The Kids Submit Designs For The Ghosts of Gone Birds and All Tropical T-Shirt Contest
September 25, 2011
Over the summer, the kids used a poster designed by the folks at Ghosts of Gone Birds as a model for their own protest posters, which they made to criticize Toronto’s mayor and his proposed cuts to city services. Due to the vigilance of our city’s citizens (maybe even kids like mine!), it looks as if our mayor is now backing off on a great number of his cuts. We’re still monitoring city hall like hawks…When the kids found out that Ghosts of Gone Birds and All Tropical were hosting a T-shirt Design Contest to call attention to bird extinction and social responsibility, we just knew we’d have to give it a go. 
Last night, I took a long look at the list of 123 extinct birds on the All Tropical site, so as to have a sense of what birds I thought the kids might like to choose for their designs. I spent some time jotting down the names of a few birds we might look up online or in some of our own reference materials here at home. High on my list: The Passenger Pigeon. I was pleasantly suprised, however, when my daughter, excited that we’d finally be tackling the longed-for project this morning, took down a copy of All the Birds of North America from her very own bookshelf and directed me to the front few pages. “In here,” she said, “you can find some lovely drawings of extinct North American Birds.” 
I didn’t mind so much when she passed right over the Passenger Pigeon and all of its winsome spots, because she had a definite idea of where she was going. She wanted to point out the picture of her favourite Carolina Parakeet a few pages on. And, as she turned the pages, she made sure to let me know that, just like her grandparents, the Carolina Parakeet used to live in Ohio. The birds’ home, she told me, had affected her choice, for sure. And even more importantly, she wanted to reassure me, “it had been beautiful, that bird.” Mission accomplished. And, when we brought the book downstairs, the Labrador Duck on the facing page caught the eye of the little one. So, the entire morning’s worth of research I had planned in advance got whittled down into my daughter’s 15 minute reading aloud the Duck and Parakeet descriptions in her book!!
Once they had chosen a subject, the kids started to do some preliminary sketching. We set up shop on the dining room table, with the book opened up between the two kids. The kids got out some scrap paper to use on these initial sketches. Once they had a general feel for their overall designs, we discussed if they wanted to place any text on their t-shirts. Thinking back, again, to that fabulous gone birds poster, with its warning of demise, the kids decided to ask a few questions on their prints. Bea wanted to know “Why” the Carolina Parakeet was extinct. And Tobes wanted to know “What Heppened to the Labrador Duck?” The t-shirts, they decided, should “definitely demand explanations from people,” as my daughter put it. 
After they had sketched out their images and phrases, the kids got to work on their formal submissions.
Once again, the kids used their favourite techniques from our Still Life Drawing Class on Crazy Fruit Day and our Comic Strip Weekend Workshop with Papa. First, they used pencil to sketch another rough draft out on thick watercolour paper. Then, they lined over their pencil markings in permanent ink. Finally, they chose four colours of marker and filled in their outlines with those colours. Bea decided to leave the background of her picture white. Tobes decided to use his colours to denote a very “hot sun, too hot, maybe that’s why it died,” as he said, as well as the blue blue waters of Labrador.
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Here are the results!!!
We’ll be scanning and submitting them to the contest in the next few days.
The deadline is still a week away: October 6, 2011.
Why not try one yourself?
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Quick Links for Mobile Users The Lunchbox Season : Summer of Funner : In Defense of Burning
Bakesale Bestsellers: Sugar Cookie Wands
September 22, 2011
It’s a toy and a treat all in one, a cookie lollipop wrapped up with a little magic and mystery. Last year, for the bakesale at the school’s Fall Fun Fair, we baked our first batch of Sugar Cookie Wands. This year, we got it down to a science, finding even more ways to get the kids actively involved.
These Sugar Cookie Wands are great for bakesales, alternatives to birthday cake (say, at movies or sports parties), in loot bags, as stand-alone party favours, and holiday treats.
Supplies * Ingredients * Baking * Decorating * Wrapping * Labelling
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SUPPLIES
50 (1/2 Package) Wooden Coffee Stirrer Sticks
1-2 Rolls Clear Cellophane Wrapping Paper
1 Roll Festive Curling Ribbon
1 piece Colourful Cardstock or 2 Index Cards
Parchment Paper for Baking
All of these supplies are available at our local dollar store. The kids really like choosing the ribbon colours and poking around. Alternatives to the Coffee Stirrer Sticks may include tongue depressors, wooden popsicle sticks, 8-in wooden skewers (pointed tips removed with scissors, cut tips never inserted into cookie dough) and lollipop sticks (from the bulk or baking supply store). Do not use bamboo skewers for this project, they take on a strange odour when wet!!!
