Sharing Saturday 13-41

First an apology to all who have been following my Flamingo Fridays. My week got a bit hectic and I decided I needed a break and did not want to put out something that was not up to my quality, so I took the break. Also an apology for not getting to visit everyone's wonderful post shared last week. The ones I did visit are amazing and I am sure the others are as well. Thank you to everyone who share with us last week. We had quite a few new blogs sharing!! I hope all of you had time to be inspired by them all. This week we had a tie for most clicked.

From Living Montessori Now: Positive Use of Technology with Kids

and

From Peakle Pie: Halloween Party Bunting

Here are a few favorites from the ones I visited.

1) From A Beautiful Ruckus: Kids' Craft Fall Handprint Wreaths

2) From Doodle Buddies: Breast Cancer Ribbons Tutorial

3) From Happily Ever Mom: A Not So Scary Fairy Pumpkin House

4) From Preschool Powol Packets: Egg Carton Bats

5) From Wildflower Ramblings: What is Classical Education?


Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess:
This week we shared a Korean Cinderella, shared our mixed up stories (great for creativity and imagination growth) with Virtual Book Club for Kids, shared our exploration of Korea with Around the World in 12 Dishes, Reviewed and am giving away a copy of a Kids Yoga book that goes through the Australian Animals from A to Z, and shared our various ways of decorating pumpkins so far this year!

Our current giveaway ends Wednesday!! But more giveaways coming soon!!

Now for This Week's Party  
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1)  Please follow Crafty Moms Share via GFC (or one of the other ways that work for you).  

2)  Link any kid-friendly, child-centered post. Please no etsy shops or giveaways, etc.  Remember to link to your actual post. 

3) Post the newly updated button on your sidebar or somewhere on your blog to help spread the word.

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Pumpkin Time! Decorated Pumpkins, Pumpkin Books, & More

Have you entered my current giveaway yet?

With Halloween only 15 days away, I thought I would share some of the ways we have been decorating pumpkins and more!! I guess I better get serious about sewing Hazel's costume. This year we planted some pumpkins in our garden. We saved seeds from last year's pumpkins and bought a pumpkin plant. We saved seeds from white pumpkins and sugar pumpkins. Apparently white pumpkins take over and don't grow white the next year. We ended up with two (and there is one more small one out there) skinny and kind of tall orange pumpkins. These took over the pumpkin area and also hindered the zucchini (we got our first zucchini of the year last week now that the pumpkin vine is dying off). 

When we were at Hazel's best friend's house for a playdate a few weeks ago, they had already decorated and had some great pumpkin ideas, so we borrowed a few of theirs with a few changes. They had found a kit to make two black lace pumpkins at Target. It came with pom pom spiders. We did not find the kit at our small Target, but found some black lace tights and stretchy spiders.

We used our homegrown pumpkins since they were so skinny. Total cost was $6. 

They also had a pumpkin they painted with blackboard paint and then her friend wanted to spray it with gold spray paint. The result was beautiful. We used gourds for the rest of our decorations since I have been told to watch my spending. Since we did not have blackboard paint, we used Hazel's black tempura paint. I had some gold glitter paint and did another coat with it. The one problem with the tempura was the other paint made it watery again, so there are some orange spots showing. We also did one black and then Hazel used her glitter nail polishes to decorate it. She used blue, pink, gold, silver and multicolored glitter nail polish on it.

I had painted two gourds with the gold glitter paint--an orange gourd and a white gourd. Then Hazel added some of her glitter nail polish to the top of the orange one.

Hazel was having so much fun painting with her nail polish that I bought her another white gourd to paint. (She also painted some acorns with it.) I thought she would use the glitter ones, but she decided to use the solid colors first.

Finally when I was at Target again, I saw a kit using a fake gourd and making it a spider. I knew we had some fake gourds that we used for turkeys last Thanksgiving and we painted one of those black. Then we used pipe cleaners to give it legs and glued on eyes. 

