Drilling and Threading Glow-in-the-Dark String

OUTDOOR / CAMPING ACTIVITY TO DO WITH THE KIDS

Check out this hand drill Hubs borrowed to bring on our last camping trip. Spud took to it right away and spent much of his time drilling holes into scrap wood and threading designs with this cool glow-in-the-dark string.

It didn't take long before Spud was directing his dad to saw shapes out of the scrap pieces of wood. He had big ideas of creating an entire village; turns out 5 days of camping wasn't long enough. We'll be taking these simple supplies with us on our next trip.

Pound Cake Grilled Cheese Sandwich

That's right. You heard me. Grilled cheese sandwiches made with pound cake! The sweet/savoury combination inside makes it quite a sophisticated brunch idea, especially if it's while camping (I mean glamping).

INGREDIENTS

· Pound cake

· Fig jam

· Brie

· Butter

· Rosemary, fresh, chopped

METHOD

First we set up a frying pan and an upside down lid from one of our dutch ovens. Then melted butter and sautéed the rosemary.

Next we took 2 slices of pound cake (for each sandwich), spread fig jam over one side, sliced brie cheese onto the other and placed them face up in the butter.

Once they are golden and toasty underneath flip one side onto the other. The cheese will continue to melt.

These are very rich and wonderful. Fresh fruit is an excellent accompaniment. Thanks to Grilled Cheese Social for the idea!

Photo Friday #45: Venice Beach

VENICE BEACH, CALIFORNIA  |  TRAVELS WITH KID

Venice Beach is not the first place you think of when you think of travelling with kids. But we were in the neighbourhood, so to speak, and took a couple of hours to wander along the boardwalk and beach. Spud was oblivious to most of the, say, questionable aspects of the area and had a good time taking in the street performers, general people watching, and window shopping the various vendors. Hey, it even has a decent playground on the beach!

One of the highlights for all of us was the graffiti ("Psst. Spud. Don't look behind you." Maybe this explains the nightmares.)

And watching the artists in action was pretty cool.

Muscle beach is crazy! Watching beefy men, in skimpy outfits, pumping iron on the beach was, well, an awkward, oddly voyeuristic experience ... that I wouldn't miss! I wouldn't dare take photos of them, but the building, with its concrete dumbbells is cool.

Ending with some quality playground time.

Next stop, the California ScienCentre.

Check out our other California adventures.

Thanks to Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Friday each week. Share your travel pics there too or check out some other travel posts from some very talented, travel-savvy participants.

Makes Me Happy: A Pretty Stack of Wood

There is something indescribably satisfying about having a wood reserve to help stave off those chilly mornings while camping. Oh, and to make camp coffee ... see last week's Makes Me Happy.

Bucket, Rope, and Pulley

OUTDOOR / CAMPING ACTIVITY TO DO WITH THE KIDS

We got this idea from some of our camping buddies last year. I posted about it briefly on ohdeedoh. 

This year's pulley made its way up to the rooftop tent down to our spare picnic table, which turned out to be endless amounts of fun. Spud had a blast receiving surprises in the bucket, anything from found items around the campsite or little trinkets from his toy bin. Even more fun, though, was him sending down snacks down to his fellow campers (I wish I had a picture of that!).

The parts that I really like about this activity is how compact it is ... we had the rope anyway for tying down stuff on the car. It's inexpensive (just a few bucks for the pulley itself). And it's amazing to watch Spud learn and experiment and get frustrated but push through it as he set up the pulley system (with parental assistance of course).

Instead of just setting it up for him or telling him how it should be done based on our experience, we let him come up with ideas, test them (and moaned with him when it didn't work), and tried again. Repeatedly. I mean you are camping ... what's the hurry? These are life lessons in a nutshell. And when it's all said and done he is so proud of what he made. Then, of course, there are hours of fun eating delivered marshmallows for days to come. So what's better than that?


Tips: in Spud's experimenting he found that adding weight to the pulley made it go faster which is why that stick is attached at the top of the bucket. The other good thing is to attached a string to the bucket, tying the other end to the place you want to retrieve it from.

Note: Hubs bought this pulley strong enough to hold, I don't know, adult weight, so there might be a DIY zip line in our future. I hope!

