Subsistance Whaling in Alaska

These photo’s are on  Anchorage Daily News.  They made me smile and so I wanted to share them.  There are a lot more photos on the ADN site but I can’t seem to get them to load, so you’ll have to follow the link I have attached to see more.

Beaded Necklace

Virginia always has a beaded project she is working on.  This is her current project.

Art

My kids love to enter art contests.  Here’s a picture Virginia drew for a water conservation contest.

Sherrad also drew one.

Asa likes to draw cartoons.  Here’s one a sent to Grandma for her birthday.

Taku

 

Radom pictures

These are some pictures my in-laws sent us that they took while they were here.

The first day they where here we took a hike up a new trail that was just completed this summer.  It’s actually a very old trail but a new trail head section was put in to hook up the old trail with a new trail head.  We only hiked the new portion but if you wanted to take the whole hike it would take a very very long time.

Everywhere we went Sherrad had to bring his fish net and pole.  Looks like Grandma really got a great catch this time.

Hammer Slough

Random pictures of the kids.

Cakes

Asa’s birthday cake.

Virginia loves to make cakes.  For this particular one she used Nami-Nami’s Egg White Cake Recipe.  I’ve posted it here before. It’s is the best homemade white cake recipe I’ve found and I’ve tried several.   She cut out the center and filled it with ice cream.  She used this great fondant recipe.

Marshmallow Fondant
16 oz marshmallows
2-5 T water
Melt together then add:
2 lbs confection sugar
Use to grease hands and counter:
½ c shortening or butter
Roll out fondant. Put frosting on cake before covering it with fondant. Also use frosting when gluing fondant shapes to a fondant covered cake. Fondant can be tightly wrapped and stored in the fridge for several weeks.

We were out of frosting decorating bags so she put chocolate chips around the edge.

Fall Colors

Everything is so green all year long around here that a splash of color is very appreciated.

Pumelo

Whenever Virginia see’s something unique in the fruit isle at the grocery store she simply must try it.  Sometimes this ends up being a very positive experience and others we regret, but yesterday’s new experiment was awesome!  If you have never tried a Pumelo, do!  They are yummy. Wikipedia says it,” is a crisp citrus fruit native to South and Southeast Asia.”  They taste like a sweet grapefruit.  We peeled it and ate it like an orange.

Costume time

For Jasper’s costume we took some upholstery, and traced a shirt onto it.  Then I cut out two panels and sewed the right sides together.  After turning it right side out I had to cut a slit down  the front so his head would fit.  Then we made fringe and used the glue gun to attach it.  His gun is a wooden one Asa made with a horn attached to the end.  

His hat is a knitted bear hat I made for him and his basket is a crotchet one I made for Easter.

 

He is very tired of waiting.

Ephraim wore our old stand by, the Alligator costume but he was tired and so he stayed home to hand out candy with me.

Sherrad was a miner.  All he did was grab a wool sweater, a gold panning plate, and a shovel.  Asa was a robber.  He wouldn’t let me make him a mask, he said he didn’t like them.  So, all I did was make him a bag with a money sign on it.

Virginia spent a couple of hours getting her friend Fallon dressed up as a cat.  First we had to make the skirt fit her.  So, we cut into the elastic waist line and pulled out about 10 inches of it then re-sewed it together.  Then Virginia attached a dark brown fleece scarf to her front for a shirt.  Then she made her a scarf out of cat like material.  They spent a lot of time in the bathroom designing her face.  Finally, she grabbed a black head band and some scraps of material and used the glue gun to put together the ears.

For Virginia’s costume we spent days making her cape.  She wanted to be an ice queen so it had to be out of white material.  We cut a sewed the cape and then made a hood and sewed the two together.  The hood nearly eluded me until Jeremy suggest I just use a hood she already likes on one of her sweat shirts as my pattern.  It worked beautifully. She really wanted some white fluffy material to edge her hood but we ran out of time to do it.

Pumkins

 

  We are saving the big pumpkin for Halloween night but I let the children carve the sugar pumpkins since I needed to get them cooked up for pumpkin pies.