JourneyLeaf: Life a Page at a Time

Veggie People: Philip Haas' Four Seasons

 

Our summer kids' group, Camp Rainbow, chose a veggie theme for
July 6-12.  A trip to the farmer's market and making ketchup were good activities.  (Click HERE for that post.)  And my friend Nikki remembered that the Atlanta Botanical Garden currently has four sculptures on view based on vegetables and fruits.  American artist Philip Haas created portrait busts over fifteen feet tall to personify Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter.  His inspiration was the paintings of Renaissance artist Giuseppe Arcimboldo.

Buddies ready for an adventure...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

There was so much to see at the Atlanta Botanical Garden that we didn't stay at the sculptures long.  Still, the kids enjoyed pointing out how familiar objects were used for their shapes and colors, coming together to create something new.  We discussed the seasonal nature of produce and how the sculptor reflected that in his work.  Then the kiddos were off to explore the Garden.  Click HERE for the next post about the Garden.

 

Camp Rainbow:  
A summer play/exploration group for kids and their families

Explanation of Camp Rainbow 
Week One:  Careers and Jobs -- Restaurant and Bank
Week One:  Careers and Jobs -- Pizza Parlor
Week Two:  Native Americans
Week Three:  Wet and Wild (water creatures and wetland habitats)
Week Three:  Wet and Wild -- Home Aquarium
Week Four:  Natural History (mud pies and fake rain count, right?)
Week Five:  Art All Around Us -- Georgia Museum of Art
Week Five:  Art All Around Us -- Patterns
Week Six:  Produce -- Fruit -- Berry Picking 
Week Seven:  Produce -- Veggies -- Making Homemade Ketchup
Week Seven:  Produce -- Veggies -- Four Season Sculptures

   

Related articles

A Healthy Balance

A Tale of Three Ketchups

Camp Rainbow

Philip Haas: Four Seasons

Wet and Wild

Native American Week

Aquarium

Capturing Winter

 

After four years living in Northern California, the seasons of North Georgia are rather seductive.  Now I am often surrounded by nature's clues to where we are in the calendar year, and I love the way this orients me.  Goofy?  Perhaps.  But true.  I remember feeling a sense of excitement when I began attending the Episcopal church during my college days and joined their pattern of celebrating the Liturgical year.  Maybe it is somehow listening to the generations upon generations of farmers in my ancestry --following the calendar, the almanac, and nature's signs to know when to plant, forage, hunt, or harvest.  Whatever the origin, it is appreciating and being grateful for the present.  It is a way of being in sync with the world around me.

 

Eli spent most of his life (so far) in a place with milder weather patterns and fewer obviously-seasonal plants, so whole forests of bare-limbed trees full of winter sunshine are new.  He doesn't articulate noticing the change, yet our nature walks are now full of bouncing and pointing up at the sky and scrunching in the brown leaves.  I want to encourage that.  I would like to nurture his sense of appreciation and gratitude for the present as well as help him be in sync with his world.

 

   

This line of thinking puts me in mind of the spot in California where we always took St. Paddy's Day photos, and how taking photos of the same landscape over time can help you appreciate how much it changes according to the season and weather conditions.  (Click HERE to see the wild, rolling hills of California in varied shades of green.)  

Hmmm.  Why not go on a hunt for signs of winter and capture them with a camera?  We could zoom in on specific effects of winter but also take broad photos of the landscape that we can print out in the summertime and bring back for comparison.

 

 

Thus Eli and I embarked on our project.  But how to approach it?  I could take all the photos, but that wouldn't give Eli the freedom to capture what he sees from his perspective, and I think there is value in that freedom.  He has a Fisher-Price digital camera for kids, but it is better for a rambunctious two or three year-old.  It can take abuse well yet gives small, low-resolution photos that are blurred unless the camera is kept quite still.  Now that Eli is older and more careful, I want him to have better results.  

Our old point-and-shoot Sony camera doesn't get used much now that I have an iPhone, so I decided to test Eli on it.  I adjusted the padded carrying case so Eli could wear it bandolier-style.  So the camera had less chance of falling, Eli had a choice of wearing the camera's wrist strap (in a cow-hitch to make it a little tighter) or attaching it to the case.  I admit that I had visions of the camera shattering in a million pieces or my child doing a face-first splat because he was too busy taking pictures to watch for tree roots.  But we talked a little about safety before we started and he did great!