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INGREDIENTS
makes 48-50 cookie wands
Dough
1 1/3 cup unsalted butter
3/4 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
2 tbs milk
2 tsp vanilla
2 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
4 cups flour
Icing 1 500g bag icing sugar, 1/2 cup milk, 1 1/2 tsp vanilla, food colouring
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BAKING
Making the Dough
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Have the kids cream the butter and sugars in a mixer.
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Let them crack the eggs and add them one at a time.
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Add the vanilla and milk and mix until smooth.
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Add baking soda and salt.
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Add flour 1/2 cup at a time until incorporated.
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Refrigerate dough until needed.
The Wand-Maker’s Technique
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Heat oven to 350 F.
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Line two cookie sheets with parchment.
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Have two more parchment liners ready for the remainder of the dough.
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Have the kids form tim-bit sized balls of cookie dough with a teaspoon or with their hands.
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Insert a coffee stirrer stick half-way into each ball.
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Flatten the dough into a disc as the kids see fit: try pressing them flat between your hands, try pressing your hand onto the ball of dough on the baking tray, or try pressing it with a flat bottomed jar, a cup, or a rolling pin.
Have the kids align the pressed cookies onto parchment lined cookie sheets so that the sticks don’t stray too far. They came up with the skull & crossbones pattern to the right. You can fit about 12 per sheet.
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Bake for 9-11 minutes.
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Leave on hot baking trays for 3-5 minutes.
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With cookies still on parchment, cool completely on wire racks.
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DECORATING
Making the Icing
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Have the kids divide the sugar from the bag into 2 or 3 bowls.
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Add 1/2 tsp vanilla to each bow.l
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Add milk 1 tbs at a time to each bowl, stirring hard, until icing becomes of a thick but drizzlable consistency.
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Add food colouring 1 drop at a time to create the kids’ choice of 2-3 colours.
The Icing-Spreader’s Technique
- This is messy. You might want to cover your table or workspace with a plastic cloth or an old cotton sheet.
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Once cookies have cooled, rearrange each batch on their parchment paper sheets so that the cookies are in the center and the sticks jut out from the edge of each sheet.
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Choose a “base” (usually your darkest) colour of icing. Using a tablespoon, have the kids drop or swirl icing onto each cookie, beginning in the centre.
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Icing WILL run to the sides and off of the cookies.
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Choose your second colour of icing. Using a teaspoon, drop or swirl icing onto each cookie, attempting to fill in the naked places on each cookie you missed the first time. -
If you chose to make a third colour of icing, swirl, scatter, or dallop this on to your cookies now!
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After letting the icing harden on the cookies for 10-15 minutes, remove cookies from the parchment sheets and place them on wire racks to continue to set without sticking to one another or to the gooey parchment sheet. You might want to place the wire racks on top of the old parchment sheets or your tablecloth. The cookies WILL continue to drip. The kids will try to lick and taste the icing from the now-empty parchment sheets. Will you let them?
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Be sure the icing is set completely before wrapping your cookies.
Alternative Decoration Ideas
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Instead of starting with cookie balls, roll out your cookie dough a little thicker than you normally would for cut-outs and use cookie-cutters to create special shapes for your wands. Carefully insert a stirrer stick in the midst of each cookie’s thickness. Tricky…
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Impress white or coloured sugar into the cookie before baking .
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Add food colouring straight to your dough for a coloured cookie base.
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Ice each cookie in a single colour for a monotone look. Or gradually darken the hue of the icing as you go along for a paint-deck style array.
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Add coloured sugars, sprinkle or decors to a single or multicoloured cookie.
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Make some icing a little thicker and, using a small-nosed squeegee bottle, draw faces or shapes on each cookie.
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Use fruit juice instead of milk in your icing.
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Cut 50, 12-in lengths of ribbon.
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Slicing across the entire length of the roll of cellophane, cut 12-in wide strips.
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Cut each 12-in strip into 4 equal sections (you should have long rectangles).
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Place a section of cellophane on the flat surface in front of you such that the longer portion of the rectangle of cellophane is horizontal and the stubbier portion of the rectangle is vertical. -
Place the cookie part of your wand in the center bottom of the rectangle of cellophane.
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Fold the cellophane down over top of the cookie, forming a new rectangle whose vertical height is now half of its former size.
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Fold the cellophane to the left side of the cookie at a 90 degree angle back behind the cookie, so that what was the right side of the top of the rectangle is now bent over and running parallel with the stick. -
Do the same to the cellophane to the right side of the cookie.
