breathing deep where the air is thin: crafting party time

It all started with Maddy wanting to invite a friend over to do some crafts and baking. It ended up with 8 people for dinner and 4 people for night. But it was some good times.

Diana is a senior at the kids' school and is Maddy's Guardians leader (a youth group for middle school that the seniors lead). She is one of the sweetest people God made (I'm blessed to know several; I always wished I was one.). Well she wanted to learn how to do some crafty things, so Maddy invited her over. Then she invited Mikala and then she invited Jenna and then Mia invited Francisca (Diana's sister and Mia's friend) and then I invited Marlo (Mikala's mom) and then I invited Katie (Jenna's mom) and then invited Micah (Jenna's brother, Katie's son and Cade's friend; and then older brother came and hung out for a little bit too).

So we had a party. Chili, dessert and conversations which was repeatedly too loud for some of the kids while they were watching a movie (Marlo, Katie and I kept getting "sushed"). Unfortunately my comrades had to leave before the crafting started, but we all survived (them probably better than me).

Before the whole crowd got here, Diana and Maddy wanted to make an apple pie. With little instruction and demonstration, they made a fabulous pie. Fabulous.

At first they just put in the M and D, but later decided I could be included. How gracious of them.....

It looked like perfection and tasted wonderfully too.

Before the kids got home from school I decided to try the dessert I've wanted to do ever since we roasted those giant marshmallows this summer. Too lazy to build a fire, I roasted them over the stove. It took a little practice to get it right.

I discovered that it works best to wait a few seconds after the roasting to pull the "cup" off so it doesn't cave in. But don't wait too long or you'll have a hard time getting it. 10 - 15 seconds will do.

Glorious little cups.

And glorious little gooey insides for when the kids come home from school.

It was good that I held onto the insides. We ended up walking home in the rain - us five plus two guests (great way to treat guests, I know) and I forgot to bring umbrellas. What a loser. Anyway, we were rather cold when we arrived so we warmed up with Chai Tea and Hot Chocolate - with marshmallow guts.

After the girls finished the pie they wanted to help make the desserts....kind of a chocolate strawberry shortcake. The girls sliced up some strawberries and cut up a cake that I had baked earlier in the day and piled that into the marshmallow cups. We threw in some whipped cream and a few more strawberries on top and ta-da:

They were quite scrumptious. HOWEVER, note to self (and you if you ever do this) assemble the dessert into the marshmallow cups right before serving. We made them around 4:30/5:00 and served them around 9:00 and the marshmallow was rather soggy. They started falling over and you no longer got the nice caramelized crunch that I was looking forward to. This would be especially true if you were going to do something even more liquidyish as I was originally thinking - like trifle with mouse, or something of that nature.

After we got rid of all the extra baggage (kidding, only kidding!!) - after the moms and boys left (Micah invited Cade to spend the night..... he was thrilled!!) and Lucy went to bed and Mia and Francisca watched a movie in bed, the rest of us went to work.

The girls wanted to make headbands with fabric flowers so I broke out the rather large back of fabric scraps and away they went. They did a beautiful job of them.

Note: I made all these pictures black and white because it seems no matter what I do with the camera, flash/no flash, white balance adjustments, etc. any picture I take at night time in our dining room looks terrible. And I'm no good at editing yet (yet means I'm hopeful).