 

 

Eli took forty photos.  (Thank goodness for rechargable batteries and no film needed!)  "You can put 'em on the bwog, Mama!"  Here are a few of our favorites...

 

 

 

   

 

 

 

The wood where we walked is a place I walked with my parents when I was growing up.  And it has lots of memories from solo adventures and walks with friends as a young adult.  Sharing it with Eli on a sunny winter afternoon was bliss.  I think we'll be back often, capturing the seasons and the years as we go.

(I think the white wildflower Eli found is an early bloodroot.)

Related articles

The Winter Garden

Winter Sky

Winter Barn

Twig, Stick, Pebble, Rock Retrospective

Yummy Magic Wands

We've been making batches of edible magic wands around here.  So handy for transforming holiday gatherings into yummy parties.  (Heather, you asked for the recipe, so this post is for you...)

 

You'll need a twelve-ounce bag of pretzel rods, an eight-ounce box of semi-sweet chocolate squares, a six-ounce box of white chocolate squares, parchment or wax paper, and some confection sprinkles.  (I use Baker's brand for both kinds of chocolate.)

Melt an eight-ounce box of semi-sweet chocolate squares in a double boiler or in the microwave.  Many recipes add a tablespoon of shortening at this point to give the chocolate a smoother consistency.

 

When the chocolate is completely melted, dip the pretzel rods into it one at a time, using a spoon to help cover the rod except for an inch or two at the top.  Eli and I make a two-person assembly line at this point.  I coat the pretzel rods and place them on a parchment-covered pan.  He shakes sprinkles over them while they are still hot.

 

Once we use up the dark chocolate (covering about three-fourths of the pretzel bag), we start in on the white.  Broken pretzels are not a problem; lots of folks like nibbling on a smaller wand.

 

After all the pretzels are covered, I dip a spoon in the white chocolate and drizzle it over the dark chocolate-covered pretzel rods for added decoration.  Chill the wands in the fridge to set them.  Easy peasy start to finish!

 

The final step is to use up the leftover white chocolate.  If you have any berries or dried fruit, dip them in!  Or you can pour Cheerios into the melted chocolate, adding enough that the cereal gets lightly but uniformly coated.  Add some nonpareils to create Elf Donuts.  These tiny treats are surprisingly yummy, which is saying something coming from a person who isn't a fan of white chocolate.  If you have any Elf Donuts left by Christmas Eve, you can put them out for Santa's helpers along with cookies for Santa and carrots for the reindeer.  

 

One of the fun things about these magic wands is that depending on the colors and types of sprinkles you use, they are great for all seasons and holidays.

Melting Beads

A few weeks ago one of my mama friends posted on her blog about Perler Fun Fusion beads.  These loose beads can be arranged on a small peg board and then you use an iron to melt them, permanently fusing the beads together.  A few days later, one of my favorite authors, Jane Brocket, fondly recalled the same beads in one of her blog posts, although in England they apparently call them Hama beads.  So when Eli pounced on a Perler kit at the dollar store, I was eager to try them too.

Eli liked the Perler beads, but they were sometimes frustrating to him because they are so small.  He often knocked the beads out of place by mistake.  His fine motor skills are getting better all the time, but in the meantime I discovered Perler also offers Biggie Beads.  As the name implies, they are melting beads of a larger size and work well for a three year-old's fingers.  We used a Micheal's coupon to pick up a bucket of 1,200 beads for $6 and love them!  We've melted some of them into ornaments but also discovered they are fun simply to play with -- making temporary patterns or pictures, counting and sorting, but also stringing (especially on pipe cleaners).

The peg board we purchased is clear, so we can place a paper pattern beneath it if we want to make a specific design.  If you do a web search for "Biggie Bead patterns," there are many available for free.  (Click HERE for an example.)

 

Most of the time Eli just wings it, creating colorful amoebas and ink blots.  But we had fun making ornaments for Halloween too.  There are lots of holiday-related patterns to be found.

 

 

I predict a lot of bead melting in our future!

