Baby Whales

Back when I was making the Denim Humpback Whales I came across some pictures of baby stuffed whales on Pinterest.

I worked on drafting a pattern for stuffed baby whales, and sewed a few to work out the bugs.

I really want to write out proper instructions for how to make these, with pictures and everything. But, for the time being, I only have taken the time to show you the finished product.

I think I started this project back in January. I have been dragging my feet when it came to stitching the eyes. I don't think that part is very fun. I have finally finished them all! I was very excited to be able to get them listed on my Etsy store, QuietStandards, this past week! You can check the listings out HERE.

Little Bits Of Wisdom

This is a cute little book that BMW picked out at the resale shop.

Isn't it adorable!

Thelma Christenson's illustrations are darling! This book was published by Hallmark and is copyrighted 1967. Little Bits of Wisdom is a collection of wise and witty sayings along with pictures that correspond to the sayings. 

This publication is 42 pages long. 

As you leaf through the book, you will find a saying on the left-hand page, and the matching image on the right-hand page. Every other image is color and the ones in between are plain pencil.
 I'll share a few of my favorite pages.

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲🌲

🍞 🍞 🍞 🍞 🍞 🍞 🍞 🍞

💲 💲 💲 💲 💲 💲 💲 💲

🍌 🍌 🍌  🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌 🍌

❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️❤️

Do you have any witty little sayings that you can share with us? I love to hear them in the comments section!

Fun Yeast Experiment!

I conducted a yeast experiment with my boys a few weeks ago. My oldest son is 4 and he loves science experiments. Technically, this wasn't a true science experiment because we didn't set up a control, but oh well, we had fun anyway.

Our experiment was about what types of fuel that bread baking yeast will produce the most carbon dioxide consuming. We had 5 plastic bottles and chose 5 fuel sources; sugar, honey, molasses, corn syrup, and all purpose flour.

Into each plastic bottle we poured 1 tsp. of yeast, 1 TBS. fuel, and 1/4 cup warm water.

We secured a balloon onto the top of each bottle to capture carbon dioxide.

We labeled the bottles as we went.

Within 5 minutes of setting up, the sugar bottle was in the lead.

At the 15 minute mark I noticed that some of the balloons had teeny tiny holes in the stem portion of the balloons. I used rubber bands to seal off the stems.

I took a picture of the bottles after 30 minutes,.....

1/2 hour

... At 1 hour,...

1 hour

... And at 3 hours.

3 hours

The next day I blew up the balloons for the children to play with. We discovered that one of the balloons had a teeny tiny hole on the top of the balloon. I didn't know which bottle it had come off. My first thought was that the holey balloon had been on the bottle with flour. I really had expected the flour balloon to do better than it did.

The next day I ran the experiment again, with a bottle with flour as fuel, and a bottle with sugar to act as a control.

After 4 hours,....

4 hours

There you have it folks, yeast really likes simple carbohydrates.

Bread baking yeast produced about the same amount of carbon dioxide with each of the sweeteners that we tried. There didn't appear to be any significant difference between using sugar, honey, molasses, or corn syrup as fuel. Sugar had a little head start, but after an hour the rest caught up.

Let us know how we could improve this experiment! If you have any ideas tell us in the comment section!

Carrot Jam; Layer Cake Filling

This post is for documentation purposes. I was "winging it" when I made this jam. If you are interested in a recipe for Carrot Jam, I will share the one I found and I used for inspiration. You can check that recipe out HERE.

After making Carrot Food Coloring For Icing.......

I had a bunch of grated carrot that I had squeezed a 1/3 cup of juice out of.

I added a 1/3 cup of water back to the grated carrots and put them into a sauce pan. I cooked them; steaming the carrots with the lid on the pot, for about 10 minutes, until the carrot pieces were soft and tender.

I placed the cooked, grated carrots into a blender, reserving about 1/2 cup. I thought that leaving some carrots un-blended would add some texture to the final product that would be pleasant.

I pushed the blended carrots through a mesh sieve. Why? I don't know. It seemed like the professional thing to do. I did want the jam to have some texture, so I probably didn't have to do this step.

I added the 1/2 cup of reserved grated carrots and 1 cup of sugar. I cooked the carrot mixture over medium/high heat until it started boiling, stirring as little as possible. Once it was boiling really good I cooked it for about 10 minutes, if my memory serves me correctly.

I allowed the jam to cool 10 minutes and then added 1 tablespoon of bottled lemon juice and 2 drops of lemon essential oil. I would have liked to add some lemon zest instead of essential oil, but I didn't have a fresh lemon. If I make carrot jam again I would add more lemon juice. I feel like my jam was lacking some acid. Carrots don't have any tanginess and most fruits that jams are made out of have a good amount of tanginess.

I used the carrot jam for the filling in a birthday cake. Everyone seemed to enjoy the carrot jam. Because of the color my mom expected the filling to be apricot. 

Carrot jam could be a little confusing on the taste buds, but it does make a very pleasant spread. I ate the leftover jam on oatmeal and liked it that way, too.