We also made some pumpkin bread last week. We first cut open two sugar pumpkins and enjoyed cleaning them out. Hazel had the best time playing with the goo and seeds. I believe she said, "Sometimes it is fun to get messy."

Then she liked the feel of the seeds and trying to get them offer her fingers.

After they were clean we baked them in the oven for an hour and a half at 350. Then I pureed the insides and put it in the refrigerator. We made pumpkin bread later in the week. We used the recipe here, but changed it to be gluten free. One loaf we ate and the other we brought to her school for Grandparents' Day.

Finally some of the pumpkin books we have been enjoying lately. Big Pumpkin by Erica Silverman is among one of Hazel's all time favorites! Three of them go into how pumpkins grow. We also shared the Pumpkin Fairy story a few years ago. Are you getting ready for Halloween?

The abc's of Australian Animals: An Interactive Kids Yoga Book Review & Giveaway

Have you ever done yoga? I find it so relaxing. Plus there are so many benefits to it. According to Mayo Clinic, "Yoga is considered a mind-body type of complementary and alternative medicine." (Source) One of the biggest benefits is that yoga can reduce stress and anxiety and enhance moods. (Source) For more benefits, Yoga Journal has a great list of 38 ways yoga improves health. I want to pass this wonderful practice on to Hazel. I remember my mother taking yoga classes when I was young and she had a record from the class. My sisters and I would try to do the record by looking at the cover (each pose was pictured on the cover) and listening to the record. This instilled a wonderful practice in my life. When my life gets stressful, I tend to look for a yoga class to take or put a yoga dvd in to relax. Now I have a wonderful way to introduce Hazel to yoga in a fun and meaningful way. You may remember the wonderful book I reviewed in May, Luke's Beach Day by Giselle Shardlow. Well, Giselle has been at it again and has published The abc's of Australian Animals: An Interactive Kids Yoga Book and has been kind enough to send me a copy to review and offer me a copy to giveaway. Disclosure: I received the book free to review, but all opinions are my own.

First I should say this book is available in English as well as Spanish. The book goes through each letter describing an action of an animal found in Australia or Australian waters and gives a picture of a yoga pose. Hazel and I read the sentence on the animal and looked at the picture of the animal. Then we looked at the yoga pose and tried it. We still need to work on some things, but flexibility will come the more we practice.

Hazel's favorite was of course the letter h. She knows that it is the first letter in her name. She also thought the pose was pretty easy.

We really enjoyed doing the yoga together. 

She also wanted Ducky to try it with us,  so you will see him in a few of the pictures. Overall the book is very well written and illustrated. It is a wonderful way to bring a relaxing exercise into a child's life. I know we will be trying it some more.

Giselle Shardlow writes at Kid Yoga Stories.  She is a teacher, traveler and yogi as well as a mom and draws from these experiences to write her books.

I hope reading these yoga books and practicing the poses will help Hazel learn a bit about yoga and develop a love for it like I have. That way she will always have a healthy lifestyle or at least something to fall back to when life gets stressful.








Now it is your turn to try to win a copy of this book. Giselle is willing to ship worldwide!! All you have to do to enter is follow the instructions on the Rafflecopter and follow my giveaway rules except this one is open worldwide!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Around the World in 12 Dishes: Korea Chap ch'ae

Have you entered my current giveaway? It ends Tuesday!!

Around the World in 12 Dishes is traveling to Korea this month. On Sunday we shared a Korean Cinderella tale called Kongi and Potgi. Today we are going to share our experience trying some Korean recipes and music and stories. We also did a few easy Korean crafts.

Coloring Page from RainbowKids

The dish we spent the most time making together was Chap ch'ae or Mixed Vegetables with Cellophane Noodles.  We found the recipe in Cooking the Korean Way by Okwha Chung and Judy Monroe. We compared recipes in a few books. We all loved this meal.

