On Sunday afternoon the children finished decorating their pinata. Leah chose to paint the base coat, blue onto the pinata. Daniel chose to paint some decorations. We didn't stick tissue paper to it like it was suggested. We like it the way it is.
When we were studying the USA one of the art projects suggested was bead work made out of soaked beans. "The Cayuga Nation, Iroquois Confederacy are well known for their beautiful traditional bead work." Daniel and Leah did a great job making some beautiful necklaces. Daniel finished his. Leah got tired and didn't. I thought it so pretty that I would actually wear it. Whitney also like it and requested that Daniel make her one. I remembered to soak the beans Sunday night so on Monday Daniel made this necklace out of black and kidney beans.
From "Global Art" we got the idea to make these pictures yesterday. "The Huichol Indians of the Pacific coast of Mexico create brilliantly colored drawings with yarn and wax which look like a painting when complete." I can see it would less messy (maybe?) to use wax. We just had yarn and glue. Leah tried but it got too messy for her so I finished hers. It was fun. I'm thinking they should paint around the cats to make it even nicer.
In the afternoon after I had made homemade pizza for lunch and a couple pans of buns and Daniel and I did the dishes, we made tortillas. Here is the machine I use to cook them. You are supposed to be able to put a circle of dough in there and press and cook the tortilla at the same time. I've found it doesn't work that well as we don't like small thick hard tortillas.
So I use my Pampered Chef pastry mat I got last spring and the marble rolling pin a got at a garage sale many years ago. See the big bowl of tortilla dough? That's 6 recipes. I used to make 12 recipes when Whitney was here to help. It would take us 2 hours to do all the tortillas.
The Santa Fe Wrap Master hot and ready to go. Daniel's job now! He uses two oven mitts while running it.
Daniel had to take a break about half way through the process. He loves to smear a fresh hot tortilla with butter and sprinkle sugar and cinnamon on it. He ate several. Leah is having a fresh bun.
Looks like he has a good amount of sugar on there. I didn't even notice until I looked at the picture.
My station...and as Daniel got a bit tired from pushing down on the maker I finished the last couple dozen by myself.
It's nice to have several dozen homemade whole wheat tortillas in the freezer. They are healthy to eat and have no preservatives in them. I just cringe when I read the label on store bought tortillas! It's a job I'm glad is done. Although while I'm doing it I don't mind and kind of enjoy it, it's a job I never look forward to and put off.