Lunch: Walking the Dog

· Egg salad sanny
· Blusher tomatoes (oh sooooo sweet)
· Cucumber doggies
· Carrots
· Chocolate chips in the centre

Spud is always up for a story. And for some reason it makes him eat his veg: so today the one-eyed tomato-man is walking his Scottie dogs.

Setting Up Our Roof Top Tent

So easy to put up a kid can do it. Almost.

 First, you attach the ladder ...

... which helps give you leverage to open up the "clamshell".

It's getting there.

No time like the present to actually go up in the tent! Take your shoes off!

Leave the parent to put up the awning.

No eating in the tent so this must be snack time.

Check out my previous post on our roof top tent to see some of its different configurations and to find out where we got it. Happy Camping!

Fire Baked Toffee Apples

Just one of my favourite parts of camping with friends is feeding each other. I get a lot of pleasure planning meals to share by the fire. And it's always a welcome treat to be fed without any of the fuss and muss. 

We are blessed with very good friends who also really like to cook and share good food. My buddy KR made us baked toffee apples after a wonderful dutch oven enchilada casserole that even Spud enjoyed despite the tiny bit of spice. I must have been so busy eating that I forgot to document the dinner! I must have come to at some point because here are some shots of our simply yummy apple dessert.

One tray of green and one tray of red.

Sure, we done baked apples with brown sugar and butter but this was a welcome twist: full to the top with butter and toffee bits. Oh my.

Photo Friday #44

PURPLE PUPPET GOES TO MOROCCO  |  TRAVELS WITH KID

Here's Purple Puppet (yup, that's his name) on day 1 of our 28 day trip to Morocco. We are waiting for the subway to our hometown airport. Look at him. Exhausted already.

After a good night's sleep, and a little breakfast in Casablanca, he's feeling much better.

His favourite parts of travelling with Spud? Keeping him company on trains, planes and buses. Sometimes he even got to go out and see the sites.

But most of the time he was found keeping guard of our luggage. And he never complained.

Well. Almost never. Sometimes he just had a little freakout.

You would expect no less from such a wildly furry, purple creature, really.

Check out other posts about our travels in Morocco.

Thanks to Delicious Baby for hosting Photo Friday each week. Share your travel pics there too or check out some other travel posts from some very talented, travel-savvy participants.

Makes Me Happy: Percolating Camping Coffee

Find Your Own Treasures Hunt

OUTDOOR / CAMPING ACTIVITY TO DO WITH THE KIDS

Before setting off on our last camping trip we made up a list of things for Spud to find while we wandered around the beach and on the trails. We tried to keep a lot of the items listed open to (his) interpretation. He often asked for clarification but I would remind him that there was no right answer, that it was up to him to decide if the found item met the criteria. He pretty quickly got used to the idea and came up with his own, adorable, justifications for choosing particular items. So fun, for everyone.

Back at camp he asked me to take a picture of his findings so I asked him to make up a composition for the camera.

Camping Shower

So, everyone should have a super power, right? My Hubs said recently, at our last outdoorsy expedition, that his super power is camping. I couldn't argue with him as I was, at that very moment, having the shower of my life in that blue and green wonder of his shown above on the right. I can't get into all the technical bits of his genius (and I've yet convinced him to make up an instructable) so this ode to our camping shower is more from a very appreciative user's perspective than a "how to".

First you start with the shower floor. The genius part of this is that it fits on the floor of the back of our car, hardly taking up any room at all. (Also note that the shower-super-hero is in between kite boarding bouts here, which explains the unusual outfit ... sort of).

And when you fold up the floor, it encases this ... the magic copper coil that goes into the fire and heats the shower water.

But first, you must put up the shower curtain, which he does so with clever combinations of twine and found sticks.

The fabric is sewn from some of my Vancouver 2010 fabric. He sewed pockets into the bottom of the curtain to hold large stone; this holds the curtain steady. Important: No embarrassing exposures in gusty conditions!

Then there are a lot of magical things that happen that I will never understand mostly because I don't need to.

I can tell you that the pump runs on a battery (I think?) which is also hooked up to a portable solar panel (I believe?). Below is a shot of Hubs testing the temperature. That part is low tech.

And there you have it. Arguably the best outdoor shower in the world. And the best Hubs.