Related articles

Happy Halloween 2012

Liquid Stained Glass Window

We found a fun creative toy on Pinterst that we had to try.*  It's super easy -- just squirt a couple of tablespoons of finger or tempera paint into a gallon sized baggie with a reliable zipper and then tape it to a window.  I used blue and green so the colors would look pretty when blended.  (Great way to teach color mixing!)  The thin layer of paint shines nicely in daylight.  I'm thinking for the holidays I'll put up several bags in rows so it will look like a stained glass window.

 

 

 

Eli had fun playing with the texture and blending the paint, but we found it is also handy as a drawing surface.  Eli is still learning to recognize his numbers, so we've been writing them on his paint bag.  But we write and draw other things too...

*A big thanks goes to Breanna of the "No One Has More Fun Than the Adams" blog.  She posted a photo of this project on June 29, 2011.   

Tokonoma

When I traveled to Japan in the mid-1990s, I was intrigued that many houses have a special alcove for a vase and an art object or two.  The display changes with the seasons.  The vase may hold daffodils in spring, peonies in summer, a cluster of colored maple leaves in autumn, and an arrangement of bare branches in winter.  Called a tokonama or toko, the small area is designed to bring calm aesthetics to the house and welcome a little bit of seasonal nature.  

I love to celebrate the holidays as well as the seasons.  I also love the idea of a cheery decorated spot above the usual family clutter.  Thus I decided to dedicate the otherwise-rather-ugly brick mantel in our rental house den as a toko.  Each month I change the flowers or nature objects I place there.  When contemplating what else to add, I realized that the den is the most cozy and "family-ish" part of the house, so the toko should reflect this.  Thus I got some plain, cream-painted wood frames and started swapping out favorite Eli photos that matched the month's theme.  I add some colored candles and maybe a couple of appropriate knick-knacks.  Martha Stuart probably wouldn't be impressed since the focus is on family rather than elegance, yet it is a great way to rotate beloved photos, celebrate the passing of time, and have something visually fresh in the house.

 

Post-Easter, we're now in a holiday lull.  What to do for the month of May?  Spring brings to mind flowers, but since Eli is a boy we're not dripping with floral-theme photos around here.  Hmmm....  How about fun bugs?!  (See what I mean about Martha not being impressed?)  I have a butterfly tealight holder and then I got some bright yellow daisies that I dispersed across the mantel in small, mismatched green vases.  I added some favorite baby photos of Eli when he was dressed as a bug...  

   

(Yes, there are boy butterflies.  If there weren't male butterflies, we wouldn't have fertilized eggs to hatch into caterpillars and become new butterflies, now would we?!)

Next, I decided it would be nice if Eli got to creatively contribute to our toko.  He's helped me pick out flowers and gather pinecones for the display, but I wanted him to really be a part of it...

 

Eli busy making...

 

...busy making....

 

...busy making a mess!  Yes, it is necessary to dump out all the art supplies.

 

Actually, he made a mess AND he made an egg carton caterpillar.

 

A good project for spring!  They are quite happy living on our mantel for the month.

 

Project Notes:  We used a cardboard egg carton to make two caterpillars.  I find that using a sharp serrated bread knife cuts the carton much more easily than scissors.  I cut the top off the carton (recycling that part), cut the main part of the carton in half, and then cut off some of the "bumps" inside so that the caterpillars would rest flat on the tabletop.  We colored them with crayons and markers.  Eli liked crayons the best on his caterpillar, but the markers showed up much better.  Paint, stickers, and wiggly craft eyes would work too.  When we were done, I poked two small holes in the caterpillars' heads and poked pipe cleaners through to make antennae.  

Tokonoma Notes:   Sometimes I can't pick a single favorite photo to display, so I use Walgreens/Snapfish to create a photo collage.  When I take out last month's photos and collages, I put them in a folder so they will be fresh and crisp to use again.  In addition to photos, a tokonoma is a great way to occasionally display travel souvenirs, family heirlooms, childhood treasures, and the like.  I love the idea of using items that are usually tucked away so I'm appreciating what I have rather than buying anything new.

Hmmm.  A theme for June...?

Valentine Popcorn Balls

I sent all the cookies off with Brian this morning.  Enjoying a couple of cookies is a good thing.  Enjoying a whole batch is a bad thing!  I'm not making any more holiday treats this weekend, but I thought I'd share my recipe for popcorn balls.  If you want to make a Valentine treat with kids, this is a fun one.

