenni

My Daughter's Valentine's Pancake

Just a quick "Hello" today before I make lunch for my husband.....I wanted to show you my daughter's pancake art.  She was inspired to make her own Valentine's Pancake Candy Box after eating the one I made previously HERE.  So, so, cute! I love the additional pancake layers she made for her candy!

A close friend of mine bought me another griddle for my house so that I can have two griddles going at the same time for my kids-pretty cool huh?!  It seemed to work pretty similarly to my Presto griddle so it will come in handy around here :)

Gotta go make lunch....thanks for stopping by!

Jenni