Project Overload

Noah's Social Studies / Science project

{For anyone who's interested, here are the project details: Noah's assignment was to create something showing 10 specific land forms. We did eleven: ocean, island, mesa, desert, swamp, valley, lake, river, tributary, canyon, mountain range. The main material we used was that green crumbly floral foam, the kind that absorbs water and is stuck into the bottoms of pots or vases. It was pretty cheap; $3.99 for six blocks (of which we used five). Very easy to carve, lightweight, easy to glue and paint. Extremely messy... we kept the vacuum near by while carving. Aaron made the mountains, Noah made the mesa; it was a group effort. Noah did most of the painting. I had the brilliant idea (which worked really well!) to make hard candy (melted sugar) to pour for the ocean and the lake. I experimented and found that the green floral foam does NOT melt when 295 degree sugar is poured onto it! The color of the water is more green and less blue than I wanted but oh well. The base of the whole thing is half a piece of foam core, with painted balsa wood dowels for the frame. The pine trees are 1" pieces of green pipe cleaner, trimmed into skinny triangles: all the kids helped make the trees. The cactuses were made by me with salt dough, and painted. Noah typed & made all the labels himself, including one more larger "bill board" looking sign with his name & class which was added after this picture was taken. Yes, I'm giving you too many details... but ever since Tuesday, this Noah project has been front & center in my mind and kitchen, so you're getting the whole thing!}

So first it was the pumpkins. Then the other pumpkins. Then the Halloween costumes. Then on Tuesday I spent the whole day making a fake wedding cake for a fake wedding reception, except that it was a real wedding cake which is every bit as much work as a fake one. Confused? I was doing a favor for a friend who was hosting a super fun, super-involved Young Women's activity where her whole backyard was decorated like a wedding reception. I made three rounds; 10", 8", and 6", the largest being chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling, and the smaller two being white/lemon cake with raspberry mousse filling (and I invented the recipe for the raspberry mousse). Each round was split into four layers of cake (and three layers of luscious filling). I'm not including a picture because they were lime green, very very lime green, which is what they wanted but I just don't like to look at the picture of them. Unfortunately it was a warm night and my chocolate mousse filling wished it was cold and tried to make a break for it (oozing out of the bottom tier of the 3-tiered cake) so apparently they ate it sooner than planned! Then as soon as that project was finished, Noah's big school project took center stage (and my entire kitchen table for two straight days). Now that is finished, but another project yet looms... applesauce! I have had 3 1/2 boxes of apples (four delicious varieties) sitting on my counter, ignored for eight days now, waiting for their turn to become the next project.

I will start making applesauce tomorrow, just as soon as I fold the seven loads of laundry that I washed today.

If you happen to ask me to help you with a project in the near future and I say "no," don't be offended. I bet I would really love to do it, I just need a tiny break from projects right now... I have enjoyed every one of these projects the past couple of weeks, but I would've enjoyed them more if they hadn't all come at me at the same time!