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Fold the right side in small increments at an angle towards the front of the cookie.
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Do the same with the left side of the cookie. -
Wrap the ribbon around the base of the cookie and tighten into a knot.
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Tie a bow with the ribbon.
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Curl the edges if you like.
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LABELLING
Finally, you can create a card listing the name and ingredients of the Cookie Wand by writing or printing on a piece of cardstock or an index card. We used the same technique to make this card as we did to create our canning labels, scanning a photo into picnik.com, adding text to list our title and ingredients, and printing it out in black and white on cardstock. Then, the kids folded and taped the cardstock to make a stand-up card. Finally, we penned in “Buy Me For: __” to leave space for the organizers to set a price. Alternatively, you could print the name and ingredients on a small set labels and attach each label like a “flag” to the stick.
Voila! Sugar Cookie Wands!
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Quick Links for Mobile Users
The Lunchbox Season : Summer of Funner : In Defense of Burning
Bakery Knock-Offs for Beginners: Cookie Meteors (No Nuts)
September 18, 2011
We’re paying homage to a favourite (unnamed) local bakery with this week’s lunchbox treat: COOKIE METEORS
Insert yourself into the little tale below.
Then, try the recipe!
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It’s the kind of treat you’d empty your pockets for. There’s this bakery downtown that sells a certain chocolate chocolate chip cookie. This cookie’s shiny. In fact, its surface glimmers. Yet, that surface is cracked, too, so that you can see the soft, brownie-like interior riddled with chocolate chunks and larger walnut pieces. You don’t even like walnuts all that much, but you’ll pay whatever you’ll have to pay for these cookies. They have this great self-service set-up at this bakery, see, where you fill your own bag with far too many cookies than you likely ought. Then, you pay by the pound. This way, when you go up to the register with your bag full to bursting, you might be absolutely gob-smacked by the price. However, you’ll be too infatuated with the idea of having one of those cookies (you’ve pretty much had your hands all over them, anyway) and too embarrassed by the sheer weight of your haul to even think of asking to put a single cookie back. They’re worth the ridiculous price, you reason. Yes, yes, they are absolutely amazing. And, you’ll go back again, too, most any day, at the drop of a hat.
Later on, when you’re not studying or working near that bakery anymore, you get the idea that you want to try and recreate this ideal cookie in your kitchen at home. You substitute cocoa powder and melted chocolate for some of the ingredients of your traditional chocolate chip cookie recipe — no luck. You make brownie batter and attempt to drop it on a pan — even worse. Then, one hot summer day, you’re sitting in the dentist’s office, about to have an x-ray of your please-just-don’t-let-them-be-rotten teeth, when you come across a picture of a shining chocolate cookie in a Christmas magazine for seniors, a magazine, unfortunately, whose name you’ve already forgotten. (Your apologies for having been so completely absorbed by the prospect of a potential “cure” that you cannot now give credit where credit is due…) This cookie, you think, looks eerily similar to the cookie you’ve been trying to knock-off with no luck for over three years. So, you grab a tooth-brush-shaped pen from the counter and jot down the recipe on the back of an advertisement for clear braces, you know, the kind you think would probably make you lisp if you wore them every day.
Stopping at the grocery store on the way home from your surprisingly stellar x-ray, you gather all of the ingredients you’re sure you’re missing back at home. And, at this point, you’re getting a little angry, too, because the sum total for a whole batch of these potential replicants, even if you’d had absolutely nothing on hand at home, seems to be about a quarter of the price of maybe two or three of those cookies you’d purchased from that favourite bakery of yours. Though, you’ve forgotten all your cares in thirty minutes, anyway, because your hair and your entire kitchen smell like melted butter and chocolate. You barely wait to let those cookies cool before you test them, too. They look just right, bright, crackling, fudgy, studded with nuts. And they taste almost…almost…So you try the recipe again (why not?) with a few tweaks of your own…and there you have it, the bakery cookie that you thought you’d never be able to recreate.
These Cookie Meteors are now your go-to cookies for almost any special occasion, and, more often than not, with a change or two, here and there, in terms of what you put into that last measuring cup of mix-ins, your favourite weekly treat.
