As we were eating, the kids and I were trying to decide whether to call these octo-dogs or dogtopusses… We decided on octo-dogs.
John used to make these when he worked in daycare years ago, and he said the kids loved them.
Because it is getting warmer out, I thought I would make these on the barbeque, but they also work well boiled.
They are very easy to make. First, cut the hotdog in half, then use a knife to start at the cut end, and slit them in quarters, stopping about a centimeter away from the round end.

Then, because I found cutting with the knife a little tricky, I cut each quarter in half with a pair of kitchen scissors.

I popped them into the barbeque on their sides…

And as they cook, they began to curl, so I turned them so they were upright.

Then, when they were finished, I added some ketchup eyes, put some ketchup, mustard and relish on a plate, and set them out for a swim!

I heard you could make your own Pop Rocks somewhere, but apparently the real pop rock recipe involves a whole lot of pressure that would be extremely dangerous to try at home. So, here is my version of the recipe for homemade pop rocks.
You need icing sugar, sugar, corn syrup, baking powder, and citric acid (tough to find…I found it at Bulk Barn) it is also a good idea to have some waxed paper, a cookie sheet, a couple baggies and a hammer

In a large pot, mix 2 cups of sugar with 1/3 cup of corn syrup, and stir.

Add 1 tsp water, or just enough to make the sugar easier to stir.

Then, keep stirring until the mixture comes to a rolling boil, then stop stirring. While you are waiting, prepare your cookie sheet by covering it with waxed paper, and spread out about 1/2 cup of icing sugar, and 1/4 cup of citric acid on the waxed paper.
If you are the measuring, taking temperature sort of personality, use a candy thermometer to boil it until it reaches 300 degrees.

If you are more of an estimating and make a guess type of personality, then let it boil for about 5 minutes. To test if it is done, let a drop fall into a small bowl of water, then take a bite, and if it is crunchy, and cracks when you bite it, it is done. If it is chewy, it needs a couple more minutes.
If you are a take a reckless chance on burning your tongue type of personality, like me, then put a tiny drop of the boiling mixture into your mouth, and if it is crunchy, it is ready.

Once you are satisfied that the mixture has cooked to the right temperature, take it off the heat for a couple minutes (measuring type personalities, wait until it cools to 275 degrees) and add your flavoring, colouring, and the baking powder. Stir quickly, it will foam up a little, then pour it onto your prepared cookie sheet.

As you can see, the colour of my pop rocks turned out to be a lovely brown. I added peach flavour, and was going for a nice shade of orange… I guess I should have added more red…
Anyways, sprinkle some more citric acid and icing sugar on top and let it cool.

Then break it into pieces. They taste great in large chunks, but the real pop rocks are tiny, so I put some into a sandwich bag and smashed them up with a hammer.

I have to be honest, I was a little disappointed at the lack of popping with these. I would call it more of a slight fizzing… But they do taste really great! I love sour candy and the citric acid made them really sour. Maybe next time adding more soda would make them pop more? Well, no one else at my house seemed to mind….

Let me know if anyone has tried this before…

It is pretty cool to me that anyone else other than my immediate family is interested in what I am doing, so the fact that there has been over two thousand views at my blog in the last 20 days is pretty mind blowing to me!

It’s good that summer is coming up soon, because I might just be thinking of quitting my day job! (just joking john!) actually, i did look up blogging as a career… You can make a little bit of money blogging after you reach about 1000 views per day… So I think I’ll keep my day job for now…The best part for me about writing this blog, is I can look back at the last three months, and its pretty cool to see a record of what I have been doing… And the coolest part is that I could easily keep making and writing for the next 10 years with the all of the ideas I have…

By looking back at my life for the last three months, I have to say that I am very content with my life now, I’m in a very happy place! I have two intelligent, awesome kids; an amazingly supportive and involved husband; a wonderful network of family and friends, a job I love, and we are living in a fantastic house that provides me with just enough projects to do! For the record, if I die tomorrow, I will die feeling that I wouldn’t change anything right now.

Anyways, thanks to everyone for reading!

I have been looking for an excuse to use this somewhere….

Samantha and Dylan are going on a trip to the Toronto Symphony with school tomorrow, so of course, the most important thing on my daughter’s mind was what to wear. She decided that she needed a dress or a matching skirt and top, and that she should design and make her outfit. Once again, i think my kids think it’s normal to design and sew a new outfit for the next day when they need something to wear…. Anyways, I did have an idea. Sam had this skirt when she was younger and it has always been one of my favourites, so I kept it to use as a guide.

Here are the jeans we picked to work with. They are now a little too short for her, but still fit at the waist, so they are perfect for this.

So, since Sam was the designer, she picked out the fabric and lace she wanted from my scraps.

The first step was to cut off the legs of the jeans…

Then, we cut two long strips of each fabric about six inches wide, and about double the width of the skirt. I pressed the strips in half, then sewed both end the two strips together, so they formed a continuous loop, with one folded edge.

I pinned the two pieces of fabric together so the fold of one piece overlapped the raw edge of the other. As I was pinning, I tucked in the lace piece, and then sewed all the way around.

Then I pinned the lace to the bottom as well, because according to the “designer”, there had to be lace on every part because that is “the prettiest.” Fine.

So, that’s basically the skirt. If you have a serger, you could definitely use that to finish your edges.
Now, to attach the skirt to the skirt top, I sewed all the way around the skirt, close to the top edge using the longest stitch on my machine, then I pulled the top thread to gather the material, so the skirt was the same width as the skirt top.

Then I pinned the lace around the skirt top, and then pinned the skirt bottom to connect the two pieces together. I top stitched the layers together, but once again, you could easily serge this seam.

Here is the finished product. As you can see, I followed the designers instructions to add a couple details to make a matching shirt. All ready for the symphony!

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