Surprise Day! {BIG Fresno Fair}

Today we surprised the kids by Brandon taking the afternoon off and going to the Fresno fair. The girls love "The Cat in the Hat knows a lot about that" on PBS, and he was going to be there today until 1pm. We knew they (or Emma at least) wanted to see him, so after we got in the car we told them where we were going!

Look at Emma's reaction...I love it!Of course when we arrived, he wasn't where they said he would be, but we were on the lookout for the hat! We spotted him and followed him until we could get him to stop for a picture. Cami was cowering behind daddy.

The girls have VERY different taste in rides, as you will soon see. Emma on a rollercoaster.

Cami on a slow elephant.

Emma and mommy on the giant slide.

Cami on the kiddie rockets.

Emma and daddy on the Orient Express coaster.

Cami on the carousel.

Emma on the go-gater coaster.

Gotta see the giant vegetables when you go to the fair. An ode to Wallace and Gromit, the curse of the Were-Rabbit! =)

We looked up some old California Raisin commercials on youtube when we got home because the girls didn't know what they were.

I REALLY love the pirate ship play area that they added a year or two ago. That whole park area for kids is great.

The girls like Pirates of the Caribbean so the whole time we were going through it we were saying "it's Captain Jack's treasure!", "is this where Elizabeth Swan is?" =)

The loved walking under this waterfall.

I am in LOVE with the treehouse, both this bottom part and the quirky little house above it!

It reminds me of the Berenstain Bears.

This was the area right across from it, I think it's called the water tree house or something like that, but it's all about saving water.

This place reminded me of the Tiki Room at Disneyland, with it's thatched roofs.

They had different stuff for them to play in this room.

This was hilarious. I've never heard of it, but Brandon had. It's children upto 6 years old riding sheep!I took video of the wool warriors, it was hilarious. One little boy was totally trained to do it, and there was even a 3 year old!!

Next to the wool warriors was a kids zone, which was pretty cool. There was a giant chess board...not like we knew how to play or anything. ;)

A giant wall of nails...

GIANT bubble wands...these were a hit!

A make and take craft area.

Cami showing off her less than $2 ring and corn dog.

Emma asked if she could go in the fire truck and they were happy to let her explore.

The last thing we stopped for was the little pig races.

I thought it was funny enough...and then I saw the hurdles! HAHA

We left before dinner since it cost a small fortune (and a tummy ache) to eat at the fair and headed to Dog House to beat the dinner rush. Yumm!

{Halloween cookie bark}

Emma is going to give a "how-to" speech this week and she is going to teach how to make cookie bark! We decided to make little samples for the other kids to take home and try it. I got this idea from my friend Trish, and she got it from Your Home Based Mom. Start out by lining your cookie sheet with wax paper. Break up pretzels and oreos and spread out on the tray. Add candy corn and fall colored m & m's.

Melt your candy disks, only microwave 30 seconds at a time or they will seize up into a chunky mess. Stir every 30 seconds until they are fully melted.

Spread the melted disks out on the tray and make sure all of the pieces are covered. Use a spatula to help. Top with a few extra candy corn and Halloween sprinkles. Wait for it to dry. Some people put it in the fridge to speed it up, but since I was going to package it, I was worried about it "sweating" if it was cold.

After it's dry, break it up into chunks.

I had enough to make all of these sample bags, a mason jar, and still have that much left over!

I made these cut tags on my cricut.

I used 3 bags of melting disks, and this is my leftover amount after filling my bags. It's super yummy!

{Giant candy corn}

My friend, Trish, and I have been planning on making these giant candy corn together ever since I saw them on a blog. Click on the link if you would like to see the original version. With our schedules conflicting for over a few weeks and no end in sight (at least no kid-free time end in sight!) we decided to just combine materials and make them at home. Mine are a bit different from the original blog because I didn't distress and stain them after painting. I like them as is...at least for now. ;)

I freehanded the shapes on a board that I already had and Trish had a leftover piece of beadboard so we shared. Don't you just love having fellow crafters as friends? This afternoon I broke out the jigsaw and started cutting the pieces. My hubby stepped in and offered to help after the first piece...maybe he was afraid I would cut a finger off or something. =)

After cutting the thicker wood shapes, I laid them on the back of the beadboard and traced around them. Then cut the beadboard. I painted what would be the back side of the thick board with a few coats of white paint.

