Thursday, May 7, 2009

Science Stuff All Around

Just as the school year is winding down, my schedule is piling up. Lots to do! This weekend we have baseball and two Mother's Day celebrations. We had some shopping to do tonight, and some baking to do, and homework to finish, and I have a project that needs finishing, not to mention the correcting I should be doing, but obviously, I'm not. Ugh! Yes, things are heating up, as everything winds down. Ah, well, it will all get done.
We seemed to be surrounded by science today. These are those peanut things that come as packing material. I ordered some bracelet blanks and they came packaged with those peanuts. They were (mostly) the biodegradable kind. I let the boys water them down, then collect the non-biodegradable ones. They liked it, except for the wind. It was blowing the peanuts all over the place, so they just did a few. We'll do the rest on a day that isn't so windy-if ever there is such a day.
Riley has a science project to do. It involves some of these. Did you know there are neon food colors? Cool huh?
His project also involves this. Yummy! Chocolate chip cookies, in three bright colors! The project is due next week. I'll fill you in on all of the specifics then. We needed to get the cookies baked before Saturday though. The dough is ready, and they will be baked tomorrow night, by Riley.

My science project! Sheri and I took a PMC (precious metal clay) class in October. We made and fired several pieces, but the lady who ran the class, Beki, had a broken kiln. Someone brought in another one, but it fired slowly, so we ran out of time, and all of our pieces that we wanted kiln fired, did not get fired. Apparently, there was much drama in the fixing of this kiln, as it took until today, to get the rest of my pieces back. Here they are! I have to say that they were worth the wait. I especially love the owl. I may need to string it up tonight, so I can wear it tomorrow. Oh, and for those of you who are not sure what the heck PMC is, well it's simple. It's a clay. It starts out as a clay-an expensive clay. You then work with it as you would normally use clay-only quicker as it starts to dry out. You can punch out shapes, use stamps to imprint in it etc. It then has to be fired in a kiln, or it can be torch fired. My other pieces were torch fired-it's sooooo much fun too! After they are torched, they get tumbled and then you polish them by scrubbing the hell-um, burnishing them. In the end, you are left with metal-silver specifically! It's really cool. I can't wait to load up on supplies and a torch gun!! A girl and her torch. It's a beautiful thing.

Word of the Day: Stanford. We went over to the Stanford Shopping Center tonight, to go to Crate & Barrel. I was looking for a salad bowl, a pretty green salad bowl. It had a place where you can store the salad tongs. It was very cool-in the catalog. They didn't have it. NOBODY has it apparently. The catalog just reached my house! They are already gone? Apparently, there's also a notice that they have not been reordered, according to the sales associate. It pisses me off when something is advertised (like that cute blouse at Macy's-remember?) and then it's not available. I feel like they are trying to trick me. Get me in the store, have the item unavailable, and then I'll have to buy something else. It didn't work-THIS time (although it did work-times two-at Macy's), and we made our purchase from Williams-Sonoma instead. So there! I still like Crate & Barrel though, we're just having a fight right now. We'll make up. I might have to. They have the CUTEST spatulas and little spoons with cupcakes on them!! I have to have them. 

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