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Cookie Meteors (nut-free for school, of course)
makes 16 large or 32 smaller cookies
1 cup chocolate chips, semi-sweet or dark
2 squares unsweetened chocolate, chopped fine
3 tablespoons unsalted butter
2/3 cup white sugar
1/4 cup flour
1/2 tsp baking powder
2 large eggs
1.5-2 tsp vanilla
1 additional cup of semi-sweet, dark, or milk-chocolate chips or chunks
1/2-1 cup white chocolate chips or other mix-ins (chips, candies, dried fruit, etc.)*
*You can use nuts as mix-ins. too. However, don’t bring them to school or to places where you might find someone with nut allergies. Best bake on the safe side!
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- Preheat the oven to 350F.
- Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper or silpats.
- In a high-heat-friendly glass bowl set 0ver a pot of boiling water, melt the butter, the first cup of chocolate chips, and the chopped unsweetened chocolate.
- Set the bowl aside to cool for a few mintues OR transfer the melted chocolate mixture to another mixing bowl.
- Add the sugar, flour, and baking powder to the chocolate mixture, stirring until combined. The mixture will now look thick and slightly grainy.
- Stop to test that the mixture is cool enough, at this point, to add eggs without scrambling them and chocolate chips without melting them. It might be hard to leave things at this stage, but better to be careful than to have to start over.
- Once the mixture is relatively cool, add the eggs one at a time and the vanilla. The mixture will now begin to shine.
- Add your additional 1 cup of chocoalte chips and your 1/2 – 1 cup of white chocolate chips (or other mix-in).
- Using a large tablespoon, drop large dollops of the cookie dough onto a parchment-lined cookie sheet. (Use a teaspoon if you’d like to make smaller cookies.)
- Bake for 7-9 minutes, until the cookie looks shiny. It will still be soft to the touch, though. Don’t overbake!
- Carefully move the parchment or silpat of cookies onto a wire rack. Cool for as long as you can before sampling!
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Quick Links for Mobile Users The Lunchbox Season : Summer of Funner : In Defense of Burning
“Glamming Up Your Cans” Lab #1: Canning Label Design
September 17, 2011
We canned close to 100 jars of sweet and savoury goods over the course of our Summer of Funner. I love the way these jars glimmer and glisten high up along the tops of our kitchen cabinets. Now that we’re into the Lunchbox Season, however, it’s time to think about sharing some of our kitchen’s shimmer by wrapping up our cans and giving them as host and hostess gifts, teacher treats, and presents for the holidays.
Today, we took the first step in the process of “glamming up our cans” by designing and printing a basic label for their lids. First. we looked for inspiration from canning experts, and we sourced our own blank labels. Then, we drew illustrations for our labels and came up with a “brand name.” Next, we used Picnik’s photo editing website to add text and shape to our images. Finally, we produced our labels. Now, we’re looking forward to what’s next.
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These Aren’t Your Grandma’s Cans … Inspiration and Sourcing
Retro-chic gingham jam jar lids from the u.k
We’ve come a long way from the lace and gingham mob-caps we used to see on the tops of jam jars at county fairs or in other people’s grandmother’s cupboards. [My Italian and Irish grandmothers weren't canners, though they had their own distinctive talents in the kitchen. Think egglplant parmesean and egg yolk cookies or turkey stuffing and boozed-up mincemeat pie.] While these decorations retain their charm [aren't these red gingham jar lids from the u.k.'s Preserve Shop the ultimate in retro-chic?] there are newer, modern options for “glamming up your cans.”
We’ve been looking to the experts for inspiration. Canning Across America is a good place to start online. The kids also admired some of the very simple ideas depicted in this summer’s Better Homes and Gardens Special Interest magazine, Canning. They marvelled at the pretty red and white string they saw connecting a plain white paper tag to the rim of a jar.
Baker's twine from Kate's Paperie
I had to explain to them that this was not kite string [although, now, the notion of kite string and small oragami kite tags beckons!], but the string that old-school bakeries use to keep their cardboard boxes tight. This led to a fascinating discussion about cannolli which I won’t get into here…Another favourite label of ours looked like either a piece of masking tape or a white cotton ribbon pencilled “Tomatillo Salsa.” This name had been placed at an angle like a sash over the front of a stubby jar. The beauty queen’s identification was secured, additionally, by a plain red elastic band stretched around her girthiest girth. The editors of the magazine also featured a lot of pretty, plain stickers that you could easily find alongside of the “hello-my-name-is” labels [hey, why not use those, too?] at an office or dollar store. We liked these simple styles a lot.