 Popcorn Balls 

My maternal grandmother taught me how to make these when I was in college.  They are a little hard to eat, but yummy.  It’s fun to make different colors for holidays – pastel for Easter, red & blue raspberry for July 4, orange for Halloween, red & green for Christmas, etc.  For Valentine’s Day, use white popcorn and various red/pink shades of gelatin.

1 gallon unsalted, unbuttered popcorn (less corn makes more “candy-like’ balls)

1 cup light corn syrup

½ cup granulated sugar (cane sugar works best)

3-ounce package of gelatin (regular, not sugar free), any flavor  (I’ve found cherry, watermelon, and peach tend to be most popular.)

Make popcorn, remove unpopped kernels, and place in a buttered roasting pan or other big pan with deep sides.  Put out a 2-foot sheet of waxed paper or parchment paper.  Over medium high heat in thick-bottomed medium saucepan, cook syrup and sugar while stirring slowly to prevent scorching.  When it reaches a foamy boil, continue to boil one full minute stirring only enough to keep it from scorching.  (Watch out for caramel-colored hot spots.)  Add gelatin and stir until dissolved.  (A metal whisk works well for this part.)  Drizzle hot syrup over popcorn and stir with buttered wooden or metal spoon.  Let cool slightly.  Coat your hands with butter and press popcorn into balls.  (Hard-pressed balls are difficult to eat, so go easy.)  Leave on waxed paper to cool and harden.  Store in an airtight container.  

And how did yesterday's cookies actually turn out?  Like this...

Creature Comforts -- Philosophy Bath Gel

My friend Danielle started it.  One year around my birthday a box arrived with a bottle of Philosophy brand bath gel in it.  It was a "plain Jane" sort of domed bottle with a black snap top.  The odd thing was the scent -- Pumpkin Pie.  And it really did smell like pumpkin pie!  From the first use, I was hooked.  This stuff can be used as shampoo, shower gel, and bubble bath.  It is much thicker, richer, and nicer than anything else I've ever used plus the scents are very true and not too harsh.  I think one of the biggest appeals, though, is the variety.  I love to have small pleasures that I change with the seasons and Philosophy is perfect.  In the winter months of the new year, I stick with Hot Cocoa, Cinnamon Buns, or one of their mint scents.  In spring I move to one of the fruit scents like Berry Crumb Pie or one of the vanillas like Waffle Cone or Birthday Cake.  In the summer, I love Lemonade or Fresh Peach.  September is for Apple Cider while in October and November I've always got a bottle of Pumpkin Pie in the shower.  I'm out of Candy Cane for next month, but can make do with Egg Nog.  I'm a little tempted by the new gingerbread variety pack they have out -- Cinnamon Hot Dots, Gingerbread, Spicy Gumdrops, and Sweet Creamy Frosting.

When we moved cross-country, out went all our liquids.  We gave away every bit of cleaning supplies, cooking extracts, etc.  But I couldn't give away my unfinished bottles of Philosophy.  I put the caps on tight, slid each bottle into a sealed freezer bag, and then packed them carefully in a plastic bin with a tight lid.  And they arrived just fine.  I'm glad I did.  Right now some of my longtime favorite pleasures are limited -- visits with old friends, a long hike, marathon shopping jaunts with buddies, and the like.  I don't have time for movies and such.  I'm trying to eat healthy for Jelly Tot.  I've been tied to my computer for a while and soon will be tied down to the house with a newborn.  But the pleasure of a warm shower with Philosophy is always there.  (I know!  I know!  Several of you have warned me that I'll barely have time for a shower once the baby comes, but at least it will be a good one.)

Sephora beauty store carries Philosophy, but some department stores (like Dillards) carries it too.  And there are shops online.  I've found that each store carries a different selection; even the Philosophy website doesn't always have them all.  They are admittedly expensive -- $16 for 16 ounces.  But it lasts a very long time.

Some of the other scents:  Carrot Cake, Red Velvet Cake, Melon Daiquiri, Raspberry Sorbet, Strawberry Milkshake, Key Lime Pie, Caramel Mocha Latte, Spicy Pear, Orange Cranberry, Black Licorice....