Summer Fun

Wow, I am so incredibly bad at keeping up with this blog! Thanks to those of you who still bother to check in on it now and then.

My excuse is that we've been doing a whole lot of this lately, swimming at our favorite local pools and parks. This one in particular is one of the best pools in the city - the view of the mountains is incredible.

What's everyone else doing with their summer days?

Gingerbread House

On Thursday we went to visit some friends for a little Solstice get-together. They have a really neat reversible cast iron mold that makes two styles of gingerbread houses. Since we've been enjoying the Little House on the Prairie books for the last little while, Bee decided on the log cabin style.

We got the house constructed, but brought it home to decorate, which Bee did last night.
The gingerbread mother, standing by the door, is wearing a blue apron and calling the kids in for dinner. Santa is up on the roof getting ready to go down the chimney. I love the vivid colours she chose for the icing, and the little added details such as the skating marks on the pond and the holly decoration on the front door. The warm glow coming from the windows looks very welcoming.

Merry Christmas!

Homemade Caramels

The kids absolutely love the caramels that one of the vedors sells at our local farmer's market, and I was planning to contact the woman who makes them to see if I could get some for stocking stuffers, but then I got to thinking that surely there must be a recipe for them out there, and I could just make them myself. I did some searching and finally found one that looked promising.

These are the resulting caramels - glossy and creamy and unbelievably good. They might even be better than the ones at the market! They taste a little like the Werther's hard candies, but are soft and chewy and melt in your mouth.

My plan of putting them in the kids' stockings flew right out the window when they started going stir crazy from being stuck at home while I was in the kitchen baking, so I put them to work wrapping the individual candies in waxed paper. Bee (my little manager) took great pride in wrapping them just so, and was so pleased to show off our huge pile of professional looking candies when her dad got home. I think we've got a new holiday tradition on our hands.

The recipe that we used to make these delicious treats can be found here.