Chap ch'ae (adapted from Cooking the Korean Way)
4 tablespoons soy sauce
2 teaspoons sugar
1 clove of garlic finely chopped
4 teaspoons toasted sesame seeds
1 boneless chicken breast cut into bite-sized pieces
1 package of cellophane noodles
6 tablespoons oil (unless you have the pan I have)
1 large onion, chopped
4 medium carrots, peeled and cut into 2 inch pieces
1 cup baby spinach, washed
5 teaspoons sesame oil
(Note: we took out the black mushrooms and water for them and the bean sprouts)

1. In  a large ziploc bag combine 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 teaspoon sugar, garlic, 2 teaspoons sesame seeds. Add chicken and seal and distribute the mixture among the chicken. (Note: if you do not have toasted sesame seeds, toast them first by putting them in a frying pan with no oil and on medium heat. Stir and cook until they are brown and smelly nutty.)
2. Cook and drain noodles according to package. Place in a large bowl and set aside.
3. In a large frying pan or wok, heat 1 tablespoon vegetable oil over high heat for 1 minute. Add the chicken and fry, stirring frequently, for 2 to 3 minutes or until chicken is white and tender. Remove from heat and add chicken to noodles. (We have a new pan that does not require oil to cook, so we did not use any oil for the cooking. I love this new pan!)
4. Wipe out pan. Heat 1 tablespoon of oil and cook vegetables. (The recipe says to do this separately, but we did it together as a stir-fry.) Then add vegetables to chicken and noodles. 
5. Combine 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 teaspoon sugar, sesame oil and remaining sesame seeds. Pour over mixture.
6. Serve warm or at room temperature.

 While this was cooking and we were eating we made Oi naeng guk or cold cucumber soup (the recipe also came from Cooking the Korean Way). We however did not really like it, so we are not going to share it with you. A different night I made Pulgogi (Barbecued beef) which we loved, but Hazel did not help make it and I didn't take any pictures (it was eaten before I got my camera out). The recipe also came from Cooking the Korean Way.

We have been enjoying some Korean stories as well. Here are the variety of picture books we have found at our library. One goes through the alphabet and describes things in Korea. Another counts to ten in English and Korean and relates each number to something in Korea. Then there are traditional stories as well as modern stories.

 We also made some crafts. One that we did was a simple version of the Korean game, Yut-nori.  There are simple instructions on TLC. We used dot markers instead of stickers and I let Hazel do it. We used glass gems as our playing pieces.

We also made a traditionally dressed paper doll. We got it from Education.com. Hazel loved this craft and wants me to make more clothes for her.

We also made a Tradtional Korean Sam Taeguk Fan from a template found at 4 Crazy Kings. I let Hazel choose the colors and had not shown her theirs, but she picked the same colors.

Our final exploration of Korea has been listening to some music we got from the library. The first two CD's we listened to came from the adult section and they were all right, but we did not listen to them too long. We have not listened to the children's music yet, but I'm planning on bringing it in my car tomorrow on our way to school.

So that is our exploration of Korea. Have you cooked any Korean food that you would like to share in our trip around the world? This blog hop is brought to you by the following amazing blogs! Please be sure to visit them to see what they cooked this month.

Adventures In Mommydom - Afterschooling for Smarty Pants - All Done Monkey - Crafty Moms Share - Creative World of Varya - Glittering Muffins - Here Come The Girls - Kid World Citizen -  Mermaids’ Makings - The Educators’ Spin On It - Maroc Mama

Also check out Around the World in 12 Dishes on Pinterest. Be sure to follow so you will not miss a thing! The Korean Placemat is available here and the Korean Passport Pages are available here. Now it is your turn to share or to be inspired to try some of the recipes shared at this blog hop!

Virtual Book Club for Kids: Mixed Up Fairy Tales by Nick Sharratt

This month the author for the Virtual Book Club for Kids is Nick Sharratt. We have really enjoyed his books. He has quite a range of books and then even more that he has illustrated. You can learn a little more about Nick Sharratt on his website.