Required Reading by Sarah B. Hood
Then, we looked at our new yet already well-sugared and vinegar-stung copy of We Sure Can, where Sarah Hood introduced us to the fabulous notion that you can place circular stickers on your jar lids to label their contents. If you’re going to use a sticker, she argues, this is perhaps the best place to do it because the flat metal lid is the only part of a can that you don’t reuse. You don’t have to deal with removing a sticky label from the side of a glass jar, then. And, if you’re packing your jars in a box, you can easily identify them by the words on the discs on top. Hood has some fantastic resources for sourcing pre-formatted circular templates as well as label vendors in her book. We can’t wait to try some of the etsy boutiques she recommends! As far as we’re concerned, Hood’s book is required reading for today’s “glamming up” lab, so please be sure to have a look!!!
We also did some “sourcing” on our own, or stumbled into it, as the case may be. When we were shopping for school supplies a few weeks ago, we found some 2.5-inch diameter circular, brown-lunch-bag toned Avery labels (#22808). The company also makes a 2-inch white circle. However, for this round, we wanted to go full size, so we took the recycled-looking one home. Today, we went to the company’s website and downloaded their basic ms-word template for the label we had purchased. We also noticed that they offered some very lovely prefabbed templates for you to download free of charge (think scrollwork, electric mixers, baby onesies, or birds) and to which you can add your own text and personal touches. We skipped those, though. We wanted to do the design work on our own!
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Drawing and Branding
Next, we had to create the images that we wanted to put on our canning labels. The kids abandoned last weekend’s sketches, the horse and ‘dillo drawings that they had produced as rough drafts for this project. To emphasize the contents of the cans, they decided that they wanted to draw images of their favourite animals indulging in home-canned goods. So, they sat and sketched their images in #2 pencil on plain white paper. Then, using their favourite “cartoon technique,” they traced over their sketches in black permanent ink and filled in the rest with markers and pencil crayons.
Bea sketched the bear holding a spoon, ready to dig into a jar of jam or jelly.
Tobes sketched a turtle getting ready to catch a flying pickle in his smile.
This gave way, naturally enough, to the idea that we would label our sweeter jams, jellies, butters, and mustards with Bea’s handiwork and use Toby’s turtle for our savoury pickles, relishes, and compotes. Next, we had to decide on a “brand” name, a way of identifying ourselves and our project. When I asked the kids if they wanted to have a particular name or slogan for their jams [i.e. B & T Foods, Lunchbox Season's Greetings] they decided to go with the name that expresses how and when the gifts were made: Summer of Funner. They also wanted to make sure they included both the name of the canned good and the list of ingredients on their label.
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Picnik Time: Reshaping and Adding Text
Then, we used our computer to shape and add text to our drawings. After scanning our bear and turtle images and saving them as picture files, we headed over to http://www.picnik.com to make use of their free photo editing software. Using the “Frames” feature, we rounded the edges of each image so that it would fit more easily onto a circular label. Toby’s square image was more amenable to coming full circle, so to speak. Bea’s image worked best as an oval inset on a round backdrop. Then, we used the site’s “Text” feature to label our canned goods and to list their contents. We used a different font for each type of canned good that we wanted to label. That way, while the pictures remained consistent, the font expressed the style or “soul” of the contents of the jar. Here are the nine label designs we came up with today:
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Paste and Print
After we saved these new and improved images on the computer, we inserted each picture file into one of the nine pre-fabbed circles on our label template. We had to remember to save this file under a new name, so as to always have our original label template handy. Unfortunately, when it came time to print our test-run of labels, we ran into trouble! We had printed so many things over the course of our Summer of Funner that the colour printer was woefully low on coloured ink. Given the “brown paper packages tied up with string” look of our labels, it was quite difficult to produce a bright example of our craftiness.
Still, a few of the labels were vibrant enough:
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What’s Next?
Fresh Supplies: Once we get our printer ink, we’ll be printing out several more batches of our brown labels. We’re also thinking about checking out the slightly smaller 2-inch white Avery circular label. It might just fit better on the lid after all…
More Glamification: In a few weeks, we’ll be moving on to Glam Cans Lab #2: Decorating Your Cans. Be sure to check back with us then!
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Quick Links for Mobile Users
The Lunchbox Season : Summer of Funner : In Defense of Burning
Our Sister Site: Summer of Funner
- The Lunchbox Season is Back
- Summer of Funner 2012 Film Festival
- Peach Day! Amaretto Peach Jam, Brown Sugar Vanilla Jam, and Giant Peach Butter
- A Movable Mural
- The Imaginary Beasts of Riverdale Farm
- Mad Scientist Day 2012: Ten “Sweet” Experiments
- The Kids Make Street Eats (with Beer!): Pilsner Pretzels & Hops and Robbers Mustard
- Glam Cans 2012: Kid-Designed Canning Labels DIY
