Some Digital Memories…

I was messing around on facebook, trying to find myself (heh heh) and none of my searches were finding my name…so somehow it  got into the web search….and then I googled myself (Denna de Motta) and a whole bunch of things popped up that I had forgotten about!  Mostly they were digital scrapbooking projects that I did in the past for Creative Memories.  Since I just re-found them, I thought I’d share some of them here:

Legohead

and a tutorial on the Digital 411 blog:  Making the best of a blurry photo, has some ideas for editing photos.

and Baby’s Favorite Things:

Daddy’s little girl!!  My sister took these photos.

And another  idea from the Creative Memories Digital 411 blog, giving an idea for a scrapbook page layout : The Rest of the Story

All of these projects were created with all Creative Memories Digital content, of course.  I had a great time designing digital stuff for them 🙂

The Dirty Mystery of the Appearing Socks

We have always had a sock problem around here.  Sock problems.  There’s the obvious sock problem of the dryer eating the socks and then you end up with mateless socks.  Yes, that is one of our problems….we have piles of lonely socks.  But the other is a different scenario.  The Case of the Dirty Appearing Socks.  They appear everywhere, cowering under the sofa, jammed in behind the end tables, hanging around the book shelves, strewn on the bathroom floor, frolicking under the piano bench, rolled up in balls among the dust bunnies under beds, flung onto piles of clean clothes, hidden under desks and tables, shoved into nooks and crannies, in short: everywhere that they are not supposed to be!!  I won’t name names, (as I myself am not completely free from this type of criminal record)  for the culprits of these dastardly crimes all know who they (we) are.  I was just wondering if anyone else has a similar sock problem.  ???  No one that I know has ever mentioned such a thing, and it could be a phenomenon that only happens at our house…. well, only my Mom has mentioned finding some socks hidden in….oh wait…they were ours! 😦

The other day, with a flash of Sherlock-like brilliance, I found a solution to our dirty appearing sock mystery!  The answer was very simple, and involves a clean garbage can and a piece of chalk.  Stop! Before you see the solution, you should see the before photo of our back entrance.  This was taken in the fall, note: no winter jackets & boots.Just back packs, jackets and lunch bags.  So I tried to make our back entrance a more useful and interesting space, and came up with this after photo:Added: one chalkboard with hat pegs, one black crow, 5 large magnets for holding artwork and…look closely….no I don’t mean the rubber boots (ok, this was a few months ago before the winter boots came out),  but look closer!!TA da!  A special place for the dirty socks!!  Imagine that!  We need a whole container to hold the pairs of dirty socks that come off the feet of my kids.  Belive me, it was full in no time.So far, this has been a fairly efficient solution, and out dirty sock problem has become almost less of a problem.  The problem now is that there seem to be less clean socks for the kids.

Oh, I guess I should actually go and check that Dirty Sock Holder and take it down to the laundry once in a while……that might help a bit.

“Sunshine, lollipops and rainbows” cake

“everything that’s wonderful is how I feel when we’re together…”  it’s about spending time together.  And in this case it happens that the kids and I were spending time making a cake together.  Some little person figured that we should “play home-school” on Saturday and had mapped out the whole day including gym, matematica, recess and craft class.  Why does it feel so ironic that this same little person complains every morning about having to go to school all day?

We did play school (though I explain every time that Home-schooling is really a very different thing, and that playing school one Saturday is not at all the same thing as home-schooling).  It was real old-fashioned one-room school where each child had their own “slate” to write on: what a novel idea!  Some matematica was involved (I write it that way because that’s how the little person says it) and some figuring and whatnot, but best of all was the “baking/craft” class!  I decided I’d let them play with some fondant and we could put together and decorate a cake (and then eat it up for snack time of course!).

I cut the layers for the cake, then the younger kids helped me fill it.  We were experimenting, so one side of the cake was filled with jam and the other side was filled with buttercream icing.  This said to explain the fondant squiggles on the edges of the cake plate….I wanted to know which side was filled with what when it came time to cut the cake…

First a short demonstration of how to roll the fondant out and cover the iced cake in a smooth-ish layer of fondant, then everyone set about coloring their fondant and making flowers and snails and leaves and braids.  Being the perfectionista type, of course I decided that I would be the one to put the flowers on the cake (and tweak a bit here and there)….what can I say, I can’t help myself.  So we worked together to create this colorful masterpiece….Colorful is definitely the right adjective!  The colors all turned out quite bright, not quite that pastel look I had in mind, but I’m fine with bright colors….and they tasted just as good to the kids!(I took some of the swirly “braids” and rolled them into usable flowers.)  This is actually marshmallow fondant, not the traditional almond kind and it’s for sure not playdough (no matter how much it resembles that stinky stuff!!)We had a few tools to play with.  Each of the kids worked for awhile on flowers while I was busy making stems and leaves….And then (almost as soon as we were done decorating) time to cut and eat the cake!!The iced layers looked the best, but the jam-filled side tasted the best!!I just need to work a bit on the jam filling technique….but this colorful cake sure tasted great!!!A little birdie friend even flew down for a peek at the cake…Hmm, gotta go now, after looking at these photos that last piece of cake is definitely calling my name!