100 Days of School!

I'm a little behind on posting events of our family the last month or so, so I'm trying to catch up.

On January 21, Abby and Emma celebrated 100 days of school.  They each had to make a paper bag vest with 100 things on it as homework.  My poor children are blessed/cursed with a mother who's always trying to think of things that are different from what anyone else might too.

While Emma was in Southern California with Don, Abby and I got started on her vest.  The first step was a spelling test, to see how many words she knew how to spell.  (Can you see where this is going?)  She was able to spell a whopping 110 words!  She told me, in no uncertain terms, that she didn't want to write 100 words on her vest.  So, we compromised on 50:

She did a great job, and selected which words made "the cut".
She also used her markeres in a pattern.

That left us with an empty front, and a deficit of 50 objects.  So, we decided to tint butterfly pasta with food coloring.  Abby used them to make a picture on the front, which she detailed with markers:


It's a little hard to tell in this picture, but she has grass, flowers,
a sun, birds, and butterflies.  Ignore her facial expression, apparently,
I exasperate her!

 So, of course, my desire to have my children be originals was thwarted as soon as Emma got home and saw Abby's vest.  She decided to use the same ideas.  Sigh.  Emma's spelling test resulted in her being able to spell 105 words, and she chose which words to use on her vest.

Emma chose to use only a red marker for her words.

This is the front of Emma's vest, using her colored pasta:

Her pasta is in more of a pattern, and she drew spots on the red noodles for ladybugs!

Both girls together.  Apparently, Abby wasn't in the mood to pose for me that day.

When I picked the girls up from school, all the teachers told me that in their years of doing this project, they'd never had anyone use spelling words before, so at least I hit that one!

After school, I decided we needed a special "100th day" dessert.  So, using Alton Brown's recipes, we made 100 day doughnuts.  I made some in the shape of 1's, and some 0's.  The 1's were glazed with a plain glaze, and the 0's were glazed in either chocolate or maple glaze.  We made 9 sets:  one for each of us, and one for the kindergarten teacher.

That left us with the holes, and with plenty of leftover dough.  We made some regular doughnut holes, and some "Maddie" doughnut holes, and rolled them in granulated sugar.

That still left us with leftover dough.  What to do with it?  Then, it hit me!  I made circle doughnuts, stuffed them with vanilla pudding, and glazed them with chocolate.  Here is a picture of the results:

And here is what our dining room table looked like that night:

The girls asked me to make up a sampler plate for their teacher, who told me she'd never had homemade doughnuts before.  I thought that was very sad for her, but on thinking about it, I guess she is more the norm than we are.  Probably most people don't make homemade doughnuts.  There are no doughnut shops in Brentwood; a couple of bagel shops carry a small selection, and you can get them at our local grocery store, but there are no specialty shops.  Brittany suggested that we start one.  Hmmmm......