I used hot glue smeared over the back of the beadboard to attach and then hotglued around the entire edge. Then I painted the tip of the candy corn white, the middle orange, and the widest end yellow. I used shades that I already had because I'm an uber cheapskate. It's kind of a dark orange and a mustard yellow, but it looks great! I didn't attempt to bother taping it because of the crevices, so I just free-handed it. As I painted each color, I wrapped it around the edges too, but I left the back side white because I knew they wouldn't be seen.

Then I added some raffia tied around a couple of them and arranged my shelf!

I love them!

{Candy Corn Cookies}

For a couple of years I've wanted to make candy corn sugar cookies. For some reason, I never have. Tonight I found a cheap and easy way to do it. This Wilton frosting is SO easy to use and it dries well, but can be a bit pricey. It is over $4 a bottle. I am too cheap to buy three different colors so I bought white in hope that I could divide it up and dye it. Thankfully it worked! After microwaving it for 30 seconds, I dumped some in two ziploc baggies. One I dyed orange and one yellow, leaving some white frosting in the bottle. I was going to make my cookies from scratch but after a day like I've had today, I wanted nothing to do with my mixer and a sink full of dishes. So when I went to the store to get butter to make my own, I picked up a tube of pillsbury sugar cookie dough. As it turns out, I don't always have to make everything homemade, haha.

I bought a candy corn shaped cookie cutter but was less than impressed with the way they turned out after they baked.

They looked much better when frosted though. This frosting is so easy to use. Just snip the tiny corner off of the bags and the white still in the Wilton bottle has a writer tip. I did find out that if you frost them when you remove the hot frosting from the microwave, it will run and drip.

It's better to let it slightly cool and you can always reheat it as many times as you need to.

See all of that mess!

I think they turned out pretty cute though! I'm glad I found a cheaper way to do it with the frosting I prefer without buying three bottles of it!

50 book treat!

Well yesterday the girls put up their 50th shape cutout on the wall! That means they've read 50 books. I promised a movie day when we got 50 up on the wall. We write the names of the books and who read them on the cutout and then hang up on the schoolroom wall. The great thing is, they love to count them every couple of days so that is even more practice with numbers! We went to see Beauty and the Beast singalong. It was only one showing today and we were there early. Unfortunately, after a half hour of the managers trying to get the sound to work, we gave up. We went and got our money back and of course right as we were getting our cash back, they got it working. They offered to have us go back in and watch it and still keep the cash.

These were pics of them waiting for it to start. By the time we were outside though, I had promised them we'd walk to the paint your own pottery store instead so they didn't want to go back in. We thanked them for our cash back and walked on our way. The man followed us out and offered to give me cash back for our concessions as well, so we followed him in and did that too. Thanked AGAIN, and then headed to our car to put away our popcorn. The woman manager then followed us all the way to our car on the side of the building and brought us three free movie tickets as well!! Don't ever let anyone tell you Regal doesn't have good service from their managers, I was blown away.

So we kept our cash (cizzash for you Dana) and walked the two blocks to paint pottery instead. Thankfully this option ended up being cheaper anyway....by less than half the price the movies was going to cost me with snacks!

I couldn't get a normal picture of Cami because she was sucking on a life saver, haha. Oh well..if you look in her right hand you'll see her TINY heart she decided, after much deliberation, to paint. Thankfully the gal didn't charge me her $5 painting fee just to paint this 50 cent product!

Double score! Blessings all around today! Congratulations on 50 books girls, and keep reading for your next treat day! =)